Skjoldehamn belt

In 1936, during a peat cutting in a bog there was a body found in Skjoldehamn Norway. This well preserved body had a lot of fabric parts still looking like the day they fell into their watery grave. One of the things well preserved on the find was the braided belt. A 12 strand times 2, so a 24 strand braid in total, with six tassels made with a three color pattern. These tassels were wrapped in the style of the modern Scandinavian Sami people. To say the least this was an extraordinary find. And I decided to replicate the belt shown in the photo's.

The original belt.

I started by looking up some video's online. This helped me see how the braiding worked. I had never made a braid with more then 6 strands so it was a lot! But after a little trail piece I made a little workstation on my stepstool and off I went, braiding away.

My replica.

In the end my version is a lot shorter, but other than that I think I did a pretty good job! I can wear it in a bow on my tunic and it looks really nice. The colors fit in really nice with my other browns and greens. I never thought I could make it work to make one myself, cause I wanted one for years now. Then I just tried, got a bit more confident, measured to make the big piece and there I went. And I must say, It's lot less scary then I originally thought.

Close-up on my tassels.

Wrapping the tassels was a nice little task. Well. not quite little, but non the less it was really nice to work on. In total I spend about 6 hours making it, including the braiding. I felt so lucky that I already got the right materials, the dark orange wool, and the fine green, pink and yellow yarn. I had just enough of the orange wool, only having a strand of 2 meter left after measuring the belt out. I used 24 strands of about 2,50 meters, turning into a 1,5 meter belt, without the tassels. So you loose quite a lot in the braiding part.

The tassels on the find.

The original tassels have more colors on the ends, sadly I do not have these colors, so I decided to make then ends with the same color of the braid. This also worked quite well, even though it looks a tiny bit less fancy.

That's it for today, I hope you liked this little post. I am really proud off the belt, so I really wanted to make a post dedicated to it. I hope to wear it this Sunday when we go to Middeleeuws erf de Bergkamp. It will also be the first time I'll go there so that's also really nice!