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Peter Beatson and his wife, Christobel Ferguson, recently posted a Web article positing a Viking apron-dress design based upon the famous Hedeby fragment:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~chrisandpeter/hangerock/hangerock.htm

Any thoughts?

Don't rush; At this point, I have barely glanced at the illustrations in the article, and doubt I'll have time to read the article throughly until Christmas is over. But I would be interested in thoughts about their proposed pattern, which is different from most of those I've seen.

[Cross-posted to sca_garb.]

Having just written about the movie everyone's talking about, I'm going to bore you for a few moments with a bit of random scholarship that almost nobody even knows about.

Courtesy of a monograph entitled Tools for Textile Production from Birka and Hedeby, by Eva Andersson, here's an excerpt from a description of archaeological finds from tenth century graves at a Viking-era site called Hedeby, which is in an area that is now part of Germany:

In several cases the grave furnishings that have been found include remains of down from a cushion or bolster. Covers of leather have been found mainly in male graves, whereas the covers in female graves were mostly of textile material.

So the association between men and leather upholstery goes back at least 1,000 years. Who knew?