Posts: 1,757 Location: Storvreta, Sweden
Thu 01 Nov, 2012 2:38 am
The complete
shield is covered with a single sheet of gut. As I understand this it is stomach hide. It is glued and stitched on to the boards to my understanding.
It is raw hide and translucent so that paint can be applied to the boards and show through. Pig bladders was a traditional cover for lanterns because of its translucent quality.
In the find there were generally no traces of the raw hide because of the conditions in the bog.
But I think there were minute traces of thin raw hide under some of the metal mounts of the shields.
I cannot now remember if this was something I was told by the archaeologist Xenia Pauli Jensen, or if I read this somewhere in the many Illerup pages.
In general the research done on the Illerup find is very thorough and professional.
The idea that the shields were gut covered should not bee seen as a complete fantasy.
My personal opinion is that the use of thin gut hide saw many uses. I think that many of the wood hilts of the spathae in this find were originally covered with gut. The metal nails and the narrow reinforcing bands as well as the groves cut in the wood, suggest that thin raw hide as applied over the wood to provide greater resilience and perhaps water proofing.
The idea that some of the the hilts were gut or raw hide covered is not to be found in any published research. It is my own theory.
There is some evidence that later period
seax grips may have been treated in a similar way.