Fascinating Textile Discovery in Scotland

From BBC.com we have an article about a fascinating rare Iron Age textile find on display at the Scottish Crannog Centre in Kenmore, Perthshire. The article can be read here.

The wool textile, radiocarbon dated at the University of Glasgow to be between 480-390 BCE, was discovered in 1979 when an Iron Age dwelling, known as the Oakbank Crannog, was excavated on Loch Tay. (Sadly, that structure was destroyed by fire in 2021.) Previously believed to be too fragile for display, recent conservation work has made it possible to be on display at the Scottish Crannog Centre. The textile, woven of unusually fine yarn for the era, also bears remnants of what may be a hem, make it particularly interesting to historian of early costume. The BBC.com article includes a photograph of the find, which displays an interesting pinstripe textural effect.

If anyone who reads this post has a chance to visit the Crannog Centre and view the textile, please post and let me know!

New Book: Bog Fashion

I don't know how I missed the Kickstarter for this project, but I just learned over the weekend that there is a new book coming out: Nicole DeRushie. Bog Fashion--Recreating Bronze and Iron Age Clothes. (Chronocopia Publishing, 2025). The Kickstarter has ended, but Chronocopia Publishing will soon be selling the book on their website, and eventually other booksellers will have it available for sale as well. The book's page on the Chronocopia site can be viewed here, and a short bio of Ms. DeRushie can be read here.

The Chronocopia site does not indicate what the price of the book will be, but it's a hardcover book (probably in the same general format as An Early Meal, Daniel Serra's book about Viking age Scandinavian food). Still, I'm planning to buy Bog Fashion when I can, because the page about it on Chronocopia's site indicates that it will be well-illustrated as well as well-researched. Its scope is "Bronze and Iron Age fashion from Northern and Western Europe," and it includes detail from all phases of costume construction, from spinning and weaving the thread into cloth to the creation of accessories.

If, like me, you are fascinated by the clothing of Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe, you'll want this one for your collection.

Update (5/3/2025): I ordered the book from an independent seller in Missouri, USA this past week. The price I was quoted was $40 USD, plus $7 USD for shipping. Chronocopia has it for $39 USD, but shipping is likely to be more than $7 USD from Sweden. It will probably be about 2 weeks before I receive it.

How Much Fur Did the Vikings Wear?

To my readers: Happy New Year, and a wonderful 2025! Number 66 of the Archaeological Textiles Review is now available on the ATN Friends website. A table of contents for this issue, and a download link, can be found here.

I have just begun looking through that issue, and already have found an interesting article about a newly-commenced study seeking to establish a critical fact: was fur commonly used in Viking age clothing? It turns out that no comprehensive review of Viking age finds containing evidence of fur on clothing has been done to date. The few finds that document survival of fur on clothing are problematic as evidence, in part because it is very difficult to identify the species from which a fur specimen came using microscopy.

A project has recently been initiated to examine extant Viking age clothing finds in Denmark for fur and evidence about fur. The article in ATR No. 66 that discusses the project and the reasons such a study is important and necessary is: Luise Ørsted Scharff Brandt, Imported fur in Viking Age Denmark and its importance as a visual marker, Archaeological Textiles Review, No. 66, page 111.

Happy reading!

A Shallow Beret

I recently came across an article in Piecework magazine called "The History of the Beret."

The Piecework article may be read here.

The article, unsurprisingly, is short, which is fine. But the article is also shallow. The author claims that "The beret-style hat has its roots in the Basque region straddling the French-Spanish border." I have not yet explored the articles she cites in support of this statement (though that would be easy to do as all appear on the Internet and the URLs are given). But the Basque country is not the only place where beret-shaped hats have been worn, and may not be the place where they were worn first. Wikipedia has a short article about a cap called a kausia, which supposedly worn by the kings of Macedonia in antiquity "as part of the royal costume", and supposedly was worn by Alexander the Great and his Companions. I blogged about this hat, which may or may not date to antiquity, here.

Kudos to the author of the Piecework article for attempting to pin down some of the latter-day history of the beret, though! It's hard to document when a garment or other artifact originated or how long it's been around, as anyone aware of the "history" of a cord-making device called a lucet can tell you.

Margrethe Hald Archive

I have spent too much time being, alternately, busy, exhausted, and sick, to want to blog much. But the discovery I made on the Internet today is worth sharing. The Centre for Textile Research at the University of Copenhagen has made the Margrethe Hald Archive available on the Internet! The archive consists of PDF copies of papers that Professor Hald authored or co-authored during her lifetime, free to download. The page you need to access is here. Please note; most of these papers were written in Danish, not English; the PDFs are of pre-computer age originals. I first learned about Professor Hald with regard to her work on Danish textiles and shoes worn during the Iron Age, she also worked on other ancient textiles, notably in Peru. Enjoy exploring!

An Excellent Lucet Article

Common modern lucet.

"Lucet" (or "lucette") is the name given, at least in English-language sources, to a type of device used to turn yarn into cord.  The photograph to the right, from Wikipedia, shows a type of lucet that is common nowadays, but other forms have been proposed.

10th c. "lucet" find.

I became interested in lucets because it has been often proposed (though not proven) that the Viking cultures used them to make cord.  While fork-shaped finds of bone have been made in Viking contexts, none have been, to my knowledge, associated with cord production.  The only type of device arguably linked to cord-making is a small tube with posts or prongs at the top (such as the second image from Wikipedia, a 10th century find from northern France). 

Today, I found a long article about lucets that was written by an archaeologist. The article is called "Brief History of the Lucet Braiding Tool." It can be found on the "LRCrafts website and read here.  It systematically discusses the evidence for lucets, complete with numerous photographs, some I have not seen before (including some from Southern Europe).  It even includes an instructional video on how to use the fork-shaped lucet shown above!

 

I am looking forward to reading this article in full, and I suggest that readers interested in the lucet, as well as in Viking and medieval clothing history read it as well.

New Wonders

Now that our local election is over (don't ask) and I have less pressing law business, maybe I can resume at least posting about historical costume again.

Just today, I found a wonderful website; a collection of articles, in English and Czech, about various issues relating to Northern European culture and costume.  It's called Project Forlǫg and you can find it here.  It's aimed at reenactors, but is of interest to historical costumers and is useful to anyone interested in the early medieval period in northern Europe.  Further, it's possible to search for articles on particular topic.  Topics that I have looked at so far include life expectancy; women's ages for first and last childbirths; notes on early medieval women's dress; and articles on period armor and weaponry.  Some of the articles are bibliographies of articles about a particular issue.

Nor have the organizers limited their outreach to that website.  The following text appears on the website's Editorial Board subpage, describing the resources they are making available to reenactors and researchers.  I reproduce it here with its original links intact:

"Hello.

By this, we would like to thank you for visiting the project that tries to shed light on various topics connected with Early Medieval period and historical reenactment.

We are personally devoted to Viking Age studies for more than fifteen years. Our internet journal is registered under ISSN 2788-3000, DOI: https://doi.org/10.59500/forlog and is archived by the National Library of the Czech Republic as part of the Webarchiv.cz project.

Articles presented on the websites oscillate between scientific and educational or popular style. Our priorities are plainness, factuality and humility to sources. Our results are based on the combinations of different sources. The primary goal of the project is the popularization, myth-busting and constructive criticism. Secondly, we aim to create a compendium of information about the Early Middle Ages. We hold the opinion that the reenactment and science can cooperate and mutually enrich each other. You can read the code of this project by clicking on the link.

As we think it is important to discuss about the past and to find the consensus, we encourage you to write comments here or at Viking Age Facebook group. The list of articles can be seen in Sitemap. In case you would like to support the project, please continue to Sponsorship. We also offer those interested the opportunity to use our physical library, the catalog of which can be found here.

I plan to check their website for new material as often as I can, and urge those of my readers who are interested in the early medieval period to do likewise.  Thanks to Alfrun of A Wandering Elf for posting about this website; that is how I learned about it. 

Fashioning The Viking Age

Happy September!

During the summer I was too busy to think about historic costume, let alone blog about it.  

So it was a delightful experience to learn from the University of Copenhagen's website, that the ongoing Center for Textile Research project on Viking Age clothing (called "Fashioning the Viking Age") has led to the publication of two books so far:  "Fibres, Tools & Textiles," and "From Analysis to Reconstruction." Both are available for free download on this website.  Alternatively, one can order paper copies of the books (though not for free).  

I haven't had time to read either book yet, but they are wonderfully illustrated with full-color photographs of actual finds as well as reconstructions.  Enjoy!