Ancient_Finnish_Costumes.pdf

Contents

FROM FINDS TO RECONSTRUCTIONS

Finnish inhumation cemeteries ......................................................................................................................................2

Textile finds and dresses................................................................................................................................................4

Excavations in the field and in laboratories ...................................................................................................................5

Colours under the microscope .......................................................................................................................................7

Fabrics and materials .....................................................................................................................................................8

From details to dress ......................................................................................................................................................9

SKETCHES AND ADAPTATIONS

The first pictures of ancient Finnish costumes.............................................................................................................10

The sketches of the costumes from Tuukkala ..............................................................................................................13

Ancient costumes on the stage .....................................................................................................................................14

What the scientist said .................................................................................................................................................16

Aino costume ...............................................................................................................................................................19

Hjalmar Appelgren-Kivalo's book and the first »Eura costumes» ...............................................................................19

RECONSTRUCTIONS FOR EXHIBITION AND FOR USE

The Pernio costume .....................................................................................................................................................22

The Tuukkala costume.................................................................................................................................................28

The new costumes made according to finds from Ladoga Karelia ..............................................................................33

The Eura costume ........................................................................................................................................................45

UNIFORM AND DISSIMILAR FASHION

Women's costume and its ornaments in western Finland during the late Iron Age .....................................................54

Development of fashion in other parts of Finland .......................................................................................................56

Basic structure of costumes in Northern Europe..........................................................................................................59

The origin of Finnish spiral ornamentation..................................................................................................................60

Real or imagined schools of decoration.......................................................................................................................61

Pan-European trends of fashion ...................................................................................................................................62

Select bibliography ......................................................................................................................................................64

Suomenkielinen lyhennelma - Resume pa svenska .....................................................................................................65

THE MOST RECENT RECONSTRUCTION: The Masku costume ..........................................................................77

Illustrations:

Rauno Hilander

Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander

National Board of Antiquities of Finland, Archive for Prints and Photographs (NBA)

Kalevala Koru Limited

English language checked by Philip Binham, M.A.

Karjalaisen Kulttuurin Edistämissäätiö and

A. Ahlström Osakeyhtiö Company hade provided financial support for the publishing of this book

Design and (c) Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander

Published by Suomen arkeologinen seura - The Finnish Archaeological Society,

Box 913, 00101 Helsinki, Finland

Printed by Vammalan Kirjapaino Oy, Vammala, 1984

ISBN 951-99605-4-6

ANCIENT FINNISH

COSTUMES

by Pirkko-Liisa Lehtosalo-Hilander

This is the story of Finnish ancient dresses, of dress

fragments found in graves and of costumes made

according to them. These costumes have become the

festal garments of many Finnish women, but only

few know the history of them.

These dresses are not national costumes although

they have often been confused with them. National

costumes are copied or constructed according to the

peasant dresses of the 18th and 19th centuries. The

costumes we are studying now are more or less

scientific reconstructions of much older garments

deriving from the Viking Age and centuries

following.

Their story, however, is closely linked with the

history of Finnish national costumes, and also with

that of »Kalevala», the Finnish national epic.

Therefore there is every reason to tell it now, on the

eve of the 150th anniversary of »Kalevala».

From Grave Finds to Reconstructions

Finnish inhumation cemeteries

There are almost no pictures of Iron Age costumes in Finland. Accordingly only grave finds can

tell us how the Finns were dressed in prehistoric times. However, during nearly all of the Bronze

and Iron Ages, cremation was the prevailing form of burial in Finland, and therefore the first

information we can obtain from graves is from a fairly late phase of the Iron Age. Certainly, the

oldest known textile remains are from the 4th century A.D., but they are only small fragments

fastened on a spearhead found in the Kärsämäki cemetery in Turku. It is not possible to make

any reconstructions based on them.

About the year 600 A.D. inhumation burial became usual in Eura and Köyliö in Satakunta. At

the end of the 8th century this practice had extended to Yläne in northern Finland Proper, and it

spread also to the other neighbouring areas, but only sporadically. In Eura, Köyliö and Yläne,

however, the inhumation cemeteries were in continued use until the end of the heathen era.

Accordingly it is mostly from these parishes round Pyhäjärvi that we can get information about

dresses and their materials during the Merovingian and Viking periods.

From the 11th century onwards there are inhumation graves also from other parishes in

southwestern Finland, and from the next century there is also material from eastern Finland, from

Savo and Karelia. The dress fragments found in these graves are also important from the pan-

European point of view, because there are furnished graves as late as these only from a very few

areas in Europe and there are no costumes from that time in any private or museum collections.

Dress details have mostly been preserved in Finland because some garments have been

ornamented with small bronze spiral tubes sewn on to the fabrics. These spiral ornaments have

often been preserved, and their oxides have also conserved textiles. The spiral ornamentation is

richest in the garments found in the youngest graves, and therefore our knowledge about the

costumes of the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries is most abundant. Finds like those from Yliskylä in

Perniö and Ristinpelto in Lieto, where textile fragments more than one metre long have been

preserved, are very unusual, however. In general only after a careful excavation, a detailed

documentation and many laboratory examinations can we get enough information about the

connections of the ornaments and spiral decorations.

The deceased have not always been dressed like living people. Sometimes the dead women have

been covered with their big mantles or they can have been wrapped up in them, although they

have otherwise been dressed in their best garments. The men on the other hand seem often to

have had the mantle on their shoulders just as it could have been worn. But although there were

many details in graves and they were in their proper places, it is a long way from the finding of

an inhumation grave to a reconstructed dress.

Fig. 1

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