Collected quotes regarding women's Viking clothing

A description of Viking women's costume is given by Judith Jesch [Judith Jesch in Women in the Viking Age (ISBN 0-85115-360-7) 1991]:

The most characteristic items of female jewelry are the pairs of oval brooches (sometimes called tortoise brooches, from their shape), usually made of bronze, found in many female graves from the Viking Age. ... These brooches must not be thought of as purely decorative objects, they served the highly practical purpose of keeping a woman's dress up! In fact, apart from their diagnostic value in identifying female graves, oval brooches can tell us a great deal about the dress of Viking Age women, when they and the textile remains preserved around them are subjected to detailed archaeological analysis. Were it not for the brooches, we would in fact know very little about what the well-dressed woman wore in this period.

Textiles do not normally survive very well in the ground, unless there are very special conditions. However, there are quite large numbers of textile fragments found in association with the oval brooches and other metal objects. Some are still attached to the brooch and have been protected from disintegration by its proximity. In other cases, the textile has disappeared but has left an impression on the metal of the brooch. Painstaking research, particularly by Agnes Geijer and Inga Hagg on the textiles of Birka, has helped to establish what fabrics the brooches were attached to. On this basis, it has been possible to reconstruct the entire habit of the women of Birka, even though no whole dress is preserved. Finds from elsewhere, particularly Hedeby, confirm that fashions were essentially the same throughout the Viking world. Normally, a woman would wear an outfit consisting of two or three layers. First, a shift or underdress was worn. This could be of linen or wool, had sleeves, and was sometimes pleated and gathered at the neck. The neck opening was usually held together by a small disc brooch. Over the shift, the woman wore a strapped gown, or overdress. This was basically a rectangular piece of material (usually wool) wrapped around the woman's body and reaching to her armpits. Holding the gown up were looped straps over the woman's shoulders which were sewn on at the back and which were joined to smaller loops sewn on to the front by means of the two oval brooches, the pins of which passed through the loops. Thus, the term 'brooch' is something of a misnomer, since their function was more like that of a buckle. The strings of beads found in many women's graves could be hung between the oval brooches. Pendants of amber, jet or silver could also be strung between the beads at intervals: this is where the woman from Bjorke may have hung her Anglo-Saxon book mount. Here also the woman newly converted to Christianity could wear a small silver cross. Useful implements, like scissors and knives, could also hang from the brooches on straps or rings. Another garment which could be worn in addition to the basic shift and gown was a tunic worn between them, known from Birka and clearly of oriental inspiration. The better-dressed woman would have her tunic decorated with bands of tablet-woven braid of linen or silk, often with a metal weft for a particularly luxurious effect. Over all these garments, for outdoors, a woman might wear a sleeved caftan or a cloak, also held together by a brooch or pin. There was more variation in this fastening, it could be a disc brooch, a trefoil brooch, an equal-armed brooch, or even a refashioned metal souvenir from the British Isles. Although the garments were of simple design, they were carefully made. In a study of textile fragments from twenty-five women's graves in the west of Norway, Inger-Marie Holm-Olsen found evidence of stitching, hems, sewn-on cord, loops and pleating. The women of Birka,whose clothing has been studied in most detail, were however not representative. As members of a rich trading community with wide international contacts, they did not have to make do with homespun. In fact most of the textiles at Birka appear to have been imported, at least those used for women's clothing and studied in connection with the grave finds. It is also likely that women were buried in their best clothing. They undoubtedly had simpler textiles for everyday wear that are not preserved in burials.

While burials tend to give us information about clothing worn by the higher levels of society, new archaeological techniques can indicate what kind of clothes were worn by poorer people in the Viking Age, often from unexpected sources. Thus, the largest collection of Viking Age textiles comes from the underwater excavation in 1979-80 of the harbour at Haithabu (Hedeby), the southernmost emporium of Viking Age Scandinavia, now in Germany near the Danish border. These textile fragments were all discarded clothing which had been tom up into rags and used in shipbuilding, either for tarring the outside of a ship, or for stuffing into cracks to make it watertight.

The simplest clothes found at Haithabu were made of the roughest woollen fabric, suggesting that these were the clothes of slaves, servants and the poor, or the daily dress of the better-off. The women's garments consisted of very simple ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses, cut loose to enable freedom of movement at work, and possibly a simple wrap or shawl.

Better-quality clothing was also found in the rags of Haithabu and here the finds are similar to those of the clothing from Birka and elsewhere in Scandinavia: over a linen shift, women wore an overdress of fine woollen fabric, held up by the ubiquitous pair of brooches. However, whereas elsewhere the overdress has always been reconstructed as a straight garment, the Haithabu finds indicate that there at least it was tailored at the waist. Tucks and decorative braid running vertically further emphasised the wearer's shape. Outdoors, the better-off women of Haithabu wore an ankle-length coat, again quite wide at the bottom. These coats were made of high-quality dyed wool that had been felled to make it weather-resistant, and were lined, and often quilted with down or feathers for added warmth.

This love of decoration was also noted by Foote and Wilson [Foote, P.G. and Wilson, D.M. The Viking Achievement (1970)]:

Embroidery was a common occupation; silks, coloured wools and even filaments of precious metal were used. Needles of iron, bone and bronze, sometimes in cylindrical needle-cases, are of quite common occurrence and it has been suggested that the gold and silver thread was inserted with tweezers. To this type of embellishment were added certain simple lace-making techniques. Various embellishments could be added during weaving Tablet-woven strips were used as borders and an interesting technique of manufacturing shaggy cloaks has been found in Viking contexts in the Isle of Man, the Western Isles and Iceland. This pile-weave (ON tong, f., r~oggr, m.) is executed by laying short lengths of wool in the shed or tying them round the warp threads. When woven, the short lengths of wool appear as tufts. The garment produced had the appearance of a shaggy fur. It was an important Icelandic export, but it was also made in Ireland and elsewhere.

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The Ravenstead household is dedicated to studying the arts and sciences of the Norse culture during the “Viking Era” (700-1066 AD) and re-enacting the lifestyle of that era in our encampments.