Textile tools are ubiquitous in a Viking context. The finding of a spindle whorl at the furthest westerly expansion of the Vikings that we know of in L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada and the
FIGURE 4.1 Gilded copper alloy composite oval brooches from the Viking cemetery at Cumwhitton, Cumbria. (Source: Oxford Archaeology North. With permission.)
Recent excavations by Patricia Sutherland have shown that European-style cordage made from animals such as hares and foxes can be found as far as Baffin Island (2009). Such evidence suggests that Viking expeditions included at least a few textile workers among the explorers. Since the spinning of very fine hairs such as those of hares requires a very fine skill level, Sutherland’s work suggests that experienced female craftworkers participated in Viking explorations.
Textile work in the Viking Age was taught presumably from mother or foster mother to daughter, so the techniques were passed along generations. This transfer of skill should allow us to research differences in techniques, such as the spinning of the yarn. The widely known depiction of the quintessentially Viking dress consisting of a pinafore pinned with oval brooches on the shoulder, is largely based on costumes found at the Swedish cemetery of Birka, reconstructed by Swedish archaeologist Agnes Geijer (1938). However, this analysis is based on only 5% of all recovered fragments from the cemetery.
The work of subsequent textile historians such as Inga Hagg (1991) and Lotte Hedeager, and Eva Andersson-Strand (2011) has shown a much larger variety of both fabrics and fasteners in the homelands. Thus, the ubiquitous Viking woman’s dress fastened with oval brooches (Figure 4.1) was already becoming unfashionable in Denmark when many of the Scandinavian settlers to England left their homelands. Far fewer oval brooches were recovered from Denmark than were found in Norway or Sweden. Most of these brooches are from a 9th century context and were found in the eastern part of the country that is closest to Sweden.
At the Birka cemetery, however, almost every grave contained oval brooches. The remains of fabric on the backs of the brooches can tell us a little about the social status afforded to the dead. The fabric ranged from poor coarse woollen material to fine silk imported from the Orient. Costume in the past has been taken as a marker of ethnic origin. However, the correlation of dress and ethnicity is very tentative and should be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism. Changes in fashion indicate that even in the Viking Age the ‘one size fits them all’ garment is a myth.
And this leads to other important questions: When did changes happen? Who adopted them? Were certain types of clothes worn by every woman? Could such fabrics be regarded as markers of a Norse identity? If this is the case, how do we know that the dress of the homelands and the dress of the Viking diaspora served the same purpose? Not all of these questions can be answered, but I think they are important to ask.
Most recreations of Norse dress have been based mainly on evidence found in graves (see Figure 4.2), posing the question whether funeral wear was the same as garments worn by living populations. A cautionary tale may be the travel report by an Arabic envoy named Ibn Fadhlan who met a group of Rus (taken to be Viking Age Scandinavians or a group of mixed Viking and Khazar people) on the Volga. He observed the funeral of a wealthy man and noted that new clothes were made for the man in preparation for the funeral. How do we know, then, if people were not dressed specifically for the grave?
Most of the grave dress found in the British Isles came from rural environments and which may have been different from urban dress. Grave goods have symbolism and we now think that they are meant to
FIGURE 4.2 Female costume documented from Hedeby, Schleswig Holstein; drawing by Tina Borstam in Andersson-Strand 2003 (after Hagg 1991). (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.) tell a story about the dead—position in society, wealth, and perhaps age (Williams 2006). If this is the case, textiles are part of this narrative, and we should and must consider them as having special meanings.
Currently, archaeological publications commonly list textile finds in appendices, divorced from catalogues of grave goods. If the residues on the backs of brooches are supposed to represent the funerary attire of the dead, they should be included in grave inventories. Dress historians, however, must be careful since some of the imprints found on the backs of the brooches were not parts of the clothing worn by the deceased and were made during the manufacturing process. Clay-impregnated cloth was used to separate a bronze cast from its mould. When the hot metal was poured into the mould, the textile disintegrated and left an imprint. Unless a textile historian participated in the identification, such poor quality cloth could easily be taken as the clothing of the dead. Also, not all of the cloths used were from cheap rags. A very fine herringbone twill was found on the back of a brooch at Chaipaval on Harris in the Outer Hebrides (Graham-Campbell 1975).
The spread of oval brooches around the Irish Sea region indicates that at least in death high-ranking women continued to be buried in the fashion of their ancestors. Grave finds in Scotland such as at Westness in the Orkneys, Cumwhitton in Cumbria, and Finglas in County Dublin all contained pairs of oval brooches. However, in areas of eastern and midland England that were also Norse settled and commonly called the Danelaw, people seem to have preferred Irish-influenced ringed pins or penannular brooches rather than oval brooches.
Textile production occupied much of a woman’s time. The twelve ells of yarn that Gudrun, the heroine of the Laxdxla saga, produces in one morning may be an exaggeration, but textile production required a lot of time and energy. For this reason, some textiles may not have been produced at home.
FIGURE 4.3 Wool combing. Drawing by Annika Jeppsson in Andersson-Strand 2003. (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.)
FIGURE 4.4 Spinning with a drop spindle. Drawing Tina Borstam in Andersson-Strand 2003. (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.)
Reconstructions of Viking Age dress have shown that it takes 2.5 kg of wool to produce the most basic female dress and 3.5 kg to make a man’s costume (Andersson-Strand 2011, p. 2). One sheep produces around 2 kilos of wool and such an amount must have been difficult to obtain in the Viking Age. Sheep were not shorn routinely until the 12th century in Scandinavia. Wool was also obtained by ‘rooing’—the upper coat of wool was hand-plucked from sheep when they were moulting, leaving the new hair intact.
This may have led to preferences for different breeds of animals such as long-haired sheep. Analysis of wool has shown that the fleece types and colours of wool differed among the Viking-settled areas. Sheep wool in Scotland comes in a full range of colours from black to brown-grey to white. Irish sheep were usually brown and English sheep were white (Henry, 2004). After wool is removed from the animal, it must be carded (combed) to remove impurities (Figure 4.3), then washed and spun.
Yarns were spun on a drop spindle (Figure 4.4) and depending on the size of the spindle, whorl yarns were finer or coarser. For spinning, yarns were twisted clockwise (Z-spinning between the fingers) or anti-clockwise (S-spinning). Z-spinning can produce a firmer thread, but S-spinning is often used for delicate fibres such as silk.
Using different types of wool and spinning yarns in different directions can produce a patterned effect that precludes the laborious work of dying. Textiles in the Viking Age were produced mainly on upright warp-weighted looms (Figure 4.5) that required the wool to be taken over and under the weft. Depending on the sizes of the loom weights, very fine textiles could be produced. A textile is defined as ‘fine’ when
FIGURE 4.5 Warp-weighted loom. Drawing by Annika Jeppsson in Andersson-Strand 2003. (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.)
Its thread count is high, usually more than 25 threads per centimeter. Various effects achieved by weaving patterns are shown in Figure 4.6.
It is estimated that the wool of 15 to 30 sheep is required to produce about 10 costumes (Andersson-Strand 2002, p. 48). The production of yarn is labour-intensive; to produce enough bedding, clothing and other household goods, it is estimated that a Viking woman would have to work a full 8 months per year on textile production. However, such domestic production pales into insignificance when we consider that about 2000 fleeces were needed to produce the wool for one sail for a Viking ship (Wincott-Heckett 2010).
Not all textiles were produced at home. In the Viking homelands, towns such as Hedeby and Birka established centres of textile production and women may have been organised in guilds. It is also possible that other areas of the Viking world including the Irish Sea region possessed centres of production and that not all textile was homespun.
Flax is an even more labour-intensive material. The plant grows best in damp conditions, which is why Irish linen is still world famous. Flax is demanding of the soil and grows best on light sandy soil free from heavy frosts—a quality that many of the islands around the Irish Sea region, such as the Outer Hebrides, possess. The raw fibre must be retted in standing water to break down the fibres before they can be prepared for use in spinning. Flax must be spun in humid conditions, preferably inside a building; otherwise the yarn will break. It is clear that such a labour-intensive textile can be produced only by settlers who are no longer on the move and have established themselves in new areas.
Comparing textiles from Scandinavian Scotland with those from other areas of the British Isles and Scandinavia gives us an idea of different preferences that tie in with the people who moved to these areas. Philippa Henry (2004) shows most textiles from Scandinavian Scotland are wools and the main weave is tabby made by leading one thread over and under the warp. Few twill weaves were detected, and the main type was a plain four-shed twill (yarn taken over two warps and under two). This weave has parallels in western Norway, but was less popular in Denmark, Sweden, and England. We assume that many settlers to the Irish Sea region had Norwegian backgrounds. These textiles also seem to indicate that the women involved had Norwegian backgrounds. The Veka-style twill that seems to be native to western
FIGURE 4.6 Textile types. Rows 1 and 2: types of tabby weave. Rows 3 and 4: examples of 2-1 and 2-2 twill weaves. Drawing by Annika Jeppsson. (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.)
Norway was found with one male burial in Kildonan on Eigg, Inner Hebrides, but similar examples were found in Dublin and Waterford.
Assumptions of what textiles should look like may prevent us from seeing regional differences and adaptations to the new homelands. For example, the well-preserved textiles from Birka in Sweden are usually taken for comparison to Scottish material. The linen of the undershirts worn by Birka women was pleated, but no such pleats have been found on any examples from the Irish Sea region. Similarly, no belt buckles were found at Birka, but we do have an example from Kneep, Isle of Lewis; it was worn over a garment made from Birka-style twill. Belts were worn by English women, so this buckle may have been a variation of dress.
Textiles may underline the connections that Viking settlers made with other areas of the British Isles and Ireland. For example, sprang, a technique of plaiting warps without a weft, is only associated with Scandinavia. It was used when a high degree of elasticity was desired (e. g., for bands that bound trouser legs). An impression on the backside of an oval brooch from a 9th century grave at Clibberswick, Unst, Shetland, has a parallel in 10th century Anglo-Scandinavian Micklegate at York.
Some textiles occur in special contexts in Britain and Ireland. Some fine examples of silk head coverings from Dublin, York, and Lincoln are remarkably similar and may have even been cut from the same bale. This does not indicate that they are forms of ethnic head dresses. Rather, Dublin, Lincoln, and York had close political connections that extended to trade. Imports of such items may have distinguished women of a merchant class who could afford to obtain exotic goods. Textiles may have then, as now, been markers of social status and wearing ‘foreign’ dress may have been something to which rich women aspired. A wealthy Viking lady may have purchased her clothes from a special market in the same way modern women buy haute couture from special retailers.
There is a difference between textiles made in the home and finer fabrics purchased from centres of production. For example, no examples of fine diamond twills (the pairing of the wefts produces a diamond pattern) have been found in the Viking areas of the British Isles other than imprints of metal objects, such as the belt buckle from Kneep that seems to have originated in a larger trading town of Scandinavia.
Other textiles display regional biases. VaSmal (English Vadmal) was produced in Iceland and across the North Atlantic from the 11th century onward, but there are examples at York and The Biggings, Papa Stour, Shetland. The yarns are Z-spun in one system and S-spun in the other, with coarser wool in the weft. Using different types of wool and spinning methods allowed a fabric to be fulled easily and thus waterproofed. It seems that the origin of this quintessential Icelandic fabric may been the Irish Sea region since early examples were found in Waterford and York (Henry 2004). Z - and S-spun cloth has a strong English and Continental bias and may indicate some form of cross-cultural hybridisation.
Piled fabrics involve the addition of additional tufts of wool during weaving; they were produced in Scandinavia and Ireland. The ground weave in Scandinavia for these fabrics is Z-spun in both warp and weft, but the tufts are S-spun. The fabric has a shaggy appearance. The technique produces a material that is lightweight and semi-waterproof. Irish and Icelandic examples were dyed; all examples from Scotland and the Isle of Man are undyed.
Fabric found at the sword burial of Cronk Moar in the Isle of Man shows an amended technique. The tufts were fastened to the fabric by darning, which gives it a softer appearance. The wool for the cloth was from local sheep. Osteological analysis has shown that the breeds on the Isle of Man varied very little from the Viking Age through today. Such osteological studies of sheep types may therefore tell us about what kinds of raw materials were available to Viking Age weavers.
The distinctiveness of the Isle of Man textile may be notable in connection with other evidence for cross-cultural encounters such as the Hiberno-Norse styles of decoration and the evidence from the Braddan runic inscriptions that suggest Norse-Celtic hybridization. It may even be possible that textiles were ‘gendered.’ The determination of a male or female burial is usually made on the basis of grave goods, since in many cases skeletal remains are missing or completely decayed. Previous generations of excavators were interested largely in ‘treasure’ and a lot of organic material was destroyed as a result. However, all instances of piled fabrics found with burials have been gendered male. Most were found in connection with weapons, which, like their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, may have been wrapped in textiles before they were placed into a grave.
Piled fabric was discovered in remains from Anglo-Scandinavian York. It appears, however, that the maker was unfamiliar with the weaving technique, since the tufts were sewn laboriously into the fabric, rather than woven into it. This cloth may represent an imitation of Norse fabric. In contrast to the textile evidence from the Irish Sea region that shows very strong links with the Scandinavian homelands, the textile evidence from the areas of Scandinavian settlement in England such as York have a more
FIGURE 4.7 Reconstructed textile tools: shears, spindle whorl, weaving batten, carding combs, and bone picks. (Source: Eva Andersson-Strand, Copenhagen Textile Research Project, Http://ctr. hum. ku. dk/. With permission.)
‘English appearance’ (Walton 1997, p. 64), possibly indicating that the Anglo-Scandinavian populations adopted each others’ textile techniques.
York is an interesting find spot. It has evidence for eastern Scandinavian imports such as honeycomb twills and nalebinding, a form of crocheting developed in Sweden. Nalebinding is virtually unknown outside Scandinavia. Apart from York, the only other example came from Viking Age Dublin in the Irish Sea region. This may suggest that a group of highly skilled textile specialists, perhaps even emigres of Eastern Scandinavian origin, may have resided in Irish and English Viking Age towns. Still, such tentative connections should not rest on two examples alone because textiles can be transported easily. What these examples show is that trade extended a long way across the Viking world.
Fine textiles may have been raided as well as traded. They may have been used as tax payments to local chieftains and nobles and were thus clearly components of the economy much like metal work and pots. Frankish sources tell us that opus feminile (women’s work) was paid as a local church tax. Eva Andersson-Strand (2011) recently examined textile production figures from Denmark and Sweden and has shown that textiles were manufactured in towns. Textiles therefore may represent a uniquely female aspect of Viking economy and we should look at the skills and the raw materials that these women used.
Textile tools attributed to high-ranking females such as the whalebone plaques from Sanday in Orkney and the tools from Westness may indicate women were involved in both production and control of the textile industry. We should therefore be careful to associate these objects on the basis of a mythology developed at a much later stage. Some examples of tools are shown in Figure 4.7.
The Westness woman with artefacts from her homelands and those acquired in the new lands demonstrates what material culture can tell us about Viking activities in newly settled places. Her burial as a prominent member of her society underlines how much women shaped the expansion of the Viking world. While literary texts may favour the earls of Orkney and the kings of Dublin, objects also function as texts and tell us about female migration in the Viking Age; we are just now learning how to read them.
World History
