Yesterday afternoon, I stumbled over an article about a new Scandinavian grave find that may eventually yield more information about costume in the Viking era, particularly women's costume. The article may be found here.
Researchers from the archaeological museum at Stavanger, Norway found three graves that are very well preserved and believed to date to the 8th and 9th century CE. The location was "in Frøyland, in Time, in the shire of Rogaland,
about twenty kilometres south of the city of Stavanger, and ten
kilometres from the coast."
One of the graves was that of a woman, and contained a significant amount of the characteristic kinds of women's jewelry. The article contains some good clear photographs of some of the items in the condition recovered from the woman's grave. The items include some glass beads with gold foil on the inside, at least one blue glass bead, a tortoise brooch big enough to completely cover a woman's palm, and a equal-armed brooch nearly as long as a woman's hand.
More importantly for costume specialists, "[s]ome of the items, when they were lifted from the ground, even had
traces of textiles, from the clothing they had originally been fastened
to...." Hopefully, those "traces" will be analyzed, and will add to our slowly but steadily growing knowledge of Viking age women's costume.
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