Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Síða 28

Elín Hreiðarsdóttir
The context of the Icelandic beads
The general view about bead use in
Europe after the end of Viking age is that
in the beginning of this period beads were
much less common than before. The gen-
eral belief is that as they were adopted
within Christian practice, their popular-
ity increased, reaching a peak in 15,h '16th
centuries only to fall out of use again in
central and northem Europe after the Ref-
ormation. Written sources show that after
the Reformation, the use of beads in reli-
gious practices was often discouraged or
even banned in protestant countries. As far
as this author can see, clear archaeologi-
cal evidence does not back up this scenario
and the Icelandic material clearly does not
support it. On the contrary beads seem to
have gained a new popularity in 16th-19th
centuries. Therefore there are good reasons
not to take the documentary record about
bead usage too seriously. Indeed, extensive
excavations in Amsterdam have, for exam-
ple, shown that nearly every household
excavated after the 17th century had beads,
even though they were seldom if ever men-
tioned in inventories from the same time or
shown on contemporary paintings (Baart
1988:74). Judging by the limited material
that has a tight dating from excavations
in Iceland most bead types, except beads
from amber and possibly wood, seem to
have been fairly uncommon until after the
1601—17th centuries. The lack of beads from
the 12th-16th centuries is partly a reflec-
tion of the limited number of excavations
from this period, but nevertheless the indi-
cations we have do seem to suggest an
increase of most bead types after the 16*
century. Why amber beads seem to have
been in most continuous use is difficult to
say. It might very well have to do with sup-
ply, as it is likely that some amber beads
were always available whereas the supply
of glass-, jet-, and stone beads might have
been limited until the 16* century.
The Icelandic beads come from
various contexts. Since none of the larg-
er excavations from medieval and early
modern Iceland have yet been published,
information about the contexts of the
beads was often hard to find, making it
difficult to say much about their possible
use or meaning in Icelandic society. Still,
from the available material it can be said
that the largest part of the excavated beads
comes from churches or church-related
locations, that is churches and cemeter-
ies, church farms, monasteries or dwell-
ings at the two episcopal sees. Again this
says more about the focus of excavation
in Iceland in the last three decades than
anything else, as efforts have been direct-
ed mainly towards high status sites which
in most cases were linked to the church in
one way or another. The fact that a large
proportion of the Icelandic beads come
from the 16* century and later shows that
after the Reformation in Iceland, beads
continued to be used and were even more
popular than in the preceding centuries.
The fact that most of the beads come from
a religious or semi-religious context indi-
cates that some of the beads might have
been used as rosaries. To sum up it can be
said that if the Reformation changed the
church’s attitude towards beads and their
usage in ceremonies, the disapproval of
beads did not seem to have had a lasting
affect in Iceland.
Because of how few excavations
have taken place on non-religious sites it
is difficult to state to what extent beads
might have been looked upon and treat-
ed as a religious as opposed to simply a
decorative, possibly high status, item fol-
lowing the Reformation in Iceland. To
gain a fuller understanding of this further
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