Today I will describe one of the larger garments. The sark is the garment which was worn closest to the body in the woman’s clothing, both before, during and after the Viking age. One difference between how the sark was used in the Viking age compared to the later period is that Viking age sarks often were visible, at least the shoulders and sleeves.

The Viking age sark used to be made of linen, always in tabby. The linen was typically undyed and probably what we today call half-bleached, which means that it was not pure white but not as grey as unbleached linen. There are also finds of sarks which have been dyed blue with woad.

Today we will focus on the simple, smooth sark. It is best known from smooth fragments of linen found behind the tortoise brooches in graves in Birka, but also from e.g. scissors hanging further down on the body. This indicates that the sark had long sleeves and the same fabric everywhere. Depictions of women also use to show garments with long sleeves. The sark in Birka had a slit at the front of the neckline which could be really long, probably to make nursing easier. The edges of the slit could be held together with a small round brooch or with a small horseshoe brooch of silver.

Aside from these finds we have no sources showing us how the sark was cut. Instead we can look at how sarks were cut after the Viking age. Since they continued to have the same, simple cut all the way up til the 1800s, we can guess that they were cut in that way in the Viking age too. This means that we suppose that the sark was made from square pieces and gores.

On the photo to the left, taken by Iduna Pertoft Sundarp, I am wearing a simple, smooth sark. In my case the slit is not especially deep, but I should probably put a small round brooch there anyhow. You can see that I am immensely proud of the rake with the teeth pointing in all directions.

You can buy our pattern for the simple sark here: Sark and Smokkr