A Western "Savanion"?

As time permits between shoveling out from various blizzards and doing other things, I have been reading the other articles in NESAT X.

One of the articles, "Elite and Military Scandinavian Dress as Portrayed in the Lewis Chess Pieces", is an analysis by Elizabeth Wincott Heckett of the costume details shown in the famous Isle of Lewis chess pieces (cited hereafter as "Heckett").  Heckett mentions that there are other chess piece finds which date approximately to the same time period (i.e., the 12th Century), including a queen that was found in County Meath, Ireland.  The sketch on the right, reproduced from Heckett's article, shows the piece. Heckett makes this comment (Heckett, p. 272. ), which appears to apply to both this piece and the queens among the Lewis chess pieces as well:

It became apparent to the author, whilst analysing silk and wool headcoverings from Viking Age Dublin that comparisons can be made between specific archaeological finds and the Lewis Chessmen.  For example, the queens wear shoulder-length veils under their crowns, and a purple silk cloth-piece from Dublin has the right dimensions to be worn in this way.

Heckett's comment may well be true of the Lewis pieces, but what the chesspiece from County Meath appears to be wearing does not look to me like a crown worn over a short veil.  To me, it looks rather like a wrapped linen headdress; specifically, it looks like the savanion I made for myself last year.  I have placed head shots of myself in the savanion and of the County Meath chesspiece side-by-side here for comparison.  Readers may also recall the later Irish headdresses of the same type, which I discussed here.

Immediately after Heckett's article in the NESAT volume is an article by Anna Zanchi called "Headwear, Footwear, and Belts in the Íslendingasögur and Íslendingaþættir" (cited as "Zanchi").  Zanchi points to portions of these sagas which indicate that Icelandic women wore several different kinds of wrapped headdresses, one of which, the lín, appear to have been worn by women in general:

While it is impossible to identify with precision the nature of the lín-headdress worn by Guþrún's maids-in-waiting, the hofuþdúkr (headcloth), its use and its design, can be understood by the situations in which it is described.  The twenty-ells-long hofuþdúkr that Gísli wishes to give to Ásgerþr implies a garment that was repeatedly wrapped around a woman's head. As Ásgerþr is already married, there is no reason to belive that this particular headpiece was meant singularly for the purposes of a marriage ceremony.

Zanchi, p. 278 (emphasis supplied; internal citations to the sagas omitted).

Zanchi and Heckett have given me food for thought.  Though neither have provided evidence for wrapped headwear among Viking Age Scandinavian women, they have produced some interesting evidence that headdresses like the savanion were worn, not just in Byzantium, but in Scandinavia and Ireland in the 12th-13th centuries (the Íslendingasögur and Íslendingaþættir date to the 13th century). I find interesting the possibility that similar headwear fashions appeared in such geographically-separated parts of Europe at that date.

The Savanion Complete

Finally, here are pictures of my savanion in wear. I made sure I ironed it before starting to wrap it around my head. That simple act has improved its appearance greatly over what it had been in my initial trial run wearing. I still need five minutes to wrap it properly, but once I have it wrapped and tucked it feels very solid and secure. I think it's rather flattering, even if it does make my head look huge.

While he was taking these photographs, my husband remarked that he thought the savanion looked rather like male Islamic headwear. Since the savanion is a close cousin of the turban, structurally speaking, and some Middle Byzantine women actually wore turbans instead, that strikes me as a rather astute observation.

Meanwhile, I am making good progress on the mantion, considering the fact that work and vacation plans have intervened. Hopefully, I will finish it before the end of the summer and can get started on the final, most important component of the outfit--the himation.

Sewing for Byzantium--Making The Savanion

As I mentioned a while ago, I'm also sewing a savanion to wear as part of my Byzantine outfit. In its early form (which is what I'm making), the savanion is nothing more than a long strip (about 3 meters) of hemmed cloth, which is then draped and tucked around a woman's head to form a kind of veil-and-quasi-turban combo. I had about a yard of 59-inch-wide cloth, so all I had to do was to tear the fabric into three strips of equal length and width and sew them together end to end. Most of the work consists of folding the edge and hemstitching, so I expect it to go quickly, and so far it is. At this point, I have the three pieces firmly seamed together and am working on hemming all four edges.

I started experimenting with wrapping the savanion as soon as I had the three pieces sewn into a single strip. So far, I've learned several things about the process:

* The hardest part is keeping the strip evenly folded while you pass it around your head;
* I need to fold the strip much narrower than Tim Dawson suggests in order to obtain a visually similar result to the reconstruction on the Levantia site;
* Once wrapped, no pins are required to hold the savanion in place; it's sufficient to tuck the end firmly inside the wrapped cylinder because the layers of linen grip each other pretty well, and are not inclined to slip and unwind.

I can see why the Byzantines ultimately gave up on wrapping and, as was done with the men's chaperone in 15th century Europe, just sewed the savanion so that it could be put on like a hat. Wrapping the thing for the first time took me about 5 minutes, with a large mirror to use as my guide. Even if we assume that the process of wrapping one's head with linen was part of the daily routine for a Byzantine woman, it must have been a nuisance to deal with, at least sometimes. I may end up tacking the last 3/4ths of the strip into a folded piece of the correct size, to facilitate the wrapping.