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| Left and Center: Cap worn tied
back behind the ears. Right:
Cap worn open. |
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Background: In an extensive excavation of a tenth and eleventh century Viking settlement in Dublin, many textile fragments consistent with headgear were found. (1) A total of 15 examples of peaked caps with ties were represented in the excavation; these caps may represent the headdress known as faldr in Norse literature, although this is not certain. (2) The caps consisted of folded lengths of tabby woven cloth (either wool or silk), typically with rolled hems at the neck and front edges, selvedges turned in and oversewn at the sewn back seam, and a sewn peak at the outside back. Ties were sewn to both front edges of the fabric as evidenced by pulling of the fabric at those locations, although no ties survive. Both the wool and silk fabrics were finely woven (approximately 30 to 55 threads per inch), and were likely unable to withstand substantial wear. As a result it is unclear how the caps were worn; possible ways include only lightly tying the cap, or pinning the cap to an undercap. The cap may have been worn open with ties hanging forward (as is often seen in SCA settings), or tied back behind the head. There are no contemporary depictions of these caps to support one theory over another.
Although the wool fabric used for these caps was likely the product of local weavers, the same is not true of the silk fabric. Trade routes through hub cities such as Birka linked the Viking world to the Byzantium silk producing workshops via inland water routes through eastern Europe. (3) Another possible route for the Dublin fabrics was southern, via London and Frankish lands from Spain, where sericulture was introduced in the 8th century. (1) Some of the silk fabrics demonstrated evidence of dyes (lichen purple, madder, and indigo).
Construction: The body of the cap is made of 30/2 silk in tabby weave, woven on a 36” 8 shaft Schacht floor loom at 30 ends per inch in warp and weft. As in the extant examples, the silk cap was cut down from a wider width of fabric than the final width of the garment (unlike the woolen caps, which appear to have been woven to width). The back seam is a running stitch in 60/2 silk which continues on the outside of the cap to form the point. The selvedges are exposed inside the back seam. At the neck and front edges, the edges are whipstitched in a narrow rolled hem. The ribbon ties are 60/2 tabby woven silk at 48 ends per inch, consistent with silk ribbon from the Dublin excavations. (4) Although black silk is not a representative color from the excavation (and is a challenging color to achieve in natural dying), this cap is intended as a gift for the Baroness of Bright Hills and I therefore chose to use black as the heraldic color of our barony. By far the most challenging part of this project was weaving the silk ribbon; working with very fine threads at such a narrow width led to greater unevenness in the selvedges than I would have preferred.
References
1. Heckett, Elizabeth. Viking Age Headcoverings from Dublin. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2003.
2. Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Great Britain: Stroud, 2007
3. Fitzhugh, William and Elisabeth Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2000.
4. Pritchard, Frances. “Silk Braids and Textiles of the Viking Age from Dublin.” In Archaeological Textiles (Report of the 2nd NESAT Symposium), Copenhagen: Arkeologisk Institut, 1988