A Viking Period metalworking hoard from Alvena in Mästerby parish,
Gotland
Gustafsson, Ny Björn
Fornvännen 2011(106):3, s. 242-245 : ill.
http://kulturarvsdata.se/raa/fornvannen/html/2011_242
Ingår i: samla.raa.se
242 Korta meddelanden
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–019. Umeå universitet.
Karin Viklund
Miljöarkeologiska laboratoriet
Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier
Umeå universitet
SE–901 87 Umeå
[email protected]
A Viking Period Metalworking Hoard from Alvena in
Mästerby parish, Gotland
In October 2010 archaeologist Jonas Paulsson
made a remarkable discovery during a metal detector survey which formed part of Gotland
County Council’s project “Ett plundrat kulturarv” (“A looted cultural heritage”). On land belonging to the farm Eskelhem Alvena 1:21 in
Mästerby parish he recovered what is most likely
a ploughed-out hoard of bronze objects (fig. 1).
The project’s goal is to re-survey recorded find
sites with the intention to recover as much as
possible of the metallic stray finds in the topsoil.
Campaigns like the current one have been launched intermittently since the 1970s, when the
development of metal detectors had reached a
point when anyone thusly equipped could get at
the often very rich finds in Gotlandic fields (cf.
Jonsson & Östergren 1990).
The field in Mästerby had previously seen
metal-detecting by archaeologists in 1984, 2000
Fornvännen 106 (2011)
and 2006. From the first visit it was evident that
the field contains a settlement site. The recovered artefacts point firmly towards the Late Iron
Age and Middle Ages (c. AD 400–1500). Several
finds are clear indicators of advanced metalworking on the site (e.g. copper-alloy smelts, fragments of hearth lining, scrap metal and a possible
master model for a pendant). Most of these were
found in the northern part of the field. This part
of the parish is mostly known for an all together
different event – the fabled battle of Ajmunds
bridge, fought between an invading Danish force
and a Gotlandic muster in 1361. It was a lessknown prelude to the final end to Gotlandic
resistance brought on by the Battle of Visby on 27
July 1361.
The battlefield area in Mästerby has recently
attracted the attention of several researchers, and
in 2006 one of two teams metal-detected the
Korta meddelanden 243
Fig. 1. Five sword pommels and fourteen unfinished fish-head pendants from the Alvena metalworking hoard.
field discussed here in search of traces from the
battle. Nothing directly relatable to that event
was found. However, at one spot the detectorists
found what the finds list refers to as a “Fish-head
shaped brooch” (Landgren et al. 2006). The find
spot was later added to the Swedish National
Heritage Board’s register of ancient remains
(Raä Mästerby 88). Since the so-called brooch
dates from the Viking Period it met with little
interest, and it was not until Paulsson’s re-survey
of the area in 2010 that the site’s full potential
was discovered. In the very same area, spread
over a surface of some 10 m2, Paulsson found an
additional 13 similar objects. It now became evi-
dent that neither they, nor the 2006 find are
actually brooches. They are pendants of an indigenous Gotlandic type generally referred to as
fish-head shaped (Sw. fiskhuvudformiga hängen).
Such pendants are known in considerable numbers from Gotland (cf. Thunmark-Nylén 1982),
but the ones from Mästerby are different in an
important respect: not one of them is finished.
Most of the pendants are rather severely damaged, probably from ploughing, and have mainly
lost their original surface. Yet it can still be observed that they all lack the suspension holes crucial to pendants. Instead, all are fitted with an
iron stud piercing the middle part and a smaller
Fornvännen 106 (2011)
244 Korta meddelanden
Fig. 2. Repaired miscasting on one of the Alvena
sword pommels.
stud in the basal end. These studs fulfilled an important purpose as they fixed the cores of the
casting moulds in which the pendants were cast.
To cast a hollow object it is necessary to have
a core around which the molten metal can solidify – a mould without a core cannot produce a hollow object in a single casting. The full procedure
of the line-of-production of the pendants from
Mästerby will be described in a forthcoming
paper though – as the unfinished pendants were
not the only objects recovered.
Within the same area, Paulsson also found
something previously unseen on Gotland: a collection of five cast sword pommels in a zoomorphic style. They are very similar to a master model or rather cast found by metal detector in Fole
parish on Gotland in 1992 (now in the Historical
Museum, Stockholm, inv. no. 34300a:67). All
five pommels display the same damage as the
pendants, i.e. a nearly complete loss of original
surface, but judging from the small portions that
still cling on, none of them were ever finished off
like similar pommels from other sites. Taken
together, the pendants and pommels from Alvena in Mästerby suggest a date of deposition most
likely in the late 10th century judging from Lena
Fornvännen 106 (2011)
Thunmark-Nylén’s WKG chronology (2006).
Three such pommels are currently known
from other sites: from Gråsand in Ginding, Denmark (Horn-Fuglesang 1980, s. 157), Pacuiul lui
Soare on the Bulgarian border with Romania
(Popa 1984) and the Taman peninsula of Russia
(by kind information from Sergei Kainov, Moscow). All these are partly gilded and fitted with
ornate silver casings.
Two of the pommels from Mästerby (finds
no. 207–208) do however show signs of some further working. They had apparently been somewhat miscast and had several unintended holes.
The caster tried to mend these by adding fitted
pieces of a sixth pommel which had been cut up.
These patches were soldered to the pommels by
means of a copper-alloy based solder (fig. 2). By
the time of their recovery, one of them (no. 208)
had lost its mending patch, leaving a ring of solder around the edges of the hole. Analysis by
means of SEM-EDS showed that the two pommels were cast in an alloy consisting of roughly
92% copper, 7% zinc, 1.5% tin and small amounts
of lead (0.5 atomic %). The solder was found to
consist of an alloy of approximately 70% copper,
20% tin, 4% zinc and 0.5% lead. The five pommels measure between 66 and 67 mm at their
longest point, 30.8 and 33.3 mm at their highest
and 23.1 and 25 mm at their widest.
In the spring of 2011 the area was re-surveyed
yet again and two more unfinished pendants were
recovered, thus making the total number 16 so
far. All in all it is hard to overestimate the value
of the Mästerby find – not only does it consist of
16 pendants and five pommels, but due to the
fact that they are all unfinished, they offer hitherto unseen clues as to the methods of Gotlandic
bronze casters in the Viking Period. The whole
find is currently undergoing in-depth analysis at
the Archaeological Research Laboratory at the
University of Stockholm and will be exhaustively published in a forthcoming paper.
References
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Viking-Age Coinage 1–4 June 1989. Stockholm.
Landgren, J. Pettersson, M. & Ström, J., 2006. Arkeologisk undersökningsrapport över forskningsprojekt Fjälemyr 1361, Mästerby sn, Gotland. Archive report in the
ATA archives, Stockholm.
Popa, R., 1984. Knaufkrone eines wikingerzeitlichen
Prachtschwertes von Pacuiul lui Soare. Germania
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Ny Björn Gustafsson
Arkeologiska forskningslaboratoriet
Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur
Stockholms universitet
SE–106 91 Stockholm
[email protected]
Nationalsocialisten Herbert Jankuhn
I Fornvännen 105 (2010) har Henrik Thrane en
debatartikel, »Germansk oldtidskundskab som
leksikon», om baggrunden for og tilblivelsen af
2. udgaven af Hoops Reallexikon der germanischen
Altertumskunde, der udkom i perioden 1973– 2007.
Mine bemærkninger her vedrører ikke forfatterens gennemgang af leksikonets baggrund, indhold samt vurdering af værkets anvendelighed i
dag. Her er Thrane – ikke mindst i kraft af hans
årelange medlemskab af leksikonets fagredaktionsgruppe – naturligvis på hjemmebane. Artiklens afsluttende afsnit om leksikonets hovedmand, den tyske arkæolog Herbert Jankuhn (1905–
1990), fortjener dog et par ord med på vejen.
Nærmere bestemt drejer det sig om Thranes vurdering af Jankuhns virke i nationalsocialismens
tjeneste.
Thrane opfatter sig selv som en elev af Jankuhn, og det smitter efter min mening lidt for
meget af på hans bedømmelse af forbilledets laden og gøren under Hitlerregimet, navnlig når
talen falder på Jankuhns karriere i SS. Den var,
skal vi tro Thrane (s. 119), et udslag af opportunisme på arkæologiens, men næppe egne vegne.
Argumentet er overtaget fra en anden Jankuhnelev, Heiko Steuer, som Thrane også refererer til
i sin artikel. Steuers vurdering af sin Doktorvaters
karriere under Hitlerstyret (se f.eks. Steuer 2001;
2004) har i Tyskland mødt kritik (se f.eks. Eickhoff & Halle 2007). En kritik, jeg også finder
berettiget. Det er efter min mening ikke holdbart
udelukkende at se Jankuhns karriere i SS som et
udtryk for opportunisme på arkæologiens vegne.
Jankuhn var nationalsocialist af overbevisning, og hans tilknytning til den nazistiske bevægelse rakte videre end blot medlemskabet af
SS (fig. 1). Som blandt andre Wolfgang Pape
(2001, s. 68 f) har dokumenteret, var Jankuhn fra
1933 tilknyttet SA og fra juni 1934 medlem NSDDozentenbund, inden han i maj 1937 blev medlem af NSDAP. Den sene indmeldelse i NSDAP
kan skyldes, at partiet fra 1. maj 1933 til 1. maj
1937 havde lukket for tilgangen af nye medlemmer. Jankuhn søgte 1936 om optagelse i SS og
blev fundet egnet dertil. Året efter blev han overflyttet fra SA til SS, hvor han gjorde hastig karriere og 1944 opnåede rang af oberstløjtnant i
Allgemeine SS og major i Waffen-SS. At Jankuhn
havnede i SS var naturligvis ingen tilfældighed.
SS-rigsføreren Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945),
som Jankuhn fra 1934 stod i forbindelse med,
havde blik for Jankuhns talent og ikke mindst
hans lederpotentiale.
Som den overbeviste nationalsocialist han
var, følte Jankuhn sig hurtigt til rette i den elitære
SS-organisation. Her blev hans primære arbejdsFornvännen 106 (2011)