VIKING CLOTHING AND JEWELRY

The typical Viking wore wool and linen: a knee-length tunic (kyrtill), trousers bound with leg wraps, a cloak closed with a brooch and soft leather boots. Colors depended on wealth: madder red, woad blue and weld yellow cost more than natural tones, so dressing in deep blue flaunted riches as clearly as wearing gold.

Women wore a strapped dress fastened with two large oval brooches (the famous "tortoise" brooches), joined by strings of glass, amber and jet beads. Keys, combs or amulets sometimes hung from the brooch: carrying the household keys was the visible symbol of the húsfreyja, the lady of the house. Men completed the outfit with the cloak's penannular brooch, arm rings and, the richest, twisted gold necklaces.

We know all this thanks to graves like those of Birka, Sweden, where textiles survived against all odds. Even Byzantine silks and silver-thread embroidery appeared there: proof that Viking fashion reached as far as their ships, and that dressing well was, even then, a statement of who you were.