Kat Stasinska, AOC Archaeology
Volga to Vinland: Early medieval dress & textiles 9 November, 2024
The fragment of linen band from the grave 182 – 185:12 in Hedeby (10th century Denmark) was first published in 1991 by Inge Hägg in her book Textilfunde aus der Siedlung und aus den Gräbern von Haithabu. Despite its humble size (7 mm in width), it is the uttermost intriguing piece of textile. It was made of linen fibres dyed blue, with single red threads in warp and weft forming the checked pattern. The sole fact that this fragment has been dyed makes this band interesting, as during the Early Medieval period in northern Europe plant fibres were often left undyed. Dyeing them was a laborious process requiring specialist knowledge (unlike dyeing animal fibres, which was relatively simple).
A weaving pattern is another interesting feature of the braid. It combines a blue background with single red threads. This kind of pattern is not unique, as checked patterns of similar type (single lines on the background of different colours) appear in other settlements and cemeteries in Scandinavia of this time – e.g. Birka and Vaernes. The combination of blue and red is not unusual between these finds. It appears in other textiles from Hedeby, and from Birka, and the usual combination is single red threads in warp and weft separated by much thicker blue stripes. The mixing of blue and red thread has a long tradition of European culture, starting from antiquity. The main purpose was an imitation of extremely expensive Tyrian purple. The reason for mixing blue and red fibres instead of e.g. overdyeing is probably the ease of receiving purple shade, with control over the process (whilst double dyeing in red and blue dyestuffs can result quite often in undesired brownish shades).
This paper aims to investigate if this weaving pattern could be a Scandinavian approach to the imitation of purple, taking the Hedeby textile as an example. For research, the most similar copy of the Hedeby textile was prepared, starting from the spinning linen threads, through dyeing them and weaving. Then tests were conducted, visual (with the naked eye) and with a colorimeter. The purpose was to answer the question, of how the colour is perceived. Does the naked eye see the colour from the distance as purple? What about the different intensities of lights and the candlelight/flame? The author hopes that experimental archaeology helps to answer these questions.
