Home, Crafts and Hobbies Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the shape of the gap rather than its subject: what sort of thing is unresolved.
Showing 21 to 23 of 23 open questions, page 2 of 2.
dating 21
When something happened, where the sources disagree or are silent.
Sledgehammer
When was the sledgehammer introduced as a tool?
Open Sledgehammer
Why It Is Open The standard reference consulted for this entity gives the Old English etymology of the word sledgehammer but names no date or era for when the tool itself came into use.
What Would Settle It A history-of-technology or archaeology source naming when heavy long-handled two-handed hammers first appear in the record, or their approximate era of origin.
Expertise Needed History of technology
Question posed in
Sledgehammer (Wikipedia).
etymology 1
What a word carried in its own language, before it was rendered into another.
Hygge
Does hygge derive from the Old Norse hyggja, meaning to think, or from a sixteenth-century word for embrace?
Open Hygge
Why It Is Open The Wikipedia account of hygge's etymology states the word derives from the Old Norse hyggja, to think, and hugr, soul or mind, but in the same breath notes that some speculate it may instead derive from a 1560s word, hugge, meaning to embrace. The two derivations are not reconciled, and no source is given for the rival hugge theory.
What Would Settle It A philological study tracing hygge's documented use through the earliest surviving Danish and Norwegian texts, rather than working backward from later dictionary etymologies.
Question posed in
Hygge (Wikipedia), Etymology and Origin section.
mechanism 1
Recorded as unresolved.
Embroidery
Is the Migration-period Swedish textile's reinforced trim genuine embroidery or plain repair stitching?
Open Embroidery
Why It Is Open The surviving Migration-period Swedish garment's reinforced edges could be read either as functional seam repair or as deliberate decorative embroidery, and no scholarly consensus resolves which.
What Would Settle It A technical textile-conservation study of the stitching pattern, compared against known repair-stitch versus decorative-stitch conventions from the period.
Expertise Needed textile conservation
Question posed in
Embroidery (Wikipedia), en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embroidery, Origins section, Migration-period Sweden passage.