The genesis of this volume was a conference strand that took place at the IONA: Early Medieval Studies on the Islands of the North Atlantic conference, held at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, in 2019. ‘From Fibres to Decorated Textiles in the Early North Atlantic: Making, Methods, Meanings’ brought together scholars, practitioners and other professionals specialising in different aspects of textile study and production from the Viking North Atlantic (800–1000 CE). The aim of the interdisciplinary strand was to explore how scholars and makers interpret and understand early medieval textiles and, as a result, the people and cultures that inhabited the early North Atlantic region.

The strand combined taster workshops and seminars that ran across the three days of the conference. The workshops gave attendees opportunities to experience weaving on a warp-weighted loom, tablet weaving, sprang, nalbinding and preparing fish skin for use as leather. The first seminar focused on theoretical approaches to studying surviving textiles and their meaning and use within society. The final session brought together both practical and theoretical strands with presentations demonstrating how both approaches can work together to give people who would not normally consider themselves interested in history opportunities to explore and enjoy both craft and the distant past. The success of these sessions could be measured by the buzz and positive atmosphere that pervaded them and it was through the resulting discussions that the idea for an edited volume was first conceived.

This book is the culmination of that project. Many of the original contributors to the conference strand have written chapters for the book. These have been supplemented with chapters by other emerging and leading scholars and practitioners of research on textiles from the early North Atlantic. The editors hope that the work it contains will enthuse those who already work in the field and engage others who are new to it: that it will show that many different approaches can be used to generate knowledge and understanding of the people and cultures that inhabited the North Atlantic lands in the Viking period and that by engaging in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of textiles, we can develop a more nuanced and holistic knowledge and understanding not only of these now-fragile objects but also of the worlds in which they were made, used, treasured, buried and discarded.