Greenland dress: first trial

Way back in October of 2009 I wrote about a dress from Herjolfnes that I want to try recreating. the dress is not in great condition and a fair amount of guesswork is going to be necessary. the original picture shows the pleats on the front extending down well past the waist, but the fragment from the chest does not go that far. There is a second piece which looks to be a part of a skirt with pleats. the upper edge perpendicular to the pleats has remains of a seam. I surmise that the bodice and skirt were made separately then, and sew together at the waist. the bodice is V necked with small gores under the arms which are also pleated. the back of the gown shows no pleating.

I attempted to make a couple of pleats to see how they were constructed. the original archeologists remark that the pleats are sew together on the back but otherwise not supported with any other stitches. The upper row of pleats is about 10 mm deep, while the lower row is only 5 mm deep. the pleats on the original gown were about 4 mm. The shear amount of fabric that will be needed to achieve a panel wide enough to cover my chest is going to be prodigious. I am not sure at this point how to adjust the cut of the fabric to take into consideration all the pleats.

Next step: Trying to cut a neckline which will become the shape of the gown when the pleating is completed.

Greenland Gown

I have had the opportunity to look at the book "Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes" written by Poul Norlund in 1924. I also have "Woven into the Earth" by Else Ostergard checked out of the library at the same time. Both of these books are essentially about the same archeological digs on Greenland. There was a settlement of Norsemen on the island sometime during the 11th through 14th centuries. The exact reason the settlement was abandoned is unknown. However, since it was abandoned the remains were not disturbed much until the 19th century. One of the earliest explorations of the area was done in 1921 and then written about by Poul Norlund. The second book WITE is then written about pieces from the original dig and subsequent textile finds. It is fascinating to see the difference between the two. Dr. Norlund saw the large pieces as they were removed from the graves. Unfortunately many of the pieces were considered too damaged to be conserved.

I have decided to try to make a replica of one of the pieces that I am fascinated by. It was not in the best of shape, and only about 1/3 of the dress was saved. The following picture is a sketch from Dr. Norlund's book. He found this dress used as a shroud on a small woman. unlike many of the other shrouds the corpses arms were put into the sleeves and crossed across her chest. A picture Dr. Norlund took of the gown as they pulled it out of the ground is published in WITE. That picture is still under copywrite so I cannot publish it here. The gown had a deep V neck and vertical pleats running down past the waist. The pleats start at the bottom of the V neck, and cover the entire front and sides of the gown. Since he mentions the arm holes are cut deep in the front, but are almost straight down in the back. Most of the other clothes isolated at this site had side gore which form the lower edge of the arm hole and extend to the bottom edge. while he does not say there were underarm gores on this gown he does say "the number of seams in the bottom part fit well with the other garments". From that statement I am going to assume the gown had gores which made up the lower edge of the sleeve hole. His comment that the pleats extended on the sides leads me to believe that the front and gores under the arms were all pleated. It will be entirely conjecture on what the bottom half of the gown looks like since their was no report on it. There is a Swedish gown from the 16th century which is pictured repeatedly. Margareta Leijonhufvud wears a pleated gown in her portrait. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Margareta_Leijonhufvud.jpg

While there is no real reason to think that the style of the 16th C gown could be in any way an evolutionary result of the earlier piece from the other side of the Atlantic, I need to base the lower half of the gown on something. At least both of these pieces are used by Scandinavians. It is possible that pleats were a reoccuring theme throughout the scandinavian's history. I will have to look into this a lot more before I can make any generalizations.

The first thinkg I need to do is find some fairly light weight wool in brown or black. T original piece was black warp and brown weft. I don't think I will be lucky enough to find that color combination. I am going to use the pattern of the Herjolfsnes piece #39. The lower pattern is #39. It is essentially 2 gores on the side and single gores in the front and back. I will have to make a sample to see how much the pleats will increase the width of the fabric that will be needed.

Another project to start. I need to get a couple other things off the table before I get started on this one, but I can start looking for the fabric now.