Islensk Husfreyja

þú hefur kannski tekið eftir því að þar er nokkrar verkefni á þessi vefsiðu nýlega sem er ekki um að landnamsöld. Það er viljandi. Ég hef nú þegar endurskoðað síðuna “um (about)” sem er til að útskýra breytingarnar hvað er ég að gera, en ég hélt að ég ætti að útskýra það hér líka.

Þegar ég byrjaði þessi vefsíðu, það var af einni meginástæðu: sem staðgengill fyrir þátttöku SCA í eigin persónu. Síðan þá hefur líf mitt breyst mikið og aðallega á góðan hátt. Ég hef grennst í áhugamálum mínum og rannsóknum og takmarka mig ekki lengur við landnámsöld, svo ég vil að þessi vefsíða endurspegli það.

Það sem þetta þýðir er að þú munt sjá efni sem er utan landnámstímabilsins (“víkinga”) hér sem og frá því tímabili. Ég ætla að merkja allt á viðeigandi hátt, svo að það líti ekki út fyrir að ég sé að setja inn efni frá 13. og 14. öld og halda því fram að það sé viðeigandi fyrir víkingatímann.

Ef þú vilt lesa meira um þetta, farðu og kíkja á endurskoðaða „um“ síðuna mína hérna.

In English…

You may have noticed that there are some projects on this website recently that are not about the settlement (“Viking”) era. This is intentional. I’ve already revised the “about” page to explain the changes and what I’m doing, but I thought I should explain it here as well.

When I started this website, it was for one main reason: as a substitute for in-person participation in the SCA. Since then my life has changed a lot and mostly in a good way. I’ve expanded my interests and research and no longer limit myself to the settlement era, so I want this website to reflect that.

What this means is that you will see material from outside the settlement period (“Viking era”) here as well as from that period. I’m going to label everything appropriately, so it doesn’t look like I’m posting 13th and 14th century stuff and claiming it’s Viking-era-appropriate.

If you want to read more about this, go check out my revised ‘about’ page here.

There’s a revision coming to the “about” page here sometime in the future (plus I’m sure I’ll post about the change as well), but for now, don’t be surprised if you see some posts about things that don’t quite fall under the “settlement era housewife” category. I’ll explain later.

In the meantime, I have a video to show you! In the fall semester of the 2021/2022 school year, I took a class on Icelandic Folktales. A really cool thing about the Icelandic Department at the University of Manitoba is that all of the non-language courses have it as an option (and a strong recommendation, really) of one of the two assignments being what they call a “free-play” project. This basically works out to “anything that you can think of that relates to the course, even tangentially, in whatever medium you like”, within reason of course. I had this giant project I’ve been working on for years, and I decided I wanted to do something related, so I took a portion of that project and ran with it… I even started working on it before I started the course, because I knew what I wanted to do, and had the summer beforehand to work on it.

I reused the project last week, to do a presentation for a gallery opening at the Icelandic Library at my university – https://vinlandtovalinor.com/symposia/ – It’s the “Creation Myths of the North”. And now I have the video available for you to watch here too!

Ég ætla að skrifa færslu um rannsóknir á þessu fatnaði, sem er byggt á raunverulegum fundi frá eyju í Noregi sem heitir Andøya, nálægt Skjoldehamn. Það fannst á líki sem fannst í mó og var grafið upp af bónda við að skera mó, og eftir margar tilraunir er talið að það hafi verið á milli 995 og 1029. Líkið var ákveðið kvenkyns og það eru 20-30% líkur á að hún hafi verið af samískum ættum. Þannig að þetta plagg er EKKI íslenskt, en það er mjög líklegt að það eigi “víkingatímann” við. Þarna endar hentugleikinn fyrir alla mína íslensku fókus, þar sem ég er að búa hann til úr efni sem eru aðeins óljóst nákvæm (þung ull úr teppi, fóðruð með silki og útsaumuð með ull) og í litum og með útsaumi sem er miklu meira fantasíuvíkingalegt en sögulegt.

Ég er nýbyrjað á verkefninu, þannig að í bili færðu bara mynd af hráefninu mínu og skissuni minni.

In English:

I intend to write a post on the research for this piece of clothing, which is based on an actual find from an island in Norway called Andøya, near Skjoldehamn. It was found on a body which was found in a peat bog, and dug up by a farmer while cutting peat, and after numerous rounds of testing is currently believed to date to between 995 and 1029. The body was determined to be female, and there is a 20-30% chance that she was of Sami descent. So this piece of clothing is NOT Icelandic, but it is very likely to be “Viking era” appropriate. This is where the appropriateness of it for my whole Icelandic focus ends, as I am making it of materials that are only vaguely accurate (heavy wool from a blanket, lined with silk, and embroidered with wool) and in colours and with embroidery that is far more fantasy Viking-ish than historical.

I’ve just started the project, so for now, all you get is a picture of the raw materials and my sketch!

A couple of days ago, I finally figured out how to get all the content I’d written for this website back, when I’d previously thought it was all lost. I am absolutely thrilled to have done this, and to have all of the previously written content back up and running on my site.

But now I have to write a major caveat: most of the content on this site was written in 2017 and 2018. My life has changed significantly (and in a good way!) since then, so much so that some of the content on here makes me cringe a little myself. But everyone has to start somewhere, right? Even people with PhDs were at one time a brand new undergrad student who was probably nervous about their first day at college or university. So while I cringe a tiny bit, I am not embarrassed by anything I have on the site here; it just needs updating. And that will happen, just not right this second. I just ask that you take that into consideration when you’re reading things that were written a few years ago. But otherwise, enjoy!