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Time Team 2003
Fetlar, Shetland

26 January 2003

Vikings in the vegetable patch

A handful of rivets
By midday on Day Two the settlement site has produced some evidence for a capped drain or underground passage but no foundations for buildings have been discovered yet. The Giant's Grave site has produced tonnes of rubble and a handful of rivets. The trenches are expanded and the evidence accumulates.

Bowl and brooch
By the end of the excavation the settlement site has revealed the foundations for a Viking house, flagstone floors and a huge steatite vessel. Further geophysics survey results indicate possible other houses leading down to the sea. At the Giant's Grave, accurate plotting of rivets has produced the outline of a boat. Evidence is found for a burial area within the boat, but also for an ancient robber trench: so any grave goods or human remains are lost. However, the icing on the cake is a fine Viking brooch missed by those earlier robbers. A successful Time Team excavation after which the people of Fetlar now have more evidence about their Norse forefathers.

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Getting Time Team to Shetland

Moving a stripped-down crew of 45 people and several tonnes of equipment more than 900 miles to the Shetlands is no simple task. Production co-ordinator Nicola Gibbs had her work cut out to make it all happen. It was her role to make sure that everybody had planes, cars, boats and beds booked up and all correctly timetabled. 'I've worked on programmes that have sent crew as far as Pakistan and America so I wasn't that worried, but when you add on all the contributors and digging equipment it's quite a big project,' says Nicola.

'The 4x4s with trailers of equipment drove up first, a journey requiring three stopovers along the way. The rest of the Team and all of the camera equipment had a 6.15am book-in at London Heathrow Airport. By 7.15am a Boeing 737 with everyone on board was on its way to Aberdeen. Then it was a short wait until all the equipment could be loaded onto a smaller twin-propeller aircraft. With a cheer, Time Team was airborne once again and flying towards the Arctic Circle.

'Touchdown at Sumburgh Head meant the team had made it to the southern tip of Shetland by 10.30 in the morning. Into the hire cars and then the push north continued. After driving up the main island it was onto a ferry and across to the island of Yell. Then, after travelling to the northernmost point of Yell, another boat was taken to Unst island, our home for the duration. Finally at around 12.30pm the Team all booked into the hotel. Of course, that wasn't the end of the travelling: every day of excavation needed a drive-boat-drive journey of an hour each way to get to Fetlar island!'

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Conservation with the Team

Conservator Sonia O'Connor, from the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford, was brought in to help Time Team's conservator Ceinwen Paynton because so many rivets needed to be handled from the boat burial. So what does the on-site conservator do? Sonia explains:

Keeping out of the way
'The definition of my role is to be as much out of the way of the archaeologists as possible,' she says. 'There are occasions when you can't be fast and just get in and lift an artefact because it's so delicate, and that's when you have to get everybody to stop – but generally my job involves trying not to disturb the flow of work. Sometimes it's possible to take a find away by just lifting it from the soil and at other times you have to lift a delicate find in a block of soil so that it can be excavated carefully on a laboratory bench afterwards. Quite often finds don't need the conservator's attention until they are off the site, but when you work closely with an excavation it's more a question of first aid. It's all about consolidating finds to keep them safe from further decay. Finds that need to be kept wet should be kept wet and those that need to be dry should be kept dry.'

Hands full with rivets
Sonia and Ceinwen had their hands full with all the rivets from the boat burial. 'The case with the nails that we're finding here is that the original iron has completely corroded away. All we are left with is the shell of corrosion,' says Sonia. 'There are plus sides and minus sides to this. The minus side is that we have no metal left at all, but the plus is that the decaying metal has preserved the organic wood. The organic remains are very friable and crumbly. As a conservator I'm letting the nails dry out very slowly and then removing the remnants of soil mechanically with a dentist's tool. The wood around the nails is essentially preserved by the corrosion, so after cleaning I can see which way the grain of the wood flowed. Cleaning the artefacts like this enables the other people working on the programme to have a really clear picture of what they've excavated.'

Proddy pokey things
'The tools I use are proddy pokey things from all sorts of backgrounds: dentist's tools, clay sculpting tools, surgeon's tools and even a few that I've picked up from a hardware stall at a market, anything and everything that's useful for conserving artefacts,' explains Sonia. 'I have a proddy pokey thing for almost any situation. Apart from the tools you also need to know about the period you're working on so that you know what to expect to find. On top of this you need to know about the different environments that can be found so that you understand the conditions that artefacts have survived in. Here on the Shetlands the soil and weather are very aggressive and much of the decay we have on our artefacts would certainly have happened in the first few years after they were deposited in the soil.'

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Soapstone reconstructions

Soapstone knack
Tony Sherratt is a living-archaeology specialist who has the knack with soapstone. Here he explains the merits of this wonderful material.

'Commonly known as soapstone, the proper name for this stuff is steatite. It's a very flexible and versatile material and it takes shock very well. Though mainly found in Shetland, it's also common in Scandinavia and there are a few pockets in Cornwall. It makes a good cooking pot, I can use it for a mould when I'm casting bronze, and you can even use it for cooking food on in a similar way to a grill.'

So what's it like to work with?
'It's a very easy stone to work. It's a metamorphic rock and can appear either very hard or soft like talc, which is still quarried on Shetland to make talcum powder. Ground steatite is still used in industry today as a base for paints and make-up. I prefer to quarry the stuff myself straight from the cliff face where it appears in seams.'

How long have people been using steatite to make things?
'I would say that this material has been used to make items for as long as people have lived on the island – right back to the Bronze Age. On the island of Unst, at a place called Clibberswick, there are over 150 bowl-shaped marks in the rock face where the Norsemen and Vikings cut out blocks of raw steatite. You can still see the ancient tool marks in the stone today. I love that sort of thing.'

Complete soapstone vessels are almost more common than fragments of broken ones, Why?
'It's rare to find large fragments of broken vessels because, unlike pottery, the fragments can be recycled and remodelled easily into other useful items like lamps and spindle whorls.'

What tools do you use?
'The tools used are very basic. I use hammers, chisels and sandstone files to work the stone. These are basically the same tools as the Vikings used.'

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Further reading

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings edited by Peter Sawyer (Oxford University Press, 2000 revised edition) paperback £15.03 ($22.50) ISBN: 0192853651
Were the Vikings, as contemporary description had it, a 'valiant, wrathful, foreign, purely pagan people' who swept in from the sea to plunder and slaughter? Or were they unusually successful merchants, extortionists, and pioneer explorers? Archaeological research, from Dublin to Russia, backs up this fully illustrated overview of the history and culture of the Vikings. Includes chapters on their seamanship, religion and the Vikings in history and legend.

The Vikings and their Origins by David Wilson (Thames and Hudson, 1989) paperback £6.95 ISBN: 0500275424
Describes the history and culture of the Vikings, and discusses their influence on European civilisation.

The Viking World by James Graham-Campbell (Frances Lincoln was Windward, 1989, new edition May 2001) paperback £16.99 ISBN: 0711218005
A splendidly illustrated account of the Vikings, their homelands, ships, warfare, trade, arts and crafts, and daily life. A truly lovely book.

Viking Age England by Julian D Richards (Tempus, 2001) paperback £14.99 ISBN: 0752414895
From shortly before 800 AD until the Norman conquest, England was subject to raids from seafaring peoples from Scandinavia – the Vikings. They were not only raiders but also traders and settlers. During this period the English state was unified under a single ruler for the first time and Anglo-Saxon society underwent great changes. Results from major excavations in both the countryside and in towns, such as London, Lincoln and York, mean that it is now possible to reassess the Viking contribution to the history of Late Anglo-Saxon England and to examine the creation of a new mixed Anglo-Scandinavian identity. Dr Julian D Richards is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York and Director of the Archaeology Data Service.

A History of the Vikings by Gwyn Jones (Oxford Paperbacks, 1984) paperback £9.99 ISBN: 019285139X
The history of the Viking peoples and kingdoms, from their half-glimpsed origins and legendary prehistory to the triumphs of Canute, is as exciting a story as has ever been told. Professor Jones's classic work incorporates all the latest research.

Viking Age York by Richard Hall (English Heritage/Batsford, 1994) paperback £15.99 out of print but may be found in libraries
A fascinating and significant book on the archaeology and history of Jorvik, or York. Using archaeological evidence from the excavations of the York Archaeological Trust, Richard Hall provides an informed discussion of the city's development, its buildings and people, trade, industry and crafts. Informative, readable and well illustrated throughout – a great all-round book.

Towns in the Viking Age by Helen Clarke and Bjorn Ambrosiani (Leicester University Press, revised edition 1995) paperback £19.99 ISBN: 071851792X
Explores the Vikings' role as the founders of urban centres over much of northern Europe and aspects of urban life from Jorvik to Wexford and considers the contribution of Vikings, as craftsmen and merchants, to urban life. Packed with examples from York and London, and with lovely illustrations.

Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch (Boydell, 1994) hardback/paperback £30/£12.95 ISBN: 0851152783/0851153607
What role did women play in the apparently irredeemably male world of the Vikings? Archaeological evidence brings us into close physical contact with Viking-age women, their dress, work and daily life. This pioneering book seeks out the varieties of female experience from admired warriors to sacrificial victims in both Scandinavia and the Viking colonies.

Barbarian Warriors: Saxons, Vikings and Normans by Dan and Susanna Shadrake (Batsford, 1997) hardback £18.95 ISBN: 1857532139
A pictorial review of the dress, arms and armour of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that succeeded the Romans in Britain. Very well illustrated from archaeological finds and re-enactment societies, with a selection of outstanding plates by Christa Hook.

Scandinavian Scotland by B Crawford (Leicester University Press, 1987) out of print but may be found in libraries
Vikings in Mann by Manx National Heritage (Manx National Heritage, 1997) paperback £4.50 ISBN: 0901106380
A glossy, concise pamphlet on the Vikings on the Isle of Mann. It discusses their arrival in Europe; everyday life; tools and weapons; clothes and jewellery; ships; trade; beliefs and myths; stone carvings and their legacy on the island.

Viking Scotland by Anna Ritchie (Historic Scotland/Batsford, 1993) paperback £15.99 ISBN: 0713472251
The story of the Vikings in Scotland, told through the archaeological, historical and literary evidence. Includes a guide on what can still be seen today.

Orkney by Anna Ritchie (Mercat Press, 1996) paperback £12.99. ISBN: 0114952884
A chronological survey of the island. It describes Viking brochs and houses, Pictish gravestones and medieval houses, castles and churches with plenty of photographs and directions.

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Other websites

This website contains links to other websites which are not under the control of and are not maintained by Channel 4 Television. Channel 4 Television is not responsible for the content of these sites and does not necessarily endorse the material on them.

World of the Vikings
www.pastforward.co.uk/vikings/index.html
This site gives a very extensive and informative view of the Vikings and their culture. It covers their history, the key battles fought, the routes they took through Europe, their gods and their customs. There are sections on runes, and links to museums both in the UK and abroad. Information is also provided about re-enactments.

Swedish History: the Viking Age
www.utb.boras.se/uk/se/projekt/history/
articles/vikage/vikage1.htm
Although it is apparently a Swedish school project, this is a worthwhile site. Most areas of Viking life – ranging from gods to writing, and from explorers and ships to warriors – are covered. There is also a sizeable section on the Vikings' campaigns.

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