At Pennsic I had a display which covered many areas of Norse fiber arts.  Among the items I showed were a miniature warp weighted loom, a sheep breeds display and a handwoven dress.  I was rather surprised when I saw that one of the items getting the most attention was my display of handwoven linen samples showing the process of wet-finishing and mangling/smoothing.  So many people were fascinated by it (and most of them have never heard of it). 

Historically, once the weaving of linen fabric was completed, a coarse piece of linen might be beaten to make it more soft or a fine textile might have been pressed flat to close up the gaps between the threads and give the surface a pleasant sheen.  (Bond 175-181)   Even in modern times linen fabric can undergo this finishing process called mangling.  Mangling uses weight and sometimes moisture (and modernly, heat) to flatten the yarn and create a smooth, polished surface on the fabric.

In the Viking era the fabrics were pressed smooth with a glass smoothing stone (also called a slickstone) on a board.  To the left is a whalebone smoothing board.  Below is an image of a glass smoothing stone from the Swedish History Museum and a collection of smoothing stones from York.

Note that while many of these stones appear black, they are actually dark very green glass.  They were pressed, domed side down to the fabric, and pushed in a back and forth motion to flatten and polish the fibers of linen textiles.  (Walton 1776)

At Pennsic 41 I had Historical Glassworks craft a dark green glass smoothing stone for me, so that I could experiment with the technique myself. 

Here you can see my smoothing board (a marble tabletop, as I do not have a whalebone board and the wood that I had handy had very pronounced grain lines) and glass smoothing stone, as well as some of my linen samples.

When I cut the fabric from the loom, I took each of my different weaves and cut them into three pieces.  The first was left as it was on the loom (which means it still had my boiled flaxseed sizing on it), the second was washed and allowed to dry and the last was washed and mangled. 

My first attempts to mangle were on dry fabric.  This resulted in the linen fibers fuzzing up to some extent.  I tried again after dampening the fabric, pressing most of the water out and then mangling it.  While the gaps in the weave closed somewhat with the wet-finishing the final act of pressing the textile with the smoothing stone created a soft, flat surface that has a bit of sheen to it.

Andersonn, Eva. Tools for Textile Production from Birka and Hedeby (The Birka Project for Riksantikvarieambetet), 2003.

Ejstrud, Bo, Andresen, Stina, Appel, Amanda, Gjerlevsen, Sara and Thomsen, Birgit. “Experiments with flax at the Ribe Viking Centre” (Ribe Viking Centre & University of Southern Denmark), 2001.

Bond, J.M. and Hunter, J.R.  “Flax-growing in Orkney from the Norse Period to the 18th Century,” Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot. 1987. 175-181.

Walton, P. "Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate." The Archaeology of York Volume 17: The Small Finds.  1977.

(In light of further research on my part, I will note here that I believe that the use of herringbone externally as a seam embellishment is completely a reenactorism.  We love it, but evidence for its use in period is actually quite limited, and there is no evidence of it on garments over seams at all.  It was used on a garment from Pavement and on the INSIDE of a hem at Hedeby.  A stitch similar to herringbone was used on the Mammen cushion cover (decorative item rather than a garment) and on the collar of the Skjoldehamn tunic (which may or may not even be Viking and possibly dates post-period).  I am leaving my earlier article and instructions below intact, however, for those who still wish to employ this stitch as a decoration.  See more details at: http://awanderingelf.weebly.com/blog-my-journey/a-deeper-look and
​http://awanderingelf.weebly.com/blog-my-journey/why-i-count-threads-sourcing-a-myth )

Embellishing garb (appropriately or not) is an SCA tradition.  Embroidery, elaborate trimmings, fancy stitches... these things are infinitely appealing to most of us and perfectly acceptable within the Society. 

Learning to embellish garb, however, is an art unto itself.  Learning both appropriate methods for doing these decorative touches and when and where to use them for your persona can often involve long hours of research and even more time to perfect a technique for execution (and apparently I did not do enough research first for this one, lol, oh well, we live and learn).

I very much enjoy hand embellishing my Viking garb, even though my first attempts were very crude and I had a hard time coping with what I felt were very imperfect stitches.  Learning to hand sew or embroider is much like anything else in that you have to develop the muscle memory needed to keep the stitches neat and even and you additionally have to develop an eye for spacing. 

I also had to learn to let the little imperfections slide.  Period stitches were not perfect (I believe someone even teaches a class on this at Pennsic!).  And the more garments I embellished, the better my stitching got and while my handwork is still not perfect, I am more than happy to wear and display these items and to discuss some things that helped me craft better costumes.

I also have to note here that I am not a fan of practicing something just for the sake of practicing it.  If it is using time and materials, I would prefer to still use my "practice" piece in the end.  When I am learning a new stitch I try it a few times on a piece of scrap fabric and then typically apply it to a piece of older garb or a pouch or, well, anything that I can still use rather than stuff in a pile of samples.  Would I try something totally new on my court garb?  Likely not, but I will definitely make use of it somewhere until I am competent enough to use it to decorate my finery.

Below, is a diagram of the stitch for those who might be unfamiliar with it's structure.

Aside from practice, there are quite a few things things I have done or tried to allow me to better keep the stitches even in size and spacing: 

• To help keep the stitches appropriately spaced, and to help keep them neatly in line along the width of the row, do not stab the needle through the fabric in two motions (up from the back, and then down again from the top), but rather, insert the needle from the front to the back to the front all in one pass as detailed in the photo to the left. 

Cheat:

If you happen to have a sewing machine that allows for very wide stitches and that has a series of building complex stitches, you can try this cheat to help develop the muscle memory for working with this stitch. 

To the left is an image of the screen from a Husqvarna Designer SE.  #13 is a Herringbone stitch.  Now, stitched out I do not actually find this very convincing (even when done with wool machine embroider thread) because it actually breaks each segment of the stitch into smaller stitches.  But, you can machine stitch on your fabric with thread that exactly matches your fabric or thread that exactly matches the hand stitching thread you plan to use (I find the former method actually hides the machine work better) and then use the machine sewn lines as a guide and sew over them by hand with your thicker hand sewing thread or yarn.  The hand stitches should completely cover the machine stitches and render them invisible unless someone happens to turn the fabric over and look at the reverse.

Now, this method has a couple of drawbacks.  One is that it is actually very slow as the machine can take time to stitch out a complex pattern like this.  Another is that it will make that area of the fabric somewhat stiff.  Finally, it takes an expert touch (which I do not have) to guide the machine evenly over seams (where the fabric is several layers thick) and this can have a tendency to distort the machine stitches and make them longer or shorter when crossing a seam line.

(The tan plaid fabric depicted further down was created by laying down a row of machine stitches first.  I did a few pieces with a machine laid row as a guide and now now longer need that crutch to keep my rows of stitches in order.)