Viking Clothing - What Vikings Loved to Wear?

Viking clothing centered on wool and linen and was shaped by climate, gender and status rather than fashion. Men typically wore trousers, a linen shirt and a wool over-tunic called a kyrtill, cinched with a belt and a brooch-fastened cloak. Women wore an undershirt beneath an apron-like hangerock overdress held by shoulder straps and metal clasps.

Many of us have dreamt about having a golden cup of wine while walking through a Roman forum, wearing nothing but sandals and a woolen toga. Most of us would gladly spend their days in a Pharaonic Palace, dressed in only bead-net dresses, bracelets, and collars, eating grapes, drinking beer, and enjoying the Egyptian Sun.

However, all of us would trade that glory for just one day in Valhalla. To help you dress appropriately for that day and give you a better understanding of our ancestors' clothing habits, we have decided to make your wishes finally come true. We have decided to take a walk through a history of Viking Clothing.

But what do we do when our lifestyles don't match our wishes? Oh yes, we compromise. In that manner, we can proudly say that our fashion problems were no different than those of our Viking ancestors'. Whether we liked it or not, unless we worked at a Tiki Bar, a Hawaiian Hula skirt would never make an appropriate work outfit.

Similarly, as much as a Viking may dream of walking around in just a Roman toga, he would be very much aware that seconds after making that risky choice, this light piece of cloth would be stolen by no more than a harsh wind, leaving this poor Viking in a state of nature.

Unfortunately, we can conclude that just like ours, Viking's clothing styles were determined by various factors, such as socio-economic status, age, gender, occupation, place of living, personal preferences, but mostly environmental factors.

Cold Hard Evidence of Viking Clothing

As you can assume, not much physical evidence of Viking clothes remains whole, for the simple fact that it was mostly found inside of graveyards, buried with their owners. But sometimes, even the tiniest thread can lead us to the bigger story. Only one thread is enough to tell us of the fabric, color, texture, and purpose of a piece of cloth. One thread to help us understand that our ancestors cared more about the practicality of what they wore than their fashion.

Luckily, not all Viking clothes decayed with them. Some were used in, well, rather unconventional purposes. For example, in desperate need of a rope that wasn't always within reach, boat builders often used clothes covered with resin to fill in cracks. Little did they know they were killing two birds with one stone. Resin conserved the fabric and left it rather untouched for us to find. Other pieces were meant to become parts of torches, but if the flame was never lit, it left us more evidence to research.

Sagas, oh sagas, what would we do without you? (Possibly spend the rest of our lives in the dark, not knowing half the history of our descent).

Thanks to the scribes of Fljótsdæla saga and Gísla saga, and of the law code Grágás, we don't have to play detective all the time; some things are simply known as facts.

And let us not forget of the last pieces of our vast Viking puzzle. Of the objects that needed barely any conserving and explanation. Objects that were indispensable parts of any Viking outfit regardless of gender or social status. Objects that self-sustained during the centuries waiting to complete our stories – Viking jewelry.

What Colors Did Vikings Wear?

Vikings wore reds, blues and purples, and probably yellows, alongside the white, gray and brown of undyed wool. Red from madder was the most common dye found in Viking Age York, blue came from woad, and the brightest, costliest colors marked out people with money.

The dyes and where they came from

Blue came from woad, whose fermented leaves yield the colorant indigotin. A box of woad seeds was buried with the 9th-century Oseberg ship in Norway, good evidence that the plant was grown there. Red came mainly from the roots of madder, Rubia tinctorum, a plant native to southern Europe and Asia Minor that merchants traded north. It was not the only possible red: lady's bedstraw, a common wild plant in Norway, gives a similar color in weaker form.

Yellow could come from dyer's greenweed. Purple came from lichens, or from combining madder with woad. A clubmoss found in York's Viking Age deposits may have stood in for alum, the mineral that fixes a dye to wool. Brown and gray often needed no dye: sheep grew brown, gray and fawn fleeces, and weavers paired dark and white yarns into patterned twills.

What dye tests on Viking Age textiles found

The best evidence comes from York, where Scandinavians settled in large numbers from the mid-9th century. Most of the cloth found there was woven in the Anglo-Saxon and Continental tradition rather than the Scandinavian one, so it shows what people wore in a Viking-ruled town, not a purely Norse wardrobe. At 16-22 Coppergate, Dr. G.W. Taylor of York Archaeological Trust tested almost every textile, cord and tuft of raw wool for dye. About two-thirds of the woven cloth still held some. Madder was by far the most common, found in wool, in silk and even in raw wool dyed before spinning. Indigotin turned up less often. Even coarse cloth was dyed, while kermes (an expensive insect red from the Mediterranean) and lichen purple appeared only in fine wool and silk, some or all of it imported. Soil samples held madder, dyer's greenweed, clubmoss and woad, so the dyeing happened in town. All of this is in Penelope Walton's Coppergate textiles report.

Denmark adds the luxury end. Dye analysis for the National Museum of Denmark's Fashioning the Viking Age project found kermes in a red wool cloth from the Hvilehøj grave and cochineal in a silk fragment from the Mammen grave, the first time either dye had turned up in a Danish Viking Age context. That cochineal came from Poland or Armenia. Yet the famous embroidered garment from Mammen had no dye left to detect at all.

Color in the sagas

In the sagas, bright clothing marks rank, and the word for it is litklæði, literally "color-clothes" (the translations here are ours). In Njáls saga, chapter 45, Skarphéðinn spots a man in colored clothes and mocks him as "the red elf." Scarlet, skarlat, is the gift cloth of chieftains: in chapter 109 Flosi gives Höskuldr a scarlet cloak, the same cloak Höskuldr is later killed in.

Blue has a darker edge. On the morning he kills Þráinn (chapter 92), Skarphéðinn walks at the front in a blue coat with his axe on his shoulder, and the saga adds that all of them were in colored clothes. In Gísla saga, chapter 16, Gísli goes out in a blue cloak on the night he kills Þorgrímr. The Old Norse word blár covered a deep, lead-dark shade, closer to navy, or even black, than to sky blue. It was not only a killer's color, though: Þráinn, the man Skarphéðinn kills, habitually rode in a blue cloak. And both sagas were written in 13th-century Iceland, long after the events, so they tell us what color meant to their authors more than what any one Viking wore.

Why Viking clothing looks brown today

At Coppergate, most textiles were so stained by the soil that no trace of their original color showed to the naked eye, yet the tests still found dye in many. Yellows are especially hard to detect, so their absence from test results proves nothing. The drab, gray Viking of popular imagination is partly a product of burial.

What we do not know is how far ordinary farm families shared this palette. Most of the dye results above come from one trading town and a few rich graves. They say little about everyday life in the Viking Age out on the farms. Exact shades are guesswork too, since dye strength and mordant changed the result. Navy, about the closest modern match for saga blár, is one of the two staple colors in our modern Viking-inspired clothing.

Men's Favorite Viking's Clothing Fashion Line - Dressed to Impress the Aesir

If there is one thing we could be sure about men and their everyday fashion choices all through history, it is that they managed to remain simple yet effective.

While the effectiveness in this day and age could be related to making an impression on the crowd, it sure couldn't back in 900s. The only thing Viking men really cared about when it came to their clothing was its fundamental purpose - protection.

Standard Viking attire included trousers, linen shirt, and a kyrtill. Trousers could be either tight or baggy, made out of linen or wool, came in natural wool shades or dyed colors, with all possible patterns (at least a Viking man wasn't judging).

So-called kyrtill or an over-tunic was a woolen, knee-length garment with a prominent neckline worn on top of the shirt, and was long or short-sleeved depending on the season. Kyrtill was the most noticeable part of the male attire, around which typically came a leather or bronze belt.

And a linen shirt? Well, it's kind of self-explanatory.

On top of all that, some Vikings even wore a cloak in order to provide more warmth during the winter. Cloaks could be plain or brightly dyed, from undyed wool to blue and scarlet, secured with a brooch around the chest area, making the arms free.

And under all that? Some of you may wonder. Can't a decent Viking have some privacy? Well, I guess he can't. Viking underclothes consisted of a plain shirt and a pair of trousers, no colors, no patterns - simple as that.

Viking's War Clothing

A warrior without a shield = a horn without mead.

While it may be true that a mead-less horn was kind of a no-no for a Viking, could it be the same as a hornless helmet?

Well, of course not.

It is a common misconception in current interpretations of Viking culture that metal horns were a consistent part of Viking war attire. While it may look good for a costume ball or a Halloween party, freeing you from having to explain your costume to everyone in the room, it is important to remember that the horns have nothing to do with real Vikings.

In fact, helmets weren't even considered a necessary part of war clothes, making those who possessed it indeed lucky. War clothes in the Viking era were nothing but an addition to their everyday clothes. Kyrtills and cloaks were only made out of thicker materials in order to remain more impermeable.

Sheepskin, for example, was an excellent choice for those who were off to a long voyage or combat, protecting the one who wore it both from heat and a fight. Apart from shields, helmets, and weapons they carried, Vikings typically avoided having heavily protected bodies, for it made them less mobile and consequently less deadly to the opposite party. Mail shirts were costly: the only near-complete Viking Age mail shirt found in Scandinavia, from the Gjermundbu grave in Norway, is iron, and most fighters probably wore no body armor at all.

Like in the Viking aspect of life, there a strong message here: it is our abilities we should rely on, not our looks.

Shieldmaiden Outfit Ideas from the 11th century

Shieldmaiden's Outfit

Unlike today, women's clothes in Viking age didn't differ too much from their other halves'.Grave finds suggest a typical woman's outfit had two main layers: an undershirt and an apron-like overdress, which modern scholars call a hangerock.

Hangerock or an over-dress was of thicker material and by its design was reminiscent of an apron. It had two straps connected with metal clasps.

When it came to female clothing, we could see an element of fashion, for Viking women in different areas preferred different prints for their undershirts, necklines, or brooches. A shorter woolen cloak was an addition they wore during colder days.

Viking Jewelry - an Essential Segment of Viking Outfit

As we have seen so far, no Viking item existed only for the purposes of looking pretty. And Viking Jewelry is no exception.

Although wearing it had nothing to do with age or gender, details of its making had a lot to do with social status. Besides their aesthetics, necklaces, arm rings, brooches and amulets played a huge part in trading. This could also be a double-edged sword, for Vikings who were a bit showier with it would make an excellent target for crooks and thieves.

Fall/Winter 1020-1021 Shoe Trends

Spending most of your days and especially nights in surroundings as cold as our medieval predecessors, you would probably realize that printed tunics aren't necessarily the most important part of your everyday wardrobe.

Your boots are.

Believe it or not, Vikings paid the most attention to this seemingly trivial piece of clothing for obvious reasons. By remains found so far, archeologists could conclude that most of Vikings' boots were of a similar look. They were mostly made of goat or calf leather with stitching on the inside, protecting the ankles but rarely going far above them.

To give you a better insight, we could easily compare Viking footwear to their late 20th-century heritor - dress boots.

And just when you thought that somewhat universal shoes could give you a judgment-free society, at least based on your social status, you were wrong. Just a tiny detail, like moss sticking out of your shoe instead of a fine needle-binding, could completely tell on you.

Just a simple heel, on the other hand, was an obvious indicator of wealth, since not many people could afford such an add-on. Unfortunately, as you can see, one millennium has passed and not much has changed in our perception.

A Note for Neo-Viking Fashionistas

The 21st century made it extremely hard for us to stay distinctive, for there aren't many things that could be called totally new and unseen before, leaving those who like to stand out from the crowd something of a hard task.

So, what do we do when we can't really invent the unseen?

Oh yes, we dig out from the archives and find pieces that have been merely forgotten and not seen for quite some time.

Keep exploring: Viking beard styles and historical Viking hairstyles that completed the look.

Viking Clothing FAQ

What colors did Vikings wear?

Vikings wore reds, blues and purples, and probably yellows, as well as the white, gray and brown of undyed wool. Dye tests on textiles from Viking Age York found madder red most often, then woad blue, with costly kermes red and lichen purple in finer, mostly imported cloth. Surviving textiles often look brown because the soil stained them.

Did Vikings really wear horned helmets?

No. This is one of the most persistent myths about Vikings, there's no archaeological evidence for horned helmets in the Viking Age. The image comes from 19th-century costume and opera design, not from actual Norse war gear.

What did ordinary Viking men wear?

A typical outfit was trousers, a linen shirt, and a kyrtill (a wool over-tunic), often worn with a leather or bronze belt. A wool cloak, fastened with a brooch, was added for warmth in winter.

What did Viking women wear?

Grave finds point to a two-layer outfit: a linen or wool undershirt with an apron-like overdress on top, which modern scholars call a hangerock, held up by shoulder straps fastened with a pair of oval brooches. A wool cloak was added in colder weather.

Why was red clothing considered valuable?

Plain madder red was not rare: it was the most common dye in textiles from Viking Age York. Madder is a southern European plant that merchants traded north, and wild bedstraw could give a weaker local red. The prized reds were the costly ones, such as kermes, an imported insect dye found in fine cloth, and the scarlet cloth the sagas describe as a chieftain's gift.

If you own one of these unique essentials, don't let them rot in the back of your closet. And in case you don't, find them, make them yours, make a statement and wear them proudly, for they represent much more than a styling choice. They are the symbols of strength and everlasting Viking spirit.

Remind society of the true meaning of Viking clothing and its origins. Our origins. With these words of encouragement, we leave you. And we, by all means, hope to see you soon, with an arm ring or a Mjolnir, whichever your Viking soul chooses. Skål!