Timeline

Die Menschen im frühmittelalterlichen Norden mochten es, ihre Kleidungsstücke und Gegenstände zu verzieren. Besonders auffällig ist das bei den reichen Gräbern der Oberschicht; die Gräber von u.a. Oseberg, Mammen und nicht zuletzt Birka ³ weisen einen besonderen Reichtum auf, der uns durch besondere Umstände zum Teil erhalten ist.

Auch wenn die Saison hauptsächlich im Sommer stattfindet, kann das Wetter schnell ungemütlich nass und kalt werden – das haben uns die Märkte dieses Jahr gelehrt. Um diesem zeitlosen Problem entgegen zu wirken, nähte ich für unsere Gruppe Gugeln der Art, wie man sie häufig in der Frühmittelalter-Szene findet: rechteckige oder abgerundete Kapuze verbunden mit über die Schultern reichenden Stücken, welche je nach Belieben ebenfalls auf Brust- und Rückenseite zugespitzt oder abgerundet sind. Im folgenden Artikel gehe ich auf die norwegische Fundlage zu diesem Kleidungsstück ein und lege anschließend dar, wie ich bei meiner Interpretation vorgegangen bin.

There are tunics and there are tunics. Some tunic remains from the Swedish trading metropolis of Birka show a certain, characteristic kind of decoration which might reflect its influences from foreign countries. In this article, some archaeological evidence from the "Birka tunics" has been collected. The content has been structured according to the questions: What kind of fabrics do we have? What kind of decoration has been used on the tunics? Where on the body where the decorations located?

We write a lot about wool combs and at the markets, we explain and demonstrate how they were used. But what is the actual evidence for those tools?

Folgende Rezensionen geben einen kurzen Abriss über eine Auswahl der von uns verwendeten Literaturquellen. Aufgeführt sind an dieser Stelle nur “echte”, also gedruckte Bücher. Online auffindbare Quellen sind unter Quellen verlinkt.

We use different kinds of sources for our background research. Some are of pure academic nature, others derive from the experiences of others or our own wild speculations.

No info about Asa yet-For Ása (almost) everything revolves around textiles, starting with the sheep and the different qualities of the fleece up to the finished piece. Depending on her status and place in the social hierarchy, different aspects of textile handicraft would have been in the focus of her own work.

Our camp consists of a hand-sewn woollen (4mx4.5m) tent, a small table, some chests, some baskets full of raw wool and other materials, and Víl's shaving horse a.k.a. his universal woodworking contraption.

We like to write about our activities but everyone always asks for pictures. So here you'll find some.

Free farmer and craftsman

Beautiful weather, nice people and more fighters than ever before at this year's HIKG.

... Ribe. If Lejre was taking a deep breath before the bigger markets, Ribe was like exhaling again, relaxing a little.

After Trelleborg came Moesgaard, of course. Moesgaard was as mixed an experience as always. Due to limited space, it can't grow in size, so it's really, really crowded.

This year we spent around ten days at Trelleborg. We also re-united with our friends Dany and Micha, with whom we spent the market at Archeon and who would from then on travel with us until Ribe, where they could only stay for a few days.

After the market in Hafnarfjörður, we faced 36°C and high humidity in Germany. Hardly being able to exist in this weather, we packed everything we thought we would need for 5.5 weeks, drove north to Copenhagen (thanks to Simon for letting us stay for a night) and then to Sweden. We took a few days to enjoy the Swedish landscape (oh, how I missed that!) and check out Birka, Sigtuna and Gamla Uppsala. Finally, we went to Nynäshamn and participated in the lovely event "I Förfäders Spår", one of the best events we've been to so far. We've made new friends, learned a lot during the workshops and just had an overall good time. Unfortunately, this too came to an end. But we, we still had the Danish markets before us...

Another market we visited for the first time was the Viking Week at the Land of Legends in Lejre. The Land of Legends has what the Archeon doesn't: A lot of space.

Having returned from Archeon we flew off to Iceland. We left most of our stuff at home, borrowed a tent for during the day (which we shared with Max (kvalitativt krigsbyte) and Maxi) and totally confused our internal clocks because around that time Night simple does not exist up there.

We started this year's summer tour during Pentecost in the Netherlands at the multi-period park Archeon. A very quiet and atmospheric start. Unfortunately, the park lacked a pair of nice wool combs for demonstrating this part of textile work, but we were able to change that :-) - It was the first time we were at the Archeon (Vil being there once as a child doesn't really count...) and we liked that place, but could not help noticing that everything is quite crowded. That's because the park could not expand area-wise as much as they once wanted to, so they had to put too many periods in too little space. It's still worth the visit, though.

This list of links is a loose, incomplete, and colourful collection of sources that have helped us in one way or another. May this growing list be of help to anyone who is interested in one of the listed topics.

From time to time (but admittedly, not often enough), we update this list since some links might not work anymore or we no longer think that they are as useful as we once thought they were. Also, we decided to include free information only - that is, if you would have to create an account or, worse, pay money to get the information, we won't include it in the list.

A fleece might be washed, but it is not entirely free of straw and other tiny sorts of dirt. Also, the fibers are all entangled and knotty, which makes it impossible to spin a fine and even thread. In order to get rid of these hindrances, the wool has to be combed. Most of the dirt drops out, knots are being removed and the fibers lie parallel to each other.

If you acquired a pair of Víl's wool combs, you might be interested in some tips and tricks regarding their proper handling in order for them to enjoy a long working life.

The spring market during Easter in Hedeby was our first market in 2019. 2017 rain and mud, 2018 icy wind and snow - 2019 warm temperatures and sunshine. The visitors were large in number, their motivation to buy stuff so great that no merchant had any reason to complain. The entire atmosphere was just fantastic. We could not have wished for a better start of our Viking market season. Now we're looking forward to our great summer tour even more - with less products than be had before. Vil puts every free moment into making more wool combs while Ása is busy making yarns and digging into research.

When visiting Copenhagen at the end of 2018, we took the opportunity and went to the National Museum. We would like to share some impressions from that visit with you; but careful! The pictures show artifacts from Denmark's Bronze Age up the the Middle Ages, so the Viking stuff is somewhere in between.

Unser Saisonabschlussmarkt brachte nicht, wie erwartet, den lange ersehnten Wettertest für unser neues Zelt, sondern erinnerte uns noch einmal an den Sommer 2018: Temperaturen über 25°C und pralle Sonne, das ganze Wochenende lang. Während die HIKG-Kämpfer sich nicht davon abhalten ließen, den Tag über zu trainieren, genossen wir die tolle Stimmung am Lager auf der Kämpferwiese. Dank gebührt Fabian & co. von Swafaborg, dass wir in toller Gesellschaft lagern durften!

Unser zweiter Moesgaard-Markt übertraf den von letztem Jahr in fast jeder Hinsicht. Wetterbedingt verbrachten wir einen Großteil der Freizeit am Strand, überwiegend mit Lokis Freemen. Während des Wochenendes teilten wir das Zelt mit Elisa und Georg, zwei Freunden aus Berlin.

Our four weeks long Denmark tour started with a very quiet week in Hedeby. Unfortunately, neither of us had any motivation to take many pictures.

The raw wool contains everything left in there when the sheep is shorn. Including insects, flora and things from the stable floor.

In the times before industrial spinning mills, even before the first spinning wheels, wool and flax had to be spun with the drop spindle. Because the production of textile threads was an elemental part of the production of clothes, spinning can be seen as very important in the everyday life of the people.

After a yarn is spun, one wants to remove it from the drop spindle to make room for a new one or to work with it. One possibility to do so is by winding it into a ball; however, there is still a lot of tension in the yarn so that it'll have to rest quite a long time before it can be used without entangling it in itself. Another possibility is to wind it on a niddy noddy. Whether the Viking Age people used this tool or not is not to the question, since there are archaeological finds from Oseberg/Norway and Hedeby/Denmark (now Germany).

It was a very sunny weekend and just as sunny shone the yellow tones we managed to dye onto round about 8kg of wool cloth and yarn. All expectations were exceeded by the greens produced the next day when dyeing some of the material again using Indigo...

Wood might be the oldest working material used by humankind. Even before people began to make stone tools, they would have used branches, clubs and twigs in order to make everyday life easier, be it for hunting or for making camp. And so we can assume that in the Viking Age, too, wood appeared as the most common working material for all sorts of every day objects, even though be historically speak of the "Iron Age" (for Northern Europe), which rather reflects the "material most difficult to produce for everyday use", however[citation needed].

Zeitlich und geographisch gegliederter Überblick über die verschiedenen wikingischen Aktivitäten inklusive Kartenmaterial.

Grobe Einführung in die Verbreitung, Form und Nutzung von Runen

(Dar-)Stellung der weiblichen Bevölkerung des Nordens während der Wikingerzeit unter Rücksichtnahme verschiedener Quellenarten

Aktueller Wissensstand zu der wikingischen Kleidung, mit Blick auf die Vorgeschichte, Verbreitung und Herstellungsweise.

It was by far our coldest market weekend so far but everyones spirits were high and as a season opener this one surpassed every other market.

In a time when industrial mass produced articles from the Far East dominate the tools of everyday life, many of us engage in craftsmanship in their free time, because having something "made by oneself", however crude, gives a certain satisfaction. So it is likely that many of us in the reenactment scene have made their equipment in the same manner, even if he or she might actually portray a warrior. But it is here where the difference between the "do-it-yourselfers" and professional craftsmen lies: the former yields with sometimes the most up-to-date tools a presentable material result, whereas craftsmanship is a defining part of the portrayal of Viking Age life. Those with the goal of an authentic portrayal of craftsmanship should therefor work with accurate reconstructions of historical tools and means and should be able to delight the watching visitor with some knowledge.

At the end of textile production is the finished garment. The fabric is, depending on its material and colour, first being dyed and then cut into the required pieces and sewn together. On archaeological finds the warp threads have often been used as sewing thread. Whether those were pulled out of the fabric or whether they are the "scrap" that's left after weaving, the find descriptions usually don't tell.

Nalbinding is one of the oldest handicrafts in the world. The oldest nalbinding fragments are about 8000 years old and come from Israel. Different, more or less complex forms were used throughout history on the whole world.

According to Eva Andersson Strand, four different levels of textile production can be distinguished.

So gut wie jedes Lager hat den einen oder anderen Eisenkessel beim Kochgeschirr stehen und wer sich keinen leisten kann, gibt sich auffallend oft mit modernen, emaillierten Gulaschtöpfen zufrieden. Dabei gab's um 900 herum weder Email noch leistete sich jeder Haushalt einen vernieteten Eisentopf: Gekocht wurde überwiegend in Speckstein- und Keramiktöpfen, wie es schon Jahrtausende davor Usus war.

Every single step during textile production was of high importance and influenced the life of the people - the finer a textile was to become, the more work and, most of all, time had to be put into the production process. And the richer one had to be in order to afford it. There are a lot of finds connected to textile production such as combs, spindle whorls and parts of looms. Burial gifts of such tools in different female graves suggest the importance of such handicrafts in everyday life.

We occupy ourselves with textile production in order to re-enact this aspect of Viking Age life. We want to explore every possible step of wool processing - from sheep to fabric. This includes cleaning and combing raw wool fleeces, spinning of the fibers to get a yarn and finally sewing, embroidering, nalbinding or weaving with this yarn. The wool is being dyed in the process with plants or fungi if needed.

Mit Honig gesüßter Wein ist schon seit der Antike bekannt (Wein war damals eher sauer) ^{[cit. needed]}. Met ist allerdings (spontan) vergorener Honig und als solcher insbesondere im slavisch-baltischen und nordischen Raum, wo Honig geerntet wurde, schon seit Jahrtausenden bekannt. Honig ist stark hygroskopisch und beginnt bei entsprechender Lagerung spontan zu gären; bei höhererem Wassergehalt schneller, da Honig von sich aus antibakterielle, antivirale und antimykotische Eigenschaften besitzt (und damit den wilden Hefen schnell den garaus macht), so lange er nicht über ca. 45°C erhitzt wird. ¹

Als lagernder Darsteller auf (Früh-)Mittelaltermärkten hat man diverse Gründe, sich mit dem Thema “Essen” näher zu beschäftigen. An erster Stelle steht da das eigene Erlebnis. Wie hat es damals geschmeckt? Ganz gleich, wie gerne man Kartoffeln, Chili oder Romanesco-Kohl mag, zum wahren Reenactment-Gefühl gehört es nicht. Und dieses buchstäbliche Über-den-Tellerrand-schauen hat sogar einen schönen Nebeneffekt: Man lernt über die Herkunft und die ursprüngliche Form der modernen, auf Ertrag gezüchteten Lebensmittel und weiß altes wieder zu schätzen.

Ein weiterer Grund ist, den Besuchern diesen Teil des damaligen Alltagslebens ein wenig näher zu bringen. Schließlich werden alle Gerichte vor Ort auf den Märkten zubereitet, manchmal werden sogar zuerst Samen und Kräuter vom Wegesrand gesammelt. Da kommen gelegentlich mancherlei neugierige Fragen auf – oder man kriegt sogar junge freiwillige Küchenhilfen, die auch mal in einem Wikingerlager helfen wollen.

Die (Vor-)Geschichte der wikingischen Kunst. Die Entwicklung, Zusammenhänge und definierenden Eigenschaften der verschiedenen Stile im Laufe der Zeit.

Eine Auswahl diverser isländischer Sagas. Auch wenn diese erst ab dem 13. JH aufgeschrieben wurden, so geben sie doch wichtige Einsichten in die Lebensweise der frühen Besiedler Islands.

Was wissen wir über die Wikinger aus historischen (also schriftlichen, nicht archäologischen) Quellen? Wie sahen sie sich selbst, wie sahen sie andere?

Unser altes Zelt sieht etwas anders aus als die meisten "Wikingerzelte", die man auf den üblichen Märkten so sieht. Es so klein, aber nicht so schlicht wie ein klassisches 2x2.5m A-Zelt. Es besitzt ein an die Osebergzeltkonstruktion angelehntes Gestänge. Und es ist aufwändig bemalt, also bunt. Und das Beste: es ist Zelt und Bett in einem.

Vermutlich wird es eine derartige Konstruktion in der Wikizeit nie gegeben haben, aber das soll uns an dieser Stelle nicht weiter stören. Wichtig ist in erster Linie: Die Konstruktion ist nicht ohne nachzudenken von anderen abgeguckt und erfährt ihre eigene Evolution. Sie war mitnichten von Vornherein so geplant. Dieser Artikel soll nun beschreiben, wie aus einem einfachen A-Zelt das aktuelle Ergebnis geworden ist und welche Überlegungen dabei eine Rolle spielten.

This was our first stay as active participants in one of Germany's arguably most authentic Viking age markets. As if meeting so many high-quality peers was not enough, there even was an active archaeological dig going on next door.

The Midgardsblot Metal Festival in Borre (Vestfold, Norway) is a perfect blend of Black Metal and Viking age history.

Our first attempt at dyeing wool with yellow onion skin. The images speak for themselves.