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Else Østergård

Woven into the Earth: Textile Finds in Norse Greenland Hardcover – 30 Nov. 2004

by Else Ostergaard (Author)

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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. Eighty years of technical advances and subsequent excavations have greatly added to our understanding of the Herjolfsnaes discoveries. In Woven into the Earth Else Ostergard recounts the dramatic story of Norlund's excavation in the context of other Norse textile finds in Greenland. She 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 medieval 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.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Aarhus University Press
Publication date

30 Nov. 2004
Dimensions

21.44 x 2.92 x 29.92 cm
ISBN-10

8772889357
ISBN-13

978-8772889351
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aarhus University Press (30 Nov. 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8772889357
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8772889351
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.44 x 2.92 x 29.92 cm

Customer reviews:
38 ratings

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Else Østergård

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Kath Walsh

A Must Have for my historical textiles shelf!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 May 2015

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I loved it. It was incredibly technical and detailed but still easy to read and digest. For any lover of historical textiles it is a fabulous resource.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 October 2014

Verified Purchase

excellent book on the greenland norse garments. It includes a short norse settlement history, information on the finding sites, other'(relevant) material culture and pletifull detailed information on the garments itself.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 January 2012

First, the obvious: this book is only going to appeal to those who are rather obsessed about medieval costumes. If that is you, this is a great book.

This is a wonderfully detailed account of the largest surviving collection of medieval clothing that archaeology has given us. There are masses of photographs, useful diagrams and lots of detailed break-down of the garments. Lots and lots of fascinating fine detail. My only complaints are that 1) most of the photos have no scale bars on them, so you have to find the textual description of the item and calculate sizes from there, and 2) it's sometimes a little difficult to determine exactly what is being described in figure legends (mostly because the time in the ground has left the textiles a near-uniform brown so picking out the difference between, say, stitches and fabric is often difficult to impossible if you don't know what you're looking for).

My only other point (and, really, this is not a comment against the book itself) is that this is not necessarily a great reference for high fashion on the European mainland. So, if you're looking for references for that, this might not be the best source. (See 'Medieval Textiles and Clothing' vol. 4 for the argument against conflating the Greenland construction techniques with the techniques used to produce high fashion European mainland gowns of the same era).

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Francesco Lanza

An astonishing research

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2010

I found this book incredibly interesting: it's priceless for anybody who ever researched how people dressed in the middle ages. Even more fascinating are the details about daily life and the rigours of survival in the cold north.

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Woven into the Earth: Textile Finds in Norse Greenland Hardcover – 30 Nov. 2004

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