Earlier this year I picked up these small books online for women's dress in the 14th and 15th century. I don't know that they are perfect, but they absolutely can help someone make a very good start into an era.

What I like about these books is that they are brief and loaded with images. They pretty simply show the silhouettes and basic construction for the garments, and give necessary details on colors, cloth, and accessories.

I know that the Medieval Tailor's Assistant covers much of this as well, but seeing it in a VERY compact form is also nice. Even if someone is not interested in going fully period or sewing their entire kit themselves, the images here can help them shop for things that perhaps can give them a look that they desire.

Not everyone wants to research (or research every single thing they do) and guides like this become very handy to help folks fill in the gaps where needed.

You can sometimes get these on Amazon, but they are also available from the publishers site (Chronocopia Press). https://chronocopia.se/

15th Century Women's  https://amzn.to/49GKz7M

15th Century Men's https://amzn.to/3NThflr

1360-1425 Women's https://amzn.to/3QzCLMA

There are certain books that you just need in your collection.  Some of them cover only one topic, such as Birka III (the textiles volume of the Birka finds), often though, the best gems are single articles within a larger book.  The entire series of the NESAT books (North-European Symposium for Archaeological Textiles) is worth looking at if you have a chance.  If you are in the US, most of them are available via ILL, and several are still in print or available as a Kindle edition.  Every single one of them has a valuable article for the Viking Age (or ever several).  I believe some of the articles in the older volumes are starting to show up on sites like Academia.edu for free download, but I still recommend taking the time to look at the books for yourself as even some of the peripheral topics can help you get a good feel for a period or a practice.

I will concentrate on Volume 7 and 10 here, and will cover the other still-in-print volumes (11, 12 and 13) later this week, hopefully.  13 was just released, so I have not yet gotten that one myself, but I will include some information on it as well.  (I will eventually review all of the books, but am starting with these.)

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Ulla Mannering, at the National Museum of Denmark, is one of the authors whose work I will go out of my way to track down.  Many of her works focus on the Viking Age, which is how I was introduced it to, but I also am just now starting down the Migration Era and Iron Age trail of research for Scandinavia, and I am attempting to absorb as much of her papers as I can on the topic as well.

I cannot recommend this book enough to people interested in either time period.  It is well-illustrated and covers many forms of iconography for the time (metalwork,  tapestries, etc.).  She analyzes the figures and interprets the costume arrangements in them.  By far of most interest to me, however, is the last portion of the book that discusses the textile evidence of the period.  There are great images of the extant garments as well as pertinent information about them.

I found this book mildly helpful with my Viking research, but it is exceptionally helpful now that I am looking at earlier periods and the transition between the eras.

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This book is fantastic.  I sadly missed my chance to buy it right before it went out of print (I had to choose between this volume and Heckett's book on the Dublin headcoverings), and I regretted not picking it up.  I did ILL and read the book, but that is not the same as having it in some form.  

If you are interested in Saxon costume, or early period costume, you really must download this book, which is now offered for free here:  http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-281-1/dissemination/pdf/RR145.pdf

​This book covers textiles, textile production, clothing, embellishment, and jewelry.  If you are interested in this time period, this book easily offers enough material to get you started.

If you would like a bit of a taste of this author's work regarding silks, you can checkout an article on silk trade that she wrote here:  ​https://www.academia.edu/10620737/Silk_trade_to_Scandinavia_in_the_Viking_Age._In_Textiles_and_the_Medieval_Economy_Production_Trade_and_Consumption_of_Textiles_8th_16th_Centuries._Angela_Ling_Huang_Editor_Carsten_Jahnke_Editor_._Oxbow_Books_2015

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I will note here that the Herjolfsnes finds are dated several hundred years past the Viking Age. However, most of the information on textile production is still highly relevant as the use of dual coated sheep and the warp-weighted loom continued longer in Greenland than it did in many other places.  These books are fantastic for that information alone.  Beyond that, it is also important that Inga Hägg, in her work with the Hedeby textiles and garments, describes the construction of the garments there to be very much like those at Herjolfsnes.  Indeed, Hedeby shows us that the Viking Age Norse had some advanced methods of tailoring such as set-in sleeves, and, with some careful research, the patterns in Medieval Garments can help you to construct items that would fit well into the late Viking Age.  I personally used the books to pattern my first gown which I used for my Beyond the Aprondress class and handout.  ( ​awanderingelf.weebly.com/blog-my-journey/beyond-the-aprondresss ) 

I actually have both of these books in an electronic format, but also own the hard copies as well (and tend to reference those more often than my electronic copies).  They are great reference volumes and I often take Woven Into the Earth to events if I need to illustrate the process of crafting wool in period without taking my own bulky display. 

Because I also like to include some additional resources that fit well with these volumes, I also recommend downloading the two articles below:

Dress, Cloth and the Farmer's Wife by Michele Hayeur Smith:  This article gives additional details on textiles from Greenland, but also provides insightful information into what was being manufactured/used in Iceland at that time.  It can help provide insight into how the Greenland cloth evolved, and this information assist a Viking Age researcher better determine what information in the books above might be unique to Greenland.
www.academia.edu/7441906/Dress_Cloth_and_the_Farmer_s_Wife_Textiles_from_%C3%98_172_Tatsipataa_Greenland_with_Comparative_Data_from_Iceland

The Burgundian Hat from Herjolfsnes Greenland by Michele Hayeur Smith: This study redates one of the hats from Herjolfsnes.  The information given is very fascinated and shows us exactly how precious (and how often reused) cloth was in period.
www.academia.edu/23015256/The_Burgundian_hat_from_Herjolfsnes_Greenland_new_discoveries_new_dates
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