Construction Techniques

Even the poor­est peo­ple in the Viking–Age so­ci­eties of North­ern Eu­rope were good tai­lors — they had to be, most peo­ple lived far away from ur­ban ar­eas, and even then they might not have the money or goods to trade for com­pleted gar­ments. Be­cause of this, I sug­gest plenty of prac­tice at seam­ing, and fit­ting. Old tea tow­els and bed­sheets are good to prac­tice on.

Tools of the trade

• Nee­dle
• Thread — wool for wool, linen for linen. Avoid cot­ton thread
• Scis­sors or shears
• Dress-mak­ing pins
• Tai­lors chalk, or fab­ric marker (for draw­ing pat­terns or mak­ing ad­just­ments) or use
• Pat­tern pa­per - cre­at­ing a pat­tern on pa­per means you can reuse pat­terns, and any changes you make can be drafted for the next time you de­cide to make a gar­ment
• Beeswax — run thread through a beeswax block to stiffen the thread, pre­vent knots and be ex­tra wa­ter­proof

Basic Stitches to Master

• Run­ning Stitch
• Back Stitch
• Whip Stitch
• Blan­ket Stitch

Under–Garments

Overview

It’s not clear from ar­chae­ol­ogy how Viking-Age peo­ple lay­ered cloth­ing, as most finds are frag­men­tary, ad­hered to the un­der­side of metal brooches and buck­les on the top­most layer.

How­ever, through the ex­am­i­na­tion of lit­er­a­ture, and ac­counts from the pre and post Viking–Age, we can de­ter­mine that there are two dis­tinct male gar­ments: the shirt, and the kir­tle. The shirt, we as­sume, is an un­der–gar­ment. It’s shorter that the kir­tle — just be­low the waist — and is prob­a­bly close fit­ting.

One of the only known ex­tant finds of a Viking–Age shirt is from Vi­borg in Den­mark. It’s a made from many small pieces of linen fab­ric, with a draw­string neck­line and sleeves that are tight at the wrist.

We can ex­trap­o­late a sim­pler pat­tern from the Vi­borg shirt by look­ing at a frag­ment of a child’s linen smock from York. It had two sleeves, a side and part of an un­der arm gus­set.

An­other part of the un­der­wear is the breeches & hose, or trousers. Again, much of our knowl­edge comes from pre and post Viking–Age finds, such as the Thors­berg trousers and Dät­gen breeches, but there is some con­tem­po­rary arachae­ol­ogy. There’s a frag­ment of woollen hose found in Hedeby, Ger­many, and an elab­o­rately dec­o­rated pair of woollen leg­gings from Skjold­e­hamn, Nor­way.

One of the most in­ter­est­ing and com­plete finds from York is a woollen sock wo­ven us­ing a tech­nique called Naal­bind­ing. The knot­ted con­struc­tion makes them ex­tremely hard weav­ing, and quite wa­ter­proof.

Textiles

For the shirt, use a medium weight, undyed Tabby (plain weave) linen. Get one with a sett of 15-20 threads per cm.

Undyed linen colours range from bleached grey­ish white to a muddy green–brown.

For the breeches or leg­gings, use a semi-fine, or fine-medium wool. Again, stick to nat­ural colours: white fleeces were pop­u­lar, as were light brown and dark brown. Some­times, a light wool and dark wool were used to­gether to add a two tone ef­fect to the weave. Be on the look­out for a 2/​1 or 2/​2 twill or her­ring­bone (chevron) weave.

Colour Palette

Linen

Wool

Shirt

This is a hugely sim­pli­fied ver­sion of the Vi­borg shirt. You can ei­ther cut two rec­tan­gles, or fold the fab­ric over and cut just the neck hole like a pon­cho. The square gus­sets can be in­serted un­der the arms for ex­tra space. The sleeves ta­per to the wrist, be­ing quite close fit­ting. The bot­tom hem should sit just be­low the groin. Cut the neck hole quite small, and make a short front open­ing. This can be pinned, or laced.

If you fancy a go at the more elab­o­rate Vi­borg shirt, take a look at this ar­ti­cle from which the pat­tern is based.

Breeches

Be­sides the Skjold­e­hamn an­kle–breeches, there are frag­ments from Hedeby and ear­lier Iron–Age footed–breeches that in­di­cate pos­si­ble meth­ods of con­struc­tion.

The legs of the breeches, how­ever long, are cut as tubes with a sin­gle seam — ei­ther in­side or out­side. The breeches have a large seat, and some bag­gi­ness for the be­hind. A sep­a­rate waist belt is folded over to in­cor­po­rate a draw­string.

Short breeches should fall just be­low the knee, long breeches should be fit­ted at the an­kle. There is a small cut to al­low the foot through, which is re-en­forced with a blan­ket stitch.

Socks

There is ac­tu­ally very lit­tle ev­i­dence for socks be­sides the sin­gle find from York and wool socks from Skjold­e­hamn. The for­mer is a naal­bind­ing sock with a mad­der-dyed trim, the lat­ter are woollen rec­tan­gles sewn up un­der the heel. They may have been a rare item; per­haps leg wraps were ex­tended to wrap around the feet, or shoes were lined. Sadly, the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal record does­n’t say much, so use your dis­cre­tion — it’s OK to do with­out!

Outer–Garments

Overview

Outer–wear for most peo­ple of the Viking–Age was made of wool. Wool is a good ther­mal in­su­la­tor, so helps in both the win­ter and the sum­mer, al­though it’s easy to as­sume that lay­ers would be dis­carded in hot weather. Wealth­ier peo­ple were known to wear linen as the outer layer — Saxon buri­als from be­fore the pe­riod show this, but those clothes could also be fu­neral dress so it’s hard to tell.

The ‘kirtle’ or over–tu­nic is a knee-length gar­ment with a full skirt. It could be hitched up at the waist with a belt, and sleeves are slightly bag­gier and can be rolled up. The neck lines of these outer gar­ments seem to have a wider neck that the shirt, but we have very lit­tle in­for­ma­tion — most ex­tant finds of tu­nics are ei­ther frag­ments, or pre or post Viking–Age. Thank­fully, there are some il­lus­tra­tions of every­day dress in con­tem­po­rary art work.

British Li­brary, MS. Cot­ton Tiberius B. v Part 1, fol. 5r

The cloak was an im­por­tant item, par­tic­u­larly in the gift-giv­ing cul­ture of the Vikings. As well as be­ing an­other layer of thick wool for warmth, they make great blan­kets. Sim­i­larly, there are phases through­out the Viking–Age where head wear comes in and out of fash­ion. Hats, caps and hoods are known in ar­chae­ol­ogy.

Textiles

For outer–gar­ments use wool, but try to get medium or hairy wools. Again, like the wool tex­tiles for the breeches, search for 2/​1, 2/​2 and Her­ring­bone (chevron) twills. There is also ev­i­dence for di­a­mond twill fab­ric at York, and in ear­lier finds such as the Thors­berg tu­nic. There are wool tab­bies pre­sent in ar­chae­ol­ogy, but they are all quite loosely wo­ven, per­haps for blan­kets or sacks, so avoid.

Di­a­mond twill weave in con­trast­ing warp & weft colours.

Tunic (kirtle)

The tu­nic should be knee length and with a full skirt. This can be achieved by cut­ting the skirt width into the pat­tern, or by adding tri­an­gu­lar gores into the sides and op­tion­ally, the front. Al­ter­na­tively, for­get the gores and have a split in the side (don’t have a split in the front). The arms are a bit bag­gier, but should still ta­per to the wrist. op­tion­ally, you can in­set the sleeves at the shoul­der for a bet­ter fit. The shoul­der seams are op­tional — you can fold the fab­ric over like a pon­cho and just cut the neck hole.

For the neck­line, use a round cut rather than square (which is an 11th cen­tury fash­ion suit­able for our late–Saxon por­tray­als). You can ‘key­hole’ it with a slit at the front in the cen­ter and use a thong or pin to keep the it closed. Some ex­am­ples of neck­lines are quite wide, com­ing from the neck to the col­lar bone. A short v-neck is also ac­cept­able, with a rounded back.

Use the same fab­ric (and colour) for all the parts: sleeves, gores and gus­sets.

The Kragelund tu­nic has a dis­tinc­tive v-neck.

Colours

Stick with nat­ural wool colours — light-brown to dark-brown. If you pick a dyed fab­ric, try to find one with a washed–out colour, like a onion skin colour, or brick red.

Cloak

A ba­sic cloak is sim­ply a rec­tan­gle of heavy–hairy wool. The fab­ric can be tabby wo­ven or a sim­ple twill like her­ring­bone. The edges should be raw, or fixed with a blan­ket stitch.

British Li­brary, MS. Cot­ton Tiberius B. v Part 1, fol. 5r

The cloak is clasped at the shoul­der (right shoul­der, un­less you’re left handed!). Al­ter­na­tively, it can be a semi-cir­cle with the curved side at the bot­tom when it is pinned.

The clasp can be a sim­ple af­fair — leather thong­ing, or a pin. The pin can be made from wood, bone or metal. One of the most pop­u­lar types of pins in the Viking–Age, was the ringed pin. Again, these can be made from bone, iron or cop­per-al­loy.

A ringed pin from Got­land in the British Mu­seum

There a few other de­signs of pins — an­nu­lar, penan­nu­lar and ansate, and a num­ber of brooches. For a sim­ple kit, stick with a pin.

Hat/Hood

Most male hats in ar­chae­ol­ogy point to a sim­ple woolen cap — there’s pan­eled hats from Birka, pill­box caps from the Nether­lands, naal­bind­ing caps from Ger­many and po­ten­tially sun hats which are seen in art­work.

Decoration

As with the breeches, you can add dec­o­ra­tive stitches in a con­trast­ing colour to the seams, and thin braid on the edges of the neck and cuffs.

Dou­ble her­ring­bone stitch over brown wool felt.

Accessories

The ac­ces­sories listed here are per­sonal items that fin­ish off a cos­tume. these are key items for the fit of cloth­ing — usu­ally func­tional as well as dec­o­ra­tive, and some es­sen­tial for any work or trade.

Shoes

Shoes from the Viking–Age are made of leather and are usu­ally of the ‘turn shoe’ con­struc­tion. The top part is cut as one piece then stitched to the sole in­side out around a last — it is then turned the right way out so that the stitch­ing is on the in­side.

Sole con­struc­tion

Stitch­ing the sole

Knife & Sheath

A knife is of course a great util­ity. Made of iron, some­times with a hard steel edge, the knife or seax could be any­where from a cou­ple of inches to the size of a ma­chete. These aren’t adapted for war­fare, but tools that are used around the house, or out in the fields and woods.

The han­dle would be of wood, or bone, some­times with cop­per-al­loy or iron fit­tings. Hous­ing the knife is a leather sheath. The sheath is made my wrap­ping the (wet) leather around the knife, cut­ting to shape and stitch­ing one seam. In some cases the stitch­ing is pro­tected and re­in­forced by a metal fit­ting.

Leg Wraps

Leg wraps are cloth strips that wrap around the calf and fas­ten just be­low the knee. They func­tion as sup­port and also to pro­tect the trousers from wear. The cloth strips should be 2–3 inches thick and around 12 feet long and made of wool in a sim­ple twill weave. They are wrapped around the calf start­ing at the an­kle (or around the foot) and tie around the back of the knee with thong­ing, cloth or with a hooked tag made from iron or cop­per-al­loy.

The wraps, some­times called winingas or putees, could be wo­ven as a sin­gle piece or as a cut off from other fab­ric and joined to­gether.

Jewellery

For this por­trayal, a sin­gle neck­lace with a pen­dant will suf­fice, and per­haps a ban­gle of cop­per-al­loy. There are many finds of crosses, ham­mers, spears and axes as pen­dants made from iron and cop­per al­loy, and some of bone. Use woollen yarn or leather for the neck­lace.