Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1965, Síða 91

erlendir munaðardúkar
95
SUMMARY
Luxury Cloth From the Viking Age in Two Icelandic Graves.
The article deals with a very fine broken lozenge twiil found in Iceland in
two women's graves from the lOth century. The finest piece, from Reykjasel
(no. 4873), may be a chevron twill as the preserved bit is too small to allow
an absolutely certain identification of the weave. The thread count is ca 44 by 22 pr.
cm. The piece from Snæhvammuri (No. 3931, Fig. 1) is somewhat coarser with a
thread count of ca 30 by 12 pr. cm. The threads in both warp and weft are z-spun.
The pieces belong to a group of finds of woollen cloth known also from other
European countries. The Scandinavian pieces are dated to ca 700—9th century.
Outside the North the cloth has been found in England (Sutton Hoo), probably
in France (St. Denis in Paris),8 and in several German graves; these latter finds
are all older than the ones in the North (6th—7th centuries). Much older are
two related pieces found in Antinoe and Palmyra (lst to 3rd centuries).ts
The origin of the cloth is a matter of discussion. Some fragments (from Birka
in Sweden (Fig. 2) and Kaupang in Norway) have starting borders which indicate
that they were woven on the warp-weighted loom. Thanks to written Icelandic
descriptions, now in the National Museum in Reykjavik, the basic principles
in setting up a twill on this loom are known. According to these principles it
seems that the displacement in all the lozenge twills is also due to the technical
Peculiarities of the warp-weighted loom.
It is known that the loom has been widely used both in Europe and in the
Near East. The quality of spinning and weaving as well as the selected material
°f the standardized lozenge twills, which can be followed at least through 400
years in European finds, require a highly developed professional craftmanship.
As there is no evidence to support an idea of professional weaving in Western
Europe at this time, the present author ventures the suggestion that the fine
twills were woven in the Near East. This suggestion has recently been supported
by the Swedish scholar Agnes Geijer in a review in the periodical Fornvannen
(1965).
Weaving as a man’s craft in Europe seems to be connected with the new
horizontal loom with treadles, which appears to be spreading rapidly in Western
Europe in the llth century. At this time a new type of luxury cloth, scarlet,
seems to become fashionable, while the lozenge twills described above do not
appear in the sources. The name scarlet is supposed to be of Persian origin, and
the cloth itself may be a European imitation of the Persian cloth with the
same name.20