The Fitted Wrapped Apron Dress--Conclusions

With a belt.

Without a belt

As promised, here are the pictures of my fitted wrapped apron dress. Each photograph should be clickable for a larger version. I have my husband, Eric, to thank for taking these.

Despite the evidence (e.g. from Birka and Pskov) that any dresses that might have been wrapped designs were probably trimmed across the entire top of the dress, I chose to trim this dress only along the area between the brooches. I did that primarily to speed up completion of this project, not because of any theories about how apron dresses were trimmed.

Having gone through the exercise of making this type of dress, I now believe that it is very unlikely that any Viking woman ever made, or wore, such a garment. Why? Because this approach is based less on the existing (and limited) design evidence and more upon certain assumptions about how apron dresses may have been made.

Rear view, unbelted

Rear view, belted

Consider this. There is certainly evidence that can reasonably be interpreted as indicating that some apron dresses consisted of flat pieces of cloth that were wrapped around the body. Some of the Birka finds--particularly the finds from Grave No. 597 that extend in a straight line from brooch to brooch--tend to support this theory, as does the Pskov find. There are other finds, such as the Hedeby fragment, that suggest that some apron dresses were made from specifically shaped pieces of fabric and sewn together to fit the contours of the body.

The concept behind the type of wrapped dress I made, however, is that someone wanted a wrapped garment that would fit the body relatively closely. Why would a Viking care about that? I care about it, because I'm exploring different theories of apron dress design. But a Viking woman would know how apron dresses were usually made--or at least how they were made in the area where she lived. If she decided to explore different designs, it would more likely be for practical reasons. Perhaps she had only a limited amount of the fabric that she wanted to use, or wanted to achieve a tighter or looser fit.

Best view, belted

In other words, if a Viking age woman wanted an apron dress that fitted closely to the body (and it is far from clear that any woman of the period would have wanted such a garment), it's unlikely that she would have tried to fit triangular gores into a sheet of fabric, as I did. Instead, she likely would have abandoned the idea of working with a flat sheet at all, and would have attempted to make a pieced garment rather than seeking to force a wrapped peplos to do a job for which it is not naturally suited. Certainly Viking seamstresses were not deterred by the prospect of piecing together fabric to make a garment.  The Viborg shirt demonstrates Viking ingenuity and willingness to experiment with pieced construction techniques, and the Hedeby fragment does also (though it is unclear whether the garment that fragment came from was made or worn by a local "Viking" or a foreigner).

There are other facts that militate against the use of this apron dress design by the Vikings. One is that it is difficult to make the hemline of the dress come out even. I certainly did not succeed in doing so. My dress is enough longer and fuller on the left side that it looks a bit odd (see photographs). It's also difficult to belt the dress attractively without a full-length mirror--something the Vikings did not have (though I suppose a keen-eyed relative or friend might have been an adequate substitute).

Finally, I note that, to complete this dress, I had to lengthen the back set of loops by at least an inch (2.5 cm). The back loops measure 7 5/8th inches long (about 19.3 cm) from the place where the loop folds at the top to the edge of the apron dress (and they are sewn onto the edge without more than a millimeter's overlap). When I had the loops shorter, the dress tended to cut into my body at the armpits. This may be, as Hilde Thunem has suggested, because this dress is fitted rather than loose (and the very top of the dress is the most tightly fitted part of the garment). The pleated tube-style found at Køstrup and some of the Norwegian graves, which Shelagh Lewins recreated, would be looser and may well require much shorter loops to avoid having the dress shift during wearing. So it's possible, maybe even likely, that the rear loops of apron dresses were of different lengths, based both upon the measurements of the wearer and the style of the particular dress.

Unfortunately, existing grave finds do not preserve the full length of apron dress loops, so this hypothesis cannot be directly tested. It may be useful for me to look at the length of the rear straps on the variety of dresses I have made, to see whether my limited experimentation with different designs supports that idea.

EDIT:  (5/11/2013) To correct the last paragraph.  It originally said that grave finds "do not preserve" apron dress loops which is wrong.  What I had meant is that only a small portion of each loop is preserved, so it's impossible to tell what the full length of the loop was while the dress was being worn.

A Little Detour Into Glove History

Recently, someone inquired on Yahoo's Norsefolk_2 list whether the Vikings were known to have worn gloves.

Someone on the Yahoo nalbinding list attempted to answer the question by  reporting that Thor Ewing, in his book Viking Clothing, that "the usual gloves found in Viking contexts had two 'fingers'"....

Although at least one saga refers to "catskin" gloves, I know of no Viking age finds of gloves or glove parts, so I eagerly went to my bookshelf to discover what Ewing's sources for such a statement might be. It turns out that the index of Viking Clothing contains only two references to "gloves." One merely mentions the "catskin glove" saga reference (from Eiríks saga Rauđa). The other passage is short, and it is my belief from its contents that the poster on the nalbinding list was simply paraphrasing it. Ewing's statement, which begins with useful references to gloves in the sagas, reads:

The term glófi is probably a late borrowing from Old English, and is used for a new style of costly decorated glove, similar to a medieval bishop's glove.  In Gull-Þhóris saga ch. 3, glófar enhance the description of a richly dressed man, while gold-adorned glófar occur in Njáls saga ch. 31, as well as in the saga romances Bósa saga ok Herrauđs (ch. 12) and Ӧrvar-Odds saga (ch. 19).  Archaeological evidence suggests that most ordinary gloves will have had just two finger compartments, each for two fingers, but the glófi clearly had four separate fingers, and in Bósa saga ok Herrauđs, Bósi even plays harp wearing glófar. (Viking Clothing, p. 122) (boldface emphasis mine).

This paragraph ends Ewing's two-paragraph section on Viking gloves (and the first paragraph consists primarily of additional saga references and discussion of words used in the sagas that may or may not refer to gloves). Conspicuous by its absence is any discussion of archaeological finds, or even "archaeological evidence" for Viking gloves, let alone of evidence that such gloves likely had only two finger compartments.

Inspired by frustration, I did a little digging for Viking glove finds on the Internet. I didn't find any. But I have found a very interesting website that has collected links to surviving medieval European gloves as well as medieval art depicting gloves. The page, which mostly shows the four-fingered type of glove, may be found here. One of the more interesting links is to this blog, which displays a photograph of the blogger's own reproduction of a medieval work glove with only two finger compartments and references the relevant miniature in the Luttrell Psalter. The blogger has her own collection of links to images of gloves and pictures of surviving gloves, which may be found here, but none of those gloves are Scandinavian, let alone attributable to the Viking age. Karen Larsdatter's medieval artifacts page also lacks any Viking era gloves, though she does have links to a number of photographs on the Historiska Museet's website showing a surprising number of leather mittens from Sweden that are dated to the medieval period. All of these leather handwear items have only a single compartment for all four fingers and are clearly mittens.

All of this is a useful warning not to take offhand remarks even in scholarly sources as evidence of hard facts.  But it also makes me wonder what "archaeological evidence" Mr. Ewing was thinking about when he wrote the language I quoted above.  If any of my readers have any information on this subject, please let me know, and I will share it here.  I have to admit that I find it hard to believe that Viking era Scandinavians did not use protective handwear, and the glove with two finger compartments (which I've also seen referred to as a "three-fingered mitten" seems like a plausible candidate.

Corded Skirts From Bronze Age Denmark

Those of my readers who are interested in early period costume or in the role of textiles in archaeological discoveries should check out the following article, which discusses the unusual fate of an interesting grave find:

Bergerbrant, Sophie, Fossøy, Sølvi Helen, & Jørgensen, Lise Bender. Ginderup--Textiles and Dress from the Bronze Age Gleaned from an Excavation Photograph. Archaeological Textile Review, Issue No. 54, pp. 14-18. (2012).

Ginderup is the location of an ancient burial mound in Denmark, which was excavated in 1933.  According to the article, the central grave, grave A, was a stone cist that was about 1.7 meters long and .25-.45 meters wide.  It contained skeletal remains and a quantity of jewelry:  a neck ring, a fibule, a metal item shaped a little like a chess pawn that the authors call a "double button," two arm rings, and a finger ring.  Based on these metal artifacts, the grave was dated to the period 1300-1100 BCE and its occupant deduced to have been a woman.  There were also a number of textile remains, some quite large. Before proceeding further, the team took two clear photographs of the grave in situ.

In an attempt to create conditions that would allow the grave to be examined in more detail, it was decided to remove the entire cist without touching its contents. This was done by covering the grave first with sand, then with tissue paper, then with plaster.  The side stones of the cist were removed and the sand/paper/plaster treatment repeated for all sides.  Then they built a wooden box around the encased grave and shipped it to the National Museum of Denmark for excavation in the museum's conservation laboratory.

More than 70 years later, Bergerbrant, Fossøy, and Jørgensen became interested in Ginderup, and started looking for information about grave A. They could not locate a report about the ultimate excavation of the grave block, nor could they find any surviving textiles from the grave.  All they had to work with were the initial sketches and report of the excavation team that removed grave A from where it was found, the two photographs, and a casual reference in a work by H.C. Broholm and Margrethe Hald suggesting that the occupant of the grave had been wearing a corded skirt. 

Early recreation of Egtved woman's
costume (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Lacking any better information, Bergerbrant, Fossøy, and Jørgensen scrutinized the photographs in light of other Danish grave finds of similar date, and accumulated enough information to arrive at a reconstruction of the Ginderup woman's costume. Their conclusion is that she was wearing a short blouse with elbow-length sleeves and a short skirt made of twined cords, like the costume of the Egtved woman (also found in Denmark; go here for some wonderful zoomable photographs of the surviving textiles from Egtved).

There are interesting differences between the Ginderup and Egtved burials, and the archaeologists were able to derive information about those from the photographs as well.  The Egtved woman was buried in a hollowed-out oak trunk, apparently specifically shaped to serve as a coffin, not a stone-sided box, and she was covered with a large piece of cloth believed to have been a blanket. Covering textiles also appear to have been part of the Ginderup burial.  The stone cist in which the Ginderup woman was laid was "more or less covered with textiles". The authors of the article identify a large coarse cloth (3.5-4.5 threads per cm) woven in tabby.

Like the Egtved woman, the Ginderup woman wore a corded skirt to the grave.  However, Bergerbrant, Fossøy, and Jørgensen conclude that it was constructed somewhat differently than the Egtved skirt--and in fact was made differently from all other corded skirts found in Denmark from the Bronze Age:

Most skirts have cords constructed as cabled plied threads, S2Z2s or Z2S2z, and two skirts have cords made from 2-ply threads, Z2s or S2z (Fossøy and Bergerbrant in press).The Ginderup cords, however, are Z3s, plied of three single threads. In total, more than 20 cords, 3mm thick, the longest c. 12 cm, can be identified on the western side of the burial, i.e. by the left hand of the deceased. As one cannot see the top of the skirt it is hard to say how different this corded skirt is from the other known fully or partly preserved corded skirts. The photographs do, however, indicate that the lower part of the skirt is made in a manner similar to that of the fully preserved Egtved skirt, i.e. the cords end in a thread ring made from the end of the cord. A thin thread has been twisted tightly around the ring to make it thicker and to keep it together. A string is threaded through the rings, above the rings two twined threads can be seen. Together, these keep the skirt in place. (p. 17)

I found this article inspiring for two reasons.  One is the reason emphasized by its authors, namely, that even good photographs can provide enough information to attempt the reconstruction of clothing from a grave find.  Although the authors do not specifically say so, the story of the Ginderup grave is an object lesson in how important it is to preserve as much information about a grave find as possible, because one cannot be certain how much information will survive long enough to be studied and interpreted.

The other reason, however, is that until I read it, I had not been aware that the Egtved woman's costume was not unique, and that there have been other Bronze Age finds of corded skirts in Denmark.  (Apologies to my Scandinavian and European readers, who may well have long been aware of this fact.)  That matters because the types of questions one asks, and the deductions one tends to make, are different once enough evidence has accumulated to confirm that a costume is not unique to the occupant of a single grave.  Evidence that multiple women wore the corded skirt raises questions about what its wearers had in common, whether it was worn as an everyday costume or for some type of religious or other special occasion, and so on.   The article has changed the way I think about the Egtved woman, and made me more interested in looking out for information about similar burials in the future.  Unsurprisingly, the article's authors are currently working on a study of Bronze Age corded skirts that is likely to be well worth reading.

Finally, you don't have to take my word about Bergerbrant, Fossøy, and Jørgensen's research.  Although Issue No. 54 of ATR is not yet freely available, this particular article can be downloaded for free from academia.edu, a site where researchers both professional and amateur researchers alike share knowledge.  An account is needed to access the site, but accounts are free, and the site is searchable.  Whether your interest lies in Bronze Age fashion or other areas of history or science, academia.edu is a useful tool for any researcher, including researchers of historic costume.

EDIT:  (4/19/2013)  Ms. Bergerbrant and Ms. Fossøy recently published another article, this time in Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, in which they discuss the evidence for the manufacture of corded skirts. This article is, to my knowledge, not available for free download but can be purchased from Ingenta Connect for $32.99 (plus tax) here.

A Little More Context

Mongol Ruler and Consort Enthroned, detail

Last year, I blogged about a 13th century CE Central Asian find in the Astrakhan region of Russia consisting of enough textile pieces to reconstruct the complete costume of a Mongol woman. The find was described in detail in one of the 2011 issues of the Archaeological Textiles Newsletter (now the Archaeological Textiles Review).

Today, I found a website showing a color photograph of a Persian miniature that I believe gives context to this grave find. It's a copy of a Persian miniature depicting the Mongol court, entitled "Mongol Ruler and Consort Enthroned". I found it shown on several different sites and, piecing together the information I located, it's from Jami' al-Tawarikh, and it illustrated a work called the "Universal History" written by Rashid al-din; Il-Khanid period, Tabriz, Hazine 1653, folio 23a. It is mounted on an album containing illuminations of different sources. Here is a cropped version of the image, showing just the Mongol women.

The interesting thing about the miniature is it depicts a large number of women, and they are all dressed like the woman found in the Central Asian grave; red, cross-wrapped robes, and odd hats perched on their heads (though the hats are not black, but red). Perhaps this is what all of the khan's women wore, in period, regardless of rank (though the primary consort is shown in white). The miniature does not of course show all the layers each woman was wearing, but the woman from the grave find could have fit into the scene. I also found this image on the site of an SCA member, Richard Cullinan, who notes that this is one of the few period artworks showing female Mongol costume and shows a copy of the full image. Note that the women's costumes show brown around the neckline and sleeve edge--and the robe in the grave find was trimmed with brown silk and was worn over a brown underrobe.

Neither this miniature nor the grave find give a complete answer to what the women of the Mongol court might have worn in the 13th century. However, reconstructing the early history of costume involves assembling information from many sources. This miniature, whether or not it took liberties with costume depictions, is another puzzle piece that should be consulted to determine what the women of the Mongol court wore, and that element makes it doubly useful and interesting.

EDIT: (3/22/2013) After reading Lara's comments (see below), I found a translation of William of Rubruck's account of his observations of Mongol life during this period. That account may be found here. His account of Mongol women and their clothing rings true in light of the Asktrakhan grave and other sources. I'd just like to quote one passage in particular:

But on the day following her marriage, (a woman) shaves the front half of her head, and puts on a tunic as wide as a nun's gown, but everyway larger and longer, open before, and tied on the right side. For in this the Tartars differ from the Turks; the Turks tie their gowns on the left, the Tartars always on the right. Furthermore they have a head-dress, which they call bocca, made of bark, or such other light material as they can find, and it is big and as much as two hands can span around, and is a cubit and more high, and square like the capital of a column. This bocca they cover with costly silk stuff, and it is hollow inside, and on top of the capital, or the square on it, they put a tuft of quills or light canes also a cubit or more in length. And this tuft they ornament at the top with peacock feathers, and round the edge (of the top) with feathers from the mallard's tail, and also with precious stones. The wealthy ladies wear such an ornament on their heads, and fasten it down tightly with an amess [J: a fur hood], for which there is an opening in the top for that purpose, and inside they stuff their hair, gathering it together on the back of the tops of their heads in a kind of knot, and putting it in the bocca, which they afterwards tie down tightly under the chin. So it is that when several ladies are riding together, and one sees them from afar, they look like soldiers, helmets on head and lances erect. For this bocca looks like a helmet, and the tuft above it is like a lance. And all the women sit their horses astraddle like men. And they tie their gowns with a piece of blue silk stuff at the waist and they wrap another band at the breasts, and tie a piece of white stuff below the eyes which hangs down to the breast. And the women there are wonderfully [J: astonishingly] fat, and she who has the least nose is held the most beautiful.

The gown worn by the woman in the Astrakhan grave tied on the right side.

New Baltic Calendar

There is a new historical costume calendar on sale at BalticShop.com. You can see a picture of the cover here. It is a 24-month calendar for 2013-2014 and is titled, "Curonian Costumes of the 1st to 14th Centuries." Like the other two calendars published to date by the Lithuanian Folk Culture Centre, it sells for $25.00 USD; BalticShop.com charges $3.95 USD for shipping to locations in the continental US.

Because of my limited budget (and because I already have the folk-costume calendar published by the Folk Culture Centre for 2012-2013), I probably won't be buying this calendar this year, but the cover picture alone convinces me that it contains useful information (and gorgeous, full-color pictures of reproduced costumes). Hopefully I will be able to afford a copy in time for 2014. EDIT: (4/10/2014) I'm a right idiot. I *have* this calendar. I don't know what made me think it was a different one. Sadly, I discovered this by ordering it and opening the box when it arrived today. Nothing like stress to make one stupid. :-(