Research Question #1

In this blog post, we will answer our first research question:

What techniques and materials were used throughout the Viking Age in the production of glass beads? And, in what ways do modern bead production techniques and materials reflect and/or differ?

Because this was an important issue for our experiments, we briefly went over the main differences between traditional Viking bead making and our bead making in Take One. In this post, we will go more in depth to answer the question, using further research and experience from our bead making sessions. 

Rose - Tools for Bead Shaping

To make beads in a variety of shapes we used tools such as clamps, a paddle, and a raking tool. These tools would help us make straight edges or indentations for melon beads. Through our research we tried shaping beads in several different ways to replicate the Viking beads. We found that some tools worked better than others. For instance, to make a square bead, the clamps worked better than the paddle. The Vikings must have used similar tools, or tools that served the same function. The only evidence we have found for tools in our research to date are the impression of tongs on unperforated beads from various sites and the use of metallurgical crucibles for melting glass at Helgö and Paviken in Sweden (Lundström 1976:10-11). Other than that, we have found no other examples of Viking shaping tools in our research. It may be that they were not preserved, or were described as metalworking tools, as the crucible example suggests.

Krista - Heating the glass

In many ways, the techniques of glass bead making has not changed since the Viking age, though technology has meant that materials and certain methods have been altered. From the research I have conducted on Viking glass bead making, there were two ways the Vikings heated their glass: 

1. In a small clay furnace
2. Over an open flame 

Videos of both of these ways can be found in Take One. This is much different than what is used today, a propane torch, and of course means that some fundamental things would be different: 

Control over flame - When using a torch, the flame is automatically constant because you have control over the torch. The Vikings would have had to use a bellow to maintain a constant flame, and therefore this is another thing they would have had to worry over while making the bead - keeping the fire hot enough to melt the glass and at a constant temperature to make it easier to work. 

"dirty-ness" of flame - When we were using the small torches, they burned 'dirty' - and by this I mean they drew in oxygen and carbon dioxide from the air and made it easier to 'burn' or 'dirty' the beads. We were able to use a torch that was run on propane, but also oxygen - so the flame pulled only oxygen and therefore ran 'cleaner' and hotter (because you could control how much oxygen the flame received - the more oxygen, the hotter it was able to go). The Vikings, using a fire, would have just been pulling oxygen from the air and so they probably would not have had to deal with the 'dirty-ness' we did. This does not mean that burning the glass would have been impossible, as getting the fire too hot would have achieved this, but I think it is more likely that the fire would be too cool - making the glass heat improperly. 

Somewhere to rest arms - One thing that came up in the course of our experiments was that our arms got tired. With a small torch attached to a table, it was easy to rest our arms on the table when they got tired. The Vikings would not have had this luxury. We will discuss this more in Research Question #3.

Angela - Clay, Mandrels, and Punts

A few other minor differences in our techniques and those that the Vikings used are the composition of the clay we used, our use of steel mandrels, and that we did not use metal punts for the actual beadmaking (although Krista did use one for making stringers). 

The clay we used is called "Super Blue Sludge" and while I cannot find the ingredients of it, that it is blue, and referred to as sludge instead of clay makes me assume that it is not just clay. It also has a pretty thin consistency that suggests it is not just clay. Although Vikings would have used naturally

The mandrel in the forefront has natural
clay on it.
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com
/vikbeads.shtml

occurring clay (Ward 2013), our use of  "Super Blue Sludge" did not alter the purpose or results of the clay. It served the same purpose of preventing the glass from sticking to the mandrel, just as naturally occurring clay would. However, one difference may lie in the difficulty of removing the clay from the bead once it has cooled. To remove the substance we used, a diamond bit is needed to scrape it off. The Vikings would have used a brush or pick to remove the clay used on their mandrels (Ward 2013). 

Viking bead still on the mandrel.
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vikbeads.shtml

Stainless steel was not available when the Vikings were around, and they would have used simple iron mandrels. In speaking with some of the employees at the glass shop we made our beads at, we discovered that iron mandrels make the glass more likely to stick, and this is why stainless steel mandrels are used. Again, despite the material being slightly different, our mandrels served the same purpose. Even if it was more difficult for the Vikings to remove beads from iron mandrels, this seems to have been dealt with well with the clay they used. 

A metal punt is used instead of a glass rod when beadmaking is done within a closed kiln, much like the kiln in the first video on our "Take One" post. Because our technique more closely mimicked beadmaking over an open kiln, like the second video in the "Take One" post, it was not necessary to use a punt, and glass rods worked best. Using a punt would likely result in slightly different working techniques being used, as it acts as an intermediary between the mandrel and the molten glass, but I feel that it would change the experience fundamentally. 

A metal punt is used here to apply the molten glass
to the mandrel. 

Bibliography

Lundström, Agneta. 1976. Bead Making in Scandinavia in The Early Middle Ages. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. 

Ward, Christie. 2013. "Viking Beads and Necklaces." The Viking Answer Lady. Last Modified November 8, 2013. http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/vikbeads .shtml.