SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Phase III (Jacket)

The third component of my summer project is the short jacket.  The thing is, the authors of the 2025 paper on the Bryndum grave G12 didn't actually specify exactly what type of garment it is or how it was constructed.  They say that it's a "short jacket" reaching to about the hip, and they say that it appears to have been tailored to the body based on the way some of the pattern pieces and seams are oriented - it's not just a straight rectangular cut.  But aside from that, details are scant. So, just like with the pleated serk, there's a lot of filling in the blanks based on what I know of other, similar garments (in my head I'm thinking of this as "substituting with frog DNA" like in Jurassic Park, lol).  

So, there are two types of outerwear jacket/coat known from 9th-century Norse graves: the klappenrock, which is a rectangular-cut short (hip or thigh length) jacket that has a cross-over wrap front which is secured by a belt.  This garment has only been found in a couple of graves, and all of men.  The other type is the caftan we know from Inga Hagg's analysis of the Birka graves, which she documented as having belonged to female graves, and which is a longer, open-fronted garment secured with a brooch or pin in the center front, very similar to the buttoned caftans we see in Slavic and Russian settings from the same time period. 

My adaptation is modeled after Hagg's "caftan" garment.  It's cut with curved armpit/sleeve seams instead of the square armpit gusset you see in rectangular construction, and with sides and back fitted to the body and then tapered outwards to form the "skirt" of the jacket that fits over the hips.  We have no guidance from the ATR article on how this jacket was constructed other than the note that it was likely tailored to the body, so I've done the best I can in fitting the pattern a bit more exactly than you get with rectangular construction.  

Where the Bryndum jacket is made of wool lined with linen, I've made my adaptation out of a heavy (9oz) linen with a lighter weight (5oz) lining.  (I started with a "medium" (9oz) weight wool fabric, but it was WAY too heavy for this application and it would have looked just awful, so I decided to start over with linen fabric instead, which just happens to be much better suited to the hot Ansteorran summers and to machine-washing anyway. After all, I DO actually want to be able to wear - and wash -  this outfit!)  

I have absolutely no idea how the Norse would have accomplished lining their wool garments;  I chose to flat-line my jacket, by first basting the lining pieces to the jacket pieces and then sewing the combined pieces together.  Why? Mostly because I just like the way the felled seams look on a flat-lined garment; we do have examples of this type of lining in newer garments from the 14th and 15th centuries, so at least it's "SCA period" if not specifically known from Norse finds. Because I was going to be removing the basting stitches as I went along, I used a cotton sewing thread to baste the lining/outer pieces together; the actual sewing is done with linen thread which just *almost* matches the blue fabric (it was as close as I could find). 

Stitches used are pretty basic:  running stitch (seams), back stitch (seam reinforcement every few inches), and whip stitch (to fell the seam allowances open). There's also a staggered running stitch which the ATR article discusses as relates to hemming the top of the apron dress, which I used to hem the edges and the sleeve cuffs of the jacket.  

So. That's my Bryndum jacket for the time being.  I'm keeping my ear to the ground on this one - I can't wait to read more papers on the find, and I hope there'll be much more detailed analysis on the whole outfit in the future.  

Oh, and yes, this is what the wooden display stand that I built in May was for.  I plan to display the serk and apron dress on my dress dummy, and this jacket on the wooden stand.  I'm going to need to get a wagon to cart all this stuff around!  

Next stop: the apron dress...

SCA: 2026 Summer Project, Progress Report

Things on my big summer project are proceeding apace.  In April I posted about a pleated serk I made; in May I built a wooden display stand for part of the project.  

This whole thing is about the woman's outfit found in grave G12 at Bryndum in Denmark in 2016 (which I posted about in December).   I'm...not "recreating" the outfit, but I'm adapting a version suited for rough SCA use - linen instead of wool, cotton weaving thread instead of wool and flax - all to make this thing able to stand up to harsh use and machine washing.  

Yes, I started out the project in wool, but the fabric I bought was too heavy, so I ordered some new linen fabric and started over a few weeks ago, and altered the direction my documentation was going to reflect the changes.  I'm MUCH happier with the way it's going now, and I think it's going to look fantastic when it's all done. 

At the moment I'm working on the "jacket" for the outfit, and when I'm not sewing, I'm weaving the bands which will become the straps for the apron dress (see the December blog post for details).  

Here's a pile of pattern pieces all basted together with the lining pieces, ready to be sewn together.  I'm sewing with waxed linen thread, although I did the basting with regular cotton machine thread since I was going to pull it out anyway and discard it as I sewed the seams.  

And here's a bit of the tablet weaving I'm working on for the straps. The pattern is "Mammen Mia" by L. Elewys von Finchingfield, who adapted the pattern off one of the motifs from a woven band found at Mammen from the 9-10th century.  Since I'm working in 8/4 cotton thread instead of thicker wool threads, the bands are a bit narrower than the extant examples, but since they'll be doubled and sewn together, they should be plenty strong (I'll get into that a bit more later when I do a post on just the tablet weaving).  I will say, though, that this is my first pattern with only two threads per card instead of four, and it is kicking my BUTT.  It's so slooowwww and tedious.  I'm really not enjoying it, LOL.  

Busy busy!  I should finish the jacket by the end of this week, and then I'll have pictures of the whole thing for you. After that I have to finish the weaving, and then sew a matching apron dress to complete the set.  

KAS is in two months, so I've got plenty of time to finish this outfit (and my documentation) - I'm looking forward to being so I can take a break, although I've already got the next three projects planned out and one started, hehe.  SO much to do, always!  

Where’s Hrefna?

Oops, sorry, everyone, it’s been a minute since I posted. Life got weird for a while there. 

I bought a new car and it’s been a nonstop barrage of small problems since day one. Everything is all fixed now, though, so it should be smooth sailing, er, driving, from here on out. 

I’ve had some medical issues, too - my asthma, which was almost gone, reared its ugly head again so we’re dealing with that. Had some skin cancer removed. Found out I have some other medical issues I didn’t know about, which I won’t bore you with here. 

It’s been a lot. 

However, I’m still working solidly on my big project. I don’t have any pics for you just yet, but I will in about a week if things continue to go well. 

I decided that the fabric I was working with, a medium-weight felted wool, was just too thick for what I was doing, so I scrapped the whole project and started over with some nice middle weight linen, which is a huge change and required some substantial rewriting of my documentation. The serk I made in April is great, but I’ve redone the smok and am working on a third piece right now. 

I’m also tablet weaving pretty much all my free time that I’m not sewing, although it’s going v e r y  s l o w l y. It’s a skip-hole weave, which I’ve never done before, and between fiddling with the cards to try to keep them aligned, and the fact that my left shoulder is hurting every time I start weaving, I’m only managing to do about 6-8” in a 45-minute session. Yeesh. It’s coming along, though. 

Anyway, I’m still here, still making stuff. I’ll have some progress pics for you here in the next week or so.