Clothmaking was in many respects similar among the Nordic countries. Tools are more common in Norwegian Viking Age graves than in graves in other countries, while implements used by professional crafts in central parts of Europe seem to be documented at an earlier date in Sweden. Finland seems to have been influenced by eastern neighbors as well as from the West.
The sources for knowledge of textile work are of three kinds: archaeological, including tools and cloth mainly from Viking Age graves and medieval settlements; written sources, such as laws, official documents, and literature; and living tradition, where tools known from the Middle Ages continued to be used alongside more modern equipment.
According to the sources known at present, it seems unlikely that any professional clothmaking existed in the Nordic countries in the Middle Ages. The production of cloth for everyday use seems to have been a home craft. Both archaeological finds and written sources suggest considerable importation of professionally produced textiles, including woolen cloth of different qualities, often named after the place of production, such as amsterdamst or iperst. It has not been possible, however, to identify any of these specific cloth types in archaeological finds, and it is often difficult to form an opinion about whether a fragment of cloth is imported or locally produced. The construction of the cloth is in most cases the same.
Sheep wool is the main domestic textile material. Some examples of very coarse goat-hair fabrics have been found in city excavations (Lund in Sweden: Blomqvist 1963: 228 et passim; Bergen in Norway: Schjølberg 1984: 79 et passim).
Finds of seed from vegetal fibers like flax (Linum usitatissimum) and hemp (Cannabis sativa) show that these plants were grown. Both were paid as tithes according to church law (Archbishop Jon's Kristnirétrr [ecclesiastical law], Norway [rpt. in Keyser and Munch 1846-95: 2:355.19]. Sweden: Upplandslagen 6.5 [rpt. in Strömbäck 1960]-both 13th century). Vegetal fibers are seldom preserved in the soil in the northern countries, but importation of linen is known from the written sources. It seems likely that even nettle (Urtica dioica) was utilized for textiles
Tools are the most important indication of local textile production. In most cases, only those made of imperishable material are preserved, but finds of wooden objects do occur, as in the famous Oseberg (Norway) barrow from the 9th century.
All stages of textile production were women's work, except fulling, which, at least in Iceland, seems to have been done by men. For preparing wool for spinning, a pair of combs with long iron teeth were used to separate the long from the short wool and to lay the fibers even and parallel. Combs have been found in several Viking Age graves, even with wooden parts preserved, very similar to those known from professional clothmakirig in more recent times. Wool combs are mentioned in the sagas (e.g., Gretris saga). Cards are first mentioned at the beginning of the 16th century. The wool was spun on a dropped spindle, one complete example of which was found in the Oseberg barrow. Finds of whorls made of stone, clay, or bone are common both in Viking Age graves and in medieval settlements. The Oseberg spindle had a carved notch in top for holding the thread, and the stone whorl was attached to the upper part of the spindle, much like those found in folk museums in Norway, Iceland, and other Nordic countries. Even the distaff for fastening the wool during spinning is of the same type as more recent ones, with notches carved along the upper part, as seen from the finds from excavations of Oslo.
The yarn was made into a ball or a skein, both of which are known from finds from prehistoric times. Bobbins of weft thread, a skein-winding reel of the "niddy-noddy" type, and a swift are documented in the Oseberg find.
In Iceland and Norway, in the Middle Ages and later, the warp-weighted loom was the common instrument for weaving ordinary everyday cloth, like wadmal (2/2 twill) and tabby. In Norway, loom weights have been found in abundance in Viking Age graves and also in medieval settlements, while they are rare in medieval sites in Sweden and Denmark. The great majority of the Norwegian loom weights are soapstone, easily worked and provided with a hole for fastening the warp threads. In Iceland, lava stones were used. Loom weights made of fired clay are the common type in all other countries.
The warp-weighted loom consists of two uprights, about 2.2 m. high, carrying a revolving beam, between 2 and 3 m. long. Along the beam is a row of holes. During warping, a band was woven that arranged the threads in a regular row. The band was sewn to the holes in the beam, forming a starting border, a third selvage. The loom stood in a slanting position, leaning against the wall or a beam. It was equipped with a shed rod and from one to three heddle rods. The weaving started at the top and proceeded downward, while the weaver walked back and forth along the loom, inserting the weft. The weft was beaten up with a sword-like beater made of iron, whalebone, or wood. Instead of a woven selvage, a corded band could hold the warp and be sewn to the beam; in both cases, a closed selvage was the result. Fragments of such starting borders can in many cases determine the use of the warp-weighted loom. In Iceland, this loom was the only one used until the 18th century, and the operating of it for weaving wadmal is known from written descriptions in the last century, when the tradition was still extant. The weaving of tabby is still practiced in certain areas of Norway, and the two types of binding, 2/2 twill and tabby, were representative of products of the warp-weighted loom.
This loom allowed a person to weave both cloth of great width as well as narrow pieces; very little was wasted by cutting. The pieces were short, perhaps up to 3 m. The long weaves for unspecified use belonged to the horizontal loom.
Iceland was the only Nordic country that had a large export of cloth to western and central Europe. Wadmal (vaðmál) was the main export article of the country, woven on the warp-weighted loom by women. Influenced by the long weaves in the European market, the Icelandic women succeeded in weaving up to twenty ells in one piece. Wadmal was woven in several qualities, one of which was a standard of value in Iceland, as it had been even in the other Nordic countries in the early Middle Ages. Length, width, thread count, and weight for different qualities were fixed by law (Hoffmann 1964: 194-226). As an example of export, the receipt for nine years of papal tithes from Iceland amounted in 1337 to 12,164 ells of wadmal in three different qualities.
In central parts of Europe, the warp-weighted loom had long since been replaced by the horizontal loom with treadles, operated by male weavers, as is documented from 11th-century France (Cams-Wilson 1971: 165 et passim). Around 1200, the new loom seems to have appeared in Sweden, as evidenced by a couple of finds of single pulleys, which have been interpreted as part of a horizontal loom. This evidence might perhaps mean that individual professional weavers, immigrant craftsmen with their new, effective loom, made their first appearance in the North at this time. Apparently, these weavers were isolated craftsmen. Weavers' guilds are unknown in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. A new type of binding construction in twill seems to indicate a new technology connected with the horizontal loom. A great amount of asymmetrical twill, 2/1 or 1/2, has been brought to light in excavations in medieval cities (e.g., Bergen and Oslo in Norway, Lund and Gamla Lödöse in Sweden). Very little of this material has as yet been published (see Lindström 1982: 180 et passim, Kjellberg 1979: 85, 102, et passim).
The quality of the twill varies a great deal, from coarse to very fine. The latter is a worsted, sometimes in a lozenge pattern, and both spinning and weaving are exquisite. The fabrics were doubtless imported from a well-established foreign center of professional weaving. The warp-weighted loom is not well suited for asymmetrical bindings, and it is inconceivable that the fine medieval three-shed twills could be woven on this implement. A few simple fragments of this construction, with the characteristic starting border of the warp-weighted loom, have been found in Sweden (Lund) and in Norway (Bergen and Oslo). They were most likely imitations of the imported cloth, woven by women who did not own the new horizontal loom. A recent theory, which must be regarded with skepticism, advocates that a group of very fine quality twills found in rich Viking Age graves, and similar to the ones mentioned above, were woven in western Norway (Bender Jorgensen 1987: 120).
Marta Hoffmann