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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Finding stuff in the "missing" book

Last weekend I purchased my second copy of "Women's Garb in Northern Europe, 450-1000 C.E.: Frisians, Angles, Franks, Balts, Vikings, and Finns" by Christina Krupp and Carolyn A. Priest-Dorman. It is #59 in the Compleat Anachronist publication series of the SCA. (To buy back issues of this fine quarterly publication yourself, go here.) I had bought my first copy of CA #15 from Poison Pen Press a few years back, but it's gotten lost somewhere, and I didn't have it in front of me when I taught my Pennsic course last summer.

I vaguely recalled that I'd noticed something wrong with the booklet the first time I read it, but I couldn't remember what it was until I read the section on Baltic garb again. It turns out that not all the sources mentioned in the Baltic garb section are actually listed in the bibliography in the back of the booklet. One of them was "Moora, 1932" and the other was "Kulikauskiene & Rimaniene, 1958, Abb. 567, reproduced in Ginteus."

Thanks to Worldcat.org, I think I've tracked down the former. It's a book called Die Vorzeit Estlands ("The Prehistory of Estonia") by H. Moora, published in Tartu, Estonia, by Akadeemiline Kooperatiiv. Fortunately for me, the Library of Congress has a copy, so I might actually get to see it someday.

I'm having more trouble with the second search. "Ginteus" doesn't even exist in Google. Through BookFinder.com I noticed a volume called Senoves Lietuviu Drabuziai Ir Ju Papuosalai: (I-XVI A.) ["Ancient Lithuanian Clothing and Ornaments: (I-XVI century)"] by R. Volkaite-Kulikauskiene, published by the Lietuvos Istorijos Institutas (Lithuanian Historical Institute) in 1997. Again, the Library of Congress has this and other works by this author. (If she's the same person as in the 1958 reference, then she's had quite a long career!)

I wonder if "Ginteus" is a typo for "Ginters," as in the bibliographical listing for Tracht und Schmuck in Birka und im Ostbaltischen Raum ("Costume and Jewelry in Birka and the East Baltic Area") by Valdemars Ginters (also at the Library of Congress).

I suppose I could e-mail the co-author of CA #59 for the identity of "Ginteus," although since it's been 17 years since the booklet was published, she probably doesn't have the answer at her fingertips.

To summarize, I'm really glad I got myself another copy of this CA issue, because it's very handy for getting some plausible female garb together. However, I have to remind myself that this booklet was published in 1992, just months after the Soviet Union fell apart and the Baltic republics got their full identity back. I'm sure that much new research has been done in the last 17 years, and it would be great to pull it together so that it could be of use in the SCA.

4 comments:

  1. Ginteus doesn't seem to be a typo in my copy of CA, but it IS V. Ginters' book that's the one you want.
    It is a really, really small booklet that just summarises a bunch of other sources.

    As for Volkaite-Kulikauskiene, and her various books, in the 1997 book, the pictures from the 1958 book were reused. To give you an idea of how vague that line drawing in CA is, the closest picture that appears in Ginters, is this one in Volkaite-Kulikauskiene.

    I e-mailed Christina Krupp (one of the CA authors) once, and she agreed that the Baltic stuff needs a re-write, and was happy to answer all of my questions, but I've never written to Thora Sharptooth.

    (The biggest problem I have with the CA, is that most of the examples of dress mentioned are really place-specific, except for a bit of generalised Viking, and then the entire eastern coast of the Baltic sea gets labelled 'Baltic'!

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  2. I don't remember seeing the name "Ginteus" in CA 59, but Valdemar Ginters is, so I'm betting that pearl is right and it's a typo.

    I've had e-mail discussions with Christina myself, and she has said that CA 59 is dated in some respects and needs a re-write/revision. Thora Sharptooth is on the Norsefolk2 list, and there's nothing stopping any of us from trying to contact her that way.

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  3. "Ginteus" is halfway down the page on page 37: "This is, in fact, the position suggested by Kulikauskiene & Rimaniene, 1958, Abb. 567 reproduced in Ginteus, p. 52 (see Fig. 7.3)." Whatever that is, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe I should try to look it up in JSTOR or some other academic database.

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  4. There is a review of Ginters' book on JSTOR, but if you message me on livejournal with your address, I can go photocopy book-things for you. (It may have to wait a week though...)

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