The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by LS. The card was printed by Laffineur, Imprimeur of Amiens.
The card was posted via the British Army postal service during the Great War. A soldier has used a pencil to write on the divided back:
"11.2.18.
Another for the
collection Darling.
All my love,
Yours Bert".
Bert has ineffectually tried to censor the name of the cathedral, although the building is instantly recognisable.
The British Army Postal Service
During the Great War, the British Army Postal Service despatched over two billion letters and cards. Assuming an average length of 6 inches, if they were laid end to end they would stretch for 189,394 miles (304,800km) - that's over seven and a half times round the Earth's equator.
The Great War lasted for 1,567 days, therefore the Postal Service were kept busy handling an average of over 1¼ million pieces of mail every day of the war's duration.
Amiens
Amiens is the chief city of Picardy, in the valley of the River Somme, and is just over 100 km north of Paris.
The Cathedral
The Gothic Cathedral of our Lady of Amiens is the tallest complete cathedral in France, with the greatest interior volume (estimated at 200,000 cubic metres).
According to this estimate, the cathedral could comfortably accommodate well over sixty billion marbles. (Yes, billion, not million!) This number of marbles, laid end to end, would produce a line 900,000 km long - it would encircle the earth 22 times, or stretch to the moon and back nearly two and a half times. It's a big building!
The vaults of the nave are 42.3 metres high. The size of the people in the photograph at the base of the entrance steps give an idea of the sheer scale of the building.
Work on the cathedral started in 1220 and was mostly finished by 1266. The floors include a number of designs, including a swastika. The labyrinth was installed in 1288.
John The Baptist
The cathedral contains what is alleged to be the head of St. John the Baptist, a relic brought back from Constantinople. You can find out what happened to one of his fingers by searching for the tag 65SJD88. There are bits of him all over the place! In fact the Great Mosque in Damascus also claims to hold the head of John the Baptist.
The West Front
The west front of the cathedral, which is shown in the photograph, was built between 1220 and 1236. It shows an unusual degree of artistic unity. Its lower tier with 3 vast deep porches is capped with a gallery of larger than lifesize kings which stretches across the entire façade beneath the rose window.
The Rose Window
The immense rose window has a diameter of 43 feet (13 m).
Above the rose window is an open arcade - the Galerie des Sonneurs. A sonneur is a player of traditional music, primarily in Brittany, typically playing a clarinet or the Breton bagpipe.
John Buchan
In the 1919 book Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (1875-1940), the character Richard Hannay describes the cathedral as being:
"The noblest church that the
hand of man ever built for God".
Anne Ingstad
So what else happened on the day that Bert wrote the card?
Well, the 11th. February 1918 marked the birth of Anne Stine Ingstad. Anne was a Norwegian archaeologist who, along with explorer Helge Ingstad (her husband), discovered the remains of a Viking (Norse) settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1960.
Anne Ingstad - The Early Years
Anne Stine Moe was born and raised in Lillehammer, Norway. Her parents were attorney Eilif Moe (1889–1954) and Louise Augusta Bauck Lindeman (1886–1966). She married Helge Ingstad in 1941, after which she became his scientific collaborator.
The Excavation of an Early Norse Settlement
Anne studied archaeology at the University of Oslo in the 1950's. In 1960, her husband discovered settlement traces at L'Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland.
Between 1961 and 1968, Anne Stine Ingstad led an excavation of the settlement with an international team of archaeologists from Sweden, Iceland, Canada, U.S. and Norway.
The excavation revealed the remains of an early 11th century Norse settlement. These remains included sod houses, a forge, cooking pits and boathouses. The settlement is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Site of Canada.
Anne Ingstad - The Later Years
In the 1970's, Anne worked on the textiles from the Kaupang and Oseberg excavation sites.
Honours
In 1969, Anne Stine Ingstad was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 1992, she was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Bergen.
She was a Commander of the Order of St. Olav, and was made a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science. She appeared with her husband in the 1984 National Film Board of Canada documentary The Vinland Mystery.
Death of Anne Ingstad
Anne Stine Ingstad died on the 6th. November 1997 at the age of 79, leaving behind her 98-year-old husband Helge and their daughter Benedicte Ingstad, a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Oslo.
Bibliography
Ingstad, Anne Stine (2001): 'The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland'.
