Portegies snorrebot

snorrebot

Source term: snorrebot (type I)

snorrebot: Dutch for a 'whirring bone'; here, an end-holed blade swung freely on a cord.

A child in seventeenth-century Beverwijk sent this ivory blade circling overhead on a cord until it spun on its own axis and hummed, faster swings raising the pitch. Dutch speakers call the type a snorrebot. It probably began as something more solemn, a ritual voice, before it sank to the nursery; by the time this blade was carved and pierced, Beverwijk knew it only as a plaything. Not everyone agrees: a 2024 survey of Dutch bone objects takes strips like this for bone folders, used to crease paper and cloth.

Waarschijnlijk ontstaan als rituele objecten, maar bij ons verworden tot kinderspeelgoed zijn de snorrebotten.

Probably originating as ritual objects, but among us degenerated into children's toys, are the snorrebotten.

Van Vilsteren, Het Benen Tijdperk (1987), p. 52

Particulars

Object

A 17.6 cm blade of probable walrus ivory, rounded at one end and pierced near the other by a single large cord hole, found at Portegies in Beverwijk.

Function

A children's humming toy: swung overhead on a cord, spinning on its long axis and changing pitch with the speed of the swing.