SCA: 6-Strand "Hedeby Braid"

Several clothing fragments have been found at Hedeby (Haithabu, Germany; was Hedeby, Denmark in the Viking Age) - some in graves, some which had been torn up, coated with tar and used as caulking in a ship.  One of these torn remnants was fragment 14, as described by Inga Hagg in 1984, pictured here: 

Hagg, 1984

This piece measures around 30x23cm, is made of wool which has been dyed brown, and is cut straight on one side and torn off in a curve on the other side.  It is thought to be a fragment of a smokrr, or apron dress.  

There is a seam on one side of the dress where two pieces of fabric are stitched together, and on top of that seam is stitched a section of braided cord, highlighted here in blue: 

highlighting by me to show location of braid

As far as we know, based on the finds, the Norse peoples of the 10th century didn't do decorative embroidery on these female garments the way you sometimes see in the SCA; but they did embellish seams and edges with strips of contrasting fabric and braids/cords like this one.  Sometimes braids/cords were applied to seams, like in this example; sometimes they were applied to the top edge of a smokkr along with a section of contrasting fabric, as decoration and reinforcement of the edge.  

illustration by Hagg (1984), red highlighting by
Hilde Thunem to show direction of weave)

This particular braid is made up of 6 strands of thread, originally in red and yellow (3 of each). Each thread is 6-ply; the entire braid is only 1-2mm wide. 

Having several skeins of cotton yarns left over from recent crochet/weaving projects, I decided to use my leftovers to try my hand at weaving this 6-strand braid from Hedeby, to use to further ornament my apron dresses.  I found a very good tutorial video by Wyrd Kindred on YouTube, located here. 

Here is my first attempt, done in fingering weight cotton yarn, in brown and rust-brown.  It's not bad for a first try, but the colors don't go with anything in my wardrobe, which is all done in blues and greens.  So I made a second one - I didn't have any blues or greens, so I dyed some white cotton yarn blue and green for this: 

Rather than use my braid over a seam the way the Hedeby find does, I opted to use it at the top of one of my apron dresses.  Many Viking age finds of smokkr fragments show the top edge of the smokkr hemmed to the inside, and then decorated on the outside with various items, usually contrasting silk ribbon or wool fabric, sometimes along with braids and twisted cords at the top or bottom edge of the contrasting piece to both embellish the decoration and strengthen the construction of the top edge: 

illustration of various examples of ribbon/cord decoration the top edge of a smokkr, 
Hagg 1974; image borrowed from Hilde Thunem's Smokkr page

Since my Hedeby braid is done in blue and teal, I decided to affix it to my teal smokkr, which had only a 2" strip of teal silk ribbon across the top edge. I stitched it on with regular cotton sewing thread, because that's what I had on hand: 

I only braided enough to go around the front of the dress; I poked the ends through the fabric and knotted them in place on the inside in order to finish the ends.  (I hope they stay in place). 

I like the effect.  This feels more "finished" to me; and it's a step towards being more historically accurate than it was before.  I love little details like this; in my opinion it's the little things that combine together to make an outfit look HA - and look good.  

(That said, I know this teal color isn't, to my knowledge, historically accurate;  but I made this smokkr (and all my other ones) before I started my big push to bring everything closer to accurate a year ago - it's still in good condition, so I still wear it, and at least the construction and stitching, and now the top edge ornamentation, is as HA as I can make it at this time. Future projects will be begun and completed very differently, but that's for another blog post).  

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We're getting closer to the fall event season - only a few weeks away!  I'll have more soon  about clothing, accessories, furniture, and campsite stuff.  

SCA: Possible CRF (Critical Research Failure)?

 I recently discovered the wonderful YouTube channel, The Welsh Viking.  Jimmy presents dozens of videos on early Medieval Viking society, in all it's facets, backed up by research and web sources, and his own research as a reenactor and grad student. He reminded me recently of something I've heard before:  make the outfit fit the research, don't do the research to fit the outfit.  It made me wonder:  which have I been doing? 

My research process has been something like this: read the research, establish that the [Thing] I want to make IS historically accurate for what I want, and then make it.  Once I'm in the creation phase, I tend to forget most of the research - I can tell you that a [Thing] IS Viking, but not when it was found, who found it, who published the research, when the original article is dated from, or which aspect of "Viking culture" it comes from.  Most of my research has been only to establish "Yes, this is good."  I mean, I read all I can get my hands on, but I often just forget once I'm actually making things.  

So I wondered, is my reenactment Viking kit simply a mishmash of random "Viking" stuff I've read about, or does it even all go together?  I couldn't answer that question at all.  Think of cosplaying 20th Century American with an Edwardian corset, a flapper dress from the 1920s, with spectator shoes from the 40s and a bullet bra from the 50s, and a curly shag hairstyle from the 1980s and smoky black 90s eyeshadow.  Sure, it's all 20th century, but none of it goes together at all.  Had I done that unintentionally?  The idea horrified me.  

And so I made a list of all of my Viking kit components, and re-did all my original research, and then kept going until I had answers to all those questions from earlier in this post answered for each item.  The results pacified my earlier horror: it turns out that by dumb luck, most of my Viking kit is solidly 10th century Swedish/Danish, with a few exceptions.  Here's a short list: 

• My serk and apron dresses are solidly in the area of finds from Birka and Hedeby from around 9-10th centuries
• The blue colors in which I do all of my clothing are backed up by blue serks and apron dresses also found at Birka and Hedeby
• The small round silver-colored brooch I use to hold my serk neckline together is not period, but is made to resemble finds of similar small round silver brooches found at Birka and Hedeby from the 10th century
• My beloved "Hedeby bags" are made based on extrapolated designs proposed based on wooden bag handles found, again, at Birka and Hedeby from the 10th century
• My two rectangular shawls/cloaks (one wool and one linen) are reminiscent of similar items of clothing worn by figures shown on the Oseberg tapestry, and which were also commonly worn in early Saxon and other neighboring cultures in the 10-11th centuries
• Two coats/caftans, modeled after a find from Birka from the 10th century, probably only worn by high nobles - not many of these were found, but they are known (the fur trim on the gray coat was actually a thing.  Not the white fur that I used, but probably brown fur or sheep's wool which was either added to the garment post-construction or woven into the cloth used to make the coat).  
• My wool winingas are known from graves from around Scandinavia, for my purposes most notably Hedeby from the 10th century (but winingas/leg wraps are known from the ancient Romans onward through WWII).  
• The beads that I wear both suspended from my brooches and as necklaces are modern glass, amber and metal beads, made/chosen to resemble beads actually found in Viking graves from the 8-11th centuries.  (The metal, I've learned is not correct, but the glass and amber are okay). 

This stuff is all around 10th century Swedish or Danish.  Here's some stuff that differs a bit: 

• My leather turnshoes are based on a find from Vlaardingen, Holland, from the 11th century, and similar finds from York, England.  
• The Jorvik hoods that I wear are modeled after a silk hood found in Jorvik (York, England) from the 10th century
• While tortoise brooches are known from the 8th-10th centuries throughout Scandinavia, mine are a replica of a pair of Vendel Period brooches, which predate the Viking Age by a little bit, probably from 650-700CE. 
• The Skjoldehamn hood is known from a single find in Skjoldehamn, Norway, which dates to the 11-12th centuries, and is from a man's grave.  No hood like this has ever been found in a woman's grave that I'm aware of.  (The crocheted version of this hood that i made several years ago is basically just ridiculous, I made it just for fun and mostly to wear mundanely anyway). 
• My earrings, which I made to coordinate with my necklaces and bead strings, are basically not a thing.  No jewelry which can be called "earrings" has ever been found in a Viking Age grave as far as I know.  

So what now?  I'm pleased that most of my kit turns out to be correct for 10th century Sweden/Denmark, which is what I was vaguely aiming for to begin with. There are some things i'd like to fix, and some things I'd like to change going forward to make my kit more authentic: 

• I've known for a while that I'd like to try hand-sewing an entire outfit from the ground up.  Usually I machine-sew the construction seams and serge the seam edges, and then finish all the other work by hand.  I'd like to try actually sewing the whole dress by hand, including finishing the seams, which terrifies me. 
• As much as I love my Rit dye, I really would like to learn to dye with natural dyestuffs. I don't know if this will happen though, because dyeing supplies and materials are expensive, and I'd have to start basically on the ground floor. 
• I'd like to make a few Jorvik hoods out of actual silk fabric, like the original find was.  
• Now that I know I'm not allergic to actual wool and can treat wool so that I don't react to the chemicals in it, I'd like to try making a wool apron dress.  It's too hot here for wool most of the year, but I could wear one at BAM in November...maybe next year. 
• I'm working on getting better at inkle loom weaving, but inkle weaving is not period for Viking Age recreations.  As much as I loooove tablet woven trims, I'd really like to try learning to do tablet weaving and make my own. 
• Two years ago, before the pandemic hit, I was learning to make glass beads, and had amassed some supplies of my own.  The classes I was taking are no longer available; I'd like to acquire the rest of the supplies I need and begin practicing in my own garage, and replace all my storebought glass beads with homemade ones that resemble or replicate actual Viking glass beads.  
• I'd also like to learn naalbinding.  I've tried before and it was miserable and practically impossible, but I've learned recently that I was using the wrong kind of needle.  I'm going to make my own wooden needle soon, and I'll try again.  

Whew! That was a long post.  But wait, let's list some of the sources I've been reading/reading about: 

Carolyn Priest-Dorman (SCA): https://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/viktunic.html 

Hilda Thunem: http://urd.priv.no/viking/ 

Thor Ewing, Viking Clothing, 2006

Agnes Geiger, Textile Finds From Birka, 1983

Inga Haag, Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu, 1983

Inga Haag, 1974

Else Ostergard, Woven Into the Earth, 2003

Onward, to better reenacting!

The Headgear Discrepancy

In the Hungarian National Museum exhibit, the extant Hapsburg wedding gown is shown sans headgear. There's a white scarf or veil wrapped around the head of the display mannequin (as seen here); but no other head covering is shown - the focus is on the dress itself.  To my knowledge, there is no headgear that goes with that extant dress.

So, in researching the Hapsburg wedding gown for my red-and-white version, at some point along the way I decided that I'd make a truncated hennin to wear with it.  The decision was based on (a) the Hapsburg gown being a combination of Burgundian and German styling, and (b) I kept coming across portaits of Mary of Hungary/Hapsburg that were either German in styling or French.  A little bit more research and I would have realized that I was actually seeing portraits of two entirely different women!

Marie de Bourgone, Michel Pocher, c. 1490

The first is Marie de Bourgone, (1457-1482), daughter of Charles the bold and Duchess of Burgundy. This is the Mary of Burgundy so often depicted in classic Burgundian dress with the steepled hennin.

Hans Maler, 1520

The second is Mary of Austria, also called Mary of Hungary after her marriage to Louis II (for which event the "Hapsburg gown" was created), and Governor of the Netherlands after his death, as regent for her brother, Ferdinand I.  She's the daughter of Philip I and Joana "the Mad" of Castile, and the niece of Catherine of Aragon...and is no relation to Mary of Burgundy.

Portraits of this Mary are often of Mary as Governor of the Netherlands, after her first husband's death, and in these later portraits, her garb looks decidedly more German.

(There are a also couple of portaits of her wearing mourning dress, after her second husband's death, which looks like it's probably Tudor-y, but I haven't been able to track down sources for them other than or hobbyist blogs which have no documentation).






Why didn't I catch this?  Because all of my research was about the *dress*, not the woman herself.   There is a also, I've discovered, a LOT of confusion between the two out there on the internet, a lot of blogs and A&S papers and other sources which list incorrect names for both women and/or present both women as the same person.  It took some digging into the parentage and domain of both Marys to figure out which one was which.  ARGH.

So, now what? 

Man, I have no idea.  While the Hapsburg gown is, technically, contemporary to late Burgundian fashion, during which women were still wearing hennins, I *could* get away with it...but now I know I've been confusing my Marys, I feel like it's not the right hat for the dress.  And, of course,  I can find NO period portraits of her in a gown that looks like the actual Hapsburg wedding gown.

I don't have time to make a big ol' German hat.  And the Hapsburg gown isn't a big ol' German hat type of dress, anyway.

When I did my original research on the patterning and construction of the Hapsburg wedding gown, I found three others made by SCAdians on the web, and...none of them are wearing headgear at all in the photographs.

Sigh.

Anyway, in the meantime, I thought I'd share my research-fail with you, because I thought it was kinda funny.  I really should have clued in, earlier, to the fact that I might actually be looking at two different women!

Oh, yeah...

So, here's the truncated hennin that I made:

(this is my "seriously?!" face)

The hat is made of a double-layer of heavy cross-stitch fabric (because that's what I had), covered with some blue drapery fabric scraps that I adhered to the cross-stitch fabric with spray adhesive.  The drape across the front is black velveteen salvaged from an old coat.

I folded the point of the cone inward to blunt the end and add stability to the hat itself, which was pretty flimsy before I did that.

Inside the "brim", the edge of the blue drapery fabric is turned under the edge of the cross-stitch fabric and the raw edges covered with a strip of ribbon hot-glued and stitched in place by hand.

While it doesn't show well in the photo for whatever reason, my silk gauze veil is sheer enough that the color and pattern of the hennin shows through it.  I really like the effect.

Not bad for a little hat that I totally didn't need and don't have anything to wear with.  :P



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