Some things are really made easier and more accessible by modern technology. Case in point? 3D scans and then digital models of items that you can look at, from your own cosy home, without ever setting foot in Norway.

Or, to make it a little more straightforward: The Uni of Oslo's Kulturhistorisk Museum has made 3D-scans from some of their items and put them online. So now you can look at a medieval incense burner or at wooden items from the Oseberg ship. And yes, that includes the niddy-noddy found there, in great detail.

So you will probably want to head over to https://3d.unimus.no/ now and fall down the rabbit hole yourself... have fun! 

If you are into historical tablet weaving, you might know the tablet-woven band found in Hallstatt. Now a new find has been made and analysed, and it might be from the same workshop or even a part of the same band - at least the colour pattern and the thread number all match so that you can weave both motifs on the same warp.

Want to read more? The new piece has been published in an article in the newest Archaeological Textiles Review for 2024, and you can download the full issue (and all the others, too) on their website.

You all know the tangible heritage we have - old buildings, old cities, old items. And most probably, you have heard of intangible heritage, which is cultural practices and knowledge. Knowledge, for instance, on how to make the items that we have preserved as tangible heritage, made in times long past.

The Unesco is keeping, and extending, a list of this heritage, and you can find it here. Even better, each item on the list can be clicked to tell you more about it, usually with a short and well-made explanatory video. So if you want to see some beautiful Portuguese horseriding, or some amazing fibre arts - go there and enjoy!

One of the fruits of the EuroWeb Cost Action is the freshly-published thematic dossier in the open access journal Ophiussa. Some of the talks presented in May 2022 in the conference in Muro Leccese are collected and published here - and the texts are, at least partly, in English, so don't be scared off by the Portuguese titles in the website and dossier contents.

You can access the full journal including the dossier here.  

So - one thing that Tropy can do (according to the documentary) is using a controlled vocabulary. Which is nice - because one of the difficulties in having and managing a database is always consistency.

Now I only have to figure out how to a) get a controlled vocab that I want to use to link up with Tropy, and b) figure out what I want from it. One of them is the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, which might be interesting for me. Another is the ICONCLASS system, which I knew was used by the wonderful IMAREAL database. I've taken a look at it and found that it's too large and too complicated to use for my stuff (especially as it contains so many things that I don't have in any way that it would take too long to re-keyword everything) - but during this, I have discovered  that there's a bunch of online databases that use it.

So in case you like databases that use an elaborate and detailed system for their descriptions of art (and who doesn't?), here's the ICONCLASS list of databases. Enjoy!

On the journey back home from Uppsala, I stumbled across a nice and helpful website if you're planning to travel by train: zugfinder.net. It lets you search for a specific train (like, say, the EN 346) and shows how much and how often that train was delayed in the past 30 days. That could have been very helpful indeed for my plans!

You can also see what train is where just now, in case you are looking for a specific one. 

EuroWeb has something more coming up: A webinar on traditional wax batik printing! It will take place on September 6, 10 am CET start.  

I'm already looking forward to this - it's always interesting to see traditional textile techniques!