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. 2013 Oct 18:3:2686.
doi: 10.1038/srep02686.

Viking and early Middle Ages northern Scandinavian textiles proven to be made with hemp

G Skoglund  1 , M Nockert, B Holst
Affiliations

Viking and early Middle Ages northern Scandinavian textiles proven to be made with hemp

G Skoglund et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Nowadays most plant textiles used for clothing and household are made of cotton and viscose. Before the 19th century however, plant textiles were mainly made from locally available raw materials, in Scandinavia these were: nettle, hemp and flax. It is generally believed that in Viking and early Middle Ages Scandinavia hemp was used only for coarse textiles (i.e. rope and sailcloth). Here we present an investigation of 10 Scandinavian plant fibre textiles from the Viking and Early Middle Ages, believed to be locally produced. Up till now they were all believed to be made of flax. We show that 4 textiles, including two pieces of the famous Överhogdal Viking wall-hanging are in fact made with hemp (in three cases hemp and flax are mixed). This indicates that hemp was important, not only for coarse but also for fine textile production in Viking and Early Middle Ages in Scandinavia.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Map of Northern Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway) showing the archaeological sites discussed in the main text and the churches where the textiles investigated were originally placed.
Map prepared for this publication by author GS. The Map outline was traced from Wikimedia file Scandinavia.svg (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Author Hayden 120).
Figure 2
Figure 2. The Överhogdal Viking wall-hangings.
The two top pieces Ia (Length: 164 cm (top edge, Width: 33, 4–33, 5 cm) and Ib (Length: 195 cm, Width: 33–35 cm) are shown to be made of a mixture of hemp and flax. For the other pieces only flax were found (see Table 1). Published with permission of Jamtli Museum, Sweden.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The Lomen coverlet (Length: 130 cm, Width: 82 cm).
Published with permission of the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway.
Figure 4
Figure 4. The Marby hanging (Length: 81–85 cm, Width: 16–17, 5 cm).
Published with permission of The Swedish History Museum © Gabriel Hildebrand/Statens Historiska Museum.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Fibrillar orientations of bast fibres.
To the left: Z-twist, to the right, S-twist.
Figure 6
Figure 6. The modified Herzog Test performed on the Överhogdal Viking wall-hanging piece Ia.
The two top pictures (a and b) show a Z-twist fibre (Hemp) and the two bottom pictures (c and d) show a S-twist fibre (Flax). The analyzer is oriented vertically.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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