A Russian Language Article About The Pskov Find

As is often the case, I found this article about the Pskov find while I was looking for something else. It's written in Russian, but the photographs of the textile fragments from Pskov are much clearer and more informative than any other photographs I've seen so far--including the photographs in the official report published in NESAT X. Moreover, the pictures are clickable so that the viewer can see small, medium and large versions, and the amount of detail visible in the medium and large versions is impressive.

The article also includes sketches showing possible reconstructions of the apron dress found in the grave that are different than those offered in the official archaeologists' report. My guess is that this web article was written by a Russian reenactor who has read the Pskov team's reports and is making deductions based on the information.

I don't read Russian, but running the page through Google Translate has enabled me to understand enough of the article to determined the gist of the author's suggestions about the find.

As others have done, the article observes that the Pskov apron dress could have been worn wrapped around the body, with the decorated panel in back and the opening in the front.  However, this version makes the panel, with its applied decoration of antique silk, harder to see, and is difficult to justify on that basis.

The other suggestion the author makes is more interesting. The author suggests that the front panel was huge precisely because the intended wearer of the dress was very large. We have no information about the wearer of the Pskov apron dress because the dress fragments were found folded inside a birchbark box found in the grave, not on a body, and no body was found. The author states that if the apron dress when draped as a tube was 152 cm (about 59 inches) across, it would fit perfectly if the wearer had a girth of 180 cm (about 70 inches). The front panel would just about cover the upper front of her body, while the rest of the apron dress would completely surround the lower part. Under this view, the Pskov reconstructors theory about how the apron dress was worn is correct, except that there would be no front sagging if the woman was large enough.

This suggestion is not crazy. The Central Asian woman buried in the 13th century CE grave that I blogged about previously was buried in trousers that were 162 cm wide.

The author of this essay also notes that there are at least two ways to reconstruct the linen shift found in the Pskov grave, namely, as a pieced Western style t-tunic with long, straight sleeves, or like the Russian shifts still found in "folk costume", with a gathered neckline and wide, puffy sleeves gathered at the wrists, like a modern "peasant" style blouse.  However, what the grave contains actually shows a combination of these forms. There is evidence of a linen garment with gathered neckline, pleated to a narrow strip of fabric that likely was tied, and wide, straight cuffs trimmed with silk. These facts suggest that the neckline was gathered and tied while the sleeves of the shift were straight--again paralleling what the official reconstructors have deduced. That suggests that the woman's costume is a hybrid of the typical costumes of two different cultures--Slavic and Scandinavian.

Perhaps such hybrids were more typical than we can easily confirm. This article in Fornvannen discusses a number of finds in the Gnezdovo area (not far from Pskov) of iron neckrings (a more Slavic style) bearing one or more Thor's hammers. The author's thought is that the hammers were worn by Scandinavian settlers, but it's just as possible that some of the wearers were individuals influenced by both cultures--perhaps the children of Scandinavians who intermarried with the Slavs of the area.    More research will certainly be needed to reconstruct the costume worn by women in this part of the world during the Viking period.

Pskov Was Not Unique!

One of the most challenging aspects of researching Viking era costume is to compare and analyze research from different parts of the Viking world.  It's difficult, because relevant articles are written in many different languages and often appear in obscure technical journals.  But since there is so little surviving information about Viking clothing, it's essential to do this kind of comparison, and it can lead to useful and surprising results. 

I had this kind of insight recently when I re-read an article from Fornvannen that pearl cited in one of her posts about Viking women's shawls (a lovely example of comparing information from different sources in its own right). This was the article, which you can download here:

Advusin, D.A. & Puskina, T.A. "Three chamber graves at Gniozdozo"  Fornvannen, 83, pages 20-33 (1988).

This Fornvannen article is about three chambers graves found at Gnezdovo (the authors prefer the non-traditional spelling Gniozdozo as being closer to the actual pronunciation) under mounds that had been assumed to mark cremations.  The authors' investigation revealed that, under three of the mounds at least, there were burial chambers underneath the mounds that had not been previously investigated because they were located underneath what appeared to be the remains of funeral pyres.  Because of local soil conditions, relatively little of the grave goods survived, but there was enough to ascertain that there were chamber graves under the mounds--lined with boards as though they were underground rooms.
 
Two of the graves had grave goods of the type associated with women.  More importantly as far as my interests are concerned, both graves contained fabric and jewelry remains that were strikingly similar to those of the Pskov grave that was written about in NESAT X and which I have discussed in this blog--even down to containing remains of a birchbark box with which textiles and jewelry were found and in which they most have been stored.  One of the finds even included remains of pleated linen, possibly of a shift.  Their description of the textile finds bears interesting resemblances to both the Pskov find and some of the women's graves at Birka:

In the bundle of cloth found between the birchbark discs, were the remains of a red gold-worked silk garment, embroidered with tapes of smooth and denser silk and of a goffered linen shirt.   An oval bronze brooch was wrapped in the garment.  Aside from this, fragments of brown, coarse, woolen cloth and a piece sewn of two ribbons of untinctured blue linen--a fragment of a skirt, and some fragments of silk ribbons of different width were found.  The fragments of silk are of Spanish and Byzantine origin.  (page 28)

This passage suggests that the Pskov grave represents a Viking fashion that has elements in common with what the women wore in 10th century Birka.   If Agnes Geijer was right, that fashion, along with the pleated linen shifts, may well have originated in Russia.  If that's true, the Russian and Swedish finds may tell us more about Viking age costume together than either set of finds does separately.  I need to think about this subject some more, which is hard when I'm so excited about the implications.   

EDIT (5/29/2011):  It occurs to me that the previous paragraph, as I wrote it, can be read as saying that the whole Viking apron dress fashion came from Russia.  That's unlikely to be correct--the native finds of the period do not have jewelry indicative of apron dresses.  On the other hand, it may be that the Pskov and Gnezdovo finds are instances of a Viking fashion from Birka--one that possibly teamed native Scandinavian brooches and apron dresses with a pleated-neck linen shift from Russia.  The interesting element is the strong resemblance of the Pskov and Gnezdovo finds--and the striking but less strong resemblances to the Birka finds (if that makes sense).

Rethinking The Pskov Shift

Today, I was thinking again about my project for making a reconstruction of the Pskov clothing. It occurred to me that there are a limited number of choices to make in its design, and the find itself provides excellent information to decide upon three of them.

One is, of course, the sleeves. The silk-trimmed cuffs that survive suggest that the sleeves were long, straight (with perhaps a slight taper; I need to look at the photograph of the cuffs again), carefully hemmed and, of course, trimmed with a broad strip of silk. That tells me most of what I need to know about the sleeves, except maybe the appropriate seam treatment (and I believe the NESAT X article describes that).

The second is the neck-opening. It is clear from the surviving neck fragment that the body was pleated, affixed with a narrow strip of the same linen as the body that extended into tie strings at the opening. The picture of the Slavic woman on the Adamklissi monument (reproduced here) suggests what the body of such a shift might look like. (The Adamklissi shift, however, is short-sleeved.) But was that opening placed in the center or on a shoulder? As I've said previously in this blog, I can imagine a shoulder-opening pleated shift being made from a body cut from only two pieces of fabric, a front and a back. However, to put the opening in the front would take at least three pieces; a back, and two equal-sized pieces seamed together in the middle, up to the point that the opening for the head was to begin. I can't see any clues from the fragment as to how many seams the body had, and the NESAT X article does not really address this issue. I will probably go with the three-panel, front slit approach because it's clear from the neck fragment in the find that the neck opening was meant to tie closed, and it is more awkward to tie strings located on your shoulder than it is to tie strings on a front-facing centered neckline.

The next choice is the length of the shift. Usually, an archaeological find as fragmentary as most Viking age finds provides no information on this issue. However, the Pskov find includes a piece of hemmed linen with more of the silk trimming sewn to it. As I should have realized when I composed this post, these attributes suggest that the shift was long enough that the silk-trimmed hem could be seen below the apron dress. It also indicates that the hem was *meant* to be seen (why else trim it with expensive silk?). These facts tend to reconfirm the reconstructors' conclusion that a shift of at least ankle-length would be appropriate, and I see no reason to argue with that conclusion.

The one major design choice I can think of as to which the Pskov find provides no information whatsoever is whether the garment is made with gores to widen the body or not. However, the Adamklissi shift appears to widen significantly at the bottom, suggesting that the garment at least has side gores. I will go with that approach and see whether the result resembles the Adamklissi image.

EDIT: I've looked at the picture of the Adamklissi shift again, and it seems to me now that if the fabric from which the body of the shift was made was wide enough, no gores would be necessary to get the appropriate effect. Simple experimentation may be in order.

The Pskov Apron Dress--How Many Straps?

I was thinking about the NESAT X article on the Pskov find over the past few days, and I had a new thought.

The strap traces found by the archaeologists can be read as showing that the dress *did* have three sets of loops--short ones in the front, and two pair of long ones in the back. Consider the passage I quoted in my last post on the subject:

On one of the narrow lateral strips of the detail described, at a distance of 20 and 25 cm from the place to which it is attached on the broad central part, the remains of threads and traces of sewn on straps have also been recognized. (emphasis mine)

I originally read the boldface language in the sentence quoted above as showing uncertainty about the location of remains of stitching where a strap had been sewn onto the "narrow lateral strip". But upon re-reading the article, I think I got that wrong. I now think that what the authors are really saying is that there are traces of straps at two different locations on the "narrow lateral strip"--located 20 and 25 cm away from the strap location on the front respectively. Moreover, they go on to say, in so many words, that they believe that there would be as many straps on the strip on the other side, even though the relevant parts of the strip on the other side do not survive:

The general symmetry of detail no. 6, as well as the symmetrical position of the remains of one of the straps, and the traces of a similar one on the central part all suggest the presence of the identical straps on its second narrow lateral strip. (emphasis mine)

Aside from this remark in the Pskov reconstructors article, I don't think the traces could belong to only one strap, because apron dress straps are typically no more than 1 cm wide, not 5 cm. In addition, the surviving front loop is only about 1 cm wide, consistent with other loop finds, and the article says that the "distance between the [stitching] holes [on the decorated part of the panel] was equal to the width of the preserved fragment of the strap." Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mikhailov at 297.

So this may mean is that there were *two* sets of straps on the back part of the Pskov dress--which opens up new possibilities for how to suspend the dress from brooches securely in a way that would display the silk ornamentation to advantage. I *must* make time to do some experimenting to see how that would work.

A Reconstruction of the Pskov Costume

No, it's not mine--not yet. However, tonight, on a mailing list, I found a pointer to the following Russian language web site:

http://archcostume.narod.ru/

I started to explore the site using Google Translate and found this subpage with photographs of a proposed Pskov reconstruction. I assume that Ms. Julia Stepanova, the author of the page, is responsible for the reconstruction, though I can't tell for sure.

Here's a direct link to one of the photographs.

I wish I knew the size of the dress form on which the reconstruction is displayed, since I'm having trouble imagining how the front lies so flat if the front loops are as far apart on the reconstruction as they are on the find.

More About the Pskov Find, Specifically, Apron Dress Design

My copy of NESAT X arrived last week. Unfortunately, it's arrival was immediately followed by a huge blizzard, so that I spent most of my time working from home and trying to help my husband dig us out from the snow drifts, instead of reading it.

I did read the official write-up for the Pskov find. It does include additional, and interesting, information that was not in the preliminary articles but, as always, raises additional questions which, by way of memorializing my own thoughts, I will set forth here.

1)  It appears that silk used on the apron dress and underdress consist of three different kinds of samite.  Most of the trim on the apron dress comes from a textile with a "Bahram Gur" hunting pattern.  The illustration at the right, which is from the article, shows how a piece of the Bahram Gur textile was cut into strips to be used for trimming, and the other illustration (also from the article) shows which sections were applied to particular portions of the apron dress's uppermost section.  The Bahram Gur sections are described as now appearing to be blue-green, with a yellowish tint, while the sections marked "IIa" and "IIb" in the apron dress sketch are described as "reddish violet" and come from a different textile--the same textile that was used to trim the cuffs of the underdress.  The third type of samite was of indiscernible color  (though the authors suggest that it might have also been reddish violet, which would create a pleasing color contrast) and consisted only of a narrow band, 4.5 cm wide that was used as binding (referred to as "trimming" in the sketch below) on the outside edge of the apron dress.

2) The full write-up refutes my original speculation that the Pskov team might have been placing the top of the apron dress upside down in devising their reconstruction. As the attached sketch also indicates, stitch marks clearly show in three places on the edges of the silk binding.  However, the original reference to the strap locations being 85 cm apart does not appear.  Instead, the article contains the following, somewhat cryptic paragraph:

The second article, in Slavic areas called a sarafan, may be akin to the Scandinavian apron.  This is connected to details no. 6 (Fig. 49.4 [i.e., the long piece with the two types of Bahram Gur silk used as trim]) and no. 8--an apron dress strap (Fig. 49.14 [it is shown here]).  Detail No. 6 is of particular interest in terms of the reconstruction of the type of garment which it decorated.  This detail, sewn from several strips of silk cloth, probably served as the trim of the top edge of the sarafan (as mentioned above, over the entire surface of the reverse side, a destroyed layer of blue linen and the remains of sewing threads have been observed).  On the broad central area of detail no. 6, at equal distances from the centre, the base of a strap of blue linen on one side, and the remains of sewing threads on the other, have been identified.  The distance between the holes was equal to the width of the preserved fragment of the strap.  On one of the narrow lateral strips of the detail described, at a distance of 20 and 25 cm from the place to which it is attached on the broad central part, the remains of threads and traces of sewn on straps have also been recognized (Fig. 49.5 [i.e., the sketch of the top of the apron dress above]).  The general symmetry of detail no. 6, as well as the symmetrical position of the remains of one of the straps, and the traces of a similar one on the central part all suggest the presence of the identical straps on its second narrow lateral strip.  Furthermore, since any trace of sewing on the straps is absent on the narrow strip, we may suppose that these were long straps.  Such straps are also mentioned by I. Hagg (1974) and F. Bau (1982) in their description of the apron.  These consisted of a narrow long strip of cloth turned into several layers and folded in two in the middle.  The ends of the strips (each separately but close to each other) were sewn to the top edge of the clothing from the back, thus forming a long loop.

NESAT X, "Studies of the Textiles from the 2006 Excavation in Pskov," Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mikhailov at 297 (emphasis supplied) (hereafter "Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mikhailov"). 

Based upon these observations, the Pskov team concluded that the Pskov apron dress is rather like Geijer's original idea of the apron dress--a piece of cloth with two small loops on the front, two long loops in the back, folded around the body and open on one side.  Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mikhailov at 296 (the sketch reproduced on the right is also from the article). 

Here is how I understand this paragraph. According to the diagram of the apron dress fragment, there is evidence of the placement of three straps; one on the surviving "narrow" strips; one on the top of the "broad central area" about 20-25 cm away from the first strap, and one on the opposite end of the broad central area.  Thus, each of the two straps on the top of the broad central area are "at equal distances from the centre".

Assuming that the sketch of the apron dress fragment is to scale, the two strap locations on the top of the broad central part may well be 85 cm apart (though the present article does not say so).  However, if the Pskov garment was an open-sided garment suspended on straps, like the design proposed by Agnes Geijer, there are even more serious questions about how the garment could stay in place during wear without a belt, or without pinning the apron dress to the undertunic (of which there doesn't seem to be evidence)--or by adding additional straps to the apron dress, as I had suggested.

I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems to preclude the possibility that the Pskov apron dress was a wrapped garment (since if there were additional loops on the part of the dress we have, it seems likely that the researchers would have seen traces of them). The article also discusses Flemming Bau's hypothesis involving multiple loops, front-cloths, and back-cloths.  The authors reject the idea of front-cloths and back-cloths as being inconsistent with the physical evidence of the Pskov find, though they do not consider whether the presence of more than two pair of loops could indicate a wrap-around design.

Does the Pskov evidence rule out a wrap-around design?  What if there were multiple long straps on the "back" portion of the apron dress (i.e., the part that did not survive from the Pskov grave)?  I'm thinking of my green linen apron dress.  Spread out, that dress looks like this (see photo on the left). If the Pskov dress had another set of long loops on the back side of the apron dress (in addition to the one that appears near the right-angle bend shown on the sketch of the surviving apron dress fragment and its missing mate), it might not matter so much that the small loops on the front are so far apart.  Or, perhaps there were two sets of long loops--one set of which were crossed in the back (so that the strap on the right-hand side connects to the left-hand brooch in the front, and vice versa) and one of which (the ones near the right angle bends on both sides) were not. 

I need to think about this new information.  Maybe I need to get some really cheap scrap fabric, and experiment with pinning different strap configurations to a piece of fabric where the front is cut like the Pskov fragment.

3)  The article confirms what I had suspected from the picture of the neckline of the underdress, which is "turned inside out along the edge of its neck, cut out and gathered in fine pleats. ... The folds were fixed with a thin band, which pulled together the edges of the collar."  Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mihkailov at 297.  However, the find suggests that the brooches might in fact have been pinned into the underdress.  The article notes that "On its pin [i.e., the pin of one of the tortoise brooches], straps of linen and a fragment of a collar from a garment made from a similar linen textile were preserved."  Zubkova, Orfinskaya & Mihkailov at 292 (emphasis supplied).  


As always, any thoughts, comments, or information that might bear upon the construction of the Pskov apron dress (or anything else about the find, for that matter) would be greatly appreciated.

My Thoughts On Annika Larsson's Apron Dress Interpretation

Right now I don't have much to post about on my own costume projects, so I've decided to post about someone else's apron dress idea--Professor Annika Larsson's. Although Professor Larsson's reconstruction is no longer actively in the news, posting about it here will give me an opportunity to note all the things I like about her reconstruction--as well as the things that bother me about it--in as coherent a manner as I can manage.

Those of you who follow archaeological theories, particularly those relating to Viking material culture, may remember the rash of news articles that came out last year about Professor Larsson's theories. One of the more detailed news articles may be found here. A larger photograph of the reconstructed woman's costume based on Larsson's theories is here, and a second article, which includes an additional photograph showing the same outfit with an optional shawl, is here. These two articles have fairly tame titles; some of the other news items included titles like "Viking Women Had Sexy Style."

For example, a Science Daily article quotes Larsson as saying:

"The grave plans from excavations at Birka outside Stockholm in the 19th century show that this is incorrect. The clasps were probably worn in the middle of each breast. Traditionally this has been explained by the clasps having fallen down as the corpse rotted. That sounds like a prudish interpretation," says Annika Larsson.

I am not familiar with the Birka grave plans. However, I have seen photographs of a number of other female Viking burials that clearly show the brooches, in situ, with the brooches at or near the collarbones--nowhere near the "middle of the breast", such as the one at Cnip, on the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides (scroll down the page for the picture), and the Adwick-le-Street find, near Doncaster. (It should be remembered that the Pskov "apron dress" was not found on a skeleton, so we do not know where those brooches would have rested when the garment was being worn.)

It is not prudish to take into account the fact that positions of buried items might change as the corpse rots or other changes affect the soil over time. Nor is it prudish to consider that the pin on a tortoise brooch runs vertically along the long dimension of the brooch. If one wore such a brooch directly over the middle of the breast, as Larsson suggests, the pin would rub against the nipple. Larsson's model avoids this because her breasts are large enough, and hang low enough, that the brooches actually tilt a bit away from the body (see the photos in the articles above); that would certainly not be true of all, or even most, women.

Professor Larsson's reconstruction particularly interests me because it is based fairly directly upon the Pskov find (as will be obvious to the reader who has read some of the early summaries and examined the photographs of the textiles found in Pskov). Most of my disagreements with her work lie in the fact that her reproduction falsely represents the nature of the Pskov grave finds though it is apparently based upon them. For example:

* Larsson's reconstructed outfit appears to show a long-sleeved red silk garment being worn under the shift, instead of red silk sewn on the ends of the shift cuffs, even though the red silk cuffs in the Pskov find were clearly sewn to linen.

* Larsson's reconstruction uses trim that was meant to represent metallic brocade tablet weaving> However, so far as I have been able to determine, no tablet weaving was found among the Pskov fragments. Instead, those fragments incorporate strips of silk fabric as trim, one of which was woven in a hunting pattern and may have been an antique already at the time when the apron dress was made. (See the abstract of the Pskov researchers' article for NESAT X, coming out later this year--the Pskov abstract is on pages 26-27 of the link above.)

* Larsson's reconstructed apron dress is trimmed vertically (i.e., on the side that was oriented down the torso) instead of across the torso. Judging by the shape of the Pskov piece and the fact that a short piece of expensive silk was used on top of a longer piece of silk, the trim was likely worn across the torso instead. (Now that I think about it, every instance of tablet weaving or other trim on a Viking era garment that I'm aware of from archaeological finds involves shorter pieces, oriented horizontally on the torso, not lengthwise down the body. The Mammen cloak has vertical decoration along its edge, but that decoration is embroidery, not applied cloth or tablet weaving. See also Carolyn Priest-Dorman's article about the positioning of trim in various European cultures, including the Viking cultures, before and during the Viking age.)

To be fair to Professor Larsson, there are several aspects of her reconstruction that do not disturb me, though they have drawn fire from other costumers and members of the reeenactment community. For example.

* Some have complained about Professor Larsson's use of obviously modern metallic trim in her reconstruction. It is not always possible for a researcher to afford the types of valuable (and rare) materials used in the Viking period for reconstructions, and since Larsson was not trying to draw inferences about tablet-woven trim in making her reconstruction, I think the use of modern trim is excusable. (As I said above, it is much less excusable for her to have used such trim on a reconstruction based on the Pskov find, where no tablet-woven trim was found at all.)

* Some have argued that having only a thin layer of linen over the breasts would be too uncomfortably cold in the Scandinavian climate. That would not necessarily be the case if such an outfit were exclusively worn indoors, for display at fire-lit evening feasts, where the combination of the fire and the presence of many people would probably have contributed enough warmth to make it comfortable for a woman to wear clothing that was thinner and more revealing than usual.

Moreover, I think it is useful for Larsson to make the point that, based on what we do know from the graves, Viking women must sometimes have dressed for display, as their men did. There are finds that show that Vikings, including women, sewed metal trim and mirrors and other shiny bits to their clothes. It is worthwhile to consider how such garments would have sparkled in the firelight at feasts, and to think about that point in the context of our general knowledge of Viking culture when we think about what Vikings may have worn, and at what times. Cultural reconstruction work of any kind, including costume reconstructions, needs to consider all the available evidence to try to build a unified picture of what garments people in earlier cultures wore, and on what types of occasions those garments were worn.

More on the Pskov Finds

Today I was re-reading Google Translate's English rendition of the Russian article I'd located on the Pskov finds, and noticed that it contains an interesting paragraph about a second find containing textiles. Google Translate renders this paragraph as follows:

"For samples of organic decay of the chest defined tissue, which was buried sew clothes (studies performed ES Zubkova and OV Orfinskoy). Was able to establish four types of textiles of various colors and types of binding. In the records and annotations of materials are listed as red-brown silk fabric ( «samid»), thick woolen sarzhevogo mixing red, blue linen cloth binding and non-woven textiles of vegetable origin ( «bat»). Some fragments are preserved, and traces of the seam pattern. EA Yakovleva suggests that the burial clothes were of cotton. As the author writes in his report «bat», probably used in a quilted warm clothing, as well as stratigraphically located between two layers of tissue, and, on top «sarafan» In addition, in the layer were found separate cotton fibers and indeterminable plant fibers. Sample decay of the board, the underlying bone, showed the presence of remnants of red woolen cloth."

I suspect "samid" should be translated as "samite", a weave characteristic of Eastern silks of the period. The presence of cotton clothes, if confirmed, is very interesting indeed. However, it's possible that the "cotton" in question was only cotton batting, used in the "quilted warm clothing"--a use found during the medieval period in Europe much earlier and more commonly than woven cotton cloth.

The red and blue color scheme, on the other hand, appears in other prestigious burials of the Migration Period and in the early medieval period. Indeed, it is shared by the other Pskov textile find, the one including the apron dress remnant.

More Information About The Pskov Find

During an idle Google search the other day, I found a link to this web article, in Russian, about the Pskov finds. There were several, but the others did not have textile remains.

I ran the article through Google Translate to get an English version that I could read. Judging by Google Translate's translation, the grave that contained the large fragment believed to be a shift and apron dress was robbed in antiquity--probably between the 13th through 15th centuries. There were other metal items found besides the tortoise brooches, including "chased binding, broken bead of silver wire, round silver pendant ornamented with a triangle of grain, ring-shaped fibula with a needle and scraps chain". The article mentioned the textiles wrapped around the tortoise brooches, and supplied this description of the figured silk trimming: "In the process of restoration of tissue revealed that it consisted of strips of silk, on which the medallions are depicted with the fantastic animals and flowers."

I commend the article to your attention, whether or not you read Russian. It includes good color photographs of metal jewelry and other metal artifacts from all the Pskov sites, including some highly ornate tortoise brooches.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Which Side Is Up?

The question of the placement of loops or straps on the piece believed to be the surviving portion of an apron dress from the Pskov grave is intertwined with the question of which side was the top side, and where on the body the piece would have appeared when the dress was worn.

The Pskov reconstructors have assumed, reasonably I think, that the wide blue silk piece with the red silk woven with a hunting design appliquéd on it would have been at the front and top of the dress, and that the narrower blue silk strips would have gone around the rest of the top of the dress. As can be seen from this sketch, the reconstructors concluded that the angle where the narrow blue silk strips join the front piece bearing the red patterned silk would be located approximately at the armpits when the dress was worn, and that the front panel rose higher on the body than the rest of the apron dress.

This theory strikes me as improbable. Cutting the dress this way would require the loops connecting the back to the front of the dress to be even longer than usual (as the sketch clearly indicates) and would make the dress even likelier to fall off the shoulders than the 85 cm placement of the front loops would do.

In addition, the top edge of an apron dress naturally comes to armpit level. Cutting the dress lower at the armpits is unnecessary for comfort; if the dress were too tight at the armpit lengthening the straps a bit, or perhaps moving one of the loops a few millimeters, would be enough to alleviate the problem.

Suppose instead that the reconstructors are placing the piece upside down. If you invert it as I have shown below, there is no dip at the armpits and the top of the dress is at the same level all around. It becomes possible to place multiple pairs of loops, and pull the dress more tightly around the body, so that the red silk stripe across the wide blue silk panel in the front is plainly visible.

The first sketch displayed with this post attempts to show what I mean. The dotted line at the top of the drawing is where I suggest the top of the fabric originally ended, with the portion outlined in red showing (roughly) the surviving textile. Compare it, if you will, to Peter Beatson's sketch of the top portion of the apron dress here.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the find to be able to say whether there are physical details on the "apron dress" piece that rule out this hypothesis. For example, I don't know how many actual loops were found, and whether any of them were found attached to the apron dress. I also don't know whether the stitch hole locations were or what they look like, and thus I can't begin to guess whether they could have been anything other than locations where the loops were fastened to the apron dress.

My view of how the outfit likely appeared in wear is shown in the second sketch, which appears to the right. Yes, it's clear from the sketch that I'm no graphic artist, but what I'm trying to show here is the gathered neck shift of the Pskov reconstructors' theory under a wrap around apron dress much like my orange one. I have shown the apron dress to be somewhat shorter in length than the shift so that the red silk strip sewn to the bottom of the shift shows beneath the apron dress.

I still want to photograph my orange dress, spread absolutely flat, measure to see how far all of the loops are from each other, and compare that photograph to the sketch of the Pskov piece, but these sketches should show where I'm going with this line of thought. Any comments on my theory would be greatly appreciated.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Apron Dress Design, Part Two

In addition to thinking about the fabrics I should use for the Pskov apron dress, I've been pondering the actual design of the apron dress itself.

Today, no one knows exactly how apron dresses were made. We know they were held up by fabric loops that hooked over the pins of tortoise brooches, because the loops and brooches are almost always all that remains of the dresses in the graves. But the design possibilities for the body of the dress are varied, and include tubes both plain and pleated, flat sheets wrapped around the body, and fitted garments that look like modern pinafores.

The fabric find from Pskov that is believed to be the apron dress is fairly large--large enough to have been either part of a body-encircling tube or a flat sheet. It is not clear from their reconstruction drawing whether the Pskov reconstructors have assumed that the original was a wrapped flat sheet or a tube, either of which is a supportable position, given that we do not have a surviving piece that is large enough to rule out a tube shape.

On the other hand, the stitch holes in this piece that the reconstructors assume to have indicated the original locations of the fabric loops on the front of the garment were 85 cm apart.

As costumers and reenactors who have dabbled in reconstructing apron dresses know, those dresses fit most comfortably and stay up best if the front loops are placed between 15 to 20 cm apart. 85 cm, more than four times as wide as that measurement, will just about completely encircle my modest mammary endowment. The Pskov reconstructors understand how wide this would make the garment, which is why their tentative reconstruction drawing shows the front part of the garment hanging low in front, nearly to the waist.

However, having the front loops positioned so far apart and the front of the dress hanging so low poses real practicality problems. Peter Beatson's summary discusses one of them. He notes, correctly I think, that if the front loops were 85 cm apart, the dress would tend to slip off the shoulders when the dress was worn.

But there is another problem.

As I have noted in a previous post, the portion of the dress that has survived is expensively trimmed, not just with plain blue silk, but with an elaborate, pictorially-patterned silk that may have been 100 years old at the time the dress was made--an expensive antique. The reconstructors concluded, very plausibly, that this part would be the top front of the apron dress. But then they concluded that the front of the dress would hang in low folds that would have the effect of hiding the expensive silk trim from view. Why go to the effort to sew that narrow bit of expensive, rare silk on a part of the dress that will just sag into folds, making the rare strip of silk nearly impossible to see?

I don't think any Viking or Rus woman would have done that. Everything we know about Vikings and Rus suggest that they were very status conscious and sought to display their wealth in clothing and jewelry as prominently as they could. I think that means that the wearer of the Pskov apron dress would have displayed that valuable antique silk prominently on the front and center on her chest, unobscured by folds. That would be especially true in the early/medieval period, when clothing served the same kind of social display function as Maseratis and Jaguars do now (and could be nearly as costly).

What I'm thinking is that it may be more likely that the Pskov apron dress was not a tube-shaped dress, but was a wrapped sheet, held closely against the body by more than two pairs of loops. With the information I now have about the find, I cannot say whether this explanation is already ruled out by the surviving apron dress piece or not. I know that the Pskov team found some short loops, and the apron dress piece has stitch holes that are approximately 85 cm apart. But I don't know whether there are other locations on the find that might also have traces of stitch holes, let alone how far from the two identified stitch holes such additional areas might be.

Moreover, no one knows the original dimensions of the fabric piece that is believed to be the surviving portion of the body of the apron dress. The front panel with the two kinds of silk appliqued onto it is complete, but there are narrow pieces of silk leading from it that likely ran across the rest of the top of the dress--and those strips are damaged on the ends and obviously incomplete. This matters because a wrapped apron dress needs at least three sets of loops--one pair in front, one in back, and one to support the wrap-around section. The photograph with this entry, which shows my orange wraparound apron dress laid out more or less flat, may help make the nature of the problem clearer.

If the Pskov reconstructors had found other stitch holes than the two sets that are 85 cm apart, they likely would have incorporated them into their reconstruction. However, that fact alone doesn't mean there weren't other loops. For example, there could have been loops on the other parts of the dress--the parts beyond the ends of the thinner silk strips--that did not survive. I need to think about whether it is possible to create a three-pair-of-loops arrangement that is consistent with the condition of the Pskov "front" piece.

In addition, there is a question about which side of the Pskov piece is "right side up", but I'll get to that in a later post.

EDIT: I've thought of a technique that may give me a better handle on the problem and how to come up with a working design, but I don't have time to work on implementing it tonight, and I'll be away all weekend at a science fiction convention. Maybe I can get to it next week, though next weekend is more likely.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Apron Dress Design, Part One

The second garment of which the Pskov reconstructors found fragments is believed to be a Viking style apron dress. They believe this because they found small linen loops, of the same type found in and with apron dresses in other Viking era finds, and the larger textiles were found wrapped around a pair of tortoise brooches.

The fabric photos at the top of this post are the fabrics I have chosen for my apron dress reconstruction. In order to describe why I selected those fabrics and colors, a little more description of the actual find is required.

The piece that is believed to be the surviving portion of an apron dress is 152 cm long and 25.5 cm wide. It is composed of two different kinds of silk sewn onto linen; a blue silk and what Beatson described as a purplish-red silk. Most of the piece consists of the blue silk, but a narrow (9 cm) piece of the purplish-red silk is appliqued on top of the blue silk, down the middle of the center panel, creating a striped effect. A picture of the purplish-red silk I bought is at the top. Narrow strips of the blue silk protrude from two of the corners of the long dimension of the piece, and the outer edges of the piece are edged with piping made from the same blue silk. The silk I have chosen for these portions is seen at the right.

As for the linen body of the apron dress, the photographed loop is of a darkish blue, and indigotin (the active colorant in both woad and indigo) is one of the few vegetable dyes that work well on linen, so I have assumed that the body of the apron dress consisted of blue linen. Because I wanted to have some contrast between the blue silk and the blue linen, I chose a blue that is lighter than my blue silk but darker than the blue I plan to use for the shift. The final photograph (below the purplish-red silk) is of that linen.

I am torn between beginning this project and waiting to see whether the full write-up of the find in NESAT X provides me with additional details. What has made me seriously consider the latter course of action is a critical detail that I learned from the abstract of the NESAT X article; namely, that the purplish-red silk in the Pskov find was patterned. The abstract observes:

On silken cloth no. 1, a woven pattern has been recognized with a scene of the Sassanian prince Bahram Gur hunting. In Europe, cloths with similar designs are known by finds from Milan, Cologne, and Prague. Within the territory of Russia they have been found at mountain burial grounds of the northern Caucasus. All of them are dated, at the latest, to the 9th century being imitations of the earlier Sassanian textiles.

That suggests, to me, that the reddish-purple strip is not only a much more costly patterned silk, but may have been an antique at the time it was appliqued onto the apron dress, since the Pskov find was dated to the tenth century, but the Sassanian-designed cloth is similar to ninth century textiles. (However, I don't yet know the reconstructors' basis for dating the Pskov find itself to the tenth century.)

So now I'm thinking about getting a patterned cloth to replace my purplish-red silk for the center strip trimming the front of the apron dress. I found this cotton upholstery fabric on EBay. It's available from the Waverly line of fabrics and is called "Persia". Though it mimics a hunting pattern from a later period (16th century), I suspect that it is closer to the fabric in the Pskov find than a plain silk would be.

Comments, anyone?

Pskov Re-Creation Project--A Clue About Apron Dress Length?

It occurred to me this evening that the Pskov find may have given the reenactment and costuming world a clue about a topic that some people have wondered about for a long time, namely, how long at least one Viking apron dress actually was.

One of the pieces found was a strip of silk, 4.2 cm (about an inch and a half) wide, that the reconstructors suggest trimmed the hem of the shift. If they're right, the apron dress had to be at least 1 1/2 to 2 inches shorter than the shift. If the apron dress were longer, the silk strip would not show, and it would have been pointless to sew it on to the shift's hem.

If the shift-like garment shown on the Adamklissi sculpture is typical of shifts worn by Russian women, the shift hem fell just above the ankle. If the Pskov shift was that length, the apron dress was at least high enough to show the red silk trim at the hem. (If it wasn't, why bother to sew silk on in the first place?)

Yes, that's a long chain of suppositions. Russian women were likely wearing different shift styles by the 10th century--a long, long time after the Adamklissi sculpture was made. Nor can we be certain that the red strip was part of the shift's hem; it might have been used as trimming elsewhere on the shift, or belong to a different garment altogther (such as the apron dress itself). Even if the silk strip did trim the hem of the shift, and the apron dress was cut to reveal it, we can't say exactly how much of the linen shift showed between the top of the silk trim and the hem of the apron dress.

Other sources have claimed that Russian women wore their shifts anywhere from floor-length to calf-length. (More on that later.) So I will assume, for purposes of my Pskov project, that the Pskov shift was ankle-length, and make the apron dress about 3 or 4 inches shorter--short enough to reveall all of the red strip, and a bit of linen above it for contrast.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--More Thoughts About The Shift

I am still pondering exactly how I will construct the shift for my Pskov reconstruction. Since my last post on this subject, I have re-read a web article by Hilde Thunem, which discusses various archaeological textile finds and artwork from the Viking Age in order to arrive at an appropriate (and at least potentially dateable) Viking shift design.

I had read this article before, but noticed that Ms. Thunem had added some information to the article since I had last read it. Among the added information were two photographs which she identified as showing pleated "south Slavic serks." These were of interest to her because the Kievan empire was a major linen producing area in the Viking age, and scholars, particularly Agnes Geijer, have suggested that the women at Birka imported the pleated linen shifts of which traces have been found from Russia. Both photos are from the Trajan monument in Adamklissi, Romania, and thus earlier than the Viking period, but still of interest in the absence of better information. They are even more of interest to me at the moment, since I am trying to recreate a garment that was found, and presumably worn, in Russia instead of one of the Birka finds.

The photo on the right appears to show a man, instead of a woman, and the garment he is wearing is ambiguous in cut. It could be a pleated shift with no sleeves and a draped front, or a shawl-like garment over a loose (but not pleated) shift, for example. However, I am more interested in the photo on the left. This photo shows two women, each in short-sleeved garments that are gathered or pleated into banded necklines. However, unlike the Pskov remnant, no tie strings are in evidence; except for the pleating, the neckline is more like the Manazan shirt I've just made for myself than anything else I've seen. Even more curiously, the garments appear to stop, or be belted, at the hipline, before falling into a loose skirt.

Other than suggesting that Slavic women apparently wore shifts with pleated necklines for a long, long time, the photo on the left raises a number of questions. Is this image evidence that Slavic women sometimes wore shifts with stand collars during the Roman era? Were they doing so continuously until the tenth century? If so, how were those collars made? Did they have a flap that buttoned closed like the Manazan shift (a feature that might not have been shown by the artist)? Or did they tie closed? If they tied closed, where are the tell-tale tie-strings? Would the slit have been down the front or down one shoulder? Is the garment really a hip-length shirt worn with a skirt, or is it just a long shift belted at the hipline?

I do not intend to add a stand collar to my Pskov shift, since the find itself clearly indicates that there was no collar, merely a strip used to hold the gathers/pleats of the neckline in place. But it would be interesting if the sculpture had provided support for my original conjecture that the Pskov shift had a slit down the shoulder, instead of in front.

It is also interesting that the garment is shown with short sleeves. We know that the Pskov shift had long sleeves because the tall silk cuffs survived. Or do we? Could the red silk pieces be short sleeves, instead of deep cuffs for long sleeves? No, they are unlikely to be short sleeves, because they measure only 21 cm in circumference around the ends--and that is barely enough room for me to force my small hand through. Similarly, the Pskov shift had a deep strip of silk sewn at the bottom--suggesting that the garment was longer than hip-length.

There is much food for thought here. I should seek out other period artwork showing women in shifts--if I can find any.

EDIT: I looked at the Adamklissi sculpture more closely and now think that it shows a belted garment, with the cloth bloused over or perhaps rolled over the belt. Comments from anyone who disagrees would be appreciated.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--A General Question

Have any of you made a garment that has a small round pleated neckline with ties or a drawstring? If so, how did you decide how wide a piece to use for the body of the garment? I've never tried to make that type of garment before and any comments would be appreciated.

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Planning The Shift

I have already purchased the fabric I plan to use for my reconstruction of the Pskov costume; the photographs you see here show the two fabrics, and in my opinion give an excellent idea of the effect they will have in the final product, even though the silk, if not the linen, is a significantly darker shade than the photographs show. For the shift, I obtained a light-weight, light blue linen, because the shift is believed to have been blue (although the surviving shift pieces are now a light brown, as the Pskov pictures show). The shift fabric picture appears on the left.The surviving loops from the apron dress portion are a much darker blue; however, I think it likely that the shift would have been lighter in color and weight than the apron dress, so I have planned accordingly in obtaining my fabric. I bought a dark red silk broadcloth to trim the cuffs and hem. A picture of the silk appears on the right.

Some aspects of the reconstruction will be simple, because the surviving bits provide a good deal of information. It is clear, for example, that the cuffs are long and fairly narrow--the measurements of the fragments tell us that, just as they tell us how wide to make the silk strip that trims them. Similarly, the width of the strip at the hem is known, though we don't know how far down on the wearer's body the hemline came. The reconstructors have assumed that the shift was ankle-length, and having no evidence on the point I'm willing to accept that assumption for my purposes.

But the neckline raises questions. We can tell from the neck portion that survives that the neckline wass gathered into sewn pleats, which are anchored with a folded strip of the same fabric. That strip extends past the ends of the neck opening and apparently served as a tie string. However, this means that, that unlike the neck openings of many tunics of the period, the neck opening of the Pskov shift was not cut out of the center of a larger piece of fabric. If that had been done, there would be no need to pleat the fabric to neck size. Clearly, the neckline was done by pleating much larger pieces of fabric to neck size, sewing (or perhaps only tacking) the pleats in place, and then sewing the strip of fabric that would become the neck string over it.

So how should I cut the body of the shift, and how should I make the opening that I will need to pleat down to neck size?

The Pskov team hypothesizes that the shift had a gathered neckline that tied closed in the front, and long sleeves which ended in the red-trimmed cuffs, as shown in this sketch. But I have reservations about this proposed design. The surviving piece suggests that the body of the shift was made of two pieces of cloth, with the center portions pleated to form the neckline (leaving a bit of unpleated section to form a slit to allow for passage of the wearer's head) and the rest seamed together at the shoulders. How does one make this style of shift, however, if the opening is in the center front, as the reconstructors suggest?

I suppose that it would work to make the shift out of three pieces of cloth: one wide piece for the back, and two pieces each about half as wide as the back piece for the front. The front pieces could be seamed together, leaving a slit for the head, and then the body could be pleated to the appropriate neck size.

It seems to me, though, that this type of neckline introduces extra steps (splitting and then seaming the front pieces) that aren't really necessary. It is easy enough to pleat a neckline from only two wide pieces of cloth--provided you don't intend to have the slit down the front. If the slit extends down the shoulder, no additional cutting is necessary; you seam the front and back pieces together at the shoulder and pleat your neckhole to size, leaving the slit down the top side where the shoulder will be, install your stay strip/neck string, and seam the shoulders together. Tunics with slit openings down the shoulder have been documented in early Russia (though perhaps not as early as the Pskov find's 10th century date) and in Byzantium also. In addition, the surviving neck piece from Pskov appears to show evidence of being sewn into the dress in only one place, not two as would be required with a front opening.

Am I crazy? Is there something I'm missing? Any thoughts would be appreciated (particularly before I cut my cloth). :-)

Pskov Re-Creation Project--Introduction

In 2007, shortly after reading Peter Beatson's summary of the Pskov fabric find, I decided to attempt my own reconstruction of a costume represented by a substantial collection of textile fragments found in a birchbark box in one of the graves.

The textiles included fragments of the neckline, hem and cuffs of what were assumed to be part of a linen shift or undertunic; the hem and cuffs were trimmed with wide strips of what appears to have been red silk. The other fragment was about five feet (152 cm) long and 9 inches (25 cm) wide. It was made of blue-colored linen, but was trimmed with three strips of colored silk, two of which were blue, one of which reddish and was patterned. This piece is believed to be the remains of an apron dress, because it was found wrapped around a pair of large tortoise brooches with blue linen loops still inside them.

I plan to reconstruct both the shift and the apron dress as part of this project. I've supplied links to all of the photographs because I am hoping to get feedback from my readers, both as to the viability and correctness of the Pskov archaeological team's proposed reconstruction and on my own thoughts about how to reconstruct these garments.

Note: the photos I have reference in this post were linked to by Peter Beatson, but came from the Pskov team's website, which is written in Russian. The original Russian web page seems now to be unavailable, but a translation into English of that site by Lisa Kies is available here. EDIT: I have revised the entry to show the photographs as they appear in Lisa Kies's translation of the Pskov's team's former website.