Showing posts with label Stavanger Archeology Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stavanger Archeology Museum. Show all posts

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Lurs

Lurs

Description from National Museum in Denmark:
The sonorous mystical tone of the bronze lur would ring out at religious ceremonies where the instruments were played in pairs as the priests and priestesses led ritual processions, some of the priests wearing horned helmets.
Depictions of such ceremonies can be found on rock carvings.

Lurs were cast in separate plates, and some have 'jingling plates' to create a magical sound. Thirty five lurs have survived in Denmark as have a further 24 in Sweden, Norway, North Germany and Estonia.

(Note - on other webpages these numbers differ)

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Description from Wikipedia:




Bronze lurs

The bronze instrument now known as the lur is most probably unrelated to the wooden lur, and has been named by 19th century archaeologists, after the 13th century wooden lurs mentioned by Saxo Grammaticus.
Bronze lurs date back to the Nordic Bronze Age, probably to the first half of the 1st millennium BC.
They are roughly S-shaped conical tubes, without finger holes.
They are end blown, like brass instruments, and they sound rather like a trombone.
The opposite end to the blown one is slightly flared, like the bell on a modern brass instrument but not to the same degree.
A typical bronze lur is around two metres long.


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To listen to a sound bite of actual playing of the Lurs, in pairs, go to this link:

These 2 selections are the best, they are what the recording at the Stavanger Archeology Museum sounded like to me...haunting, ethereal, as said above--mystical (and I wonder further would the ancient Sirens songs have sounded like them? to lur-e the sailors...)
aa
"Forntida klanger"
Intrada
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Lat & Lur
Musikproduktion
Anne-Marie Sundburg
(Note: I think she's from Sweden)
Her Link: www.lurspel.nu/
Note: once again, many of these webpages are in Norwegian -but you can translate them with Google

Borre style


A Borre style example
Description from The Vikings in the Museum of Archeology Stavanger brochure:
"...a gold clasp from Nedrebo on Bokn (island)...originates from the 900's, round gold plate wtih decor in the style of the Nordic animal ornamentation, the so-called Borre style...4 sections, main one cross motif...riveted to a round silver sheet plate, 2 thin, entwined gold threads are laid around this...thought cut from an Irish hanging bowl, a holy water vessel which was used in the Roman Catholic church service..."
Note: No photo of it is on their webpage - but I saw the particular clasp it describes to find it was very well preserved, surprisenly mixed among other Bronze Age items on display on a shelf in a large case - I would of had it stand alone I think & you could not view the bottom side of it either, but then I am not an archeologist nor part of the museum to have a say - the detail was intricate & curious, I stood a long while to try to figure out the faces of either people or animals in it's design...so I returned home to read more about this style of jewelry making from the Bronze Age & found a lot of photos/links...see below...
Stavanger Archeology Museum

Description from Wikipedia:
The Borre style is a Scandinavian animal style which is named after a boat grave in Borre, Norway.
The Borre style succeeded the Oseberg style and was partly contemporaneous with the Jelling style.
The Borre style evolved at the latest c. 850 and was still used in the late 10th century.
Its most characteristic motif is the so-called "ring braid" which consists of a symmetrical braiding with two bands, held together by rings that are surrounded by square figures.
The animal ornamentation of the Viking Age is usually categorized into Oseberg style, Borre style, Jelling style, Mammen style, Ringerike style and Urnes style.
Other Links to View photos/read more...

Silver jewelry replicas of Borre style:
www.urweg.com/list/broaches.html




More descriptions, photos of samples:
Preview from book:
Metalworkers of the Borre Style, pg 140-141 - preview from book
The Viking World by James Graham-Campbell, David M. Wilson

Here Comes the Sun

Current Exhibition:



Andeformete bronsekar fra Slovakia og Ungarn. Andeformete bronsekar from Slovakia and Hungary. Foto: The Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, Ungarn. Photo: The Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, Hungary. Copyright. Copyright. Duck shaped bronze vessels from Slovakia and Hungary. Duck shaped bronze vessels from Slovakia and Hungary.




Bronselurene from Revheim, Sola. Foto: Terje Tveit, AmS. Photo: Terje Tveit, AMS. Copyright. Copyright. The bronze lurs from Revheim, Sola. The bronze lurs from Revheim, Sola.


The Sun Chariot - photo from the Danish Pre-history Museum
Link to see & read about the original: www.nationalmuseet.dk/sw59869.asp
(Note: a copy in the Stavanger Arkeologisk Museum...from catalog, it's an unnumbered copy)
The sun's journey


Rogaland in the European Bronze Age

The 25 September 2008 open the museum in Stavanger doors for a unique Bronze Age exhibition.

The exhibition theme is the contexts of Europe at that time, both in idéverden and in the form-related expression.
This period is a period where the archaeological material has a very expressive common over much of Europe - from Maharashtra to Crete, and from Ireland to the Caspian Sea.

We will collect the Bronze Age material from their own collections, and objects from Maharashtra found in other museums in Norway.

These objects, we view the relationship they once were part of, through innlån from various European museums.

Including to the European community, and diversity be expressed in the Bronze Age material form and decoration.

This will thus be the core of the exhibition, richly supplemented with gold.
(Note: the intro translation above is from this link, the webpage is in Norwegian, you can then copy&paste the address into Google Search, hit Search, find it on the list - or it might just be on it's own - & click on "Translate This," which it will go to in English, or mostly English...)