New Source of Information About Early Textiles

This week, courtesy of Katrin Kania, I learned about a free, searchable database of scholarly publications.  It's called Digital Vetenskapliga Arkivet, or DiVA, and it allows one to search for books, dissertations, and articles published by scholars at nearly 50 different universities in Scandinavia. (The above link goes to the English language version of the home page; for the Swedish version of the home page, go here.) Best of all, DiVA is absolutely free to use.  You can go directly to the DiVA search page from here. 

Naturally, DiVA includes dissertations, articles, and other works that are not related to textiles, clothing or the Vendel and Viking Ages.  In addition, many of the works findable via DiVA are not in English.  However, I still found an excellent work relevant to textile-related Vendel period studies with my first search:  

Malmius, Anita.  Burial textiles: Textile bits and pieces in central Sweden, AD 500–800 Doctoral Dissertation, Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies (2020 (English))

I am really looking forward to reading this volume of Anita Malmius's work, which on first glance appears very comprehensive.  I look forward to further searching on DiVA for other useful papers when I have more time (and brain energy!) to invest.  In the meantime, by means of this post I hope to make DiVA available to more costume researchers, and perhaps to people with different reenactment-related interests as well.

A very old basket

Today, I came across a news article from the Jerusalem Post. The article is about an archaeological find of a basket, with a lid, in a cave in the Judean Desert. The picture with the article shows the basket, looking not only complete, but in good condition with only a little visible damage.  One might buy such a thing for a few dollars or Euros at a yard sale or a used goods shop. 

But this basket is no thrift store find. It is 10,500 years old, made during the Neolithic period, and believed to be the world's oldest surviving basket.  The dry climate of the Judean Desert likely is responsible for preserving the basket so well.  It is still remarkable that it survived because there was evidence that looters had come within 10 cm of the basket, when they stopped digging for some unknown reason.

The basket is also very large.  Its capacity has been measured at 92 liters.  It was empty and closed when found, but a small quantity of soil was found inside.  The researchers hope that analyzing this soil will help identify the basket's original contents.  

Basket weaving is the cousin of, and believed to be the forerunner of, cloth weaving.  As such, it belongs to the chain of handwork that includes the history of cloth and of costume.

Some Interesting Articles about Viking Age Clothing

Within the past week, I discovered some articles on Academia.edu about projects in Viking clothing and textile manufacture.  They are less formal in style than traditional academic papers because they were written by SCA folk, but they have interesting and useful information all the same.  If you are interested in Viking age clothing, you may want to check them out.  

• Verborg, Rolf. Weaving broken diamond twill fabric to create a Viking age apron dress.    Describes the entire process, from making a warp-weighted loom to cutting and sewing the finished dress.  Assumes more knowledge of the actual warping process than non-weavers are likely to have, but gives interesting and different information than other accounts of Viking-style weaving than I have read.
• Verberg, Susan. Women’s Set of Viking Winter Clothes: Based on 10th Century Haithabu garment finds.  Describes the cutting and sewing of a complete winter outfit, based primarily, but not exclusively, upon Haithabu archaeological finds.
• Verberg, Susan. The Klappenrock: A Viking Warrior's Coat From 10th C. Haithabu,  Similar to her "winter clothes" paper but about the wrapped coat believed to have been worn by Viking men.
• Thunem, Hilde. With a Pleated Front - a Possible Reconstruction of the Hangerock (selekjole) in Grave ACQ from Køstrup, in Lyngstrøm, H, ed. Refashioning Viking Age Garments (SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen 2015).   Shortened account of the reasoning Hilde employed in designing her apron dress based upon the Køstrup find.

The Academia.edu pages may ask you to "connect" or log in to read or download the articles, but an account on the site is free.  Happy reading!

A Viking Age Weaving Sword

Anyone who has spent time researching the history of clothing and textile production will know that weavers In the early Middle Ages used an object, called a weaving sword, in the weaving process.  A weaving sword is a roughly sword-shaped object made from wood or bone, that was used to beat each row of the weaving so that it would be solidly in place.  It typically had a point that could be used for moving threads to make particular weaving patterns.  

Because weaving swords were made from wood or bone, few of them survive, and the surviving ones are rarely complete.  

But recently, a completely intact wooden weaving sword was found in the city of Cork, in south-western Ireland.  An article about the find, complete with pictures, can be read on the Archaeology News Network site, here.

The weaving sword was made from yew and is about 30 cm (a little under one foot) long, and carved with Viking motifs that indicate that it was made in the late 11th century.  A wooden thread-winder was also found at the site.  The dig that uncovered those items took place on the site of a brewery, where construction is planned.  It is now unclear when construction will proceed on the site.

This weaving sword is interesting because it has a "blade" shaped rather like a period knife blade, with a clip point.   I might wonder if it was actually a practice weapon or even an older child's toy, except for the thread winder found with it.

Thanks to Carolyn Priest-Dorman, from whom I learned about the find.

A "Mini-Mill" in Iceland

Icelandic sheep (ram).  Photograph by biologyfishman,
Found on Wikimedia Commons

Today, I learned that Marled Mader, whose Icelandic apron dress reconstruction I wrote about a few months ago, is involved with a crowdfunding project, started by a friend of hers, to create a "mini mill" in Iceland to make and sell yarn spun from Icelandic sheep.

The friend's name is Hulda Brynjólfsdóttir and she owns a farm in Iceland.  According to her IndieGoGo page, her objective is "to produce high quality Icelandic yarn from our own wool and the wool being produced here in the area" that is traceable to the farm from which it came. She also plans to sell wool bats for people who like to do their own spinning. Hulda is hoping that, by starting such a mill, she can make it possible for farmers to get a better price for their wool, as well as serving a growing Icelandic wool market.  A wool decorative pillow, made from fabric woven by Marled, is one of the backer perks for the project. Note that this is a "flexible funding" project, which means that Hulda will receive whatever funds backers commit, even if the project does not achieve its funding objective.  She hopes to be able to start wool production in October 2017.

Parties interested in following Hulda's progress may wish to consult the project's Facebook page, which can be found here. In addition, Hulda sells wool batts from her sheep on Etsy, here.  

If I had a real income right now, I'd back this project, since I would dearly love to be able to make Viking clothing items from Icelandic sheep wool.  If you are interested in Viking age clothing, or in hand spinning, you may want to support this project, or at least buy some wool from Hulda.

Lendbreen Weaving

In a publication called the Norwegian Textile Letter that has recently gone digital, I found an article about a wonderful experiment by some independent craftspeople.  The article may be read here.  It was originally written in Norwegian for a Norwegian museum's blog, and the article contains a link to the Norwegian original for readers who would prefer to read the original instead of the English translation in the Norwegian Textile Letter.

The article describes how three crafters--a Norwegian woman, a woman from the Shetland Islands, and a woman from Iceland--met, and decided to embark upon an ambitious project--to weave a reproduction of the diamond twill wool fabric that had been used to make the Lendbreen tunic, using a warp-weighted loom.

The story starts in 2013, when the crafters were contacted by the Norsk Fjellmuseum I Lorn (Norwegiean Mountain Museum, Lorn) with a request to borrow their warp-weighted loom for an upcoming museum display that would include the Lendbreen tunic.  A few weeks later, the museum called with a different request; to have the crafters weave a bit of diamond twill wool on the loom to be left on the loom as part of the display during that summer.

The crafters were a bit daunted at first, because the conservation report on the tunic had not yet been published, and they did not have access to the tunic itself.  However, it turned out that the photographs of the tunic that had been placed on the Internet were of good enough quality that they could determine necessary information (such as the thickness of the threads and the size of the diamonds) by examining them closely.   The article describes in some detail how they set up the loom in  three days "of fairly intensive work" and wove enough cloth "to see that our technique was correct", and the museum displayed the loom with that bit of weaving on it, along with the tunic.

I don't know enough about the cloth weaving process to appreciate the details in the article, but I commend it to my weaving-literate friends, especially those who have experience working with a warp-weighted loom.  It pleases me to find another instance of the Internet helping people with practical research into the material culture of the past.

Early Period Links

I'm still not ready to return to regular costume blogging, but over the past day I've found a number of fascinating Early Period links that I'd like to bring to the attention of my readers.  Most of these involve serious reproduction projects.

First of all, textile geeks and Early Period costuming buffs will want to check out Carolyn Priest-Dorman's latest post (just a day after her re-posted Viking double weave article) about her project to attempt to replicate textile specimen Jorvik 1307.  She started by spinning warp and weft yarns of  thicknesses and wool types to match the original.  I'm always humbled when I read about people taking clothing recreations to this level.

Over at The Reverend's Big Blog of Leather, I found an article by the eponymous Wayne Robinson describing how he made a pair of 6th-7th century CE Anglo-Saxon shoes he made, based on one of the Sutton Hoo finds.  Recent posts by "the Reverend" that are also shoe-related include this short post, with large, clear color pictures, about the world's oldest shoe, and this post and this post about late 16th century shoe horns.

From Irish Archaeology's website comes this recent article about an Iron Age body found in County Offaly wearing a very modern-looking leather-and-metal armband. Known as Old Croghan Man, the find is dated to between 362 BCE and 175 BCE. The article features a beautiful photograph of the armband that deserves a place on one of my Pinterest boards.

Finally, The Greenland Gown Project by Doreen M. Gunkel merits a serious look from students of early and medieval costume. She is in the process of making a replica of one of the 13th century Norse gowns discovered at Herjolfsnaes in Greenland.  She is starting by researching and searching for an appropriate breed of sheep from which to obtain suitable wool fleece to spin into yarn to use to weave fabric for the gown. Ms. Gunkel asks interested readers to register, but registration is free and gets you e-mail updates as she writes about new developments in the project. 

Happy reading!

Some Scholarship on Viking Age Weaving

At the moment, I'm kind of distracted, having lost my full-time contract job (the major source of my income) on Friday, so I'm not ready to blog about my sprang cap project, let alone start working on it.

Instead, I'd like to pass along a link of interest to Viking textile enthusiasts and weaving geeks.  My friend, Carolyn Priest-Dorman, reposted on her new blog, A String Geek's Stash, a great article from 2005 entitled "Viking Age Pick-Up Double Weaves from Sweden and Norway.  It discusses in some detail the Revsund border, the Överhogdal textiles, the Marby fragment, and the Kyrkås hanging.   Best of all (as is typical of Carolyn's work), it contains links to photographs of a number of the textiles discussed, as well as a substantial bibliography.

Although the pieces discussed in Carolyn's article probably came from wall-hangings or other non-clothing household textiles, they shed copious light on weaving techniques that were originally believed to post-date the Viking age, and I commend her article to the attention of anyone interested in Viking Age textiles.