a certain effect through the use of woven bands. Grey and brown wool, less impressive,
was used for more everyday purposes, for example homespun production.
The importance of wool quality is often forgotten now when sheep are reared
primarily for meat and a degree of knowledge has been lost. Wool from the old country
breeds consists of long, strong and very shiny outer hairs, and very soft inner hairs. There
is also a major difference in quality between lambs’ and sheep’s wool. By separating the
outer and inner hairs one could produce woollen fibres with radically different properties
and uses. The shearing period is also crucial, the best time for fine-quality wool being in
the autumn after the rich grazing, and when there are no lambs whose nourishment
affects the wool proteins. This level of knowledge in textile production can be seen even
in Bronze Age finds.
Two underestimated textile elements in the Viking Age are feathers and down, of
which examples are preserved in graves – perhaps as stuffing in cushions and bolsters
on which the dead have lain. Clothing may also have been stuffed with down, for winter
warmth.
Otherwise typical for the Viking Age are the so-called twill weaves. These are woven
in three- or four-shed twill and have names such as ‘goose-eye’, ‘chevron-twill’ and
‘diamond-twill’. This means that the cloth was woven on the loom in a certain order
with several so-called sheds. The simplest and eldest weaving technique is called
tabby, consisting of only two sheds. In this technique, alternate warp threads are lifted
with one shed while the second shed lifts the other threads so that a new one can be
inlaid into the weave. In this way warp and weft threads are combined to make a fabric
that cannot be torn. This process is continued until the desired length is reached. The
resulting tabby cloth is rather stiff and in appearance resembles the surface of a woven
basket.
With twill and the multiple sheds, the weaves became more flexible and thus more
suited to a mobile horse and warrior culture. The cloth was also more durable and had
a beautiful surface of shifting patterns, even though often simply coloured. When
looms with horizontal warps were introduced, production capacity increased by 400 per
cent. Greater efficiency in dyeing followed, when whole finished cloths were coloured
rather than individual yarns that were then used in isolation. The latter method was
long-lived on rural settlements, but the more effective production process assumed
greater prominence in the towns as it was more suited for the production of surplus and
thus for sale.
We see this in female textile equipment found in the Birka graves, especially when
contrasted with its rural equivalent. In the country, women were buried with spindle
whorls, but these are generally absent from Birka. There instead we find needles,
scissors, tweezers, weights and coins, suggesting trade and fine sewing. The access that
towns provided to costly materials such as silk probably meant that this too was
incorporated in the work, though clearly these kinds of cloths were cut up into narrow
strips for economy. Sewn on to make exotic borders on woollen clothes, these shining
silks still played their part in indicating status, membership of the Viking Age culture
area and a set of shared norms spanning the north from England to Scandinavia and
Russia.
–– Annika Larsson––