Viking Women's Clothing

In general, women's clothing was made from the same materials as men's clothing. Typically, a woman wore an ankle length linen under-dress or shift, with the neck closed by a brooch. Over it, she wore a shorter length woolen dress suspended by shoulder straps fastened by brooches. This kind of suspended dress is sometimes called a an apron-skirt. Some interpret the outer dress as two separate panels, but more likely, it was a slightly flaring tube-shaped dress, longer at the back than the front. The details of how these garments were constructed is highly speculative. Inga Hägg's article  in Cloth and Clothing In Medieval Europe There is also evidence for an overdress similar to the one worn by the woman on the right, completely covering the shoulders and requiring no brooches, sometimes joined by a chain or string of beads to hold it in place. (left) Inga Hägg's article  in Cloth and Clothing In Medieval Europe which shoes of the inside of a pair of tortoise brooches that were found at Birka.

Belt buckles or other fastenings are rarely found in women's graves, as they are in men's graves, suggesting that women's belts were woven fabric, rather than leather.

Head coverings were typically worn by women, perhaps as simple as a knotted kerchief over the head (left), which even women of the lowest class wore a headdress. Some noble women ma have worn elaborate headdresses, which may have been worn like jewelry on special occasions. It has been suggested that the type of headdress worn served to distinguish married from unmarried women.

Women's shoes were similar to men's shoes in virtually every particular. Her legs and feet were covered with thick woolly socks and soft leather shoes.

Both men and women wore fur or woolen hats and cloaks in cold weather. The cloaks were fastened at the shoulder with a brooch or a pin.

Some evidence suggests that women's clothing was worn long. Images of women in picture stones and jewelry (right) show long, trailing skirts on female figures. Trailing garments would get soiled while working around animals and would be awkward around the fire burning on the floor of every longhouse. Perhaps high status women wore such long clothing on special occasions. As is often the case with Viking material culture, we are reminded of the limits of the available evidence.