That JORVIK Viking Thing Podcast

Endangered Viking Heritage Crafts

June 04, 2021 Miranda Schmeiderer, Emma Boast
That JORVIK Viking Thing Podcast
Endangered Viking Heritage Crafts
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Last season, we talked about the Coppergate Sock (listen here!) - today, we're talking with a modern day crafter who's working to preserve this ancient technique.

Emma 'Bruni' Boast is a Viking Age archaeologist and heritage crafter. You can find her nalbinding kits and finished products here: Nidavellnir Fabrication Shop.

Find out what's on the 2021 Red List of Endangered Crafts here.

Learn more about the Coney Street Heritage Project here!

Listen and enjoy, and please consider leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!

Miranda  0:12  
In Viking times a 'thing' was a gathering a place where leaders and warriors could meet and talk. In the 21st century, our 'thing' is a virtual place where history academics and enthusiasts from around the world can come together to share knowledge. I'm your host, Miranda Schmeiderer. Hold on to your helmets for this episode of That JORVIK Viking Thing podcast. 

Miranda  0:37  
Welcome back to the podcast! Last season we did a deep dive on the Coppergate excavation, the dig that changed our understanding of Vikings forever. In episode eight, we spoke with Rachel Cutler, who told us all about the fantastic Viking era finds uncovered during the dig. One of the most interesting artefacts was an almost complete Viking sock. If you want to hear more about the sock itself, make sure to check out that episode. The sock was made using a technique called nalbinding. And today we have an expert on nalbinding with us, Emma 'Bruni' Boast. First of all, Bruni, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. We're very excited to speak to you. 

Emma  1:14  
You're welcome. 

Miranda  1:15  
So first of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Emma  1:18  
Yeah, sure. My name is Emma Boast. I am a Viking Age archaeologist and heritage crafter. I'm based in York in the UK. What I mainly do at present is I run my own nalbinding business, which is specialising in this ancient craft and teaching it and promoting it and safeguarding it for future generations. So it's part of my wider remit, if you like, of archaeology, heritage, and supporting the arts and crafts in the UK. That's what I do.

Miranda  1:55  
That's very good. So we talked a little bit last season about the Coppergate sock and how it was made with the technique that you just mentioned, nalbinding. You have a really strong connection with nalbinding, can you tell us a little bit about what nalbinding is?

Emma  2:07  
So nalbinding is one of the many different terms that gets used to describe an ancient fibre technique whereby you're using one single needle, and long lengths of yarn normally sort of about in foot long lengths to create specific stitches to make items like hats, socks, gloves. Different cultures at different time periods have used this technique to make basketry, bags, and other types of home accessories and goods as well. And different types of fibres have been used in the past too. But my specialism is mainly on the Viking application of nalbinding - nalbinding is the Scandinavian term for this craft. And yeah, the whole skill around this ancient fibre craft is about the inherent understanding of passed down skill and knowledge. So how we can take an example like the Coppergate sock, which is a wonderfully preserved piece of archaeological evidence. And we can assess it and look at it from a heritage craft point of view and an archaeological point of view. And we can try and figure out not only how it was made, but what kind of decisions and choices the individual crafter may have made 1,000 years ago when they were sitting there and deciding to make a sock at that time. So yeah, there's a lot more that goes into sort of nalbinding as a heritage craft, from its archaeological founding, because there are so many other different little disciplines that feed into it. And of course, when we have the archaeology preserved, all that evidence is already there, we can use that as a really good strong foundation for learning how to apply the stitches and create shape and form and structure. So yeah, the Coppergate sock is the only surviving piece of archaeological piece of nalbinding in the UK, from the Viking Age. So it's very, very important. It's internationally significant. And for me, as a heritage crafter, this is, you know, my go-to example, explaining nalbinding to people. The Coppergate sock is, you know, one of the best preserved examples that people should certainly go and visit.

Miranda  4:27  
I love that you mentioned that you look at their techniques and like the decisions they made when crafting it. I do a little bit of like knitting and stuff as well. I love that in 1000 years, someone might look at a scarf at a stitch I dropped and judge me for it. 

Emma  4:40  
You needn't! 

Miranda  4:42  
So you mentioned that you focus on Viking stuff, but you said that nalbinding was across many cultures. Where else do we have examples of historic nalbinding?

Emma  4:51  
So one of the earliest examples of nalbinding that we have across the world is actually from a very small fragment of pieces of sock that was excavated in Israel, and that dates to around 6500 BC. So we have got early Mesolithic nalbinding, and we have got a Stone Age nalbinding as well. It obviously comes through into the Iron Age. And we get sort of small fragmented pieces of nalbinding that survives. But like I mentioned, it's important to bear in mind because it's normally done with wool materials or bast fibres. So it's your plant fibres like your nettle, your hemp. Obviously, depending on the soil conditions, sometimes these remains survive, and sometimes they don't. So we're a bit limited as to the level of preservation. But yes, as well as it being sort of in the Middle East, we have the Scandinavian examples that date back to prehistory. We also have South American examples, Peruvian examples of nalbinding. So when you take nalbinding as a world craft, if you like, at different points across the historical timeline, different cultures that haven't necessarily interacted with each other have come up with their own unique way of making items and cordage to be able to produce nalbound items. And they've all got their own unique style, their own unique stitches. And that's why indeed, we've got so many different types of variation in fibre and stitch work in nalbinding. Because, like you mentioned, every crafter has got their own uniqueness. You know, when you're learning, first learning a craft, you are going to be putting certain nuances and little additions into your items as you learn. Whereas as you become more proficient in that, you're going to be able to round off your items and obviously share that skill with others. So wherever level of preservation allows, we can see items that have been made by younger members of society maybe, or those that are more advanced, that have a more advanced understanding of this particular craft or skill too. And that's again, what we see in the Coppergate sock, you can see that the stitching is extremely fine, used two ply yarns, so it's a very finely plied yarn. And that's been used to nalbind the York stitch. And the York stitch is the only example of this stitch that has been found. So this is one person's unique interpretation of making this item in this way, which is just fascinating.

Miranda  7:21  
Why did nalbinding fall out of fashion and when about did that happen?

Emma  7:26  
So nalbinding, the one of the reasons that nalbinding is so difficult to try and string a narrative like historical narrative together with is because of this sporadic amount of archaeological evidence that we've got full. So we know that nalbinding certainly occurs in the prehistoric period through the Roman period, into the Anglo Scandinavian period. However, into the 12th century, what we start to see are different changes and adaptions to the way textile production is being made in Central Europe. So with the introduction of the spinning wheel, and with people looking to develop ways of making textiles quicker to be able to get the volume out, we start to see the introduction of Dutch knitting. So that's your traditional two needle knitting that comes in. So rather than relying on just one single needle to do one item at a time, you're actually allowed to make items quicker at a bigger volume. So you can obviously sell your finished bolts of cloth quicker in this particular form. So it's from the 12th century onwards that we start to see nalbinding in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, it starts to be impacted a bit by this. But in certain countries, like in Sweden, for example, nalbinding has got a really nice long craft history. It was always taught to family members, individual family stitches developed and different techniques were developed. And that carried all the way through into the 18th and 19th century, whereas other cultures and countries that have had this craft interaction, we lost it. So in the UK, for example, we don't see and haven't found any, at the moment, remains of nalbinding all the way from the Viking Age. And we start to see from the 18th and the 19th century, more remains of knitting and crochet starting to appear. It's sort of only at the turn of the century, sort of around the 1920s when this you know, this spark of interest of archaeology and antiquarianism and discovering new things and rediscovering new things starts to spark interest again, that we start to see small little pockets of interested fibre workers that start to go, "Whoa, what about this?" and "Oooo, what about that" and "Oh we found this from a different culture. Do you think we have this in our culture?" and discussion starts to broaden. And it starts to get revisited a little bit into sort of the 1930s, 40s and 50s in the UK. And people start to ask questions a bit more about like well, where did nalbinding come from. And then, of course, in the 1970s is when the Coppergate excavation occurred. And the beautiful, wonderful nalbound sock appears in the archaeology, and that reinvigorates the discussion again about heritage crafts, and crafting and fibre work and how people in the past made the things that they need. So yeah, it's a very undulating and complex timeline. And there are many scholars and many books that have been written that attempt to bring this all together, some do it better than others. But it is an ever evolving sort of discipline, really, because it's always governed by things that we uncover, and we discover within the archaeology, and it's always based upon how those items then fit within the culture that we're talking about at that particular time. So yeah, there's always things ever evolving.

Miranda  11:12  
Well, what other kinds of crafting then did the Vikings do? I'm sure this wasn't the only kind of crafting technique that they had. Can you give us other examples of what they might have done?

Emma  11:20  
Yeah, sure. So the important thing to bear in mind with sort of Viking Age culture at this time, is that there aren't any shops, you know, everything you need, you have to either make yourself so it has to be a learned skill, either within your family unit or within the wider unit, or especially when we talk about moving forward into the Viking Age into the 10th century, like at Jorvik, you then start to see the development of specific craft skills and skills that are being plied as a trade, which is why you have the cup maker, the leather worker, the blacksmith, you know, the textile worker may well be making items like tablet braid, you know, dyeing and fulling cloth, you might have the tanner that is preparing the skins. But they might be doing that as an added skill to help you know, fund their family. But if they are good enough at it over a period of time, obviously they'll be then able to demand a price, a fee, in exchange from other members of the community to be able to offer those services to others. Which is why we have such a variation in craft skill at Coppergate. Because you've got those people that are like, well, I made a pair of shoes, so I'm going to make myself a pair of shoes, and they will fulfil the purpose of a shoe but they won't necessarily be the best made. And then of course, you have the leather worker that has got a very high level of skill and knowledge understanding of working with those raw materials, they are able to obviously ply their craft and their specialism even on a 10th century street, because they are proficient at that craft, at what they do. So yeah, in the 10th century, in England, in particular, we start to see this development of craft specialisation, which is really, really interesting.

Miranda  13:13  
Definitely. So as far as nalbinding today, then it's a bit of a dying art. But you've done some work to counteract that, haven't you? So can you tell us a little bit about what you've done?

Emma  13:22  
So nalbinding is as a modern sort of fibre craft has always been a little bit hidden and misunderstood in the modern world of knitting, crochet, other fibre arts as well. So as a heritage crafter, my job is to try and bring that to the forefront and to try and safeguard it for future use. And I do this by interacting with people to explain and engage with it and the fact that nalbinding, although it's an ancient heritage craft, and was used in the past, and we can use this to, you know, inform and educate people on the history and archaeology of this skill. But it's also very, very relevant to the modern world, you know, as a method of being able to create something with your hands, as a method of being able to use it to make your own everyday items. Nalbinding is very versatile, it's very durable. One of the great benefits with nalbinding as a craft is that because you're doing one stitch at a time, you are only needing to focus your attention on one piece at a time. So you don't have to apply that whole skill set and knowledge like you would do if you're doing knitting and crochet and you'll have to work in great big lengths of yarn and it's all about the speed and the volume that you can create. So it's very much sort of fits into the everyday life of people, which why people tend to find that it's very accessible. You know, you can pick it up, you can put it down, it's not going to unravel as you place it down because every knot interlocks and what I've been trying to do with the Heritage Craft Association. In 2018, I submitted a listing to try and get nalbinding safeguarded and put on the Red List of Endangered Crafts. And I'm pleased to say that that's been successful. So nalbinding is now a on the Red List of Endangered Crafts in the UK, which is a double edged sword really, because it's good that it's there because it recognises that it's a skill and that there are individuals like myself that are still teaching this craft, this ancient skill. But it also means that there aren't enough professional individuals in the UK either using it as a full time job, or using it as a full medium of craft teaching, to be able to keep it going for the future. So the Red List of Endangered Crafts is a catalogue, a yearly catalogue that gets re-evaluated based on all of these different skills and ancient crafts for people to recognise what is being lost within our intangible cultural heritage. And the cultural heritage of the UK is obviously very rich, it's very vast, but there are practical skills like nalbinding, that because they occurred in the past they get sort of forgotten about if people don't do that. 

Miranda  16:11  
Well, fair enough. 

Emma  16:12  
Yeah, exactly. So if you engage with this craft and this skill, what I've been trying to do is do the independent research and give the sources and the materials and all the necessary information to the Heritage Craft Association to be able to support fellow nalbinders, you know, people that are working in this craft to be able to boost others and support others so that this craft can carry on for future generations. But like I say, by no means, nalbinding isn't the only heritage craft on the list, sadly. And actually, this week, they have just released the Heritage Craft Association 2021 version. So there are things like glassblowing and basketry and thatching and things such as that that go on the list. So although these items and these crafts may have a historical and an archaeological grounding, they are all still very relevant to the modern world and just whether people perceive the value in them.

Miranda  17:10  
Well, hopefully, like through your work, more and more people will learn about nalbinding in the first place. But even once it was on the red list, you you haven't stopped advocating for nalbinding, you currently have a shop going dedicated to it. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Emma  17:23  
Yeah, sure. So um, yeah, I mentioned it briefly earlier. I mean, my sort of foundation has always been from the archaeology and the heritage. So from a long time ago, I decided that I wanted to focus all my energy into making promoting, creating resources and teaching materials to safeguard this ancient craft. So my shop name is called Nidavellnir, which comes from Norse mythology. It's the realm of the dwarves, and I like to think that I'm quite an industrious person and keep on going. So I thought that was quite an apt fit. But yeah, what I've been doing with my historical craft shop, if you like, is just not only supplying and making items for people in heritage reenactment, and living history, but also creating nalbinding for beginners kits and needles, and, you know, booklets to be able to teach people that might see this craft from afar and think, "Oh, I'd like to give that a go. But I'm really not too sure about how all of this starts," to give people the confidence in the bare basics of this foundation, to then branch out on their own nalbinding crafting journey, really. So yeah, it's got many different threads, many different threads. 

Miranda  18:35  
Well, you're also involved in a project now on Coney Street, our high street here in York, aren't you? What can you tell us about that?

Emma  18:42  
In April this year, when everything started to sort of improve a little bit, I decided to join the wonderful crafting and artists collective at Fabrication on Coney Street. It's a group of individuals that sort of band together in York and we're all local artists and makers and heritage crafters. And it means that we have a shop platform in York to be able to sell our wares to the public. Because there's an individual craft, it's obviously very difficult to be able to get the public facing avenue that you need to engage with your items. So this came up as an opportunity and has been brilliant so far. But Fabrication is run by a lady called Dawn Wood who is also a heritage reenactor, has got many many years of heritage crafts expertise, and last year, she actually got funding to be able to do the Coney Street Heritage Project, which is whereby they did research into the local York archives to figure out and understand how much of a crafting and heritage hub Coney Street was sort of from the 12th to the 18th century. And in fact there are many, many pieces have evidence and documentation to suggest that Coney Street really was a bustling hive of all different types of craftsmen and women, from printmakers to coopers, everything that you could think of would be along Coney Street. So that's fascinating, not only as a heritage project, but what that does to us modern makers is it gives us a bit of confidence. It gives me confidence, and a bit of hope and uplifted-ness, to be able to think well, all these people back in the past managed to make their living and engage with their communities around them to help support them in their craft and their business. So hopefully, with myself and my colleagues at Fabrication, what we can try and do is, you know, continue demonstrating and showing what our skills are with all our various different crafts specialisms. And hopefully the public will see them and take value in them. And you know, we'll slowly but surely start building Coney Street up again to be this little crafting heritage quarter. That would be fun.

Miranda  21:05  
That would be incredible. Definitely. Well, I hope that that comes through, that would be just the best, it would be amazing if it was just full of crafts people, I would absolutely love that. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. I definitely learned a lot. I think our listeners will as well. And where can our listeners find you? Are you on Facebook or Instagram or anything like that?

Emma  21:25  
Yeah, I certainly am. Yeah, if you do any search on any search engine, you'll be able to find me under my shop name, which is named Nidavellnir. I'm on Facebook. I have an Instagram page. I have an Etsy shop. I have a Heritage Craft Association link as well. So yeah, if you find one of those links to do with sort of nalbinding in York, you'll be able to find me for sure. And I've got YouTube demonstrations and such as well. So yeah, people will be able to find me, I'm the lady with the red hair, you'll be you'll be able to find me.

Miranda  21:59  
A very special thanks to Bruni for being our guest. You can find Bruni on all of her social media platforms. And check us out on Instagram at JorvikViking to see some more examples of nalbinding. Thanks for listening to That JORVIK Viking Thing podcast. You can find us on Spotify, Apple podcasts and anywhere you get your podcasts. Don't forget to rate and leave us a review and if you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. It's the best way to help support your favourite Viking podcast. That Jorvik Viking Thing Podcast is a production of the Jorvik Group and York Archaeological Trust. Researched by Miranda Schmeiderer and Ashley Fisher. Produced by Ashley Fisher. Sound designed and edited by Miranda Schmeiderer.

Intro
What is Nalbinding
Other Viking Age Crafts
Nalbinding Today
Coney Street Heritage Project
Outro