The peplos is actually the predecessor of the smokkr, but on Gotland it seems like it was used throughout the Viking age too.
The Gotlandic woman’s fashion choose a completely different direction to the fashion in the rest of Scandinavia. While the tortoise brooches showed up on the mainland and became larger and larger, the Gotlandic women continued to use their animal-head brooches and dress pins. Because the smokkr is intimately connected to the tortoise brooches, it didn’t appear on Gotland either. Instead the peplos continued to be used, maybe with some modifications.
The peplos is a very simple garment. It consists of either a rectangular piece of fabric sewn together like a tube around the body or of a rectangle which left one side of the body open. It could then be worn one atop the other so the the outermost one covered the side left open by the innermost one. It needs to be wide enough to reach up to the shoulders where it was held together with a pair of animal-head brooches or dress pins. On the picture to the left I am wearing a pair of animal-head brooches, but it was even more common to wear a pair of dress pins this way. In that case the animal-head brooches were worn at the sides of the body, slightly above the waist. This means that the peploses on Gotland probably were of the open variety.
The picture at the bottom shows different types of peploses. As you hopefully see you can fold down more or less of the fabric at the top to create a different look. We don’t know which version was common on Gotland during the Viking age.
Animal-head brooches and dress pins do not create the same good preservation environment as the tortoise brooches do. Therefore we know much less about the types of fabric used for the peplos on Gotland.
The photo is taken by Iduna Pertoft Sundarp.
The peplos is described in the booklet about Vendel Period Scandinavian Clothing, but you don’t need a pattern to make one. It is just a rectangle and you can try out which length and width fits you best.
Hello! I’ve been trying to find some archeological sources on Gotland women’s clothing that indicate that the peplos dress was used through at least part of the Viking period. What sources did you find that support the peplos on Gotland? I’d really like to make one for reenactment. Thank you!
Hi Anna, sorry for the late answer and I saw that you found my article about the peplos in last years Yule calendar. I hope that gave you the information you looked for, otherwise don’t hesitate to ask more questions here.
I’m happy I encountered this post – there’s not a lot out there that I’ve found for reenactors on Gotland women’s clothing.
I can’t remember the source, but somewhere I read recently that linen wasn’t used on Gotland. Do you have any knowledge of that? I’m wondering if undertunics were also made of wool, or if a different kind of plant fiber was used.
Hi Anna, I have also read somewhere that linen wasn’t used on Gotland. I doubt that it is true though. For a long time it was said that linen was very rare in Norway but now there are more and more linen finds in Norway. I think that the use of linen in the Scandinavian Iron Age (which includes the Viking Age) is severly underestimated, mostly because linen is usually not preserved under the same circumstances as wool. There is an exception with the big tortoise brooches used in most of Scandinavia during the Viking Age, but since these are very rare on Gotland that can explain the lack of linen, at least partly. It may very well be true that linen was more rare on Gotland than on the mainland, but I think the real answer is that we don’t know.