Iron
age life: Ethnographic Archaeology
“Really?” I
asked again.
“Really, really.
We’re going to smelt some iron.” Kim said with that thick European way of
speaking English; it sounds almost British as it hangs on his tongue. His laugh and smile are on the edge of
mocking, but I find that I never mind. Kim
is our wizard, troldmand in Danish, our guide to a moment in the past. A waking
dream of the past, since the men and women of the Danish Iron Age would not
spend the morning bumbling about, adding the final touches to their leather
shoes before being put into costume. But
for a moment I want you to picture Kim as I remember him that morning. Dressed in black, he has gathered us around
him like children at story time to tell us the history of Denmark’s Iron
Age. His salt-and-peppered beard is
braided into one small braid in the front of a face prone to laughs and
smiles. Akin to wizards he has smoke
billowing about his face more often than not as he smokes ‘Finnish Leaf,’ as he
calls the cigarettes tucked away in his costume.
I cannot begin
to express my surprise when Kim told us we would be smelting iron. There was also a fair bit of guilt. A few of the other students were interested
in blacksmithing but I knew this was happening because of me. Several months previous during a meeting with
Dr. Bill Schindler in his overcrowded office on what was probably a damp
winter’s day, we had discussed what I wanted to do in the course that summer. The program in question was a three week
course entitled “Interpreting the Past,” run by Washington College of
Chestertown, Maryland. The class was
designed educate students on how the past was interpreted by museums and
presented to the public. The class would
range across the Middle Atlantic States and their main museums and culminate in
a ten day program at Sagnlandet Lejre, Denmark’s premier living history and
experimental archaeology education center.
I had graduated from Washington College the previous spring in 2011 and
my enrollment in the course made me the odd man out. Dr. Schindler doing his part as the gracious
mentor wanted to guarantee that I would get the most out of the
experience. At the time I was just
formulating the idea of conducting research into the history of iron production. “I knew that the University of Copenhagen had
done some work with iron smelting experiments at Lejre and if it would not be
too great of a trouble I would like to speak to the experimenter.” Dr. Schindler said he would see what he could
do. I had never dared to hope that many
months later in July at Lejre we would be offered the opportunity to work iron,
let alone produce it. To say I was
surprised might be a small understatement.
It was not until the second day of constructing the furnace that I
accepted that it was happening.
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| The remains of a bloomery furnace, previously used for smelting iron. |
On this our
first day into the Iron Age village we had to wait a terribly long time before
we could get into costume and go down to the village. The reason for the delay was concerning the
costuming of half of our group. I
suppose this would be a good time to talk about our group. There were eight students in their late teens
and early twenties: four men and four women including myself. We had two instructors: Bill Schindler and
Jack Cressan, who when Dr. Schindler was a student was his flint-knapping
instructor. In total there were ten of
us, all with at least a working knowledge of anthropology and archaeology. So the delay in costuming arose from the size
in our party, particularly in dressing the men.
Lejre was
hosting a Viking Market, a gathering of people akin to our Renaissance
Faires. Costumed merchants camp out for
a week and sell their wares which they may produce themselves or buy already
made. As tents rose expanding the Viking
Village, we were permitted to wonder the stalls and pass the time. Many of us gawked and lusted after knives and
drinking horns, trade beads, and brooches.
We could see the other families disappear up the back stairs of the
Multihouse, a large building sporting showers, toilets and at least four
kitchens that for the past five days had been the main hub of our
existence. The other families would come
down bedecked in Iron Age clothes and pack their modern life away in wooden
safe boxes and disappear down to the Lethra, the Iron Age village.
At last, it was our turn-first the women and
then the men. The other three girls and
I followed the lithe blonde up metal stairs into a loft lined with racks of
clothing. “What you are about to wear is
going to be the most expensive thing you will ever wear.” Natalia said with a
smile and a secret threat. What we
really heard was, “Hi archaeologists! Wear these outfits which will cost more
than your wedding dresses, go live for a week in the Iron Age to smelt iron,
and oh, by the way, don’t get dirty.” We
all agreed to do our best. As Natalia
handed out our clothes she displayed a dizzying array of archaeological and
weaving facts.
 |
| The group from Washington College and our guide, finally in costume. |
“First there
were the underdresses. Like all of the
clothes we would be wearing these were made of wool. Most of clothes are drawn from
archaeological remains found in long barrow burials or on bog bodies. Bog bodies are human remains that were placed
in a water logged location after death and preserved because of the anaerobic
environment. There is evidence of linen
cloth found between the fat rolls of one particularly obese female bog
body. But generally they would have worn
wool, don’t worry the itching will stop before you know it. Please don’t wear this without underwear
under it.” The yellow-white wool
underdresses were long sleeved and did itch a bit. They reminded me of night gowns my
grandmother wore or the kind Wendy wore in my copy of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. I wonder if this is what Wendy and her
brothers felt before they were taken to Never Neverland. A tingling of excitement and fear, but a
foolish fright, for really there was nothing to fear. All of us Wendies giggle and twirl awaiting
the next array of garments. The thrill
of playing dress-up again after so many years has returned to us. Each girl eyes the rack of dresses wondering
which will be her prize. There are blues,
reds, greens, and browns. Dresses and
skirts hang side by side. There are
pattered belts and ribbons for our hair.
“Blue was the
color of wealth.” Natalia says handing out two bright blue dresses that are
reminiscent of Roman ceramic vessels.
They are long dresses with the bit of fabric folded over in the front
and back, perfect for throwing over your head, as the girls gaily discovered
the hood. Blue dye is derived from a
plant that has to be fermented in urine.
Emptying the chamber pot first thing the morning will lead to the
strongest blue. “The square or diamond
style of weaving was also a mark of wealth.” A brown shirt and green skirt gets
handed out to another in our group. “Yours
is a hound’s tooth style weaving. Anything
in green is typically woven in this style. It was the fashion forward style
during the Iron Age. So you’re ready for
the catwalk. This,” Natalia says,
handing me a simple moss green dress, “is called a tubular dress. You have a little bit of wealth, see your
strings at the shoulder are blue and so is that patch.” I’m glad it’s not
entirely blue. Being petite my greatest
worry while trying on clothes is that it pools on the floor, but the dress
stops right at the ankles. As the dress
goes over my head, I cannot help but begin to craft a story for myself. It races to develop a persona for this past
life I’m about to don.
There has to be a reason for why I don’t have
children at my age. In most farming
societies, women begin to have children young.
This most likely would be true in the past. Infertility would be a bad choice since we
are going into an iron smelting project. Based on the observation by Peter Schmidt and
others fertility seems to be a large preoccupation for these groups. Perhaps I’m widowed and not yet remarried. Before I get very far in those musings there
are belts that go twice round the waist before being tied, shawls handed out,
hair ribbons given, and paperwork to sign.
The paperwork is for when we check out in a few days, so they will know
we have not stolen anything. We descend
the stairs and around the corner to pack our modern clothes and lives away in
the wooden box. We turn and pose for the
men before they are ushered up the stairs by our wizard. Natalia takes pictures of us on the lawn as
we wait for the men to come back. They
return dashing as ever, cloaks pinned or thrown over their shoulders, playing
at being run-way models and remembering they too once liked to dress up.
After a few
quick snaps of the camera, we were on our way down to the Iron Age
village. We carried baskets of dishes
and cooking equipment. After a stop at
the ‘well’, a water spigot where we fill our cloth buckets, it’s off to the
village. Lethra, the Iron Age village,
rests between two hills along a marshy lake.
The hills around the cluster of houses are used for grazing sheep and
goats. Gates and fences keep the animals
contained near but not in of Lethra. A
trail leads to the village, twisting between a few marshy pieces of ground and
up to a counterweight gate at the edge of the town. The gate creaked open and closed greeting
us. The other families were already
moving about the cluster of houses and communal fire making lunch, canoeing on
the lake, or meeting the other families.
We were shown to our home for the next few nights, ‘the long house’. The
general design of the building was drawn from archaeological remains from
Jutland, another island that makes up the country of Denmark. We had seen this house several times during
our various explorations throughout Lejre, but this was the first time we
looked at it knowing it was ours. We
received instructions on fire prevention and the appropriate actions to take in
case of fire. Then we went to work.
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| The blacksmith shop on the Iron Age village. |
At the edge of
Lethra, the Iron Age village, between the palisade wall but within the
livestock fence, was the blacksmith shop.
Amongst the long grasses old bloomery furnace stacks peeked out. The land sloped slightly down to the edge of
the lake bordered by cattails and water grasses. These old bloomery furnaces were the remains
of past experiments. Behind each furnace
was a trough for the slag to flow. The
uphill side of the furnace was broken down to allow the bloom to be
removed. These were our future.
Kim gave out
instructions on how to set about the work.
This was his thirteenth-no twelfth (thirteen being unlucky)-smelt he had
taken part in. He had a good feeling about this group and this smelt; it was
going to work out well. A smelt started
with building the furnace. We had to dig a pear shaped pit about a foot deep
and 18 inches wide. It had to have a
flat bottom. It had to be place on a
sloping part of the hill with a slag trough leading away down the hill. We also
had to gather materials for constructing the furnace stack: grass or hay and
clay. The clay would come from a pit
near the bake ovens behind our house outside the palisade but within the goat
fence. Silently, we broke into two groups.
 |
| The hay gathered to temper the clay. |
Four of us set
about clearing the area of tall grass with a sickle, revealing old troughs, branches,
and large piles of bog ore lying about and tripping us up. The cut grass was piled up about the base of
an old furnace. Grass and hay would be
the temper added to the clay allowing us to build one meter high furnace
stack. The hay came from grass
previously cut and lain out to dry. We
picked a spot along the hill near the water’s edge to build our furnace. With tools modeled on those used during the
Iron Age, we struggled to dig. The tools
were wooden paddles, a long pole with a metal spoon-like end, and another long
pole with a metal crescent. These were
used to loosen the soil which we dug out with our hands. Sparks flew when metal struck flint nodules
that clogged the soil. As the other
group dug the clay from the pit, it was loaded onto a slab of rubber made into
a sled with rope handle. Down the dirt
trail it would come, up and over the bumps of the old trough, and down to the
water’s edge. Again and again that
sledge would come bringing with it clay and gossip from the village. We laughed and joked as the pile of clay grew
and our pear-shaped hole expanded. By
the evening, everything was ready for us to begin building the furnace the next
day.
 |
| The pear shaped base of our bloomery. |
The other
families had been busy throughout the day as well. When we arrived at the communal fire, dinner
was hot and ready for us. There was paté,
whole roasted chicken, bread, and salad.
We ate and chatted with the other families; many of them were here for
their second or third time. It was their
usual family vacation for a week during the summer. Some of us went down to the sacrificial bog
after dinner to ask the older spirits for personal favors. The bog is located in the woods that surround
the village and separates it from the Stone Age settlement. This bog is modeled after those excavated in Jutland
and other districts of Denmark. Weapons,
pots, fertility sculptures, horse skins, and animal skulls are placed in the
water made bright green by duckweed.
Similar artifacts have been found in bogs throughout Northern Europe;
this bog has never been excavated, who knows what lies beneath the surface? The bog is silent at night and calming during
the day. Near the entrance to the bog is
an elm tree whose branches have grown into a circle. Legend holds that if you can crawl through
the hole, any illness will be cured.
That night our friends from the first half of our trip during the Stone
Age experimental archaeology conference were in the bog to say farewell. There was singing and storytelling. Sacrifices were personal, a way to ask for
favors and a way to say thank you. After
our visit to the bog, many of us sat late into the night around the communal
fire sharing stories about our life far away and distant in time beyond the
hills of Lejre. In the distance, the
folk festival at the nearby town of Roskilde echoes in the hills.
 |
| The sacrificial bog. |
During our first night we were cramped and uncomfortable. Four people tucked the short way on a lofted bunk. On the second night, we decided to be smart and sleep feet to feet instead of side by side. If you have ever seen the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we were the grandparents, two of us on each side with all of our feet meeting in the middle. The bunk, being placed at the far end of the long house, was right at shin level and left many bruised memories in the gloom. The bunk was lined with straw and then covered with skins. There were blankets to sleep on and under along with our shawls and cloaks. On the couple of cold nights we would inch closer to each other for warmth.
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| The inside of our long house from my bed in the back. On either side of the room, around the hearth, are bunks. The stable is the door beyond the hearth. |
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