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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 ❤
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 RUclips), 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!
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 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!
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.
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%)
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 😉
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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. =)
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.
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.
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! 🙏🌿💐🌿😉🌿💐🌿🙏
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.
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 "😅
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!
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.
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.
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."🤣
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
If you're going to be appearing on podcasts I'd love to hear you on We're Not So Different. If you're doing your own podcast I'd like to hear you speak with Milo from miniminutemman, you and he are the only archeology channels I follow.
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.
Why is this surprising? The Vikings were traders. They were also fine woodworkers. We can extrapolate from this, that they probably had multi-pane windows. They had seen and traded for the material, they were quite capable of the fabrication. Finding evidence of this would be difficult, but we are talking probability.
@@Loweene_Ancalimon I did not need it explained. 😁 "Intrigued" as in "tell me more, show me, I wanna see that, is it still being done somewhere?!", not "what does that even mean?" 😉
The day this video came out the settlement of Bristol was raided for Germanic glass and mead by Welsh Vikings! These warrior maidens where last seen sailing away in they long coaches back to the valleys by the disprited town watch. 😂 thank you for another fantastic video!
I wonder if there could be a geographical 'half way house' between the trade route you describe and locally made glass. I'm thinking of Bohemia. Bordering the Roman Empire and having advanced glassmaking skills before many other regions, they could be a candidate. Plus they followed a form of paganism that would have been familiar if not acceptable to Skandanavians - different pantheon - same feel. Just an idea.
oooh talking about steel did you see Luleå university had done an analysis on slag and found 2 thousand year old steel production in the northern nordics
Hey Jimmy! I am an early medieval glass bead specialist at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and have a couple of things to add! If you are willing I would love to meet over Skype of zoom to fill you in!
I know that if you’re making a film about glass, you have to say the word “glass”, yeah? I feel like I’ve heard Jimmy say glass altogether _too_ many times now, though. Crikey he said glass a _lot_ . Glass. See, even I’m saying it now and it’s starting to sound weird. (great film, mind, it’s an observation not a criticism)
Whilst I am happy to acknowledge that 5he Vikings were not barbarians, I am not sure "they were in business" is on the not barbarian side of the ledger. There are a number of businesspersons who if not Neo Nazis are at least Nazi curious thinking of an electric car merchant and a property developer former President of America. Most Historians are willing to label the Nazis as barbaric.
I mean, the Romans were brutal barbarians *and* a complex, nuanced, highly developed, culture. The Vikings were the same. Barbarism and civilization are not as mutually exclusive as people think. You can have a complex and nuanced culture founded on barbaric and violent principles, in fact almost all of them were!
Actually this is history nerd important, as I understand it Vikings would work as highly paid personal guards for the Emperor in Constantinople, so glass from Turkey. (They came home rich!) The glass making families of Constantinople fled to Venice when the Turks came, and were put off on the isle of Murano because of the fire risk. It was Silicon Valley. 😉Generations of glassmakers comparing notes. It’s why we got telescopes, microscopes, glasses, and the modern world.
Well, let's also be clear: having glass windows does not prevent you from being a barbarian haha. Plenty of barbaric actions occurring in societies far beyond having glass windows lol
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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 😉
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 RUclips), 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!
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?
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!
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!
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.
That's really cool Jimmy. Thanks for telling us about all kinds of fun topics like glass windows.
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%)
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 😉
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 wonder if you can look at the isotope distribution and see where the glass comes from.
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.
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
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.
10:09 YEEEAAH! *slings back drink and slams glass (made with authentic Egyptian natron, obviously) on table* ^.^
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.
You one Smartglass Jimmy. Excellent narrative on old glass stuff. 😂
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. =)
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.
I didn't know that there was no proof of glass in Viking time, you learn something new every day : D
Norse peoples were amazing ( sorry for stating the obvious ha!!) This just deepens my appreciation and it’s a great topic Jimmy, thanks much✌🏼
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.
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.
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!
🙏🌿💐🌿😉🌿💐🌿🙏
Yay! New Jimmy just dropped!!!
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🙏🏼
They built longships and created art prints onto axe heads using silver, so making glass doesn't seem out of reach at all.
Seaweed ash became popular in Venice...which, being built on the sea, had plenty of seaweed to harvest...
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 "😅
This was so very interesting, thank you for the video.
Great video as always Jimmy!
Thank you Jimmy. More ideas for my “day in the life” style Viking sitcom.
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.
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!
how interesting. I've read about faience amulets and objet d'arte. They were exquisite.
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.
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.
What a great vid. I've always loved glass, but have never considered it's history
Thank you
This has been illuminating. 👏
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
So interesting - thanks Jimmy
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 cool subject! Unless you got the window closed, then it's potentially a bit warmer.
The eyes are the windows to our souls, and windows are the windows to our houses 🤯
I'm glad to hear that the Norse had glass. It means I don't feel so bad about recreating the Crystal Palace in Valheim now....
Love your nuance and angry sand❤❤
If you're going to be appearing on podcasts I'd love to hear you on We're Not So Different.
If you're doing your own podcast I'd like to hear you speak with Milo from miniminutemman, you and he are the only archeology channels I follow.
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.
So good I watched it twice.
It kinda sucks that RUclips is trying to auto generate chapters now....
Coming Home From Torm to new Jimmy video. Yay🎉🎉🎉
Interesting topic indeed 😮 lovely lovely! 😁
Why is this surprising? The Vikings were traders. They were also fine woodworkers. We can extrapolate from this, that they probably had multi-pane windows. They had seen and traded for the material, they were quite capable of the fabrication. Finding evidence of this would be difficult, but we are talking probability.
Now I'm super-intrigued by the mention of table glass poured on a marble desk. 😛
Well, to get flat glass, you need to pour it onto something flat and level, and let it cool like that !
@@Loweene_Ancalimon I did not need it explained. 😁 "Intrigued" as in "tell me more, show me, I wanna see that, is it still being done somewhere?!", not "what does that even mean?" 😉
The day this video came out the settlement of Bristol was raided for Germanic glass and mead by Welsh Vikings! These warrior maidens where last seen sailing away in they long coaches back to the valleys by the disprited town watch. 😂 thank you for another fantastic video!
There are even some polychrome glass spindle whorls from A-S England....
I wonder if there could be a geographical 'half way house' between the trade route you describe and locally made glass. I'm thinking of Bohemia. Bordering the Roman Empire and having advanced glassmaking skills before many other regions, they could be a candidate. Plus they followed a form of paganism that would have been familiar if not acceptable to Skandanavians - different pantheon - same feel. Just an idea.
DID U SAY PODCAST??? I HEARD U SAY PODCAST 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
I loved the pun. ❤😂
yes interesting. but what about Welsh funeral gloves humm?
For those that are wondering natron is basically baking soda
Hey there Jimmy 👋 😊
Have you learned much about Northern Ireland (Derry, not Belfast) being a huge trading center with the Greeks before the Black Death?
Vindue (in old Swedish) vindöga - Vindauga (in old norse) = Wind eye - Wisdows
Yes to potash mining in Canada.
oooh talking about steel did you see Luleå university had done an analysis on slag and found 2 thousand year old steel production in the northern nordics
Is natron the stuff the Ancient Egyptians used in mummification?
What object found in a Scandinavian dig came from the furthest away?
A solid contender is the Helgö Buddha. 6th century, so pre-Viking-age. Likely made in Kashmir.
@@Loweene_Ancalimon Yes, that is definitely a Buddha!
You wonder how long it took to get from where it was made to where it was buried.l
Hey Jimmy! I am an early medieval glass bead specialist at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and have a couple of things to add! If you are willing I would love to meet over Skype of zoom to fill you in!
Send me an email and we’ll jam :)
I think most groups of humans were more advanced than we give them credit for.
I heard "AD 1000" as "81,000". 😅
Found you today. This one alone is worth a subscription. Thank-you. Diolch yn fawr.
"Glass is what happens when sand gets really angry"
Can you explain to some people that a troll cross is a 1990s thing lol😂
I know that if you’re making a film about glass, you have to say the word “glass”, yeah? I feel like I’ve heard Jimmy say glass altogether _too_ many times now, though. Crikey he said glass a _lot_ . Glass. See, even I’m saying it now and it’s starting to sound weird.
(great film, mind, it’s an observation not a criticism)
"so did we" nah nah nah
Are you talking smaller pieces of glass leaded together to make larger pieces…?
Yep
Whilst I am happy to acknowledge that 5he Vikings were not barbarians, I am not sure "they were in business" is on the not barbarian side of the ledger. There are a number of businesspersons who if not Neo Nazis are at least Nazi curious thinking of an electric car merchant and a property developer former President of America. Most Historians are willing to label the Nazis as barbaric.
I mean, the Romans were brutal barbarians *and* a complex, nuanced, highly developed, culture. The Vikings were the same. Barbarism and civilization are not as mutually exclusive as people think. You can have a complex and nuanced culture founded on barbaric and violent principles, in fact almost all of them were!
hahahah because of your accent, I thought you said that eyes are the windows to assholes....I nodded sagely, then...wait... hang on a minute...
So more average people wouldn't have glass? If so, that's a pretty raw deal
It was pretty standard up until the 1800s. Poor people just didn't have a lot of glass
Skjár a window screen made of an animal membrane used instead of glass
Actually this is history nerd important, as I understand it Vikings would work as highly paid personal guards for the Emperor in Constantinople, so glass from Turkey. (They came home rich!) The glass making families of Constantinople fled to Venice when the Turks came, and were put off on the isle of Murano because of the fire risk. It was Silicon Valley. 😉Generations of glassmakers comparing notes. It’s why we got telescopes, microscopes, glasses, and the modern world.
We were civilised enough to close our windows, to keep those barbaric sounds out....😉😆😂
🪟❤️🪟❤️
Well, let's also be clear: having glass windows does not prevent you from being a barbarian haha. Plenty of barbaric actions occurring in societies far beyond having glass windows lol
Probably for ritual purposes
"Today we're talking about... windows!" [windows startup sound]