Professor Heather A. D. Mbaye, University of West Georgia
Volga to Vinland: Early medieval dress & textiles 9 November, 2024
Much of what historical reenactors think we know about 10th century Norse women’s clothing is fairly conjectural, from an academic standpoint. That’s why we see so many different styles of aprons on reenactors – we have very little archeological textile evidence and what we do have doesn’t tell us very much.
Professor Heather Mbaye applies an interdisciplinary approach, reviewing the information we have from the textile finds of the apron dress. This paper demonstrates an approach that can be used by reenactors when there are no extant garments to reproduce and few visual representations remaining. The paper draws some conclusions, and carefully reviews what we cannot know from these fragments. Finally, Dr. Mbaye discuss several possible styles that fit the evidence, as represented by scale-sized dresses and one full sized reproduction dress.
