In February 2019, I spent three weeks at the Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós in northern Iceland. As an artist and shepherdess of Hebridean North Atlantic sheep, my aspirations were two fold.
In the first instance, I spent time on Icelandic sheep farms learning about their animal husbandry while at the Textile Centre I creatively explored the material qualities of Icelandic North Atlantic sheep fleece. It was during this time that I learned of the Viking vararfeldur woven cloak and how the nature of the North Atlantic sheep fleece lent itself to the creation of this piled textile. In addition, my research introduced me to the strong historic and genetic links between the Hebrides and Iceland and most importantly the story of Auŏr.
You can read about my time at the Icelandic Textile Centre in my blog from last year HERE and if you are interested find out more about my art work HERE.
Since my time in Iceland, I have continued to research Auŏr’s life, the Vikings in the Hebrides and North Atlantic sheep. My research led me to spend time at Osterøy Museum, near Bergen, Norway during February - March 2020 this year where I received instruction on a warp weighted loom and wove a vararfeldur cloak.
There is so much to this story that I have decided to break this blog into two parts:
Part 1 - Auðr’s story, the direct links between the Hebrides and the settlement of Iceland. The story is then interwoven with that of the North Atlantic sheep, the significance of wool to Viking culture and the role that these little sheep played in advancement of the Norse people across the region.
Part 2 - Elaborates on my creative response to what has been a fascinating and illuminative Hebridean-Norse voyage. The weaving of a vararfeldur on a warp weighted loom and my forthcoming Auðr (Aud/Unnr) the Deepminded art exhibition.
This research will be presented as an art exhibition at:
Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Art Gallery, North Uist, Outer Hebrides during October - November 2020
Osterøy Museum, Lonevåg, nr. Bergen, Norway during June - September 2021
Víðimýrarkirkja turf church, Skagafjörður in North-Iceland, the original foundations date back to 1000 AD.
Auðr’s story
Auðr (Aud/Unnr) the Deep Minded was an outstanding Norse female leader who lived in the mid 9th Century in Norway, the Hebrides and Iceland. Though she lived over 1000 years ago, her story of bravery, strength and honour is still relevant to our contemporary context.
Her story is laid out in the Laxdaela Saga and is referenced in Ìslendingabók and Landnámabók (the Icelandic Book of Settlement).
Auðr was the most significant woman within these medieval texts. Her father, husband and son were the most powerful Viking men of their era to rule the Hebrides, West Scotland and Ireland. In due course, Auðr converted to Christianity and led her people from conflict in Scotland to a new life in Iceland, where she was the only woman to claim settlement lands in her own right.
Auðr’s story begins in north-west Norway as the daughter of Ketill Flatnefr ‘Flatnose’ (Jennings & Kruse 2009: 129). Around the mid 9th century, the tyrannical King Harold Fairhair rose to power in Norway. Harold had raided and taken control of the Hebrides but when he returned to Norway both Scots and Irishmen took the opportunity to invade those islands and plunder them for themselves. Harold then called upon Ketill Flatnose to gather an army and sail west to settle the matter on his behalf.
Ketill set sail with Harold’s army, taking his family including Auðr with him and leaving his son Bjorn in charge of his affairs in Norway. Once Ketill arrived he gained control of this region and made himself Lord over all the Hebrides. However, he did not return to Norway nor paid King Harold any taxes. For this Harold took ownership of Ketill’s assets and expelled his son Bjorn.
At some point at this early stage, Auðr had a relationship with Olaf the White, the ‘Viking King’ of Dublin, which resulted in their son Thorstein the Red. Landnámabók makes a brief reference to their ‘marriage’ and his fall in battle. However, beyond that the sagas make little reference to their life together.
It was during this time that Auðr came into contact with Iona and converted to Christianity along with many of Ketill’s family members. Auðr’s conversion to Christianity is referenced in Landnámabók in the section referring to when Harold expelled Bjorn from Norway. At this point, he first sailed to the Hebrides but ‘would not abide there; nor would he accept Christianity like the other children of Ketill’ (Anderson 1922: 360), he subsequently left to settle in Iceland. Auŏr went on to become a highly devout Christian and it is possible that her faith guided her leadership to seek peace and harmony amongst her people.
By the time Bjorn arrived in the Hebrides, Ketill was dead and Auðr’s son Thorstein the Red had succeeded his grandfather in the Hebrides. Her son Thorstein was also a great and powerful warrior, Landnámabók makes reference to him as a ‘war-king’ who with Earl [Sigurd] the Mighty, won Caithness and Sutherland, Ross and Moray, and more than half of Scotland. Thorstein then became King over all the Hebrides and these lands but in due course his Scots allies deceived him and he fell in battle sometime between 889-895 (Anderson 1922: 378 - Landnámabók).
It is at this point that Auðr’s strength of character and own story come to the fore. She was then in Caithness, all her powerful men folk - husband, father and son, were now dead and she was most likely vulnerable to their Scottish adversaries. It is, also, possible that she had got wind of King Harold’s plans for a retributive expedition to the west c. 889-900, which may have triggered the greatest exodus of Norse people from the islands to Iceland (Anderson 1922: 378). As Ketill’s daughter, she would potentially have been a target of King Harold’s vengeance.
Stone carving of a birlinn Hebridean galley in Rodel Church, South Harris, a similar but smaller version of the knaar that Auŏr would have built in Caithness.
Laxdaela Saga makes reference to Auðr’s preparations to leave Caithness and it is from this passage that we can also gather the respect that she commanded for her foresight, wealth and leadership.
After that she had a ship made in a wood secretly; and when the ship was completed, she prepared the ship and loaded it with wealth of treasure. She took away with her all her relatives that were alive; and men remarked that hardly [another] instance could be found of a woman’s having escaped from such warfare with so much treasure and so great a company. It may be observed from this that she was much the superior of [all] other women.
(Anderson 1922: 379 - Laxdaela Saga)
On route to Iceland, Auðr made political alliances in Orkney and Faeroes by marrying off two of Thorstein’s daughters to influential families before captaining her vessel to Iceland. Auðr eventually settled in Iceland where she was the only woman referenced in Ìslendingabók as claiming settlement lands in her own right. Auðr then made her slaves freemen and provided them with land of their own, again a reflection of her fair and honourable nature.
Now increasingly elderly, Auðr made arrangements for her grandson Olaf Feilan to inherit all her lands and to marry Alfdis of Barra. On the third and final night of the wedding she died, after which she was given a ship burial with much treasure. Most significantly, she was buried below the high water mark ‘on the ebb-shore, as she had said before, because she wished not to lie in un-consecrated ground, since she was baptised.’ (Anderson 1922: 387 - Landnámabók).
West side of Berneray (Bjorn’s island) looking north to Harris.
The Outer Hebrides and Iceland
Around 780, Shetland and Orkney were the first of the North Atlantic islands to be colonised by the Vikings, followed by the Outer Hebrides, then the Faeroes around 825 and finally Iceland around 870.
Iceland was settled rapidly over a period of around 60 years, by which time the majority of viable land had been allocated. Recent genetic studies estimate that 80% of the male settlers were Scandinavian (Helgason et al 2001: 724) while by comparison, the majority of settling females were from the Outer Hebrides, the only place shown to share two forms of unique mtDNA with Icelandic populations (Helgason et al 2001: 732).
These genetic findings are supported by the records of Icelandic settlement as found in Ìslendingabók and Landnámabók. In the later, the Outer Hebrides are mentioned 22 times, Orkney 7 times, the Faroe Islands 4 times, and Shetland 2 times, as places of origin for those settling in Iceland in the 9th century (Helgason et al 2001: 732). While the initial influx of Norse people into Scotland and the islands during the Viking period was by male dominated raiding parties, once they began to settle it was natural for these young men to acquire wives from the indigenous population. It was these admixed families, particularly from the Outer Hebrides, that took part in the largest movement of people during the Viking era to find land and established new lives in Iceland (Helgason et al 2001: 733).
In Iceland even today, it is widely acknowledged that the Hebrides are referred to as the Suðureyjar ‘the southern islands’ from whence they came.
Norwegian Spelsau North Atlantic sheep, Osterøy, March 2020.
North Atlantic Sheep and the Viking culture of wool.
The North Atlantic sheep breed can be found in regions stretching from Russia to Iceland, the Scottish islands to the west and north as well as the Faeroes. While extensive genetic studies across all variations of the breed are yet to be conducted, it is generally assumed by zoo-archaeologists that the current dispersal of North Atlantic sheep is linked to the settlement of Norse people during the 9th Century (Chessa et al. 2001: 4).
For the Vikings, these North Atlantic sheep were not just a source of meat, their wool was a valuable source of trade goods and had a strategic role. The introduction of sails to Scandinavia during the 8th Century, largely made from wool, enabled the Vikings to advance of their territory across the Northern regions (Bender Jørgensen 2012: 173). Seafarers and settlers also needed warm clothing and bedding to survive in the North Atlantic. Wool is an excellent material for such extreme conditions providing weather-proofing and insulation even when damp.
One such garment would have been the vararfeldur piled woven wool cloak. It was essentially an imitation of an animal fur but given the properties of wool it was more flexible, lighter and dried quicker than animal skin. A vararfeldur was made on a warp-weighted loom, a simple, ancient loom that dates back to the Neolithic period. The textile consisted of a base weave into which lengths of spun yarn or wool staples were woven but left long to create a pile. These pile-woven cloaks would have been worn as outer clothing during the day and blankets at night. It was the long outer oily fibres of the North Atlantic sheep that leant themselves particularly well to the evolution of this essential seafaring garment.
For the newly settled Icelanders, the vararfelder was not only a practical garment but also a very valuable traded textile. By the 11th Century, Bergen in Norway had become a major commercial hub for the Norse diaspora across the Northern region including Iceland and Greenland. In the first two centuries after the settlement, the principal export commodity from Iceland appears to have been the vararfelder (Hákonardóttir et al. 2016: 23).
Given that wool played such strategic element in the advancement of Viking territory it would seem logical that they would bring their sheep with them as them settled across this region. It is hence why the North Atlantic sheep breed can be found dispersed from north west Norway to Orkney, Shetland, the Outer Hebrides, the Faroese, Iceland and even Greenland. These hardy and thrifty little sheep have evolved and adapted to the harshness of each climate to become sub-breeds in each region.
Forthcoming Blog Part 2, elaborates on my creative response to what has been a fascinating and illuminative Hebridean-Norse voyage. The weaving of a vararfeldur on a warp weighted loom at Osterøy Museum, near Bergen and my forthcoming Auŏr the Deepminded art exhibition.
A sneak peak at my vararfeldur … more to follow in Part 2.
I am very grateful for the Research and Development grant that I received from Creative Scotland which has enabled me to immerse myself in my research into Auðr the Deep Minded and the vararfeldur Viking cloak.
References
Anderson, A. O. (1922) Early sources of Scottish history, A.D. 500 to 1286. Edinburgh & London: Oliver and Boyd.
Bender Jørgensen, L. (2012) ‘The Introduction of sails to Scandinavia: Raw materials, labour and land.’ Proceedings of the 10th Nordic TAG conference at Stikestad, Norway 2009 Oxford: Archaeopress
Chessa. B. et al. (2011) ‘Revealing the History of Sheep Domestication using Retrovirus Integrations Science’. Science 2009 April 24; 324(5926): 532–536.
Hákonardóttir, H. Johnston, E. and Kløve Juuhl, M. (2016) The Warp-Weighted Loom. Norway: Museumssenteret I Hordaland.
Helgason, A., Hickey, E., Goodacre, S., Bosnes, V., Stefa ́nsson, K., Ward, R., and Sykes, B. (2001) ’mtDNA and the Islands of the North Atlantic: Estimating the Proportions of Norse and Gaelic Ancestry.’ AJHG vol.68, pp. 732-737
Jennings, A. and Kruse, A. (2009) ‘From Dál Riata to the “Gall-Ghàidheil’. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia Vol 5 pp. 123-149