Dannike wife

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The Dannike woman ( Swedish Dannikekvinnan ) is a bog body from the 17th century, the 1942 Swedish bog Rydetsmossen found was. The woman is one of Sweden's most famous bog corpses , along with Bockstensmann and Frau von Luttra . Her remains and belongings are on display in the Borås Museum.

Find

The Rydetsmossen moor borders the hamlet of Rydes to the southwest, in the Dannike parish , Borås municipality in the southern Swedish province of Västra Götalands län . In the summer of 1942, peat cutters came across the remains of a wooden coffin without a lid with the remains of the woman, including the remains of clothing and other personal items, at a depth of about 45 cm. Undetermined time later, the local governor became aware of the find and switched the Central Office for the Preservation of Monuments ( Riksantikvarieämbetet ) on. The following day, the archaeologist Erik Floderus arrived, examined the find and published his results on the discovery known as Dannikekvinnan (Dannike-Frau) in 1944. The remains of the find were exhibited in the permanent exhibition of the Borås Museum until 2001 and subjected to closer examination as the museum was redesigned.

Findings

According to osteological findings, the woman was about 20 years old and about 160 cm tall at the time of her death . Her joints showed no signs of wear. She lay on her left side in the coffin with her legs slightly drawn up, was dressed in a woolen coat and wore a pair of low shoes of modern size 36 to 37 with heels made of multi-layered leather. She wore a wool sock on her left leg. The hands and possibly the legs were tied together. A pathological curvature of the right tibia indicates that the woman suffered from athetosis , possibly due to polio . To compensate for the difference in leg length, she wore an insert in her right shoe. Only parts of the skull and tufts of reddish-brown hair remain from the head, and parts of the thoracic spine and legs are also missing. The originally preserved head must have been removed in the days or weeks after it was found until it was recovered by Floderus. There were no indications of the possible cause of death.

Beside the body a leather bag was with several coins: a 1 øre - silver coin of King Charles XI. , a pierced 1-ore silver coin of King John III probably worn as a pendant . with illegible minting date and three Ö-Öre copper coins from Charles XI, minted in 1672, 1676 and 1677 . It also contained an opal and a dark blue glass bead , two pieces of quartz , a corroded pocket knife and three buttons. Noteworthy are two flints , an oval brass box for tobacco and the clay tobacco pipe , which were also included in the leather pouch. According to recent findings, the Dannike woman's clay pipe was not made until 1690 in the southern or western part of England , according to Arne Åkerhagen in Portsmouth or Southampton .

Dating

In the 1940s, the corpse was dated to the late 1670s using the final coin , i.e. the coin with the most recent minting date, the ⅙ Öre coin from 1677 . Only in the course of the new investigation of the find was it recognized that the clay pipe was only made in England from 1690 and that the woman could not have died until after 1690.

interpretation

The relatively coarse quality of the clothing does not suggest that the woman had a high class in her social environment, but neither did she appear to have worked hard physically, which was possibly due to her disability. The fact that the woman did not receive a regular burial in the consecrated earth of a Christian cemetery , but was buried outside the usual rite in the moor, suggests that she must have stood outside the Lutheran community. Such special burials were given to murderers , suicides, or mothers who died in childbirth before they received the final rites .

In this context, the woman's smoking accessories are of particular importance, which suggests that the Dannike woman was a tobacco smoker . So far there are no contemporary written and image sources on tobacco-smoking women from Sweden. It is possible that her tobacco consumption was the cause of her community exclusion and special funeral. Jordan Goodman argues that tobacco pipes were the only way to consume tobacco in the 17th century, which is why pipe-smoking women are not uncommon. He considers the uncritical transfer of current views - about pipe-smoking women of today's society - to the conditions of society in the 17th century as very problematic.

Despite all deviations from the usual rite, the woman received an orderly burial in a coffin. The offerings of coins and the bondage of the dead are unusual for Protestant doctrine and spring most likely the superstitious fear of a Wiedergängertum of the dead. For the apparently contradictory findings , in particular the addition of tobacco and smoking materials on the one hand and the supposedly low social status on the other hand, there are no generally accepted explanatory models in the scientific literature.

literature

  • Magnus Ljunge: The Dannike Woman A pipe smoker of the late 17th century . In: Knasterkopf - specialist magazine for clay pipes and historical tobacco consumption . No. 19 , 2007, ISBN 978-3-937517-93-3 , ISSN  0937-0609 , p. 48–49, 172 (translated and edited by Natascha Mehler).
  • Anna Kloo Andersson: Mossen - plats, tid, mening . In: Fornvännen - Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research . No. 103 , 2008, p. 190–192 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019]).
  • Magnus Ljunge: Dannikekvinnan - ett unikt mossfyndt . In: Ur Borås Museums samlingar . S. 173–176 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019]).
  • Erik Floderus: Dannikekvinnan . In: Västergötlands Fornminnesförenings tidskrift / Västergötlands Fornminnesförening . No. 3 , 1944, ISSN  0347-4402 (Swedish, first publication).
  • Robert Bergman Carter: Vem reddess alla dessa pipor? en historisk-arkeologisk study av kritpipor och rökning i 1600- och 1700-talens Sverige med enjoyable and intersectional perspective . Lunds universitet, Lund December 13, 2013 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019] Bachelor thesis).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erik Floderus: Dannikekvinnan . In: Västergötlands fornminnesförenings tidskrift . No. 3 , 1944, ISSN  0347-4402 (Swedish).
  2. ^ Anna Kloo Andersson: Mossen - plats, tid, mening . In: Fornvännen - Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research . No. 103 , 2008, p. 190–192 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019]).
  3. ↑ a b c d Magnus Ljunge: The Dannike woman A pipe smoker of the late 17th century . In: Knasterkopf - specialist magazine for clay pipes and historical tobacco consumption . No. 19 , 2007, ISBN 978-3-937517-93-3 , ISSN  0937-0609 , p. 48–49, 172 (translated and edited by Natascha Mehler).
  4. ↑ Arne Åkerhagen: The swedish kritpipan: pipor, tillverkare och fynd . Tobaks- och tändsticksmuseum, Stockholm 2012 (Swedish). Quoted by: Robert Bergman Carter: Vem rökte alla dessa pipor? en historisk-arkeologisk study av kritpipor och rökning i 1600- och 1700-talens Sverige med enjoyable and intersectional perspective . Lunds universitet, Lund December 13, 2013 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019] Bachelor thesis).
  5. ^ Jordan Goodman: Tobacco in history: cultures of dependence . Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 978-0-415-11669-5 , pp. 62 (English). Quoted by: Robert Bergman Carter: Vem rökte alla dessa pipor? en historisk-arkeologisk study av kritpipor och rökning i 1600- och 1700-talens Sverige med enjoyable and intersectional perspective . Lunds universitet, Lund December 13, 2013 (Swedish, PDF [accessed February 3, 2019] Bachelor thesis).

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dannike wife
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dannikekvinnan (Swedish)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bog corpse
DATE OF BIRTH 17th century
DATE OF DEATH after 1690
Place of death uncertain: Borås (municipality) , Västra Götalands län , Sweden