How did the Norse dress in the Viking Age? It might surprise readers to find out that the Vikings wore vivid colours, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors.
One of the leading scholars on Viking clothing is Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson. In her research, she found that men and women would dress boldly and provocatively. “They combined oriental features with Nordic styles,” she explains. “Their clothing was designed to be shown off indoors around the fire.”
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She has studied textile finds from Lake Mälaren Valley, the area that includes Stockholm and Uppsala and was one of the central regions in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The findings show that what we call the Viking Age, the years from 750-1050 A.D., was a time of changing fashions, with new styles emerging as trade routes brought not only different textiles but also different ideas of what made for proper clothing. The oriental features in clothing disappeared when Christianity came and they started to trade with the Christian Byzantine and Western Europe.
“Textile research can tell us more about the state of society than research into traditions. Old rituals can live on long after society has changed, but when trade routes are cut off, there’s an immediate impact on clothing fashions,” says Larsson.
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She maintains that Swedish Viking women in the pre-Christian period probably dressed much more provocatively than we previously believed. She bases her theory on a new find uncovered in Russian Pskov, close to Novgorod and the eastward trade routes then plied from Sweden. The find consists of extensive remnants of a woman’s attire, which Annika Larsson claims does not square with the traditional picture of how Viking women dressed.
Viking women’s clothing consisted of a single piece of fabric with a train, an opening in front, and clasps that accentuated the breasts. The apparel in the picture is on display at Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala University. The outfit is worn by Anna Lavgren, who also sewed it. Photo by Annika Larsson
Previously it was thought that Viking women wore a long suspender (brace) skirt, with both the front and back pieces consisting of square sections, held together by a belt. Clasps, often regarded as typical of the Viking Age, were attached to the suspenders roughly at the collarbone. Under this dress they wore a linen shift, and on top of it a woolen shawl or sweater.
“The grave plans from excavations at Birka outside Stockholm in the 19th century show that this is incorrect. The clasps were probably worn in the middle of each breast. Traditionally this has been explained by the clasps having fallen down as the corpse rotted. That sounds like a prudish interpretation,” says Annika Larsson.
In an article published in The Viking World, Larsson finds that we can learn much from Viking-age burials at Birka. She notes several interesting details:
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One example is the oval brooch, worn in pairs by women. However, despite the fact that these brooches are represented in almost all the rich female graves of Viking Age Birka, the cloth to which they were fastened varies considerably – from crude domestic woollens to the finest oriental silk. It is interesting that this huge blend of qualities is often present in one and the same grave. The coarser textiles are sometimes found as lining in clothing of finer quality. Outerwear is also often sewn together from smaller pieces of cloth of different grades, then joined together by tablet-woven bands with geometric patterns in shining silver threads. The cloth has then been bordered with thin strips of silk – the same form in which we find the silk present in the Oseberg burial. Alongside these exotic materials we also see beaver furs, a typical Nordic phenomenon from the great forests of Scandinavia or Russia. It is clear that while the material changes, the cut of the clothing has been consistently made to fit a domestic tradition that includes the oval brooches.
She maintains instead that the Birka women’s skirts consisted of a single piece of fabric and were open in front. The suspenders held up the train and functioned as a harness that was fastened to the breasts with the clasps. Annika Larsson’s theory is strengthened by the fact that several female figures have been preserved whose outfits both have trains and are open in front. But if we are to believe the archeological finds, this style of clothing disappeared with the advent of Christianity.
“It’s easy to imagine that the Christian church had certain reservations about clothing that accentuated the breasts in this way and, what’s more, exposed the under shift in front. It’s also possible that this clothing was associated with pre-Christian rituals and was therefore forbidden,” she believes.
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When it comes to Viking men, the Birka burials show they could even be bolder than women. Larsson writes:
A large number of burials show that men wore headbands or thin diadems of gold and silver, from which small pendants (also in gold and silver) hung down at the neck, decorated with glittering mirror fragments. We also encounter embroidery in threads of precious metals, such as the extraordinary silver-on-silk finds from one of the Valsgärde boat graves from Swedish Uppland. It seems that the embroidery was once on a collar, and perhaps a pair of cuffs or similar, belonging to a fully armed male warrior buried with his horse. A number of silver-thread pendants also followed him into the grave. Similarly fantastic examples of embroidery can be found in the dress of the man buried at Mammen in Denmark.
She adds that archaeological finds related to wool show that clothes were dyed bright red, blue and yellow colours. Similar research from Norse Greenland reveals that while their textiles were mostly brown or a light, almost white colour, we can find examples of red-violet created from a local lichen, and blue, which may have been made with indigo that would have been imported.
Swedish viking men’s fashions were modeled on styles in Russia to the east. Archeological finds from the 900s uncovered in Lake Malaren Valley accord with contemporary depictions of clothing the Vikings wore on their travels along eastern trade routes to the Silk Road. The outfit in the picture is on display at Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala University. Photo by Annika Larsson
How did the Norse dress in the Viking Age? It might surprise readers to find out that the Vikings wore vivid colours, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors.
One of the leading scholars on Viking clothing is Swedish archeologist Annika Larsson. In her research, she found that men and women would dress boldly and provocatively. “They combined oriental features with Nordic styles,” she explains. “Their clothing was designed to be shown off indoors around the fire.”
She has studied textile finds from Lake Mälaren Valley, the area that includes Stockholm and Uppsala and was one of the central regions in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The findings show that what we call the Viking Age, the years from 750-1050 A.D., was a time of changing fashions, with new styles emerging as trade routes brought not only different textiles but also different ideas of what made for proper clothing. The oriental features in clothing disappeared when Christianity came and they started to trade with the Christian Byzantine and Western Europe.
“Textile research can tell us more about the state of society than research into traditions. Old rituals can live on long after society has changed, but when trade routes are cut off, there’s an immediate impact on clothing fashions,” says Larsson.
She maintains that Swedish Viking women in the pre-Christian period probably dressed much more provocatively than we previously believed. She bases her theory on a new find uncovered in Russian Pskov, close to Novgorod and the eastward trade routes then plied from Sweden. The find consists of extensive remnants of a woman’s attire, which Annika Larsson claims does not square with the traditional picture of how Viking women dressed.
Previously it was thought that Viking women wore a long suspender (brace) skirt, with both the front and back pieces consisting of square sections, held together by a belt. Clasps, often regarded as typical of the Viking Age, were attached to the suspenders roughly at the collarbone. Under this dress they wore a linen shift, and on top of it a woolen shawl or sweater.
“The grave plans from excavations at Birka outside Stockholm in the 19th century show that this is incorrect. The clasps were probably worn in the middle of each breast. Traditionally this has been explained by the clasps having fallen down as the corpse rotted. That sounds like a prudish interpretation,” says Annika Larsson.
In an article published in The Viking World, Larsson finds that we can learn much from Viking-age burials at Birka. She notes several interesting details:
One example is the oval brooch, worn in pairs by women. However, despite the fact that these brooches are represented in almost all the rich female graves of Viking Age Birka, the cloth to which they were fastened varies considerably – from crude domestic woollens to the finest oriental silk. It is interesting that this huge blend of qualities is often present in one and the same grave. The coarser textiles are sometimes found as lining in clothing of finer quality. Outerwear is also often sewn together from smaller pieces of cloth of different grades, then joined together by tablet-woven bands with geometric patterns in shining silver threads. The cloth has then been bordered with thin strips of silk – the same form in which we find the silk present in the Oseberg burial. Alongside these exotic materials we also see beaver furs, a typical Nordic phenomenon from the great forests of Scandinavia or Russia. It is clear that while the material changes, the cut of the clothing has been consistently made to fit a domestic tradition that includes the oval brooches.
She maintains instead that the Birka women’s skirts consisted of a single piece of fabric and were open in front. The suspenders held up the train and functioned as a harness that was fastened to the breasts with the clasps. Annika Larsson’s theory is strengthened by the fact that several female figures have been preserved whose outfits both have trains and are open in front. But if we are to believe the archeological finds, this style of clothing disappeared with the advent of Christianity.
“It’s easy to imagine that the Christian church had certain reservations about clothing that accentuated the breasts in this way and, what’s more, exposed the under shift in front. It’s also possible that this clothing was associated with pre-Christian rituals and was therefore forbidden,” she believes.
When it comes to Viking men, the Birka burials show they could even be bolder than women. Larsson writes:
A large number of burials show that men wore headbands or thin diadems of gold and silver, from which small pendants (also in gold and silver) hung down at the neck, decorated with glittering mirror fragments. We also encounter embroidery in threads of precious metals, such as the extraordinary silver-on-silk finds from one of the Valsgärde boat graves from Swedish Uppland. It seems that the embroidery was once on a collar, and perhaps a pair of cuffs or similar, belonging to a fully armed male warrior buried with his horse. A number of silver-thread pendants also followed him into the grave. Similarly fantastic examples of embroidery can be found in the dress of the man buried at Mammen in Denmark.
She adds that archaeological finds related to wool show that clothes were dyed bright red, blue and yellow colours. Similar research from Norse Greenland reveals that while their textiles were mostly brown or a light, almost white colour, we can find examples of red-violet created from a local lichen, and blue, which may have been made with indigo that would have been imported.
Today, Annika Larsson is part of The Society for Textile Archaeology and Culture Studies – click here to learn more about the group.
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