The textiles in the Oseberg ship By Anne Stine Ingstad
Amongst many other discoveries the Oseberg grave chamber also contained the largest and most varied collection of textiles and textile tools that has ever been found in a single grave. It is without equal in Nordic Prehistory. The collection consists of a number of fragmented tapestries and other patternwoven blankets of wool and linen, tablet woven braids and a large collection of cloth fragments, which come from clothing, sails or tents, rugs and so on, and in addition remains of silk fabrics and silk embroideries. [Picture shows embroidery on woolen cloth. Much enlarged]
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Of textile tools were found several smaller looms, of which one appears to have been a tubular loom and two others were braid looms. There were also a number of small square tablets for tabletweaving, see ill. p. 132.
[Illustration page 132. Collection of textile tools. Drawing by Tone Strenger]
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Of spinning tools were found whorls with and without attached spindles and several loose spindles. A pair of carved wooden pieces may possibly also have been used during spinning to attach the wool to. There were also a couple of linen clubs and also a pair of iron shears, which were probably used to shear the wool off the sheep.
The whole textile material makes up 277 catalog numbers, and when each number can comprise of one to close to a hundred fragments, it shows how extensive this collection is. Some of the textiles are in very bad condition and are now stiff cakes, often in several layers on top of each other. Others are surprisingly well preserved, so fresh and bright it is hard to understand that they've spent over 1000 years in the ground.
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The most interesting textiles in the collection are doubtless the tapestries. Professor Bjørn Hougen has already scientifically treated these. His work with the tapestries has been preliminarily published in Viking and is in manuscript form for the fourth volume of the great work on the Oseberg find.
Hougen starts his article in Viking in this manner: "Tapestries and wood carving - in these two words are the starting point for the new perspectives that the Oseberg find has opened for the arts history of the viking age. We are here presented for the first and so far only time with a full selection of forms of artistry that we knew existed, but could not picture, because we lacked practically any actual materials." Such as the tapestry fragments appear today, it is hard to get any real impression of them. Many are so stiff and unclear that any attempt to analyse them is practically impossible.
[Cake of textiles in many layers. It was not possible to separate them all.]
It has been possible to get something from some of them. It turns out that they have been surprisingly narrow, between 16 and 23 cm wide. The length can't be determined; but since it must be considered fairly certain that they were created on the little tubular loom of which pieces were found both in the chamber and in the fore, they may, based on the distance between the cross pieces, have been between 1 m and 1.5 m long. Even though they are that narrow, these strips are still filled with a diverse richness of topic, ordered in horizontal rows above each other. As Bjørn Hougen has suggested, this could have been a primitive attempt at perspective.
First some words on the technical weaving aspect of these extraordinary tapestries. The warp, which is of wool, has on average ten threads per centimetre. The threads, which make up the figures, are also of wool, but between the individual figures the warpthreads are left exposed. It is unthinkable that this was originally the case. Therefore we must believe there was a double weft system, one of wool which made up the motifs, and one of linen which is now gone. This is known as brocade. The actual brocading is done in twenty different weaving patterns, of which several have an exquisite decorative effect. The outlines of each figure was marked by a thread of a different colour than the background, and it's wound around each warp thread - so called slyngesmett.
Brocading is a special type of weaving technique with ornamentation of differently coloured wool yarn in different weaves and patterns. The warp can be of wool or linen and the background of linen. This kind of fabric is found already in the 7th century in some Swedish graves (Valsgärde. 8 and Valsgärde 6), and in two graves in the Swedish Viking merchant town Birka at Lake Mälaren. In Norway there are fragments of this technique in three Norwegian finds, from Haugen in Rolvsøy, Østfold and Bo in Torvastad, Rogaland and Jåtten in Helland, Rogaland, but above all the technique is strongly represented in the Oseberg grave's rich collection of textiles. The colours are now faded and appear in different shades of brown and grey colour tones. Only the red colour has kept well and still has a fresh carmine colour. This colour appears so often it can appear as though it was the main colour.
[The red colour has lasted better than the other colours, like here in the great wagon train. The tapestry fragment was sketched during the excavations.]
These narrow cloths seem to equal the Old Norse word 'refill'. Unlike a wide rug it was a long, narrow piece and of a more costly material than the rug. In modern terminology it's known as a [runner]revle.
Tapestries from Skog and Överhogdal in Sweden (Överhogdal C-14 dated to the 9th-12th centuries) can be considered commoner descendants of the refined tapestries manufactured at the court of the Oseberg queen. It has been suggested that the earlier examples of brocading in the braids from Evebø and Snartemo, which belong to the Migration Period, could be the origin of this art.
[Interior from the Oktorp farmhouse at Skansen in Stockholm. Photo: Skansen.]
Bjørn Hougen has placed the main emphasis on the stylistic analysis of these runners, but in another chapter of this book I will attempt to give a religious interpretation of them, since there can be no doubt that we here have mythological material of great value.
[Tapestry fragment from the Oseberg ship.]
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Another category of fabrics that has a lot in common with the runners as far as the weaving technique goes, is the tablet woven braids of which there are several. In these also the warp as well as the patterning is of wool, but it is clear that here also there must have been a double system of a vegetable fibre which has disappeared. By a lucky coincidence such a braid was found in the Oseberg ship with the whole warp with 52 tablets still attached. See ill. p. 187. Tabletweaving is a technique that can be traced far back in the prehistoric era.
[Illustration page 187. Tabletweaving as found in the grave.]
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Another group consists of the patterned fabrics of wool and linen. These are also brocaded, in that they have a linen warp and a linen weft, but the pattern weft is made of wool. This thread is relatively coarse in comparison to the linen threads, and it was red. The red patterns in various geometrical figures must have made an effective contrast against the white linen background. These fabrics were apparently used as blankets in an unprocessed state. This is shown by some selvedges remaining on the fabrics. These generally appear as an endless spiral of fine, two-plied wool threads, which must have been wrapped around an inner core, probably of linen, which is now gone. Only in one single instance this core consisted of several fine, two-plied wool threads. How the attachment of the selvedge and the actual cloth was created is impossible to determine, since all the linen threads that formed the actual ground fabric have disappeared. See page 177.
[Illustration page 177. Palmett, probably modelled after an Oriental silk.]
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In addition to the fabrics mentioned some bigger and smaller fragments of other patterned fabrics were found. One of these has a palmett-like motif, a purely ornamental composition that appears almost classical. Bjørn Hougen suggests an imported silk fabric may have tempted one of the Oseberg weavers to copy it. See ill. p. 178. [I suspect the pictures have been switched here.]
[Illustration Page 178. Collection of textile remains drawn during the excavations.]
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The silk fabrics A collection of narrow silk strips exists. Some of them are shown here. See ill. p. 182. The fragments are currently under scientific treatment in Stockholm. For this reason it is difficult for me to say anything about the technical side to these textiles, since I haven't analysed them myself.
[Silk strips, cut up for application. Drawing by Sofie Kraft.]
It is possible that they all come from the same piece of fabric. The strips have needlemarks on both lenghtwise sides and have originally been attached to another fabric, probably of wool. There is reason to believe that this was one of the fine, probably imported two-shed and red fabrics mentioned below. Silk fabrics are found in no less than 50 graves at the Swedish market town Birka from the Viking age. They appear to be of the same origin as the Norwegian, and according to Agnes Geijer the majority of the Norwegian and Swedish silk fabrics appear to belong to the type known as 'samitum', which was manufactured in Byzantium and the Middle-East in that period. They were also cut up and found a similar use as decoration on plain-coloured pieces of clothing. One of the fragments from Oseberg has a pattern clear enough that it can be directly compared to a large silk fragment preserved in Lyon.
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Two-shed and four-shed fabrics of wool This group consists of 914 fragments. Some of them are in very bad condition and are now forming stiff cakes, often layered on top of each other. Others can be surprisingly well preserved. The material consists of remains of fabrics in tabby, several variations of twill or four-shed, slyngvev and soumakh, so-called slyngsmett. While I've been working on the scientific treatment of these textiles, I could not help but admire the women who, with their primitive tools have managed to produce textiles of such a high quality as these fragments show. I doubt that one today could, even with our modern advanced looms, make them any finer.
[Tapestry fragment with horses. Watercolour by Sofie Kraft.]
In connection with his work on older iron age textiles Bjørn Hougen once said: "It is possible that the technical tool, the loom, was fairly simple, but the end result can in no way be called primitive." The Viking age women had a long, unbroken tradition behind them as far as textile production is concerned. Here they had a wealth of experience handed on from mother to daughter through many generations. In our days this continuity of experience has been broken, and we are forced to again search for much of what to the olds was obvious. The old ones knew that to achieve a good result in the end product, everything had to be planned very carefully. From the very beginning it had to be decided what qualities one desired from the finished cloth. The textiles in the Oseberg find show clearly that everything was planned down to the minute details, and every stage in the preparation was decisive, not the least the quality of the wool which would be used.
[Fragment of woven braid. About double size. Water colour after drawing by Sofie Kraft.]
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It is likely that we in Norway as early as the Bronze Age had a fully developed sheep industry, and that the sheep belonged to the short-tailed, goat-horned sheep breed Ovis aries palustris, which is related to our modern spel sheep. This breed had long, shiny kemps and a particularly fine undercoat, which was extraordinarily well suited for woven cloth. This sheep had the characteristic that it shed the wool in large clumps, which were easy to collect. Originally perhaps this was satisfactory. But from the Viking age graves we know large shears, which have been interpreted as sheep shears. There is therefore reason to believe that the wool of the Oseberg textiles was cut. This theory is supported by the fact that there is no roots on the wool fibres in the Oseberg material, and that a pair of shears were found in the grave, see ill. p. 185.
[Illustration Page 185. Shears from Oseberg.]
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When the wool was collected and had been carefully sorted, the combing could begin. Carding appears not to have been practiced in the Nordic countries before the mediaeval period. As late as the 14th Century cards were considered harmful tools, as they tore up the fibres. Combs of iron, interpreted as wool combs, occur from time to time in prehistoric female graves around the Nordic countries. These arrange the fibres to lie parallel, so that the cloth had a shiny and even surface.
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The spinning was done by spindle. In the Oseberg ship was found a functional whorl of clay shale with the spindle attached. There were also several loose spindles. With this primitive tool the loveliest, fine and even threads were spun. It could not be done better today with our advanced aids.
The whorl is one of the most commonly found tools in female graves of the Viking age. This shows that spinning must have been done by virtually every single woman in our country. However, some will have been better than others, and that it might also have been a specialist task is not out of the question.
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When the threads were spun, the warping of the loom could begin. Various circumstances make it clear that the Oseberg textiles must have been woven on a so-called warp-weighted loom, which simply put is an upright loom with hanging warp. At the bottom of the warp warp-weights of stone were attached to keep the warp threads under tension. The warp was created by weaving a narrow braid on a heddle or such, but the thread which was brought into the weave from one side, was brought out in a long loop or a warping frame on the other side before it returned to the weave again. A warp that is created thus will have a closed starting border on the finished cloth. See ill. on page 192 top.
[Illustration page 192 Top. Analysis of the starting border on a four-shed fabric. Drawing: Anne Stine Ingstad.]
A warp set up in this old fashion was found in a bog on the farm Tegle I Time on Jæren. It's been dated to the Migration Period. See ill. on page 192 bottom. This extraordinary and rare find is an illustration of how the Iron Age women set up their loom.
[Illustration page 192 Bottom. Warp with starting borders and warp weights. Found in a bog onTegle I Time on Jæren. From ca 500 A.D. Photo Norsk Folkemuseum.]
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The warp, the hanging threads in a loom of this old type, was always tightly spun to be able to carry the weights which held it tense. In all the fabrics mentioned here, these threads are right-spun. The horizontal threads are called the weft or woof. It could be either right-spun or left-spun, and it was quite often thicker and looser, and of finer wool than the warp. The threads in the warp were thereafter organised with the help of heddles, which were attached to the heddle-rods. One of the sheds was the natural shed created by itself because of the tension of the warpweights. Because of this warping system what we call a two-shed fabric, is in the old terms known as a one-shed + the natural shed; a four-shed fabric was in the old mode known as a three-shed + the natural shed. In the following I'll use the modern terminology.
[Upright warp-weighted loom. Photo: Norsk Folkemuseum.]
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Two-shed is the simplest and oldest of the basic weaves. It is created by the weft going over one and under one thread of the warp each time. This group comprises 91 fragments. Most of them are fine with up to 27 threads per centimetre in the tightest system, which is probably the warp, and 14 in the other. The fragment with these measurements comes from a lovely red fabric, which is different from the other two-shed fabrics in that every other thread in one system (which it is can't be determined) is thicker and every other thread thinner. This must have been done on purpose, as it has given this fabric a beautiful muslin-like effect. The finest threads are 0.3 mm in both systems. The fabric was probably dyed with madder, as the colourant alizarin was found in it. This colourant also exists in a few plants that are native to Norway, but as fine as this fabric is, and as well as this dye has kept, there is reason to believe it is an imported fabric. The fragment is sewn together with another fragment of two-shed. This was also originally red, but it is now faded. Further, there is information that there was a small silk-fragment attached to the muslin-like fragment, but it has now disappeared.
[Fragment of two-shed wool fabric. Oseberg.]
There are many fragments of the faded red fabric mentioned above. These are mostly cut up into narrow strips, of which one has an oval shape and might be a neck facing.
[Fabric strips of fine two-shed wool fabrics. Oseberg.]
Several of these fragments have fine, small embroideries that have been located along the edge of seams and applications. One fragment is sewn together with a silk fabric, of which a small piece is still attached. Here too there is small embroidery along the seam joining the two pieces. Some of the fine tabby, blue fabrics have been cut up for applications, which amongst other things portray animal figures.
The tabby fragments in the Oseberg material probably represents five or six different fabrics, of which three must be considered fine. Through the whole prehistoric period known as the Migration period (400-600 AD), tabby textiles are notable through their absence in the Nordic region, but in the years 700-800 they begin to appear again in the graves, particularly in the Western region. In Viking age they are abundant. There are several types of them. Apart from the two types mentioned already, there was also a third type, which has a ribbed effect. All these two-shed fabrics are right-spun in both systems and are characterised by their high quality. Outside the Nordic region these textiles don't have a wide distribution, but all three fabric-types appearing in our graves appear in Ireland during the Merovingian/Viking age. They are common along the whole Norwegian coast during these periods, and they often appear in the graves alongside articles of anglo/irish origin. In Ireland fabrics of the previously mentioned types with right-spun threadsystems are so to speak solely found. Fourshed fabrics are rare there. It could therefore appear as though this kind of fine, two-shed fabric was an Irish specialty. This is supported by the fact that it's particularly common in the Western Norwegian graves, and as mentioned along with anglo-irish articles.
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