by A life-size 3D model of a grinning old woman holding a walking stick looks like a contemporary elder strolling through her neighborhood. In reality, this woman lived in Norway almost 800 years ago and the model is a sculpted life-size reconstruction based on her skeleton.
On October 7th Ellen Grav (opens in new tab)an archaeologist at the University Museum of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), introduced the world to the lifelike model, dubbed “Torah”. Facebook (opens in new tab). Tora’s likeness can now be seen as part of an exhibition exhibition (opens in new tab) in the museum of the NTNU. (Tora’s name was chosen in a public survey (opens in new tab) performed by NRK, a Norwegian broadcasting company.)
Tora was born towards the end of the 12th century and lived in Trondheim, a city in central Norway. During this time, the medieval metropolis grew rapidly and, according to the museum, was inhabited by craftsmen and traders.
While there are no written records of Torah, archaeologists a story of this medieval woman’s life together, based on clues from her skeletal remains and the location where her body was exhumed.
“We know she was buried in the churchyard near the street where the merchants lived,” Grav told Live Science in an email. “This suggests that she may have lived in a merchant family.”
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Archaeologists suspect that the people buried in this churchyard were quite wealthy.
“Since Tora lived to be around 65, which is considered quite old for that time,” Grav said, “we think she must have had a reasonably good life for her time.”
A spinal deformity in Tora’s skeleton led Grav and her team to conclude that Tora likely walked hunched over. She also had no lower teeth and lived without them for a long time before her death. To the archaeologists, the curve in Tova’s back and her missing teeth indicate “signs of hard work and lifetime wear and tear on the skeleton,” Grav said.
Grav collaborated Thomas Faltberg (opens in new tab), a Denmark-based film industry makeup artist to make Tora as lifelike as possible. Unlike many facial reconstructions that use both X-rays or CT scans, Foldberg focused on Tora’s skeleton to create a 3D model of what this medieval woman might have looked like. For Torah skinFoldberg used silicone and even “hand-painted moles and other marks” on her body, Grav said.
“Each strand of hair in the eyebrows, eyelashes and facial hair is individually pinned,” Grav said. “It’s really amazing artwork.”
For Tora’s costume, Marianne Vedeler (opens in new tab), a textiles professor at the Department of Archeology at the University of Oslo in Norway, was studying archaeological finds from the area that date back to when Tora lived. Vedeler then approached local seamstresses to design an outfit for the model.
“Nile Glaeselan experienced seamstress of Viking and medieval clothing [based in Norway]made Tora’s dress for us using medieval techniques,” Grav said. “She spun the yarn, wove the fabric, and dyed it Rubia tinctorum [also known as rose madder]. Then she sewed the dress by hand [Vedeler’s] Reconstruction. She also made the shoes. We have a lot of found shoes from Trondheim, so it was pretty easy to know what the shoes should look like.”
As for Tora’s friendly facial expression, “It was very important to us to give the audience a sense of a warm meeting to create a better connection [them] with medieval man,” Grav said. “People always tend to think that the Middle Ages were dark and hard, but there was also joy and happiness, people loved each other, and some even lived long lives. Tora’s life has been tough, but she must have had good days, too. I hope people learn that they looked like us, felt like us, and were people like us.”
