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.