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Viking women's clothing. What did the Viking women wear?
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Viking women's clothing. What did the Viking women wear?From the Viking Answer Lady Note: This article is quite out of date. There is much better information available, and as soon as I can I will update this page. In the meantime, write me for more information about updated information on this topic, or better yet consult one of the following excellent articles: Resources for Viking Women's Clothing Krupp, Christina and Carolyn Priest-Dorman, "Women's Garb in Northern Europe:450-1000 CE: Frisians, Angles, Franks, Balts, Vikings and Finns." Compleat Anachronist 59. Milpitas: SCA. 1992. [Forms for ordering may be obtained from SCA Member Services. Þóra Sharptooth's Sources for the Re-Enactor http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikresource.html Þóra Sharptooth's "But That's How They Look in the Book!": Viking Women's Garb in Art and Archaeology http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/roach.html Þóra Sharptooth's A Quick and Dirty Look at Viking Women's Garb in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/qdirtyvk.html Þóra Sharptooth's Reconstruction of the 10th C. Danish Apron Dress (a correction of Sharra's pattern, see below) http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/image/apdress.jpg Þóra Sharptooth's Bibliography of Sources for the Construction of Viking Garments http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikgarment.html Sharra of Starwood's Reconstructed 10th C. Danish Apron Dress (based on Þóra Sharptooth's research. See Þóra's correction to the pattern, above) http://www.mtsu.edu/~kgregg/dmir/09/0945.html The Viking Apron-Dress: A New Reconstruction http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/usr/mjc/www/aprond.html http://www.virtualelpaso.com/neverwinter/dress/dress.htm The Greenland Dress: A 10 Gore Underdress Y  our confusion is understandable. The "Ugly Viking Book"(1) alone has four different styles pictured. Before I decree the fashion style for the well-dressed Viking this season, however, let me tell you why the confusion exists. The reconstructions upon which the many pictures you've seen are based are created by scholars who have taken the archaeological finds, literary record, and iconography of native art to base their conjectures upon. Gentle Reader, I can hear you saying, "If they're such great scholars how can they get such a mish-mash out of all that evidence?!" The reason is that the primary evidence are the Viking woman's clothes themselves, or at least, the remains of clothing that we have found in women's graves. The Vikings used two types of funerals: cremation and inhumation. Of course, the cremations don't leave clothing remains to analyze. Inhumations are nearly as bad: cloth does not survive well in the earth.(2)
So, you ask, how are the archaeologists able to tell us anything about the cloth? The answer lies in the Viking woman's jewellery, particularly the distinctive "tortoise-shell"(3) brooches.
Unfortunately, these two scholarly ladies worked on the Birka finds from the early 1960's until they started publishing in extremely technical textile archaeology journals in the late 70's. A "user-friendly" version of each woman's work did not appear until 1983. Meanwhile, the catalogues of grave finds of the Birka graves, as well as previous excavations (especially Queen Asa's Oseberg gravesite) had already given the armchair scholars plenty of material for conjecture. Viking art shows a very few examples of women,nearly all of these in profile, such as the "valkyrie" amulets(5) 
Four "Valkyrie" amulets suggesting details of women's dress or the gold plaques showing embracing couples(6), 
"Goldgubber" amulets depicting embracing couples, perhaps Freyr and Gerd and a few runestone depictions. These give a generalized idea of the clothing, but are lacking in detail. From this evidence, it can be inferred that Viking women wore a triangular shawl over a dress with at least two layers which might be either striped or pleated. The over-garment had to be held up with the brooches at the shoulders(7), but it was unclear until the Birka evidence became available just how this over-dress was designed. The earlier reconstructions postulate fore-and-aft narrow tabard-like rectangular aprons held together by the brooches. This is the most common outfit found on S.C.A. Viking ladies. As a garment, this style has numerous problems. First, the reconstructions don't include a belt. Without a belt, not only do the rectangular aprons fly about in the breeze, but every time one leans forward (say, over a fire, for example) the apron in its entirety swings forward also (and, if a fire is involved, we get an instant cremation funeral). There is a significant problem in retaining body heat without a belt, as every breeze seems to blow straight up the skirt and out the neckline. Also, in medieval costume throughout the ages the pouch made by the waistline of the garment was often a useful storage area: a wallet or small goods could be dropped down the neckline and held against the waist by the belt... impossible with the unbelted tabard design. The scholarly argument against belts is that no metal buckles or fittings are found for a belt in female graves. This overlooks the fact that belts may be inkle- or tablet-woven and thus need no buckle. Other problems include the straight rectangle design... an apron narrow at the shoulders and widening towards the bottom gives a better "line"(8) and provides more fabric coverage for better warmth... and warmth was important, as the wearers lived in snowy Scandinavia. The clothing finds at Birka, with their metal trim along the edges, show a better idea of the over-garment. Instead of narrow "tabard-aprons" what seems to have been worn was a pair of larger rectangular pieces which were wrapped around the body, one on the left and one on the right. This eliminates all the problems found on the previous reconstruction. Dr. Geijer called this style hangerock, or "suspended skirt".(9) The garment is much warmer since there is two-layer overlap in both front and back. When one leans over the fire (or any where else) the wrap-around aprons don't move forward but rather spread open to the sides. The garment doesn't flap excessively in a breeze. No belt appears to be necessary with the wrap-around design, although for convenience I usually wear a woven belt underneath it over the under-dress, which allows me to carry a pouch conveniently shielded from the cutpurses that afflict the busy market at Birka. When made as regular rectangles, however, the wrap-around aprons do have some problems with the line of the garment and with gaping at the back. These problems are solved however, by examining the archaeological finds from an underwater excavation for the harbor of Haithabu (Hedeby). Haithabu represents the largest, best preserved collection of Viking Age textiles currently known. Haithabu/Hedeby was, like Birka, a rich and populous trading center, and like any densely populated area produced waste such as rags. In Hedeby, when one's garments were no longer wearable, they were sold to be made into caulking for ships. Ropes of these garments were made and sealed with tar or pitch and forced between the overlapping strakes in ship hulls to make them water-tight. The garments included everything from slaves' burlap-like homespun to examples of fine-quality women's wear. Previously, the over-garment had been reconstructed as a straight garment, but the Haithabu wrap-around aprons were tailored at the waist, using tucks, darts and decorative braid to shape and define the garment, and emphasize the wearer's figure.(10) Now that we've got a good idea of what the over-garment should be, let's examine the rest of a Viking lady's clothing. Next to the skin was worn a linen shift which could be finely pleated. Chemises found at Birka show evidence of pleating or plissé of the body of the garment and perhaps also the sleeves, achieved by gathering the fabric with a needle and thread, and subsequently drawing the thread straight . After removing the thread, the fabric was soaked in water and stretched in the direction of the pleats, and then left to dry, perhaps with a weight attached to the hem to hold the pleats straight. When fully dried the fabric remains tightly pleated. The Haithabu finds show that less-wealthy women wore a simple ankle-length long-sleeve dress, often without the pleats. Another garment which could be worn with the basic shift and apron combination was a knee-length tunic or kirtle with shorter sleeves, upon which metal-woven trims ornamented the sleeve and hem, known primarily from Birka and which showed clear oriental influence. This gives three layers of clothing, which makes for a very warm style of dress (probably necessary for women manning dockside open-air sales booths with the wind whipping off the North Sea!) Outdoors, women might wear a shawl or triangular cloak, or an ankle-length coat or caftan which might either be sleeveless or have long sleeves. The coat was quite wide at the bottom, and seems to have had almost a train coming to a point in the back. The coat was made of heavy, high-quality dyed wool that had been felted for weather-resistance, lined, and were often quilted with down or feathers for added warmth. The coat or shawl was fastened with a third brooch, which varied widely in shape from wearer to wearer: examples are known of disk brooches, trefoil brooches, equal-armed brooches or even re-worked bits of metal plundered from books or reliquaries in the British Isles.(11) Notes: 1. Bertil Almgren et al., The Viking. (New York; Crescent. 1975) 200-203. [These pages especially, but see illos throughout the book. The name "Ugly Viking Book" is self-explanatory if you've seen it. The artist's models resemble the California Raisins more closely than the average human being... the book isn't ugly, it's the Vikings pictured in it that are. But the details are very clearly drawn & it's an excellent book to have if you can find a copy.] 2. If this is not clear to you, take a piece of cloth -- an old sock will do -- and bury it in your yard. Check on it in a week, a month, a year. I doubt that it'll last as much as a year in our soil. It won't even be recognizable as a sock in a very short period of time. 3. "Tortoise-shell" refers to their domed oval shape, not to their composition. These brooches were normally made of silver, occasionally in gold. They might be more properly called "shoulder buckles" as they were used primarily to fasten the two parts of the over-dress together. 4. Agnes Geijer. "The Textile Finds from Birka," in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Eds. N.B. Harte and K.G. Ponting. (Pasold Studies in Textile History, 2). London: Heinemann, 1983, pp 80-99, and Inga Hagg. "Viking Women's Dress at Birka: a Reconstruction by Archaeological Methods," also in Cloth and Clothing as cited above, pp 316-350. 5. We call these "Valkyrie amulets" but they may or may not be either Valkyries or amulets. 6. Called goldgubber ("gold-granddads") today by archaeologists. Often thought to represent Freyr and Gerdr and used as fertility amulets. 7. The gravefinds give a good idea of the location of the brooches, however since in the initial 1800's excavations, archaeologists saw the brooches laying on the ribcage at the level of the breasts (on ribs 4, 5, or 6) and so the very earliest reconstructions give us the "Wagnerian Valkyrie" with the famed metal breast-cups.
Further confusion was introduced when translations of the account of the Arab Ibn Fadlan's embassy to the Rus became available. Ibn Fadlan says, "Each woman wears on either breast a box of iron, silver, copper or gold; the value of the box indicates the wealth of the husband..." (H.M. Smyser, "Ibn Fadlan's Account of the Rus with Some Commentary and Some Allusions to Beowulf," in Franciplegius: Medieval & Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun Jr. eds. J.B. Bessinger Jr. & R.P. Creed. New York; NY Univ Press. 1965. pp 92-119) This misconception lasted until women became involved in the interpretation of the gravefinds and pointed out to the men that no one in their right mind would wear a metal bra in the frozen Northlands any more than they'd wear a metal jockstrap! Better understanding of what happens when the flesh decomposes helped to give scientific evidence that the ladies were right. The brooches go on the shoulders, not on the breasts! 8. Surely only a man could envisage a woman wearing a garment that would so strongly emphasize the size of one's hips and rear end... even a slender woman appears to have "thunder-thighs" and "buffalo butt" in this style! 9. Her reconstructions show this as one rectangular length of cloth with four loops through which the brooches might be threaded, instead of the two rectangles that are surmised elsewhere. I haven't tried the one-piece design yet, but it's probably much easier to put on than the two-piece wrap-around design. For an excellent discussion (with clear line-drawings to illustrate) See Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, ch III "Women's Costume in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries" (Manchester: Manchester Univ Press. 1986) pp. 25-63. 10. Or probably, to de-emphasize certain aspects of the figure, if Viking women were like women today! 11. Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age. (Woodbridge; Boydell. 1991) pp. 14-18. [This book should be required reading for any woman with a Viking persona. Jesch has pulled together all the latest scholarship and made it accessible.] Download 3.63 Mb. Share with your friends:
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