I saw the Viking exhibit which just opened in Los Angeles last week, and I wasnt to make sure everyone knows about this. Before you say Viking material is too early for this forum, you should know that several garments from 15th century Greenland (Herjolfsnes), and other related items, are in this show. This is a very rare opportunity on this side of the atlantic.

The exhibit, Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, was organised by the Smithsonian and had a long showing in Washington early last year. Now the west coast gets its chance, and it is worth the trip to L.A.! The exhibit is at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, and ends March 17, 2002 (see their website a www.nhm.org). There is also an excellent catalogue which illustrates most, but not all of the items on display.

The show includes all manner of items from Russia to Nova Scotia, the entire range of Norse influence. There are some very rare items, although a number of particularly fragile objects are represented by good copies (even ship rivets from l'Anse aux Meadows were considered too precious to travel). There are magnificent swords, shield bosses, and some horse equipment; extensive cookware, combs and toiletries, textile fragments, shoes and bone skates from York, woodworking and blacksmithing tools, a selection of the Lewis chessmen, and much jewelry, some of it very fine indeed. The displays are not crowded, but the presentation is clearly more "Natural History Museum" than "Art Museum" in character, which means large assemblages of objects with extensive, illustrated didactic displays, so some items are hard to get as close to as you might like. One of the most achingly refined knotwork objects in existence, an Urnes-style brooch from Iceland, is easy to miss in a large case of mixed objects. Fortunately the lighting is good, and I found that for the most part I was able to see all that I needed to of the objects.

From Greenland, three garments probably from the 15th century are included: a chaperon with liripip and vestigial cape, a small child's dress, and a pillbox cap. These are not in the catalogue (another hood is), But I believe these are Norlund's hood 78, dress 62, and cap 85. Also among the Greenland finds are a shoe last, bits of wood carving, and the only probably 13th century, woodworking plane I've ever seen. There is also a lot of material concerning the appropriation of Viking imagery in modern culture, which might leave some reenactors cold, but "relevancy" is an unavoidable part of any big exhibit these days. I could go on listing objects, but there wouldn't be much point. Suffice it to say that this show has more middle age acheological material, particularly daily-life material, than you are ever likely to see again on this side of the atlantic, much less the west coast.