I shall introduce my project to textile class today, so probably it’s easiest to write down here about the same things I’ll be telling there.
I’m making an western Finnish everyday dress based on some archaeological and ethnological evidence. I’m not reconstructing any special grave find. Fabrics found in burials are mostly festive or better clothes with jewelry and tell mostly about richer people’s burial. Clothes worn daily at the Viking Period are not familiar to us. I make my guesses about daily clothing using two main sources:
1) Archaeological evidence. What has been found? What kind of fabrics, materials and models do we have from Viking Age Finland and, if there isn’t any in Finland, then Sweden, Denmark and Norway? I admit that I don’t have enough sources from Estonia or other Baltic countries or from Russia, but I emphazise Western Finlands strong contacts to Sweden at that period.
2) Materials in use. Which were and are the most practical materials? I assume that because of processing fibres to fabric and then to a dress has taken so much time, there has been much more daily dresses made of leather as we have been thinking. Wool has evidently been a very important material: warm, quite easy to handle and relative easy to grow and get. Linen is also overrated as a fabric material – hemp is easier to grow, though a bit coarser fibre.
Frock
The frock will be made of fat-tanned and bark-coloured animal skins (goat, deer, sheep). For colouring I will use willow and fur bark, for fat-tanning sheep brains and seal train oil. I will take the pattern from Danish bog finds and sew the frock together with hemp- or linen yarn.
Syrcotte
Syrcotte is a medieval term for a dress on top. “Syrcotte” doesn’t describe this part of a Finnish dress very well, but I’ll use it before I find a better description. Finnish Viking Age syrcotte-dress doesn’t have any seams. There are probably some variations of the dress: one possibility is to have a peplos-dress like in the Eura costume, a rectangular piece of cloth, which is folded on top and fasten with round brooch or brooches on one or both shoulders. Reconstructed Kaarina costumes syrcotte is made of two different fabric pieces fasten on both shoulders with brooches. All syrcotte types have an apron on them and are thus bound on waist with a tablet-weaved band.
The most common woollen textile type from Finnish grave finds is 2/2 twill (Sz/z, type 12 according Jorgensen 1991). It is found especially from Eura Luistari burial ground and is very typical for Finnish mainland. There aren’t any other similar 2/2 twill types in the same period in Northern Europe – the nearest examples are from Halstatt culture about 1000 years earlier.
The most coarse fabric finds from Finland are from 5/4/cm (warp/loom). Because I’m weaving an everyday dress, I’m spinning yarn which will make about 6-7 yarn/cm in warp and weft.
Both the weft and the warp are combed with viking wool combs. Warp is spinned with an underneath spindle. Because my time is restricted, I’m spinning the warp with a spinning wheel though the spinning wheel came to Finland earliest at 16th century.
I’m dyeing spunned yarn with heather plant and alun. Colour should be strong yellow. After dyeing I’ll set a loom to a warp-weighted weaving loom and begin to weave. I have to decide sooner or later am I weaving a bread peplos-style fabric or a much meager Kaarina costume -styl, two-piece syrcotte.
Aprons
I will make two different aprons. Another is made of bark-tanned leather and don’t have any special pattern: it’s a piece of leather for dirty and wet work.
Another one is a hemp apron. It is a piece of cloth, about 40 cm x 75 cm. Finnish woollen Viking Age aprons have been between 30-45cm broad and 50-90cm long. I’m taking the same model to a hemp apron. I’m using hemp as the material because it is much more easy to wash and use in everyday work than wool. It is also possible that many of Viking Age textile finds are hemp, not linen.
Linen is a plant which needs lots of care and a good soil for growing. Hemp thrives in clay soil and is very easy to cultivate. It doesn’t need rooting up because the leaves are so thick that weed don’t grow under it. It’s also almost impossible to separate linen and hemp fibres from archaeological finds even it has been a tradition to call all fibre-like fabrics as linen. In Sweden there is a survey coming out on the autumn 2008, which will tell more about separating hemp from linen.
I’m processing water-retted hemp stems with linen tools. I brake dry stems and after that scutch them with a medieval-type scutching tool. After that I’ll hackle hemp fibres with a hackling comb and spin them with a spindle (weft) and a spinning wheel (warp).
I’m using hackled fine hemp for the warp, but spinning the weft of tow, the “waste fibres” which stuck into the combs when hackling. So the apron will be made of a bit more coarse material.
I’ll also weave a tabled-weaved band for binding up the apron and the whole dress. I’m spinning the yarn with a spindle and using natural colours of wool for the pattern.
Headdress
I will weave the headscarf with the same warp than the hemp apron. Scarf is about 40 x 70cm piece of cloth. In the headscarf also the weft will be hackled hemp.
Shoes
The shoes will be made of the cow hide. Cow hide is tanned with fur bark and will lay in the bark bath from the beginning of October to the beginning of January. Model of the shoes comes from Viking Age Scandinavia, but I haven’t decided yet, what they will look like.
Socks
If there is enough time, I’ll comb wool and spin thick yarn with a spindle and needle-bind tubular socks. This is also possible to do later.
