Tag: collections

Echoes from the past

Walrus skull with cut off rostrum
One of the many walrus skulls from Svalbard in the collections of the Bergen University Museum. Parts of the rostrum have been cut away (dotted line) to remove the tusks.

 

The walrus’s most distinctive feature is its tusks. They can grow to up to an impressive meter in length, and both males and females have tusks. Walruses were once very abundant in the Svalbard Archipelago, but were nearly hunted to extinction during the Middle Ages for their ivory. Walrus ivory was very popular during the early Middle Ages, and a famous example of objects made out of walrus ivory are the Lewis Chessmen. The growing trade in walrus products in medieval Europe led to overexploitation of walrus populations, and the population on Svalbard was brought to the brink of extinction. In 1952, walruses on Svalbard became protected. The population is slowly increasing but walruses remain on the Norwegian Red List. 

The Osteological collection of the Bergen University Museum contains many archaeological walrus skulls, such as the one in the picture above, that still bear the signs of this overexploitation. According to archaeologist James Barrett, walruses were slaughtered in a consistent way where the frontal part of the skull, the rostrum, was chopped off in order to remove the tusks. The marks left behind by the chopping can still be seen in many of the skulls (indicated by the dotted line).

More on how the North Atlantic walrus ivory trade was linked to the boom and bust of the Norse settlements in Greenland: https://titan.uio.no/naturvitenskap-livsvitenskap-english/2020/boom-and-bust-economy-greenland-norse-walrus-ivory-trade

Season’s greetings from Bergen Osteology!

 

Smalahove is a traditional Norwegian dish made from a sheep’s head and often eaten in the period leading up to Christmas. The name of the dish comes from the combination of the Norwegian words hove (meaning head) and smale (meaning sheep). The dish is considered a delicacy in the western part of Norway, although it is certainly not everyone’s favorite. The head is salted, sometimes smoked, and dried, and is boiled or steamed for several hours before serving. It is served with boiled potatoes and kolrabi mash, and if you need some help washing it down, a little glass of akvavit.

In addition to the cultural delight some of us take in eating this dish every year, it also provides great specimens for our osteological collection. The fact that smalahove is often sold already cut in half means that it gives us a nice sagittal cross section of the sheep skull. This is helpful in understanding the internal anatomy of the sheep’s head, and helps in identifying small skull fragments from archaeological excavations. Can you spot the petrosal bone, the densest bone in the body?

Cockfighting in Medieval Norway

Two chicken tarsometatarsi from medieval Norway with their spurs chopped off. Boxes give a close up of the remaining stumps.

 

When PhD student Sam Walker was looking at bird bones from medieval Norway, he noticed a chicken tarsometatarsus with the bony spur, a pointy outgrowth of bone covered by a layer of keratin that projects from the back of the bone in mostly roosters, cut off. Then he found another one. And another one. Now, more than 16 chicken tarsometatarsi from a number of cities in medieval Norway have been found, all with their bony spur partially or complete chopped of. This type of bone modification is typical of cock fighting, an ancient blood sport with a long tradition in many countries. The bony spur is removed and an artificial spur, often made of metal, is attached to the stump. The tarsometatarsi that Sam has found come from all over Norway, suggesting that cockfighting was widespread in medieval Norway. Trading networks between Western Europe and East Asia, where cockfighting has traditionally been very popular, might have introduced cockfighting to Scandinavia. But strangely enough, there is no mention of cockfighting in any historical literature from or about Norway. Why that is the case remains unclear. These peculiar bones therefore look to be the first, and only, evidence we have for cockfighting in Norway.

Walker, S.J. and Meijer, H.J.M., 2020. More than food; evidence for different breeds and cockfighting in Gallus gallus bones in from Medieval and Post-Medieval Norway. Quaternary International 543: 125-134.

Svalbard reindeer

Reindeer metacarpi from mainland Norway (left) and Svalbard (right), both from our collection.

Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) are a separate subspecies of reindeer, endemic to the Svalbard archipelago. They have relatively small heads, a compact body, and shorter legs than the reindeer found on mainland Norway (Rangifer tarandus tarandus). The latter is clearly illustrated by the photograph above: the bone on the right is a metacarpus of a Svalbard reindeer, the metacarpus on the left is from a reindeer from mainland Norway. The osteological collection of the University Museum of Bergen contains numerous skeletons of both species.

Norway’s most iconic bird

Skull of an Atlantic puffin, Fratercula artica, in the collections of the University Museum of Bergen.

The Atlantic puffin, Fratercula artica, is probably Norway’s most iconic bird. One of the best places to spot them is on Runde Island, which is the southernmost breeding colony in Norway. Puffins have a distinctive bill that changes color throughout the year as well as the bird’s life. The colorful part of the bill is also called the rhamphotheca, and is made of keratin, similar to our hair and nails. During the skeleton preparation process, the rhamphotheca is often lost, but the bony beak underneath still reflects its typical shape.