I have wonderful friends who gifted me with a copy of Bundled Up in Blue last fall.  It is a great museum exhibit book that covers many details of a Viking grave find in Iceland.  I was very happy last night to see the dress information now available online.  You can find it here!

https://northernwomen.org/project-2/

I saw this weekend that there is a new book about the Hedeby textiles coming out.  I am beyond excited about this!  Textilien und Tracht in Haithabu und Schleswig. Die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu 18 can be found here:  http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3529014184?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=od_aui_detailpages00

I usually add upcoming books, as well as legal downloads as they become available, to this blog, but I know that going back to search for them can be difficult so am going to paste a few of my favorite resources for free, legal material below.  When one starts out doing research it can be confusing as to which books are work the expenditure and which are not.  ILL is an amazing way to get a hold of older, rare books, but sometimes the wait is very long so below there are some fantastic things you can use for free!

Pangur Press:  This is the Anglo-Saxon Labratory's downloadable books and papers.  Several of Penelope Walton Rogers most sought-after publications can be found here for free!  http://www.aslab.co.uk/pangur-press/

Academia.edu has several "must read" authors as members:
Marianne Vedeler, who covers Viking silks as well as other textile items: https://uio.academia.edu/MarianneVedeler

Lise Bender Jorgensen has been covering Viking era textiles for decades.  A few of her papers are here (including the excellent one about the pre-Viking era Lendbreen tunic):  https://ntnu-no.academia.edu/LiseBenderJ%C3%B8rgensen

Dagfinn Skre recently added his volumes of work on Kaupang (which are lovely enough that you will likely want to get the hard copies even if you opt to down load them):  https://uio.academia.edu/DagfinnSkre

Eva Andersson Strand has done a good deal of work concerning textile production at Viking sites and many of her papers are on Academia.edu.  (I still recommend that you get her book Textile Tools for Production from Birka and Hedeby which is available at Oxbow Books.)  https://ku-dk.academia.edu/EvaAnderssonStrand

Individual Articles:
Elizabeth Wincott Heckett is the author of the book Viking Age Headcoverings from Dublin (which is available in print again from Oxbow and I highly recommend this title which can be purchased here http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/viking-age-headcoverings-from-dublin.html ), but you can get her article "Irish Viking Age silks and their place in Hiberno-Norse society" by running a Google search on that title (the direct PDF download does not link well).

The entire series of Viking publications can be downloaded here.  I especially recommend the issue from 2011:  https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/37522

The Archaeology Data Service has a number of publications online as well.  You have to do some searching but there is an amazing amount of material there:  http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/

Jstor is a research site for academic institutions, but they do let you look at many articles online (up to 3 at a time) if you do not have academic access.  http://www.jstor.org/


And as always, I cannot recommend Mendeley enough for storing your documents and taking notes!  https://www.mendeley.com/

I have had this book for quite some time and it is a beautiful volume with information about jewelry, pottery, textile tools and much more.  I still recommend getting the hardcopy book, as it is very nice, but you can now also download it legally from this site: 
https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/44036

Note that the other two volumes in the series are there as well:
https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/44083

https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/44084

Enjoy!!!

Someone on the Viking textiles forum that I run posted the links today for downloads from the University of Tartu.  They are for archaeology books that have AMAZING textiles in them.  Lots of cool jewelry, weapons and metal spiral work as well, all with great photos.

You can download the books for yourself here:  http://www.arheo.ut.ee/uudised

I am working on a cloak for a dear friend's impending elevation, so my own projects are on hold.  That, however, does not stop me from digging into research!  I have been sitting on a pile of research I did this summer on a particular type of weaving found at Oseberg and had planned to sort through it after I could weave up a nice sample.  Because that is unlikely to happen soon due to other items, I have put compiling my notes on hold.  When someone asked just recently about those items on an online forum, it occurred to me that I do not have to wait until my own project is complete before I can put what I discovered out there.  Hopefully I will get this written up in the next week or two so that perhaps someone else can make use of it!

Beyond that, I want to share two great resources that I have come across.  The first is the Norwegian Textile Newsletter.  In addition to articles and projects using Scandinavian weaving techniques, there are articles on things like wool sails, warp weighted looms and other things of interest to reenactors:  http://norwegiantextileletter.com/archives/

The next is the series of Viking publications which have articles covering pretty much every topic:  https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/37522

Happy researching!!!!

For those who have not see these already, a number of museums and archives are putting books and image collections online for free.  Some even give the rights to to use the images in research documents (always check the fine print to see what use is considered personal, research or commercial).  Many other museums have also taken to putting their collections online for browsing.  This is a great way for us to gain inspiration or to get a broad view of a culture or item and possibly find answers to lingering qu  Listing a few below that you can browse at will:

Getty Publications Digital Library - http://www.getty.edu/publications/virtuallibrary/index.html

Metropolitan Museum of Art - http://www.metmuseum.org/research/metpublications

British Museum - http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx
    And British Library at Flickr Commons - http://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary

Wellcome Trust - http://wellcomeimages.org/

University of California - http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/search?facet=subject;rights=Public;;brand=eschol

Google Art Project - http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/browse/?c.projectId=art-project&v.view=room&v.filter=items&projectId=art-project