The Silver Fyrkat-Bracelets from the Viking Period

photo: Replicas of the Fyrkat-bracelets.

On an excavation by the Viking fortress Fyrkat by Hobro (East Jutland) were in the early 1950s found two silver bracelets about the same size, but of a different shape, one twisted, the other smooth with a little jingling pendant. The twisted bracelet was found 1952, when a stolp hole was being emptied in one of the big curved-wall longhouses. Since it was late season the hole was first digged out fully the next year - and thirteen centimeter deeper was found the smooth ring with the little pendant. In the stolp hole had once been two uprights, and the bracelets were squeezed between those. There is no doubt that they were hidden in a space in the wall. Why? This can only be a guess.

Bracelets like these were modern in the period of Gorm the Old, Harald Bluetooth and Sweyn Forkbeard. The smooth bracelet is made of heavy silver thread, which gets a little narrower in the ends, the twisted made of two silverthreads and twisted together. The closing plait is rather different, but the size of the bracelets is approximately the same, a little more than 6 cm, which is what we today regard as a normal size. Their owner was undoubtedly a woman. A tough viking would hardly be able to wear them.Besides the closings and the pendant there are no frills on the bracelets, they were actually applied art.

Viking house Fyrkat

In the finds at Fyrkat were coins, but a real monetary system was not yet known, people paid with silver after weight, whether it was marked or not. A little ring like the pendant was a suitable change, but it often happens that jewelry is found cut into pieces. The silver jewelry from the viking period can be regarded as decorative cheque books.





The twisted parts in both bracelets are made in a way which is a little awkward, though natural for a left-handed person; they are possibly made by the same silversmith. He might have worked in the viking fortress itself, where craftsmen lived and worked with precious metals.
(source: Skalk 5/1976)


photo: grethe bachmann

Fussingø Forest, a mild November Day and a Norwegian Forest Cat.....

The last Days of Autumn. ....

Fussingø, the day before the leaves were all blown away by the storm.

Will we get a record-hot November again in 2015? The temperature yesterday was 16 degrees Celsius and some sleeping butterflies woke up and fluttered around..

Some people still wear short jeans - and on the jogging trip in the evening even summer shorts!
The air is warm both day and night.

The average temperature for a November day is 7 degrees Celsius.

Yellow/Green Beauty

Autumn, especially in poetry, has often been associated with melancholia - the summer has gone and winter is near. Skies are grey and the evenings are dark, but these present warm lovely autumn days of 2015 are not a breeding ground for melancholia, but maybe I should be at the forefront. You'll never know how things look next week!  So here's a little poem about autum from a master.

When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long
Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.

And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

 “Chanson d’Automne” by Paul Verlaine, from Poèmes saturniens (1866). Translated by Arthur Symons in Poems (First Collected Edition, 1902)

Some of the forest at Fussingø were laid out as untouched forest since 1992. The section is no longer used for timber or fuel. The trees live as long as they can. The dead trees are important habitats for mammals, birds, insects and other little animals. The forest will gradually turn into a kind of jungle with fallen and dead trees and a variation of trees growing up.

Cyclists in the forest

Lady with dog

old oaks by the road.

The path down to the forest.

The Fussingø district was inhabited since Stone Age. The first safe proof of human settlements is from the bondestenalder which begins 4200 BC. From this period are found many flint axes.  

the buzzard high up in the blue.

A hen in the road, the hens at Fussingø live a dangerous life. The whole flock was up in the traffic road a short minute before I took the photo, but they are very.very fast to get away from the traffic. They disappeared down in the garden below in the flash of a light.  

Fussingø slot in the background.

.

See Link:

http://www.fussingoeslot.dk/ 

Fussingø slot is today used for alternate exhibitions of art and arts and crafts. In other buildings are Nature School and Skov- og Naturstyrelsen. Fussingø is owned by the Danish State.

The German family  Skeel von Plessen owned the estate until the end of WWII, where the estate was confiscated by the Danish State as some kind of war compensation.

Fussingø slot is only open during the year in connection to various arrangements etc. The park is
open to the public all year.

Fussingø skov

Stævningsskoven . The coppice forest on the other side of the brook.

The coppice forest (Stævningsskoven)  is the earliest known form of forestry in Denmark It can be traced back to Stone Age in Denmark and further back in other parts of Europe.

The coppice forest began in connection to the peasants' need for fence, fuel, grazing for the livestock, poles, posts etc. The landlords had the right to use the upper section of the forest, while the peasants had to settle for what they could find in the low forest. The coppice forest was a smart solution for the peasants, since this type of forest developed an upper forest, if it was coppiced regularly - and in this way they could keep on their right to use the forest.

When new materials arrived in the 1800s like stone, bricks, stone dikes, earth banks and fences like wire and fossil fuel, the importance of the coppice forest disappeared and the coppice forests were mainly allowed to stay as they were.

an old fragile bridge

the old boat is still there

Well, here comes the ruler of the water mill!

Dear Cat, I see from the facts below that you are adapted to a very cold climate. Don't you feel it is too hot here? Maybe you should have a little hair cut? Oh no, that would be a shame. You are so beautiful, and you know it. Maybe you have adapted to the mild climate too. I hope you have, but you have really got a big beautiful and hot fur coat! Do you like ice cream? 

Last time I met this cat it was so aristocratic that it was not interested in talking to me. Let's see how the pretty cat behaves today.....

Facts: The Norwegian forest cat is a breed of domestic cat native to Northern Europe. This natural breed is adapted to a very cold climate with top coat of glossy long water-shedding hairs, and a wooly undercoat for insulation. It is a big, strong cat, similar to the American Maine Coon  breed, with long legs, a bushy tail and a sturdy body. The breed is very good at climbing, since they have strong claws. 

Hello, are you social or aristocratic today, dear cat?

What a cuddly cat!

Wauw, you've actually got autumn colours. So beautiful.

Bye, bye....I'll go find my good landlady. She's got some food for me. and maybe some ice cream !

Emeraldgreen ferns

See you next year at Fussingø............

The Mill Pond

Long-tailed tit - the afternoon light was fading!!

Nature's beautiful decay. 

Text and photo November 2015: grethe bachmann :

Ebeltoft Glasmuseum - OCEAN exhibition, 2013

Outside the museum stands this funny jellyfish, but I don't know which artist created this. Most of them have made some fine glass sculptures of animals and things connected to the ocean. But it might be a work by Janine C Schimkat. (see her works later) 

entrance

The frigate Jylland (which holds a museum) lies close to Ebeltoft Glasmuseum.

 Mark Elliott and Jack McGrath

 The first sculpture is by Mark Elliot from New Zealand and the Australian film maker Jack McGrath, who have developed a method called "Flame action" or "Glass-mation" . 

See link  Ocean Exhibition

 Maria Garcia Rosin

 Maria Garcia Rosin (Whirling Hole on the floor)

 Maria Garcia Rosin

 

Three photos of the installation of Maria Garcia Rosin from Italy. She combines traditional Italian artwork with a contemporary artwork and creates objects which remind of both Venetian chandeliers and jellyfish with light. Her work was shown in another version at Venice Biennale 2009.

 Anja Isphording from Germany creates sculptures in small finely shaped elements put together in a larger form. The works are cast in glass in a lost-wax technique like the cast of bronze "cire-perdue". 

Raven Skyriver from USA is inspired by the colourful animal life in the sea - and at the same time referring discreetly to the fragile ecological balance.

 

Christina Bothwell from USA works with cast glass which she combines with raku-clay and oil- paint. Her figures are both melancholic, fragile and secret, hiding inner rooms and carrying new life. 

Hiroshi Yamano from Japan combines glass with silver leaf and copper. The fish symbolizes his life's philosophy: to swim against the stream to keep alive.

  NB : I forgot to say that Hiroshi's bowl is shaped like an apple, an extra refined touch, since the OCEAN exhibition is in Ebeltoft ( =Appletoft)

Palo Macho from Slovachia uses the glass as a kind of  canvas for his simple compositions in grey-blue. His work Horizon is a beautiful contrast between the horizont of the water and the circular frame of the glass.

 Katherine Gray from USA works with both  minimalistic sculptures and works focusing on the debate about art, crafts and the industrial made works.

Janine C. Schimkat from the Netherlands is fascinated by the weightless world beneath the surface of the sea. She uses both pate de verre, blown glass, slumping and fusing, glass pearls, glass paints, found glass objects, silicone and air pumps in her underwater tableaus,  telling short, subtle stories about the life in the bottom of the sea.  

A view down to the museum's workshop.

Below: Some pictures from the permanent exhibition at Ebeltoft glasmuseum 

Below: Trondur Patursson's glass installation at Ebeltoft Glasmuseum 

If you look closely you can see the square floor in the bottom of the photo. I could not walk in upon that floor. I have tried once and I would not do it again. I get terribly dizzy!!.

  The Faroe glass artist Trondur Patursson made a great mirror- and glass-installation "Kosmisk Rum" which was made in connection to Kulturby 96 in Copenhagen. With this Kosmisk Rum-installation Trondur Patursonn has tried to express the experience he had, when he sailed with a bamboo-fleet from China to America together with others in 1993. The journey lasted 106 days. He saw no other ships and was at the bamboo-fleet very close to the water, which made him be a part of the rhytm of the sea. And this gave him a kind of cosmic feeling of the sea.

He says that he has expressed it in the glass container by installing a mirror to walk on, but there is also a mirror above you, which gives a reflection with a depth of about 700 meters and a height of ab. 700 meters. This has the effect that you'll be in some kind of cosmic state. When you walk into the room there are no horizontal or vertical lines, it is like a feeling of walking upon the water, Trondur Patursson explains.

Apple-sculpture outside the museum in Ebeltoft (= Appletoft)

text and photo September 2013: grethe bachmann