Tabletwoven Oseberg band as trim for a Viking tunic

I had the honor to serve as lieutenant of Her Majesties Guard during the last reign of Her Grace Gabrielle van Nijenrode and His Grace Timothy of Arindale and that called for new outfits for us to wear at Their coronation. Their colors are red and black, so my wife made matching Viking outfits for the three of us in black and red linen. It was up to me to weave the trim: for the top of her apron dress and at the edge of the facing and the cuffs of the tunics. I decided on a narrow Oseberg band, since I was looking for a historically correct pattern for our persona's and one that would not be too overly time consuming to weave.

The pattern for the band was downloaded from Sherlagh Lewin's website. The tunic was red with black facings and cuffs, so I used red as the main color and black for the pattern. The band is woven with 10 tablets, which are turned together in the same direction. The pattern is set by using black threads in some or all of the holes of tablets 4 to 8 and red in all others. Red and black 20/2 silk thread was used for the warp resulting in a width slightly less than 6 mm, close the 5 mm width of the extant piece. The same red 20/2 silk thread was used for the weft, resulting in a reasonably square pattern.

The band was woven on my warp-weighted tablet weaving loom. Steel washers were used as weights, two washers of 40 gr each for each tablet. The starting length of the warp was 180 in, which gave me 137 in of finished band.

Warping the loom.

 

Weaving the band.

A closeup of the band after sewing it to the tunic.

The finished tunic.

The proud owners of the new outfits.

Bibliography

Anton Wilhelm Brögger (1921) "The Oseberg Ship", The American-Scandavian Review, Vol. 9, pp. 439-447.

Shelagh Lewins (last accessed 11/09/17) "The Narrow Oseberg Band"
http://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/patterns_past.php
www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/Oseberg_narrow/Oseberg_narrow.pdf