For several years I have been wondering about the shawls the ladies are wearing in one of the only tapestries we have that survived from the Viking eara until the present day. I knew they were sort of pointed in the back, but I'd only seen a couple of web photos and never gotten a chance to look at them carefully.
Then my husband showed me his entire book in Danish that had many lovely water colors made from the original tapestry back when it was first found in the tomb of a Viking Queen, and excavated by Anne Ingstad. There were many pictures of men, women, carts, ships etc., but the one thing that stood out to me was the while the men were in various types of dress, including horizontal striped trousers that would make any hippy proud;
the women were all wearing these huge shawls. Not only that, but the embroderer had taken great care to show details of complex patterns on some, other more plain, but all in any color you could get with a dye pot.
My first thought was, "I guess these shawls must have been the in thing at the Royal Court that year," the second was that "these shawls are so much a part of a ladies wardrobe that it has become the symbol that makes sure the viewer knows they are looking at a female figure." Then, I also noted that one of the finds found on the bodies of both ladies buried in their Viking ship (they were laid to rest with many of their fiber toos as well as other important and precious objects) were the remnants of what looked like "blankets," to the archeologists. Unlike most Viking Cloth, they had a very low thread count, that's weaving speak for number of threads in an inch. If most Viking Cloth had at least 20 strings of warp yarn per inch, these swatches had about half that or even less. This indicated cloth that was spun big and woven big, in otherwords the way anyone would weave who wanted a warm, comfy, drapy, shawl or blanket. I then wondered:
Could the "blankets" covering the two women for their final journey be their lovely shawls?
That would not stop them from doubling as blankets, for generations the Scots have used their plaids both as garments and sleeping rolls. Were these Northern Ladies perhaps doing something similar? And, how did they get a piece of woven cloth to hang down to a point like that? In the Faoe Islands, they still wear a similar long pointed shawl, but it is a knitted double triangle. I've made some of these but they don't look quite the same as those pictured above. A grandchild of the original woven ones perhaps, but not the same.
Then a friend of mine realized that you could have a very long piece of rectangular cloth and get it to hang that way. Thus began my attempts to weave a piece of fabric that would look and drape like the Osberg Shawls. I had wads of rug yarn from a friend who had collected it over a decade ago when the last rug factory had closed in Ireland. It was a big larger even in the Viking yarns, but the effect should be close, big yarn and woven loosely.
My first attempt, became my lovely and currently favorite piece of clothing which is a brown shawl with nice borders on it. But, it was far two short and only had a hint of the correct drape. It looks best folded into a triangle and worn over my shoulders. Lovely to wear with mundane skirt or garb, but not quite what I wanted.
So, for my second try, I decided to warp an entire three yards on and see what happened. The next issue I faced was that because my loom has only four harnesses and is only 26 inches wide, the only way I could make a shawl that wide was in what is called "double weave." That's a way to weave the double width of your loom, but if you have a four harness loom, you can not make double wide items in "Viking" Twill. You have to do plain old up and down weaving (in and out and in and out). The Vikings did do plain weave but they mostly worked their wool in twills. Also, with twills it is much easier to get the sorts of complex patterns the tapestry seemed to show for many of the shawls. So, I would have to get creative on the colors if I wanted a pattern in plain weave. Finally, I had used up most of the brown wool and was left with mostly light blue, rose and a bit of beige.
Oh my, how to avoid a Viking Baby Blanket? The bits of brown seemed to help when I laid the yarns together. So, I crossed my fingers and did a 52 inch warp with a E.P.I. (weaving speak for threads per inch) of 5, using stripes of various colors, including natural white. That's when I discovered that I had almost no natural white left anywhere in the house, not even homespun! Oh well, I figured, at worst I'll have a blanket the cat can sleep on.
But as I worked the different horizontal stripes over the vertical ones, an amazing thing happened. The resulting Plaid looked GOOD. It was still hard to tell with the fabric on the loom, but once off I was pretty stunned. It was lovely, not really my colors at all but really lovely and it looked nothing like a baby blanket.
Then I put it on and surprise! The effect is EXACTLY like the shawls being warn in the pictures. I could even have made mine a tiny bit longer, because even at my 4'8", I have to drop it a bit low to cover my behind and have it drop properly to the knees. But it does work and I can wear it.
My guess is that the Viking Ladies were weaving their shawls at least a yard longer possibly two to get the same effect on a person of average height. They may also have been weaving up to 60 inches wide, but with a warp weight loom you can go as wide as you want, sometimes two women would work the same loom to get really wide fabrics. You can't do that on a modern loom, the best you can do is double cloth like I did.
In any case, that was todays project, and I'm very happy. I finished the shawl it is now washed, and fulled (stuck in hot dryer for five minutes to shrink the fibers together you only do this ONCE). The photos are before fulling but the effect is still pretty much the same. The very heavy rug yarn does not full or shrink all that much.
So, today we have one very happy cat who plays with string and now Kitty Can Has Shawl!
