The Snartemono is a custom-made belt for His Royal Highness Duke Yngvar inn Heppni commissioned by Her Royal Highness Maestra Isabella Beatrice della Rosa. The final product is 175cm long, 3.5cm wide and took 75 hours from drafting to cutting it off the loom.
• Monochrome modified Snartemo V aka Snartemono.
• Done with vacant hole to create a visible structure
• Warp 20/2 silk (silk of design threads by Dixie Weaver, border handspun by myself, black by Treenway)
• Weft 60/20 silk by Treenway
• Brocade based on the Yngvar’s charge, silk
• Soumak is done with my handspun silk
• 56 tablets (40+16)
• 175cm / 5’9″ long 3.5cm / 1³/₈” wide
• 75 hours from warping to cutting off.
When and where?
The original fragment was found in 1933 in grave 5 in the village of Snartemo, Norway. The grave is dated to around 550 CE, it is believed to be somewhat younger than Snartemo II. The fragment consists of four pieces, it is altogether about. 35 cm long and 5 cm wide and woven with thin wool threads. It has wide borders with stripes in blue, red and yellow, and the pattern pieces are threaded with a thread in each color: red, blue, yellow and green. The original weaver used a floatwork technique.
Snartemo is one of the three villages of the municipality of Hægebostad in the county of Agder in Norway. Agder is mentioned in the Heimskringla, one of the Kings’ sagas.
Materials
Fibers
I opted to weave this band in silk rather than in wool. Since this was a monochrome, I needed a fiber with enough luster to reflect the light in order for the pattern to be visible. Also, silk will be more resistant and will felt less due to wear and tear.
Even thought the belt is monochrome, I’ve used 4 different silks:
- I’ve used two different whites;
o One is a 20/2 by Dixie Weaver for 8 of the border tablets and 1 of the 3 threads in the design tablets (it is the whitest of the two whites),
o One was spun by myself on a bottom whorl drop spindle based on a 6th century Swedish find for 4 of the border tablets, 2 of the 3 threads of the design tablets, and the soumak, - A 20/2 black silk by Treenway Silks for the brocade and 4 border tablets,
- and finally the weft is a 60/2 light gold by Treenway Silks.
Tablets
I used 56 tablets: 40 design tablets and 16 border tablets. Because I only own 24 tablets made of period material, I used cardboard ones that were cut to the size of some period tablets dating from the 6th century CE (4cm X 4cm).
Shuttle and needles
The shuttle I used is made of wood which is a material that could have been used in period. The soumak and brocade were made using a needle based on a burial mound find in Eide, Norway dated to 475 CE made by Mistress Martha Effingham of Stewart Kepe.
Tension
The belt was woven a loom gifted to be by Duke Yngvar and made by Sir Jonns Gunnarson.
There is no way, as of 2023, to know what material were used to make the equipment used to weave the original Snartemo V.
Technique
The fragments from the Snartemo finds were the first floatwork fragment found which is why the technique is sometimes called “Snartemo”. In proper floatwork, 2 warp thread from a given number of tablets are kept floating on top and on the underside of the band with the 2 other threads twisting together and behaving as they would usually do in other techniques. There are 4 different sub-techniques of floatwork:
Saint-Severin
The Saint-Severin band is a floatwork band from Cologne, Germany woven between the 7th. It is similar to the Snartemo band when it comes to the use of 4 different colours (white, red, green, yellow) per tablets but the difference is in the threading. The Saint-Severin band is threaded with alternating SZ tablets. The geographical shapes and the checkered patterns are very similar to the subject of this presentation.
Øvre Berge
The Øvre Berge uses 3 different colours; yellow, red, and blue with the yellow thread repeated. Like with the Snartemo band, the Øvre Berge band is threaded in all Z tablets. This 6th century band was found in Lyngdal, Norway.
Queen Bathilde
Like the Øvre Berge band it has 3 colours; red, yellow, and blue with red repeated. Contrary to the
Øvre Berge band, the repeating colours are threaded at opposite corners of the tablets instead of next to each other. It follows the Saint-Severin threading with alternating SZ tablet slants.
Snartemo
This is the technique used for the presented belt. The technique differs itself from the other floatworks by being threaded with all Z tablets and having 4 different colour (green, yellow, red, blue) threads per tablets. There are several Snartemo bands, and the majority uses the floatwork technique.
I diverted from the original technique by threading the design tablets using 1 colour and removing a thread in each tablets making it a vacant hole technique also. The missing thread creates relief on the surface of the band, this is due to the twisted threads that would usually be hidden under the floating threads to be visible. The missing threads also makes the belt slightly thinner and more flexible. This can be noticed when touching the borders and comparing them to the design section. The missing thread also allows for the weft to be slightly visible in the areas where the vacant is dominant.
The pattern
The original fragment contains several swastikas. I do not weave swastikas. I’ve found a pattern by
Magnifica Arabella De Mere, OL of the East Kingdom of the Snartemo V band with the offensive symbols modified and the remaining symbols intact and made some modifications to adapted it to better suit a monochrome vacant-hole. Aside from the obvious colour difference and the missing threads, I modified some shapes in order to make them sharper and more visible, I added the soumak that is visible on one end of the original fragment, finally I’ve designed and brocaded a den stora hären, one of the two charges from Duke Yngvar’s heraldic device.
Finished belt
Sources
• ASKASMIÐR Hlíf (ST. JACQUES Tanya), Tablet Woven Band of a Merovingian Queen, A&S Kingdom entry documentation, 2013
• COLLINGWOOD Peter, The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, Echo Point Books & Media 2015
• DE MERE Arabella (JACKSON Sara), Modified Snartemo V Inspired Band, 2018
• GRENANDER NYBERG Gertrud. Spinning Implements of the Viking Age from Elisenhof in the Light of Ethnological Studies, Textiles in Northern Archaeology, Symposium for Archaeological Textiles 3 [NESAT 3], 1990
• LAPORTE Jean Pierre, Les reliques de Chelles, une sépul ture royale mérovingienne. In: Bulletinde la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, 1987, 1989
• THING Olvik, Viking Age Tablet Weaving Class Handout, 2011
• TWIST, Tablet Weavers’ International Studies & Techniques, Volume 30 1, Spring 2023 edition
• WOLLNY Claudia, Tablets at Work, Das Brettchenweben Grundlagen Technikbuch, Claudia Wollny Edition, 2017
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