I find it interesting that nearly all of my European interests center around one little bit of geography. There's something about the southern North Sea shores that draws me. My name is from 15thc Zeeland, I'm enchanted by the 5thc brooch-closed Kentish dresses (heavily influenced by the Franks, who occupied Zeeland), I like the tablet-woven edges particular to the Jutes who lived in that peninsula, and my current favorite summer event wear is this outfit, which our extant pieces document to Bronze Age Denmark. (Same place.) (I won't talk about my love for Danish modern furniture just now.)
Concept: Zealand (Olby? no, Hagendrup) variation of Bronze Age string skirt, with waistband taken from Egtved skirt, in order to wear with Borum Eshoj outfit...this is a hodgepodge, but a hodgepodge I'm going to perpetrate.
(Non-hodgepodge historical reconstruction of string skirt ensemble in Bronze Age Denmark with good pictures here.)
Societal rules apparent from Bronze Age documentation (particularly Barber's extensive treatment of symbology):
String skirt is for women of child-bearing age who are AVAILABLE. Hair covering is for adult women who are NOT AVAILABLE. They don't go together.
More disclaimers about the drawing, which is of what I wear:
I close my neck slit with two primitive penannular brooches. I find these to be more secure than the straight brooches that are found in abundance in graves. I hang a short strand of glass beads (recreations of 100BC) from the two brooches a la 5thc Kent jewelry described in Owen-Crocker, pgs 90-93, and Rogers, fig. 5.49. My necklace is seashells, but someday I'll get some amber.
I wear a silver cuff, and a green tabletwoven girdle, with no particular tasseling. Earrings are shown per the matched pendants in Hawkes. Bog-type moccasins were purchased. [is ref for these in Bog People or Hald? Check.]
Assembly Notes:
Used charcoal gray wool (alpaca, already had, and would minimize friction felting, though still ply into cords well)
Need 36" of stringed area to wrap hips. Planning 16" long skirt, which is not as short as Egtved, but not knee-height on me (20") either. Personal preference; expect 20" skirt to catch too much in knees with hard metal for comfort.
Tabby belt accomplished with 2-hole tablet weaving warp.
Yarn is 17 wpi, S-twist, used alone for warp, but for weft, plied to itself, S-twist.
Resulted in tabby gauge of one cord per 1/4" of stringed area, therefore requiring 4x36 metal tubes for ends of cords.
Total cord yardage required: 4 pieces per inch x 36" x 16" long = 2304"/36 = 64 yards. I don't have a yardage meter, so I'm just filling a few 1 oz drop spindles. When I run out, I'll refill them as necessary.
I am thinking the way to get a twisted cord while weaving is to use the drop spindle as a shuttle - this way I can pass it through the shed, spin the spindle to overtwist the cord, fold the cord around some jig setup (note to self: clamp tabletweaving loom to warping board and use warping peg. No wait, that interval is too large - add raddle.) [ADD PIC OF SETUP]
Purchased 36"long 1/8" diameter brass tubing; cut into XXX lengths for beads per XXX. [Could be 1", producing a beaded cord every 1/4", or could be smaller. Waiting for more data.] Someday I would like bronze beads, as I have a bronze bracelet, and I think the difference is apparent, but am in a hurry to complete skirt to wear at Pennsic. Brass was cheap, though - under $12 for 4 pieces 36" long.
UPDATE: I now have Barber's Prehistoric Textiles, which has much more information about the string skirts, as hoped (though still no pictures of any but Egtved, annoying). The metal tubes are COPPER. They are made by wrapping little rectangles of metal around the ends of the cords underneath the stay-cord, in place of the loops on the Egtved skirt. I bet I can find copper sheet, and that'd be much easier to control, and live with, than tubing. Plus it will patina nicely. Also Barber does a nice job of citing original publishers on everything she mentions, so tracking down Glob and Munksgaard is the next step on this.
PHOTO OF COMPLETED SKIRT GOES HERE
References:
Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years. Norton, 1994. The mainstream version of her academic work below. Pages 54-70 deal with string skirts and their symbology in various cultures from Stone Age to modernity.
Barber, E. J. W. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991. [What's in this book? On its way.]
Hald, Margrethe. Ancient Danish Textiles from Bogs and Burials: A Comparative Study of Costume and Iron Age Textiles. [Copenhagen]: National Museum of Denmark, 1980. [Chase down corded skirt, look at what she says about string skirts in general]
Chadwick Hawkes, Sonia. "The Jutish Style A. A Study of Germanic Animal Art in Southern England in the Fifth Century AD." appearing in:
Harvey, John H., Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, David M. Wilson, Gerald Clough Dunning, and R. P. Howgrave-Graham. Archaeologia: Or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, Volume 98. Oxford: Printed at Oxford by Vivian Ridler for the Society of Antiquaries, 1961.
Lise Bender Jorgensen, "Industries of the Near East and Europe in Prehistory: Europe." The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Cambridge University Press, 2003. Photo of Egtved finds, description of those and Zealand as follows:
"The women's garments consist of three blouses with the same basic shape; but whereas two are plain and simple, the one from Skydstrup is decorated with elaborate embroideries**. The three bouses seem to indicated that this type of garment was a normal part of female fashion in early Bronze Age Denmark. Skirts are a different matter: the Egtved grave, Jutland, contained a corded miniskirt, which, like the triangular loincloth of Hvidegaard (G: a male garment), has parallels in several bronze figurines. On Zealand, several female graves contained parallel rows of bronze tubes containing cord remains which had been placed at knee-height, plainly deriving from similar skirts and suggesting a fashion for corded skirts adorned with bronze tubes. Experiments have shown that such skirts have a merry tinkling sound when worn; an unexpected glimpse of Bronze Age life."
The very next paragraph describes the other skirt that I'm wearing together with the corded skirt:
"Another type of female skirt is indicated by the two graves of Skrydstrup and Borum Eshoj, both on Jutland. Both contained long, skirt-like garments, and in the case of the one found at Skrydstrup, was placed on the lower part of the woman's boy and bound with a girdle, like a skirt."
Jorgensen then says something with which I don't agree...
"The lower 40 cm of the 'skirt' were wrapped arond the woman's feet so that she appeared more like a participant in a sack-race, and the interpretation as a skirt must be considered doubtful."
I disagree with this amount of doubt because as anyone who's ever helped carry anyone unconscious, let alone dead, knows, you need to corral the feet somehow, and a tube already securely wrapped around the body would be awfully handy. I want another opinion. In the meantime, I interpret the long tube bound on the body with a girdle as a skirt. [didn't one of the ones in Hald have a drawstring? Must chase that down.]
**I'm very interested in these embroideries, but haven't seen an image or detailed description yet. HA! Here.
Owen-Crocker, Gale R. Dress in Anglo-Saxon England. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986.
Walton Rogers, Penelope. Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700. CBA research report, no. 145. York: Council for British Archaeology, 2007.
Surviving Garment Database
Viking Answer Lady, Egtved page, accessed July 23, 2009.
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