Mammen Pillow Reconstruction

Documentation on the Mammen Pillow

With the excavation of the Mammen man’s grave in the burial mound Bjerringhøj in 1868 various remains of a splendid man’s costume were found. The clothes were badly damaged, but originally must have been a fantastic sight. They were made of exclusive materials. The excavation was not carried out to today’s standards and no record of the finds were made at the time. It is therefore difficult to establish the function of the textiles.

The man was laid on a blue woollen cushion decorated with red embroidery. He probably wore a woollen tunic. A blue gauze material perhaps makes up what is left of his breeches. He also wore a woollen cape lined with marmot fur. The tunic and cape were embroidered with complicated patterns: leopards, four-footed animals, bird masks and acanthus leaves in shades of red, blue and yellow. Many tablet-woven bands were also found in the grave, some made of lilac wool and others of lilac silk with interwoven gold and silver thread. It is uncertain, how the bands decorated the costume.

THE MAMMEN TEXTILES Finds from the Viking era of textile remains are rare. There is a unique collection of embroidered finds is commonly referred to as the Mammen Textiles. Included were fragments of “…clothing from the corpse and remains of pillows and blankets existed...” (Roesndahl, 1992, page 274). Marienna provided the following description of the cushion fragments that were part of the find from the book "Mammen - grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid". The cushion is described in details in the chapter entitled "Textilfragmenterne fra Mammengraven" written by Else Ostergard.

In figure 17, the cushion, Item C144, is described as “…Cushion cover in wool. 78x28cm.

b) Diagram showing the cut of the cushion fig. 17a.

c) Enlarged detail of the selvage. The warp threads are darker and more tightly spun than the weft-threads. Tabby, 15x9 threads per cm. Z/Z spun. Originally the Mammen Style Cushion for King Draco By Zanobia Adimari cushion cover was blue.

d) Embroidery from the cushion cover with raised fishbone stitch beautifully placed over the seam that keeps the front- and back piece together. e) Enlarged detail of the raised fishbone stitch. The red embroidery thread is twoply wool S-plied. f) Diagram of the embroidery…” (Iverson, 1991).