Historiska världars forum

Hi,

My name is Jane Stockton, (well, that is my SCA name) and my main interest is embroidery. I am currently writing a series of handouts that will focus on the types of embroidery and designs used on clothing for various cultures and times in the pre-16th century period. I am nearly finished with my first handout, on Anglo-Saxon embroidery (currently running at about 30 pages, including 10 pages of patterns).

I would also like to write one on Viking period clothing and decoration (that is the topic I have had the most requests for).

I try where possible, to base all my design work on extant examples, and where those aren't available, logical extrapolations based on contemporary designs and other types of sources (such as manuscripts).

I know of the webpages at:

http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikembroid.html
http://www.forest.gen.nz/Medieval/artic ... EXTILE.HTM
Also the Viking Answer Lady (whose Mammen stuff is great, but I would love clearer/larger copies of the images there).
http://users.bigpond.net.au/quarfwa/mik ... n_text.htm

Does anyone else have any information that they could share that I might be able to use?

The problem I have is that I don't have access to alot of the books that have been published that might cover this topic. Firstly, many are in languages other than English and secondly, they aren't held by libraries in Australia and I just can't afford the fees for international inter library loan.

Another question, the last link above lists a CD-Rom called "World of the Vikings". Does anyone know if there are other embroidery images on this CD?

Any help that you can give me would be much appreciated. My email address is:

jane_stockton@webcon.net.au

Cheers,
Jane

Hello, Jane.
Look at these sites:
http://www.forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/embroidery/
http://www.silverdor.org/viking/NorseSeamTreatments.pdf
http://heatherrosejones.com/mammen/index.html
http://www.jomsb.org/Sunnifa/Accessorie ... idgets.pdf
Best regards,
Rusia

Perhaps you can find some inspiration to patterns from the following sites:

The [url="http://www.hembygd.se/index.asp?DocID=1587"]Kyrkås tapestry[/url] is a double weave, one layer in red and black plaid wool the other in white linen.

The [url="http://www.overhogdal.se/english1/tapestry-e.htm"]Överhogdal tapestry[/url], also seen
[url="http://web.telia.com/~u60108224/html/bilder_vavarna_4.html"]here[/url], is made in soumak technique and lends itself well to embroidery.

Both tapestries are dated between 900-1100. Though now in Sweden they were probably made elsewhere, if only because that part belonged to Norway during the Viking age.