Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Síða 25

Medieval and early modern Beads from Iceland
sold in an international market, and con-
sequently large quantities of Spanish jet
began to be imported. The Spanish jet
was considered inferior to the English
and the lack of quality of the imported
jet is said to have caused the jet industry
to decline before the turn of the century
(Muller 1980 and 1987). An indicator of
this is the fact that in 1882 English jet
was valued £300-1300 per ton whereas
Spanish jet was sold for much less or
£60-140.7
Jet beads were made in much the
same way as amber beads and the mate-
rial is in many ways similar (hardness of
jet being about 2.5 on Mohs scale). This
explains why jet is sometimes called black
amber. The jet beads found in Iceland are
however much more variable than the
amber ones. About half of the jet beads
have simple shapes (such as global or
barrel shape) with smooth surfaces (see
for example SKR04-36-1718 - figure 4,
nr. 4); the rest have some sort of pattern
carved onto the surface. The simplest of
these have diamond facetted surfaces but
quite a few jet beads have been found in
Iceland with much more elaborate carv-
ings. An example of this is a bead with
so-called “basket-work” found in the
excavation of the church of Reykholt
in Borgarfjörður (RKH04-25-047 - see
figure 4, nr. 5) and dated by context to
1788-1835. Another is a bead with eight
ridges running parallel to the perfora-
tion, found during excavations in Viðey
(V89-57108); this one is without a dated
context. Two jet beads with almost identi-
cal patterns have been recovered from the
south west, one in the Bessastaðir excava-
tion (Bessastaðirl987:814 - see figure 4,
nr. 6) and another from Viðey (V90-41).
The Bessastaðir bead is dated to around
1730 but the bead from Viðey is undated.
Both examples have three raised, leaf-
shaped surfaces and grooves in between.
Another similar bead, although much
larger, is a beautifully carved jet bead
found in Vestmannaeyjar in 1816 (Þjms.
344). This bead is a stray find and there-
fore no further information is available
about its date or context.
However, the most common
type of carved jet bead in Iceland is the
so-called scallop bead. Altogether nine
such beads have been recovered. Two of
these are stray finds and therefore with-
out context. One of these was found in
Grindavík in the southwest (Þjms. 345)
but no information is available about the
location of the other one (Þjms. 5918). Of
the other scallop-beads, one was recov-
ered during excavation of the monastery
in Skriðuklaustur (SKR03-36-400) but
the remainder come from the southwest;
five from the excavation of the church in
Reykholt (RKH03-147, RKH03-25-091
-for the latter see figure 4, nr. 7, RKH
2002-25-142, RKH04-25-111, RKH04-
25-128) and one from a small excavation
by the Parliament in Reykjavík (ALÞ-99-
424). The bead from Skriðuklaustur was
dated, by context, to the 16th century but
the Reykholt beads are dated from con-
texts throughout the period 1788-1886.
Although all these beads have the same
type of decoration, they do still vary in
size and detail. The smaller beads (Þjms.
345 and Þjms. 5918) are divided into
three even areas, each having one scal-
lop. The larger beads have a line running
transversely which divides the bead into
7 Source: http://www.whitbyjet.co.uk
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