CLEARANCE 10-11th c. Viking Coat

Size Chart

Note: Sizing on our Viking Coat is judged by chest size because it flares out and is meant to fit loosely in the waist and worn with a belt to complete the shape and look (as shown in our photos). The length is measured from the shoulders to the hem.

Viking Clothing consists of many layers the top layer often being a woolen coat.  Wool Coats or Kaftans were worn by both men and women.  Viking royalty or wealthy nobles might have their coats lined in silk or decorated with embroidery down the front and on the cuffs.  We have based our Viking Coat on a number of sources from early saxon graves to surviving fragments from Birka and Hedeby and engravings on items such as the Sutton Hoo helmet. A Viking Coat or Kaftan was common throughout Scandinavia, anglo-saxon settlements all the way to the eastern Rus areas.  The Revival Viking Coat fits loose through the chest then flares out widely with side and back gores to create a full bottom hem at knee length. The Viking Coat features a contrasting front facing and sleeve cuffs.  The front of the Viking Coat overlaps Kaftan style at the waist when worn belted.  The front can be worn open, belted or closed with a brooch.

We have based our Viking Age tunic on a number of 11th century sources, showing the growing influence of southern European dress. Examples include the shirts pictured in Anglo-Saxon Tiberius Calendar, the Bayeux Tapestry, that worn by Cnut in the Liber Vitae and Thorkell in the Eadui Psalter The Revival Viking Tunic is cut straight through torso with many gores to create a full skirted bottom hem. The neck hole is a distinctive, square shape with a front center-slit, while the sleeves are cut straight for a more fitted line around the wrist and forearm.

About our Viking Age / Early Medieval Line

“AD. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island (Lindisfarne), by rapine and slaughter.” – The Anglo Saxon Chronicle

In the late 8th century, Scandinavian sea-pirates sacked the island monastery of Lindisfarne, heralding in the so-called Viking Age, a term applied to the eighth through eleventh centuries, in which Norsemen traders and raiders, explored Europe, and settled in Normandy, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, and Vinland. To the east, they set themselves up as the rulers of Russian Kiev, pressed into Anatolia and took service as the famed Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Emperors.

Our new Viking Age product line will be continuously growing with representations of the fashions of the Norse, Anglo-Saxons and Normans civilizations of this period. Regardless of which of these cultures one portrays, there are a number of common truths for Northern European fashion in this period. Linen was the most fabric for clothing, followed by a variety of different weight wools used for overtunics, cloaks and overdresses. Silk, as an extremely rare, luxury fabric, was only used for small trim or accents.

The period leading to the Viking Age was a conservative one, with localized cultures and limited trade. Consequently, many similarities of cut and fit exist between late Roman era Germanic dress and Viking era, Scandinavian clothes, until very late in the period.

Read more about Viking culture in our From the Pen of History article: The Gift of a Shirt

We have based our Viking Coat on a number of sources from early saxon graves to surviving fragments from Birka and Hedeby and engravings on items such as the Sutton Hoo helmet.

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