From carolingian army to norse women's fashion : the trefoil mounts

A very lovely example of reuse for foreign object by Norsemen is the trefoil brooch.

When browsing though excavation catalogues, (such as Holger Arbman's catalogue of the graves in Birka), you will encounter lovely clover-leaf shaped brooches in women's tombs. These brooches are usually ornamented with scroll-work or gripping beasts, but some stand out, with a completely different style of decoration, more Roman, or Byzantine than Scandinavian.

This example, found in Birka according to the manufacturer of this copy , has a central six-petals flower and sheaves of what appears to be laurel sprigs, a typical "antique" pattern for decoration.

Why is that ?

The first trefoil "brooches" were not brooches. They were Carolingian strap-distributors used to fasten a sword-scabbard to a belt or baldric, as we can see in these two illuminated images from Vivien's Bible.

 

This manuscript is a 9th century Bible which was offered to king Charles the Bald (grandson of the emperor Charles the Great, or Charlemagne) by Vivien, count of Tours. The book was probably composed at the abbey of St Martin de Tours, between 845 and 846, and provides us with interesting evidence concerning these trefoil mounts.

Apparently, one lobe of the trefoil was fixed to the belt, or baldric, and the two other lobes held two smaller straps from which the scabbard hung. My speculation is that these two smaller straps were fastened to the scabbard by means of small plaques of metalwork, like these two images suggest.

The "three connected straps" system probably wasn't a Carolingian invention, as a beautiful triangular strap-distributor of gold and garnet cloisonné was found in Sutton Hoo ship burial (Anglo-Saxon, 7th century), together with two mounts, a buckle, a strap-end and a slider... more or less the same assemblage of pieces as found in Vivien's Bible. The hypothesis is that this particular set of mounts was attached to a strap that ran across the body and over the shoulder to support the purse-belt, since it was found near a beautiful cloisonné purse-frame of the same style.

The strap-distributor is the triangular piece at the top of the image. We don't know for sure if it was indeed a distributor. It could also be a strap-end.

The Carolingian swords that had such mounts were items of prestige that would have been prized loot, or luxury import, both for the quality of the Rhine steel of the blades, and for the beautiful metalwork of the fittings.

This item (9th century), from a private collection, is of silver, with gold inlay.

This one, displayed at the British Museum (9th century, found at Kirkoswald, England), is a particularly fine work of filigree and granulation in silver that included garnets at the end of the lobes.

Reusing foreign items as pieces of jewellery is common during the viking period.

The most obvious reason is the luxury-character of the original items : weapons and belt-mounts were already used to display wealth and status among the Franks where these objects came from, so, they were made with costly materials and a great deal of craftsmanship.

An other reason is that they were "exotic" and showed how far they had come from, through raid or trade. For example, coins such as dirhams and even sassanid drachmas were used as pendants, fitted with loops  to be hung on necklaces, or were added a clasp at the back, to be used as brooches.

Such was the fate of these carolingian baldric-mounts that were modified as brooches, to adorn the garments of a wife, a daughter or a sweetheart.

It is hard to find images of the back of these mounts to know how they were fixed to straps before becoming brooches, so I have found little of them. Two can be seen on this very interesting blog article. It seems that a system of loops was in use, but rivets are also a possible options, as holes are found is some mounts.

The aforementioned British museum example of brooch shows no sign of either clasp or loops whatsoever.

This is probably due to poor restoration in the 19th or early 20th century, says Daniel Perrier, curator of the Merovingian section of the National Antiquities in St-Germain-en-Laye.

"When mineralized fabric or leather clung to metal objects, the excavators used to "clean" them the hard way, often removing any trace of rusted or crumbling loops or clasps entangled in the rotten fabric. Old-fashion archaeology didn't know yet the value of this kind of evidence, and a lot was lost with these rough so-called restorations."

While the first trefoil brooches that arrived in Scandinavia were foreign, reused items, they were rapidly copied and the fashion became widespread. Finds of such brooches are widely distributed in Scandinavia, with a particular concentration of them in Denmark, where imported Carolingian items are similarly concentrated. They also are found in significant numbers in Britain. It is hinted that they were both made locally and imported from Scandinavia. Geographic areas had their particular style of trefoil-brooch ranging from simple geometric patterns, lines and dots, zoomorphic, acanth-leaf-like patterns and intricate interlace.

It is worth noticing that the use of the trefoil-shape was not limited to jewellery : the presence of pairs or loops at the back of all three lobes of some trefoils suggest the pieces were rather elements of horse-harness than clothing.

I'm still looking for a complete time-line of trefoil brooches, to be able to tell you when the fashion died and they stopped being made. I'll make sure to update this post when I do !