Abstract
In a medieval tower in the Tallinn Old Town wall there is a wooden internal door that was suspected of being rather old. The age of the door was determined using dendrochronology. It was possible to measure tree rings from the lower ends of the oak planks of the door. Matching the ring-width series with oak references from northern Europe revealed that the door was over 600 years old, and still in place in medieval Bremen Tower in Tallinn, Estonia. The ring-width series of the door was most similar to oak chronology from the Daugava River. However, this does not mean that the door timbers originate from that region. At present, we do not possess Estonian oak chronologies extending back to that time. Thus, the provenance of the oak for this door remains undecided. The dendrochronological date of the door, AD 1394–1411, can be confirmed and can be narrowed by documentary evidence to AD 1400–1410
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Baltic Journal of Art History |
| Volume | 21 |
| Pages (from-to) | 79-92 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| ISSN | 1736-8812 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Aoife Daly and Alar Läänelaid are indebted to European Research Council project TIMBER: Northern Europe’s Timber Resource – Chronology, Origin and Exploitation, grant agreement No. 677152. Kristina Sohar was supported by Mobilitas Pluss returning researcher’s project MOBTP35 financed from the European Regional Development Fund
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021. Baltic Journal of Art History.All Rights Reserved.
Keywords
- Bremen tower
- Dendrochronology
- Door
- Oak
- Tree rings