Woven into the earth
Subtitle: textiles from Norse Greenland
By: Else Østergård.
Publisher: Aarhus University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Aarhus; Oakville, Conn
Language: eng
Number of pages: 296
Subjects: Textile fabrics -- Greenland.; Textile fabrics, Medieval -- Greenland.; Excavations (Archaeology) -- Greenland.; Northmen -- Social life and customs.; Greenland -- Antiquities.
Description: "The book tells the story of one of the 20th century's most spectacular archaeological finds: the excavation of the Herjolfsnaes graveyard in 1921 where - because wood has always been extremely scarce in Greenland - bodies had been buried in multiple layers of cast-off clothing instead of coffins. The occasional thaws had permitted crowberry and dwarf willows to establish themselves in the top layers of soil. Their roots grew through clothing and corpse alike, binding them together in a vast network of fibres - as if the finds had literally been woven into the earth."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-273) and index.