Linen textiles and ancient looms

Abstract

Linen textiles and ancient looms

In an admirable article in KUML 1987 Mytte Fentz describes the remarkable new discovery of a shirt from Viborg Søndersø, which is dated to late Viking times and is the only reasonably complete item of dress from Scandinavia in that period. No further comment will be made here on the description of the shirt, but in a final section on flax and linen, and in the English summary, Fentz draws some conclusions about the weaving of linen and the vertical or warp-weighted loom that in the present author's opinion cannot be sustained. Similar views and roughly the same line of argument were earlier presented by the textile expert, Inga Hägg, and as the similar conclu­sions of two authorities might be regarded by many as settling the matter, the aim of the present article is to present my counter-arguments.

Mytte Fentz writes in the English summary, »According to experts, linen material woven to medium quality requires a horizontal loom, which was known in Europe at the time and archaeologically documented from the 10th century in Poland and at Haithabu. The Søndersø finds in general attest to professional artisans and some to cultural contacts with West and Central Europe; it is thus likely that the horizontal loom was known in Viborg and that the shirt was made there, possibly from flax grown elsewhere«. This is put more cautiously in the Danish text, »Experiments have shown that the warp-weighted loom may be less suitable for weaving finer grades of linen, particularly as the inelastic warp cannot bear the pull of the loom weights. Moreover material woven on a vertical warp-weighted loom is characterized by uneven density in the weaving, while the horizontal loom gives a uniform and regular result«.

In Tor XX (1985) Inga Hägg has expressed similar views. The decisive argument is found in note 3. »As the weaving expert Britta Stenberg-Tyrefors has made clear to me, it is unlikely that linen textiles of average or fine quality were made on the warp-weighted loom. Even if sized, the yarn of the warp could not tolerate the wear of weaving. It is probably right to see the weaving of linen in connection with the treadle loom or with some more simple predecessor of it«.

Fentz and Hägg have in common that they both use expert opinion and weaving experiments as the decisive argument showing that medium to fine linen textiles in Viking finds must have been made on a horizontal loom or a treadle loom.

The present author does not wish to question the possibility that Viking linen textiles were made on a horizontal treadle loom. That such looms existed in northern Europe after about the 11th century is, as Fentz says, indicated at Hedeby, Gdańsk, and Opole in the 10th century, and at Sigtuna and Lödöse at the end of the 12th century. What I cannot admit is the assertion chat finer linen textiles cannot be made on a warp-weighted loom, and therefore must have been made on a horizontal loom. The weaving of flax goes far back in Europe's past. In reality we know fine linen textiles of a quality not unlike that of the Viborg shirt about a thousand years before the first woolen textiles appear. Throughout prehistory fine linen textiles occur as an important part of the textile repertoire in central and southern Europe. The warp-weighted loom is shown to have existed in the same area and at the same time by finds of loom weights, or in the early Iron Age by representations on Greek vases and on an urn from Sopron in Hungary (fig. 1). The earliest indications of a treadle loom are much later. The first are a group of Roman silk textiles from the 3rd-4th centuries (Wild 1984, 22; de Jonghe & Tavernier 1977/78), a group of patterned weaves from Merovingian times (Bender Jørgensen 1987, 114), and, at the transition from the Viking period to the Middle Ages, the finds of pulleys from looms and the like mentioned above.

The earliest linen textiles in Europe come from the Swiss lake dwellings and are dated to the Neolithic, more specifically to the 4th millennium B. C. (Vogt 1937). They are woven of two-ply yarn, and the fineness is generally between 10 and 20 threads per cm. A couple of central German finds from the same periods are of the same type (Bender Jørgensen 1990). Linen textiles of plied yam are also known from the Bronze Age. Linen textiles made of single yams first appear in the early Iron Age and are very common in the La Téne period, not least in the eastern part of Central Europe. In Slovakia unplied linen textiles (tabby with z/z spun yam) comprise far the largest part of the textile remains that have so far been studied from that period (Furmánek & Pieta 1985). A discovery from Nové Zámky, dated to the 3rd century B.C., included embroidered linen textiles of a quality exactly corresponding to the material of the shirt from Viborg Søndersø: 20/12 threads/cm (Furmánek & Pieta, kat. no. 53-54) (fig. 2). In northern Europe a group of fine linen textiles appears in cremation graves of the Jastorf culture in the area of the Lüneburger Heide (Schlabow 1972, p. 17ff; Bender Jørgensen 1987, 105 and fig. 6). Throughout the Roman period and subsequent Migration period linen textiles occur frequently everywhere in the European continent (Schlabow 1972; Wild 1970; Table A 10-29, Table B 36-46; Bender Jørgensen 1986, 121f with further references). It is only in Scandinavia that linen textiles are uncommon before the later Germanic Iron Age (Bender Jørgensen 1986, 164ft).

We can thus conclude that linen textiles of a quality fully equivalent to the shirt from Viborg Søndersø are a phenomenon at least 600 years older than the earliest hint of a horizontal treadle loom in Europe. Thus a part of both Mytte Fentz' and Inga Hägg's argument that medium and fine linen textiles must have needed a horizontal loom can be dismissed. The question remains whether they could have been woven on a vertical loom. That is admittedly the only loom documented from the European continent in the whole Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age until the Roman period, but that other looms possibly existed naturally cannot be denied out of hand.

Among the Neolithic linen textiles from Switzerland are several examples of starting borders of the type usually associated with the warp-weighted loom. Marta Hoffmann mentions them in her work, »The Warp-Weighted Loom« (Hoffmann 1964, 160f), and from this and other evidence comes to the conclusion that the warp-weighted vertical loom was the usual European loom throughout prehistoric times. This is a positive indication that fine linen textiles (though of the early type plied of two strands) were woven on a warp-weighted loom.

Remains of starting borders are rare among the tiny fragments that make up most of the surviving prehistoric textile remains. There is therefore no cause to be surprised that to the best of my knowledge none survives on linen textiles from the Bronze and Iron Ages. However there are other indications that the warp­weighted loom was used for weaving linen. Two German graves from the Later Roman period contained linen textiles in diamond twill z/z, both with displacement in warp and weft (Schalabow 1972, 18, Abb. 9 and Hundt 1976, Tafel 49-51). This detail, displacement in preference to point repeat, is characteristic of European twill variants throughout early times. Marta Hoffmann discusses this trait in her work on the warp-weighted loom (Hoffmann 1964, 187ff), and comes to the conclusion that it was associated with this kind of loom and was due to a particular method of warping and knitting the heddles, called the Icelandic method. Here again the conclusion is that there is positive indication that linen fabrics, in these cases respectively with 18/16 and 21/18 threads/cm, was done on the warp-weighted loom.

Mytte Fentz mentions a find from Århus Søndervold, dated to the 9th century A.D., of carbonized skeins and remains of warps, all of (single) linen yarn. They were found in pit­house CME together with a loom weight and some textile fragments (Lorenzen 1971). Fentz remarks -again with the opinion of an expert as her strongest argument- that the piece of warp could derive equally well from a horizontal as a vertical loom. This cannot be denied -but the same pit-house also held a loom weight, i.e. a positive indicator of a warp-weighted loom.

From all this it can be concluded that there are a number of positive indicators that linen weaving throughout prehistory was done on a vertical warp-weighted loom.

Mytte Fentz writes that experiments have shown that the inelastic flax-fibre yams cannot bear the weight of the loom weights, and Inga Hägg's note 3 contains a similar statement. Here it may be pointed out that there are a number of difficulties in the way of comparing modern weaving experiments with ancient weaving practice. The main problems are the quality of the raw materials and the skill of the weaver. Linen yarn from the Iron Age can normally be seen to have fibres of a length and quality far ahead of what is found in modern, industrially made yarn. If one tries to carry out a weaving experiment with yarn that has been bought, there will be a marked difference in yarn quality compared to similar work done in ancient times. There is also the question of craft skill. All crafts have their secrets and remedies, which are normally transferred from master to apprentice. This must naturally also have applied to weaving on a warp-weighted loom. In this respect continuity is interrupted. None of the weavers that have carried out the experiments which Mytte Fentz and Inga Hägg refer to have acquired their skill from teachers qualified as journeymen or masters in weaving on vertical looms. There one ought in my opinion to be much more careful in using modern experiments as arguments, and in all events the results must be weighed against the archaeological sources. In the present case the sources say clearly that medium and fine linen weaving existed long before the horizontal loom did. The vertical loom was in use at the same time as the linen textiles, and all the indications are that it was used to make them. Therefore no number of expert opinions can convince me that a linen textile in the Viborg shirt's quality proves that the horizontal loom was known there in the 11th century.

Lise Bender Jørgensen