Steatite vessel/weight, Loch Harray, Orkney

3D Model

Steatite vessel fragment reused as a net/line weight, Harray Loch shore, Orkney, OM.2018.50

This fragment from the collections at The Orkney Museum, see http://bit.ly/2HrKfjp was once part of a steatite vessel. Steatite, or soapstone doesn’t occur naturally in Orkney, but it does in Shetland. The vessel that this fishing line or net weight was made from was made in the Norse period and points to links between Orkney and Shetland and the wider Norse kingdom, which both continued to be part of until 1469. Find out more about steatite and its use in the Northern Isles at http://bit.ly/2CoA637 We don’t know when this Norse vessel was recycled but we can see that it was drilled with a hole for suspension. The hole is drilled from both sides creating an hour-glass profile. The weight is 120mm long and its depth is 24mm. This is part of the “New Connections” Virtual Museum, funded by Museums Galleries Scotland and the Hugh Fraser Foundation, see irc.hw.ac.uk/new-connections.html