Band and Cord for My Køstrup Project

The tablet-woven band and wool cord for the Køstrup apron dress that I am planning to make have arrived!  

I am very pleased with the quality of both band and cord, and also with the fact that the band and cord are a good match in color for each other (though the band looks much darker in my photographs).  The photographs are clickable to show the image larger and with more detail.

After I downloaded these pictures, it occurred to me that I had forgotten to include an item in them that would show the scale of the cord and band!  Perhaps some actual measurements will help.  From the beginning of the fringe on each end, the band measures 25.5 cm (about 10 inches) long and 1.8 cm (about 3/4ths of an inch) wide.  The cord looks as though it's a lighter blue than the band, but I think that is because it is plied from wool felt, and thus reflects light a little differently than the threads in the tablet-woven band.  

The fabric for the planned apron dress is a single-tone herringbone twill in a rose-red shade which should look lovely with the blue.  However, it will look visually different from the original Køstrup dress in at least two respects.  First, it will be in a twill weave (the Køstrup fragments are woven in tabby) and it will not be blue (the Køstrup fragments had been dyed blue).  But my primary objective is to demonstrate how I think the tablet woven band and the cords trimming it were fastened to the dress, and that should be easier to observe given that the dress itself will be a different color from the band.

A Køstrup Band!

In her paper on the Køstrup smokkr, Hilde Thunem mentions that she persuaded a friend to make a tablet-woven band for her Køstrup smokkr (i.e., apron dress) because she could not do one herself.    Nor can I; I do not know how to do brocaded tablet weaving, and I do not have the time and patience to acquire such skill at present.  

However, a week or two ago, I was delighted to discover that a seller on Etsy is selling reproductions of various Birka bands, and of the Køstrup one as well!  You can see the seller's Etsy store here, and one version of the Køstrup band is selling here.  I have already ordered that band for the Køstrup smokkr I'm planning to make.

Another Etsy vendor is selling a plied wool felt cord here; I will probably order that for my project as well.  

The Køstrup Dress: The Woven Band

Hilde's photograph of the surviving Køstrup band (used with permission)

For quite some time, I've been doing some thinking about modern reproductions of Viking age finds that are clearly associated with tortoise brooches, and (in all probability) with the smokkr or "apron dress", the sleeveless overdress that appears to be characteristic of Viking women's costume.  In doing so, I have been inspired by the work of independent researcher Hilde Thunem.

Hilde reads three of the languages in which many of the archaeological papers relating to Viking Age Scandinavian costume are written, namely, Norwegian, German, and English.  She has written several long, excellent papers of her own, summarizing that research and drawing her own conclusions from it.  Her paper on the smokkr may be read on the Internet here.

Hilde's conclusion seem to be based largely upon the analysis of Danish researchers Rasmussen and Lønborg, who did a detailed analysis of the Køstrup find.*  Based upon Hilde's summary in her essay (the Rasmussen and Lønborg work does not seem to be available in English), Rasmussen and Lønborg conclude that the band was fastened only to the front loops, and not to the top edge of the apron dress.  It is clear that the band was fastened to at least one of the front loops, because, as the photograph of the actual Køstrup band shows, one of the loops is still attached to that band.  But as Hilde notes, there is no consensus as to how the wool strings (also shown in the above photograph) were attached, and the extent that they were attached, to the tablet woven band and/or the smokkr itself.

Although it's clear from Hilde's comments about wearing her reconstructed dress that it's neither awkward nor impractical to sew a tablet-woven band just above the top edge, above the pleated section, something about the look of the finished result bothered me.  It bothered me because I couldn't figure out why a Viking woman might have designed her dress this way.

Top edge of Hilde's smokkr, showing band attachment (used with permission)

So I started thinking about Hilde's Køstrup smokkr design from a functional perspective. By that I mean I've been trying to think about each element of the dress's design and what purpose it serves.

For example, the straps and loops on the dress allow it to be fastened on the body without all the clumping and bunching of fabric that happens when you pin a strapless, tube-shaped peplos dress on the shoulders through several layers of cloth.

Similarly, the tortoise-shaped brooch is an improvement over the disk and cross-bow shaped brooches previously used because it can accommodate a number of straps for the dress and for hanging tools and accessories without sticking out awkwardly from the woman's body.  The smokkr design, coupled with tortoise brooches for fastening, also makes it easier to unpin and repin one shoulder in case the woman needs to pull the front of her dress down while remaining clothed (e.g., for breastfeeding purposes).**

Then I thought about the pleated area and the tablet-woven band above the pleated area at the top of the gown.  What purpose do those features serve?

Hilde's blue smokkr illustrates one possible, logical purpose of the pleats; they allow a close, attractive fit of the gown across the breasts while allowing for at least a bit more fullness around the torso, achieving what some of us call today a "figure skimming fit". The result is particularly flattering on a pregnant woman, as Hilde's own photographs of her dress (modeled while she was pregnant) indicate.  Moreover, there are at least two northern European finds from the late medieval period that use sections of small pleats in a similar manner, to create special shaping for a dress.  One is the Uvdal find from Norway, and another, which I learned about from Katrin Kania's blog, is a dress reconstruction based upon a pleated textile find from Turku, in Finland.  So it is not absurd to conclude, as Hilde did, that the pleated apron dress finds from Scandinavia represent early attempts to use pleated sections of fabric in women's dress design.

But why place the tablet woven band above the top edge of the dress?  It seems to me that placement of the band must be due, at least in part, to the pleats in the section of the dress that lies between the brooches.***

My Køstrup dress, made at a time when I had little information
about the band's attachment and size, and the size of the dress pleats.
(Photo by my husband, cropped by me)

When I made my version of the Køstrup dress over a decade ago, I didn't have very much information about the size of the pleats, or the length of the area they were supposed to cover, so I extended the pleated area from brooch to brooch, and made the pleats very deep--about an inch or so.  Then I stitched a piece of purchased trim (a substitute for the tablet woven band) right on top of the pleats, to help hold them in place.  Stitching the band down in this manner achieved that purpose, all right--but the top edge of my dress looks lumpy and weird, as the photograph to the left shows.

So it seems reasonable that the Køstrup band might have been fastened to the dress above the pleats to avoid mashing them down and crushing them.  And that's what Hilde did.  She sewed the tablet-woven band to the lower loops on the apron dress.  Her photos appear to indicate that the bottom of the band rests approximately a centimeter above the top edge of the dress.

But Hilde's reconstruction, unlike the band on the original Køstrup dress, does not have strings (thin cords, actually) sewn to the top and bottom of the tablet-woven band.  The presence of those strings in the original find is another detail I was unaware of until I read Hilde's paper about the Køstrup dress.  That fact may make Hilde's reconstruction less useful in understanding how the tablet-woven band was fastened to the original dress.

The existence of those strings suggests an alternative reason as to why we do not see evidence that the band was stitched to the apron dress.  The stitching may have passed into the very top edge of the pleats and just through the strings, or between the strings and the edges of the band, without entering the band at all.  Most of the wool string does not survive either--making it difficult to look for holes made by stitching thread to prove or disprove this hypothesis.  Hilde's essay notes that there are finds from Birka that are ornamented only with a string or cord sewn along the top edge (Grave Nos. 511, 563, 838, 954, 973, 1083, and 1084).  It might be useful to know what type of stitch was used to fasten the string to the edges of these Birka smokkrs.

Just as Nille Glaesel disagrees with Hilde about how the Køstrup pleats were formed and stabilized, she also has a different view from Hilde about how the tablet woven piece was fastened to the top edge of the Køstrup dress. Ms. Glaesel notes that Rasmussen and Lønborg suggest, in their research paper on the Køstrup find, that the top of the dress was finished by folding the top half-centimeter of the cloth to the reverse side and stitching it in place (page 4).  However, Ms. Glaesel observes that, in a Viking era fabric such as the 1/1 tabby of the Køstrup find, the warp was "hard spun" and prone to fray unless it was "secured" with a piece of another fabric.  Thus, she believes that a piece of another fabric--probably linen, for no such fabric survives--was fastened to the tablet-woven band, and the band was stitched to the top of the apron dress along the edge of the linen piece sewed to the band.  But Ms. Glaesel does not indicate where the wool strings fit into this view of the Køstrup smokkr's construction.  Moreover, if a linen strip was sewn  to the top edge of the smokkr to "secure" that edge from fraying, it would be more likely, not less likely, that stitch holes in the smokkr's top edge would be apparent, and they are not.  There is no fraying apparent on the top edge of the smokkr's pleats, which more strongly supports Rasumussen and Lønborg's view that the top edge of the fabric was folded over before the pleats were made.

I think the key to understanding the placement of the tablet woven piece on the Køstrup dress is knowing that there were strings positioned on both edges of the band.  Although the strings and band may well have been sewn to the loops first, as Hilde has done with the band on her dress, the fact that the strings were present may explain why there are no apparent stitch holes in the band itself, and suggests a different theory as to how and where the band may actually have been attached to the dress.

The maker of the Køstrup dress could have "secured" the band-with-attached-strings to the pleated top edge of the smokkr by tacking the lower string to the top edge of all, or just some, of the pleats. The sewing needle need not have pierced the string--it might have encircled the string and entered under neath a thread at the top edge of the fold of each pleat, where it would be hard to detect a hole.  Alternatively, the needle might have passed between the strands of the string (which the photographs clearly indicate was plied) in a way that would not leave a hole.  Either way, the string would then be tacked to the band, and another string tacked to the band's top edge. The way the strings have come loose from the original Køstrup band suggest that they were never sewn very tightly or with closely-spaced stitches, either of which would have been more likely to leave holes.****

In short, I believe that there likely was not a large visible space between the bottom of the band-and-strings-combination.  I think the strings were lightly tacked to the band, and the band-with-strings was, in turn, lightly tacked to the top edge of the smokkr and stitched more firmly to the front loops of the dress.  Though it is difficult to tell even from the excellent photograph Hilde has provided, it looks to me as though parts of the string can be seen on the lower left-side of the photograph, still tacked to the band.  If that is true and my own biases are not misleading me, that supports my view of how the band was fastened to the smokkr.

I think my rose-red herringbone wool smokkr project has found a mission.  I can make my own Køstrup smokkr using the same type of pattern Hilde used, but adding wool strings (assuming I can find or make suitable ones) and attaching the tablet-woven band in the way I've just suggested.

Apologies to anyone who saw this piece on my blog or on Google Plus several weeks ago, when I posted an incomplete version by accident and then removed it.


*      Rasmussen, L. and Lønborg, B. 1993. Dragtrester i grav ACQ, Køstrup. Fyndske minder, Odense Bys Museer Årbog. 

**    My own experiences with wearing peplos dresses with different kinds of brooches as well as apron dresses with tortoise brooches confirms the difference in convenience in pinning and re-pinning one's overdress. It is much easier to repin an apron dress, where the pins only need go through loops of cloth, than it is to repin a peplos, which requires one to pin one's brooches through two folded edges of cloth (front and back).  This convenience advantage remains even if one is wearing one or more bead strings with the brooches, provided you allow the strands to sink to the bottom of the brooch pin during the fastening process. 

***   I agree that the pleated section of the Køstrup smokkr was located in the center front of the dress, not under the arm or in an otherwise non-central position.  Because I am focusing on the question of how the tablet-woven band was attached, I do not discuss the evidence for the central location of the pleated section here.

**** It is an interesting question whether research has been done as to the extent to which stitch holes remain in fabric after the thread from the stitching has disappeared in the grave.   Such research might also help answer the question of how the Køstrup band was fastened to the smokkr.

A Random Thought About Viking Apron Dresses

Simple wool tube apron dress
(photo by my husband)

A pair of flat apron dresses,
wrapped in opposite directions
(photo by my husband)

A lined, wrapped, flat apron dress
(photo by my husband)

This afternoon, I had a random thought about Viking apron dresses--the sleeveless overdress associated with heavy bronze tortoise brooches that is associated with women's graves in Scandinavia during the Viking age. The purpose of this post is to clarify that thought and explain it.

As Hilde Thunem and others have observed, the surviving archaeological evidence at Kostrup shows that the Kostrup apron dress likely was a tube with a small section of pleating, probably located at the center front. The Hedeby fragment, believed to have been from an apron dress though this cannot be determined with certainty because it was not found in a grave, likely was part of a fitted garment. If that garment was an apron dress, it too would have been generally tube-shaped.

In her excellent general research article on apron dresses, Ms. Thunem summarizes a large number of textile finds that also appear to be from apron dresses. She mentions a number of textile finds in Norway that include pleated wool sections, similar to the pleated section on the Kostrup find.

Based upon these finds, Ms. Thunem and others have concluded that the apron dress, despite differences in design, generally had a tube shape throughout Scandinavia.  For that reason, she is comfortable with using the term smokkr to describe it.  Smokkr, a word used to describe a woman's clothing in one of the Norse sagas, is etymologically related to the verb that means "to creep through"--an apt name for a tube-shaped garment.

But if you examine all of the Scandinavian evidence in context, the overall picture is slightly different. Here is a brief summary of that evidence as I understand it.

• The textile finds that support the idea of a tube-shaped dress with pleats or a fitted dress of some kind come from Norway and Denmark, not Sweden.
• The Birka finds (from Sweden) believed to be part of an apron dress are not pleated, and do not show a seam or other evidence indicating that they might be part of a tube-shaped garment.
• The Pskov find (from Russia) that is believed to have been part of an apron dress (the folded textile fragments found wrapped around tortoise brooches) also does not appear to have had a seam.
• There are no finds in Norway or Denmark that resemble the Birka "apron dress" finds, which Agnes Geijer theorized were wrapped around the body instead of being sewn into a tube.

The thought I had this afternoon is that perhaps apron dress construction differed by region.  So far, the physical evidence amply supports Hilde Thunem's conclusion that apron dresses in Norway and Denmark were constructed in a general tube shape, a shape which evolved (possibly by becoming more fitted?) over time.

In contrast, the physical evidence suggests that Swedish apron dresses, and likely also the Pskov garment, were flat sheets furnished with small loops, which were wrapped around the body to form an overdress.   But this evidence does not necessarily contradict Ms. Thunem's conclusion that apron dresses were tube-shaped all over Scandinavia. Although a wrapped apron dress looks very different from a sewn-tube-shaped dress when they are not being worn, both types can look very similar in wear.  The photographs of three of my apron dresses, shown at the upper right, illustrate the point.

I also agree with Ms. Thunem that Flemming Bau's theory of open-fronted apron dresses is not well-supported by the evidence.  She correctly notes that Inga Hagg and Thor Ewing explain why the physical evidence Bau cites does not require, let alone compel, the conclusion that any of the finds to which Bau refers was an open-fronted overdress.

So although the apron dress may have been made in different ways in different places at different times during the Viking age, its basic appearance--that of a tube suspended from tortoise brooches--tended to remain the same.    Ms. Thunem notes that there may have been minor differences in appearance.  I agree, and I think such differences likely resulted from differences in construction, as I've suggested above.  Moreover, since images of women on Viking pendants and other period art do not clearly show the apron dress, they provide no reason either to argue for a particular construction or to refute the theory that all apron dresses appeared to be tube-shaped in wear.

If any of my readers know of Swedish finds that support the idea of a tube-shaped construction, or of any evidence that might bear upon apron dress construction that is not discussed by Hilde Thunem or referred to above, please let me know in the comments.

The Køstrup Dress--The Pleats

A few years ago, Hilde Thunem published a web article about her examination of the surviving fragments from the Køstrup smokkr or apron dress, and updated her broader essay about Viking apron dresses to include a discussion of how she believes that dress was made, with pictures of an apron dress she made for herself based on her in-person analysis of the Køstrup fragments. 

Last year, I found a paper on the web by Nille Glaesel, who many people consider to be an expert on apron dress construction, about her theories of how the Køstrup smokkr was made.  Like Hilde Thunem, Ms. Glaesel has also had an opportunity to examine the Køstrup finds.  Unlike Ms. Thunem, Ms. Glaesel has significant experience, not just with sewing period clothing but also with weaving tablet-made bands and using a warp-weighted loom to make fabric.  Her experience leads her to some interesting conclusions that are different from Hilde's. (Because the paper is located in the files of a closed Facebook group, I am not comfortable with making it available for free download here. Interested readers of this blog may wish to seek and obtain admission to the group "Scholarly Discussion on Viking Age Clothing" to obtain a copy.)

In the meantime, I would like to summarize Ms. Glaesel's approach and conclusions here, as they provide excellent food for thought, not only about apron dress construction in general, but on how to make deductions based on archaeological finds.  Since I began writing this post, I have found descriptions of two other reconstructions of the Køstrup smokkr and have incorporated them into this discussion.

Ms. Glaesel titled her paper, "The Køstrup Apron Dress Interpreted by a Crafter".  As was true for Hilde Thunem, Ms. Glaesel's experience in making apron dresses has greatly influenced her conclusions about the construction of the original.  Unlike Hilde Thunem, Ms. Glaesel not only sews her own Viking clothing, but she also has experience with weaving cloth on a warp-weighted loom like the looms used by Viking women, and her experience in weaving cloth has significantly influenced her thoughts about the construction of the Køstrup smokkr.

Nille Glaesel's paper discusses several different issues that relate to how the Køstrup smokkr, but in this post I will only comment on what is perhaps the most obvious question, namely, how the pleats in the center front of the smokkr were created and secured.

The Smokkrs.   Hilde Thunem had some difficulty coming up with an effective method for securing the pleats on her Køstrup smokkr.  After an initial unsuccessful attempt to fix pleats in position by steaming, she ended up creating her pleats by drawing linen threads through the relevant section of fabric, and then anchoring them with stitches placed on the inside of the garment, perpendicular to the pleats (see Alternative 3 in the construction section of her paper).

In contrast, Ms. Glaesel believes that the pleating found in the Køstrup fragment was created while the dress fabric was still on the loom, by pulling certain threads in the woven fabric tight while the fabric was still on the loom and then steaming the fabric to set the pleats after the weaving was complete (page 5, see also page 21). Because she believes this is how the pleating is done, she also believes that the pleats ran the entire length of the dress from top to bottom, and that the pleated section was sewn into the dress after the pleating was completed--though she admits that she cannot tell whether there is evidence of a seam beside the pleated portions (page 6).

Jenn Culler, in making her own Køstrup reconstruction, mostly agrees with Hilde Thunem.  Like Nille Glaesel, Jenn is a weaver (though she used a modern loom, not a warp-weighted loom, to create the fabric for her smokkr). Jenn has said that she believes that the method of creating the pleats while the dress is on the loom is "far more tedious of a process than simply drawing the pleats on a thread after the garment is crafted."  She believes that stabilizing stitches made on the inside of the garment are plausible, even though stitch holes do not appear on the surviving pleated fragment, in part because "[s]titches added from behind could penetrate the web of the textile, without impaling individual weaving threads."*  The stabilizing stitches for Jenn's pleats are whip stitched on the inside of the garment.

Finally, Kristine Risberg took a somewhat different approach to making and stabilizing the pleats on her Køstrup smokkr.  Kristine, like Jenn, drew up the fabric into pleats with linen thread, which she left in place "because I don’t know if the pleating would hold should the thread be removed." However, she also chose to back the pleated area with a piece of linen--an approach Hilde originally tried but ultimately rejected.  It should be noted, however, that Kristine's approach resulted in pleats that are much wider than the pleats on the original Køstrup dress: 8mm wide, instead of 2-3 mm wide.

My Thoughts.

For my part, I think that the very narrowness of the original pleats is inconsistent with the idea that any kind of lining or backing was used for the pleated section.  If such a lining was used but dissolved in the grave, the resulting pleats would now appear wider and looser than they actually are, as Kristine's smokkr indicates.

I also think that it is likely that the pleats were formed by drawing threads through the pleated areas, and likely kept in place with stitches taken across the back side of the pleated area.  Why?  Because it seems likely to me that the time it would take to boil enough water to produce a suitable amount of steam, and the effort it would take to attempt to steam the pleated fabric above the open-fire-heated cauldrons used for cooking, would have made efforts to steam-set such pleats impractical.**  That would be particularly true if, as Nille Glaesel believes, the pleats extended all the way from the top of the apron dress to its bottom hem (an issue as to which there currently is no evidence whatsoever).  

I do not have difficulty believing that linen gathering and stabilizing stitches would have dissolved in the grave.  It is generally believed that linen undergarments, at least, were quite common in Viking times due to the presence of scraps preserved near metal grave goods and by the discovery of linen-processing tools.   Except for tiny scraps preserved by proximity to metal items, however, linen is not found in Scandinavian graves.  In addition, Hilde notes that there are gaps in the weave of the tablet-woven band at the top of the Køstrup dress, a feature best explained by the dissolution of linen or other vegetable fiber threads underground. 

As for Nille Glaesel's suggestion that the pleats were formed as the pleated strip was being woven,   I am inclined to believe this method of pleating viable (because Ms. Glaesel is the only one of the reconstructionists who has woven fabric for her apron dresses on a warp-weighted loom, the type used during the Viking age), but any argument that this was the method actually used on the Køstrup smokkr is refuted by the fact that the pleated area does not show seams on both sides of the pleated area.  I do not see how the weaving method  Ms. Glaesel proposes could be used to pleat only a portion of a larger sheet of fabric, and that is the only possibility that would be consistent both with pleating the fabric while it was on the loom and with the lack of seams on both sides of the pleated section.   In addition, as I said above, I do not think that it would be practical to set pleats in fabric with steam using Viking age technology, and Ms. Glaesel proposes this technique also.

So at this point, I believe that Jenn Culler's method of pleating and stabilizing the pleats is most consistent with the available evidence.*** Unfortunately, a definitive conclusion to these questions will not be possible unless another, better-preserved pleated apron dress find is located.

Nille Glaesel's paper also discusses the question of how the tablet-woven band found in the Køstrup grave was fastened to the top of the smokkr, but I will talk about that in another post.

*   See this blog for yet another reconstruction which uses construction techniques similar to Jenn Culler's.

** Volker Bach noted, in Compleat Anachronist No. 156 (Society for Creative Anachronism, Second Quarter 2012) that it is nearly impossible to reach a full rolling boil using the cooking technologies available in the Carolingian Era: 

"Carolingian cooks mostly used woodfires, and it is likely that the most common technique was boiling or simmering in clay pots. These would slowly have built up to a gentle heat. Cooking food at a rolling boil is almost impossible in them, and their results are best replicated by gently baking a cooking container or cooking on a gentle heat. ... Metal cookware was probably confined to larger households. ... Still, a cooking vessel suspended over a fire is not going to produce the concentrated heat of a modern stovetop unless it touches the flame directly." (p. 26).

In Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg's book, An Early Meal:  A Viking Age Cookbook and Cultural Odyssey (ChronoCopia Publishing AB 2013) the authors note that boiling in metal cauldrons over a wood fire was a common food preparation technique among the Vikings (p. 23) but they do not state or even suggest that a rolling boil was used.  Moreover, the authors state that most of the foods cooked would have been porridges and stews, and these are foods typically cooked (even today) by long simmering, not vigorous boiling.  The point is that boiling water hard enough, and for long enough, to produce sufficient steam to fix pleats in fabric, should not be assumed to have been a simple matter with Viking era technology.

*** No, I did not reach this conclusion because of my fondness for using whip stitching in sewing period clothing!  Also note that, despite her original attempts to steam-set the pleats in her smokkr and to stabilize the resulting pleats with a backing of linen, Hilde Thunem's final smokkr deals with the pleats in much the same way as Jenn Culler's--i.e., creating them with drawn threads and stabilizing them with stitches taken on the inside of the garment.

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. 

The Køstrup Find--Evidence of a Down-filled Coat?

The article from Fynske Minder about the Køstrup find that I discussed here a few weeks ago also discussed a curious fabric fragment associated with down.  The English translation I have described this part of the find as follows:

Above the brooches there were fragments of two layers of tabby-woven wool with feather/down between them. Fragments of tabby-woven textile were also found on the key. There were also fragments of linen tabby underneath the lowermost layer of wool fabric over brooch X505 [one of the tortoise brooches]. These fragments could be the remains of a cloak or a cushion. Furthermore, remains of a small piece of iron plate with a round punched hole were found two cm north-west of brooch X501 [the other tortoise brooch]. In the rust, several pieces of textile with scattered stitches were preserved. On one side of the iron plate, there were two layers of two-ply tabby, probably wool, with a thread count of ca 8/8 threads/cm. Above this there was a small fragment of one-ply tabby-woven linen? With a thread count of 26/20 threads/cm. Above the wool tabby there were also remains of two woven bands, which were tabby-woven over four warp threads, whereas the thread count of the weft was ca 24 threads/cm. The woven band could be the remains of a facing/”edging” of a cloak and the small piece of iron plate could have been attached to the edge and be part of a closure.

Page 178 (question mark in the original).

Although the author notes that this find could have been part of a cushion or coverlet, it is unusual to have a down-filled or quilted cloak.  That factor might point toward a cushion or coverlet--except for the iron plate, which would be out of place for either item.

The author seems to be inclined to believe that the find in question likely was part of a cloak.  I can think of several aspects of the find that tend to support that.  Only one plate was found (likely a coat would have two or more closures), and it was found high up on the body, above the tortoise brooches (where a cloak conventionally is tied or clasped).

It would be useful to know the exact size of the iron plate.   The article says only that it was "small," without giving the size. But the size of the plate could be very useful to know in attempting to reason about how the find should be characterized. A plate that was, say, 5 cm by 3 cm would be comparable in size to later cloak clasps, and might indicate that the item was used as a cloak.  On the other hand, if the plate was significantly smaller than that, say, 2 cm by 2 cm, it becomes much more likely that it was part of a set of clasps used on a coat.  Similarly, it would be useful to know how thick the plate is; a thicker plate would be less likely to have rusted to indistinguishable fragments in the grave than would a thin one.  Finally, it seems to me that a cloak plate likely would be thicker than plates used as fasteners for a coat. The article says that only "remains" of the iron plate were found, which may indicate that the plate was thin (and leaves open the possibility that there were other, similar, iron plates, elsewhere on the body, which have rusted into dust). 

So the Køstrup find contains enough information to argue that the occupant of Grave ACQ wore a down-filled coat--but not enough information to confirm the presence of such a coat.  I need to keep my eyes open for other finds involving down, to see whether they include a similar iron plate that might have been a clothes fastener.

EDITED after the original post date to clarify and further explain my thoughts.

The Køstrup Find--Apron Dress Construction Clues

I recently obtained another article in Danish, but this one, unlike the Flemming Bau article, is about a Danish Viking age find.  The citation of the article is:

Rasmussen, Liisa and Lønborg, Bjarne.  "Dragrester i grave ACQ, Køstrup," Fynske Minder, pp. 173-182 (1993).

The article discusses the Køstrup find, which is the find upon which Shelagh Lewins and I based our front-pleated apron dresses.  The article also discusses other aspects of the Køstrup find, three of which I find interesting: 

1.  Is the central, pleated part of the apron dress a pieced-in insert or not?

2.  How were the apron-dress straps constructed?

3.  The article states that a kind of fabric sandwich, consisting of two layers of wool with down in between them, was found over one of the tortoise brooches.  Is this wool-and-down fabric sandwich part of a caftan, a coverlet, or a cloak?

This post will just discuss points 1 and 2; the part of the find that may be evidence of a cloak/caftan deserves a post of its own.

Point 1, unfortunately, will be getting short shrift because I do not have much information to discuss, and Rasmussen and Lønborg do not shed as much light about it in their article as I had hoped.  Shelagh Lewins and I have both assumed that the Køstrup dress was made from a rectangle of cloth sewn into a tube, and that a portion of the tube was pleated to fit the tube to the wearer's torso.  However, the English translation of the article by Freydis Svensdottir, a member of the Norsefolk_2 list (which translation pearl thoughtfully brought to my attention), seems to suggest that Rasmussen and Lønborg believe that pleated section may have been inserted into the dress.  The relevant sentence reads:

"So much is preserved of the trägerrock, that one can see that the dress has been closed at front and has ended at the top by a ca 5 mm wide seam, that is sewn with running-stitches. In one end of the fragment is the remains of a pleated piece, that was placed between the brooches, probably to give width to the dress. The pleating seems to have been made by a simple gathering with a linen thread." (emphasis mine).

It is possible that either the translation, or the original, language of the article is  simply unclear, and that the authors are not suggesting that the pleated section was pieced into the dress.  On the other hand, perhaps some scholars believe the Køstrup dress was made that way; for example, the pleated apron dress reconstruction in the Trelleborg Museum looks as though  the pleated part was pieced into the dress.  However, without a better photograph than I have of the piece, or other additional information, I cannot think of any further conclusions to draw about the construction of the pleated portion. 

Point 2, on the other hand, is greatly clarified by the Rasmussen and Lønborg article, as the drawings from that article and the photographs of straps I have included above hopefully will illustrate.

The photograph on the left is shows a portion of an apron dress strap from one of my apron dresses (the wool dress based on the Hedeby find, to be exact).   The whipstitching along the edge provides a clear indication of how I made the strap.  This was the method I used.  I cut, or ripped, a piece of linen that was about 4 cm wide, folded the raw edges inward, toward the center of the piece, then folded the entire piece so that the folded edges were together, and stitched the folded edges together.  The result is a strap as long as your original fabric piece but only about 1 cm wide.  I adopted this method, not because of any of my research, but because it was the fastest way to make the straps.  Using this method, the only seam on the straps is on the edge of the piece; front and back are perfectly smooth.  However, the stitching along the edge will show (if anyone looks) when the garment is being worn.

The photograph on the right illustrates another possible method for making such straps.  It shows a portion of a strap which I quickly stitched tonight, simply for demonstration purposes.   I started with a similar fabric strip, but after folding the raw edges over just enough to hide the jagged edge, I  simply lapped the folded edges together, one over the other, at the center of the fabric piece and whipstitched the two edges together there.  This approach leaves the seam down one surface of the finished strap.  That surface can be treated as the "back" or "inside" of the strap,, i.e., the side placed against the body, and need not be visible when the dress is worn. It is a bit slower to sew, since it's harder to hold the edges together in this position, and one has to take a bit of care not to draw the needle through what will be the front side of the finished strap.

Rasmussen and Lønborg include the drawing on the right with their article, to illustrate the construction of the straps they examined from the Køstrup grave.  Apparently portions of four straps were found; two made from the same wool as the dress, one made from linen with a piece of the same wool as the dress covering it on the outside (as shown in the diagram, on the farthest right), and one made from a coarser wool tabby than the others.

These diagrams provided by Rasmussen and Lønborg appear to indicate that the straps were made much the same way that I make my straps; by taking a strip of fabric, folding the raw edges inward, placing the folded edges together, and whipstiching the edges.   Freydis Svensdottir's translation of the relevant portion of the article confirms my understanding of the diagrams, though it is still a bit cryptic. It reads:

Two of the straps were made of “band-shaped pieces of fabric (the same kind as the dress), that were folded lengthwise, so that no cut edges were folded outward. The edges were sewn together with hem-stitches. A third strap is made of folded linen tabby, over with fabric (the same kind as the dress) is rolled around, and fastened with hem-stitches. The fourth strap is made like the two first ones, but of a bit coarser wool tabby.

Page 176 (emphasis mine).  The text of the caption of Figure 5, which appears with the drawings,  is consistent with this reading.  It has been translated by Freydis as follows: "Fig 5. Cross-section of the straps from the garment. Three of the straps are made in the same way, but of two different kinds of fabric, while the fourth is made of dress fabric over a stem of linen tabby, probably because there weren’t enough fabric of the first kind of wool tabby. Illustration: Birgit Kristensen."

So in my efforts to finish one of the dullest parts of an apron dress as quickly as possible I seem to have stumbled upon the way it actually was done--or at least the way the straps were done for the Køstrup dress.

One final interesting detail about the apron dress portion of the find is that the tablet-woven trim is not the only trim on the apron dress.  Cord appears to have been sewn to the top and bottom of the tablet-woven trim, further enhancing it.  "Along both edges of the band there are two wool cords, sewn with hem stitches to the straps, but whose possible attachment to the band is uncertain.  Stitches in the lower cords and in the trägerrock indicate, however, that these cords somewhere have been attached, both to themselves [?] and to the trägerrock." (pages 177-178).  Sewing several different types of trimming material together also appears in the Birka graves, where silver wire passements or silver-brocaded tablet-weaving has been sewn to silk strips which themselves were applied to various garments. 

I will try to discuss the "fabric sandwich" on top of the brooches sometime this weekend.