On Monday 18 February 2008, Chris Laning wrote: > On Feb 12, 2008, at 12:06 PM, Beth and Bob Matney wrote: > > There has been a bit of discussion about this on the Norsefolk_2 > > list. Here is an image of her reconstruction: > > > > see bottom of http://www.uu.se/press/pm.php?id=48 > > http://www.newsdesk.se/pressroom/uu/image/view/pm_vikingakvinna1-5825 > > I won't exactly say that Norse costume experts on other mailing lists > seem to be laughing themselves into stitches over this..... but.......
You're absolutely right, Chris. I know this because I'm also a member of some of the other lists and have participated in those discussions. :-) I'll add here that a lot of what Larsson has proposed in her reconstruction comes from a recent (2006) find in Pskov, Russia, of large fragments of what appear to have been an undertunic with a gathered neck and an apron dress. The Pskov team is preparing an article on their find which will be presented at NESAT in 2008 and be in NESAT X, but here's a good factual summary in English of the preliminarily released details: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/sarafan/sarafan.htm The abstract for the NESAT paper gives some additional details that I wanted to raise here, for they present additional reasons counting against this proposed reconstruction: "Related with this outer item of the costume [i.e., the presumed undertunic] was the largest piece among the silk details found. It was a complete upper part (152 cm long and 25.5 cm wide) of the apron. At equal distances from the centre, fragments of two loops or shoulder-straps were preserved. The loops themselves were found on the pins of two oval fibulae. The silken trimming of the upper part of the apron consisted of several details cut from different kinds of silk. These all were cloths of the Byzantine type. On silken cloth no. 1, a woven pattern has been recognized with a scene of the Sassanian prince Bahram Gur hunting. In Europe, cloths with similar designs are known by finds from Milan, Cologne, and Prague. Within the territory of Russia they have been found at mountain burial grounds of the northern Caucasus. All of them are dated, at the latest, to the 9th Century being imitations of the earlier Sassanian textiles." In Larsson's reconstruction, the part of the apron dress that is ornamented with this precious, antique (the Sassanian silks are dated 9th century, while the burial is dated late 10th century) silk goes *at the small of the back.* I can't imagine any Viking wearing a garment in a fashion that would make it hard to find the most precious ornamentation on the garment. Overall, I agree with Chris's parting shot on this sort of daringly different reconstruction: > There is certainly merit in challenging the established "applecart" > of wisdom about how things were done, just to be sure no one is > getting too complacent or thinks that we know everything. But some > challenges have a lot of plausible reasoning and evidence behind > them, and others, well, don't. -- Cathy Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> "You affect the world by what you browse."-- Tim Berners-Lee _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
