Some other experts basically called it bullshit citing how the original research was to some extent influenced by the need to "demoralize" racists or something like that.
The story seemed to die after that although none of the major news outlets seem to have taken down or changed the original news stories, which there were in every major news outlet initially.
Does anyone know what became of this whole thing? Are they still going with the original narrative or what?
Why would they take down or change the original articles? That's never how it works.
Hunter Nguyen
Its because the person who was making the claims wasn't even a historian, she was using a Major Swedish museum's twitter account to state her speculations and people treated it like fact. Honestly if I were in charge of that museum I'd delete it too because thats pretty embarrassing famalams
Tyler Jones
Shoddy journalism.
They latch on to the "feminism" is powerful part however forgot to fact check or verify the statements.
Mason Morris
>Its because the person who was making the claims wasn't even a historian She's apparently a textile archeologist and writing a book on this sort of thing. Also her tweets =/= the news articles written about it. Newspapers do not retract or modify articles unless they receive demands from the people named to do so or they're hit by a lawsuit. Especially when the debate is still open from an outsider's point of view and even the critics are wearing kids' gloves with her: theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/viking-couture-allah/543045/
In fact, for Vikings, Arabic may have come with cultural cachet. They circulated coins bearing Arabic inscriptions, as well as weights for measuring silver bearing pseudo-Arabic inscriptions (writing that imitates the look of Arabic but doesn’t get it quite right). In a journal article for Current Swedish Archeology, scholar Lotta Fernstal writes that Vikings may have used the language to “‘spike’ certain objects with additional meaning” as part of constructing their self-image. “It seems likely that the Eastern, Oriental, Arabic and/or Islamic was alluring and desirable, perhaps as an ideal image of the ‘Other’ as part of a Viking Age Orientalism,” she adds.
Given this exoticizing attitude, Mulder said, it wouldn’t be surprising if Vikings were to have bought funeral clothes with Arabic inscriptions. “It would be like, for us, buying a perfume that says ‘Paris’ on it,” she told me. “Baghdad was the Paris of the 10th century. It was glamorous and exciting. For a Viking, this is what Arabic must have signaled: cosmopolitanism.”
Priest-Dorman added that it wouldn’t be unusual to find an eclectic mix of styles in the burial finery of a single Viking woman.
Still, the critics believe there isn’t yet enough evidence to support Larsson’s claim, and are concerned by how quickly her non-peer-reviewed findings went viral.
John Cook
what does feminism have to do with it you loon
Joshua Ross
Dont't see what's controversial about some vikings converting to Islam
Jaxon Sanchez
Oh right, I meant the portrayal of Islam as something non-foreign, something that shouldn't be feared, something that's natural.
The viking/female warrior article and the viking/islam article came to my mind around the similar time. Thats where the confusion came to be
Parker Wilson
>She's apparently a textile archeologist and writing a book on this sort of thing. She's not. Like some other user said, that was just shoddy journalism. She's a visual artist who occasionally uses stuff in museums as part of her art. She has no training as an archaeologist, and she doesn't work in that capacity. Her original conclusions was literally just an uniformed guess based on what she thought something might look like.
Isaac Smith
Is there are any source on that? I'm baffled that even her critics call her an UU archeologist and I can't find any article doubting the credentials. Meanwhile she seems to have a (blank) profile page at UU and a @arkeologi.uu.se mail address which implies they at least consider her a guest researcher or something.
That's her CV, from her website. Her bio also describes herself as an artist. That's kind of the ridiculous thing about how this story was reported on; she has a website that's easy as fuck to find, and it clearly indicates she isn't any kind of archaeologist, nor does she describe herself as one. She's an artist that produces works which talk about ritual and power.
Dylan Ramirez
Actually scratch that, she does have a Swedish profile. I'm relying on google translate but:
"In recent years, I have been responsible for the planning and establishment of Uppsala University Museum Gustavianum's new inventory magazine within the campus area at EBC. The goal was to make object archives available for teaching and research. After the opening of the archives, I am back at the archaeological department as a scientist again, with several research projects that integrate with each other. First off is a book project under the work name Bucklor on the please. Viking women's costume in the pre-Christian context . According to plans, it will be released next year. In parallel, I place part of my working hours in the archaeological museum, where I, together with staff in textile science and osteology, make a total inventory of textile and bone material from the boat diggers in Valsgärde and Gamla Uppsala."
"Today there is a great interest in both the vikings and the story of the past, but I am primarily interested in the representation of the tombs. A common perception is that the Viking costume consisted of homewoven fabrics (which was certainly the case for everyday costumes), but in the boat and chamber cravings that I study, the preserved materials are dominated by imported jewels. By recreating the fabrics we can track extensive cultural contacts. The costumes also tell you about cultural expressions that may be difficult to access. In collaboration with genetics, we can get DNA to tell us more about the buried individuals. The interdisciplinary research can be followed through the following pdf files."
That sounds like an archeologist's work, whether she has the background for it or not. There's also a press release from UU calling her an archeologist. It's more than just "shoddy journalism", might a deliberate misrepresentation on her and UU's part.
Levi Jones
>That sounds like an archeologist's work Not really. She's helping to catalogue things, and using that work to produce a book about textiles and power dynamics, which is fully in line with the concepts of her art. In past articles, I've seen the planned book described as another one of her art projects, which even that description reinforces.
Either way, she clearly didn't have the expertise to make the conclusion she did, which is why people that actually do have criticized her harshly for getting pretty much everything wrong.
Thomas Gonzalez
Found an interview with UU too:
"I have two professions that I combine today in my role as a researcher in textile archeology. My first degree took me at the Textile Institute, where I educated myself as product designer. I worked for years as a pattern designer in industry and abroad for SIDA, but also as a craftsman, before I started reading archeology at Uppsala University. Discovered that there was often lack of textile knowledge among archaeologists and vice versa. There was a hole to fill that fit perfectly for my dual experiences."
"Took dual master's degree with major major archeology in 2000 and a second degree in 2001 with textile science as a major. The subjects were, among other things, ethnology, ancient languages and medieval church history, but I also read Europe's history and material culture along Side Road."
"I studied in archeology 2007. My dissertation was textually oriented and the methods closest to ethnological. One of the research courses I went to Konstfack. I can not help having an interdisciplinary approach."
"In Uppsala there was a multidisciplinary network with a seminar that was (and still) is a natural meeting place for various disciplines related to that era. Here archeologists and medieval historians, rhetologists, religious historians, art historians, economics historians and others meet. There was also an international doctoral course at the archaeological department, with the same multidisciplinary perspective[...] It was a rotating schedule for each year between the participating universities in the different countries, and the seminar was held with seminars / lectures and excursions. The vision shaped us as a researcher, and we became not only friends for life, but are now also research colleagues."
I'm not sure I see how writing a book about "Viking Women's costume in the pre-Christian context" (sic for google translate) is part of her art. Except maybe as performance art for LARPing as an archeologist if she actually lacks the credentials.
>Either way, she clearly didn't have the expertise to make the conclusion she did Agreed.
Ian Edwards
WAIT WAIT I solved the fucking mystery
Annika Larsson the artist and Annika Larsonn the textile archeologist are NOT ACTUALLY THE SAME PERSON
The artist was born in 1972 (source: her CV) and the research was born in 1958 (source: libris.kb.se/bib/10424832)
I kept wondering why the artist's bio was mysteriously devoid of any reference to her archeology work, even after the researcher gained meme status back in 2015 already. So it's simple. THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT PERSONS
Ryan Rogers
Actually, now that I'm looking at the pages linked above, I'm not sure the artist and the archaeologist are the same person. The pictures of them look completely different, and it seems like could be a common name in Sweden.
That being said, even the with the qualifications described in , the archaeologist Larsson still wouldn't be qualified to make the kind of conclusion she did. It looks like her specialization is related to the production methods of textiles, and not in anything related to being able to tell religious affiliation through symbols, or the history of the Islamic designs she thought she was looking at; that's why Mulder was criticizing her for getting so many things wrong.
As an archaeologist, I know how easy it is to fuck things up when you're looking at items you only have a passing familiarity with. I've seen tons of people make similar mistakes to Larsson.
Charles Ross
Yeah, I don't know much about medieval textiles but what Mulder said made a lot more sense while Larsson only has a hunch to go on.
Brody Hill
>Larsson only has a hunch to go on. That's what gets me about how this whole thing was handled. Larsson saw a design she vaguely thought resembled an Islamic art style, and instead of doing further research, or consulting someone with expertise, she just made an assumption and went with it. That's a pretty dumb move.
When doing research on grad schools, I briefly considered applying somewhere in Sweden, but everything that came up during my research (inclining talking to a professor who deliberately went to school outside of Sweden) warned against it. Swedish archaeology education has a reputation for being terrible, and this situation kind of confirms that for me.
Adam Edwards
Additional thing
Here is the "original" pattern found in the cloth, as seen in the OP picture the Swedish researchers assumed part of it was missing and the missing part makes it look like Kufic (which wasnt around yet at that time)
