Scotland in Pagan Times; The Iron AgeAnderson, Joseph
History
Scotland in Pagan Times; The Iron Age
Anderson, Joseph
Scotland -- Antiquities
The fact that a few examples from Scottish graves have shown the
possibility of obtaining even from these perishable materials the
tangible evidence of the form and fashion of the garments that clothed
the men and women who made and wore these ornaments, gives room for
hope that with increasing interest and greater care the products of
future investigations may complete this evidence. In the meantime we
have but one piece of dress which retains its form, and which may with
some degree of probability be attributed to the mixed population of
the Scandinavian colony. It is a hood of a coarse woollen fabric (Fig.
82), woven with a peculiarly twilled texture, and decorated with a
long fringe of pendent and knotted cords, formed by twisting the
doubled end of a thread with two contiguous threads of the warp. It
was dug up in a peat moss in the parish of St. Andrews, in the
mainland of Orkney, many years ago, and came into the possession of
the late Mr. George Petrie of Kirkwall, after whose death it was
acquired for the National Museum, along with his general collection.
It measures 32 inches in height and 17 inches in greatest width. The
border to which the fringe is attached is 3 inches in width. The
fringe itself is 15 inches in depth. The fabric of which the body of
the hood is composed is worked in alternate stripes, presenting at
their junction the appearance shown in the woodcut (Fig. <span
class='htmlonly'>83</span><span class='epubonly'>83</span>). The
fringe of two-ply cords (Fig. 84), which is its most peculiar feature,
presents a striking similarity to the fringe (Fig. 85) of a portion of
the dress of a woman whose body was discovered in 1835 in digging
peats in the Moss of [Illustration: Fig. 83.—Portion of the Fabric of
the Hood.] Haraldskjaer, in Jutland. The body, which was stretched on
its back, was pegged down in the moss by hooked branches of trees
driven into the peat so as to fasten down the legs and arms at the
knees and elbows, and further secured by other branches placed across
the breast and abdomen, and staked down at the ends. The dress was
well preserved when first discovered, but only a few fragments were
saved, and among them is a portion with a fringe of two-ply cords
(Fig. 85), bearing a suggestive similarity to the fringe of the Orkney
hood. This similarity, so far as it has any value as an indication of
relationship, links the Orkney specimen with the Scandinavian, and
thus gives apparent ground for the inference that the hood may belong
to the period of the Scandinavian colonisation of the islands, and
that, like the brooches, it may represent a typical variety of
head-dress peculiar to the colony.
[Illustration: Fig. 84.—Part of the Border and Fringe of the Hood.]
[Illustration: Fig. 85.—Woollen Fabric from the Moss of Haraldskjaer,
Jutland.]
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