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.