[Regia-NA] Geteld Poles

[rmhowe]

Steve Etheridge wrote:
>> I need to replace the tent poles for our Geteld, having had one of the 
>> existing poles split this past weekend. ( the spruce prototypes
> 
> 
>> We are thinking about decorating the uprights by painting them a solid 
>> colour ( probably white ) and then adding a vine pattern
>> on one of the long sides.  We are planning to leave the ridge pole 
>> plain, save for the ends where they stick out of the tent, which will 
>> have Bayeux-tapestry style beasts.

There are many books on the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture.
Apparently the prime material that does survive from their art-work.
These tend to be somewhat simplistic or densely regional.
I haven't chased after too many of them largely preferring
Scandinavian stuff myself. I should think that what you mention
would not be out of order.

> I can't think of anyone in Regia who has decorated tent poles (for a non 
> Vik tent), but I may be wrong.  It all depends on wether you believe 
> that geteld poles went with the tent (as they must have done with the 
> Vike tents - but were they boat tents?), or were they scavenged from 
> local timber.  If the first, then they may have been decorated.  If the 
> latter, then probably not.

In Scandinavia, particularly Norway, wood grew abundantly on the
steep mountainsides which rise amazingly right out of the fjords there.
The flatter plains of Sweden may have been different, as may Denmark
and the low countries, five centuries after the folk wanderings.

I have read, probably in one of my books on Anglo-Saxon archaeology,
that by the Norman Conquest some people had to walk a day and a
half in order to procure firewood for a forest. Thus I should think
that a lot of England was denuded, or the living wood owned (the
law of hook and crook, done to promote the lord's hunting on
horseback as much as anything else as only what was dead or within
reach might be harvested.).
Secondly one of the surviving documents from one of the
English archers in France at a later date is a permission giving him
several trees to use for constructing a house. So I rather imagine
if one had good straight poles for a travelling tent they might well
be nicely shaped and perhaps decorated. No television and a pregnant
mate might well slow one's activity down on a rainy or winter day.
This would be the period for metalwork and other handicrafts,
milking the four-legged aside.

I would think that poles were mostly shaped by axe (some axe shapes
are specific to either splitting like a froe or hewing to a line or
being pushed from behind the bearded blade like a plane. I own such
axes myself. Then they were probably generally carved with a knife
for the non-carpenter. Only the very wealthiest tradesman's shop
could possibly own a chest of tools like the Mastermyr Find of wood,
blacksmithing, jewellery and cooking tools and cauldron.

Suitable (Mora) carving knives are obtainable from Woodcarver's Supply,
or ragweedforge.com, or Klingspor's Woodworking Shop, Woodcraft, etc.
Some have bent blades, some have short blades, some longer, some
were used for chipcarving which has a long history in itself.

> Of course, the only part of the poles that we actually know about for 
> sure are the bits that stick out of the end.  Everything else is 
> educated guesswork.  I tend to be a little wary of decorating stuff 
> about which we are only guessing.  Most of the pictures of Getelds that 
> I have seen appear to show simple poles sticking out of the ends - even 
> when the fabric is decorated.  If anyone knows different, let me know!

Other than the tent poles from at the Viking Ship Museum I can't think
of any. But surely they were not unique. The amount of carving on the
Oseberg ship was phenomenal and they tended to decorate everything else
excepting underwear that I know of. The amount of carved furniture in
stave churches is rather remarkable. Most of it is 12th century and 
later though. There are carvings on lots of surviving woodwork from
Ireland and many other materials from various countries. A crude
set of illustrations is to be found in Lennart Karlsson's Romansk
Traeornamentik i Sverige from a variety of sources. I also recently
acquired a set of books on the 200 surviving bone motif pieces from
Ireland, most of which have multiple carvings on them. The stuff from
the Crannogs that survived is often carved. Same with furniture and
woodwork from Greenland and Iceland. I'm afraid I don't follow the
French much, their work appears in few bibliographies I read after
the Merowingian period.

For those who are terminally curious here is a good book to obtain
on post Regia generally carved furniture from Sweden:

Karlson, William: Studier I Sveriges Medeltida Möbelkonst; .
[A Study of Swedish Middle/Ages Furniture/Art.]; Publisher:
Lund: Lindstedts, 1928; 151pp. with 8 figures plus 42 monochrome
plates. Wrappers, 29x23cms. Swedish furniture from the Middle Ages,
including carved benches, stools, seats, beds, chests, presses,
and a cradle. Swedish text, French summary.
I think he found most all of it pre-Mastermyr find and the
publishing date find and a lot of it is in the book.

Whilst many people don't like it many illustrations of multiple
sides of the chairs and the tent pole heads appears in Du Chaillu's
The Viking (1880s). Stuff in it may be mixed from the bronze age
forward but for the furniture drawings it is quite good.

While the Saxon Saucer brooches are miserable things from early
period, the great square headed brooches are often quite elaborate
and often carved in a chip-carved oblique cut manner. Very little
Romanesque leatherwork survives apart from a few stamps on bookbindings
that shows any decoration. However, the pottery is quite elaborate
at times in England with carved stampings - most likely made from
the ends of carved tree branches. Add tablet weaving and English
embroidery, and somehow decorating tent poles doesn't seem out of
fashion at all. When you had few possessions I expect anyone who
could afford a tent probably could afford to decorate it as well.

We often forget that until the advent of modern times and the huge
drain upon our time that all our electronic wonders gives us that
up until the 1950's our forebears were far more resourceful. This
is quite clear from the crafts and technical books and crafts survivals.

My own grandfather carved two chairs and a footstool in early 
scandinavian dragonesque motifs - all over. He wasn't a woodworking
professional as I was either. As the sides to the footstool broke
badly many years ago I am considering turning the top into a chest
top to preserve what remains of that heirloom. The oak sides of the
footstool where he put a badly constructed tusk tenon on either side
is both brittle and missing some critical bits and the grain is too
short for any worthwhile replacement to last if glued in.

> Of course, the level of decoration on the manuscript may not reflect the 
> actual level of decoration on an original.  Alas, no originals survive.
> 
> I would also suspect that the poles would be much shorter lived than the 
> tent - wood is cheap to shape compared to fibre!

Ash, as Regia seems to prefer for tents for good reasons, must have
been fairly hard to come by. I far prefer it to oak. It is not near
as brittle, although it is harder to shape by hand. Then again wood
tends to grow well and quickly along river banks and if one was
travelling through on a boat it could have easily removed for use.
As hard as good ash is the only way I would want to carve it by hand
power only is green. Dry it's just too hard. I have inlaid a lot
of runes in a staff I shaped of american ironwood - hornbeam - and
that took one hell of a lot of pressure. Ash doesn't seem to be
much less tough to me. Oak by comparison is mild.

Magnus

> Hope this helps
> 
> Steve