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3 - King Harald’s Grey Cloak: Vararfeldir and the Trade in Shaggy Pile Weave Cloaks between Iceland and Norway in the Late Viking and Early Middle Ages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2024

Gale R. Owen-Crocker
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Summary

King Haraldr stayed most often in Hǫrðaland and Rogaland and so did others of the brothers. They frequently stayed in Harðangr. It happened one summer that an ocean-going ship came from Iceland, owned by Icelanders. It was loaded with sheepskin wares, and they sailed the ship to Harðangr because they had heard that there the largest numbers of people were to be found. But when people came to do business with them, no one wanted to buy the sheepskin wares. Then the skipper goes to see King Haraldr, because he already knew him to speak to, and tells him of this problem. The king says that he will come to see them, and he does so. King Haraldr was an unpretentious person and a great one for fun. He had come there with a fully manned boat. He looked at their wares and said to the skipper: ‘Will you give me a grey cloak?’ ‘Willingly,’ says the skipper, ‘or more, if you like.’

Then the king took a cloak and put it over his shoulders. Then he went down to his boat. And before they rowed away, every one of his men had bought a cloak. A few days later so many people came there, each of whom wanted to buy a cloak, that only half of those who wanted to have one got it. After this he was known as Haraldr grafeldr (Grey-Cloak).

This important event in the life of the Norwegian King Harald Greycloak (b. c. 935, d. c. 970 CE), described in Old Norse by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson in his thirteenth- century history of the Norwegian kings, Heimskringla, appears to lie at the root of some conclusions that have been drawn about the origins of the shaggy pile weave textiles in Norway, known as röggvarfeldur or röggvarvefnaður in Iceland. Vararfeldir is another term used to describe woven mantles with a piled surface that had been in vogue around Northern Europe from the sixth century and survived to the late medieval period. Their true origins are to be found in Antiquity, with the earliest documented examples of this cloth type appearing in Bronze Age Sumeria, 5,000 years ago (see discussion on pp. 69–72, below).

Type
Chapter
Information
Textiles of the Viking North Atlantic
Analysis, Interpretation, Re-creation
, pp. 51 - 73
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2024

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