Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland

Book Description
One of the century's most spectacular archaeological finds occurred in 1921, a year before Howard Carter stumbled upon Tutankhamun's tomb, when Poul Norlund recovered dozens of garments from a graveyard in the Norse settlement of Herjolfsnaes, Greenland. Preserved intact for centuries by the permafrost, these mediaeval garments display remarkable similarities to western European costumes of the time. Previously, such costumes were known only from contemporary illustrations, and the Greenland finds provided the world with a close look at how ordinary Europeans dressed in the Middle Ages. Fortunately for Norlund's team, wood has always been extremely scarce in Greenland, and instead of caskets, many of the bodies were found swaddled in multiple layers of cast-off clothing. When he wrote about the excavation later, Norlund also described how occasional thaws had permitted crowberry and dwarf willow to establish themselves in the top layers of soil. Their roots grew through coffins, clothing and corpses alike, binding them together in a vast network of thin fibers - as if, he wrote, the finds had been literally sewn in the earth. Eighty years of technical advances and subsequent excavations have greatly added to our understanding of the Herjolfsnaes discoveries. "Woven into the Earth" recounts the dramatic story of Norlund's excavation in the context of other Norse textile finds in Greenland. It then describes what the finds tell us about the materials and methods used in making the clothes. The weaving and sewing techniques detailed here are surprisingly sophisticated, and one can only admire the talent of the women who employed them, especially considering the harsh conditions they worked under. While "Woven into the Earth" will be invaluable to students of mediaeval archaeology, Norse society and textile history, both lay readers and scholars are sure to find the book's dig narratives and glimpses of life among "the last Vikings" fascinating.


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Wood is scarce in Greenland, as it was from about 950-1450, the tenure of the Norse in Greenland. As a result, these people buried their dead in layers of clothing. When crowberry and dwarf willows sent down their roots, they transfixed the bodies and clothes to the earth in a tangle of fibers, as excavators found in 1921. Ostergard goes beyond even this level of detail as she describes all of the textiles found in 25 excavation sites related to the Norse of Greenland. Along with the inevitable scraps she describes full garments, including gowns, caps, hoods and hose. She even provides patterns for items drawn on grids, and a complete analysis of the fibers for each piece. The result is a remarkably complete record of a people who settled in Greenland for 500 years, only to disappear from the face of the earth, leaving their dead swaddled amongst the roots. Distributed in the US by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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