A Bit More About Skoldehamn

Today, I found yet another Skoldehamn hood tutorial.  This one is geared toward people interested in attempting to make their hood as faithful a copy of the original as possible.  The tutorial was prepared by Eleanor Deyeson, an SCA member.  Her tutorial may be found here. 

Eleanor's tutorial is specifically geared to people who are not only planning to use the pattern of the original but are also prepared to use the correct types of handstitching that the original employs. (Note that Eleanor makes hood "kits" with pre-cut fabric pieces for making your own hood; they are available here; however, the ones available at present do not include wool fabric, which the original used.) She sees the particular stitches used in the original hood as eminently practical, as is clear from this comment from her tutorial:

I hope you enjoy learning about these various finishing techniques. Each has a functional effect, with any decoration as a bonus secondary effect. The stitching on the gore and back seams helps the hood lay flatter and the hood just looks better. The cord that is couched along the face opening helps stiffen the opening, and prevents friction from affecting the cut/folded hood edge. The “mohawk” on the top stiffens the hood, and possibly provides some comfort benefits while wearing in a cold, windy environment. Remember that the original location is on the same latitude as Point Lay, Alaska or Murmansk, Russia. 

The last point made in the above quote is particularly relevant, as many Viking reenactors and SCA participants are making clothing to wear in areas much warmer than Skoldehamn, which is located inside the Arctic Circle.  There is nothing wrong with making clothing for historical events based upon original finds, but it can be important to keep in mind that the conditions you will face at your event may differ radically from the conditions in which the original item was used.  

A Tale of Three Tutorials

Last month, I talked about how historical costuming tutorials posted to the Internet may vary greatly in the degree of authenticity they may provide.

By chance, a few days after that post was written I found a perfect illustration of the point I was trying to make. Specifically, I found three different tutorials, from three different people, all purporting to teach the reader how to make a version of a particular historical garment--the Skoldehamn hood.

The Skoldehamn hood is part of a suit of largely intact clothing that was found on a bog body in Norway that has been dated to the 11th century CE.  The body was originally found in 1936, so well preserved that at first the finders thought they had discovered the victim of a recent murder.

Dan Lovlid is the scholar currently studying the Skoldehamn garments.  My costuming friend, pearl, excellently paraphrases Lovlid's description of the surviving hood on her projects page, here (scroll down to about the middle of the page for the section about the hood).  She reviewed the descriptions by Lovlid and other scholars of the hood's construction and describes the hood as follows:

The fabric of the hood is a woolen 2/2 twill, believed to have originally been dark brown in color, with the warp dark grey and the weft a lighter grey, giving an overall buff (yellow-brown) appearance. ... The cutting pattern appears to have used this fabric very efficiently, as the pieces were comprised of rectangles and squares, all approximately 30-60 cm wide. ... The gores in the front and back of the hood, while not unusual in their placement, are unusual in that they are not curved along the bottom edge. In fact, they are simple squares, that effectively widen the skirt of the hood, so that it can fit over the shoulders. It measures approximately 138 cm around the hem.

According to Løvlid, the hood is made from three pieces of wool, not four. The main part of the hood is actually a single piece, that was split up the middle to form the face-hole, except for the final 2.5 cm, and possibly a 1 cm section between the face-hole and front gore.  The top of the hood has an angled seam, that is deeper at the front than the back, giving the hood a protrusion on top that looks similar to a cockscomb. This also causes the hood to sit further forward, providing more protection for the face. The top edges, forming the cockscomb, had been turned inward and sewn together with whipstitches in a grey-brown thread from along the top of the hood. A second seam in a darker brown, beginning near the face-hole ran 3-8 mm below this edge, while a third (seemingly from the same wool as the hoods' warp) is parallel at 10-15 mm from the top. Finally, a fourth seam creates the comb at its final height of 22 to 27 mm. The front and back gores are attached with whipstitching in dark brown wool, which simultaneously tacked the seam allowance to the outside of the hood. The bottom edge of the hood is whip stitched, with neat stitches that run parallel to the grain of the fabric, and there is no evidence that the hem was folded over. 

Thicker wool, now brown but originally red and yellow, was possibly meant to be used in a simple embroidery. A red thread is used on the right-hand side of the face opening, running over the top of the hood for 15 cm, before being replaced by a yellow thread that continues to the bottom, in whipstitch. These threads were knotted at both the start and end of their paths. A second golden-coloured thread decorates the back seam of the hood, but this 'embroidery' is described as an oblique basting stitch. Although all these seams appear to have been sewn from the outside, that does not necessarily mean these stitches were 'decorative' and in a contrasting thread. ...

Two cords, one on each side of the head below ear-height (13 cm from the bottom hem), were sewn on, and were preserved as being tied underneath the chin. The left-hand cord is fully preserved, and 6 cm long with a tufted end, that is covered with a little piece of green woven fabric. It was braided with two pairs of olive-green, and two pairs of red-brown threads in a clockwise spiralling pattern (all internal citations omitted) (boldface emphasis added; italic emphasis in original).

I have quoted this discussion at length as a demonstration of how some easily available "Skjoldehamn Hood tutorials" on the Internet differ widely in the techniques used and the appearance of the final product from the surviving garment.  I have emphasized the primary elements of the physical construction in the above description.  Let's compare the three tutorials I found to this description in order of decreasing resemblance to the original.

1.  Kristine of Náttmál published this tutorial describing how she made her version of the hood. The best part of this tutorial is that Kristine expressly takes note of all the places where she did things differently from what can be observed on the original garment.

Kristine preserves the three-piece aspect of the pattern, and uses a split in the main piece for the face hole, as was true of the original. However, she uses running stitch to join the pieces and then creates felled seams with whipstitches. In addition, she lines the hood, even though there is no sign of a lining of the original, and thus she folds all of the edges to the inside.  With regard to the top seams, that create the cock's comb effect, she uses only a single seam.  Kristine's version adds the cords, but makes a single color cord with a lucet instead of doing a four-strand fingerbraid in two different colors.  She also omits the allegedly decorative stitching in red and yellow.  Finally, Kristine sewed her hood with linen thread, not wool as used in the original.

2.  The woman who blogs at Geirlaug.blogg.se takes much simpler approach; her tutorial can be found here.  She also correctly uses three pieces of fabric for the hood, but does not cut a slit in the big piece for the face; instead she cuts it as a much longer rectangle than in the original design, folds this long piece in half lengthwise, and fits the smaller square pieces into the bottom. She does not use a seam to make the "cock's comb" at the top of the hood, and she omits the cords on the back. Like Kristine, she sews her hood with linen thread using a running stitch but finishes edges and seams with whipstitch.  However, her versions of the Skjoldehamn hood are unlined, like the original. Her tutorial is aimed at people who want a hood that looks at least somewhat like the Skjoldehamn hood (it lacks the coxcomb shape to the top of the hood and the closer fit around the face) but is simpler and faster to make.

3.   I also found a tutorial on Imgur, here. This tutorial, by probablyilsa, recommends cutting a set of three pieces out of both an exterior fabric and a lining, sewing each set together, putting the lining inside the hood exterior (right sides together) and then turning the resulting hood right side out to complete the process--which is a modern lining technique.  She also recommends cutting part of one edge from each of the two square gores before sewing them to the main piece, on the ground that this will make it easier to sew in the gores.  Interestingly, probablyilsa recommends stitching around the face opening (though she doesn't suggest this is meant to be decorative).  As with the Geirlaug.blogg.se design, there are no top seams and no back cords, and the face opening is even wider than the face opening in the Geirlaug.blogg.se design.  There is no indication of the type of stitches used, and it is possible that this pattern is meant to be sewn using a sewing machine (though the writer does not say so). The tutorial is labeled an "Easy Skjoldehamn Hood", though that may only be true for people familiar with modern sewing techniques.

I've discussed these tutorials to make the point that it's important to understand what you're trying to accomplish with your project before you choose a tutorial to help you create it.  For example, if you want to try to duplicate the exact look of the Skjoldehamn hood, or understand how the medieval techniques used in the original affect the sewing process, you should work with Kristine's tutorial, because that tutorial preserves a lot of the steps that would have been involved in making the original and explains what she's left out.  If you want a simple hood that looks somewhat like the Skjoldehamn hood and are willing to do some handsewing to achieve that objective, the Geirlaug.blogg.se tutorial may work for you. Finally, if you need a lined hood that can be run up quickly on a sewing machine, the Imgur tutorial would suit you best.

In short, don't take all advice you read on the Internet (including mine!) at face value.  Don't be afraid to review carefully whatever tutorial you're thinking of using and doing some research of your own before making a choice.  Not every historical costuming project needs to be a museum-quality replica. Only you can decide what compromises you are prepared to make and what level of consistency with the original will satisfy you.  Just remember:  All tutorials for a historical style are not necessarily alike.

A Brief Observation about the Skjoldehamn Hood

19th century Finnish woodsman

Readers of this blog with an interest in the costume of the residents of Scandinavia during the Viking age will doubtless be familiar with the Skjoldehamn find; a body with a complete costume consisting of a shirt, an over-shirt, belt, trousers, foot-wrappings, socks, shoes, and a hood that was found in northwestern Norway during the 1930s. Originally feared to be the body of a recent crime victim when it was first discovered, the age at death, ethnic origin and gender of the body continue to be debated, with the latest hypothesis (by Dan Halvard Løvlid) being that the buried person was Saami from late in the Viking period.

A few months ago, I stumbled across the image to the right in a web article about Finnish axes.  The image was captioned:

Karelian man in a woodsman's outfit with the distinctive “kukkeli” hood and a Karelian type axe with partial collar of the shaft. Louis Sparre 1892. Source “Kalevalaseura – The Kalevala Society of Finland”.

I don't know much about Finnish axes, either in the 19th century or otherwise.  What struck me about this image is that the hood the man is wearing is made in the same shape as the Skjoldehamn hood, though the man shown wearing it is a 19th century CE Finn; not a Swedish Viking, and not a member of the Saami people.   It raises interesting questions about the culture to which the wearer of the Skjoldehamn outfit belonged, as well as questions about how much utility lies in using later period costumes as a basis for inferences about clothing worn by earlier cultures.   If any of my readers know anything more about the above image and its provenance, please let me know in the comments.

For Fans of Viking-Era Costume

An  American vendor of clothing and items to reenactors, Historic Enterprises, has just announced that it is now selling its own reproduction of the Skjoldehamn hood. Although it's listed under "men's" Dark Ages clothing, anyone could buy one, since it comes in one size. It can be obtained with or without contrasting-color stitching as a decorative element.

RE-EDIT: Since I wrote this post, Historic Enterprises modified its page on its reproduction hood; it added some pictures but does not appear to have changed the text. Also, I've moved the link to the Historic Enterprises version of the hood (it's now under the word "reproduction" above).