The Gunnister Man is the remains of a late 17th- or early 18th-century man found by two Shetlanders in a peat bog not far from the junction of the A970 road in Gunnister, Shetland, Scotland. [1] The bog body was found on 12 May 1951 as the men were digging peat for fuel. [2] A stone placed by the Northmavine History Group now marks the find location.
The body is believed to date from the late 17th or early 18th century. Three coins found in a knitted purse were a 6-Stuiver piece from Nijmegen (Netherlands) dated to 1690, a 2-Stuiver piece from Overijssel dated to 1681 and a 1⁄6 Öre from Sweden dating from 1683. The knitted purse found with the body is believed to be the earliest example of two-colour knitting in Shetland. The man was dressed in many woollen clothes, all of which survived burial in the peat in excellent condition. He wore a woollen shirt, a suit of long coat and short wide breeches, and an outer jacket. He had two caps, a pair of gloves and knitted stockings. His remains suggest he was walking during wintertime, and he may have died of illness or exposure. It is not possible to see any settlement from where he was buried and weather in late 17th- and early 18th-century northern Europe was extremely cold and stormy. His body was buried purposefully, with the objects he carried buried carefully with him. It is not known if he was a Shetlander or a visitor to the islands. The coins were common in Shetland at that time because of trade by north European merchants, so these do not give any indication of his origin.
Other items found included a leather belt, a silk ribbon, three woollen cords, a small knitted fragment, a birch stick, a wooden stave tub, a knife handle, a horn spoon, a quill, a horn container with a wooden stopper, and two flat pieces of wood. The only remains of the body were a piece of skull with dark hair, finger and toe nails, fragments of bone from the sleeves and in one stocking. [1]
All objects in the original find went to Edinburgh and are now in the National Museums of Scotland collections. Some objects are on permanent display in various parts of NMS galleries. Immediately after the burial was discovered, the finds were taken to a local house, where some people knitted replicas of the stockings and purse. These replicas are on display in Tangwick Haa Museum in Northmavine, Shetland. [3] In 2009, Shetland Museum and Archives made full replicas of all of the finds, which are together displayed in a permanent Gunnister Man display in Lerwick, Shetland. [4]
The purse was originally a natural mixed grey colour, with stripes of red and white pattern on it. It is difficult to know if the man's garments were knitted in Shetland or elsewhere, but even if they weren't, it proves that stranded knitting, now known as Fair Isle knitting, had been at least seen in Shetland by the beginning of the 18th century. [1] His gloves are well-knitted with decorative stitches on the upper palms and gauntlets. They are similar to other gloves of the period. The palm of the right glove is more worn and patched than the left glove, suggesting he was right-handed. [1]
A small piece of open-work knitting was found with the man's findings, with a pattern of three concentric diamonds, but no worked edge. Small pieces of knitting were also found sewn into the lining of the man's jacket, and this fragment may have been kept to use as a patch. [1]
Knitting is a method for production of textile fabrics by interlacing yarn loops with loops of the same or other yarns. It is used to create many types of garments. Knitting may be done by hand or by machine.
Lindow Man, also known as Lindow II and as Pete Marsh, is the preserved bog body of a man discovered in a peat bog at Lindow Moss near Wilmslow in Cheshire, North West England. The remains were found on 1 August 1984 by commercial peat cutters. Lindow Man is not the only bog body to have been found in the moss; Lindow Woman was discovered the year before, and other body parts have also been recovered. The find was described as "one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 1980s" and caused a media sensation. It helped invigorate the study of British bog bodies, which had previously been neglected.
The Tollund Man is a naturally mummified corpse of a man who lived during the 5th century BCE, during the period characterised in Scandinavia as the Pre-Roman Iron Age. He was found in 1950, preserved as a bog body near Silkeborg on the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. The man's physical features were so well preserved that he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. Twelve years before his discovery, another bog body, Elling Woman, was found in the same bog.
A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between 8000 BC and the Second World War. The unifying factor of the bog bodies is that they have been found in peat and are partially preserved; however, the actual levels of preservation vary widely from perfectly preserved to mere skeletons.
Knitting is the process of using two or more needles to pull and loop yarn into a series of interconnected loops in order to create a finished garment or some other type of fabric. The word is derived from knot, thought to originate from the Dutch verb knutten, which is similar to the Old English cnyttan, "to knot". Its origins lie in the basic human need for clothing for protection against the elements. More recently, hand knitting has become less a necessary skill and more of a hobby.
A stocking frame was a mechanical knitting machine used in the textiles industry. It was invented by William Lee of Calverton near Nottingham in 1589. Its use, known traditionally as framework knitting, was the first major stage in the mechanisation of the textile industry, and played an important part in the early history of the Industrial Revolution. It was adapted to knit cotton and to do ribbing, and by 1800 had been adapted as a lace making machine.
Yde Girl is a bog body found in the Stijfveen peat bog near the village of Yde, Netherlands. She was found on 12 May 1897 and was reputedly uncannily well-preserved when discovered, but by the time the body was turned over to the authorities two weeks later, it had been severely damaged and deteriorated. Most of her teeth and hair had been pulled from the skull. The peat-cutting tools had also been reported to have severely damaged the body.
The Bocksten Man is the remains of a medieval man's body found in a bog in Varberg Municipality, Sweden. It is one of the best-preserved finds in Europe from that era and is exhibited at the Halland Museum of Cultural History. The man had been killed and impaled to the bottom of a lake which later became a bog. The bog where the body was found lies in Rolfstorp in Halland County, about 24 kilometres (15 mi) east of Varberg on the west coast of Sweden, close to the most important medieval road in the area: the Via Regia. In 2006, he was reconstructed to show what he may have looked like when he was alive, and it was displayed in the museum alongside the original skeleton.
Knitted fabric is a textile that results from knitting, the process of inter-looping of yarns or inter-meshing of loops. Its properties are distinct from woven fabric in that it is more flexible and can be more readily constructed into smaller pieces, making it ideal for socks and hats.
Below are notable events in archaeology that occurred in 1951.
The Faddan More Psalter is an early medieval Christian psalter or text of the book of Psalms, discovered in a peat bog in July 2006, in the townland of Faddan More in north County Tipperary, Ireland. The manuscript was probably written in about 800 CE in one of a number of monasteries in the area. After several years of conservation work, the psalter went on display at the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology in Kildare Street, Dublin in June 2011.
The Haraldskær Woman is the name given to a bog body of a woman preserved in a bog in Jutland, Denmark, and dating from about 490 BC. Workers found the body in 1835 while excavating peat on the Haraldskær Estate. The anaerobic conditions and acids of the peat bog contributed to the body's excellent preservation. Not only was the intact skeleton found, but so were the skin and internal organs. Scientists settled disputes about the age and identity of this well-preserved body in 1977, when radiocarbon dating determined conclusively that the woman's death occurred around the 5th century BC.
Northmavine or Northmaven is a peninsula in northwest Mainland, Shetland in Scotland. The peninsula has historically formed the civil parish Northmavine. The modern Northmavine community council area has the same extent. The area of the parish is given as 204.1 km2.
The Borremose bodies are three bog bodies that were found in the Borremose peat bog in Himmerland, Denmark. Recovered between 1946 and 1948, the bodies of a man and two women have been dated to the Nordic Bronze Age. In 1891, the Gundestrup cauldron was found in a nearby bog.
Gunnister is a small 'abandoned' village at the North-West Mainland in Shetland, Scotland. It is most commonly known for the Gunnister Man - the remains of a man from the late 17th century which were found by peat cutters in a peat bog not far from the junction of A970 road.
Damendorf Man is a German bog body discovered in 1900 in the See Moor at the village of Damendorf in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Women's Home Industries was a company founded in 1947 in London to earn export revenue for the UK in the post-war period by harnessing women's craft skills, such as knitting and needlework.
Herbert Niebling was a master designer of the style of lace knitting called Kunststricken (art-knitting). Today, his designs remain popular with lace knitting enthusiasts.
John Williamson, more commonly known by the nickname Johnnie Notions was a self-taught physician from Shetland, Scotland, who independently developed and administered an inoculation for smallpox to thousands of patients in Shetland during the late 18th century. Despite having only an elementary education and no formal medical background, the treatment he devised had an extremely high success rate, resulting in the immunisation of approximately 3,000 people and the saving of many lives, which had a significant effect on the demographics of the Shetland population at the time. He is reputed not to have lost a single patient.
Twined knitting is a traditional Scandinavian knitting technique. It refers to knitting where two strands of yarn are knitted into the fabric alternatively and twisted once and always in the same direction before every stitch. The technique is called tvåändsstickning in Swedish, tvebandsstrikking in Norwegian, and tvebinding in Danish. Their literal meaning is "two-end knitting", referring to the traditional way of knitting with both yarn ends from one ball of yarn.
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