Viking Age Spindle Whorls part 2

Stone spindle whorls from Jorvik, care of the York Archaeological Trust

With the bone spindle whorl out of the way, I turned my attention to the stone spindle whorl (pdf of documentation found on research page).

Problem #1 was acquiring materials. The stone whorls were made from materials that are found in the area surrounding Jorvik, which makes sense. For such a small, everyday item, local materials are an obvious choice. Unfortunately, those materials are not local to northeastern Pennsylvania. Limestone could be acquired in either tiny chips or pieces big enough to build a retaining wall. Chalk and siltstone were only available in small sample sizes for classrooms. I was able to get sandstone pavers from our local home improvement store. I also made the choice to add soapstone, which has been found in the form of bowls in Jorvik and were likely imported from the Shetland Islands or Norway. Soapstone was easy to find in carveable sizes, giving me an opportunity to try out some of the known shapes.

The soapstone pieces were the easiest to start with. They were cut down in manageable squares to remove excess material and the center holes were drilled. I then used a belt sander to rough shape the whorls. Sandpaper finished the shape. I'm sure that this could be done with rasps, chisels and knives if one wanted to truly delve into authenticity- I already have arthritis at 41 and, as a wheelchair user, rely on my hands more than an ordinary person. I make choices about what craft I'm willing to suffer for and opted for comfort over historical accuracy for this one.

The soapstone was smoothed and polished with sandpaper to differing levels and then coated with a wax and oil finish. I really smoothed down the cylinder but left some of the working marks on the dome for a bit of difference. The dome got some simple lines around it with a dremel and the disk whorl had a circle design filed in.

The chalk one was a little harder to shape, not because of material difficulty but because I could only get a very small piece of chalk into a roughly usable shape. I didn't fully smooth the edges because I was afraid of losing more material. This one was easy to shape with a knife, rasps and sandpaper.

The sandstone whorl was a competely different experience. And this is where Problem #2 cropped up. I apparently did not pay as much attention in middle school geology because I was moving merrily along, believing that all stones are the same.

Cue the record skipping.

On the Mohs hardness scale, soapstone and chalk have a hardness of 1 (diamond is at 10). By contrast, sandstone has a hardness of 6-7. It was breaking saw blades. It was eating through sandpaper. I was losing my mind. I deeply wanted to get another example of an appropriate stone but this thing was defying all attempts.

And yet the Vikings, with simpler versions of the same tools, managed to accomplish this.

It wasn't until I handed my husband a metal chisel and a hammer and sent him out to the driveway that we were able to achieve a roughly circular shape. From there, we were able to sand it down into something that passably resembled a spindle. However, my husband did point out that if the construction of a damn sandstone spindle was so frustrating as to make a modern Viking want to get into a boat and row to Birka and buy a spindle instead, how useful could they be, really. And considering that there are loads of limestone and chalk spindles to only a few sandstone ones, I have a feeling 10th century Norse husbands likely came to the same conclusion.