Pictures
- Historical Posaments – Photos from Swedish museums and other sources
- Posament reconstructions – Photos from this page, projects I’ve done, and my etsy shop
- Posaments at the Swedish Museum, but you need to dig for them grave by grave.
- Bone winders, possibly used for knotting posaments, from the Birka graves
Files
- Scandinavian archaeology terms – a list of potentially useful terms in English, Swedish, the Birka database’s Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Finnish.
- Posaments, grave by grave– soon to be replaced by the posament database.
Links
- Swedish History Museum – where the bulk of the posaments are kept. Many of them are available through the Collections search
- Birka online – The SHM has a special section devoted to the Birka finds, including a grave by grave search. The Birka Portal online with links to many additional sources, including PDFs of the Birka reports, including Birka III.
Materials
- The Excellent Frog – Pre-made spiral wires, beginners’ kits, and finished posaments
Techniques
- Pictures of the Sami technique of coiling wire using a drop spindle
- A video of the process of drawing wire and winding it using a drop spindle
- Coiling wire onto wire – if you are interested in coiling your own wire, here is an excellent tutorial on coiling wire onto another wire with a drill and one coiling by hand. Most of the posaments have been found coiled onto a fiber (probably silk) core, but some of them appear to have a wire as well and this technique could probably be adapted (with tension on the string) for wrapping wire on a fiber core.
- Many of the posament knots are similar to knots used in rope tying and embroidery. Some are available at Animated Knots by Grog, like this Turk’s Head Knot.
Other Posament Pages
- Posament group on Facebook
- Early Sweden – by Andrea Fain Harding (HL Disa i Birkilundi) from An Tir. Includes some instructionals and background information.
- Ari Anson has posted grave by grave links to the Swedish museum photos on Google drive and a more visual display on Facebook (the same info in one big gallery).
- Lynette de Warenne – several posament topics, but you need to dig through her documents to find them. Middle Kingdom
- Silberknoten – Posament work, focused on the drawn wire posaments and pieces inspired by the posaments. One of the first people seriously working with the posaments. In Germany.
- Posament Database – a nice, filterable summary of most of the posaments.
Related
- A rough translation of Birka III, Chapter 5 on the silks.