Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d…
—William Shakespeare, Richard II
When we think about the kings—and queens—of England, we generally consider the triumphs and failures of their reigns, the elegant palaces in which they lived, and the scandals of their courts. For monarchy to work, both the ruler and his or her subjects have to believe there is something that sets the royals apart from everyone else. Take the concept of divine right, for example, in which God grants the king his power, making the monarch subject to no human authority. The definition of aristocracy in the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us that nobles are supposed to be the best citizens, above everyone else. And the king sits at the top of the aristocracy. So it’s easy to see why many people are programmed to think these individuals are somehow better than the rest of us.
In fact, they’re just as human—and flawed—as everyone else, something that is driven home by many of their deaths.
Queen Victoria’s death at Osborne House in 1901 conforms to the stereotype of a noble death: she succumbed to illness after a long and celebrated reign, surrounded by family, mourned by her empire. But not all of her compatriots went so gently into that good night.
Death of William Rufus, lithograph by Alphonse de Neuville, 1895
In 1135, William II overindulged during a raucous evening, after which he slept poorly, tormented by bad dreams. The next morning, probably suffering from a profoundly human hangover and still troubled by the memories of his nightmares, he was less than enthusiastic about his plan to hunt that day. But hunt he did. Unfortunately for him, the only other member of his party, aiming his crossbow at a stag, hit the king instead. The Chronica Maiora tells us: The shaft flew, and glancing off a tree pierced the King full in the heart, so that he instantly dropped dead.
A dreadful accident. Or was it?
First of all, two parties had gone out hunting. The king’s consisted only of himself and Walter Tyrrel, a skilled archer. After William fell, Tyrrel fled, leaving the royal body in the New Forest. Tyrrel joined a crusade—guilty conscience?—and locals found William’s remains. Conveniently, William’s brother Henry, keen to see himself one the throne, was with the other, larger party, and he lost no time in getting to Winchester, where, the next day, he was proclaimed king. The timing was more than a little convenient, as the other potential claimant, his older brother Robert, was away from England on crusade. Strong, popular, and, as the eldest son in the family, Robert would have proven a formidable opponent for the crown. Had William died when both his brothers were in England, Henry might never have been king.
Poor William, so unloved, was quietly buried in Winchester, his courtiers not bothering to attend the funeral.
It all worked out well for Henry. At least that’s how it seemed.
Henry I ruled for 35 years and had a reputation for cruelty. Perhaps it was a bit of divine justice that after gorging on lampreys—against his doctors’ advice—he fell suddenly and fatally ill. Regardless, his death could never be held up as dignified, let alone noble and courageous. Like the rest of us, he was human, and let his appetite get the better of him.
TASHA ALEXANDER, the daughter of two philosophy professors, studied English Literature and Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame. She and her husband, novelist Andrew Grant, live on a ranch in southeastern Wyoming. She is the author of the long-running Lady Emily Series as well as the novel Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Since the Ice receded for more than 10.000 years, the landscape north of Halmsad in Sweden has changed from a cold Steppe to an ancient forest. New research traces the different phases and explains how the forest at Almeberget looks much like it did at the beginning of the vendel period, c. 500
Sweden is known for its forests. Sometimes impenetrable, at other times full of glittering lakes, and always scattered throughout with surfacing bedrock and littered with granite boulders. We tend to think of them as ancient. Recent studies of the sediments in a lake northeast of Halmstad in a national reserve called Almeberget, however, demonstrate that forests and landscapes have histories. It also tells us about how the landscape changed in the late Iron Age on the cusp of the Vendel period. (c. 500)
After the ice receded for more than 13.500 years ago, the landscape was a cold steppe covered by herbs and shrubs. Covered with juniper, buckthorn, crowberries, heather, grass, and various herbs, it slowly transformed into a less open landscape filled with conifer, birch, aspen, and willow. With Holocene warming (c. 9600 – 4000 BC), the landscape changed character. While firs were still predominant, the landscape gradually came to be characterised by a deciduous element of first elms and alder. Later oak, ash, and lime became part of the coverage, as did rowan, and buckthorn. At the end of the Neolithic age hornbeams entered the scene. It was not until the Bronze Age (c. 1800-500 BC) that the beech appeared on the scene, decreasing the role of hazel.
Finally, during the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages (500 BC – AD 1100) the landscape changed once more. Now beech became prevalent, while other deciduous trees slowly receded. At the same time, spruces became more common. After AD 1100, beeches came to dominate. As they do today, together with spruces planted in the 19thcentury.
Throughout prehistory, wild fires – started by lightening – were recurrent phenomena. Called ‘taigas’ they occurred every 100 years and charcoal would set its mark on the pollen diagrams. Vastly interesting, however, is the fact that they would peak during the late Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age, to peter out at the end of the Roman Iron Age, when climate once more became cooler, wetter, and more turbulent – and less prone to be ignited by lightening. And a probable shift from slash-and-burn or fire cultivation to more permanently fertilized field agriculture.
What we see is the evidence of the combination of wild fires as well as the later widespread introduction of slash and burn agriculture in the Bronze Age, leaving the landscape constantly open for regeneration. When cooling of the weather as well as shifting demographic pressure entered the equation – at the end of the Iron Age and the beginning of the Migration and Vendel Periods c. 400 – 500, beeches would gradually take over. They were simply able to better get a foothold leading to the present characteristic coverage at Almeberget.
What does this tell us in terms of the landscape in this remote corner of Europe. In fact, it informs us is that the landscape – as we may encounter it at the centre of Almeberget today – shows us a type of forest cover not much different from that which peasants from c. AD 500 were accustomed to at the northernmost border between the temperate vegetation zone and the southern Swedish highlands.
Norse World is a new database is a digital resource which will make it easier for researchers to study perceptions of the surrounding world in medieval Scandinavian literature
The new tool is a database aimed at researchers in fields such as language history and philology, comparative literature, manuscript studies and digital humanities. It will be freely available to both researchers and the public.
Spatial humanities and cognitive mapping are growing fields within digital humanities, but the study of spatial thinking in medieval Scandinavia and its development as an area of research are hampered by a lack of information on place names and other spatial references in literary texts.
Scandinavian medieval literature is a mine of information on how foreign lands were visualised in the Middle Ages: What places were written about and where? Are some places more popular in certain text types or at certain times? How do place names link different texts? Is there a shared concept of spatiality? How is space gendered?
“Any research aiming to uncover what pre-modern Scandinavians understood about places abroad requires as a minimum an index of foreign place names in Swedish and Danish literature from the Middle Ages. Yet, to-date no such index exists. With the release of Norse World, an important tool is being made available for the first time that makes research on the perception of the world among pre-modern Swedes and Danes possible for the first time,” says Alexandra Petrulevich, Researcher at the Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University.
The new tool consists of three main components: a bespoke MySQL database, Norse World – an interactive map, and an independent back-end application that enables access to the database when users search the map resource. All three components use open-source code which enables them to be built into larger infrastructure clusters. The tool is both a scientific and technical first with no equivalent in what has previously been done in philology and linguistics.
Ribe was the earliest emporium in Early Medieval Denmark. At the cusp of the Viking Age, the town played a significant role. But when was it founded? By whom? And for what reason? Renewed excavations this summer brings us closer to an answer.
Ribe in the 8th Century. After: Sydvestjyske Museer/ Juxtapose
Since 1970, archaeologists have excavated in Ribe, a small town situated in Southern Denmark, approximately five kilometres west of the Wadden Sea. The modern town is traversed by the River Ribe, which used to meander into the west coast estuary. Nowadays it is regulated and runs an orderly course. Until the 20th century, the town was in the grip of tidal waters, occasionally causing severe flooding. To the east, the landscape is dominated by boggy wetlands, while sandy plains reach north and south. Thus, Ribe is situated at the logical western crossroad reaching from north to south. Today, at the banks of the river we find a small quay. In the same way, the earliest town must have boasted of a harbour, albeit its precise location has so far evaded the archaeologists.
The archaeological remains of Ribe are exceptionally well-preserved. Ribe, however, is unique, because the modern town more or less covers the earlier settlements. This poses a challenge since excavations have to take place whenever a current building project calls for “rescue archaeology”. Accordingly, excavations since 1970 have yielded a breath-taking amount of artefacts and knowledge. Nevertheless, the basic knowledge about the history of the town has so far eluded the archaeologists. One reason is that even though Ribe is famous for its well-preserved stratigraphy, the older excavations had no access to the modern techniques, which allow for exact mapping of the thin cultural layers.
In 2017, the Carlsberg Foundation made it possible to carry out a systematic excavation of a plot inside the oldest Ribe. The overall aim has been to answer several questions: How did Ribe emerge? Were the earliest activities seasonal? And if so, at what point did Ribe become a permanent settlement, that is a proper town? Was the earliest Ribe characterised by high-density housing as a new evaluation of the old excavations indicate? Who were the earliest citizens? Seasonal visitors or local merchants and craftsmen? Might historical events be detected in the development and changes, which the town underwent? And finally: for how long did Ribe survive as a vibrant emporium?
Using state-of-the-art techniques like laser-scanning, 3D-visualisation, geochemical element analysis, micromorphology, and dynamic, electronic methods as well as other high-definition techniques, the archaeologists are currently processing vast amounts of data. As yet, no firm conclusions have been published. What we do know so far is that the first traces of activities at Ribe can be dated to c. 700, but also that the area was inhabited no later than the 720’s with people wintering in substantial houses plying their trade and crafts. This suggests a more or less resident population at a time when history and archaeology tell us a mighty potentate or king was otherwise busy digging a deep channel across Samsø, the Kanhave channel, as well as rebuilding the wall at Dannevirke. Dendrochronologically dated to respectively 726 and 737, these defensive projects must have involved the deployment of a significant workforce. As Ribe from day one, also seems to have been minting scaettas, its status as an important emporium may likely date from the same period and historical context.
Reaching more than three metres down, the archaeologists have so far uncovered the remains of buildings covering more than 70 M2 and housing bead makers, bronze smiths, and shoemakers. However, not only remains of their workshops have been revealed, but also – uniquely – some of their more personal objects, like combs and caskets with Runic inscriptions, a fragment of a musical instrument, a lyre, and pieces of textiles. In one of the layers from c.800, three amulets were found featuring Christian crosses. As the pendants were found in a smithy together with the moulds, the find suggests that a mass production catering for a local Christian community took place at Ribe at least 50 years before the vita of St. Ansgar tells us the first church was built in town. The new find fits perfectly with the Christian burials excavated at a cemetery surrounding the later Cathedral on the southern side of the river. Isotopic analyses of the dead persons have shown that the people buried there grew up locally.
These and a multitude of other finds from the latest excavation are, however, still undergoing conservation, while the rethinking of how to fit the new results into the old has not even begun. Slowly, the contours of a vibrant early emporium from the very early period of the history of Denmark will undoubtedly surface
All very tantalising…
SOURCE:
Northern Emporium
Northern Emporium: The Archaeology of Network Urbanism in Ribe
The purpose of Ribe Viking Center is to communicate Ribe’s Viking Age history by bringing it to life in the reconstructed environments. Alongside the presentation, theories are tested and developed through experimental archaeology; not just as regards the reconstruction of buildings, garments, tools and equipment but also in relation to the sociological side of history: How did communal life take shape under the physical conditions and surroundings of the past.
The Museum, ‘Ribes Vikinger’, reveals Ribe’s history from the Viking period and Middle Ages to the year 1700 in the very spot where the very first town was built c. 720
“A simple faith in God is good enough for me, and beyond that, I do not concern myself very much,” Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said while president. Nonetheless, his White House was frequented by spiritualists at his wife’s behest. Though some warned the Lincolns of impending doom, none were able to save the president’s life or his wife’s sanity.
Spiritualism in the United States exploded during the Civil War, particularly in the nation’s capital. Fathers, husbands, and sons were dying on battlefields in this country at a rate never before imagined. It is estimated that 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers died by war’s end, or one in ten white men of military age. It’s not difficult to understand the desire of family members to hear from their deceased loved ones during such a terrible time, and few believed as strongly in spiritualism as Mary Todd Lincoln.
Having already lost her son Eddie in 1850, it was almost more than she could bear when eleven-year-old Willie died from typhoid fever in 1862. Mary locked herself away for weeks until she finally emerged donning black mourner’s clothes. “He was his mother’s favorite child,” Mary’s seamstress wrote. “Mrs. Lincoln’s grief is inconsolable.” At the suggestion of former First Lady Jane Pierce, who’d lost her sons years earlier, Mary invited well-known spiritualists, such as Nettie Maynard, to hold séances within the White House so that she might commune with her dead little boy.
Seated in a circle about a table in the Red Room of the White House beneath a chandelier with its flames doused, a spiritualist would clasp hands with Mary and her friends as someone played music to attract spirits from the darkness. Adept at deception, the visiting spiritualist typically conjured tapping sounds somewhere within the room to indicate Willie’s spiritual presence. The trickery worked. Mary was so convinced that Willie had returned that she reported to her half-sister: “Willie lives. He comes to me every night and stands… with the same sweet, adorable smile he has always had. He does not always come alone. Little Eddie is sometimes with him… You cannot dream of the comfort this gives me.”
President Lincoln was also deeply affected by Willie’s death. Intelligent and personable, Willie most closely resembled his father. “I stood at the foot of the bed, my eyes full of tears, looking at the man in silent, awe-stricken wonder,” Mary’s seamstress wrote of the president. “His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved.” The lamenting Lincoln often visited his son’s corpse in a temporary vault in Oak Hill Cemetery where he’d sit for hours, sometimes directing that his son’s coffin be opened. “Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead?” Lincoln asked a Union officer during that heart-wrenching time. “Since Willie’s death, I catch myself every day involuntarily talking with him as if he were with me.”
Despite his intense grief, President Lincoln did not resort to spiritualism. “He was no dabbler in divination, astrology, horoscopy, prophecy, ghostly lore, or witcheries of any sort,” wrote a friend. The president did, however, humor Mary occasionally by attending séances where it was reported that he had more interest in observing the tricks than harboring any real expectation of communication.
Some spiritualists warned Lincoln of assassination, but it didn’t take a spiritualist to understand the ever-present danger to the president. When warned once, the president replied: “Colchester has been telling me that.” Colchester was the renowned spiritualist, Charles Colchester, who frequented the White House at Mary’s request. It turned out that Colchester may have had special insight into Lincoln’s peril that originated not from the spirit world, but rather a few blocks from the White House. Colchester was a friend of John Wilkes Booth.
Booth’s interest in spiritualism began soon after that of Mary Lincoln. Following the death of Booth’s sister-in-law in 1863, the already superstitious actor attended a number of séances conducted by Colchester. The two became friends and many noticed the men consorting at the same hotels and eating establishments about Washington, D.C. After the assassination, Colchester fled the capital city and was never questioned about the president’s death.
Mary’s dependence on spiritualists naturally intensified following her husband’s assassination. After moving to Chicago with her son Tad, who died six years later, and her oldest son, Robert, she frequently hosted séances in her home until Robert forbade it. Undeterred, she visited spiritualists in Chicago using assumed names. She also visited William Mumler, a “spirit photographer,” who produced a photograph of Lincoln’s spirit resting his consoling hands on Mary’s shoulders. Though clearly fake, Mary believed it to be authentic. “A very slight veil separates us from the loved and lost,” she wrote a friend, “though unseen by us, they are very near.”
While the hocus-pocus of spiritualists may have comforted Mary, their shenanigans were not enough to settle her unraveling sanity. In 1875, Robert Lincoln caused an arrest warrant to be issued for his mother, who was taken into custody, certified insane, and committed to Bellevue Place, a private asylum in Batavia, Illinois. She remained there for over a year until she stirred sufficient public interest in her plight that she was released. She lived out her life quietly with a sister in Illinois and never forgave Robert.
For Mary Lincoln, the ghostly and chilling realism feigned by charlatans and swindlers could not rival that of her actual life—three sons died in her arms, a husband was fatally shot while seated beside her, and she was committed to an insane asylum by her sole living son. Few, if any, can imagine the assault on her reason inflicted by such real-life horrors—and none in their right mind would want to suffer her heartbreaks.
PHILIP JETT is a former corporate attorney who has represented multinational corporations, CEOs, and celebrities from the music, television, and sports industries. He is the author of The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty. Jett now lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
What did Viking clothes and outfits look like? A large grant supports archaeologists and textile researchers exploring and recreating authentic textiles and dresses
Recently, a group of researchers have begun exploring what clothes and textiles looked like in the Viking Age and how they were worn. Part of the project is to reconstruct a man’s and a woman’s outfit. Another part of the project is to examine how people from all sorts of layers of society looked like.
Occasionally, archaeologists discover small pieces of textiles and fur attached to metal objects found in graves. Sometimes, they even find larger pieces as part of excavations. The question, however, is how to reconstruct the complete outfits from these tiny rags
“It’s not easy to jump from small pieces of fabrics a full suit. It’s a puzzle game of small centimetres of textiles, images, and written sources,” explains Ulla Mannering, Project Manager on the research project and senior researcher at the National Museum to historie-online.dk
For instance, iconic pieces found in many female graves are the bossed oval brooches, which were used to hold up suspended dresses. But from images, we know that women might also wear blouses and skirts
“It is important to utilized a wide variety of different sources to find the breadth and variation of the Viking era dress. Much of our knowledge is based on archaeological findings from a few very rich graves,” explains Ulla Mannering.
The team at the National Museum will not work alone. As part of the project, the researchers intend to reconstruct two outfits from the Viking age in collaboration with Sagnlandet Lejre and the Center for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen. One is the outfit found in the Mammen grave, the other, the woman’s dress from Hvilehøj. Before they start, they intend to explore in detail which tools and materials the Vikings used, and which colours the outfits had. Both graves were high-status and probably linked to the elite surrounding the Jelling Dynasty. For instance, the burial of the Hvilehøj Woman yielded not only woven bands, but also four different fragments of silk, and six different fragments of wool as well as fur. The outfit of the man from Mammen sported a series of embroideries, depicting an acanthus vine, birds, gripping beasts, a leopard, as well as different types of masks. This particular outfit was reconstructed in the late 20thcentury based on the clothes, which King Cnut the Great wore in an illumination from Winchester… However, the new project plans to rethink this reconstruction, basing it on a new study of the fragments from the grave excavated in 1868 respectively 1880. The textiles, though, were carefully drawn preserving details since lost. Linen, wool and silk, but also gold and silver were used in such outfits.
“We want to reproduce the textiles and reconstruct the outfits of these two graves using as best we can, using the ancient tools, techniques, and methods,” says Ulla Mannering.
The aim is to “develop a new approach to disseminate textile, skin and clothing design to be used for exhibitions, teaching and in popular visualisations of the multifaceted life in the Viking Age. The project will give Danish textile research a renewed focus and impact, but will first and foremost result in a new visual and tactile understanding of textile production and clothing in the Viking Age that can be used in museums, in research, and by the broad public.
The intention is thus to provide as closely as possible, re-enactors and museums with scientifically correct reproductions to be used in Sagnlandet as well as in the future Viking exhibition, currently being planned at the National Museum in Copenhagen. But also to inspire reenactors and living historians to be authentic, when recreating the fashion of the Vikings.
Recently, a lucky punch from a detectorist resulted in the find of a very rare Viking coin. Soon, the find had multiplied to 252 coins, shedding new light on the rule of power in early Viking Denmark c. 800
Suddenly in August 2018, it was reported by an amateur detectorist that an extremely rare Viking Age coin had been found in a wet meadow not far from Ribe. The coin was a so-called ray-face/deer coin. On the obverse we find a crude face with staring eyes, bristling hair and a moustache. On the reverse, a deer or a stag, which kisses a snake? Or is the snake attacking the deer?
The newfound coin prompted the archaeologists to do a proper search of the meadow resulting in the discovery of a treasure trove of 252 coins in all. Of these, 249 presented a combination of the rare head/deer type, while the last three featured a beautiful rendition of a Viking ship with a fish swimming below the keel. The watery landscape had helped to preserve the coins, which seem pristine.
Technically the coins are categorised as belonging to the combination-group, KG 4. Accordingly, the coins have could be dated to c. 800-825. They were hidden in a bog or wetland at a time when Ribe was the most important emporium in Southern Jutland. At this time, Haithabu was still a relatively small settlement.
As of now, the Museum regards the find as a wetland-deposit intended as a sacrifice. However, already other explanations are proffered. Were the coins kept in a purse lost overboard by a Viking merchant crossing the marshes in a shallow barge? We don’t know as the exact spot has not yet been published.
During the excavation, the location of the coins was mapped with precision GPS. The resultant map showed that the coins were spread over a large area, approximately 50 x 15 m and in the shape of an oblong. The spread of the coins suggests that they were not buried, but perhaps just kept in a purse, which was placed (or lost) on the ground. Afterwards, repeated ploughing would have spread the coins.
First of all, it must be noted that the coins appear pristine. They must have been used as coins and not just as hack silver. The coins had not been tested, but rather intended to be taken at their face value.
Secondly, they were surely minted in or near Ribe. Marine archaeologists have long recognised that the inspiration for the coins with ships derived from Dorestad pennies. However, the ships on the newly found coins are obviously “Viking Ships” and not the banana-shaped “Frisian Hulcs” known from the Dorestad coins. As yet, we don’t know how many dies can be identified, albeit it is clear from the published photos that several are present.
This treasure is a new and significant contribution to the history of the period c. 800 – 825, explains the archaeologist, Morten Søvnsø, who is obviously exited about the new find. Not only does it complement the astounding results of the recent excavations in Ribe, currently being conserved and studied at Aarhus University. The cache of the 252 coins will probably shed new light on the political history of the early Danish kingdom of Godfred, he tells us.
Godfred
This king of the Danes was well-known to the Frankish chroniclers, who told about his exploits during the last stages of the Saxon wars as well as his repeated attacks on the frontier of the Carolingian Empire. Thus, in 808, Godfred was involved in attacks on the land of the Obodrites (present-day Vorpommern). This pillaging prompted the Franks to cross the Elbe to protect their border against, what the Royal Frankish Chronicle calls “the mad king”. In connection with these attacks, Godfred took a number of Slavic castles, as well as destroyed a trading place at the seashore called Reric, which
“because of the taxes it paid, was of great advantage to his [Godfred’s] kingdom. Transferring the merchants from Reric, he weighed anchor and came with his whole army to the harbour of Schleswig. There he remained for a few days and decided to fortify the border of his kingdom against Saxony with a rampart, so that a protective bulwark would stretch from the eastern bay, called Ostarsalt, as far as the Eastern Sea, along the entire north bank of the river Eider and broken by a single gate through which wagons and horsemen would be able to leave and enter. After dividing the work among the leaders of his troops, he returned home. “ From: Carolingian Chronicles. Translated by Bernhard Walter Scholz with Barbara Rogers. University of Michigan Press 1972, p. 88 ff.
Evidence of Godfred’s restoration of the so-called Dannewerk has not been identified. The gate, however, was recently discovered and excavated, demonstrating that the entrance into the Danish kingdom was heavily fortified. Although Haithabu was probably founded earlier in the 8th century, its heyday as the Viking Emporium par excellence dates from after 808 – 10. We know that the newly found coins belong to the same period. Hence, it is more likely they were minted at Ribe, which had an essential role as a flourishing market centre already from c. 720 and onwards (this early date is indicated by the as yet unpublished results of the recent Ribe-excavations carried out in summer 2018).
Might we presume the newly found coins were minted at Ribe at the instigation of Godfred and as part of his endeavour to develop trade in Southern Denmark? Earlier excavations have shown that Ribe was indeed a thriving market town with a money economy in the 8th century. Since the early 1970s more than 300 sceattas with their typical design featuring Wodan/Monster have been excavated at Ribe. More – as yet unpublished examples– have surfaced during the later years indicating that these coins were in use at least until the beginning of the 9th century. It seems likely that the idea of minting our new coins was fostered there; not least since the image of the ray-face on the new coins introduced c. 800 – 820 is akin to the “face” on some of the sceattas minted and found in Ribe from c. 725 and onwards. It seems logical to consider the newly found coins as representatives of those introduced after the scaettas were dropped c. 800 – 820.
However, even if the coins were part of a project to integrate the Ribe economy in the network of powerful Viking Emporiums like Dorestad and Haithabu – and thus minted in order to facilitate trade, commerce and royal customs – it is at least as likely that the coins also played a symbolic role in the fostering of the image of Godfred as a powerful king. As the litany has repeatedly claimed: “Kings strike coins, I strike coins, hence, I am a king”. What would be more natural for a burgeoning Danish king to utilise a central Carolingian symbol, coins, which he must have encountered not just as a partner in trading enterprises, but also as loot deriving from his continued skirmishes with Charlemagne and his sons? Especially, since he would also have been familiar with the minting and use of the sceattas in Ribe.
Christian or Pagan?
Carolingian Coin from Dorestad, 814–818. Source: pinterest
To understand the symbolic character of the new coins, however, it is necessary to consider them in their context.
Generally, it is believed that these Nordic coins were local derivatives of Carolingian coins minted in Dorestad. From 768 -790, these coins were fitted with the name of the king on the obverse, and with the place of the mint, Dorestad on the reverse. In 789 a new type was launched with +CARLVSREXFR circumscribing a cross, and with the site of the mint indicated on the reverse. However, late in his reign – after 800 – these coins were replaced with a new – more picturesqe – type, with the imperial bust of Charlemagne on the obverse, and a ship surrounded by the mint name, Dorestad, on the reverse. It is likely that such coins were part of the tribute, which Godfred received from the Frisians in 810. The cronicle informs us that it consisted of a hundred pounds of silver or the equivalent of 24.000 pennies.
Scaetta with so-called Wodan/Monster design, typical for Ribe 725 – 800 Source: Auction Bruun & Rasmussen, 2010
Might we imagine that either Godfred or his sons had this treasure reminted at Ribe and according to specifications? A closer study of the different types of the Nordic pictorial coins belonging to the so-called compositions-groups 3 – 5 seems to indicate this might very well have been the case.
As can be seen from the newly found coins, the obverse is fitted out with a face. This face, however, seems to be an echo of the faces on the 8th century scaettas from Ribe (so-called series X) and not the profile of Charlemagne. The old epithet of Wodan/Odin should not be taken on face-value. This characterisation dates to 1860 and was originally voiced by a Frisian numismatist. In Italian, the coins are described as showing a “Testa di Legno”, head of wood, where the name “Wodan” has obviously been translated as “wood”(legna in Italian)! As these faces does not show two eyes, one of which is corrupted, we may limit ourselves to note that the portrait on the Caroligian coins differs radically from the one found on the Ribe-coins, which with its large and staring eyes decidedly reminds us of carvings on artefacts found in the Oseberg Ship from c. 834.
As said, the newly found coins show on the reverse ships sailing with fish below, as well as dears interacting with snakes. Other types of coins not found in the new assemblage, but belonging to the same composition groups (3 – 5), show images of Viking Halls, “redrawn” from Carolingian Temples depicted on coins from Charlemagne or his son, Louis the Pious. Other coins in the series show motives, which may be found on other scaettas from the beginning of the 8th century (the motives with a walking man or two roosters). Looking into the minor decoration on the coins, we should take into consideration that some of these iconographic details like the triskele can be found carved on the tent-stand found at Oseberg in Norway. Further, the four-legged deer, the coiled snake, and the ships remind us of paintings on the picture stones from Gotland. Obviously, the pictorial schemata are clearly Nordic.
Especially evocative is the deer. The animal reminds us of Eikthyrnir, according to the legend a stag, which stands on the roof of Valhalla and eats from the leaves of the great tree, Yggdrasil. From it horns drip water, which feeds the rivers and seas of the earth, among them Hergelmir, in which the serpent or dragon, Níðhöggr and countless snakes lives, feeding off the roots of the tree. The story is told differently in the Poetic Edda, Grimnismal, and Gylfaginning, but the main elements set the same scene.
However, another possibility is of course that the symbolic repertoire is Christian, as indicated by coins combining the motive with the stylish Viking ship sailing on a sea filled with fish. In the same way, the stag and snake on the reverse might symbolically render Jesus taking on the devil. On the other hand, this is contradicted by a die, which is not present in the new assembly: a coin with a ship on the reverse, and two roosters on the obverse. Of course, a rooster features in Jerusalem in the story of Good Friday. But roosters (in the plural) are also present in the Norse mythology, where three of them crow out a warning about the impeding Ragnarök.
A univocal answer to this complicated question is not readily available. We know, however, from the recent excavations in Ribe in 2018, that a Christian community was present c. 800. Three newly found leaden amulets or pendants indicates this. The amulets in the form of crosses of St. Andrew were found in the workshop of a metalworker together with the moulds, suggesting that the local market for such trinkets was not insignificant.
Might the newly found coins represent a syncretistic approach to the question of religion? Godfred and his Vikings would have been well-informed about the role, Christianity and the Christian church played in the Saxon wars south of the border. From 777 to 782, Widukind, the pagan leader of the Saxon faction, found shelter up north beyond the Danish border, we may presume at the court of the king. Later we hear of negotiations between representatives of Charlemagne and Godfred concerning refugees from the Saxon wars.
On the other hand, the designs of the coins are without doubt inspired by the Scandinavian artform named after Oseberg. Hopefully, the new find will in the future encourage not just numismatists and archaeologists, but also art historians to fully explore the cultural and historical ramifications of the 252 coins.
For fifteen years, Henry Johnson had his hands full as Wells Fargo’s pioneer detective. The company built its reputation on safety and security. From the time of its founding, it guaranteed delivery and paid its customers for all losses suffered in transit, whether due to theft, fire, or accident. The vast riches carried by the company were a magnet for robbers, and it quickly became evident that the company needed detectives to investigate thefts and recover stolen property. A common misconception is that the famous western lawman James B. Hume was the first Wells Fargo detective. In fact, San Francisco police officers Isaiah Lees, Leonard Noyes, and James Gannon, as well as Sacramento lawmen Dan Gay and Charles P. O’Neil, all worked as Wells Fargo sleuths long before Hume’s start in 1873.
It was during the Gold Rush of the 1850s that Wells Fargo officials hired Henry Johnson as their first detective. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1818, he was a lifelong law officer. Johnson joined the Glasgow police as a young man, in about 1840, and rose to the rank of detective at a time when the profession of policing was in its infancy. He later emigrated to Australia, where he served as a police detective in Sydney and Melbourne. Johnson and his young bride, Elizabeth, sailed by clipper ship to San Francisco in 1855. Within a year, he became a special policeman, paid by private businesses to protect their property.
American policing was then very new. Before 1845, there were no organized, professional police forces in the United States, for law enforcement had traditionally been handled by volunteer watchmen at night and by constables by day. As eastern communities became urban, the old system could no longer cope with the booming population and the resulting increase in crime, social unrest, and rioting. Philadelphia and New York City were among the first cities to form full-time police forces manned by paid officers. Soon these departments were divided into patrol divisions for the prevention of crime and detective bureaus for the investigation of crime. The latter became known as “detective police.” The result was a rapid rise in urban police professionalism.
San Francisco Police Detective Isaiah W. Lees, about 1860. He worked with Henry Johnson as a Wells Fargo detective. (Author’s collection)
But because of the transient and unstable nature of frontier communities, professional policing developed far more slowly in the American West. Only in San Francisco, where a small group of highly experienced career officers controlled its police department from the Gold Rush until the end of the century, did law enforcement reach a degree of professionalism by the late 1850s. There, Henry Johnson’s experience and talent as an investigator quickly became apparent. He was appointed a San Francisco police detective and worked closely with Isaiah W. Lees, destined to become one of America’s greatest sleuths. Johnson and Lees handled countless cases, from small-time thefts to major crimes and homicides. In that freewheeling era, on-duty San Francisco police frequently performed private detective work for banks, express companies, and merchants. Because American law enforcement was so new, clear rules separating public and private policing were often nonexistent.
Although Johnson later said that he performed his initial detective work for Wells Fargo in 1855, newspapers did not report his first such case until two years later. On the night of February 1, 1857, a thief entered the Wells Fargo office in Fiddletown, in the Mother Lode country. The office was located in a corner of the United States Hotel, owned by Jerry Kendall, and the safe rested at one end of the bar. The burglar opened it and stole nine thousand dollars in gold dust and coin. Because the safe was undamaged, the Wells Fargo agent suspected that the thief either picked the lock or used a false key. The loss caused an uproar in Fiddletown. Because of the lack of effective law enforcement, vigilance committees were very active during and after the Gold Rush. A band of vigilantes seized two strangers and strung them up in an effort to choke out a confession. The pair insisted on their innocence and were set free.
Wells Fargo officials then sent Henry Johnson and Isaiah Lees to Fiddletown to investigate. They found a typical rough gold camp in which saloons outnumbered every other business. One-third of its population of one thousand was Chinese. The camp had been founded in 1849 by Missourians. “They are always fiddling,” declared one of the founders. “Call it Fiddletown.” Stagecoaches stopped in front of the United States Hotel, the most imposing building in town and one of the few with glass windows. According to an early account, “The bar-room was also sitting room, dining room, and bedroom, the beds being potato sacks stretched across poles, furnished with blankets, but no pillows, a man’s boots being expected to serve that purpose. The floor was the original red soil, sprinkled, swept, and trampled every day.”
Shotguns and Stagecoaches: The Brave Men Who Rode for Wells Fargo in the Wild West
The company’s superintendent, Samuel Knight, went to Fiddletown also and promptly repaid the owners of the stolen gold. Soon after Knight and the detectives arrived, a lynch mob led by the Fiddletown justice of the peace, Stephen Kendall—a brother of the hotelkeeper—seized another suspect, named Stepperfield, and dragged him to the outskirts of town. He denied any involvement “and expressed the fear that if he was hung it would kill his mother and sister.” He asked one of the mob to write down his last words and send them to his mother. When one of the lynchers tried to comply, others shoved him aside and exclaimed, “The man had better be praying, for his time is mighty short.” Stepperfield was then strung up until he lost consciousness, then let down. This happened three times, until a local doctor and a deputy sheriff showed up and cut him down. He lived but was permanently paralyzed. It turned out that Stepperfield had had nothing to do with the theft.
Johnson and Lees ignored the vigilantes’ primitive attempts to solve the crime by strangulation, and they soon left Fiddletown to pursue a lead in Sacramento. While they were gone, a loafer known as “Drunken Joe” came forward with crucial information. He had been allowed to sleep in a room next to the hotel bar, and on the night of the theft, he awoke and saw the justice, Kendall, remove several sacks from the safe and hand them to a carpenter named Leroy Warden and another man, whom he did not know. Because Kendall was authorized to open the safe, Drunken Joe thought nothing of it until he saw the justice leading the lynch mob. Justice Kendall, Leroy Warden, and a ruffian called “Big John” were all jailed. One of them revealed the location of the gold, which was found hidden under a brick oven behind the hotel. Kendall and Warden were brought to trial in June and both were acquitted, illustrating that justice was extremely uneven during the Gold Rush: Innocent men were strangled half to death by a mob, while the guilty culprits went free. Though Henry Johnson did not crack the case, it marked the beginning of many investigations he would make for Wells Fargo.
JOHN BOESSENECKER, a San Francisco trial lawyer and former police officer, is considered one of the leading authorities on crime and law enforcement in the Old West. He is the award-winning author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling Texas Ranger. In 2011 and 2013, True West magazine named Boessenecker Best Nonfiction Writer. He has appeared frequently as a historical commentator on PBS, The History Channel, A&E, and other networks.
In November 1938, one of America’s most famous radio personalities took to the airwaves on a Sunday afternoon, as he had done for years. Unlike the talk shows of later years, this host would not be taking calls from his fans. On this occasion, the host opened his show with the usual church choir and organ music, before launching into a startling defense of Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Though he claimed to oppose any form of religious discrimination, the host proclaimed that recent violence against the German Jewish community was merely a response to the threat posed by Communism. He went on to name two dozen Jews he claimed had helped bring about the Russian Revolution back in 1917, before concluding that Jews had risen to “high places in radio, press and finance” and were now feeling a backlash.
This was the radio show of Father Charles Coughlin, one of America’s most infamous radio personalities of all time. From 1926 until 1940, Coughlin hosted a Sunday radio program that often focused more on politics than matters of faith. He would eventually see himself as the voice of millions of disaffected Americans who had lost everything in the Depression, and saw no improvement in sight. This populism gathered him what may have been the largest audience in American radio history, if not world history. While we don’t have accurate audience information from the 1930s, polling suggests that Coughlin’s monthly audience may have been as large as 29 million people, with about half that listening on a weekly basis. This meant his audience was much larger than any other talk show hosts’ before or since. By 1938 Coughlin had convinced millions of Americans that he understood their problems as no one else could and was giving them a voice.
Coughlin was now espousing a political ideology of his own concoction, and it bore remarkable similarities to Nazism.
The “Radio Priest” — as he was known — came from humble beginnings. Coughlin himself was actually Canadian and was born in Ontario. He entered the seminary and was apparently an outstanding student. After entering the priesthood he was appointed to a small shrine — called the Shrine of the Little Flower — in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak. This was an area known for its Ku Klux Klan presence, and local members welcomed the new priest by burning a cross on his front lawn. Coughlin came to believe that the best way to combat prejudice was by making his church popular, and a few months later he invited big-name baseball players, including the Catholic Babe Ruth, for a visit. The event not only gained Coughlin positive press coverage, but also raised his profile in the community.
Using the new technology of radio to reach the masses fit well with Coughlin’s efforts to spread his message. In October 1926, Coughlin made his first regional broadcast at the age of 35, and was widely regarded as a hit. His voice registered well on the radio, and he spoke slowly and deeply. Even today, listening to a recording of Coughlin’s broadcasts is somehow mesmerizing. From a purely performance standpoint, it’s easy to see why Americans were entranced by his broadcasts. In the early years, most of Coughlin’s shows focused on religious issues and the scriptures, but that all changed with the stock market crash of 1929. From 1930 onward, Coughlin’s weekly broadcasts were decidedly political. The audience seemed to love it, and donations flooded into Coughlin’s church. So much money was arriving that Coughlin had to hire a small army of clerks to process it all. In 1930, the Radio Priest signed a deal with the CBS Radio Network to take his show nationwide and reach 40 million potential listeners. An obscure parish priest had managed to become a household name in just a few years.
When Hartmut Topf was a small boy, he was captivated by puppets. On a warm summer’s day in 1930s Berlin, he would sit with his sisters under the blossom of the fruit tree in the family’s back garden while their otherwise rather taciturn father acted out puppet shows through the dining room window. With Hitler in power, the city was already in the grip of the Third Reich, but the horrors of that regime remained hidden from Hartmut, who enjoyed collecting and swapping Nazi belt-buckles, badges and toy planes with boyish enthusiasm.
At night Hartmut lay in bed beneath a wooden puppet carved by the father of his friend Hans—dreaming of that other world that puppet theatre could take him to; a world where he could express all of his thoughts and feelings, where he could soar or even die on stage. Not a world of silence and secrets, where his father and uncle whispered their worries for the future, and one day his friend Hans would simply vanish—and Hartmut would know to never question where he had gone.
In “Architects of Death” Hartmut Topf returns to his childhood memories, peels back the layers of his complicated family history, and explores the legacy of bearing the name of an industrial dynasty who engineered the cremation ovens used in the Holocaust. As that young boy in Berlin, Hartmut knew only that his family was related to the esteemed Topf and Sons—an industrial malting and furnace company in his father’s hometown of Erfurt. It would not be until the war was over, and his father had vanished as a Soviet prisoner of war, that he would discover the truth. Sitting in a darkened cinema, Hartmut saw the name Topf and Sons stamped in iron above the cremation ovens of a concentration camp. Millions of people had been murdered, and then cremated, using Topf and Sons technology. For Hartmut, it would mean a lifetime of trying to piece together the story of what Topf and Sons had done, and what role his relations, and their employees, had played in designing and driving the Holocaust.
While Hartmut was still enjoying a carefree childhood in Berlin, one man, wearing a dark suit and a stiff white collar, sat down in his office in Erfurt in the Spring of 1939 to draw up a plan for what he neatly named the first “mobile oil-heated cremation oven” to be delivered to the nearby concentration camp of Buchenwald.
This man was the engineer Kurt Prufer, and he carefully marked on his design “incineration chamber” rather than “cremation chamber” for he completely understood the power of his words. With a few strokes of his pen, his bland description disguised the red line between his previous work, serving the life and death of an ordinary community—and building the technology to fuel mass murder.
An 1891 advertisement for a Topf and Sons patented brewery heating system. Image is in the public domain via Wikipedia.
Prufer worked for Topf and Sons, at the time of the war under the leadership of Ludwig and Ernst Wolfgang Topf, two of Hartmut”s second cousins. During the 1930s Topf and Sons had branched out into building ovens for civil crematoria and both Prufer and his boss, Ludwig Topf, considered themselves the leading lights of a new movement to bring dignity to death and reverence to human remains. The product they developed and sold throughout Europe was lauded in a company brochure as “the purest expression of perfection in cremation technology”, promising an odorless smokeless, dispatch of human bodies, which were burned solely in super-heated air.
Topf and Sons’ work for the SS in serving the Nazi’s concentration camps was quite different: here Prufer and his colleagues stood with watches in front of the gas chambers of Auschwitz timing the death and incineration of thousands of victims to perfect a more efficient killing technique. Bodies were shoveled one on top of another into a single chamber, and burned directly in the flames—their ashes unidentifiable and intermingling. Yet they remained careful to maintain the falsehood that there was some dignity in death—Topf and Sons also supplied false firebricks and urns for non-Jewish victims whose families were allowed to claim their remains. In reality, mixed ashes, sawdust and general dust were shoveled indiscriminately into each urn which was then stamped with a false identity number (the families of Jewish victims were not even allowed the comfort of this lie).
These were the men and women of Topf and Sons: the engineers who drew up the plans, the secretaries who saw the memos, the accounts department who stamped the orders, and the playboy Directors, Ernst Wolfgang and Ludwig Topf, who signed every letter to the SS with the words, “always at your service”. These were the office-workers who gave the green light to the Holocaust, yet they were far from fervent Nazis.
Astonishingly, from the 1930s until the end of World War II, Topf and Sons was a hotbed of Nazi opposition, housing workers who were often knowingly part of the communist-resistance, while the Topf brothers themselves sheltered several half-Jewish employees, including one, Willy Wiemokli, who saw the plans for the crematoria at Auschwitz. After the war, Wiemokli discovered that his own father had been murdered at Auschwitz, and most likely burned in an oven built and installed by Topf and Sons—yet he still spoke out in defense of his former employers, supplying a statement outlining how he had believed Ernst Wolfgang Topf had protected him.
Both the Topf brothers and Kurt Prufer joined the Nazi party in April 1934, the last possible moment when it was acceptable to do so for any ambitious business person in the Third Reich. Yet rather than expressing horror and terror when they discovered the true purpose of the Topf and Sons contracts with the SS, they reacted with total indifference towards the suffering of their victims.
After developing the first crematoria for Buchenwald, Kurt Prufer wrote to his employers demanding a bonus for work he had proudly pursued “in his own free time.” His wish was granted. “Rest assured” Ernst Wolfgang Topf wrote to the SS in November 1941, the company will provide a new design for crematoria at Auschwitz which will “improve efficiency” even taking into consideration the likelihood of “frozen corpses.”
An office feud between Kurt Prufer and his senior manager, Fritz Sander, prompted the latter to invent his own design for a concentration camp oven. Sander’s plan for a “Corpse Incineration Oven for Mass Operation” seems almost a replication of hell, where piles of corpses are shoveled down into a ring of fire and the bodies are used as fuel to continuously burn other bodies. In a memo, Sander, who had previously shown no interest in cremation ovens at all, described the process to his employers as a superb way or “restoring hygiene” in “war-related conditions.” The Topf brothers, more interested in funding their lavish lifestyle, drinking and womanizing, approved it without comment. Only Kurt Prufer took issue with the design, claiming that it would not work in practice—and coming up with his own alternative equally deplorable design instead.
The work of Topf and Sons was no longer just enabling the Holocaust; Prufer and the Topf brothers were now taking the initiative in encouraging the SS to go further in their murderous regime, designing more efficient ventilation systems for the gas chambers at Auschwitz so that they could kill more people. By January 1945, the end was near, but even in the final days Kurt Prufer and Topf and Sons planned to recreate the killing system at Auschwitz at Mauthausen camp in Austria where they relished the prospect of fully taking control on an entire “extermination center.”
In every bland description and technocrats” lie Topf and Sons remained supremely indifferent to their de-humanized victims. The final statements of these men, as they were held to account for their actions after the war, showed that they had never once considered the millions of victims of their technology. During his interrogation by Soviet forces, Kurt Prufer calmly lied about his role in the process, and then, when pressed about whether he knew that innocent people were being murdered and burned in his ovens, eventually replied—“Yes I knew that.” Fritz Sander described with some pride his “Corpse Incineration Oven for Mass Operation” and then stated, “As a German engineer and employee of the Topf company, I felt it was my duty to help Hitler’s Germany to victory, even if that resulted in the annihilation of people.”
A Holocaust museum and education center opened in the former Topf and Sons administration building on January 27, 2011. Image is in the public domain via Wikipedia.
As Hartmut Topf grew up as a young man in West Germany those questions of duty and responsibility would continue to haunt him. While the rest of his family remained silent, he was determined to expose the truth behind the lie perpetrated by his cousin, Ernst Wolfgang Topf, that “No one in our company was guilty of anything at all.” Today, thanks to the work of Hartmut Topf and a small group of supporters, the building that was once the headquarters of Topf and Sons is a memorial to the victims of their crimes, and an archive of the company’s grim innovations is preserved for all to read and consider. He says: “I inherited the name. I did not inherit the company, fortunately. Even so, I felt an obligation. As a child, I bathed in the glory of being a Topf, and now I feel I have to tell the horror story of their infamy. I have to make my contribution. That is my responsibility.”
KAREN BARTLETT is a writer and journalist based in London. She has written extensively for the Sunday Times, The Times, The Guardian, and WIRED from Africa, India, and the US, and has presented and produced for BBC Radio. Most recently, she worked with Eva Schloss, writing her Sunday Times bestselling autobiography After Auschwitz: A Story of Heartbreak and Survival by the Stepsister of Anne Frank.
Spiritualism in the United States exploded during the Civil War, particularly in the nation’s capital. Fathers, husbands, and sons were dying on battlefields in this country at a rate never before imagined. It is estimated that 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers died by war’s end, or one in ten white men of military age. It’s not difficult to understand the desire of family members to hear from their deceased loved ones during such a terrible time, and few believed as strongly in spiritualism as Mary Todd 
Seated in a circle about a table in the Red Room of the White House beneath a chandelier with its flames doused, a spiritualist would clasp hands with Mary and her friends as someone played music to attract spirits from the darkness. Adept at deception, the visiting spiritualist typically conjured tapping sounds somewhere within the room to indicate Willie’s spiritual presence. The trickery worked. Mary was so convinced that Willie had returned that she reported to her half-sister: “Willie lives. He comes to me every night and stands… with the same sweet, adorable smile he has always had. He does not always come alone. Little Eddie is sometimes with him… You cannot dream of the comfort this gives me.”
Mary’s dependence on spiritualists naturally intensified following her husband’s assassination. After moving to Chicago with her son Tad, who died six years later, and her oldest son, Robert, she frequently hosted séances in her home until Robert forbade it. Undeterred, she visited spiritualists in Chicago using assumed names. She also visited William Mumler, a “spirit photographer,” who produced a photograph of Lincoln’s spirit resting his consoling hands on Mary’s shoulders. Though clearly fake, Mary believed it to be authentic. “A very slight veil separates us from the loved and lost,” she wrote a friend, “though unseen by us, they are very near.”
In “Architects of Death” Hartmut Topf returns to his childhood memories, peels back the layers of his complicated family history, and explores the legacy of bearing the name of an industrial dynasty who engineered the cremation ovens used in the Holocaust. As that young boy in Berlin, Hartmut knew only that his family was related to the esteemed Topf and Sons—an industrial malting and furnace company in his father’s hometown of Erfurt. It would not be until the war was over, and his father had vanished as a Soviet prisoner of war, that he would discover the truth. Sitting in a darkened cinema, Hartmut saw the name Topf and Sons stamped in iron above 
