Sea Silk

In the Mediterranean, there lives a type of clam called the noble pen shell, or pinna nobilis.  Its saliva, when it contacts sea water, solidifies as delicate strands called byssus, or sea silk. This BBC article discusses a Sardinian woman named Chiara Vigo who may be the last woman alive who knows how to harvest, spin, dye, and weave this precious fiber. 

Ms. Vigo does not sell her work, believing that byssus belongs to all humanity, but gives her creations away as gifts. Her daughter, who lives in Dublin, is the natural heir to this knowledge, but is torn about whether she is willing to dedicate her life to learning, preserving, and ultimately transmitting it.  

Do not miss this article.  The photographs and embedded video alone are worth viewing for those who love history and are fascinated by the history of textiles and clothing.  

Oseberg Silk Reconstruction

The video embedded in this post shows Åse Eriksen weaving a reproduction of one of the silk textiles found in the Oseberg ship on a modern loom.  Judging by page, Ms. Eriksen normally specializes in weaving ornamental panels for modern ecclesiastical vestments. 

The only really surprising thing about the textile is how bold the color scheme is.  Red, green, white, yellow--all in the same textile.  Such a combination is not one that is commonly used in clothing, or even interior decoration, today.

Other YouTube videos by Ms. Eriksen show the weaving of samite (otherwise known as weft-faced compound twill) and warp-faced compound twill (used in early silk textiles by the Chinese), two types of weave that are rarely made today.   Ms. Eriksen describes her samite weaving project, and talks about the upright loom she built to weave samite, here.  I do not know enough about the weaving process to properly appreciate Ms. Eriksen's experiments, but I think it wonderful that she has explored these weaves, and thus I am making them more easily available to other costumers with a weaving background.

Although Ms. Erickson's website is written in Danish, it is worthwhile to explore it even if you are not a Danish speaker (perhaps with the aid of Google Translate), because it contains information about other early silk textile weaves.

Vikings and Silk

One of Sofie Krafft's watercolors, depicting a silk fragment
from the Oseberg grave along with reconstruction of the full
 pattern. Photo:   Kulturhistorisk museum/Museum of Cultural History, Norway

Recently, I obtained and read Marianne Vedeler's latest book, Silk for the Vikings(Ancient Textiles Series Vol. 15, Oxbow Books, 2014).  Silk for the Vikings is a well-written piece of research that will be the most useful to historical costumers who have made themselves familiar with a goodly proportion of the published archaeological finds, and the existing scholarship about Viking era costume.  

Professor Vedeler focuses primarily upon the availability of silk fabrics to the Vikings and the social and cultural signals given through its use. Nonetheless, the book also contains some lovely full-color photographs of silk finds, as well as some useful information to fuel the deductions of  archaeologists, reenactors, and costumers interested in Viking age clothing.  Some of the details that form the basis of Vedeler's deductions about how silk fabrics ended up in Scandinavia are more interesting than the deductions themselves. Here are some of the details that surprised or intrigued me:

• Of the Viking age Scandinavian graves where silk has been found and a determination of gender has been made, the overwhelming majority were female graves.   Vedeler notes, "Silk has been found in 94 graves in total.  Of these, 52 are interpreted as female graves while 19 are male.  Nine graves contained both a man and a woman, and in 14 cases the silk were [sic] found in graves where the gender of the deceased is unknown, or in another context."  (Page 33, fn. 147).  

• There is clear evidence that some women, at least, used strips of samite silk to trim the tops of their apron dresses.  Vedeler says:  "In some cases, samite silk has been found on the back side of oval brooches, indicating that the silk was part of the suspended dress in the chest area."  She cites examples from Veka in Voss (Norway) and in Tuna in Badelunda (Sweden).  (Page 37).  However, silk strips have also been found in graves without tortoise brooches, indicating that silk was used to trim other kinds of clothing also.  (Page 38).

• Most of the silk found in Viking age graves is from Central Asia, Byzantium, or other regions close to those areas.  However, a few that appear to be Chinese have been found at Birka.  (Page 38).

• There is evidence that Vikings who served in the Varangian Guard in Byzantium were sometime rewarded with silk collars and strips taken from skaramaggia.  A skaramagion is a overtunic with long sleeves associated with the Emperor of Byzantium and other Byzantine men of high rank.  This suggests that some of the silk strips found in Viking graves may have come to Scandinavia in that condition, and not as larger pieces.  (Page 106).

After reading the book, I started searching for real silk fabrics with a design similar to the Sogdian samite silks of the period, since they are a known Central Asian type, though Vedeler notes that most samites found in Viking graves are too faded to be identified readily by pattern.  (Page 35)  Unfortunately, judging by Google, there doesn't seem to be much of a market for reproductions of the stylized patterns characteristic of Sogdian silks.  I will just have to keep looking out for plausible patterned silks to cut into suitably-sized strips to decorate my Viking clothing.