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.

THE NORTH ATLANTIC IN THE VIKING AGE

The term North Atlantic describes the geographical area situated between modern Scandinavia in the east and the east coast of North America in the west; and from Greenland in the north to the south coast of England (see Map, p. xvi). This is the area that people from Scandinavia explored, raided, traded with and settled between c. 750 and 1050 CE. The Norse people who engaged in these expeditions are now called Vikings, and sometimes thought of as sea pirates. However, the word Viking is of uncertain origins. It has been linked to two Old Norse words vikingr (m.) and viking (f.), which refer to an individual who is away from home engaged in group activities, and a group endeavour also taking place away from home, respectively. In turn, these two words may have derived from Vik, The Oslofjord, Viken, The Bay, and/or vik, bay, which could indicate that a vikingr was originally an individual associated with one of these places, either a local or a sea pirate. The etymology of all these words is part of a complex and ongoing debate that has only been touched upon here. The term Viking has become synonymous with a whole society that flourished first in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and, later, in parts of the British archipelago, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and possibly as far west as the coast of North America. To the east, this society or culture spread into Finland, the Baltic and Russia and had trade networks that extended into the Byzantine Empire (the capital of which, Byzantium, is present-day Istanbul, Turkey), and along the silk route, possibly as far as China, although this is still debated. To the south, the Norse penetrated as far as the Iberian Peninsula in the Mediterranean and the north coast of Africa, setting up winter camps and raiding there between c. 859 and 862. Viking Age society was complex and it is not the aim of this volume to unpack what others have already done, and continue to do so well. For many cultures, including those of Scandinavia, the British Isles and Ireland, this period of history is now called the Viking Age.

EIGHT MEDIEVAL EMBROIDERIES in gold and silk were rediscovered in Belgium in 1867, attached to a composite textile known as the casula of Saints Harlindis and Relindis (Fig. 4.1). Animals appear on four of them: two strips of arcades and two of roundels.

They are now in the treasury of the church of St. Catherine in Maaseik, having been transferred there in 1571 from a religious house at Aldeneik, founded in the early eighth century for two sisters, Harlindis and Relindis. At the time of its establishment it was within Carolingian Francia, a region which in the later ninth century became part of the county of Flanders. The area is now in the Belgian province of Limburg.

Local tradition, going back at least to the Vita Sanctarum Harlindis et Relindis (composed 855–881), attributed the embroideries to the founding saints. However, in 1951 Marguerite Calberg recognized them as later than the founding of Aldeneik, suggesting, on stylistic grounds, that they were English work, dating to ca. 850. A detailed study in the 1980s by Mildred Budny and Dominic Tweddle endorsed the Englishness of the embroideries, while slightly adjusting their dating. Certainly later than the sister saints, they are probably late eighth- or early ninth-century, and perhaps arrived on the Continent as gifts to missionaries from Anglo-Saxon England. They might originally have been intended as ornaments of an altar cloth or cloths, or (my own suggestion) as apparels of ecclesiastical vestments. They may have been taken direct to Aldeneik, or transferred there when the cult of the founding saints and prestige of the establishment were increasing. It had been made a royal abbey by 870.

Early in their existence, the embroideries were additionally ornamented with pearls on the arches and roundels. These were removed at some point between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, leaving some linen attachment thread, still visible in several places. None of the surviving zoomorphic embroideries is a complete piece. They have been cut down and re-used, probably on more than one occasion. Much of their gold thread has been deliberately removed or lost. As they were arranged on the composite casula on which they were rediscovered, their design was carelessly ignored or unrecognized: the arcades were both oriented the same way, the roundel strips in opposite directions.

This volume contains six essays arranged chronologically. Contents extend from the eleventh century to the sixteenth and geographically from England to the francophone world and Scandinavia, covering material remains, art, documentary material, and the value of reconstruction as a research technique. Topics include garments, soft furnishings, and more utilitarian textiles.

Our readers are always interested to learn of surviving medieval textiles, especially little-known ones. Catherine Besson-Lagier accordingly examines a little-known piece of clothing dated between 1160 and 1270 from Bussy-Saint-Martin, France (Chapter 2). Identified as a sleeve associated with medieval padded armor, its shape and composition were documented during its restoration in 1995. The article places this item of clothing in its historical, textual, and archaeological contexts; offers hypotheses on the general shape of the garment to which the sleeve could have been attached; and presents the results of experiments with the creation of such a garment that takes account of the technical characteristics of the original sleeve and argues for the value of reconstruction as a research methodology.

Moving from this obscure medieval textile to the best-known of them, the embroidered Bayeux Tapestry, and focusing on the more than 700 animals depicted in the Tapestry's main register and borders, Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Chapter 1) notes that whilst many of them are recognisable types, remarkable for their vitality, they are not spontaneous creations from life. Rather, they are very dependent on earlier textile art and recent manuscript models and, in addition, were constructed with templates. The author suggests that many of the animals are not merely authentic accessories of medieval life (in the main register) or decoration (in the borders) but that they provide subtle clues to human emotions and motivations in the power struggle which the Tapestry depicts.

Continuing the focus on embroidery, Amica Sundström and Maria Neijman investigate a group of medieval Scandinavian textiles which they call gilt-leather coverlets, after the narrow gilded strip of leather used to decorate these embroideries (Chapter 5). The preserved objects have been used in churches, but written sources show that they were present in secular environments as well. The combination of materials, techniques, and design makes these embroideries unique to medieval Sweden and Finland. The authors describe the preserved objects and show how reconstructions of them can create a deeper understanding of their construction and expression.