"I am not a primary source... I am barely a tertiary source." Statements like this are how I know I can actually *trust* someone presenting me with information.

A woman's dress is just a longer version of a man's tunic, so you've definitely got the skills. You could dress up as Thor dressed up as Freya.

I feel safe assuming women's belts were worn outside their dresses, for a number of common-sense reasons: hanging kit from the waist belt, getting the dress out of the way for work, looking not like a tent, and better distributing the weight of the wool dress.

When you said "I have never made any Viking women's clothing for myself" I just knew that was soon to change!😂💗 Lets all do a sew-along: apron dresses for all!

Oooooh man those pictures of a pleated apron dress ? They make my little perfection sewing heart bounce. So neat. So pretty. Plz make.

How my history loving butt got here I do not know, but am I totally down with a handsome welsh Viking-man telling me about Viking fashion.

Every time I hear about Viking women's clothing, I remember that one weird historian (whose name I cannot be bothered to recall) who tried to suggest and put forward the idea that turtle broaches/oval broaches were nipple piercings. and that. Viking women would hang their wool dresses from these pins and piercings because reasons or something. I don't entirely remember what they were trying to say about it, but I still get a laugh that anyone could think that a wool dress could hang from a piercing like that and not just ruin everything in moments.

MAKE THE DRESS! MAKE A DRESS, MODEL THE DRESS! Want to see Jimmy sew the dress, please.

"Linen under wool" I recite, "avoid cotton" even though I've never and don't plan on making a reenactment viking age outfit for myself. That's a sign of a good video

thank you for pointing out that women were NOT treated equally, I get so annoyed when people claim that women were actually highly respected in viking culture (literally have seen someone say it's because men thought women were magic and so was math and so women controlled all the finances??)

As a female viking reenactor - thank you for doing an evidence based video about this subject. You make many great points here, and I like that you encourage people to keep it simple and base their clothes on actual sources. I just found your channel, and will look at some more of your videos now. And also... yes, you should totally make a viking dress! :D

Jim...the description of the silhouette as "women's toilet" made me die omfg

My aversion to re-enactment clothing being made of man-made materials is primarily safety based. I love cosplay, but seeing someone get too close to an open flame, even a candle, while wearing polyester or rayon is terrifying. Please don't do it, no one wants a trip to the burn unit.

I love how you talk about the thinking and research behind reenactment and historical interpretation, instead of just a list of rules - it's really engaging and invites people in to think and learn and make their own decisions!

My grandmother liked to dress simply and modestly in natural fibers and colours, often accentuated with jewelry and silk or woolen shawls (some of which I inheirited). In other words, she dressed more like a Viking woman than the studded leather fantasy gear they are often portrayed as wearing in the movies...and although she was only about 5 feet tall, she had ginger hair when she was young and was as fierce as any Valkyrie. Her great granddaughter resembles her in many respects, save that she will probably be taller.

I think covering your hair has a practical aspect as well: it protects your hair from dust - useful in a time when people probably couldn't wash their hair as soon it got dirty, protects you from getting too hot from the sun (depending on color or fiber content).

Please, with all my heart, make the apron dress. That's the wholesomeness we need going into 2021.

So, no leather bustiers? Or loosely braided dredlocks? How about skin tight leather pants? Oh wait, I did see you video/rant about the costumes in The Vikings TV series. ;)

Yay for floofiness in a Viking lady's dress. It would be like wearing a beautifully warm blanket around your legs all the time. The brooches sound kind of like an early version of a chatelaine. Thanks for sharing. So cool. Take care. Happy New Year!

Years and years ago when I was in the SCA, there were many people who held that Viking apron dresses, open all the down on the sides, were not belted. That would have been both impractical for keeping you warm and dangerous for leaning over an open fire. I'm very glad to hear that you think they wore belts. I once ran across a book in the Iowa State University Library that contained an old photo of three women in traditional Scandinavian folk costume of their region, and the outer layer of all three costumes consisted of an open-sided apron dress that was belted together at the waist. Aha! To my mind, it was obviously an echo of the Viking apron dress.

My persona is 10th century Icelandic. I made a linen basic under tunic and a linen apron dress with side gore's. I have rabbit skin lined linen York hood for warmth and a light weight. My belt is tablet woven wool (my craft is textiles).

Married or single, covering the hair, at least with a coif or kerchief, WAS DONE. It keeps hair in place, keeps it cleaner. Modesty issues are optional. Any rational woman who cooks with open flame will cover her hair. Otherwise, do you know how fast hair burns? and what it smells like? Full on, uncovered, long hair is seen on a bride at her wedding, or a Queen at her coronation. I do Carolinigian, 780-800. Illumination? NOT a bliaut. It's the standard Frankish dress, a-line, with elbow/mid-arm trumpet or cone sleeves. It's covered with a mantle that covers the head and is pinned at the neck or on one shoulder. A bliaut doesn't appear until very late 11th c, but doesn't hit the form we associate with the term until the middle of the 12th c. (Something of a quick thumbnail on Frankish women's clothes- thin Byzantine, without the bling. A-line, yoke with the stripe down the center, band on the hem and sleeves. Use a brocade with rondels for the trim if you want the classic 'circles' look. And don't forget the mantle! --Liutgard of Luxeuil, OL, An Tir

14:16 now that you mention it.... I would love a video showing how viking reenactment fashion has changed, if that's something you can do! I think it'd be interesting to see how people used to interpret the information they had and why we now think differently.

This feels weird but I have to say.... You sir, are incredibly handsome

About the gores: If you're going to seam your apron dress on both sides, you probably need gores, because otherwise you couldn't walk, I have a shift that goes over my butt and then straight down and it's too tight around the legs to do larger steps. But if you pleat your dress, you can probably do without gores because you would take a wide enough rectangle to accomodate for walking and then reduce the excess width around the torso with the pleating.

re. Belts being under or over the dress, did the buckles and strap ends we’ve found in women’s graves consist of decorative castings and patterns? Or plain and undecorated? A mixture of both? I feel like an elaborately designed buckle wouldn’t be worn under a dress where nobody could see it. Just a thought though I’m no expert

An often overlooked practicality of headwear was to hide or prevent catching head lice.

Make the Viking dress. I would love to see how you interpret the broaches and jewelry.

PLEASE do a video making an apron dress! I would enjoy that so much!

I don’t classify that as a rant, I want a better rant!! I feel robbed of a promised rant. Woe is meee!

This was such a jewel to find. It was like Matt mercer's respect and energy + Karolina Żebrowska 's sass and love for good research. I love this kind of content and I'm guessing I'll love this kind of community. Staying for the ride!! 🌿🎇

Me wanting to make something authentic: Alright where do I get myself some northern european breed of wooly animals that existed back then?

Yes this was very useful, thank you! And also yes to making a dress yourself. That would be lovely!

Thank you for this video! After I went down a rabbit hole starting in Herjolfsness, I spent the last 3 or 4 months researching earlier medieval women's clothing online. Now that I had almost decided on how to sow my aprondress you show this absolutely amazing example. Soooooo - my plans just might have changed... Hayyp new year, Jimmy!

Thank you for this! And as for how I wear my belt with my women's kit...I don't like looking like I'm wearing a sack, and the dresses are very sack like, so the belt give a waist. Knowing that people can't tell me I'm wrong to do that is rather handy!

Why would women not wear belts? That was the most stupid thing I ever heard! Also, about the different shape of brooches. You probably know this, but the different shapes seems to be different fashion in different areas. Like the animal heads are mostly found on Gotland etc. So if one want to really go nerdy on that there is a lot of fun things just about the oval brooches. :)

Loved to see you include the bliaut type dress! I used those exact sources for an interpretation of dress for a Ottonian noble woman anno 1000. Spliced some Byzantine flavour into it, since this particular woman (Adela van Hamaland) reportedly was quite in awe with Theophanu and likely met her on more then one occasion... Piecing together an outfit to fit a particular person in time is such fun!

I sew & wear linen shifts and apron-dresses. I sew wool garments all the time, but I cannot tolerate any extra heat during our North American summers. That said, I have worn tropical weight wool dress uniform trousers, and they weren’t bad. But the weave looks very modern to me.

Thank you for all the information. I can say that I am super happy with the pleating on my Viking dress. They make it so much more comfy to wear and easier to lend to friends as it is easier to fit on different shaped people.

Depending on whether your Dublin cap is wool or silk, it could have been dyed with madder or lichen :)

Purple silk cap? Oh yes, I'm very tempted to make my ancient ancestors go "what are you doing girl? Get that silly Norse fashion tosh off your head, NAO!" :D Also, a resounding HELL YES to seeing Jimmy make an apron dress! Apron dresses for everybody!

No idea why this was recommended to me, but now I want to get myself a nice viking dress and just walk around in the forest. Thanks for the info, I feel inspired now

I love noticing whenever your nails are painted it's adorable

Re: Viking and linen (for outer garment) - not actually Viking but I found out that Lithuanian people traditionally relied on linen as their fiber of choice for clothing (...and everything else, really), despite them living in higher latitude, and this is because Lithuanian sheep's wool fiber was coarse, thus not suitable for clothing (I forgot if they used wool for something else but it didn't seem like it). I don't know if there were certain Viking communities that did similarly to the Lithuanians (that, or perhaps the Vikings were just luckier since their sheep's wool fiber was fine enough to be used for clothing purposes 😜🐑)

As a woman I've actually learned a lot from your previous video's. As a weaver it took some digging and you covered several aspects of what was available in types of weave and cloth. I'm looking at my linen and have great plans - so this video couldn't have been timed better :) Still looking to source good wool...

I know you've probably heard this a ton, but I'd really love to hear you do an entire video dedicated to beads. I think you'd cover it so well, both from a historical and a reenactors perspective. That would be amazing!

And I can imagine them using naalbind hats in the winters up here in the North xD YES! Make a whole Viking Woman kit and let us be with you on the journey! :D I have been thinking of making a Viking kit but I fell down the rabbit hole on Finnish/Baltic style of the apron dress in the same era.... would they count in being Viking? xD

An interesting thing I saw about the history of women's clothing was focused on maternity clothing. Multiple youtubers and articles talked about how (with the exception of the extraordinarily wealthy) ALL women's clothing was maternity clothing. For centuries, in basically all of Europe, women wore dresses that had room for bloating, hormonal weight gain, and pregnancy. The same dress that fit you at 40 weeks of pregnancy, would simply be tied tighter about you as you lost the baby weight.

Nettle cloth! I'm just recalling some bog samples of underwear we thought was linen, but it was nettle. So, thay's be a fun historical weaving project.

As earling Viking clothing was unisexual in design, hell yes to the dress! Lol My your and yours have a healthy, prosperous and creative year ahead. Cheers to 2021 and many more of your videos.

I wouldn’t say that I was missing this topic, but hey, I’m glad you went there. I mean there’s lots of female oriented historic clothing, but few that cover the period that you do with the historic rigor that you apply, so it was really interesting to hear your take. I also think that making a dress would be very cool just to get another take on construction and a different style etc(yes I watched Liz’s videos on her Herjolfsness dress....‘‘twas great !!). There’s not a lot of documentary/archaeological evidence for cross dressing, Thor notwithstanding (but then gods always got to do the titillating things that ordinary humans couldn’t, didnt they) but there was a mention in a saga(sorry can’t remember which one or what country it was) where a woman sues for divorce from her husband on the grounds of cross dressing. If they had laws relating to it, it must have been a “thing” often enough to be noticed one infers. The Viking attitude towards women as their attitudes to most things, seemed to be based in pragmatism. Yes women had rights....well, when the men were off a’viking or fishing, or trading(and yes there were female traders too), “someone” had to keep the farm running, the animals fed, milked, slaughtered, butchered and the meat prepared and stored, butter and cheeses made, to sow the crops, harvest and store the grain, as well as the traditional “womanly” tasks like caring for children, cooking, weaving, sewing etc. if a little legal power made them able to do these things better, then most men were happy to allow them those powers. They generally, still considered women, lesser beings tho. Yes their woman had much more freedom than most.....but that’s not saying a lot in medieval Europe, where “most” had no freedoms at all.

Linen under wool! Excellent advice.

The debate with yourself at the end was better than the post-credit scenes in a Marvel movie. Now I'll await your dressmaking video with bated breath ❤️

I know, old vid, buuuuuut as a woman, with fairly long hair (to my waist) I have to point out that caps, vails and other means of covering the hair isn't by no means for female opression perpuse only....covering the hair keeps it clean and nice even when you can't wash it every time you done some kind of physical labour.

This popped up in my recommended videos (I'd been looking at sewing vintage skirts) and, although I'm not planning on reenacting anything, it was very interesting - watched all the way to the end. Thanks for a fascinating look at historical clothing! Now I'm off to watch more of your videos. (Also, your hair is fantastic.)

I like the way you talk about the stuff we don't know 100%, that's a mark of a real researcher! What a delightful channel! *Subscribed*

When the kids were little and we were home schooling about the Middle Ages, I made myself a costume to teach a group of children in. It was NOT wool. LOL it was a shiny green damask with contrasting cream damask. The sleeves were bell shaped and the head piece was a round tube of fabric with trim wrapped around it and made to look like a wreath in my hair. (I had someone make it for me as I am not a sewer at that level.) Anyway, it made a great Halloween costume snd a nice Middle Ages costume for the next few times we covered the topic! I’m glad I didn’t know how far away from the real thing I actually was! Ha ha

This is an unrelated comment to telling you this is a good video, but I LOVE your jumper. If you ever need someone experienced in reading medieval swedish/danish/norwegian and anything in between, do let me know, my dad and I do that a lot ;)

I was planning to ask you exactly this, so thanks for the starting point :)

oooh stuff to read! And yeah, the gauge of the York sock is crazy-making. Naturally I'm trying to match it.

Just discovered your channel looking for Viking historical fashion and I love this video! Time to binge all your content and add you to my ever growing list of costubers!

I love the creative inspiration and motivation to seek new knowledge that comes from each of your videos.

Thank you for this peek into Viking women's clothing. Adore the pleated apron dress replica!

I know this is an old video, but in case noone else has pointed it out, there were linen hangerocks/apron-dresses/whatever-you-call-thems: Hägg, Inga, 1974, "Kvinnodräkten i Birka, AUN 2" page 51, fig 37 has a table listing graves of different periods with linen and wool examples. There are 3 undated linen examples, and just one undated wool example, but for 800s there is just one grave with linen hangerocks and 5 for wool, and for 900s there are 4 graves for linen hangerocks and 14 for wool. Hägg also mentions linen lining on wool hangerocks. It's an interesting book if you can get hold of it, and if you can make out the Swedish text (I got my copy in the 1980s, and it is so much easier to make sense of it now that online translators are a thing!)

I just want to say, as a smol trans man, that your painted nails have made me feel better about gender than anything else in the last day ._.

Love your channel. I always learn so much.

Thank you so much for going out of your way to provide us with a starting point for women's clothing, too. I appreciate how you always list sources and encourage us to do our own research. :)

Looking forward to seeing this dress and the process of making it! Happy new year to one and all.

Just found this channel today, and it's great! Such a knowledgeable and endearing guy. Glad I stumbled across this!

Happy new year! I hope you and Mari had a good time.

Just found this channel and you seem very very friendly and sympathetic. Loved the video, keep it up 👍👍👍

Your channel is a research prompt. I have learned so much by researching things you have talked about. I take notes of the things that peak my interest while watching your videos and dig deeper. Thank you!

I am super excited to see the dress you are going to absolutely slay! 👗 Thank you for being here and happy new year!

Good golly I can’t stop watching your videos. Such incredible content and cheekiness and charm. Thank you for all of the work you’re doing, and much love and gratitude from Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦

im glad someone was finally able to brooch this subject

Ahhh this was super interesting!! I love sewing things by hand and I’ve been thinking of trying to make some traditional medieval clothing lately, so it’s good to get a sense of the different components that would have made up women’s outfits ☺️

Wool dress sounds so nice and cozy right now! Thanks for the video! I'd have to take the broaches off my solo dress, but I do already have shield broaches. Haven't got any wool though.....I'll have to fix that. Happy New Year!

Yes to the dress! I knew it was going to be a good day when I saw you had posted. :~D

Keep it simple and it's hard to get it wrong. Great motto for so many things

I just started writing on my Norse/Viking fantasy novel. This will be perfectly useful. Thank you!

researching viking women clothing for some ocs and this is probably some of the better info ive found so far, thanks man

I would be so ecstatic to see you make a women's viking dress. Also, hi there, found you from LizCapism and have just gleefully binged six months worth of your content. Thank you for the awesome videos!

Can't believe the argument about belts is still going on, I thought we resolved that one over thirty years ago! Love your work, btw, especially this one which covers a lot of the ground we were fighting when I was doing Dark Ages reenactment in the '80's :)

Blast the algorithm that has hidden your videos from me for many months now even when I'm subscribed with all the alerts on! I have missed you mate! Thank you for this video, it's timely since I'm finally putting together an ensemble to wear. I'm not going for super historical, but decent enough. And of course you are one of my favourite research helper/jump-off points. x

I just stumbled across your channel and I'm LOVING it. I just applied for University for anthropology to study Scandinavian history and your channel makes me so excited to study!

Thats so great ! Very well done !!! ☺️

I'm so down to men using nail polish. It's so fun and nice! Jimmy's videos are always so entertaining and cool. Thank you for your work!

Thank you for this! This video is really useful. My first foray into historical costuming is a male and female version of Loki. I've got the basic design down for the male version, but had no idea where to start for the female version. I'll go have a look at those references you left to continue my research. Thank you again. Go make yourself that dress! :)

awesome, thank you! That last link has some reconstruction notes and includes, quick check, yes it includes stitches and dart construction!

So hey, I had just watched you viedo on viking clothing and was super sad not to hear anything about women's clothing but I really appreciate that you did make one! As a fresh beginner in reenactment portraying both men and women I's extreeeeemly helpful. I'm French and have heard another French (male) reenacter say women wouldn't wear belts so I'll look into it and decide for myself but cheers for the extensive and enlightening overview of women's clothing! I love your channel and can't wait to learn more about reenactment, it's super valuable to have specialists' input on such topics. Can't wait for more of you videos!

I love those last few seconds is just all of us coming up with a new project despite the 20 incomplete ones sat around

This has been incredibly useful, thank you so much!

You have been a springboard for many a deep dive into hours of manuscripts and I've got several projects waiting in the wings as a result. As always, I'm appreciative of your starting points. It's making me a bit giddy that you shouted me out for this particular video lol It is my pleasure and I hope it helps for whatever you need it to

My first time in Viking kit, I borrowed a male friend’s wool tunic to wear under my wool apron dress! Slightly short, but it was covered by the apron and worked perfectly.

when you flashed to that Jim Lyngvild painting with just the enourmes"NOT LIKE THIS", it sparked joy.

"I'm BARELY a tertiary source!" Loved that!!😁

I think you need a t-shirt with i am not a primary source printed on it. 😅

I would love to see you make a viking dress!!! I love the nails!

Can't wait to see you in the viking dress! And looking forward to making some turned shoes

By the way the nail polish rocks. Appreciate the tips and hints. A good start to figure out an outfit. Will dive into the research.