Among the wooden fragments from Haithabu, three pieces of musical instruments were found Lawson : β; Westphal : 83β These instruments, together with the bone flutes from Haithabu Brade , cast light on the music practiced in the town and in Scandinavia in general. In this article, we will describe one of the wooden instruments β a fragment, which is considered to be the oldest hard evidence of bowed string instruments of the European Middle Ages.
Three types of musical instruments found in Haithabu. Taken from Brade : 28 and Schietzel : The fragment, bearing the inventory number HbS. It consists of a one-piece body that is 43 cm long and made of alder wood Lawson : The preserved fragment represents the rounded bottom of the sound box, which is roughly shaped into a pear or bowl shape.
A flat neck is connected to that part. The roughened surface indicates that the product has not been finished, and it is even possible that it was subsequently used for a non-musical purpose, for example as a bowl. Fragment HbS. Taken from Westphal : Taf. Possible reconstruction of the fragment HbS. Taken from Schietzel : Although the object is only partial, it can be compared with other archaeological finds, pictorial and written material.
In the English and German literature, one may find that the Haithabu find is a fiddle Lawson ; Westphal , but the term is not very precise because it refers to a stringed instrument that is later and differently shaped. At the same time, it can be found that the instrument is associated with the Eastern European instrument called gusli Lawson , but again, gusli is more similar to lyres or psalteries Povetkin : β The association with the Eastern European instrument called gudok , proposed by Kurt Schietzel : , is closer because it refers to similar instruments made in the same period Povetkin : β The oldest specimen, or a fragment thereof, is dated to the middle of the 11th century Povetkin : β, Tabl.
However, the inclusion of Haithabu find in the corpus of Eastern instruments would ignore the relatively extensive number of pictorial and linguistic material that we have available for northwestern Europe.
