Narrative- social concerns and symbolism

For my B-tech I hope to explore the social and symbolic meanings through the evolution of ancient Scandinavian jewellery from 800 to 1200 ad.

In the Viking age the Scandinavian people would wear a number of different jewellery pieces for different purposes, some wore them to prays the gods or to seek help from them, some wore them as a symbol of social status and some wore pieces as redeemable wealth.

 Seeing how closely linked some of their jewellery is to their lives shows me that the research must start with the lives of the people in order to see the meaning in their jewellery. their jewellery is symbolic and “succinct yet addresses the complex question of relationships” (Noriko Takai) and it is interesting to see how back then as well as today “we use jewellery to celebrate important dates and occasions in our lives,” (Noriko Takai).

So I’ll be looking at how other social systems such as Christianity influenced their jewellery, the way their jewellery has changed over time with different technologies and I will be looking at the physical construction methods.