Michele Hayeur Smith

“An impressive presentation of Viking Age and medieval textile production in the North Atlantic, especially in Iceland and Greenland. All aspects have been examined: methods of spinning, weaving, dates, yarn, contemporary climate, as well as who did the work and for what purpose.”—Birgitta Linderoth Wallace, author of Westward Vikings: The Saga of L’Anse Aux Meadows 

“Hayeur Smith’s careful research undergirding The Valkyries’ Loom demonstrates how well she knows and understands the cultural and gender significance of textile analysis. Fascinating to read.”—Joanne B. Eicher, editor of Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion 

In The Valkyries’ Loom, Michèle Hayeur Smith examines Viking textiles as evidence of the little-known work of women in the Norse colonies that expanded from Scandinavia across the North Atlantic in the ninth century AD. While previous researchers have overlooked textiles as insignificant artifacts, Hayeur Smith is the first to use them to understand gender and economy in Norse societies of the North Atlantic. 

This groundbreaking study is based on the author’s systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (vaðmál); how they shaped the development of national identities by creating clothing; and how they helped their communities survive climate change by reengineering clothes during the Little Ice Age. She supplements her analysis by revealing societal attitudes about weaving through the poem “Darraðarljoð” from Njál’s Saga, in which the Valkyries—Óðin’s female warrior spirits—produce the cloth of history and decide the fates of men and nations. 

Bringing Norse women and their labor to the forefront of research, Hayeur Smith establishes the foundation for a gendered archaeology of the North Atlantic that has never been attempted before. This monumental and innovative work contributes to global discussions about the hidden roles of women in past societies in preserving tradition and guiding change.

Items of jewellery in Icelandic society traditionally have been analysed in typological, chronological and technological terms with descriptive approaches to discussing their presence in the archaeological record. Drawing on this research but taking a more anthropological approach, Michele Hayeur Smith looks at jewellery as social symbols and a potential indicator of gender, status and power differences, and of spiritual and religious sentiment. Taking evidence largely from burial contexts dating to between AD 870 and 1000, the results of her study suggest that jewellery was used to differentiate between the sexes, and especially to draw attention to female sexual attributes, and most likely to denote differences in gender and cultural identity. The materials used to produce jewellery, craftsmanship, technology and production are also examined in the later chapters.

In 2008, with funding from the US National Science Foundation's Archaeology Program, a small team from Brown University conducted one week of exploratory archaeological and geophysical investigations at Gilsbakki, a previously unexcavated elite farm site in western Iceland, known from the Icelandic Sagas and thought to have been occupied from the 10th century to the present. The primary goals of these initial investigations were to identify whether intact archaeological deposits remained at the site, to determine their depth, extent, and complexity, and to evaluate the site's potential for future research. The investigation included electromagnetic induction (EM) surveying, topographic mapping, coring, and small-scale excavation. This coordinated program successfully located structural remains and midden deposits at Gilsbakki, with EM providing rapid coverage and remarkable details over areas larger than standard sub-surface documentation could have produced in the available time.

Less than 1% of the forests found by Iceland’s 9th century Norse colonists remain today. Recently, a number of academic and popular works have used Norse land-use strategies and Icelandic deforestation as exemplars of unsustainable practices leading to social and environmental collapse. Yet, other research characterizes early Norse land-use strategies as resilient and sustainable. Many questions remain unanswered about the timing, causes and processes leading to Icelandic deforestation. These include not only the strategies used by Icelandic households to acquire reliable sources of energy from their own woodlands, peat beds and farmyard wastes, but also the role of regional trade in the Icelandic fuel economy. This poster details information gained about the production and circulation of fuel resources in western Iceland through excavations at Gilsbakki, an elite site with a 1100-year stratified record, Háls, a site with a complex history of occupation and abandonment, and at Skógarnes, a 17th-18th century site specializing in the production of reiðingur, a natural fibrous peat used as saddle pads for transporting timber and peat on horseback within and between districts in a period of depleting resources and cold climate. Excavations at Gilsbakki and Skógarnes were undertaken in 2008 with funding from the US National Science Foundation's Archaeology Program, work at Háls was undertaken in 1989-2000 with funding from the National Geographic Society, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and local Icelandic business and civic groups.

Identifying foreign cloth imports in the Icelandic archaeological corpus is difficult at best, yet given widespread similarities in homespun cloth from sites across the country, imported cloth can be identified visually through the presence of refined finishing techniques (such as teaseling, shearing, and fulling) that were uncommon in Iceland and were the products of specialist craftsmen in Europe. This paper examines textile assemblages from deposits datable to the period of Hanseatic trade at three sites, Gilsbakki, Reykholt, and Stóra-Borg that represent two wealthy, interior, parish centres and a moderate-sized coastal farm, respectively. Variations in the number and diversity of imported cloth items within these sites’ assemblages suggest that while Hanseatic material culture was widely spread on Icelandic rural sites, the nature of the material culture sub-assemblages attributable to Hanseatic trade was not obviously a direct function of households’ wealth or proximity to har...

Identifying  foreign  cloth  imports  in  the  Icelandic  archaeological  corpus  is  difficult  at  best,  yet  given  widespread  similarities  in  homespun cloth from sites across the country, imported cloth can be identified visually through the presence of refined finishing techniques (such as teaseling, shearing, and fulling) that were uncommon in Iceland and were the products of specialist craftsmen in Europe. This paper examines textile assemblages from deposits datable to the period of Hanseatic trade at three sites, Gilsbakki, Reykholt,  and  Stóra-Borg  that  represent  two  wealthy,  interior,  parish  centres  and  a  moderate-sized  coastal  farm,  respectively.  Variations  in  the  number  and  diversity  of  imported  cloth  items  within  these  sites’  assemblages  suggest  that  while  Hanseatic  material  culture  was  widely  spread  on  Icelandic  rural  sites,  the  nature  of  the  material  culture  sub-assemblages  attributable  to  Hanseatic trade was not obviously a direct function of households’ wealth or proximity to harbours but may have engaged other cultural factors linked to the political and social challenges of the post-Reformation period and the roles of individual households in regional or intra-Icelandic trade.

Studies in masculinity have lagged behind in the field of gender studies though recent scholarship is making up for this disparity. In this paper, we tackle the question of masculinity and modernity in early modern Iceland through an analysis of archaeological material relating to dress from the site of an Icelandic bishopric and school, Skálholt, during the late 17th and 18th centuries. We explore both the symbolic and performa-tive dimensions of dress in relation to masculinity as it is traversed by other facets of identity including status, nationalism, and calling. An important focus of our study is to unravel the subtle negotiations that are evident in dress and linked to the performative construction of different and sometimes competing masculinities. Tensions between Lutheran ideals, nationalistic pride in homespun and elite status, and more generally between clerical and nonclerical masculinities can all be seen in the way dress and dress accessories are made to work.

GUS (Gården under sandet- The Farm Beneath the Sand) is a Greenlandic Norse settlement site 80 km from Nuuk in the former Norse western settlement occupied between 1000 and 1400 CE. Renowned for its excellent preservation caused by its interment under large quantities of sand and permafrost after its abandonment, GUS is unique in Norse Greenlandic contexts as perishable materials and artefacts are extremely well preserved. Some aspects of fibre admixtures used in Norse Greenlandic clothing are unknown to us, but of great relevance to understanding the history of the colony and its subsistence practices. Here we present the results of shotgun genomic data from 11 samples originating from ten archaeological textiles from a variety of different Norse Greenlandic sites. The obtained sequences were mapped to mitochondrial genomes of 15 diverse mammals and only samples from GUS had any endogenous DNA (4,5 and 3,5%), resulting in a 70x mt-genome of arctic hare (Lepus arcticus) and a 20x mt-genome of domestic sheep (Ovis aries). The evidence of arctic hare in Greenlandic textile is one of the few examples confirming the use of exotic textiles and mixtures of wool types in Norse clothing. Furthermore, the study overall finds the biological material from GUS to have unmatched DNA preservation, indicating potential for genetic investigations in the future from this locality.

Abstract - Midden excavations at Ø172 (Tatsipataa), on the eastern shore of the Igaliku fjord in southwestern Greenland, produced a significant textile collection consisting of 98 fragments. This collection is important as it stems from a well-contextualized and well-stratified sequence, allowing significant insights into the evolution and nature of cloth production in Greenland. Analysis of this collection showed that while the earliest fragments mirror Icelandic counterparts of comparable ages, by the 14th century the Ø172 collection changes considerably. From this point onward, Greenlandic women wove a weft-dominant cloth unique to Greenland. This cloth type has previously been noted in other, later, Greenlandic collections, but the Tatsipataa collection provides new evidence for the date of its first production. The sudden appearance of this distinctive weft-dominant Greenlandic homespun in the mid-14th century suggests that its production was a domestic adaptation to the initial climatic fluctuations of the Little Ice Age. Overall, the Tatsipataa collection suggests that Greenlandic textile production did not follow the evolutionary trajectory of Icelandic textiles, which became a form of currency from the early- to the later Middle Ages. Instead, Greenlandic textiles appear to have been consistently produced for household consumption, without the intense standardization for trade observed in medieval Icelandic collections.

Archaeological textiles from Iceland have not been objects of significant analyzes until recently, yet they provide important new data on the use of cloth in legal transactions. Medieval Icelandic law codes and narrative sources include regulations governing the production of ‘legal cloth’ – vaðmál – and its uses for paying tithes and taxes, for economic transactions and in legal judgments. Archaeological data provide new insights on its production, the extent to which these laws were followed, and how ubiquitously Iceland’s ‘legal’ cloth was produced. This paper compares documentary sources and archaeological data to document intensive standardization in cloth production across Iceland from the eleventh to the late sixteenth centuries. The role of women as weavers is critical, as it is they who oversaw production and ensured that regulations were respected and as a result they may have been bestowed with more power than previously anticipated.

The Danish trade monopoly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries resulted in the implementation of strict regulations and controls on textile production, the introduction of weaving workshops equipped with new horizontal looms, and a deliberate attempt to phase out the production of homespun cloth on the warp-weighted loom. What was the fate of homespun cloth in this era of introduced industrialization in Iceland? Archaeological textile collections from Iceland’s early modern period are abundant though understudied. This paper reports current research on these collections and suggests that homespun cloth did not die out in the late medieval period, but that it continued into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, declining slowly thereafter. Moreover, homespun cloth of the early modern period evolved into something that was structurally different than its earlier medieval version, possibly in response to increased climatic fluctuations during the Little Ice Age.

VIKING AGE TEXTILES FROM ICELAND.
Michele Hayeur Smith, Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.

This paper will review Viking Age textiles from Iceland using both cloth remains and mineralized textiles (pseudomorphs) attached to objects. Analyses of these materials suggest that textiles, from the settlement period ,were both more diverse in weave types and displayed more colour than their medieval counterparts. Furthermore, textiles found in burial contexts resemble Scandinavian examples, particularly in spin direction and fabrication, while those found on farms or settlements sites resemble textiles found in the British Isles and mainland Europe. This may suggest that burial textiles were heirloom items brought over from Scandinavia and possibly reserved for ritual contexts, while day-to-day cloth may have been far less lavish, dominated by textiles locally produced by women who brought with them spinning techniques from the British Isles.

Archaeological textile collections represent an under-explored data set from Iceland with potential for shedding new light on issues of international trade, including the involvement of the Hanseatic League in Iceland. Textiles were used as a form of currency in Iceland for legal and economic transactions from the 9th century settlement to the 17th century. Woolen cloth was one of the most significant commodities traded abroad from Iceland, while linens and other textiles were important products brought in from Northern Europe. Textile assemblages from sites such as Möðruvellir, Gásir (a medeival harbor and trading site), Kúabot, Bergþórshvöll, Skálholt and Stóraborg provide insights into the types of cloth imported to Iceland between AD 1400-1700, as well as what the involvement of the Hanseatic League was in the import and export of cloth, and how Iceland was integrated through trade and textile production into the evolving medieval and early modern structures of the industrial world.

Spinning and weaving were, in Viking Age Scandinavian societies, exclusively the domain of women. Woven in weaving huts (dyngja), textile production was associated with female embodiment, with beliefs about sorcery, fate, death, fertility and reproduction, while male involvement often resulted in allegations of homosexuality or death. Based on current research looking at gender and cloth in Viking and medieval Iceland new ideas have come to light regarding these age-old associations of female embodiment and the eventual transformation of cloth into a form of legal currency in the 12th century.

Weaving Wealth: Cloth and Trade in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland.
Unlike most parts of the world, archaeological textile collections from Iceland are abundant and rich. Though largely understudied, they contain important information about Iceland’s past and its economic structure, which was based almost solely on cloth currency until the 13th century. Medieval documents suggest that Iceland’s closest trading partners were Norway and the British Isles and that cloth continued to be one of Iceland’s most significant export products into the 17th century. However, these documents provide little detail on the organization of textile production in Iceland, the nature of the products made for external trade, or changes through time in this industry. This talk will present preliminary results of ongoing research on Icelandic archaeological textile collections dating from the Viking Age and Medieval periods. While evidence of foreign imports from Western Europe are largely invisible archaeologically, technical aspects of cloth recovered from Icelandic archaeological sites offer new information about the Icelandic textile trade with Europe, its chronological development, the goods produced, and efforts made to standardize and industrialize the textile industry in Iceland in response to European demands.

News Brief in Science News written by Bruce Bower
The research team consists of Joe Walser III, Michele Hayeur Smith, Tina Jacob, Janet Montgomery, Sigrid Ebeneserdottir, Julia Tubman, Kevin P. Smith, Karen Frei, Steinnun Kristjansdottir, Freyja Hlidkvist OmarsdottirSesseljudottir; and Sandra Sif Einarsdottir.