Projects 1 and 2 – Naalbinding Socks and Mittens
Naalbinding, or single-needle knitting, is a stretchy fabric that is made by building up layers of loops on the previous layers. They can be very simple loops, like blanket stitch, or much more complex patterns involving up to about 9 loops, going over and under, and twisting between the loops. Naalbinding is often compared to basket-making using the coil method.
It is usually made with a bone or antler needle, though a wooden needle could also be used. The bone needle from House D at l’Anse aux Meadows may have been used for nonbinding, but personally I think it is more likely to have been a cloak pin as the eye area is unusually large compared to the body of the needle. It would probably work, but not well. The bone needle I used has a gradual slope the length of the needle, and the eye is generous, but more long than wide.
Wool, horse hair, and even pig bristles have been used for naalbinding, and the most commonly found items have been mittens, socks, and strainers (for milk, to clarify hot fat, and later to strain hops from beer). Hair has been used to make mittens and toe caps for socks. According to Nordland, one pair of hair mittens was used for working with heavy lines while fishing, so perhaps the hair is particularly resistant to cutting. I am currently saving horsehair to experiment with making strainers and other items. I have found it extremely difficult to work, as it is hard to join, and knots very easily.
To work naalbinding, it is necessary to use short lengths of wool or hair. Six feet is the absolute maximum length, as that is the length of a fully extended arm with the textile doubled from the needle. Remember, this is more like sewing than knitting with a continuous yarn. The lengths are joined through a mixture of friction and moisture. I tend to twist the two ends together, felt them a bit, and add a bit of spit as required. I have found nonbinding to be an ideal way to use up poorly spun wool as I learned to spin, as the joins are not obvious in loosely spun wool. However, while working alongside a weaver using a warp weighted loom, it dawned on us that the thrums would be perfect for naalbinding. Thrums are the ends of warp thread leftover after a textile is completed. On a warp weighted loom, they are the pieces that hang down and are tied to weights.
One of the most famous naalbinding items from the Viking Age is the sock found at Coppergate, York. It has a very simple coiled stitch.
My socks are patterned after to Coppergate sock with a few variations. I prefer to make my heel by starting a second circular coil and joining it to the foot near the ankle. I find this gives a better fit than the alternative interpretation, which has the coils changing direction near the ankle and working back-and-forth up to the top of the foot. Also, the Coppergate sock is very short, almost like a shoe liner. Since mine were intended to be worn with ankle boots, I have made them tall enough to peek over the tops of my boots. The socks are lumpy primarily because I was using up various bits of wool from when I had been learning to spin with a spinning wheel. For greater accuracy, I should have used drop-spun Icelandic wool, but badly spun commercial rovings worked on a wheel were what I had available at the time, and it was a good way to get them out of my basement.
The mittens are made using the Asle mitten stitch, so named from a 1st C mitten found in Asle, southern Sweden. It is a much more complex, asymmetric stitch that involves picking up a stitch from the previous row, going back under the previous three stitches, coming up over the fourth, then turning around and going under the fourth and third stitches, before coming up and starting the next stitch. This results in an unusually thick fabric, four times the thickness of the thread. The inside of the mitten has a very even and flexible layer created by the long stitches, and may have been a substitute for felting. I have made my mittens with square tops; I don’t have any evidence for this in the Viking Age, but square tops are found in modern folk naalbinding mittens, and I wanted to experiment with naalbinding in a straight line instead of starting with a circle. These mittens will go to my daughter, as the Asle mitten stitch is so thick it has almost no stretch. I had anticipated there would be more, so these mittens are a bit narrow for my hands.
Sources:
Hald, Margrethe. Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials. Denmark: The National Museum of Denmark, 1980.
Ingstad, Helge and Stine Ingstad, Anne. The Viking Discovery of America. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001.
Nordland, Odd. Primitive Scandinavian Textiles in Knotless Netting. Norway: Oslo University Press, 1961.
Walton, Penelope. Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate. London: York Archaeological Trust, 1989.
Project 5 – Norse Shoes with Felt Liners (Project 22)
These shoes were made under the supervision of Wilfred of Sweflingham. He helped me figure out the pattern using an old sock and duct tape, and taught me the various stitches as well as how to make the toggle. I completed the shoes on my own, though he did have to remind me of some steps by mail. This is my first attempt at shoemaking.
The shoes are patterned after a shoe or ankle boot from Viking York. Very similar shoes, with two toggles, were found in St Denis (9th C) and Dorestad (9th or 10th C).
The upper pattern was made by putting on a sock, then covering my foot in duct tape, and finally cutting away the sole from the upper and putting in the necessary cut at the side seam so the pattern would lie flat. The two pieces were then copied onto cardboard. The next step was to make grooves in the sole, then use an awl to punch holes for stitching, having made sure to mark clearly where the upper and the sole should join at key spots. I used wax artificial gut, a glover’s needle and a blunt needle to stitch the sole to the upper. As this was a turnsole shoe, I had to sew “right sides” together. At the heel, I needed to use a stitch that went in through the side of the leather, rather than punching through the whole thing. This made the heel seam smooth, so I wouldn’t end up with blisters. Once the upper and sole were attached, I soaked each shoe, then turned it right side out. The next step was to sew the side seam, using a stitch that went in through the side of the cut, but came out through the whole piece of leather. This allowed me to have a little bit of an overlap and no rubbing. It was really important to have stitched the upper to the sole in the right way to allow this to happen, as edge stitching from the inside to outside of the shoe is extremely important! I reinforced the flap and top of the ankle with a bit of a decorative stitch, then made a toggle by rolling up a piece of leather and pulling it through a tiny cut. I made a latch for the toggle using another scrap of leather. Again, it was really important not to make any of the cuts too big, or the toggle wouldn’t hold the shoe shut. The last step was to wipe the shoes in neats foot oil to make them as waterproof as possible. For extra comfort, I have stuffed my shoes with some wool that I had carded. It was too short for good spinning, but it felted nicely and keeps my feet warm and dry. If it should get wet, I will replace it with more wool.
These shoes are probably a little bigger than they need to be, but they fit fairly well, especially with thick naalbinding socks inside. I wore them for 10 days straight this summer, and they were warm, dry and comfortable.
Sources:
Goubitz, Olaf, van Driel-Murray, Carol, and Groenman-van Waateringe, Willy. Stepping through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times until 1800. Zwolle, Netherlands: Foundation for Promoting Archaeology, 2001.
At the workshop where Wilfred taught me to make these shoes, I also had access to his copy of the York Archaeological Trust book on leather finds, which has an extensive section on Viking Age shoes and boots.
Viking Outfit
This outfit is an experimental set of clothes because I wanted to try out various theories about how clothing was assembled. The evidence for Viking Age clothing is quite limited. Most of the extant garment fragments are too small to determine conclusively how they were assembled. The iconographic evidence is also quite limited, mostly consisting of gold foils, a few carvings and even fewer embroideries. The pictures are stylized and there is good reason to believe that many of the depictions are actually goddesses, rather than ordinary women.
Coat and Whipcording Belt (projects 43 and 52)
– The coat does not appear in any of the iconographic evidence. A cape or cloak is the over garment shown in every case. Hagg has identified a coat that would have been pinned with a brooch at the chest in a female grave at Birka, but Thor Ewing contends that the fabric could have come from a shawl, while the silver sleeve edging is from a tunic. The Swedish History Museum in Stockholm shows a reconstruction of this particular grave, and notes that the 9th C woman was also buried with a Frankish pitcher and glass. I find this interesting as the Franks wore very similar coats. A surviving coat from Chelles dates from about the 8-9th C, and pictures in manuscripts from Augsburg and Valenciennes show similar coats, with a V neck, open down the front, often with decorated edges, and tied with a belt. An Anglo-Saxon or English example shows up on the Genoels-Elderen Diptych, where Mary and Elizabeth are shown wearing girdled gowns that may represent an open overdress with decorated edges over a pleated underdress. Some of the coats have shorter, wide sleeves, while others have sleeves that are quite tight and long. The early Anglo-Saxon and Frankish coats may have been worn with two bow brooches to hold them shut near the hips, in addition to pins on the breast (or the bow brooches may simply have held a cord with personal items, suspended from the belt, in place). The “Arnegunde” grave from St Denis in Paris has the remains of a coat with a long breast pin (or possibly two round pins and a cloth belt, with the long breast pin holding her veil in place). It is an early example of such coats, and the style seems to have largely died out everywhere by the Viking Age. As you can tell from all the guesswork above, there just isn`t enough evidence to say for sure what was worn, so I have made a guess and now have something to keep me warm.
I have chosen to make a V necked coat using fabric I happened to have on hand. The outside is a heavy wool twill, and the inside is mostly likely a cotton fleece. The inside fabric is not correct for Viking Age, but the colour is plausible and it keeps the itchy wool away from my skin. The whole coat is edged with a plaid linen band. It is pinned with a small brooch, and belted with a whip corded (slyng) wool belt. Though the reproduction Viking coats are often depicted without a belt, I find that interpretation implausible. Unless the coat is intended purely as decoration and left open to show off a gown underneath, then it would make sense to belt it closed to retain body heat. Since my underdresses are both fairly plain and I wanted a belt that would not likely leave any traces in the archaeological record, I have chosen to belt mine closed using a simple slyng (whip corded) hemp belt that ties in place. All sewing was done by hand. The seams are done with a running stitch or stab stitch, then overcast (this seam finishing was found in York and Oslo), and hems and trim are done with a hem stitch (from York). The same stitches were also used on all the other items in this entry.
An alternative pattern for this coat would be very similar to a tunic, with gores at the side and possibly at the back, and with underarm gussets. This is a design that would make sense if the coat is indeed an open overdress, as may be depicted on the Genoels-Elderen Diptych.
Woolen apron dress (Project 70)
– This version was inspired by discussion on Norsefolk, where someone had looked at options for a pleated apron dress and posted a link to a reconstruction of the Kostrup apron dress, which had formerly been on display at the Museum of Denmark. My dress is more gathered than pleated, but it also has a high back. This was done for warmth in the original recreation, and it works quite well. I didn’t cut the back significantly longer than the front, but that didn’t seem to matter. The trim is tablet weaving made by Rufus, and it is topped with a finger woven braid I made using a bit of my handspun and dyed wool. I have chosen not to use brooches as I am not a wealthy woman. My wool has a bit of plaid, for which there is little direct evidence, but it is plausible. All seams and hems were done by hand. The dress is deliberately a bit large as I was experimenting with the options for being able to breastfeed a child.
Linen apron dress (Project 45)
– For warmer days, I thought it would be nice to have a linen apron dress. This was originally a rich indigo colour, which was unlikely, so I dyed it with a brown and then a yellow to turn it into a duller grey-brown, which is a more likely colour (possibly from something like oak galls, though they are southern, or purple loosestrife, which gives black when used with iron mordant. Purple loosestrife is native to northern Scotland, so is a plausible dye product for Viking Age Norse). This is more the traditional Birka patterned dress, with several gores. It was designed to use all the available fabric as efficiently as possible. I had absolutely no wastage. I am not entirely happy with the front and back gores, but extant pieces show that this bunching was not uncommon, so I chose not to re-stitch them. Most of the gored tunics in Woven into the Earth have bunches, gathers, or other messy bits at the top of gores; though these are later period, it is likely that similar problems existed with Viking Age clothing that used such gores.
I have chosen to make the apron dress large to facilitate breastfeeding. An alternative might be to have a more snug fitting top with a slit that is held shut with a brooch at the neck. This dress also uses straps rather than brooches, as befits my social status. I set these straps close together at the back and wider at the front, to try and minimize the risk of straps falling off my shoulders. Originally, I had made wide straps to see if they were more comfortable than narrow ones, but found they bunched, so have halved the original width. I have chosen to make the straps of a different linen from the main dress as the evidence from the backs of brooches seems to indicate that linen straps were probably the most common, and may have been used regardless of what the dress was made of. All seams and hems were hand sewn.
Under Dress
– This linen dress follows the basic pattern for tunics, using rectangular pieces with triangular gores. The big change was to cut a long opening, bind the edges, and add ties at the neck. This was part of my experiment for being able to breastfeed while in garb. Though I do not have young children, this aspect of re-enactment costume has bothered me for some time. There is no strong evidence one way or the other that I have been able to find regarding this, so I decided to go with ties as the option that would be least obtrusive – less likely to leave archaeological evidence or be depicted in drawings. I did up several dresses with different ties (braided wool, thin linen tubes) and made the slits in several different lengths. The most comfortable and potentially useful slit ended up being one that ended just below my breasts. The tunic was entirely handsewn.
Caps
– I have made a woolen cap and a linen cap, patterned after those found at York and in Dublin. The York cap is silk, but those in Dublin come in a variety of linen and woolen textiles. Some of the Dublin caps had a rounded top, but I rather like the simple square pattern. The caps were handsewn and the ties are made of braided or luceted wool. Some 17 bone tools that might have lucets have been found at York. I have made several and tested them to make lucet cords; they do work for this purpose. However, my cords are made using a wooden lucet.
Linen underwear with a fingerlooped wool drawstring – There is no evidence of viking Age underwear, linen or otherwise. It is quite possible that underwear was worn, but linen does not survive well, and underwear would not be touching metal (the most common way to find evidence for linen clothing is by corrosion patterns where it touched metal in graves). There is pictoral evidence of underwear in Roman times, and in the later middle ages and renaissance, so it is reasonable to suspect that Viking Age people also wore something. Mine are based on the pattern for medieval braes, except that they do not tie up at the waist. That seems to have been something done only by men, from the evidence in illuminated manuscripts.
Bibliography
____. Die Franken: Wegbereiter Europas, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1996.
Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire, England: Tempus Publishing, Ltd, 2006.
Inga Hagg, “Viking Women’s Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archeological Methods”, in Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe, ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, Heinemann Educational Books, the Pasold Research Fund Ltd, 1983.
Hall, Richard. The Viking Dig. London: The Bodley Head, 1984.
Laporte, Jean-Pierre. Le tresor des saints de Chelles. Ville de Chelles: Société archéologique et historique de Chelles, 1991.
Ostergard, Else. Woven into the Earth. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2004.
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004.
http://www.historiska.se/template/RelatedImagePopup.aspx?parent=23522&image=23525
http://www.gelfling.dds.nl/viking%20kaftan.html
http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/authenticity/female_clothing/
http://www.shelaghlewins.com/reenactment/viking_womans_outfit/viking_womans_outfit.htm
Dark Age Stitch Types: http://www.42nd-dimension.com/NFPS/nfps_stitches.html
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/lucets.shtml
Project 25 – Inkle-woven Garters
Garters were used to hold up socks. By the 14th C, they had become a conspicuous item of male dress, but careful perusal of illuminated manuscripts results in the occasional picture of women wearing garters too.
This pair of garters is patterned after several found in a late 14th C deposit in London. Those garters were probably woven on a loom, using black and red Z spun wool. Mine were done on an inkle loom, which is not appropriate for the period, but has the advantage of being portable and results in a textile identical to that which would have been produced had I used a rigid heddle loom.
These garters were made as a result of taking a class at Practicum last year, taught by Kjarvala. It was my second weaving project, my first having been some straps at her Practicum class the previous year. The garters are made using a commercial yarn; they have a high synthetic fibre content.
The garters were made by setting up the loom with an extra warp thread an inch or so away from the main warp threads, and held in place by winding a bunch of thread on the beginning post of the loom. The weft was then woven in, using a plain weave (the original garters had a mix of tabby and plain weave). Once the weft had been completed, I went back to the area with the big gap and needle wove weft pieces to make the dags. In my enthusiasm, I tried to make much more garter fabric than was possible on an inkle loom. I forgot that I would have to work backwards and the woven pieces couldn’t slide around the loom the way warp threads could! This made for an interesting challenge as I had to tie off a section at a time and try to maintain the right tension while making the dags.
I finished the garters by blanket stitching the edges where I cut the textile into four pieces. I then made cloth buttons using the instructions in Textiles and Clothing (p 171). I stuffed round pieces of black linen with bits of brown wool roving, then stitched around the edges and pulled them tight. I then stitched the button to hold the wool firmly in place, then sewed the whole thing to the garter and whipped the join before tying off. On the other side of the garter, I sewed a loop. By using the button method, I was able to get two pairs of garters out of this project. I had considered alternatives such as buckles, which were well documented for holding garters, but couldn’t figure out how to make them work with the dags. The surviving garters may have been tied in a knot, but their dags are much thinner than mine, and I didn’t think it would look right. I have no evidence for buttoned garters, but they work.
Source:
Crowfoot, Elisabeth, Pritchard, Frances, and Staniland, Kay. Textiles and Clothing c. 1150-c. 1450. London: HMSO, 1992.
Jan Scott. Class notes from “Inkle Weaving Dagged Garters“, 2009.
Project 68 – Hangikjöt
Hangikjöt is a traditional Icelandic food. Hangikjö t is literally “hung meat”. I haven’t been able to find much information on this dish, but Mistress Heithr, who is of Icelandic descent (and introduced me to this dish) says that only hung meat made with lamb or mutton is known as hangikjö t. Traditionally, it is served at Christmas, though it may also serve as a topping for bread. It can be eaten hot or cold. Sheep were known and eaten in the Viking Age
Smoking is an ancient, though not well documented, method of food preservation. The smoke dries the food, and contains preservatives which prevent the food from spoiling. All food that is to be smoked must be salted first. The Vikings most likely smoked their food simply by hanging it up in their halls. The reconstructed buildings at l’Anse aux Meadows used to be heated with wood fires and they were so smoky that visitors rarely stayed inside for more than a few minutes, and the interpreters developed chronic coughs. Eventually, the wood first were replaced with propane fake fires.
As I didn’t have access to a smoke-filled home, I settled for my barrel smoker. I used a charcoal fire covered with water-soaked wood chips. Icelanders use willow, birch and juniper, though some use dried pressed sheep dung mixed with straw or dried peat.
Before smoking, I brined my lamb shoulder for four days in 5 litres of water with 2.5 kg kosher salt, 125 g honey and 20 g pink salt (this is a commercial curing salt used to prevent botulism, and replaces the traditional saltpetre). I heated the ingredients together until the solid ingredients were as dissolved as possible. I found the brine extremely salty and had troubles getting all the salt to dissolve, even though the mixture was supersaturated through heating and rapid stirring. I then cooled and strained it, and added the lamb.
After four days, I fired up the barrel smoker and smoked the lamb for approximately 11 hours. The exact time required is a matter of luck and guesswork. This was a thicker piece of meat than I had ever smoked before, but it had the firm texture I would expect of a piece of cured meat.
Traditionally, once the meat has been smoked, it should be hung in a cool dry place as aged meat is more easily digested. I chose instead to store the meat in my refrigerator, where it has aged for about 6 weeks.
To serve it can be cooked in salted water. Leftovers can be sliced thin and served on bread. Mine has been cooked to remove a bit of the salt, and is served on flatbread made of rye and barley flour (mixed together) and water, and cooked on a hot griddle using a bit of bacon grease to keep the flour from sticking to the griddle. Ovens were rare in the Viking Age, and flat stones or griddles were most likely used for making flat breads similar to tortillas or chapattis. Rye and barley were hardy enough to grow in northern Europe, so were much more likely to have been used than wheat, which needs a longer growing season.
Sources:
Hangikjot: Jo`s Icelandic Recipes: http://www.isholf.is/gullis/jo/smoked%20meat.htm
Personal communication with Mistress Heithr
http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/food.shtml#BarleyFlatbread
Personal communication with Birgitta Linderoth Wallace, archaeologist
Project 73 – Bone Comb for Jhone
Combs were common articles of everyday use. The Scandinavians who settled in England were reportedly so fastidious about their appearance that John of Wallingford commented in the mid twelfth century on the powerful attraction exerted over English womanhood by these well-groomed Norsement who combed their hair every day (MacGregor, p. 73). More practically, they may have been important because of their role in controlling lice.
This is a composite comb; that is, one made of several pieces of bone. Composite combs by far the most common type made in Northern Europe from the late Roman Iron Age until the Middle Ages. They were developed in northern Europe, though they subsequently spread south through the Romanized regions (MacGregor, p. 74). Composite combs were most commonly made of red deer antler, as antler is significantly more able to absorb shocks and sudden impact loads such as being dragged through tangled hair or being dropped. I know from bitter experience that bone combs are fragile (the first one I made has been repaired several times). However, I have limited access to large pieces of antler, so learned to work with bone instead.
Since this comb was made for Jhone of Woodcote, whose persona is from York when she is doing Norse recreation, I chose to make a comb patterned after those from York. The York combs all tend to have a very gently sloping back, with protruding square or (occasionally pointed) edges on the end toothplates.
I made the comb by cutting a cow bone into several pieces using my hand saw. Two long thin pieces were shaped together to make the side plates. Four square or rectangular pieces were cut for the toothplates. They were then trimmed using a knife, smoothed with a file, and fitted together so that the grain of the bone was going in the same direction as the teeth would be cut. Cutting across the grain makes the teeth significantly weaker and more prone to breakage. Once everything fitted together snugly, I clamped the pieces together, carefully drilled holes at the ends and between each set of toothplates using a hand drill, then fastened rivets I made out of pieces of copper wire, using a hammer. Iron rivets would have been more common in York (and stronger), but I didn’t have access to the right kind of iron or soft steel. Once the toothplates were riveted in place, I sawed the teeth with my hand saw, trying to make the teeth even but ensuring that one set of cuts would go up between each of the toothplates, so the joins would be less visible. Although it would seem logical to cut the teeth before assembly, the saw marks on the backs of many extant combs, matching exactly with the teeth, show clearly that the sawing was done afterwards. I then smoothed each tooth with my knife so the comb wouldn’t catch in Jhone’s hair. Finally, I carved a simple design into the back of the comb with my knife, and polished the whole thing using a soft cloth and a bit of ash from the fire.
This is the second comb I have made. The first was made over 10 years ago, and with supervision from someone who was an experienced bone carver, so I was rather nervous about taking on this project alone. However, I am quite pleased with the results.
Sources:
Hall, Richard. The Viking Dig. London: The Bodley Head, 1984.
MacGregor, Arthur. Bone Antler Ivory & Horn: The Technology of Skeletal Materials Since the Roman Period. Kent: Croom Helm, 1985.
[…] though, gives me some insight that not all stitches have the same properties. For example, in Siglindesarts’s blog, the author references the simple coil stitch used to make the Coppergate socks, and the Asle […]
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