I find it interesting that nearly all of my European interests center around one little bit of geography. There's something about the southern North Sea shores that draws me. My name is from 15thc Zeeland, I'm enchanted by the 5thc brooch-closed Kentish dresses (heavily influenced by the Franks, who occupied Zeeland), I like the tablet-woven edges particular to the Jutes who lived in that peninsula, and my current favorite summer event wear is this outfit, which our extant pieces document to Bronze Age Denmark. (Same place.) (I won't talk about my love for Danish modern furniture just now.)
Concept: Zealand (Olby? no, Hagendrup) variation of Bronze Age string skirt, with waistband taken from Egtved skirt, in order to wear with Borum Eshoj outfit…this is a hodgepodge, but a hodgepodge I'm going to perpetrate.
(Non-hodgepodge historical reconstruction of string skirt ensemble in Bronze Age Denmark with good pictures here.)
Societal rules apparent from Bronze Age documentation (particularly Barber's extensive treatment of symbology):
String skirt is for women of child-bearing age who are AVAILABLE. Hair covering is for adult women who are NOT AVAILABLE. They don't go together.
More disclaimers about the drawing, which is of what I wear:
I close my neck slit with two primitive penannular brooches. I find these to be more secure than the straight brooches that are found in abundance in graves. I hang a short strand of glass beads (recreations of 100BC) from the two brooches a la 5thc Kent jewelry described in Owen-Crocker, pgs 90-93, and Rogers, fig. 5.49. My necklace is seashells, but someday I'll get some amber.
I wear a silver cuff, and a green tabletwoven girdle, with no particular tasseling. Earrings are shown per the matched pendants in Hawkes. Bog-type moccasins were purchased. [is ref for these in Bog People or Hald? Check.]
Assembly Notes:
Used charcoal gray wool (alpaca, already had, and would minimize friction felting, though still ply into cords well)
Need 36" of stringed area to wrap hips. Planning 16" long skirt, which is not as short as Egtved, but not knee-height on me (20") either. Personal preference; expect 20" skirt to catch too much in knees with hard metal for comfort.
Tabby belt accomplished with 2-hole tablet weaving warp.
Yarn is 17 wpi, S-twist, used alone for warp, but for weft, plied to itself, S-twist.
Resulted in tabby gauge of one cord per 1/4" of stringed area, therefore requiring 4×36 metal tubes for ends of cords.
Total cord yardage required: 4 pieces per inch x 36" x 16" long = 2304"/36 = 64 yards. I don't have a yardage meter, so I'm just filling a few 1 oz drop spindles. When I run out, I'll refill them as necessary.
I am thinking the way to get a twisted cord while weaving is to use the drop spindle as a shuttle – this way I can pass it through the shed, spin the spindle to overtwist the cord, fold the cord around some jig setup (note to self: clamp tabletweaving loom to warping board and use warping peg. No wait, that interval is too large – add raddle.) [ADD PIC OF SETUP]
Purchased 36"long 1/8" diameter brass tubing; cut into XXX lengths for beads per XXX. [Could be 1", producing a beaded cord every 1/4", or could be smaller. Waiting for more data.] Someday I would like bronze beads, as I have a bronze bracelet, and I think the difference is apparent, but am in a hurry to complete skirt to wear at Pennsic. Brass was cheap, though – under $12 for 4 pieces 36" long.
UPDATE: I now have Barber's Prehistoric Textiles, which has much more information about the string skirts, as hoped (though still no pictures of any but Egtved, annoying). The metal tubes are COPPER. They are made by wrapping little rectangles of metal around the ends of the cords underneath the stay-cord, in place of the loops on the Egtved skirt. I bet I can find copper sheet, and that'd be much easier to control, and live with, than tubing. Plus it will patina nicely. Also Barber does a nice job of citing original publishers on everything she mentions, so tracking down Glob and Munksgaard is the next step on this.
PHOTO OF COMPLETED SKIRT GOES HERE
References:
Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. Norton, 1994. The mainstream version of her academic work below. Pages 54-70 deal with string skirts and their symbology in various cultures from Stone Age to modernity.
Barber, E. J. W. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. [What's in this book? On its way.]
Hald, Margrethe. Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles. [Copenhagen]: National Museum of Denmark, 1980. [Chase down corded skirt, look at what she says about string skirts in general]
Chadwick Hawkes, Sonia. "The Jutish Style A. A Study of Germanic Animal Art in Southern England in the Fifth Century AD." appearing in:
Harvey, John H., Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, David M. Wilson, Gerald Clough Dunning, and R. P. Howgrave-Graham. Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 98. Oxford: Printed at Oxford by Vivian Ridler for the Society of Antiquaries, 1961.
Lise Bender Jorgensen, "Industries of the Near East and Europe in Prehistory: Europe." The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Cambridge University Press, 2003. Photo of Egtved finds, description of those and Zealand as follows:
"The women's garments consist of three blouses with the same basic shape; but whereas two are plain and simple, the one from Skydstrup is decorated with elaborate embroideries**. The three bouses seem to indicated that this type of garment was a normal part of female fashion in early Bronze Age Denmark. Skirts are a different matter: the Egtved grave, Jutland, contained a corded miniskirt, which, like the triangular loincloth of Hvidegaard (G: a male garment), has parallels in several bronze figurines. On Zealand, several female graves contained parallel rows of bronze tubes containing cord remains which had been placed at knee-height, plainly deriving from similar skirts and suggesting a fashion for corded skirts adorned with bronze tubes. Experiments have shown that such skirts have a merry tinkling sound when worn; an unexpected glimpse of Bronze Age life."
The very next paragraph describes the other skirt that I'm wearing together with the corded skirt:
"Another type of female skirt is indicated by the two graves of Skrydstrup and Borum Eshoj, both on Jutland. Both contained long, skirt-like garments, and in the case of the one found at Skrydstrup, was placed on the lower part of the woman's boy and bound with a girdle, like a skirt."
Jorgensen then says something with which I don't agree…
"The lower 40 cm of the 'skirt' were wrapped arond the woman's feet so that she appeared more like a participant in a sack-race, and the interpretation as a skirt must be considered doubtful."
I disagree with this amount of doubt because as anyone who's ever helped carry anyone unconscious, let alone dead, knows, you need to corral the feet somehow, and a tube already securely wrapped around the body would be awfully handy. I want another opinion. In the meantime, I interpret the long tube bound on the body with a girdle as a skirt. [didn't one of the ones in Hald have a drawstring? Must chase that down.]
**I'm very interested in these embroideries, but haven't seen an image or detailed description yet. HA! Here.
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986.
Walton Rogers, Penelope. Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700. CBA research report, no. 145. York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007.
Viking Answer Lady, Egtved page, accessed July 23, 2009.
Okay, apparently the post I thought I made this afternoon got eaten by the net at work.
I like very much that you’re trying this project, but I’m really concerned about the documentation and the jumping between periods, and the interpretation of the material. The combination of elements from Anglo-Saxon/Jutish Britain at the 5th to 7th c. CE and 1370 BCE is a bit incongruous.
I dont’ know much about the Barber book, although it’s available on Google books – but I will say the hairnet/string skirt married/single duality is a rather iffy, at best. I think the best argument for the string skirt is that it’s a ritual garment, although Linda Welters does suggest that in Eastern Europe about the same time it was both potentially a ritual garment and worn by women of ANY child-bearing age.
What we do know for certain is that it wasn’t worn with the equivalent of the Borum Eshoj garment, although the bodice/blouse may have been similar in cut. Within 20-30 years in terms of finds, there are three very distinct skirt variations (1370-1350 BCE) – the string skirt (found on a woman about 16-18 years of age in the case of the Egtved woman, which is one of the principle complete finds), a wrapped skrt, which seem to have gone around the bust line and attached by tying, or with pins that have been lost (found on the Skrydstrup woman, age 18-20, who wore a hairnet, but has a negligible age difference) and the modified tube,tied with a a belt, (wonr my the Borum Eshoj woman, who was between 50-60 when she died, and probably the mother of the young man (18-22) found in the same barrow.
What I find interesting is the potential that the Skrydstrup woman’s skirt actually does have the potential to actually be the maternity option in period, but if you take that skirt and belt it, it’s a modified peoplos look.
Back to the string skirt – this is one of the oldest garments we’ve got represented in Northern European art. There is a whole lot of speculation on who wore it when, and whether or not it was a formal garment, one associated with performance (dance) or perhaps religious ritual. We know it wasn’t worn under a tubular skirt – although the profusion of strings, and a potential double layer of strings ( the Olby skirt, I believe, has a double layer) makes it less revealing that it might be.
Also of major significance is the belt, which is distinct and matches the period art – it’s a serious piece of hardware – a very large boss or disk, which protrudes from the wearer’s abdomen, and increases a visual sense of the sun-worship that was practiced at the time. The skirt is incomplete without this belt (I’ve had a request in with Aedon for awhile for one, as had Glenna).
The wearers also have legging made of leather, usually reaching the knees, so the legs are essentially covered, rather than bare.
With regard to the bodice, the surviving piece is cut with an offset slit, as though it were made from an animal skin that had to be cut, in the case of the Borum Eshoj find, and without any slit in the case of the Edtved girl and Skrydstrup woman. The construction involves a wrap-around method that again suggests the skinning of an animal, but leaves the final appearance remarkably smooth, front and back.
There is a good, if nacient, argument for the continuation of the skirt/blouse combo into the Anglo-Saxon and Viking eras, but the appearance is remarkably different. I’ve been corresponding with scholars in Europe about it pretty extensively, and I’ll be glad to talk to you about it at Pennsic. There is not archaological smoking gun, however, it’s all speculation – but I suspect there will be, eventually. But, again, the format is different, and the dress accessories drastically so, compared to the elegant gold earrings and necklaces, bronze and copper bracelets and so on worn worn by the Bronze age Denmarkers.
I left out something relevant in the first part that I should have said – the Egtved girl had a hairnet buried with her.
The Bronze Age was a period of time when metal making had advanced to the point of using bronze. Bronze is an alloy of tin and copper.