Hyllestad Norway Kvernsteins Millstone Park

 

Kvernsteins Millstone Park

The production of millstones in Hyllestad started over 1,000 years ago and used to be a major industry employing up to 1,000 people. Millstones were exported to Denmark, the Baltic Sea region, and across Norway. Many of the stone crosses to be seen along the coast are made from millstones from Hyllestad, including the crosses in Eivindvik and Korssund. The park offers nature trails that visualize the history of the industry, with debris, broken product, and half-carved stones still not separated from the rock surface. At the stonemason camp there is a guided tour of the historic stone quarry in the mill stone park and a visit to Åfjordstein where you can see how mill stones are used in a modern, new design.

Demonstrations are given by the young people of the district attending the local school.
The spend one afternoon a week for a whole year learning old and ancient skills to show visitors how life was once lived in this area.
These young people are wonderful, confident and inspiring and extremely good at the skills they have learnt. The adults learned a lot from them!
Click here to visit the website www.jensbua.no

Viking Woman : Dundee academics reconstruct Viking woman's face

Academics at Dundee University have helped recreate the face of a Viking woman whose skeleton was unearthed in York more than 30 years ago.

The facial reconstruction was achieved by laser-scanning her skull to create a 3D digital model.
Eyes were then digitally created, along with hair and a bonnet, to complete the look.
The project was part of a £150,000 investment at York's Jorvik Viking Centre.
Viking Womans face reconstructed full story here

Jorvik Viking Centre: Official Guide
Jorvik: The Viking Kings

THING SITES OF THE NORTH

A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; other modern Scandinavian languages: ting) was the governing assembly in Germanic and introduced into some Celtic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers, meeting in a place called a thingstead. Today, the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions in the Nordic countries, in the Manx form tyn, as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man, and in the English term husting.
In Anglo-Saxon England, a folkmoot or folkmote (Old English - "meeting of the people") was a governing general assembly consisting of all the free members of a tribe, community or district. It was the forerunner to the witenagemot, which was in turn in some respects the precursor of the modern Parliament.
The Slavic Veche similarly developed from a general assembly into a legislature, and by some theories might have been directly inspired by the Scandinavian institution brought to Rus by the Varangians.

Click here for a list of Thing sites on Mainland Britain

Landscapes of Governance UCL Early Medieval Assembly Sites

 Thynghowe Anglo-Saxon and Viking Assembly Site Sherwood Forest

A three-year interdisciplinary research project bringing archaeology, place-names and written sources together in a national study of early medieval assembly sites.

Early medieval western Europe developed in the shadow of the classical Roman world. While substantial traces of the organizational capacity of the Roman Empire can still be seen in Britain, for example the Roman road network and Hadrians Wall, evidence for power and authority in the centuries following the Roman occupation is much more subtle. Arbitration, negotiation and dispute settlement were fundamental to the formation of kingdoms and ultimately the nation state of England, but the places where such activities occurred have never been comprehensively studied as archaeological sites, their names investigated only once in the last 80 years by the Scandinavian scholar O. S. Anderson.

Landscapes of Governance is a three-year interdisciplinary venture bringing archaeology, place-names and written sources together for the first time in a comprehensive national research project.

Landscapes of Governance

The Assembly Project (TAP) - Meeting-places in Northern Europe AD 400-1500

Thynghowe Sherwood Forest Photo Stuart C. Reddish

TAP is an international collaborative project investigating the first systems of governance in Northern Europe.

The TAP team consists of a number of international scholars from Norway, Austria and the UK, who are carrying out a large scale study of the role of assemblies in the creation of collective identities and emergent kingdoms in Medieval Northern Europe (AD 400-1500).

The project was launched in June 2010 and will run for three years.

The Assembly Project is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.

To visit the Project website click here

Thing Sites and World Heritage

Thingvellir Iceland IN?

A recent application for Serial Nomination of Viking Sites by Icelands Thingvellir to the World Heritage Convention has included the following comments:

Although a number of medieval assembly sites are known in other European countries, particularly in Norway, Þingvellir is historically, archaeologically and symbolically the most significant. In other countries, the assembly sites are those of local or regional assemblies that performed a different role. The Althing as a general assembly represented the whole country and was in effect the capital of Iceland for two weeks each year where key legal and administrative decisions were made.
Þingvellir has more visible remains than any other thing site, and there are indications of very rich archaeological layers yet to be explored. No other sites show visible ruins, although mounds are extant at the Tynwald in the Isle of Man, Gulating and Frostating in Norway, and at the Thingmount in UK. In addition to physical remains and national status, the Althing site at Þingvellir in Iceland has extra values connected with its long history of continued use, documentation and knowledge of its governance role, transmitted down the centuries in the Icelandic sagas, and through its dramatic natural setting which has changed little since the 9th century. It has thus acquired symbolic associations with Icelandic identity and with Norse culture and is perceived as a place of outstanding aesthetic value.

 Tynwald Isle of Man OUT?

The Tynwald on the other hand, although arguably older than the Icelandic Althing is heavily restored and landscaped, and sits in an urban setting. It has not come to be associated with feelings of identity, nor is it perceived as capturing the essence of Germanic law in such a way as the Althing. The Thingmount is largely unknown and, although in a beautiful setting, not associated with any communal memory of its function or significance. Further, most of the five Norwegian tings are marked with later 19th and 20th century monuments. 

 Dingwall?? It is asserted that the Thing site in Dingwall was located where the Cromartie Memorial Car Park is now.

The Althing is thus unique through its extensive built remains, its unspoilt setting and for its strong and well known associations with Germanic Law and Norse culture.
The Full Unesco Document can be read here

Viking Sherwood Forest has Something to Shout About

VIKINGS could have built a mound in Sherwood Forest as a place where they could make themselves heard, according to the latest studies by academics.
Four years ago, the Forestry Commission revealed that a rare Viking meeting place – or a Thing – had been found in the forest in north Nottinghamshire.
Since then efforts have stepped up to unravel the past of the area, known as Thynghowe, and earlier this year archaeologists probed the site with the aid of hi-tech equipment. Read more
Yorkshire Post News For Thynghowe

Anglo Saxon Link to Thynghowe Assembly Sherwood Forest

Survey on Thynghowe Photo: Lynda Mallet

Four years ago it was revealed that a rare Viking meeting place – a Thynghowe – had been re-discovered in Sherwood Forest, England. Since then, efforts have been stepped up to unravel its past and gradually one of Nottinghamshire’s most mysterious ancient monuments is yielding its secrets.

Read more >> http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/04/2011/reciting-anglo-saxon-passages-on-the-mound-of-thynghowe#ixzz1JK3R1b2b

Read the Archaeology News - then buy the Trowel at Past Horizons Tools

Link to PAST HORIZONS Advetures in Archaeology

Thynghowe Sherwood Forest World Heritage Day Walk 16th April 2011

 Thynghowe Walkers in Sherwood Forest

The Friends of Thynghowe will be holding their annual 'perambulation' walk in Birklands on Saturday 16th April. The walk will be just over 3 miles and will include many of the stories from the past of Thynghowe and the Forest of Birklands. The tour will last between 3 and 4 hours. Everybody is welcome, please reserve your place through the Forestry Commission on 01623 822447 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              01623 822447      end_of_the_skype_highlighting. 

This walk will also mark World Heritage Day (Annually the 18th of April). World Heritage is the shared wealth of humankind. Protecting and preserving this valuable asset demands the collective efforts of the international community. This special day offers an opportunity to raise the public's awareness about the diversity of cultural heritage and the efforts that are required to protect and conserve it, as well as draw attention to its vulnerability. 

Stuart Reddish & Lynda Mallett Thynghowe BBC Radio Open Country

For this week's Open Country, Richard Uridge is in the Birklands area of Sherwood Forest finding out about its ancient past when he visits Thynghowe, an ancient open-air meeting place where hundreds of Vikings gathered to make important decisions.
Presenter: Richard Uridge
Producer: Helen Chetwynd.
LINK TO BBC PROGRAMME 

Thynghowe & Birklands BBC Radio 4 April 9th 2011

 Recent Survey of Thynghowe Photo Stuart Reddish

For this week's BBC Open Country, Richard Uridge is in the Birklands area of Sherwood Forest finding out about its ancient past when he visits Thynghowe, an ancient open-air meeting place where hundreds of Vikings gathered to make important decisions.
Presenter: Richard Uridge
Producer: Helen Chetwynd.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0103z1x

Thing Sites Project Gulen Norway 5-7 April 2011

Anne-K. Misje, Martin Kulild and Frode Iverson. Photo Lynda Mallett

Presentation of Paper by Frode Iverson. The Assembly Project – Meeting-places in Northern Europe AD 400-1500 (TAP)

Research question: What was the role of assemblies (things) in the creation, consolidation and maintenance of collective identities, emergent polities and kingdoms in early medieval Northern European populations and communities? This project, via 3 interlocking strands of multi-disciplinary research addresses this fundamental question, key to our academic understanding of the emergence of nation states in early Historic Europe.

Full Details of the Project

Viking Thing Sites of Northern Europe

 Gulatinget Millenium Site Norway. Photo Lynda Mallett

This blog links to in-depth information about Viking Thing sites and their history. Thing sites are the assembly sites spread across North West Europe as a result of the Viking diaspora and Norse settlements. Viking-age things were public assemblies of the free men and functioned as both parliaments and courts. Viking society was self-regulated. Law and order was based upon the Thing system, which had already been established via common-meetings dating to least 600 AD. The Thing had legislative and judiciary powers. Every free man had a duty to meet at the Thing’s common-meetings. These common-meetings might last several days, therefore the Thing was also an occasion for a large marketplace and festival. 

Where you can visit Viking Sites:

Gulatinget Norway 

Thynghowe Sherwood Forest England