Överhogdal tapestries
Sweden’s oldest pictorial weavings, with animals, ships and houses in rows – found in a church in Härjedalen.
The hangings were found in Överhogdal church in 1910, where they had been used as floor rags. Radiocarbon dating places them between 1040 and 1170, at the turn from the Viking Age to the Christian Middle Ages. They are shown at Jamtli in Östersund.
Materials: Wool and linen, vegetable-dyed
Manufacture: Woven in a technique with wefts floating over the warp (soumak) on a narrow loom.
The rows of horses, elks, birds and ships, densely packed without perspective.
The few colours: red, blue, yellow and brown, from plants.