Norse Apron Dress Wrap-interpretation

Norse female dress is a contentious issue. Fragmentary evidence leads to a wide variety of conjectural interpretations - all of which may or may not be correct in equal measure. Tricky.

Somewhere around 2005 I decided to try a different style of wrapped apron dress that incorporated as many of the 'knowns' as possible. What was there? There were a variety of loop configurations preserved inside tortoise brooches. There was a fragment conjectured to be the waist/body section of a female dress that had an angled side, implying fullness over the hips. There were legal texts hinting at what was considered feminine dress - low under dress necks, low enough to expose a breast/nipple.

Taken together I inferred a bit and thought about style and practicality. There are really no examples of profoundly impractical dress in the Viking Age (no poulaines or henins) so whatever I concluded had to live within that context. What does a low shirt neck imply in a woman? In our age, sex appeal. In the Viking Age it is more likely to be a practical reason like breast feeding. What does a flare over the hip mean? A skirted garment with a more fitted upper body. What do those two things together mean? A dress that has some fitting but that enables breast feeding. Certainly, alternative designs of this garment can permit that activity but those all require partial undressing to get the job done. I do not have children but I have many friends who do. Feeding a child isn't an occasional thing, it is a constant. Would I want to partially undress that many times a day? Nope.

A wrapped garment can meet all of these fragments (including multiple loops which is often excluded in closed dresses) and remain a practical garment. It took some experimenting but I found a system that worked. I've cooked over hearth fires for days at a time and have never set myself on fire. I've made this dress for pregnant friends and it has seen them through much of their pregnancy and then on to breast feeding. The concept of an entirely different wardrobe for pregnancy is a fairly modern concept - another reason to view this as a likely interpretation of the evidence.

Sorry for the complete lack of pictures - almost none of the pictures of me show the full dress. Oops.

Please keep in mind that until we find a complete garment, ALL interpretations of this garment are conjectural. This is one that has worked for me and satisfies my academic side.

Here is a handout I created to go along with the class I teach on making this garment. If you would like to use this handout to teach, please contact me for permission and use the document un-altered including credit and authorial copyright information. Credit where it is due please!

Norse Apron Dress Alternative Construction by Knaughtress

Scyths and Romans and Normans, Oh My!

As some of you may know (or not!) I have a costuming business that keeps me occupied full-time (but on a part-time basis). Crown and Castle Clothing is my baby. The business focuses on meeting the needs of historical recreationists in a variety of time periods. I have undertaken custom work in later period stuff - think Elizabethan - but my real passion lies in bringing out the very best in the Anglo Saxon and Viking ages with a healthy side of Roman and perhaps a dash of Norman. These are not the clothes that most people consider flashy, there is a general lack of bead-encrustation, purpose-built undergarments and so on, but to me they are the most elegant and certainly under-appreciated to a great degree. (If you agree with any of this, please consider joining the C&C fan page on facebook!)

The great thing about this period is the variability and diversity of the fun things: accessories.

Indeed, in considering this week's post, the hat came to mind. And then there were too many hats...so this will be a multi-part series over time. Today, the Phrygian cap.


This classic little number has had the longest run of any hat style that I can think of. It first comes out in western art in the early Roman period, associated with the Scyths. They were a tribal race 'from the east' as the Romans say - which usually meant something like 'we have no clue about these dudes, man can they fight, damn troublemakers'. There are examples of this hat on Trajan's column, in some dashing marbles and the odd fresco. Let me show you.

A bust of Attis, sporting a Phrygian cap likely from the 2nd century CE:
This fresco from San Apollinare in Ravenna (early 6th century) shows the three wise men trekking out with their goods...AND wearing some snazzy phrygian caps.


This same series of frescos aslo shows some splendid details of the Byzantine emperor, empress and their gangs. They are notable for a few reasons. The details are excellent, the clothing is shown in contemporary styles that are born out in other sources and context couldn't possible be better. Amazing resource.
















A slightly different permutation of the cap is shown in the Ostia mosaics, 2nd-3rd century CE.

There are other examples of course, but the short version is: later romans were into this accessory. The hat continued northwards and appears intermittently in germanic tribal contexts. Some discussions consider the phrygian cap to have informed the shape of northern helms, particularly the crested types common in England and Scandinavia in the early viking age. A plate from a Vendel era helm shows a warrior riding into battle wearing such a helm. The formation of the crest is striking when viewed along side a Phrygian cap. ok ok. I'll show you.


See the curved top and almost floppy tip of that crest? I'm not an armouring scholar but I can certainly see how the theory got its start.

Anyway, the point is, this hat persists. In fact, the Normans thought it was the shizzle as well because they also adopted it as a fashion statement.

The nouveau in-charge Plantagenets sent Geoffrey out (literally, this is from his tomb in Le Mans Cathedral - 12th century if you were curious) with his phrygian hatted-best. Indeed, from the Roman period, the hat began to evolve from simply a solid colour to more decorative and varied. Geoff's has some heraldry on it.

In Chartres Cathedral, there is another example from the same period.

I could go on and on showing off this little beauty of a cap. Suffice it to say that if you were a guy (sorry gals, in the Roman-Norman time period this seems to be only a guy thing) and liked being a sharp-dressed man, you had one of these hats on hand to dress up your melon.


In red or white, these hats bring me back to my childhood and my affection for The Smurfs. Of course that also says that classics never go out of style. Indeed, yesterday while tuning in to a little bit of the FIFA cup, I spotted a French supporter in the stands wearing a bright red Phrygian cap...yup, this hat just won't go away.

I'm making a few of these caps for Crown and Castle. If you know a guy who does historical stuff somewhere between 100 - 1200 CE he could sure use one of these hats!

Next week...umm we'll see!