Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Page 23

Medieval and early modern Beads from Iceland
Figure 5. Scatter plot showing distinction between Viking and later amber beads based on ratio
of perforation to diameter.
of the 19th century. In the beginning of
20th century the Prussian government
bought back the rights for mining amber
and mining has continued to the present
day.
It is likely that most, if not all of
the Icelandic amber beads are made from
Baltic amber, which dominated the Euro-
pean bead market in the medieval period.
It is possible to identify the provenance of
amber through absorption spectra tests,
but this only gives a broad provenance
and it does not of course reveal where
the amber was worked. Style is equally
unhelpful as amber beads are fairly sim-
ple in manufacture. Usually a bead was
roughly cut out with a knife, then a hole
was drilled (often from both ends) before
any fine carving or polishing took place
(see for example Egan and Pritchard
2002:307). The Icelandic amber beads
from medieval and early modern times
are almost all relatively simple in form
and shape (see for example Hólar2004-
37-4299 - figure 4, nr. 1 and Stbl987-
79 - figure 4, nr. 2). None of them have
any carving or decoration and only three
have a special shape. The vast majority
are simple, oval or global in shape even
if some are elongated. Three of the amber
beads differ slightly in this regard (SKH-
2229, Þjms2003-37-3000 and SKH04-
6503), and they are all similar to each
other. They have the same polyhedral
shape, comprised of eight facets. Two of
these beads come from Skálholt, where
they are dated to the 18th-19th centuries,
and one from Hólar.
The simplicity of the vast major-
ity of amber beads makes it difficult to
say much about them, their development
or chronology. Nevertheless when tak-
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