Short post! I needed some sort of camp/court chair for SCA stuff, so I started looking around for viking-age chairs to reconstruct. The vast majority are three to four-legged stools, a few are box-style (and would end up being pretty heavy), and lastly I found a singular example of a find that was much more familiar to modern eyes. The original survives only as the chair-back, but seating and tables have changed very little over history, and it’s quite easy to imagine what the completed chair would look like. The original dates to 1000-1050 AD, was found in Lund, Sweden, stands at 75 cm high, and is made of maple and beech. According to a photocopy from an unknown book, the back was previously interpreted by one or both of the references below (wow citation needed much?) as a “bishops throne”, but given the “context [of the find] is essentially secular” this has been disregarded—a raid spoil maybe, or another case of viking absorptive cosmopolitanism?

My replica’s size is made for my width, but retains the general proportions of the original, is made of ash and oak, the and the seat from hemp twine. In a few years (or if the chair has issues before then) I’ll remake the dowels to pass through the wood entirely, like the original, and have supporting trenails passing through. I would also like to re-surface the seat; perhaps with birch bark?

The original chair has a broken section along the grain on the top, I thought it would aesthetically look best to bring that up to a slight point, and after camping a weekend with it, have realized that’s gotta go. The point hits the very center of the mid-back and really is miserable to sit in. But with that soon-to-be cut down, and the seat refinished, I think it’ll be an excellent court chair. For general camp use, though, I think I’m going to go with simple three-legged stools.