How to Use the Online Collections
Links
The Danish Online Collection
Nationalmuseets Samlinger Online
The Norwegian Online Collection
Universitetsmuseenes fotoportal
The Swedish Online Collection
Historiska – Sök i samlingarna
Historiska — Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/historiska/
Wikipedia — Alphabetical list of runic inscriptions
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabetisk_lista_över_runinskrifter
The British Online Collection
The British Museum — Collection Online
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx
Transcript
Intro
The national online collections are an excellent resource for getting high-quality images of Viking Age art.
But they are often difficult to discover and operate. As the images in the collections rarely pop up in a Google search and the interfaces of the collections are mostly far from user-friendly and only in the native languages of the national museums.
In this lesson I'll walk you through how to get usable reference images out of the online collections and give you a few tips on how to work around the language barrier.
Good search terms
Let's begin by looking at what the best search terms are across the board.
These are:
- Specific types of items — Terms for specific types of items like 'brooch', 'mount' and 'sword'. You can use Google translate to translate into the local language if needed.
- Place names — Place names like 'Borre', 'Jelling' and 'Broa'.
- Descriptive terms — Descriptive terms like 'Mammen style', 'Oseberg ship' and 'Jelling stone' often works well.
- Inventory numbers — Museum and inventory numbers can be useful too, though I usually don't have much luck with them, but maybe that's just due to my lack of knowledge.
Try browsing around through the individual items listed in the collections and make note of which keywords typically appear at common types of artefacts.
Use these terms as keywords in your searches to get better results.
For each of the following online collections presented I have listed a few native key terms to get you going.
And in the worksheet for this lesson, you'll find a cheat sheet of many of the most common keywords in the native languages to get you a head start.
All links mentioned are listed below the video.
The Danish Online Collection
Nationalmuseets Samlinger Online
In the Danish online collection, you can find great photos of some of the iconic Viking age artefacts like the Jelling stone, the Jelling cup and the Mammen axe.
The collection and interface are unfortunately in Danish only.
- Enter your keywords in the search box in the top right corner.
- Click on an item to get more details.
- Select the download button to get hi-res versions of the image.
Try these search terms to get you started:
- mammen økse
- jellingbægeret
- jelling bæger
- jelling rune sten
- hørning planken
- mankestol
The Norwegian Online Collection
Universitetsmuseenes fotoportal
In the Norwegian online collection, you can find great photos of iconic artefacts like the Urnes stave church carvings, the Oseberg ship carvings and the Borre horse harness mounts.
The collection and interface are unfortunately in Norwegian only.
- Type in your keywords in the search box at the top of the page.
- Check if any of the suggestions in the drop-down match what you are looking for.
- Click on an item to get more details.
- Click on the image to get the high-res version.
It can take some time before the high-res image loads. Have patience and don't mind the placeholder-icon that looks like the image isn't available. The image will show up after a little while.
Take note of the terms used in the item description. This way you can quickly pick out the exact Norwegian keywords used in the archive (like 'skip', 'hodelag' and 'stavkirke').
Try these search terms to get you started:
- oseberg hode
- osebergskipet
- borre hodelag
- urnes stavkirke
- gokstadfunnet
- gokstadskipet
The Swedish Online Collection
Historiska – Sök i samlingarna
In the Swedish online collection, you can find great photos of iconic artefacts like the Broa mounts, the weather vanes and grave goods from Birka.
The collection and interface are unfortunately in Swedish only.
- Type in your keywords in the search box.
- Click on an item to get more details.
- Click on the text-link 'Stor' below the image under the headline 'Använd bilden' to get the high-res version.
Take note of the titles of the items in the search results. This way you can quickly pick out the exact Swedish keywords commonly used in the archive (like 'spänne', 'beslag' and 'svärd').
Try these search terms to get you started:
- flöjel
- ryggknappspänne
- broa halla beslag
- hängkors gåtebo
- ringnål björkö
Historiska — Flickr
https://www.flickr.com/photos/historiska/
The National Museum of Sweden even has a great selection of easily accessible images on Flickr.
Wikipedia — Alphabetical list of runic inscriptions
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabetisk_lista_över_runinskrifter
If you'd like to look up the Swedish rune stones, this list on the Swedish Wikipedia is a great resource.
Most of the stones listed have accompanying images. But if they don't or if the quality isn't great you can always use the info listed to make a good old Google image search and hopefully find further documentation.
The British Online Collection
The British Museum — Collection Online
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx
The online collection of the British Museum is fairly straightforward and user-friendly.
- Type in your keywords in the search box.
- Click on an item to get more details.
- Click on the image to get the high-res version.
- Scroll down for additional images.
Try these search terms to get you started:
- urnes openwork brooch
- viking disc-on-bow brooch
- viking penannular brooch
- viking disc brooch
Outtro
There you have it!
Try it out for yourself and keep in mind that it often takes time to get good results.
Have patience and take your time.
Good luck!