I think people also forget how dazzling windows made from small, individual panes are. Some of the big Tudor revival mansions nearby will have -a- window or two done with the small diagonal panes set in the lattice and the effect in the sun is... magical. And that's plain clear glass. As an average working Old Norse person I'd have been incredibly impressed.
Even in the 1800s glass windows were cherished. My great aunt bought a small window with her when she left Sweden to immigrate to the US. Seems strange now,, but that was one of her prize possessions. I wonder what ever happened to it .
There was a beautiful window in my grandfather's house that we all treasured. Golden glass with lit candles in white and amber. Sadly it went with the house after he passed, but even today glass windows can be cherished.
In Southern France, they used a specific fern's ash for glass making, from the Roman Empire and forward. It makes an almost clear glass with a tight of blue
I’d love to see a reconstruction of a very high status longhouse or similar with these small panes windows, to see how it would have looked. Do we know how far apart the finds were from each other? That could potentially be a a clue to their placement in structures, and could perhaps give us an idea of how these buildings might look
It's kind of wild to think about things that are now ubiquitous & fairly inexpensive (Glass, salt, sugar, spices, fabric) were once rare & as valued as gold or silver.
Not 'as' valued, more often more valued. Food, salt, sugar, spices, fabric would keep you alive. What use is gold or silver on a ship? You can always come back for the gold and silver.. if you need it. If you were the Vikings, you already beat them once.
I found your description of faience very interesting for reasons completely unrelated to Vikings. In late 19th century North America, some stained glass artists stated using faience in their windows, most notably Louis Comfort Tiffany, John LaFarge, and the J & R Lamb Studios. Faience was used to give texture to clothing, drapery, and backgrounds, and it was often fabricated in multiple layers. Faience also helped make the stained glass readable at night as it was reflective as well as refractive. It was very expensive, so it was used only in very high-end commissions. It also was very heavy, especially when installed in multiple layers, which tended to cause problems with the lead came. Consequently, they are difficult to maintain, but they were very popular with a certain set up into the 1920s. I am not aware of any European stained glass artists that used it.
The description was completely misleading. For a start, the name faience generally relates to a type of earthenware (clay) pottery with a lead-based slip with a tin oxide additive that produced a bright white surface that could then be painted before refiring. Faience is the French version of the name of the Italian town of Faenza where such white pottery glazes were first introduced to Europe. This type of glaze is thought to have originated in Iran around the 9th century. So when you say "faience" on its own, it doesn't refer to "Egyptian faience", which is a different animal entirely. Egyptian faience is not glazed earthenware. It is a sintered-quartz ceramic and it is also different from Egyptian glass. Egyptian faience was always opaque, despite its shiny surface. It was originally created to mimic polished stone like lapis lazuli or jade. So the whole excursion into "faience" was irrelevant here in a discussion relating to window panes. As for stained glass, it is meant to be translucent at least. Egyptian faience never was.
@@alicemilne1444 You obviously know far more about this than I do, so I defer to your expertise. However, "faience" was the term used by these stained glass artists at the time, so I assumed Jimmy was talking about the same thing. I don't know why they chose that word to describe the material or the process they used to mold the glass. Maybe it was to imply it had a faience-like effect, but I'm only speculating.
@@christopherstephenjenksbsg4944 Didn't Tiffany also work with a company that had the word "faience" in its name? In the USA and the UK earthenware faience was often called majolica, probably because it was sailors who first encountered that type of glaze in Majorca. Perhaps the US stained glass artists thought that faience was something different and experimented with metallic additives.
THere's an interesting fact that might be related to this: the English and Irish words for "window" are (independently) borrowed from Old Norse (the Welsh as you know stuck with the word they'd borrowed from Latin). I've often wondered if the reason people bothered to borrow a word for something they already had is that it reflects a change in technology.
If I remember rightly, St Peter's monastery at Monkwearmouth, here in Sunderland, was supposed to have been only the second post-Roman building in Britain to have glass windows. It was built about 674CE and the glassmakers were bought from Gaul to do the job, establishing an industry that lasted until about 15 years ago.
It doesn't have to be swords or crowns, "everyday" objects - say, glass - contain vast histories which are just as fascinating. I like that you are covering so many elements, which gives a deeper understanding of this world.
Honestly had never really considered that Vikings had windows, all the representations seem to suggest their walls were solid. Thank you for another interesting video
@@Runix1 In medieval times it was common practice to stretch pigsbladders and similar organs as "window panes" for poorer folk, wouldn't surprise me if it existed in the viking age too but my teacher said he didn't know if there were yet any evidence for it. It's more than 20 years since then so maybe there've been some by now.
Imagine how hard that must have been. Those long, cold, dark winters...having to choose between a reasonably warm, but dark and somewhat smokey house and and open windows? I do the 'Stoßlüften‘ (opening all windows for a couple minutes) us Germans are famous for, at least 3 times a day. And let me tell you, it gets cold really, really fast, even if the temperatures are still somewhat above freezing. I'm sure glad, I live in a time and place, where large windows and central heating are the norm.
Dear Jimmy, if you want to look up about Glasmaking have alook at the glass tradition in Thuringia, especially in Lauscha. They have glasmaking school that will excahnge students with Murano in Venice. Thuringia Forest is well known for it's glass making. Probably forest glass but nevertheless very interesting.
Could you do a video on Viking age glass beads? Ive been hoping for one since your series on jewelry and brooches. I think you mentioned you had enough material for a whole video on just that subject?
I love how this is the second nugget of "people in Southern Scandinavia, historically, loved some imported glassware" that I've come across. The other one was a tax on imported mirrors in Norway in the 19th Century, based on size. You always had to pay for the mirror, but the tax was waived if it was broken during transport. Broken could mean utterly shattered, but it already counted if you had one crack across the entire width or length of it, even if it was near the top or bottom and didn't impact use. At which point you had a fancy, imported mirror and visible bragging rights that were *on par with having electricity installed in your house*.
It’s interesting because hard wood ash is used in soap making. You run water through the ash to create lye water then add fat (animal or plant) that causes saponification-hence soap (at the most basic). I think the trees render potassium chloride? Anyway, this is very interesting and very cool! I still want to (one day) make glass. It just seems like such an interesting process. Thank you for sharing ❤
Art historian here. Venice and the Byzantine Empire were the places to go for quality glass around that time, they became disgustingly rich because of their trade. Venice was so proud of their glass that it was ofently portrayed in their paintings later in the renaissanse as a flex, this painting were a subgenre of art in which they showed feasts and in those portrayed feasts you can see their luxurious cutlery oftently made of glass (by this time their glass industry was well developed from the middle ages). Veronese is a good example of this subgenre of art, in his famous "Feast in the house of Levi" you can see clear glass cutlery, clear glass was extra expensive by this time.
Everyone thinks of my home city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a Steel Town, and of course it was, but before that, it was the Glass center of America, for the same reasons it became a steel town. For impressive glass, look up PPG buildings in Pittsburgh!
Where I grew up, there was an empty lot where road concrete and slag glass from the local glass factory was dumped. We used to collect the lumpy chunks of glass colored like root beer, honey, and ginger ale.
you're the fucking coolest youtube channel in existence, for real man, and I'm scandinavian, I love how amazingly more accurate you become than even our generally great education, thank you for being such a fucking nerd, love you dude, hope some wonderful legolas eomer viking guy prince charming sweeps you away on the nerdiest adventure ever soon man, really wish the best life for you, been through similar down times, and wish you so so much love in a very friendly and communal way :D like I'd love to be your adoptive weird aunt or something lol, I truly wish you all the best
Glass is very much an interesting subject, and I'm so happy you made this video! Thank you, as always, for the great content! It's always great to highlight how well-connected places were in the medieval period because we tend to forget that people moving (by land or sea) was the only way to get imported things! My area of expertise isn't Europe, but I wanted to add some food for thought things as an archaeological science student studying early medieval glass, so apologies as it's quite long! I made it an essay, sadly, but I tend to babble when it's about glass 😅 1. Yes indeed! Natron glass continued to be made in the Levant and Egypt until around the 8th to 10th centuries CE! The political transition to the Islamic caliphate controlling these areas didn't really affect the glassmaking industry so much, as they continued to follow the 'long Roman industry' of natron glass production. The production stopped first in the Levant as the access to natron sources was more restricted for glassmaking centres further away from the Wadi Natrun (as someone else commented, natron was used for many things, including mummification!). Production in Egypt continued for a bit longer before the shift to plant ash glass occurred. Matt Phelps and colleagues in 2016 wrote a great paper on the Byzantine-Islamic transition in glass from sites in the Levant, and the chemical chronology really showcases this change. 2. Potash, in the terminology of ancient glass studies, is the potassium oxide derived from the ashes of plant material, so it can be found in salt-resistant alkaline plants (the ash type most commonly used in Southwest Asia) as well as wood, fern, bracken, kelp, etc. Glass with high concentrations of potassium oxide (potash) will sometimes be called potash glass in the literature, most often when talking about medieval European wood ash-fluxed glass. Plant ash glass is usually the term for alkaline plant-fluxed glasses from the Mediterranean, Southwest and Central Asia. 3. I had a look at the chemical dataset of the window glass, and I can say with certainty that there isn't any Near Eastern (Southwest Asian) plant ash glass present, from late antiquity or the early Islamic period. We would see much lower concentrations of both potassium oxide and calcium oxide from the types of ashes used. It also doesn't appear to be glass from medieval Byzantine Anatolia either, as this glass also has lower concentrations of the two oxides. A chemical marker for this type of glass has been found to be its high boron contents, which researchers think indicates that the glass was produced using a soda source local to western Anatolia, such as hot springs! It looks like the study for the Viking window glass didn't analyse for boron, but the compositions appear to be all Central or Western European wood ash glass, which is still very interesting! The few natron glass samples they found are definitely Egyptian types, but if they show indications of recycling, they could have been sourced from anywhere in the Mediterranean at that point! The Egypt 2 glasses don't show any traces of recycling and could very much have been imported, as the production of that glass type ran from around the 8th to 10th centuries CE! 4. Coloured glass in the form of opaque Roman mosaic tesserae was super commonly found in the early medieval period and was frequently recycled as a source of colourant! A good paper on the different types of recycling techniques used is by Schibille and Freestone (2013) on the glass from the 9th century CE monastery at San Vincenzo al Volturno in southern Italy. 5. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the big glassmaking centres were basically where they were during the time of the Roman Empire! They may have moved around a bit locally, but the good glassmaking sand is along the eastern Mediterranean coast due to the Nile Delta. The most commonly accepted model for glass production and distribution during the 1st millennium CE is that a small number of large primary glassmaking centres in the Levant and Egypt produced large tonnes of glass. This raw glass was then broken up into chunks and shipped across the Mediterranean and Europe to smaller, more numerous glass workshops for colouration and vessel fabrication. This is all based on excavations of primary glassmaking tank furnaces in the Levant that date from the 4th to 8th centuries CE. Things are a bit murkier for Roman glass of the 1st to 4th centuries, as well as Egyptian glass from about the 4th century onward, since we haven't found any glassmaking furnaces matching these compositional groups yet. There's debate that some early Roman glassmaking happened in Italy, but again, furnaces haven't been found as yet. 6. Highly recommend reading papers by Marie-Dominique Nenna (most are in French, but translation sites work fine, even with the older texts that are scanned), Ian Freestone (who has a recorded lecture on TH-cam), and Caroline Jackson to start diving into the more chemical side of ancient glass. Also, highly recommend checking out The Roman Glassmakers (Mark Taylor and David Hill), who recreate Roman glass, wood-fired furnace and all! They're based in Andover, UK and their works (which are for sale!) are based on archaeological finds! Thanks again for the great video, Jimmy!! And big congratulations to anyone who made it through this massive block of text! You're a legend.
I super appreciated the fascination you clearly have for the subject in that info dump. I won't retain much of it (ADHD brain isn't many things, but not to that impressive a depth. Thank you my (presumably) neurodiverse friend... it's so awesome to hear you geek out.
Thank you for the clarification on possible sources of the glass. It was my biggest question coming out of the video, and you've answered it really well.
@@lynn858 You’re welcome! It’s taken me three years of study at this point to retain this info, and I still have to double check things. But I love telling people about glass, so it was very fun to write. Thanks for reading!
Here in Iceland windows were made with cow intestines well into the 19. Century. Even then glass was a rarity. By the way…I worked on building this long house in the thumbnail. It was built for a movie that never got done.
Yesterday watching youtube, as you do, a clip of the antiques roadshow came up with the most expensive pieces of jewellery of the 90's. The most expensive piece was a bracelet made in the 18th century using various pieces of Roman glass. It was AMAZING! Anyway I thought someone who is interested in some amazing colour work might be interested in checking it out.
I find ancient glass as a topic just fascinating. Amazing something so fragile can last centuries and tells us so much about our history. I remember reading about Phoenician glass objects in a National Geographic as a little kid just learning how to read on the arm of my dad's chair. I think I've been obsessed with old glass ever since. I'd love it if someday you could talk more about ancient glassmaking in the UK, Viking bead-making, or Viking and world glass beads found in Viking hoards and graves, or really any other glass-related subject that you might want to share. "So, why is Sven mucking out the stables by hand?" "Terrible luck, that. He was practicing with his throwing axes when a head flew off behind him and broke the Jarl's Egyptian green window made with real natron." Great video Jimmy! Thanks!
Another wonderful informative episode. To make it all the better I did, today, have the glorious experience of meeting the man himself at torm. He is even better in person.
Also, possibly interesting chemistry information - wood ash typically contains less than 10% potassium (K). The largest compound in wood ash is actually calcium oxides or carbonates (typically 25-45%)
Someone needs to make a mug with a winking Welsh Viking on one side and NUANCE in ginormous letters on the other. I’d buy it. This was such a fun topic to hear about, and I just love how even very small objects like those bits of glass can tell us so much about the past.
If your everyday understanding of the world si that sunlight happens outside, and candlelight or firelight happens inside, glass would really subvert your perspective. I can see that being very powerful symbollically in a religious context. The idea that the built environment can be permeable to the natural environment is something that's difficult to wrap your head around even today - we usually try to avoid it (mold, temp fluctuations) but it is sometimes necessary or useful (adequate ventilation for example). I can imagine light penetrating the indoors being used to emphasize universal connectedness (or a "god's watching, better be good" concept too).
@@TheWelshViking But holes in the wall let the heat out. With a glass window you suddenly didn't have to decide if you would like to have an at least somewhat heatable and not windy room or light. A medieval house without glass in its windows would have been dark for a large part of the year, as its shudders where closed to prevent heat loss.
What’s fascinating to me is it widens the world in history. The average person thinks of different communities and civilizations of the past as insular and singular, but they were so much wider than they’re given credit. Like, I want to learn more about the BIG trade hub cities that would have seen vastly different cultures living side by side, doing business, getting in shipments etc.
There is a smattering of evidence of windows made from various interesting materials. Very thin mica or thin soap stone sheets. Grease paper or flattened animal horn. Thin resin windows. The problem is that all these degrade in archaeological deposits.
Absolutely loving the vibes on the channel recently. Don’t care how niche the topic, I’m here for it! Hope you’re well, Jimmy. Happy Friendsgiving from America!
I've read of seaweed potash being used in the book ' Traditional British Crafts'. They'd use washed up seaweed , dry it and burn it to create the potash of the ashes. Glass made like this is referred to as "forest glass" as the glass making was done in the forest clearings on mounds of sand and because it was much cruder due to the impure potash. This is in reference to Medieval Britain generally, i don't know how far this technique went back. This book explains it all quite well, but i can't speak for its sources. It was only circa 1200 that British glass seemed to start up again in the "forest glass" form i think. Land was granted to a 'Laurence the glass maker' in Chiddingford , surrey in 1226 for example. I'm not an expert, i just like heritage crafts.
I'm very surprised you didn't mention, in the intro, the Norse and English origins of the word "window". It comes from Old Norse "vindauga" which means "wind eye"
There was a time team episode, that they were investigating a church. The church glass was imported from Belgium. It was plain glass hand painted by Flemish artists
Puns for the win!!! The following are totally disorganised thoughts on this…..it’s 5.30 am here and ive been up for 2 hours…..organisation is not an option at this point :) Admittedly the glass in your phone is a very special glass that due to the temperatures involved, would not have been possible in ancient times. Natron was also used a great deal in the Nile delta…..for dehydrating mummies. In glassmaking it was less for dehydrating, but more for use as a flux, which in this case means it helps to lower the point at which the components fuse to make, glass. Thing is, small pieces of glass in a frame act like a big piece of glass in many respects(maybe not in the case of looking at the view, but that’s not the only reason for glazing windows). They keep out the wind and rain, they let in light, they look pretty, and they give you bragging rights.I’m a bit surprised that there wasn’t common knowledge of trade in glass by the Vikings…..they traded in every other luxury product of their day, why would that be a surprise?I guess finding evidence of it is a slightly trickier proposition ofc. But the Vikings were well known for loving display, loving beautiful things and trading in the above. Fun video Jimmy 👍
Very interesting and not something I'd ever really thought about before! It was lovely to meet you at TORM today! I hope you enjoyed the rest of your day.
I love heaing you go off about seemingly 'mundane' little details, from cantrefs to glass - more of this,please, it's really enjoyable! Greetings from the other end of Yorkshire 😉
If we had a teacher like you in our history department when I was at school, I wouldn't have agonised for months about whether I was taking history or geography*. Both subjects had one really cool, interesting teacher and the rest were just collecting a paycheck. (*I chose geography. I chose poorly.)
Yes, there's definitely potash mining here in Canada! Nowhere near me, but I did a geography assignment on Saskatoon in high school, and so many of the events I read about were sponsored by PotashCorp.
If you ever get to the States and want to see more historic glass, come to Corning NY, home of Corning International and the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). Speaking of which, were some of the photos you used pieces from CMoG? I thought I recognized some of them.
Hi Jimmy, Off topic I know, but I'm Rector of a church in what you'd call 'Bumfudge Flintshire' (I lol-ed when you said that on a video) we have a number of recycled poss. C10th stones with Celtic crosses, worked into the fabric of our C14th church. Next time you're passing on your way back to Bangor, feel free to call in.
Love editing Jimmy - actually that was THE news for me in the 1st 1/4 of the video. The news about the glass findis is indeed FASCINATING! ... since I'm not an avid enough follower of archeological news anyway, this is the first time I hear about these real panes of Glass! I am thinking of definitely more than what in Germany is considered to be "medieval" "Butzenfenster". (= crown glass). It seems to me that the inventors of these glass panes are pretty much further south! But it is really fascinating how show-off-y that stuff was! I'd really love to have numbers on recycling and new creation of glass in the post-Roman area! If you could put that sort of thing together, it'd be really cool!
I can't imagine the logistics of something that fragile being transported over such long distances back then. I've heard of glass panes being moved in barrels of molasses to keep them whole, but just the thought is astounding. Thanks again for a wonderfully fun video, Jimmy. Take care.
Tourists who roughed up the natives 😂.my art history professor while teaching about Egyptians art said we know lots about them because sand perserves everthing also said said "mummies are people jerky "😅
My form teacher in the seventies (yes I'm very old) mused that the ""dark ages" had vellum over windows that give a twilight feel to interiors! Also he recond windows of broken Roman glass stuck together like stained glass windows. No idea where this idea of his came from but why not?
glass making also exist in the far east, south asia, north asia, and west asia as early as pre-medieval/ancient times. Different materials, different colors, different qualities etc. Used in wares, jewelries, windows, and rituals as well. The mesoamericans have glasses too but not for the windows. It's pretty cool actually to realize that ancient societies can have translucency in their aesthetics and not just straight up opaque.
if these ancestors had ash and animal fat, bunch of herbs, (Same ingredients to make soap) how is there still a wonder how these skillful Norse peoples, made themselves credited to be so clean.
I think stained glass is pretty magical now because of the scale and artistry of it, so I can only imagine how it would have appeared to someone who had never even seen clear glass before! "What do you mean you can bring rainbows indoors and turn things a certain color with a piece of transparent stuff?!?" Magical. =)
That's fascinating! I wonder if they (also) imported raw glass or "just" the finished products, the same way it is discussed for Mycenaean Greece - which is my point of contact for ancient glassmaking.
The distances a trade item would journey are amazing to think about. Also, the value we put on the past - so this type of community is considered less technologically forward because of not having glass or having glass. That's understandable, we need to compare as humans to sort ideas into categories and suchlike - it's part of who we are. However, a lot of the terms used add their own influence to the whole of the idea - such as people summing up a complex creative thriving heterogeneous society of that part of the world at that time as less because they didn't have big buildings with lots of glass they made onsite. The people who are teaching others about the past in schools and colleges should sit themselves down and have a discussion on if it's possible to use language about the past that doesn't hold modern value judgements - if such a thing is possible.
Yay! The first new video since I went on a re-enactment deep dive/hyperfocus/excited about starting my local group - and since subscribing. And it's really friggin interesting too!!! Ty for the great content. I love how discursive it is, like I could discuss with you. Good tone and great information!
Slightly related. On a recent visit to the danish national museum, I learned that inuit turf houses had windows, not made from glass, but from tanned seal stomach. While the cultures are unrelated except for some minimal contact and somewhat similar climate, it is not impossible that the norse could have made windows from similar perishable materials.
Do we have any evidence for window "panes" made from other materials like parchment/thin scraped rawhide? I seem to remember that being a thing at some point in history ... Somewhere?
@@helenahsson1697 Wonder if the light coming through those windows is modernly thought to be seen as "magical," as well, or if bladder windows are sufficiently "barbaric" enough to escape that level of magical romanticism of their "barbaric" cultures. "SVEN!!! The light coming through your window this frigid winter morn is tinted a pale yellow, like a balmy sunny day!!! What dark magic is this?!?!" "Knut, you moron. The light is piss yellow because it's coming through a stretched pig's bladder. Now go and sit down before you think too much and hurt yourself."🤣
Glass making and glass working are two separate parts of the production process. Creating glass from sand, the salts, natron and soda is a highly technical (and originally semi-secret) two step process that requires a very, very high heat. This takes a lot of wood, basically for the charcoal production needed for running the furnaces to produce basic frit (step one) and then for its transformation into actual glass. Making this heat involved building crude ‘blast furnaces’ that could reach the high temps. Once glass is ‘made’, it can be remelted at easily achieved lower temperatures and shaped into various items. It is thought that the stripping of the forests in certain areas of Israel and the Levantine which occurred in the early Greek and Roman periods was partially the result of fundamental glass making. It’s a horrible early example of an industrial ecological disaster which transformed swaths of the Fertile Crescent into an infertile desert. There is abundant archaeological evidence of small scale glass workings all over Northern Israel, as a well as the discovery of raw glass ingots for export to places in the Roman Empire, where it would be further shaped, melted, blown and etc. Akko sand is a primary ingredient of what came to be known as Roman glass. And the Romans etc were amazing at working this primary material- making beautiful objects that still impress! There is no evidence however, of raw glass ingot creation in the Roman Empire until after the collapse of Israel in the first and second centuries when wholescale transport of enslaved craftsmen were carted off and relocated in Europe. It has been considered that eventually bands of these craftsmen would live in more remote areas of the European forests and they created the basic forest glass. There was a major discovery of some large slabs of ingot glass in Beit Shean, as well as marine archaeology work of sunken ships laden with raw glass ingots off the Levantine and Israeli coasts. Yes, glass is a strange substance, an amorphous solid, closer to a liquid than the crystalline rocks it resembles and was formed from. Anyway, it’s fascinating to see how far glass products traveled and how it was recycled.
As a Canadian I remember learning about potash (a significant export in early colonial times due to how many trees were being burned to clear fields) and potash (a current significant export that's mined) at about the same time, and being incredibly confused.
Love your work, Jimmy! I thought I would quickly answer something you wondered aloud as I grew up in Wyoming, which is the Trona capital of the US, producing 90% of the nation’s supply. (Also my papa, Owen, a good ol’ Welsh name, was a chemist ❤). Yes, soda ash (which is derived from trona) IS still used in modern glass making and per the Wyoming Mining website, glass making consumes half of all the soda ash mined there. Not trying to be an insufferable know-it-all but you got me questioning my memory about such things so Googles and thought I’d share. Thanks for all YOU share! 🙏
Thank you bunches for your fascinating discourse on the ancient, international trading of rage sand, from your newest subscriber, in Minneapolis, Minnesota! Your presentation is engaging & illuminating! 🙏🌿💐🌿😉🌿💐🌿🙏
This is all absolutely fascinating! Though my nerdy gamer self is now planning on trying to build somewhat accurate jarl houses with the crystal panes in Valheim.
I can see the modding community of Skyrim trying to make houses based on Viking longhouses with glass windows now. That reminds me I need to try to play Skyrim again. I want to romance Kaidan and have grand adventures with Inigo.
@@mirandagoldstine8548 There is an exquisite longhouse mod in Oldrim that I wish was ported over to SE/AE (and this might drive me to trying to port it myself for myself). It doesn't have windows, but I would absolutely love it if the creator was able to take this information to make a 2.0 version. I've not had Kaidan as a companion, but Inigo is my bestie and I consider my game very empty if he's not part of it. As a side note: DID YOU KNOW THERE IS A MOD THAT LETS YOU HUG YOUR FOLLOWERS NOW?? I had to rebuild my modlist but now that it's stabilized I am definitely going to Riften to hug the shit out of my favorite indigo catman
Aussie here - how can I learn Welsh? I figured learning an ancestral language might be a good idea. My great grandparents didn't teach me anything about Wales, except for cheese on toast being the greatest meal ever
Love you too, Jimmy!! I have learned so much from your channel and have looked into and started hobbies that I wouldnt have otherwise!! Like brewing, dyeing, and yes im hoping to join my local reinactment group in the Spring. Wasn't natron also used to embalming? So they had glass and they had embalming for this particular chemical? How interesting!! Yes, the trade routes are really interesting to consider especially since the Norse folk went over land for a lot of their routes. Thanks for an excellent video, I hope you are keeping well. Take good care.
Kinda reminds me if what some people do these days with 'earthhomes', made more of less completely from recycled materials. Many seem to utilize broken glass or bottles or such and smaller then usual, irregularly placed windows. I'd imagine, that the effect is somewhat similar.
Well that's fascinating! But now I'm wondering how and why someone decided to make sand rage?!?!? It just seems really random! So if you ever decided to look into it more I'm here for it. Sometimes you make more questions than you answer. Having never really thought about glass today you've added a ton of questions to float aimlessly around my brain!
I'm now gonna refer to windows as concentrated rage sand.
Peer through the sand of rage, to the world outside my cage
@@tylerdillon3745 is that from something? Either way, that's pretty good.
I just made it up :P
@@tylerdillon3745 I think we need to know what the full song/poem looks like now. That's an epic line! :D
Very apt. Especially considering the massively destructive latest "down date". Grrrr
"Today we're talking about... windows!" [windows startup sound]
I think people also forget how dazzling windows made from small, individual panes are. Some of the big Tudor revival mansions nearby will have -a- window or two done with the small diagonal panes set in the lattice and the effect in the sun is... magical. And that's plain clear glass. As an average working Old Norse person I'd have been incredibly impressed.
Even in the 1800s glass windows were cherished. My great aunt bought a small window with her when she left Sweden to immigrate to the US. Seems strange now,, but that was one of her prize possessions. I wonder what ever happened to it .
There was a beautiful window in my grandfather's house that we all treasured. Golden glass with lit candles in white and amber. Sadly it went with the house after he passed, but even today glass windows can be cherished.
In Southern France, they used a specific fern's ash for glass making, from the Roman Empire and forward. It makes an almost clear glass with a tight of blue
I’d love to see a reconstruction of a very high status longhouse or similar with these small panes windows, to see how it would have looked. Do we know how far apart the finds were from each other? That could potentially be a a clue to their placement in structures, and could perhaps give us an idea of how these buildings might look
It's kind of wild to think about things that are now ubiquitous & fairly inexpensive (Glass, salt, sugar, spices, fabric) were once rare & as valued as gold or silver.
I always feel very rich when I sort my spice rack 😁
Not 'as' valued, more often more valued. Food, salt, sugar, spices, fabric would keep you alive. What use is gold or silver on a ship?
You can always come back for the gold and silver.. if you need it.
If you were the Vikings, you already beat them once.
I found your description of faience very interesting for reasons completely unrelated to Vikings. In late 19th century North America, some stained glass artists stated using faience in their windows, most notably Louis Comfort Tiffany, John LaFarge, and the J & R Lamb Studios. Faience was used to give texture to clothing, drapery, and backgrounds, and it was often fabricated in multiple layers. Faience also helped make the stained glass readable at night as it was reflective as well as refractive. It was very expensive, so it was used only in very high-end commissions. It also was very heavy, especially when installed in multiple layers, which tended to cause problems with the lead came. Consequently, they are difficult to maintain, but they were very popular with a certain set up into the 1920s. I am not aware of any European stained glass artists that used it.
The description was completely misleading. For a start, the name faience generally relates to a type of earthenware (clay) pottery with a lead-based slip with a tin oxide additive that produced a bright white surface that could then be painted before refiring. Faience is the French version of the name of the Italian town of Faenza where such white pottery glazes were first introduced to Europe. This type of glaze is thought to have originated in Iran around the 9th century. So when you say "faience" on its own, it doesn't refer to "Egyptian faience", which is a different animal entirely.
Egyptian faience is not glazed earthenware. It is a sintered-quartz ceramic and it is also different from Egyptian glass. Egyptian faience was always opaque, despite its shiny surface. It was originally created to mimic polished stone like lapis lazuli or jade. So the whole excursion into "faience" was irrelevant here in a discussion relating to window panes. As for stained glass, it is meant to be translucent at least. Egyptian faience never was.
@@alicemilne1444 You obviously know far more about this than I do, so I defer to your expertise. However, "faience" was the term used by these stained glass artists at the time, so I assumed Jimmy was talking about the same thing. I don't know why they chose that word to describe the material or the process they used to mold the glass. Maybe it was to imply it had a faience-like effect, but I'm only speculating.
@@christopherstephenjenksbsg4944 Didn't Tiffany also work with a company that had the word "faience" in its name? In the USA and the UK earthenware faience was often called majolica, probably because it was sailors who first encountered that type of glaze in Majorca. Perhaps the US stained glass artists thought that faience was something different and experimented with metallic additives.
This is so cool. Now, we can stand up for our little windows in our longhouse in Ale, 45 km north of Gothenburg.
Glass was such an important material for science too
THere's an interesting fact that might be related to this: the English and Irish words for "window" are (independently) borrowed from Old Norse (the Welsh as you know stuck with the word they'd borrowed from Latin). I've often wondered if the reason people bothered to borrow a word for something they already had is that it reflects a change in technology.
If I remember rightly, St Peter's monastery at Monkwearmouth, here in Sunderland, was supposed to have been only the second post-Roman building in Britain to have glass windows. It was built about 674CE and the glassmakers were bought from Gaul to do the job, establishing an industry that lasted until about 15 years ago.
Potash is mined in my area (Saskatchewan)... I never realized it was used in more than just fertilizer...
That title pun is glasstoundingly paneful.
😂it shattered me
It doesn't have to be swords or crowns, "everyday" objects - say, glass - contain vast histories which are just as fascinating. I like that you are covering so many elements, which gives a deeper understanding of this world.
Honestly had never really considered that Vikings had windows, all the representations seem to suggest their walls were solid. Thank you for another interesting video
Why would the Norse not have windows?
@@talscorner3696 Holes in walls are not great for insulation here in the north.
@@Runix1 But they are great for ventilation and light. And thick shutters make them closable too.
@@Runix1 In medieval times it was common practice to stretch pigsbladders and similar organs as "window panes" for poorer folk, wouldn't surprise me if it existed in the viking age too but my teacher said he didn't know if there were yet any evidence for it. It's more than 20 years since then so maybe there've been some by now.
Imagine how hard that must have been. Those long, cold, dark winters...having to choose between a reasonably warm, but dark and somewhat smokey house and
and open windows? I do the 'Stoßlüften‘ (opening all windows for a couple minutes) us Germans are famous for, at least 3 times a day. And let me tell you, it gets cold really, really fast, even if the temperatures are still somewhat above freezing.
I'm sure glad, I live in a time and place, where large windows and central heating are the norm.
I absolutely adore how the vast trading networks that have existed for so long show up again on the archaeological record.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Dear Jimmy,
if you want to look up about Glasmaking have alook at the glass tradition in Thuringia, especially in Lauscha. They have glasmaking school that will excahnge students with Murano in Venice. Thuringia Forest is well known for it's glass making. Probably forest glass but nevertheless very interesting.
^This!
My parents have wine goblets from Thuringian Forest Glass. Look very pretty.
Could you do a video on Viking age glass beads? Ive been hoping for one since your series on jewelry and brooches. I think you mentioned you had enough material for a whole video on just that subject?
I love how this is the second nugget of "people in Southern Scandinavia, historically, loved some imported glassware" that I've come across. The other one was a tax on imported mirrors in Norway in the 19th Century, based on size. You always had to pay for the mirror, but the tax was waived if it was broken during transport. Broken could mean utterly shattered, but it already counted if you had one crack across the entire width or length of it, even if it was near the top or bottom and didn't impact use. At which point you had a fancy, imported mirror and visible bragging rights that were *on par with having electricity installed in your house*.
It’s interesting because hard wood ash is used in soap making. You run water through the ash to create lye water then add fat (animal or plant) that causes saponification-hence soap (at the most basic). I think the trees render potassium chloride? Anyway, this is very interesting and very cool! I still want to (one day) make glass. It just seems like such an interesting process. Thank you for sharing ❤
Omg thank you for this comment because I was going crazy trying to figure out where I had heard the word potash before lol
I was coming here to say that the ancient potash sounds a lot like old school lye. Great minds 😉
Art historian here.
Venice and the Byzantine Empire were the places to go for quality glass around that time, they became disgustingly rich because of their trade. Venice was so proud of their glass that it was ofently portrayed in their paintings later in the renaissanse as a flex, this painting were a subgenre of art in which they showed feasts and in those portrayed feasts you can see their luxurious cutlery oftently made of glass (by this time their glass industry was well developed from the middle ages).
Veronese is a good example of this subgenre of art, in his famous "Feast in the house of Levi" you can see clear glass cutlery, clear glass was extra expensive by this time.
Everyone thinks of my home city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a Steel Town, and of course it was, but before that, it was the Glass center of America, for the same reasons it became a steel town. For impressive glass, look up PPG buildings in Pittsburgh!
Where I grew up, there was an empty lot where road concrete and slag glass from the local glass factory was dumped. We used to collect the lumpy chunks of glass colored like root beer, honey, and ginger ale.
you're the fucking coolest youtube channel in existence, for real man, and I'm scandinavian, I love how amazingly more accurate you become than even our generally great education, thank you for being such a fucking nerd, love you dude, hope some wonderful legolas eomer viking guy prince charming sweeps you away on the nerdiest adventure ever soon man, really wish the best life for you, been through similar down times, and wish you so so much love in a very friendly and communal way :D like I'd love to be your adoptive weird aunt or something lol, I truly wish you all the best
Glass is very much an interesting subject, and I'm so happy you made this video! Thank you, as always, for the great content! It's always great to highlight how well-connected places were in the medieval period because we tend to forget that people moving (by land or sea) was the only way to get imported things!
My area of expertise isn't Europe, but I wanted to add some food for thought things as an archaeological science student studying early medieval glass, so apologies as it's quite long! I made it an essay, sadly, but I tend to babble when it's about glass 😅
1. Yes indeed! Natron glass continued to be made in the Levant and Egypt until around the 8th to 10th centuries CE! The political transition to the Islamic caliphate controlling these areas didn't really affect the glassmaking industry so much, as they continued to follow the 'long Roman industry' of natron glass production. The production stopped first in the Levant as the access to natron sources was more restricted for glassmaking centres further away from the Wadi Natrun (as someone else commented, natron was used for many things, including mummification!). Production in Egypt continued for a bit longer before the shift to plant ash glass occurred. Matt Phelps and colleagues in 2016 wrote a great paper on the Byzantine-Islamic transition in glass from sites in the Levant, and the chemical chronology really showcases this change.
2. Potash, in the terminology of ancient glass studies, is the potassium oxide derived from the ashes of plant material, so it can be found in salt-resistant alkaline plants (the ash type most commonly used in Southwest Asia) as well as wood, fern, bracken, kelp, etc. Glass with high concentrations of potassium oxide (potash) will sometimes be called potash glass in the literature, most often when talking about medieval European wood ash-fluxed glass. Plant ash glass is usually the term for alkaline plant-fluxed glasses from the Mediterranean, Southwest and Central Asia.
3. I had a look at the chemical dataset of the window glass, and I can say with certainty that there isn't any Near Eastern (Southwest Asian) plant ash glass present, from late antiquity or the early Islamic period. We would see much lower concentrations of both potassium oxide and calcium oxide from the types of ashes used. It also doesn't appear to be glass from medieval Byzantine Anatolia either, as this glass also has lower concentrations of the two oxides. A chemical marker for this type of glass has been found to be its high boron contents, which researchers think indicates that the glass was produced using a soda source local to western Anatolia, such as hot springs! It looks like the study for the Viking window glass didn't analyse for boron, but the compositions appear to be all Central or Western European wood ash glass, which is still very interesting! The few natron glass samples they found are definitely Egyptian types, but if they show indications of recycling, they could have been sourced from anywhere in the Mediterranean at that point! The Egypt 2 glasses don't show any traces of recycling and could very much have been imported, as the production of that glass type ran from around the 8th to 10th centuries CE!
4. Coloured glass in the form of opaque Roman mosaic tesserae was super commonly found in the early medieval period and was frequently recycled as a source of colourant! A good paper on the different types of recycling techniques used is by Schibille and Freestone (2013) on the glass from the 9th century CE monastery at San Vincenzo al Volturno in southern Italy.
5. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the big glassmaking centres were basically where they were during the time of the Roman Empire! They may have moved around a bit locally, but the good glassmaking sand is along the eastern Mediterranean coast due to the Nile Delta. The most commonly accepted model for glass production and distribution during the 1st millennium CE is that a small number of large primary glassmaking centres in the Levant and Egypt produced large tonnes of glass. This raw glass was then broken up into chunks and shipped across the Mediterranean and Europe to smaller, more numerous glass workshops for colouration and vessel fabrication. This is all based on excavations of primary glassmaking tank furnaces in the Levant that date from the 4th to 8th centuries CE. Things are a bit murkier for Roman glass of the 1st to 4th centuries, as well as Egyptian glass from about the 4th century onward, since we haven't found any glassmaking furnaces matching these compositional groups yet. There's debate that some early Roman glassmaking happened in Italy, but again, furnaces haven't been found as yet.
6. Highly recommend reading papers by Marie-Dominique Nenna (most are in French, but translation sites work fine, even with the older texts that are scanned), Ian Freestone (who has a recorded lecture on TH-cam), and Caroline Jackson to start diving into the more chemical side of ancient glass. Also, highly recommend checking out The Roman Glassmakers (Mark Taylor and David Hill), who recreate Roman glass, wood-fired furnace and all! They're based in Andover, UK and their works (which are for sale!) are based on archaeological finds!
Thanks again for the great video, Jimmy!! And big congratulations to anyone who made it through this massive block of text! You're a legend.
I super appreciated the fascination you clearly have for the subject in that info dump.
I won't retain much of it (ADHD brain isn't many things, but not to that impressive a depth. Thank you my (presumably) neurodiverse friend... it's so awesome to hear you geek out.
Wow! Thank!
Thank you for the clarification on possible sources of the glass. It was my biggest question coming out of the video, and you've answered it really well.
@@lynn858 You’re welcome! It’s taken me three years of study at this point to retain this info, and I still have to double check things. But I love telling people about glass, so it was very fun to write. Thanks for reading!
@@M.M.83-U you’re very welcome!
12:05 So a yarl having a glass window is the modern equivalent of having Royal Dalton with handpainted periwinkles?😊
For showing off at your candlelit supper with riparian entertainments?
@krysab6125 I was watching an episode of Time Team and someone mentioned lumps and depressions. I thought of Richard up a tree 🤣
So our crystal windows in Valheim have historical precedent. Dope!
Here in Iceland windows were made with cow intestines well into the 19. Century. Even then glass was a rarity. By the way…I worked on building this long house in the thumbnail. It was built for a movie that never got done.
Amazing channel brother🙏🏼
Yesterday watching youtube, as you do, a clip of the antiques roadshow came up with the most expensive pieces of jewellery of the 90's. The most expensive piece was a bracelet made in the 18th century using various pieces of Roman glass. It was AMAZING! Anyway I thought someone who is interested in some amazing colour work might be interested in checking it out.
I wonder if you can look at the isotope distribution and see where the glass comes from.
I find ancient glass as a topic just fascinating. Amazing something so fragile can last centuries and tells us so much about our history. I remember reading about Phoenician glass objects in a National Geographic as a little kid just learning how to read on the arm of my dad's chair. I think I've been obsessed with old glass ever since. I'd love it if someday you could talk more about ancient glassmaking in the UK, Viking bead-making, or Viking and world glass beads found in Viking hoards and graves, or really any other glass-related subject that you might want to share.
"So, why is Sven mucking out the stables by hand?"
"Terrible luck, that. He was practicing with his throwing axes when a head flew off behind him and broke the Jarl's Egyptian green window made with real natron." Great video Jimmy! Thanks!
Another wonderful informative episode. To make it all the better I did, today, have the glorious experience of meeting the man himself at torm. He is even better in person.
That's really cool Jimmy. Thanks for telling us about all kinds of fun topics like glass windows.
They built longships and created art prints onto axe heads using silver, so making glass doesn't seem out of reach at all.
Also, possibly interesting chemistry information - wood ash typically contains less than 10% potassium (K). The largest compound in wood ash is actually calcium oxides or carbonates (typically 25-45%)
Someone needs to make a mug with a winking Welsh Viking on one side and NUANCE in ginormous letters on the other. I’d buy it.
This was such a fun topic to hear about, and I just love how even very small objects like those bits of glass can tell us so much about the past.
I would 100% buy a NUANCE mug!
Or, in keeping with the NUANCE drinking game...shot glasses.
If your everyday understanding of the world si that sunlight happens outside, and candlelight or firelight happens inside, glass would really subvert your perspective. I can see that being very powerful symbollically in a religious context. The idea that the built environment can be permeable to the natural environment is something that's difficult to wrap your head around even today - we usually try to avoid it (mold, temp fluctuations) but it is sometimes necessary or useful (adequate ventilation for example). I can imagine light penetrating the indoors being used to emphasize universal connectedness (or a "god's watching, better be good" concept too).
Or holes. Holes in walls work too. Or doorways. But yeah!
@@TheWelshViking But holes in the wall let the heat out. With a glass window you suddenly didn't have to decide if you would like to have an at least somewhat heatable and not windy room or light. A medieval house without glass in its windows would have been dark for a large part of the year, as its shudders where closed to prevent heat loss.
What’s fascinating to me is it widens the world in history. The average person thinks of different communities and civilizations of the past as insular and singular, but they were so much wider than they’re given credit.
Like, I want to learn more about the BIG trade hub cities that would have seen vastly different cultures living side by side, doing business, getting in shipments etc.
Astonishing! Glass is such in important product.........from beads to windows, it was so, so important.
There is a smattering of evidence of windows made from various interesting materials. Very thin mica or thin soap stone sheets. Grease paper or flattened animal horn. Thin resin windows. The problem is that all these degrade in archaeological deposits.
Absolutely loving the vibes on the channel recently. Don’t care how niche the topic, I’m here for it! Hope you’re well, Jimmy. Happy Friendsgiving from America!
I've read of seaweed potash being used in the book ' Traditional British Crafts'. They'd use washed up seaweed , dry it and burn it to create the potash of the ashes. Glass made like this is referred to as "forest glass" as the glass making was done in the forest clearings on mounds of sand and because it was much cruder due to the impure potash. This is in reference to Medieval Britain generally, i don't know how far this technique went back. This book explains it all quite well, but i can't speak for its sources.
It was only circa 1200 that British glass seemed to start up again in the "forest glass" form i think. Land was granted to a 'Laurence the glass maker' in Chiddingford , surrey in 1226 for example.
I'm not an expert, i just like heritage crafts.
I'm very surprised you didn't mention, in the intro, the Norse and English origins of the word "window". It comes from Old Norse "vindauga" which means "wind eye"
im glad to hear we've had the simple joy of looking out the window from the comfort of the warm hearth for a long time
the dig at Hamwic (Saxon Southampton) found lots of glass that was interpreted as evidece for it being a centre for recycling
There was a time team episode, that they were investigating a church. The church glass was imported from Belgium. It was plain glass hand painted by Flemish artists
Puns for the win!!! The following are totally disorganised thoughts on this…..it’s 5.30 am here and ive been up for 2 hours…..organisation is not an option at this point :)
Admittedly the glass in your phone is a very special glass that due to the temperatures involved, would not have been possible in ancient times. Natron was also used a great deal in the Nile delta…..for dehydrating mummies. In glassmaking it was less for dehydrating, but more for use as a flux, which in this case means it helps to lower the point at which the components fuse to make, glass. Thing is, small pieces of glass in a frame act like a big piece of glass in many respects(maybe not in the case of looking at the view, but that’s not the only reason for glazing windows). They keep out the wind and rain, they let in light, they look pretty, and they give you bragging rights.I’m a bit surprised that there wasn’t common knowledge of trade in glass by the Vikings…..they traded in every other luxury product of their day, why would that be a surprise?I guess finding evidence of it is a slightly trickier proposition ofc. But the Vikings were well known for loving display, loving beautiful things and trading in the above. Fun video Jimmy 👍
Very interesting and not something I'd ever really thought about before!
It was lovely to meet you at TORM today! I hope you enjoyed the rest of your day.
I did! Thank you! It was lovely to meet you both as well :D
So happy that you went for that thumbnail, it's absolute 🔥😂; tidy work Jimmy 😊
Like deployed 👍
10:09 YEEEAAH! *slings back drink and slams glass (made with authentic Egyptian natron, obviously) on table* ^.^
I love heaing you go off about seemingly 'mundane' little details, from cantrefs to glass - more of this,please, it's really enjoyable! Greetings from the other end of Yorkshire 😉
If we had a teacher like you in our history department when I was at school, I wouldn't have agonised for months about whether I was taking history or geography*. Both subjects had one really cool, interesting teacher and the rest were just collecting a paycheck.
(*I chose geography. I chose poorly.)
Yes, there's definitely potash mining here in Canada! Nowhere near me, but I did a geography assignment on Saskatoon in high school, and so many of the events I read about were sponsored by PotashCorp.
If you ever get to the States and want to see more historic glass, come to Corning NY, home of Corning International and the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG). Speaking of which, were some of the photos you used pieces from CMoG? I thought I recognized some of them.
Hi Jimmy,
Off topic I know, but I'm Rector of a church in what you'd call 'Bumfudge Flintshire' (I lol-ed when you said that on a video) we have a number of recycled poss. C10th stones with Celtic crosses, worked into the fabric of our C14th church. Next time you're passing on your way back to Bangor, feel free to call in.
Www, diddorol iawn! Colour me there :D Diolch!
My swedish/norweigan little heart is rejoycing. 🤩
EDIT: and the word vindöga (window) is my second favourite word, after fika.
Man I get excited everytime I see you post a video
The history of Material culture is fascinating and helps shed light on the ways people lived and what/ why things were valued or discarded.
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Yay! New Jimmy just dropped!!!
Norse peoples were amazing ( sorry for stating the obvious ha!!) This just deepens my appreciation and it’s a great topic Jimmy, thanks much✌🏼
Love editing Jimmy - actually that was THE news for me in the 1st 1/4 of the video.
The news about the glass findis is indeed FASCINATING! ... since I'm not an avid enough follower of archeological news anyway, this is the first time I hear about these real panes of Glass!
I am thinking of definitely more than what in Germany is considered to be "medieval" "Butzenfenster". (= crown glass).
It seems to me that the inventors of these glass panes are pretty much further south! But it is really fascinating how show-off-y that stuff was!
I'd really love to have numbers on recycling and new creation of glass in the post-Roman area! If you could put that sort of thing together, it'd be really cool!
You one Smartglass Jimmy. Excellent narrative on old glass stuff. 😂
I can't imagine the logistics of something that fragile being transported over such long distances back then. I've heard of glass panes being moved in barrels of molasses to keep them whole, but just the thought is astounding. Thanks again for a wonderfully fun video, Jimmy. Take care.
Thinking about it, it makes total sense for Viking age people to import glass panes seeing as they were so fond of glass beads
The first thing my uni lecturer said to us was "Were the Vikings barbarians or just tourists who roughed up the natives"? We loved him.
Tourists who roughed up the natives 😂.my art history professor while teaching about Egyptians art said we know lots about them because sand perserves everthing also said said "mummies are people jerky "😅
My form teacher in the seventies (yes I'm very old) mused that the ""dark ages" had vellum over windows that give a twilight feel to interiors! Also he recond windows of broken Roman glass stuck together like stained glass windows. No idea where this idea of his came from but why not?
glass making also exist in the far east, south asia, north asia, and west asia as early as pre-medieval/ancient times. Different materials, different colors, different qualities etc. Used in wares, jewelries, windows, and rituals as well. The mesoamericans have glasses too but not for the windows.
It's pretty cool actually to realize that ancient societies can have translucency in their aesthetics and not just straight up opaque.
if these ancestors had ash and animal fat, bunch of herbs, (Same ingredients to make soap)
how is there still a wonder how these skillful Norse peoples, made themselves credited to be so clean.
I love the idea of a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Viking Edition with the Jarl showing off his prize glass windows!
I squeeled Jimmy! when I saw there was a new video. Facinating info as usual ❤.
I think stained glass is pretty magical now because of the scale and artistry of it, so I can only imagine how it would have appeared to someone who had never even seen clear glass before! "What do you mean you can bring rainbows indoors and turn things a certain color with a piece of transparent stuff?!?" Magical. =)
That wink with the "nuance!" had me all of a flutter...
2.43 That cup is beautiful!
That's fascinating! I wonder if they (also) imported raw glass or "just" the finished products, the same way it is discussed for Mycenaean Greece - which is my point of contact for ancient glassmaking.
The distances a trade item would journey are amazing to think about. Also, the value we put on the past - so this type of community is considered less technologically forward because of not having glass or having glass. That's understandable, we need to compare as humans to sort ideas into categories and suchlike - it's part of who we are. However, a lot of the terms used add their own influence to the whole of the idea - such as people summing up a complex creative thriving heterogeneous society of that part of the world at that time as less because they didn't have big buildings with lots of glass they made onsite. The people who are teaching others about the past in schools and colleges should sit themselves down and have a discussion on if it's possible to use language about the past that doesn't hold modern value judgements - if such a thing is possible.
Yay! The first new video since I went on a re-enactment deep dive/hyperfocus/excited about starting my local group - and since subscribing.
And it's really friggin interesting too!!!
Ty for the great content. I love how discursive it is, like I could discuss with you. Good tone and great information!
Seaweed ash became popular in Venice...which, being built on the sea, had plenty of seaweed to harvest...
Another topic that I had no idea would be so interesting. Loving the pun title!
I always learn somethingfrom this channel. Thank you.
Slightly related. On a recent visit to the danish national museum, I learned that inuit turf houses had windows, not made from glass, but from tanned seal stomach. While the cultures are unrelated except for some minimal contact and somewhat similar climate, it is not impossible that the norse could have made windows from similar perishable materials.
One other use for pain glass is lantern's, not a lot but still
DID U SAY PODCAST??? I HEARD U SAY PODCAST 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
Do we have any evidence for window "panes" made from other materials like parchment/thin scraped rawhide? I seem to remember that being a thing at some point in history ... Somewhere?
Bladders from slaughtered animals, stretched over frames.
@@helenahsson1697 Wonder if the light coming through those windows is modernly thought to be seen as "magical," as well, or if bladder windows are sufficiently "barbaric" enough to escape that level of magical romanticism of their "barbaric" cultures.
"SVEN!!! The light coming through your window this frigid winter morn is tinted a pale yellow, like a balmy sunny day!!! What dark magic is this?!?!"
"Knut, you moron. The light is piss yellow because it's coming through a stretched pig's bladder. Now go and sit down before you think too much and hurt yourself."🤣
Cow horn are used too to make glasses
Glass making and glass working are two separate parts of the production process. Creating glass from sand, the salts, natron and soda is a highly technical (and originally semi-secret) two step process that requires a very, very high heat. This takes a lot of wood, basically for the charcoal production needed for running the furnaces to produce basic frit (step one) and then for its transformation into actual glass. Making this heat involved building crude ‘blast furnaces’ that could reach the high temps. Once glass is ‘made’, it can be remelted at easily achieved lower temperatures and shaped into various items.
It is thought that the stripping of the forests in certain areas of Israel and the Levantine which occurred in the early Greek and Roman periods was partially the result of fundamental glass making. It’s a horrible early example of an industrial ecological disaster which transformed swaths of the Fertile Crescent into an infertile desert. There is abundant archaeological evidence of small scale glass workings all over Northern Israel, as a well as the discovery of raw glass ingots for export to places in the Roman Empire, where it would be further shaped, melted, blown and etc. Akko sand is a primary ingredient of what came to be known as Roman glass. And the Romans etc were amazing at working this primary material- making beautiful objects that still impress!
There is no evidence however, of raw glass ingot creation in the Roman Empire until after the collapse of Israel in the first and second centuries when wholescale transport of enslaved craftsmen were carted off and relocated in Europe. It has been considered that eventually bands of these craftsmen would live in more remote areas of the European forests and they created the basic forest glass. There was a major discovery of some large slabs of ingot glass in Beit Shean, as well as marine archaeology work of sunken ships laden with raw glass ingots off the Levantine and Israeli coasts. Yes, glass is a strange substance, an amorphous solid, closer to a liquid than the crystalline rocks it resembles and was formed from.
Anyway, it’s fascinating to see how far glass products traveled and how it was recycled.
Thank you Jimmy. More ideas for my “day in the life” style Viking sitcom.
As a Canadian I remember learning about potash (a significant export in early colonial times due to how many trees were being burned to clear fields) and potash (a current significant export that's mined) at about the same time, and being incredibly confused.
I didn't know that there was no proof of glass in Viking time, you learn something new every day : D
Love your work, Jimmy! I thought I would quickly answer something you wondered aloud as I grew up in Wyoming, which is the Trona capital of the US, producing 90% of the nation’s supply. (Also my papa, Owen, a good ol’ Welsh name, was a chemist ❤). Yes, soda ash (which is derived from trona) IS still used in modern glass making and per the Wyoming Mining website, glass making consumes half of all the soda ash mined there. Not trying to be an insufferable know-it-all but you got me questioning my memory about such things so Googles and thought I’d share. Thanks for all YOU share! 🙏
**Oh I forgot to say Natron = Trona… Wyoming’s biggest city is Casper (although Cheyenne will always dispute it) which is located in Natrona County.
Thank you bunches for your fascinating discourse on the ancient, international trading of rage sand, from your newest subscriber, in Minneapolis, Minnesota! Your presentation is engaging & illuminating!
🙏🌿💐🌿😉🌿💐🌿🙏
Cant wait for more details on the podcast! Its amazing to think that they had such things as glass windows so far back in history.
This is all absolutely fascinating! Though my nerdy gamer self is now planning on trying to build somewhat accurate jarl houses with the crystal panes in Valheim.
I can see the modding community of Skyrim trying to make houses based on Viking longhouses with glass windows now. That reminds me I need to try to play Skyrim again. I want to romance Kaidan and have grand adventures with Inigo.
@@mirandagoldstine8548 There is an exquisite longhouse mod in Oldrim that I wish was ported over to SE/AE (and this might drive me to trying to port it myself for myself). It doesn't have windows, but I would absolutely love it if the creator was able to take this information to make a 2.0 version. I've not had Kaidan as a companion, but Inigo is my bestie and I consider my game very empty if he's not part of it. As a side note: DID YOU KNOW THERE IS A MOD THAT LETS YOU HUG YOUR FOLLOWERS NOW?? I had to rebuild my modlist but now that it's stabilized I am definitely going to Riften to hug the shit out of my favorite indigo catman
Aussie here - how can I learn Welsh?
I figured learning an ancestral language might be a good idea. My great grandparents didn't teach me anything about Wales, except for cheese on toast being the greatest meal ever
The BBC have a very thorough site with an awesome dictionary
What a great vid. I've always loved glass, but have never considered it's history
Thank you
This has been illuminating. 👏
This was so very interesting, thank you for the video.
Love you too, Jimmy!! I have learned so much from your channel and have looked into and started hobbies that I wouldnt have otherwise!! Like brewing, dyeing, and yes im hoping to join my local reinactment group in the Spring.
Wasn't natron also used to embalming? So they had glass and they had embalming for this particular chemical? How interesting!! Yes, the trade routes are really interesting to consider especially since the Norse folk went over land for a lot of their routes.
Thanks for an excellent video, I hope you are keeping well. Take good care.
Great video as always Jimmy!
how interesting. I've read about faience amulets and objet d'arte. They were exquisite.
Kinda reminds me if what some people do these days with 'earthhomes', made more of less completely from recycled materials. Many seem to utilize broken glass or bottles or such and smaller then usual, irregularly placed windows.
I'd imagine, that the effect is somewhat similar.
Well that's fascinating! But now I'm wondering how and why someone decided to make sand rage?!?!? It just seems really random! So if you ever decided to look into it more I'm here for it. Sometimes you make more questions than you answer. Having never really thought about glass today you've added a ton of questions to float aimlessly around my brain!