Good Early Period Links

Even though I'm still dealing with more personal, professional, and household problems than doing costuming, I continue to trawl the Internet in my spare time for interesting information on historical costume (particularly Viking costume).  Recently, I've found some links that I'd like to share.

SCA member Álfrún ketta has a lot of good information on her blog, A Wandering Elf's Journey. Like me, she writes about early period clothing and books that address it. In particular, I recommend the following articles from her blog:

• Viking Textiles: A Deeper Look at Plaids, Stripes, and Checks. A summation of textile finds from the Viking age that are plaid, striped, or checked, with lots of pictures. The big news, other than how few of them there seem to be, is that the plaids, stripes and checks tend to be very subtle.
• Viking Embellishment and Embroidery. A three-article series on how the Vikings ornamented their clothes. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here. All three are illustrated with excellent photographs of existing finds.

I have also found some interesting early period studies on Academia.edu. 

• Rast-Eicher, Antoinette & Berghe, Ina Vanden.  Altrier (LUX): A fresh look at the textiles. A study of textiles in a cremation grave at Altrier, Luxembourg that are dated to the early La Tene period.  One appears to be silk, possibly the earliest silk found in Europe.  This is another article from NESAT XII (pp. 117-123).
• McConnell, Alexandra J. Re-Examining the Evidence:  A Study of Medieval Irish Women's Dress Between 750 and 900 CE. This claims to be a thesis submitted as part of the author's studies at Oregon State University, but it's only 33 pages long.   Make of it what you will.

Finally, I found a paper that Nille Glaesel wrote about her reconstruction of the Køstrup apron dress. She reaches some interesting conclusions, based upon her knowledge of use of the warp-weighted loom and her own reading of Hilde Thunem's paper about that dress.   I can't find the place I've downloaded it from; when I do, I'll post the link here.  I also intend to blog about my thoughts on Ms. Glaesel's paper soon.