10th c. Linen Viking Pants

An interesting point in the history of European fashion was the evolution from trousers, to individual leggings, or chausses, back to trousers again. In late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, trousers were common throughout the Germanic and Norse world.
Our linen trousers are based on finds from Thorsbjerg and Damendorf in late Roman Era Germania. Fitting loose in the waist and thigh, our trousers taper to a straight lower leg, which is cut from one piece of cloth that runs straight up to meet a separate gusset set in for the seat and crotch. The trousers are secured by a drawstring waistband.

"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