Viking Age Dyes: A Brief Overview

Viking Age Dyes: A Brief Overview 

So who were the Vikings? 

When we speak about “Vikings” often a barrage of modern stereotypes come to mind.  For the purpose of this article, however, we will be discussing the dyes used by Scandinavian peoples who lived from approximately 800 to 1100.  Geographically, they lived throughout Northern Europe in what we now call Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Northern Germany.   Viking settlements were also to be found along the coasts and river-ways of Ireland, the British Isles, Scotland, Iceland, and the Baltic. 

Colorants, and mordants, and modifiers oh my!

There is evidence of purposeful dyeing dating back to some of the earliest textile finds. (Barber, 1991)  In order to understand the range of colors available historically, it’s important to understand a little bit about how dyes work.  There are several different types of natural dyes.  Some are really just staining the fiber.  These are temporary, or fugitive.  Other dyes are more permanent.  These can be divided into two main groups; substantive dyes and adjective dyes.  Substantive dyes are chemically fixed to the fiber without the need for additional chemicals.  Adjective dyes aren’t able to fully fix to the fiber without the assistance of another substance such as; alum, iron, or tannin.  These substances are usually metal based and are called mordants. 

The final color result can be tweaked depending on the mordants used or by changing the chemical reaction slightly using substances like calcium carbonate, cream of tartar, and ammonia to adjust factors such as the dye bath pH.  These substances are called modifiers.  Temperature can also be a factor in the final color—many dyes need to stay within a certain temperature range for the colorant to be released.  The range of colors produced can be expanded through the use of over-dyeing as well.  This involves dyeing with one dye and then taking that fiber and dyeing it again with another color.   Finally, the fiber itself can affect the color outcome.  Not all fiber is white in its natural state.  Grey or tan fibers will give you a different result than white or off-white.  Wools, silks, and linen also absorb dyes differently.  Linen, for example, is notoriously difficult to dye.

They wore color?  But everything looks brown! 

One of the challenges of researching period dyes, especially from this era, is that we have scant source material to work with.  Contemporary depictions are stylized and generally not in color.  Records were kept through oral tradition, so any written descriptions are either through the lens of Arab travelers, monks recounting raids, or recorded centuries later.  What we do have is some archeological evidence in the form of both preserved dyestuffs and textiles. It’s important to remember that this evidence is by no means comprehensive.  They almost certainly used wayside plants we are unable to identify.  Only a small sampling of textiles and dyestuff survived, and many of those textiles are stained and discolored by the soil in which they were found.  Some dyes—especially the yellow ones, are almost impossible to identify using current techniques or were fugitive and have long since disappeared from the textile. (Taylor 1983, Walton-Rogers 1988)  So with all of these challenges how do we know what we do about which dyes were used?

The dye identification process is actually some pretty cool science.  Chemists used various types of chromatography to isolate the residual dye chemicals and then compared the color spectrums they left to known dye sample spectrums. (Taylor 1983, Walton-Rogers 1988) They were even able to draw conclusions about the shades based on the level of dye chemical found.  Mordants are a bit trickier to identify because they can be confused with minerals from soil deposits and their position and density in the soil around the finds would need to be analyzed to positively identify common modifiers such as iron. (Taylor 1983) 

In addition to the dyes identified on extant textiles, archaeologists have also discovered plant material in contexts such as workshops that suggest their use as dyestuffs.  Seeds, roots, flowers, and stems from a variety of dye plants including woad, weld, madder, walnut, heather, and broom have been discovered at a variety of Viking Age sites.  The plants were identified by archaeobotanists using a vareity of methods including chemical analysis and even distinctive dermal patterns (Stoma for the win!) observed under a dissecting microscope! (Tomlinson 1985)  

Ok, so what colors did they use?

As laid out in Table 1, we know that reds, blues, yellows, purples, pinks, oranges, greens, and browns could be achieved using dyestuffs that have been identified either as plant material found in a dye context or on an extant Viking Age textile using chromatography.   We do have some positive chemical evidence of mordants being used, and this greatly widens the available color palette.  Fibers that were naturally brown or grey would also give a greater variety of achievable colors, and the chromatography process has positively identified several examples of overdyeing, or textiles dyed with more than one dye.    The unidentified dye referred to as Yellow-X, for example, was only detected because the indigotin came off of the textile differently in some instances. (Walton-Rogers 1988)  This happened because the indigotin was on a textile that also had a mordanted dye applied—the textile had been overdyed.  The Vikings got creative with their color use too.  We have examples of woad blue stripes being dyed over madder and diamond twill being woven with a heavily saturated woad blue warp and an off white weft-- thus giving the effect of blue diamonds on an off white field.  (Walton-Rogers 1988)

Because Viking settlements and trade routes covered such a wide geographic area, they had access to dyes that are not native to Scandinavia—both in the form of pre-dyed imported textiles and imported dyestuffs.  Some dyes, such as Polish cochineal and kermes were only found on textiles whose context suggest that they were imported. (Taylor 1983, Nockert 1991) The fact that Viking Age Scandinavians lived over such a widespread geographical area also meant that they had access to different native dyestuffs.  There is evidence to suggest regional differences in color usage.  For example the Anglo-Scandinavians lived in a climate where madder could be grown rather than just imported, and proportionally a larger number of items dyed with madder were found there.  Thus, Anglo-Scandinavian finds tend towards reds and oranges.  Norwegian and Danish examples tend towards blues from woad, and Irish examples tend towards purples from lichens. (Nockert 1991, Walton-Rogers 1988, Ewing 2013)

In conclusion, we have archaeological evidence that establishes a strong tradition for dyed textiles throughout Scandinavian settlements during the Viking Age.  There appear to have been regional preferences in the choice of dyestuffs, but items dyed with weld, woad, and madder have been found throughout the Scandinavian settlements.  The availability of the three primary colors as well as the use of over-dyeing and the textiles natural color variations would have given Viking Age dyers a large palette to choose from.   

Table 1: Viking Age Dyes *
Dyestuff		Common Name	Chemical Colorant	Color/Colors Given	Archeological Evidence Found	Geographic Location
Isatis tinctoria		Woad	Indigotin	Blues, Greens	Seeds, Wool, Linen, Silk	Norway, Denmark, York, Sweden, Dublin
Reseda luteola		Weld, Dyer’s Rocket	Luteolin	Yellows, Golds	Seeds, Silks	York, Sweden
Rubia tinctorum		Madder	Alizarin, Pseudopurpurin, Purpurin	Oranges, Reds	Plant Remains, Wool, Silks, Linen	Norway, York, Denmark, Sweden, Dublin
Galium boreale, Galium verum, Galium aparine		Bedstraw, Lady’s Bedstraw	Alizarin, asperuloside	Reds, Yellows	Wool	Norway, Denmark
Juglans regia		Walnut	Juglone, Tannin, Plumbagin	Browns, tans	Wool, Plant Material	Norway, Denmark
Xanthoria parietina,  Rocella tinctoris		Wall Lichen	Orecin	Yellows, tans, Reds, Purples	Wool, Silk	Dublin
Ochrolechia tartarea		Orchil Lichens	Orecin	Purples/Pinks	Wool	York, Northern Germany, Dublin
Calluna vulgaris		Heather		Yellow	Plant Material	York
Genista tinctoria		Broom, Dyer’s Greenwood, Woadwaxen		Yellow	Plant Material	York
Nucella lapillus		Dog Whelk	Dibromoindigo	Tyrian Purple	Silks, Shells in Dye Workshop	Ireland
Kermes vermilio		Kermes	Kermesic Acid	Reds	Silks, Wool Tunic	Norway, York
Porphyrophora polonica		Polish Cochineal	Carminic Acid	Reds	Silks	Norway, Sweden
Yellow X- always found with indigotin		? Dyes eliminated include: Weld, Broom, and Heather	?	Green (Because always found with indigotin.  Dye itself produced a yellow.)		Norway, Denmark
Mordants & Modifiers most likely used	Alum -We have archeological evidence for clubmoss (Diphasium complanatum, Lycopodium complanatum) which is a likely source of alum. Iron- Most likely through the dyepot   Copper - Most likely through bronze dyepots  Tannin- Perhaps from Oak Galls Calcium Carbonate (Think shells or Coccolithophores.)        *This table is a work in progress