Today it is Christmas Day and in Sweden calendars normally stop at Christmas Eve, so we can see this as an extra day in this Yule Calendar. Therefore I have chosen a special garment which we know very little about.

There is no clear archaeological evidence for veils from the Viking age. In some graves, e.g. in Oseberg, thin textiles interpreted as ‘veil cloth’ have been found. As I mentioned earlier in the calendar, these could very well be remains of so called Dublin caps instead. Also there are no depictions of women wearing veils. On depictions women are bareheaded as a rule.

The only indications of a veil that we have from Norse Viking age are the Icelandic sagas and since they are written down during the later Medieval, period they could very well be describing their contemporary clothing instead. In these sagas weddings can be described as ‘walking below the veil’ (probably a very bad translation, but the main point is that veils are associated with weddings). This is often seen as a Christian custom but in the Anglo-Saxon England married women wore veil already before Christianity became common, so it is possible that this custom could be found in Viking context before Christianity too.

Even if we accept that the veil may have existed, we know very little about what it might have looked like. In the pictures here you can see two different possible recreated veils. On the top left, I’m wearing a short silk veil pinned over a Dublin cap. On the bottom left picture the veil is based on the Stuttgart Psalter from the 800s (Stuttgart Psalter). I am wearing it together with a dress reconstructed from the same source. The wide tablet woven braids from Hørning that I mentioned in connection with the semicircular cloak could also have come from a similar veil.

There is no pattern for a veil because we know too little about them, but if I manage to make a pattern booklet about the Carolingian woman’s clothing I promise to at least include the large veil. Instead I can point you to the possibility to buy all our pattern booklets for Viking age clothing and get one free here: 10 booklets for the price of 9.