To make the tassels for the Skjoldehamn Belt, version 1.

The belt is based on a belt found with a peat bog body, likely female, from Skjoldehamn in Northern Norway. The body was found wearing a near complete outfit, including this belt. Initially, the find was assumed to date to the 15^th to early 16^thcentury based on the style of clothing, but new analysis of the find using carbon dating in 2009 found a date of 1075 ± 20 years instead. 

The person found was about 40-50 years old. Even though most of the large bones including the skull disintegrated during the excavation in 1936 the remaining bones show no signs of wear and tear and no strong muscle attachments. Together with a slim build and a small stature of 5’ the general archaeological consensus is that the remains are too short and slender for a typical Norwegian male, and could very well be female (or possibly Sámi male or female).

This means this could be one of only a few finds of a female of the (late) Viking age wearing a belt; and the only one I know of where the belt itself is present instead of just indicating hardware (like a buckle), making it a very intriguing find indeed!

This blog post is about how to finish the ends of the braid into period plausible tasseled cords.

When the braid is at length, both ends are split into three units of four strands, each of which are separately wrapped to create the tassels.

I start with the middle cord, and tie up the two outer cords, to keep them out of the way

From the images provided in the thesis (see above) it looks like the wrapping yarn used is thinner than the yarn used for the belt and the tassel necks. Keep in mind the pattern of the wrappings; every tassel cord has a center band and the center tassels are red fields with green/gold/green bands and the outside tassels are green fields with gold/red/gold bands. The cords look symmetrical without being completely identical, which is surprisingly hard to emulate.

I tightly tied my yarn around the strands at the beginning and manually wrapped the cone of yarn around and around (and hiding the tail end of the knot underneath the wrappings). At a new field or band I did not tie off the previous color but wrapped it in with the tassel cords with the new color, until I needed it again.

Adding a third color; from now on the colored yarn can be "picked up" from the yarn making up the cord's core.

All done with the wrapped cords. Notice how to center cord of each bundle is in opposite colors as the outside cords - as is the same on the extant piece.

It is not clear from the original find if the tassel head is made from separate yarn, of by looping back and doubling up on the core yarn, like demonstrated below. In my first version I tied four single ply yarns to the end of the tassel core to make the tassel head, and used yarn from the tassel core to secure the base. Then the single ply wool went bonkers from the humidity and fluffed up quite considerably, making me look for a different technique.
 
Then the tail end of the yarn is looped back and secured with a knot to make the tassel head.

I use a secure flat knot to tie the yarn right at the base of the cords. Then the tassels get combed down, keeping one long yarn separate to use to wrap and secure the base of the tassels.

 Then one of the long ends is used to wrap and stitch the base of the tassel (this is a different tassel, the above only has two red ones to stitch with but as that was not very visible I used one in white to show the stitch).

You can wrap it around the base a few times to secure and then start stitching, or you can wrap and stitch from the get-go. The extant piece is stitched from the base up.

 

The stitch feels kind of backwards. I work from L to R, therefore I wrap the yarn around the back and come up on top, then I stitch under the base of the beginning of the yarn loop, to come back out over the previous yarn loop (but under the new one) and then it gets pulled tight. Repeat until the base is well defined and securely stitched in. In the extant piece the base stitching was done in three bands of two colors.

Then the tassels are cut to length and nicely ruffled up. It is not clear from the extant piece if the tassel fibers are only from the core, added separately, or both. The same for the cord wrapping. From looking closely at the pictures it seems like different diameter fibers are used, making a case that both existing thicker cord yarn, and added thinner wrapping yarn is used to wrap the cords. The extant tassels are felted, but again, it is not clear if the felting happened on purpose at construction, happened during wear, or happened during burial.
 

This blog post is to illustrate how to make the tasseled cords of the 12 strand braided belt in detail. Look for my earlier blog post on how to make the braid itself, and for a later post on an alternate way of wrapping.

For more information on the find itself please check my paper at:

https://www.academia.edu/27845585/A_Viking_Belt_based_on_the_Skjoldehamn_Find
which is base in part on Dan Halvard Løvlid dissertation at:
https://www.academia.edu/14654038/The_Skjoldehamn_find_in_the_light_of_new_knowledge

All photographs are (c) by Susan Verberg, 2017
All illustrations are from Dan Halvard Løvlid dissertation.