"Tablet weaving, also known as card weaving, is a method of using square tablets with holes in the corners to weave narrow decorative bands made of wool, linen or silk threads... Tablet-weaving seems to have originated in Europe during the early Celtic Iron Age, with examples from Austria , Germany and France. Fabrics with warp-twined starting borders have also been found in Greece and Spain . In the first and second centuries BCE, tablet-weaving seems to have been most common in the north and north-west of Europe, in particular England, Germanic areas and Denmark. During the migration period of the fourth to seventh centuries, tablet-weaving became popular in Scandinavia and was also known in Denmark, Ireland, Finland and Lithuania, and even Israel and Egypt. The earliest bands were purely functional, forming starting borders for textiles, but gradually weavers learned to create decorative patterns by using different coloured threads and turning the tablets individually. The sixth century weavings of Scandinavia in particular show great sophistication in the weaving method with complex patterns in four colours of warp thread."

Except from "Dark Age Tablet Weaving for Viking and Anglo-Saxon re-enactors"