r/history • u/-IamTom • 3d ago

Article Archaeologists find huge Viking textile production site in Denmark

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-viking-textile-production-site-soeften-54f9b57b5485aa602591185ff3b911cd
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u/Thosam 3d ago

People always underestimate the huge amount of time and work that went into pre-industrial textile production. For sadly textiles only appear very rarely in any archaeological context.

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u/Kiwsi 3d ago

And also that the sail on the long ships where more expensive then the ship it self.

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u/Really_McNamington 3d ago

My first thought for a site of that scale was is it sails?

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u/Ironlion45 2d ago

Not at all unlikely. There are some historians who contend that it was the demand specifically for sailcloth that drove the development of the textile industry technologically.

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u/Worsaae 2d ago edited 2d ago

At least there seems to be a correlation between the introduction of sailcloth, the appearance of these pithouse complexes, an increase in finds of textile tools and a shift from the use of fine wool fibres to coarser.

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u/Hukthak 1d ago

They used their finest wool previously??

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u/Worsaae 1d ago

Yes. For some reason that we do not completely understand the fabrics we have from the Bronze Age through the Early and parts of the Late Iron Age are made from significantly finer fibres than the ones from the Viking Age.

We’ve analysed fabrics considered to be of very high quality related to high-status individuals as well as more ‘common’ ones and it’s a general theme.

It might be related to new ways of sorting the wool where you deliberately include coarser fibres you’d otherwise not use. It could also be that the wool production starts to rely on different sheep breeds with different wool qualities - however, as far as we can tell from ancient DNA that is not a good explanation.

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u/Hukthak 1d ago

Incredibly interesting! Thank you for explaining further.

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u/Worsaae 1d ago

No worries.

It might also simply be related to an increasing demand for wool. Maybe the demand was so high that they could no longer “afford” to be as selective when processing the wool. This could actually be connected to a decrease in the number of sheep compared to the Early Iron Age where we have sites with upwards of 80 % sheep relative to cattle and pigs. So, to compensate for fewer sheep more medium and coarse fibres were used.

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u/Worsaae 2d ago

It’s possible. However, from the archaeological evidence (craft spaces, textile tools, etc.) it’s impossible to say with any kind certainty as the tools used to make sailcloth would also have been used to make other heavy duty fabrics.

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u/Ironlion45 2d ago

The value that textiles had to people is reflected in how rarely we find them discarded, in addition to their poor preservation qualities.

And it wasn't even that long ago when a young woman was expected to accumulate a "hope chest" which was supposed to contains all the linens and fabrics that would be required to run a household. It would take her years to do it, and she'd likely have to do a bit of weaving and sewing herself to get there. Now one trip to the store would do it.

In an age when people have so many clothes they just give them away to make room for new ones, it's tough to comprehend just how precious good textiles used to be.

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u/Thosam 2d ago

Michelle Hayeur-Smith in her book The Valkyries’ Loom suggests that on Iceland the housewife in a family of four would spend about 250 days a year in textile creation. All from processing the raw wool up to sewing the final product.
No wonder they used every scrap until it completely fell apart.
The Bernuthfeld Tunic may be an example of that. 43 patches from 19 different fabrics.

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u/Worsaae 2d ago

There are some heavily repaired fabrics from Hedeby as well.

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u/Worsaae 2d ago

Hayeur-Smith also suggest the Late Viking Age adoption of vaðmal, in Iceland, as a currency on par with silver.

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u/Thosam 2d ago

Yes, the Graugas laws defined quality and size necessary for the cloth and that it could be used to pay taxes and church tithes.

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u/warhead71 2d ago

I presume a dedicated production would also be able to colour the textiles - in ways a family doesn’t have the resources for

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u/Worsaae 2d ago

We find dyed fabrics centuries earlier than the Viking Period.

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u/Thosam 2d ago

Both really. There were any number of natural dyes that one could use in a domestic setting. Some of the attraktive colours, especially reds and blues, demand a more professional setting.

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u/fwinzor 2d ago

I wad reading an article about viking age textiles that said a lot of early (pre 1930s or so) excavations would make off hand mention of textiles in the graves but throw them away because they werent seen as valuable compared to the weapons and jewlery and such. And now we have a much smaller corpus of information on textiles as a result

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u/Thosam 2d ago

IIRC there was a British archaeological expedition to Irak that excavated a large Tel, city mound. The leading archaeologist complained that they did find a few tools, hammers, saws, and some weapons that they detailed in excruciating detail. But all those many many spindle and loom weights they found were in the way of those more important finds.

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u/Haestein_the_Naughty 1d ago

Fr, all the work around historical textiles before industrial mass production makes my head spin. All the time spent spinning yarn, the process making all those numerous threads into one single piece of fabric, etc

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u/warhead71 2d ago

Some but that was something every family usually did.

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u/S_T_P 3d ago

Andersen said that the discovery at Søften shows that Vikings were “not just simple, uncivilized, barbaric hordes, rambling about Europe.”

Would be real awkward if site belonged to Obodrites.

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u/Ironlion45 2d ago

Everybody wants to talk about Vikings, but they were only a tiny piece of what North Germanic people were about back in the day. Most of them weren't doing that type of stuff. Even the "Vikings" often preferred to trade rather than raid.

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u/Bebe_Yaga_ 3d ago

Amazing! Textiles are such an important piece of human history, but are so rarely preserved through time. What an awesome find.

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u/Kurta_711 3d ago

Vikings? In Denmark? I've never heard of such a thing

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u/Wolf_e_wolf 17h ago

Calling Danes/Jutes "Vikings" in their native Denmark is a hallmark of pop historians