Danish Personae

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Haldor Halvardson wrote:

Here is where we will discuss and post resources for Danish garb and personae.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

enepaygunnulfson wrote:

not much about garb for the danes but there is A LOT of great information in this document

because its in a word document form I cant link it so if you google "danish vikings" and scroll down

about 6 links you should find a document simply called "THE DANISH VIKINGS"

heres the link for it so you know its the right one
www.um.dk/Publikationer/UM/.../TheDanishVikings/viking.doc

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Sven Kolfinsson wrote:

docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:nkK43JH6AmsJ:www.um.dk/Publikationer/UM/English/TheDanishVikings/viking.doc+danish+vikings&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgj9tNDxFdH5yHa7EG6BpvgtI2hRAB5LewrlHdE9BnIriQS9O-PfDI4SygUxjGtR5y-h7erUpqCOJ9G46lfsnV9NW6V2GRsaxCZGIGliu7lzA3dnKuFZvS1rx6IOAluCtDx67Pg&sig=AHIEtbRFj2A-hsFkHRYAJF6orLU6iwamyw

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Haldor Halvardson wrote:

Good stuff. Exactly what this is for.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Sven Kolfinsson wrote:

Enepay, look under "Selecting a Cutting Draft" on this page for some differences in Danish tunic construction.

www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/viktunic.html

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

AlricofDrentha wrote:

THE book to read is Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu, by Inge Hägg. Unfortunately, it's not been translated, and the illustrations are pretty technical (those nice pictures in Thora Sharptooth's article of the Hedeby garments with the curved sleeves are based on Hägg, but as far as I can tell were drawn by Thora - Hägg has nothing that helpful for the reenactor).

Hägg discusses a number of garment fragments recovered from the harbor at Hedeby / Haithabu (a Viking trade center in northern Germany founded by a Danish king) that were preserved because they were used as caulking in ships. Some of the highlights are curved arm holes in garments (very much like modern patterns), tailored sleeves that also look very modern with a slight curve to fit around the elbow, fragments of what appear to be pants and hosen (suggesting that you could wear either), some sort of vest / waistcoat, and a fragment of a wraparound coat that looks like a little like a modern karate gi or bathrobe.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

AlricofDrentha wrote:

This comment could go in any of these threads, so I randomly decided to toss it in here. My apologies for the mini essay!

There are two dangers that reenactors can fall into. The first and easiest is to be too general, to draw on material culture from Ireland to Kiev, toss in a bronze Buddha for good luck, and make a hideously generic 'Viking' look. That's bad, because context matters, and something is lost when a portrayal fails to be rooted in real world communities and instead becomes a menagerie of three hundred years of stuff that someone somewhere said belonged to a 'Viking' (whatever that word means). So I really really like the way these threads are broken up into 'Danish' v. 'Swedish' v. 'Norwegian'; this is good, keep things concrete and avoid the generic.

The other danger, however, is an older one rooted in 19th century nation building. That's the danger of reading modern political realities back into the middle ages and drawing distinctions that might not have existed or mattered between different regions at the time. The question that has to be asked here is, did people living in the area that became modern day Denmark dress differently than the people living in modern day Norway or Sweden? And the corollary question is, was there just as much variation between how people in different parts of Denmark dressed as there was between Denmark and Norway; that is, in drawing the lines between the modern countries, are we overlooking more important local differences?

There were real political lines in the middle ages, and the modern lines grew out of them, but the assumption that dress varies by country is rooted in what archaeologists call 'culture history,' the assumption that modern states are descended directly from ancient people groups (thus, the 'Germans' have the same blood - or to be more PC, the same cultural traditions - as the 'Germanic' peoples Tacitus wrote about in the 2nd century; which are different from the traditions of the Czechs, which are different from the traditions of the Slovoks, etc), and that those differences could be observed in the material remains of those cultures, particularly in the way they dressed. Disney bought into these ideas, and you see it in his 'It's a Small World Afterall' ride where each country is represented by animated dolls that wear their people's distinctive style of dress.

In archaeological terms, this means that migration of people groups was traced by the types of dress people were buried in. If a body was buried with Anglo-Saxon style brooches in Wales, you knew that that person was from England and had crossed the border (usually the argument is that it was a woman who was married to a foreign notable).

This view has been challenged very strongly in the past few decades, first in American and British scholarship, and more recently in the very conservative German archaeological schools (where the debate is still raging very violently). The big German work to read on the subject is by Sebastian Brather (he's published a little in English, but mostly in German). John Moreland has a good summary of the issues in the introduction to his 2010 book, Archaeology, Theory, and the Middle Ages. The new emerging consensus is that, while different cultures do have unique ways of expressing their ethnic identities, it's wrong to assume that we can trace a person's country of origin by the clothes they wore.

What does all this mean? It means that these lines are fuzzy. Thora Sharptooth discusses, in the article above, the variations between the garments recovered from Birka, Sweden and those found at Hedeby. This could be attributed to differences between how Swedes and Danes dressed, but I would hesitate to argue that a Swede would not have worn garments like those found at Hedeby (a Danish town), especially as both Birka and Hedeby were trade centers and enjoyed a high level of cultural exchange.

Regional patterns could be established, but I'm not convinced we have enough evidence currently to do more than reenact a person from Hedeby or a person from Birka. To know if Swedes and Danes dressed differently, we'd need to look at how people outside the cosmopolitan trade centers dressed (I don't think we have much evidence for this, unfortunately), and see if regional patterns emerged.

For my own work, I follow a slightly different approach to try to avoid these difficulties of national boundaries. I chose a location for my character to live, outside the city of Chester (England). Chester had trade connections with Ireland and York, and York was connected to Denmark. That means, to me, that I am very safe to wear things excavated from York (it's a big city a day or two from my home). It tells me that I can also probably wear things from Hedeby, because Hedeby was just across the water from York and would almost certainly have had trade connections with York. Also, the garments found at Hedeby appear similar to the images of clothing in English art, so I can reasonably assume that a man in Chester could have worn garments like those found at Hedeby without drawing attention. Birka, however, is much farther away, and while there is evidence for trade between Birka and England, I don't feel as comfortable wearing things excavated from Birka as I do things from closer to home. In this way, I try to be sensitive to context (not wearing anything I want just because it's 'Viking age') while also not getting too hung up on whether something's 'Anglo-Saxon,' 'Anglo-Norse,' or 'Danish.' And time matters too - it might be more reasonable to wear something dug up in your period 200 miles away than to wear something found in your backyard that's 200 years too early.

It's always important to be mindful of where things came from. If you're a Viking from Denmark, you should think hard before wearing something that was dug up hundreds of miles away. But at the same time, don't write it off just because it wasn't dug up in the same country that you're from. Instead, look at trade links, patterns that allow for extrapolation (the garments from Birka and Hedeby, how different were they really?), and try to think in terms of local connections (Anglo-Saxon Chester to Anglo-Viking York to Danish Hedeby) rather than political boundaries (England v. Denmark).

It's also important to bear in mind how this scholarship is carried out. In Hägg's book (what Thora's article uses as a basis for her discussion of clothing from Denmark), Hägg uses bog finds from the 4th century, artwork from Syria, and embroidery from the Bayeux Tapestry to reconstruct the 10th century Danish clothing. That is to say, the reconstructions for clothing of specific regions relies very heavily on material drawn from sometimes very diverse sources (in time and space), and it would be a mistake to draw the geographic distinctions with more firmness than the evidence itself allows.

I don't mean to be nihilistic ('You can't draw distinctions, ha!') or to discourage these discussions of regional variation. On the contrary, I think they're FANTASTIC. I do think, however, that they have to be approached with care to ensure that we don't accidentally create differences that may not have existed.

All which boils down to, context really matters. Don't just wear something because it's 'Danish' and your character is a subject of the Danish king. Wear it because you can connect it to the place you're from. And if those connections lead you to wear something dug up in Birka, don't feel guilty for crossing a national boundary.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Haldor Halvardson wrote:

Well put Alric, as always. I would like to reiterate, though, that most of the people using these resources are doing so as their first foray into any kind of reenactment or attempt at historical accuracy, such as it is. To that end I am of the mind that some generalization is ok as you begin to delve deeper into who and what your persona is, and when and where they are anchored in history. Once you have a general idea (Danish, 10th century), you can begin to focus in on what someone might really dress like there.

You are right, though, that there is a danger in creating distinction where it doesn't exist. Somewhere between that and over generalization is where we want to dwell, and I think that we can find that point by starting wide and continually working on narrowing in.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Brenna Haldana wrote:

<3 Your guys are awesome. These are excellent points.

To add to the delving too far side: I've seen Living History types get so wrapped up in their own research and only what's definitely been found and proven, they fail to explore the 'what ifs', look down on those that do, and kill the fun and creativity.

I'm not advocating crazy off the wall stuff (like space ninjas!), but keeping an open mind to the possibilities that each new study and dig provides.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

AlricofDrentha wrote:

Well said, Haldor!

Finding the balance between existing evidence and the what ifs is so hard! But then, that's half of what makes this fun.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

AlricofDrentha wrote:

www.pvv.ntnu.no/~hmg/lrp/kostyme/viking/v-k-underkjole.html - fantastic article, had some stuff I hadn't seen before. Also check out the bibliography, it's excellent.

(I'm posting this in Sweden, too)

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

AlricofDrentha wrote:

Viborg shirt: forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/Viborg/VIBORG.HTM
and: forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/Viborg/SEAMS.HTM

Also, here's a link to the book on the Hedeby harbor textiles that I mentioned above (in German): tower.system.yaroslavl.ru/source/Die_Textilfunde_aus_dem_Hafen_von_Haithabu.pdf

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Jostal wrote:

What if we focused more on a location-based generalization, like Eastern, Western and Central over Dane, Swede and Norwegian? That leaves room for other peoples, and we could include a Southern which would be more byzantine and Kievan. These Regions could overlap enough to allow some influence from other areas, while downplaying too far an influence.

Another way we could go is have houses pick a specific region from the general guidelines and develop their own garb and equipment guidelines, like showing a preference to a specific sword type, shield, clothing, etc. This would create a sense of community within the houses.


Just some ideas.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Haldor Halvardson wrote:

I still like the idea of sticking to the cultural groups for a couple of reasons. First, while Alric is right and the countries as we currently know them were not the same 1000 years ago, they are the easiest and most accessible way to lock into the culture we want. Second, these cultures are closely tied to familial bonds, something that the society was greatly based on. That is to say that these ethnic groups are essentially the large web made out of lots of smaller family webs. Third, there is a correlation between these cultural groups (Norwegian, Swede, etc.) and the style and types of clothing and equipment used. If, for instance, you had a Northern region, that would encompass Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, etc, all of which had different norms.

Also, looking by culture will turn up more results.

[Ulfric Vilhjálmr Arngrimsson]

Brenna Haldana wrote:

I agree with Haldor.

And Kievan Rus would be more East