Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Blaðsíða 38

Davide Zori
Figure 2. Two iron nails. The black bar is one
centimeter long. (photograph taken by the
author at the National Museum of Iceland)
Artifacts having a pointed shank
with a single circular or square head were
identified as nails (Figure 2). Broken riv-
ets and clench bolts are easily confused
with nails, and therefore it is often more
difficult to positively identify a nail than
it is to identify either of the two other arti-
fact types.
Rivets have two heads connec-
ted by a shank that does not extend
past either of the heads (Figure 5). The
heads of a rivet are usually rounded, but
may also have an irregular shape due to
their deformation from flattening with
a hammer. In working with the written
catalog entries of the National Museum,
I classified an artifact as a rivet if it was
described as having two heads without
the mention of a ró (rove). The find con-
texts are particularly important for distin-
guishing rivets from clench bolts, since,
in the Middle Ages, rivets were used in a
variety of objects, often holding together
two sheets of iron, whereas clench bolts
were generally used to hold together two
or more overlapping pieces of wood.
Clench bolts characteristically
have a round head on one end and a dia-
mond- or square-shaped head, or rove, on
the other end. The artifact commonly has
Figure 3. Rivet. Note that the shank does not
protrude from either head. The black bar is
one centimeter long. (photograph taken by the
author at the National Museum of Iceland)
a piece of the shank extending through
the hole in the diamond- or square-shaped
rove, sometimes protruding several mil-
limeters (Figure 4). When direct exami-
nation was not possible, I focused on the
description of the heads or roves of the
artifacts in order to identify clench bolts.
In Icelandic, ró (plural ræf) means ‘rove’
or ‘nut.’ When ró is used to refer to one
end of the shank instead of haus (‘head,’
plural hausar) then the artifacts are most
likely clench bolts, since neither nails nor
rivets have nuts or roves. This method of
classification is not completely satisfac-
tory because the term ‘rónaglf is used
occasionally to describe a rivet. It is pos-
sible, therefore, that the conflation of the
two types of artifacts (rivets and clench
bolts) could have been carried over to
the smaller constituent parts of rivets and
clench bolts, plausibly resulting in heads
(hausar) being referred to as roves (rær).
Because of this possibility, entries were
considered inconclusive unless the ró was
described as ferkantaðar or ferhyrnda
(‘square,’ literally ‘four-sided’ and ‘four-
cornered’) or better still, tigulmynduð
(‘diamond-shaped’).
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