Tools of the Trade

Wool combs

Hand combs or wool combs (ullkam) are very useful tools for processing raw fleece. Traditionally, two combs are used to rake a section of fleece from one comb to the second. Single pitch hand combs have one row of tines and are used to remove vegetable matter (VM) and prepare the fibre for sorting. Double pitch hand combs have two rows of tines and are used to separate the tog from the þel, remove weak fibres, knots, remaining VM and any other imperfections in your raw wool.

What's the difference between hand combs intended for wool and flax heckles? Function. There are very few surviving examples of Viking Age hand combs and they are often conflated or confused with heckles used for the processing of flax (linkammer or linhekle). Wool combs are designed to be used in tandem to release and manage greasy woollen fibres. One comb is dressed with a sufficient number of locks. This comb is stationary as the second comb, the working comb, is used to rake the fibre over and over, transferring the majority of the wool from the stationary comb to the comb in motion. Once the working comb is full, the comb is rotated on its axis and the fiber is raked through the stationary comb again. The knots and imperfections remain behind the tines to be discarded or used for other purposes.

A flax comb or heckle is a solitary tool used to straighten and polish flax fibres before spinning. It is usually wider than a wool comb with straight and much shorter teeth than Norwegian wool combs. The heckle is mounted onto a static surface and the strick (bundle of flax) is thrown over and pulled through the tines. A series of flax heckles increasing in tine density can be used to produce finer fibres. It is unusual to find flax heckles with a handle.

The most common find attributed to wool combs are the presence of loose iron tines in Viking Age graves. This would suggest that is was also common to own a comb without an iron base plate as found in Hedmark and Coppergate. The average tine on a wool comb is 9 - 11cm in length and 0.5 - 0.6cm in diameter with a slight curve towards the tip. Straight tines are also common with a workable length of 6-7cm protruding from Iron base plate or binding to secure into a wooden T-shaped handle.

The fine, single pitch tines, slightly curved at the tip, from the Hyrt find (top left) are a rare example still attached to a wooden head and handle. The Hyrt comb boasts 20 iron tines, 11cm in length, with a slight curve toward the tip. Rounded head of 4 cm wide x 14.5cm in length. It also features an iron base plate to secure and reinforce the head of the comb. Originally speculated to be a flax heckle, the find from Hyrt farm is typical of tines recovered from Western Norway (Petersen, 1951).

Long handled combs of bone, wood or antler have also been found in Iron Age and Viking Age Graves in Scotland, the Orkney Isles and Norway. These unusual combs have long handles and a small comb on one end with between eight and twenty teeth (Object 3 from the Textile Equipment from the Oseberg ship burial). They are remarkably different from the hand combs used to process wool, and as such, were likely to be used as a toothed weft beater.

Pin Beaters

Pin beaters are often found along side well known textile tools in Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking Age Scandinavia. They are small, pointed tools made from a smooth material, like bone or wood, used to manipulate the weft within the shed.

'Spindles and whorls

A spindle and a whorl creates an ancient a tool used to twist fibre into thread. A drop spindle is constructed with a spindle rod (often a wooden dowel or smooth stick) and a whorl (a smooth weight centrally pierced by the spindle). There are two main varieties of drop spindle - under-weighted, where the whorl is positioned at the bottom of the spindle, and over-weighted, where the whorl is positioned at the top of the spindle.

Spindles

Spindles rods were made from a light weight wood or bone during the Viking Age in Central Europe. As such, they are much less likely to survive the grave conditions. A spindle rod, spindle shaft or just 'spindle', is the fancy name to describe the "stick" that the whorl is attached to. The length of the spindle rod directly impacts the ease of its use to twist and store the spun yarn. Longer spindles, 20 - 30cm, are often favoured for their ability to be rolled along the body to generate twist, rather than spun with the flick of the fingers. Many of the extant examples from ancient Central Europe measure to 12 - 27 cm in length.

Whorls

Unlike spindles, whorl weights are extremely common grave finds from the Viking Age. A whorl functions as a flywheel or a plomb weight which is suspended on a spindle shaft for the purpose of spinning fibre. The size, shape and weight of the whorl controls the type of yarn spun. Lighter spindle whorls (animal bone, antler, amber, glass, lead) allow for finer spinning, while heavier whorls (stone, metal, ceramics, a birch log!) are useful to spin thicker yarns. Lighter whorls would have been ideal for the production of fine wool yarn for tablet weaving. Whorls made with stone and bone were common archaeological finds across all time periods, while whorls of clay, lead or steatite (soapstone, readily available in Norway) were rare until the early Viking Age.

A variety of whorls would have been required to produce a wide range of yarns in the Viking Age, as such, it is not a stretch to suggest that a skilled spinster would possess a number for her own purposes. The diameter of the whorl also informed the speed at which it will spin the yarn. Narrow whorls spin tight and fast, whilst a whorl of the same weight with a wider diameter will spin slower. With this said, however, geographical and cultural trends are very visible in the shape and materials selected to create these whorls, e.g. whorls found at Björkö, Uppland, Sweden have very different characteristics to Viking Age whorls recovered at Orkney, Northern Isles of Scotland.

Of the 155 intact whorls recovered from Viking and Pictish sites at Orkney, the weights, largely determined by material and shape, ranged from 2g to 89g (Stirling and Milek, 2016). The average weight of the Viking Age whorls at Orkney ranged from 20-29g, the average diameter measured to 30 - 44mm and primarily hemispherical or discoid in shape. A small number of whorls also feature decorative motifs, patterns and runic inscriptions strongly suggesting the personal, possibly even spiritual, significance of this everyday tool.

Conical whorls were largely found at Scandinavian sites such as those recovered from Kaupang. Dome shaped, as naturally occuring in ball joints (ox, cow, deer), or formed from polished stone, bronze or amber, was a common profile for whorls found in Gotland, Sweden (discussed in Klessig's research). Some artisans suggest that the shape of the whorl also dictates the quality of spinning - spherical whorls, such as the one recovered from Oseberg, hold their weight close to the spindle shaft and therein, spin faster than discoid whorls, which spin slow and for a longer interval.

Distaff

A distaff is a very useful support when spinning fibre. Distaffs come in many different shapes and sizes (hand, wrist, free-standing) but all function the same way. This tool acts as a "third hand" to hold and release unspun fibres in an orderly manner whilst the spinster is focused on drafting fibre into spun yarn. Typically made from the limb of a tree, distaffs are difficult to discover in archaeological databases as they are commonly identified as "wood fragment" or "stick".

Oseberg hand distaff made with a beech tree stick. It measures to 34.2 cm in length with a square knob at the base of a 10.5 cm handle.

Niddy noddy

A hand held yarn winder.

Nostepinne

A smooth wand, often thicker than a spindle or distaff, used to wind centre pull skeins or balls.

Tablets for weaving

Tablets or cards for weaving decorative braids are a fairly common find amongst assumably female Viking graves all over Scandinavia.