16

Technological capacity of women in the High Middle Ages

Janken Myrdal and Ingvild Øye

The High Middle Ages was a period of wide-ranging economic expansion. In this chapter, we aim to elucidate women’s role in this change to highlight their technological skills, as their role has not been taken fully into account in earlier research. The socioeconomic transformations and growth of the population in the period 1000–1300 was combined with the spread of agrarian technology and new forms of land use. Several innovations had emerged and had been adopted for a long time in certain regions, but during this period, they were further developed and spread to new areas.¹ When assessing the role of technology in social change, the general spread of technology is more important than single innovations or regional spread of implements or methods.

An important part of the general economic expansion was the growing regional and long-distance trade with the establishment of towns and markets.² Agriculture was gradually influenced by commercialisation and women habitually worked with refining products. The examples here are dairying and textile production, transforming milk into butter (and cheese), and wool and plant fibres into textiles – altogether, more durable and marketable goods. Women also had a strong position in brewing, but not in connection with long-distance trade.³

High-quality textiles had been a major commercial product in long-distance trade for millennia. Also, butter had a high value per weight unit, as it contained the fat of the milk, and therefore could bear its transport costs. Textiles and butter also formed an important part of obligations to both secular and ecclesiastical institutions, such as land rent, tithes, and other fiscal duties.

Secondary products of high quality, with much materialised value, demanded greater skills and technological know-how than producing only for household consumption. Outside the guilds in the towns, such tacit knowledge was transmitted by face-to-face communication between generations, both in the female and male work spheres.

Increased production together with improved qualities involved technical changes. For textiles it has been claimed that this development was made possible by the introduction of the horizontal loom operated by male weavers, and thus also represented a shift in gender roles,⁴ which we regard as a simplification and partly also wrong.⁵ For dairy production, the technological change and an increased need for skills has simply been overlooked.⁶

In a review article about gender and technology, Francesca Bray states that one fundamental way in which gender is expressed in any society is indeed through technology, where skills and domains generally are divided between and within the sexes. Gender systems are difficult to change, but new technologies may promote boundary changes and renegotiations of what is considered masculine and feminine.⁷ Historical evidence attests that textile production and dairying represent a long-established female know-how in gendered work domains, culturally coded as feminine,⁸ but what we want to highlight here are the changes within these work domains. This issue represents more than just functional aspects; it also affects social positions within broader societal structures. For the Late Medieval Period the role of women’s work, with a decrease in population and increased demand for their work, especially in cattle breeding regions, has been acknowledged.⁹ Here, we claim that women’s contribution to the general expansion even in the foregoing centuries was crucial. To understand how, some essential theoretical concepts have to be mentioned: technological complex and production chains.

In the history of technology, the concept ‘sociotechnical systems’ has been used to denote the link between social structure and technology.¹⁰ This is an important concept to understand how technologies and associated gender patterns fuse into systems of longue dureé. However, we also make use of the concepts ‘technical system’ or ‘technological complex’, by which we signify a systemic study of technology as such. To analyse technical details and how they form systems is a prerequisite to identifying the link to the social structure more clearly.¹¹ Following from identifying technology as such, a core concept in our analysis is the so-called chaîne opératoire, operational sequence.¹² Breaking the action of production into steps of operations and stages exposes the different actors involved, and these working stages in production are connected to the social and gender representation of technologies, where technical skills and domains of expertise may be divided between and within the sexes. Large or all parts of the production chain within textile production and dairying were in the hands of women. A disregard of the operational sequence thus leads to a disregard of the role of a large female rural workforce behind the finished product. For instance, overestimating only one stage in the process such as weaving becomes, then, a misjudgement, or at least an oversimplification.

When studied as an integrated entity of interconnected work operations, it becomes obvious that innovations at one level had wide-ranging consequences for other elements in a technological complex and in all the other stages in the work process. This approach, then, helps to identify ‘trivial’ but obligatory stages in relation to those that have been regarded as the more ‘important’ and complicated ones, stages not only necessary but also important for both the quality and quantity of the production. Accordingly, we thus highlight the importance of the detail, moving from a few well-known innovations in arable farming (the wheel-plough, the watermill) to the many minor innovations that together shaped a new technological milieu. François Sigaut persuasively advocates research about details in material life, formulated as a study of the practical intelligence, which is not formed on a lower level than the abstract intelligence. By this he refers to the philosopher Henri Bergson, who sees intelligence as the human relation to and manipulation of matter. The abstract must thus be partly abandoned in favour of the concrete, and Sigaut even declares that “les details qui son le vrai realité”.¹³ Certainly, this does not mean that we underestimate the overarching level; instead, we see an integration of social action and technology, as well as a connection between ‘micro-macro’ – the inclusion of everyday skills and techniques within larger socioeconomic movements. Hence, we combine detailed empirical observations within more broad-ranging comparative perspectives.

Our assertion of an underestimation of women’s role and work in the High Middle Ages springs forward and is constructed around the concepts of gender-related tasks and technological change on a detailed level in the whole chain of production. Our hypothesis is that the economic change opened possibilities for further developed skills and technological know-how among women, and that this development also constituted a significant part of the expansion.

Sources

The multitude of details in the everyday use of techniques is often difficult to explore, and several source categories have to be considered: archaeological remains, iconography and images, besides written sources. A comparison with later ethnological sources is also of vital importance as medieval evidence is often patchy and enigmatic. Issues to consider, then, are how to combine information from different sources and how to handle the problem with e silentio reasoning. We start with a general presentation before returning to the evidence in the cases below.

When combining different kinds of sources, they have to be assessed in relation to their specific contribution to the research question, their contexts and for validity. Neither archaeologists nor historians can claim that their sources are the most salient, while others are merely complementary. The sources often have to be assessed separately, but a greater integration of sources provides a broader framework for interpretation and a more holistic outlook. Briefly stated, written sources in this context often amount to historical accounts, but information can also be collected from a wider spectre of sources such as law codices, diplomas, and collections of proverbs, amongst others. Texts give a social, economic, and chronological context but information about technical details is often missing. Archaeology provides finds of tools and textiles, but generally only as fragments. Also, environmental evidence, where science-related methods within zooarchaeology (osteology) and archaeobotany, reveals information about animal husbandry and plant production of textile fibres. Textile remains provide evidence for qualities and techniques, while remains of implements give information about their design and technical details, material, contexts, and dating. By testing how replicas of various tools function, experimental archaeology has contributed to the understanding of technology. Iconographic evidence, mainly from the thirteenth century onward, visualises tools and the gestures of actors. This material is often underutilised because of the fear of influence from other regions and the artist’s assumed ignorance of everyday objects. This could be partly correct, but when regional comparisons are made, they show that many details are correctly depicted according to the prevailing regional culture.

Comparing archaeological and historical evidence with well-preserved and well-described ethnological sources is a rewarding method, but the risk is that changes over time are overlooked. The ‘ethnological mistake’, believing in an unchanging folk culture, should be avoided.

Another methodological problem concerns what is missing. To understand technological change, the absence of innovations also has to be identified. Reasoning e silentio is a risky task and demands a certain amount of material so a conclusion can be drawn, that is: if the studied technology had been fairly widespread it ought to have turned up if there is an abundance of source-material at hand. Often, we have to handle a few specimens unevenly spread in time and space, and it is necessary to identify where and when there is enough evidence to draw conclusions about non-existent techniques.

Most of the archaeological material – both tools and textiles – consists of organic material, which is only found under favourable conditions; in Europe usually in humid cultural layers. This applies to textiles and most of the tools in textile production, and to nearly all the objects used in dairy production. Wood and textiles have been preserved from some Roman sites in England; moreover, occasionally from burials and settlements in Scandinavia and in humid settlements along the North Sea coast during the first millennium of our era, from fortresses at the southern Baltic in the ninth century and then from the High Middle Ages with a large number of urban wet layers in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and northern Russia (Novgorod), and further from Greenland with a large amount of organic material preserved by the cold climates.

For textile production parts of implements were made of more durable material, stone, and clay, such as spindle whorls that helped the drop-spindle to rotate and twist the fibres of wool or vegetal material into yarn, and the loom weights, to horizontal looms, that stretched the warp threads. These finds illuminate the level and range of textile production and provide vital information concerning chronology, technical level, and scale of specialisation.

The English medieval written accounts are so rich that they often have been used as a model for the rest of Europe, but we have to use a much more varied palette of written records, and these are as unevenly spread as the archaeological remains. Scattered evidence often only allows us to tell what existed, and we cannot tell how common these methods or tools were.

Most of the medieval images, here utilized as evidence for everyday life, have a religious iconography, which steers what is represented. For instance, dairy production is nearly exclusively depicted in images showing witches stealing milk and butter from neighbours and this motif is late medieval and exists in Northern Europe (the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Scandinavia). Archaeological material shows, then, that the implements in these images, such as the butter churn, were in use much earlier.

Necessary reasoning about the lack of technology, in relation to the introduction of new methods and tools, must therefore be very cautious and take into account the amount of evidence. For instance, concerning wooden objects we can form an opinion about some regions from where we actually have wooden artefacts, while other regions remain in the dark.

Textile production

The expanding mass production of various cloths starting in the High Middle Ages was an integral part of local and regional economies and local, regional, and long-distance trade. Not least the expanding maritime transport needed textiles on a large scale, for sails, covers, rapping and packaging of commodities, and other equipment, in addition to their use in various kinds of clothing. High-quality textiles were important status symbols and social markers in secular as well as ecclesiastical settings. Textile production, then, both rural and urban, became one of the most important industries, measured by employment and value output in many areas of medieval Europe and the leading manufactured commodity in regional and international trade.¹⁴ It was also one of the most labour intensive and an industry of great societal and social significance too.

Specialised production in urban environments depended on surplus rural production of raw and semifinished materials and had to rely on wider networks for supply and transport of manufacture. The first steps in the production started in the countryside with an increase in sheep breeding. As evidenced in literary sources and through zooarchaeology in England and the North Atlantic,¹⁵ animal farming increasingly favoured wool production; by a preference of rams to ewes and by delaying the slaughtering age to achieve more and more homogenous wool. Inevitably, this led to an intensified use of outlying resources (outfields, pastures, woodlands, etc.) and all the connected work, herding (and also milking ewes and cows), plucking and shearing fleece, sorting it into different wool qualities and categories, separating the shorter and finer under wool from the longer coarser wool. After combing the long-haired outer wool, the spinning could start – either spun individually of only short or long fibres, or mixed.¹⁶ The use of hemp and flax included even more steps after harvesting – rippling in water and retting for loosening up and separating the fibres, and then drying, beating, and hackling, or combing. These were altogether time-consuming processes carried out by workers of different age and gender – and largely a female workforce. First, after these preparatory stages, fibres were ready to be spun into yarn and then woven into fabrics of various qualities, depending on their use. Analyses of preserved textiles reveal meticulous processing of fibres, selective breeding of sheep, and indirectly of ancient animal farming.¹⁷ The production took place in different seasons of the agricultural year, mostly in the summer, in different spaces of the farmland – arable fields, pastures, and outlying areas – and the spinning and weaving took place in various work environments and also indoors in the winter, in separate or integrated buildings at farms, in villages, or in towns. All these factors, including climate, could in turn promote regional specialisation of sheep breeding and cultivation, for labour and transport, connecting them to specialised urban crafts. Here, new technology could offer new possibilities for action also at a distance, for connection and coalition between rural and urban areas.

The mounting mass production of various cloth starting in the High Middle Ages involved specialisation only in one or a few of the steps of these working operations, especially spinning and weaving, and in different settings, including workshops for special commodities. Specialised textile production in the towns depended, however, on a rural surplus production. More efficient tools for weaving such as the horizontal treadle loom and specialised urban workshops led to an increased demand for wool and yarn – and consequently increased exploitation of rural resources: grazing land for sheep breeding and a rural workforce for herding animals, plucking, and shearing wool, washing, drying, and sorting wool, before it was combed and spun. Not least the demanding and time-consuming spinning was a bottleneck as for time and competence for producing yarns of different qualities – depending on what kind of textiles and qualities that was in demand.

The horizontal loom can be traced with reasonable certainty back to the early-eleventh and twelfth centuries in urban settings in North-Western Europe. During the first centuries of the period, however, different types of looms were in use – the long-established vertical warp-weighted loom, to some degree also a vertical two-beam loom, and the new horizontal treadle loom.¹⁸ The invention of the great spinning wheel came later, in the early-fourteenth century, at the earliest in England and Flanders.¹⁹ Spinning was, then, done on the hand-turned drop-spindle and remained in use across the whole period under discussion. The drop-spindle simply consisted of a spinning rod – the spindle – supplied with a spindle whorl to help the rotation and twist the fibres into yarn of various qualities. A large female workforce both in rural areas and in new textile centres was needed to meet these challenges related to both time and quality.

Tools and technological capacity

The upright warp-weighted loom continued to be the principal tool and weaving method in domestic production far into the Middle Ages. In the process of weaving the vertical warp threads are divided in different layers by a movable heddle between the two upright beams so that sheds can be created. In the vertical loom the warp threads are held tight by loom weights, where a certain number of threads are attached to each weight, and the weft beaten upward using a weaving beater.²⁰ Finds of loom weights indicate that they could produce cloth of two metres or more in width but would then have to be operated by two weavers, one on each side. Working on the upright loom was hard work, working upward against gravity.

Recent experiments of spinning and weaving based on old technology of the drop-spindle and the warp-weighted loom at the Centre of Textile Research (CTR) in Copenhagen²¹ and in the museum village Düppel in Berlin²² have demonstrated how the various processes within the production are influenced by using different raw materials, and how variations in weights of both spindle whorls and loom weights affect the quality of the finished product. They also show how textiles depended on the labour and quality of all the foregoing processes, material used, and the labour input in sorting, cleaning, and combing fibres. Spinning was the most time consuming, taking about an hour to spin forty metres of yarn of medium thickness, and weaving 2.7 centimetres cloth per hour at a width of two metres. The time varied, however, based on the quality of the fibres, yarn, and tools – thinner threads are generally more time consuming than spinning coarser yarn. Related to weaving, spinning took two thirds of the time.²³ In general, surveys one can find quite different information about the ratio between spinning and weaving, and as for the efficiency of the tools. Some seem to underestimate the time needed, counting on a production of as much as 110 metres yarn per hour when using the drop-spindle but without substantiating these estimates.²⁴

A common characteristic for the new horizontal loom is that the warp threads are stretched out horizontally between two cloth beams, one in front of the seated weaver and another in the far end of the loom, and the sheds are steered by foot treadles and the weft inserted by a shuttle. The principle of creating sheds is, however, the same for the vertical and the horizontal loom, but a major difference between the two looms was the length of the woven cloth, making it possible to operate twenty to thirty metre-long threads and weave a correspondingly long cloth.²⁵ Early depictions of the horizontal loom show, however, that it limited the width of the cloth to the arm stretch of a single weaver, and those from the latter part of the fourteenth century also illustrate looms operated by two weavers with four treadles able to weave broader cloth.

The horizontal loom with its better control over the sheds produced, then, longer and also more uniform and densely woven fabrics, and could do it much faster. It has been estimated to have represented more than a three-fold increase compared to the warp-weighted loom.²⁶ All in all, the horizontal loom clearly represented a large increase in productivity during the period. The implementation and spread of the horizontal loom and the expansion of the textile industry had thus wide-reaching consequences for all the other processes involved, and hence, women’s working conditions. It did, then, affect women working in the new urban textile centres as well as in rural areas.

Various conditions for production

To illuminate this issue further, three regions are used as examples to assess how environmental conditions, cultural traditions, and urbanisation had an effect as on the for acceptance or dismissal of new technology, in the case of weaving in a gender perspective: England with a fast growing urban textile industry affecting both rural and urban production; Scandinavia with less but various degrees of urbanisation and specialisation within textile production; and rural Iceland without any towns but still with a surplus textile production.

Within the expanding textile production in North-Western Europe, England at an early stage became one of the most important areas. Already from the early-twelfth century onward, significant changes in animal husbandry concur with the upswing of textile production and the emergence of guilds for weavers in towns such as Lincoln in the 1120–30s, York and Winchester by royal charters in 1155, and Winchester, Oxford, Huntingdon, Nottingham, and York in the period 1154–89.²⁷ It has been regarded as unlikely that such expanding weaving centres here and elsewhere in Europe could have been using anything other than the new treadle loom, and that it was operated by men. The two-beam loom and the warp-weighted loom seem, however, to have been in use well after the mid-eleventh century, when the first archaeological remains of the horizontal loom appear at York, as the parts for controlling the weaving shed, and dated to the eleventh and twelfth centuries.²⁸ The technological change is also indicated by a marked change in archaeological textiles to fabrics of 2/1 twills, forming a pattern of distinct diagonal lines of z-spun (i.e., clockwise spun or right-hand spun) warp and softer s-spun (i.e., anticlockwise spun or left-hand spun) weft. It mainly replaced the traditional fabrics of balanced 2/2 twill and z/z spun yarn in both the warp and the weft that to a large extent was produced on the vertical loom, as well as the plain tabbies, where each weft thread crosses the warp threads by going over one, then under the next.²⁹ However, remains of starting borders that were used on the warp-weighted loom have shown that 2/1 twills were also woven on the warp-weighted loom, and it has been shown that it is fully possible to also weave this pattern on the warp-weighted loom, which was especially suitable for producing light and tight weaves. Such weaves are therefore no clear proof of the horizontal loom in itself.³⁰

Different types of looms were also still in use at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and seemingly also even longer into the Late Middle Ages.³¹ Nevertheless, the horizontal loom and guilds were undoubtedly crucial elements within the expanding textile industry in urban England.³² Although the role of guilds has been much debated,³³ the issue of gender has largely been a non-issue, and a male dominance has been taken as a precondition. Historians of women and gender have, however, questioned the previous assumptions of the guilds as an all-male terrain, especially as for the early period of the guild system. At this stage, the guilds may to a large degree have been organised within a household-like framework. Here, also women could have played crucial roles, as wives, daughters, and widows as participants in the family business.³⁴ Although guilds prevented females from gaining status as craftspeople, it still happened but mostly without getting a juridical and fiscal identity. It has therefore been warned against a too simplistic reading of craft rules since guilds were not one single hierarchical structure and could also imply a complex collaboration between craftsmen and women.³⁵

The earliest specific mention of the weavers themselves comes from Beverly and York in the latter part of the twelfth century but without referring to names. By the midfifteenth century, a female weaver appears in Norwich, enrolled as a freeman because she was a worsted weaver, weaving worsteds and in the early 1500s, a riot occurred when the weavers here complained that women were taking over their work.³⁶ That women, even in the Late Middle Ages, could play an important role within guilds of weavers, both as family members and employed staff, is further documented in an ordinance from Bristol from 1461, where master weavers were prohibited from engaging their wives, daughters, and maids as weavers.³⁷ Documentary evidence from various areas of Northern Europe and the Continent also refers to female weavers in the Late Middle Ages, not only from England,³⁸ and shows, then, that weaving still not had become a solely male sphere in urban contexts and indirectly that this was far from uncommon even within long-established guilds late into the Middle Ages.

The many depictions of weaving scenes that appear in European manuscripts, as mural paintings and in other contexts from the middle of the thirteenth century onward in England as well as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, clearly show that not only men but also women participated in the weaving on the horizontal loom.

The development in England thus indicates that the transition from old to new technology was not synchronous and that women also operated the horizontal loom, even within male-dominated guilds but as a subordinate workforce without the same formalised status as the male apprentices and weavers. Such a role is, however, not extraordinary; in rural households the husband was also normally the head and the juridical person. Additionally, the production depended on an integral access to large quantities of wools, sorted, combed, and spun into yarn of various qualities. These processes counted on an even larger female workforce. The rural and urban productive processes were, then, not separate or opposed but complemented each other and were reliant upon each other. This is a matter that has been largely neglected or may often appear and an implied rural/urban dichotomy, rather than seen as complementary processes.

In Scandinavia, archaeological finds of possible remains of the horizontal loom are also found in urban contexts, including various remains for controlling the weaving sheds. The earliest date of a possible pulley block is found in Viking-age Hedeby and dated to the eleventh century, about the same time as the earliest documentation from York. From present Sweden, the earliest finds from Sigtuna and Lund date to the twelfth century.³⁹ Similar artefacts are also revealed in Bergen in Norway, dated to the late-twelfth century and the fourteenth century.⁴⁰ In rare cases, other parts of the loom have also been found, such as reeds for spreading the warp threads, parts of warp beams, treadles, and shuttles. The most complete find complex stems from Riga and from the early part of the thirteenth century.⁴¹ These parts have so far not been found in the areas under discussion here.

Still, weaving on the upright loom seems to have lasted rather long in Scandinavia even in urban settings. In Norway, finds from three of the largest towns, Bergen, Trondheim, and Oslo, demonstrate continuity in its use from the eleventh century into the Late Middle Ages with an increase of finds in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, followed by a decrease in the fourteenth century. The amount of spindle whorls declined correspondingly. Being to a large extent concentrated in separate buildings within the urban tenements, the tools and their find contexts are interpreted as a gender-based production, possibly extending the households’ own needs.⁴² Also in Swedish towns, the warp-weighted loom lasted into the Late Middle Ages, such as in Malmö,⁴³ while the decline started more than a hundred years earlier in Sigtuna and Lund.⁴⁴ Only three of the medieval towns have, then, revealed possible finds of the horizontal loom that coexisted with the old technology of the warp-weighted loom.

The textiles from the same period match to a large degree the tools as for qualities found – both coarser and finer, and woven in various techniques. Like in England, textiles in 2/1 twills and z/s spinning became more frequent by the Early and High Middle Ages and have been interpreted as being woven on the horizontal loom – either in the towns themselves or as imports.⁴⁵ As some of them have starting borders, they cannot, however, be taken as clear proof of that. In Norway, textiles were also to a large extent imported from England. Already by the late-twelfth century onward, scattered sources refer to import of high-quality textiles from England and in increasing amount from the early-fourteenth century.⁴⁶ Also coarser fabrics of so-called vaðmál were from the late 1100s onward imported from Iceland and from the 1300s import in larger scale of coarser textiles and canvas from the Baltic.⁴⁷ In time, this expanding import correlates to the decline in the domestic urban production judging by the declining textile tools at the site.

In Scandinavia, weavers are first mentioned in the Norwegian Urban Code of 1276, specially designed for Bergen and related to the urban taxation. This is about the same time as possible archaeological remains of the horizontal loom appear. Guilds for weavers, and not exclusively male, are only known from Danish areas with the highest urbanisation. When such guilds appear, in the first part of the fifteenth century, it is in fact a female weaver from Ribe, and another female weaver is referred to as member of the Gertrud’s guild in Flensburg, present Germany. The first reference of a male weaver in Denmark comes fifty years later and from the 1500s onward, like in Sweden.⁴⁸

Compared with England, traces of the horizontal loom appeared in Scandinavia just as early, but here weaving on the warp-weighted loom also lasted longer in urban settings. In this region, the expanding long-distance trade, easily available import of textiles in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, seems to have acted as counter force to domestic production on a larger scale. In Scandinavia, guilds for weavers also appear much later and on a rather small scale than in England.

Iceland represents by far the largest textile production area in the North Atlantic and stands out as an area of special interest as it was only carried out by women within a rural household structure solely based on old technology but still on a large scale as a surplus production for export. Here, the production of so-called vaðmál even became the main export article in the High Middle Ages. This was possible by using its comparative advantages in raw material, product specialisation with its vast areas for sheep breeding and flock management in the chilly climate, needing sparse feeding and yielding fine wool. The production is well documented archaeologically and through written sources regarding qualities and quantities, work processes, gender, and working conditions.

The Icelandic law code Grágás from the thirteenth century defines the different qualities of vaðmál, both for domestic use in the households and for export. The household products covered various qualities, used in finer clothes, carpets, bed covers, and others. The commercial weaves, denoted ON vóð vaðmáls, served both as a medium of exchange and value as a standard economic measure and means of currency. It was woven in 2/2 twill technique and of two ells (at 47.4 centimetres) or ninety centimetres as the standard width. It also gives information on their standard qualities – how tight or loose they should be woven, specifying the number of warp threads in the various qualities, and defined by the number of warp threads per ell, from the coarsest types to the finest, 9–10 to 13–14 warp threads per centimetre, respectively.⁴⁹ The length of such a cloth is not specified, but according to later customary norms, the standard length should be twenty ells or 9.5 metres in length and ninety centimetres wide (i.e., 8.55 square metres), evidently not larger than that could be woven by one weaver. Archaeological remains of medieval textiles also substantiate the written information and show that they were woven in a standardised manner.⁵⁰

The working conditions are also defined in the later customary norms in Iceland, the so-called Búalôg, recorded as late in the 1600s however of older origins, probably the 13th century and saying that female weavers and spinsters of subordinate status should work on a full-day basis for board wages. A week’s work is reckoned to be twenty ells or c. 8.4 square metres according to the norm. It also tells that spinning 5 mark of wool (i.e., 1.1 kilograms) would take between twelve and fourteen hours. Moreover, every ell of voð weighed 286 grams per ell (i.e., 0,423 square metres) or 572 grams per square metre according to the same norm,⁵¹ and thus a rather heavy cloth. These working norms are far shorter than indicated by the experiments in spinning and weaving at the Centre of Textile Research referred to above. Using these time estimates it would have taken at least 140 hours to weave a fabric with the same measurements – and far more than a working week, which again implies that the products were coarser and heavier than the textiles in the experiments, and hence faster to produce. This may also indicate that the medieval textile workers were more efficient and with a higher dexterity and achieved since childhood.

The varied source material from Iceland shows, then, that one should be cautious when using dichotomies such as domestic production/crafts, rural/urban economies, and male crafts/female household activities. Large-scale textile production on a specialised level even for export could be carried out and regulated within scattered rural households, mainly carried out by women, and based on specialised farm management of sheep breeding.⁵² The case of Iceland shows moreover that the production was integrated into larger networks, which made it possible to also specialise in a rural setting using old technology.

These cases from various areas of North-Western Europe show, then, that larger parts of textile production in the period c. 1000–1300 were still carried out by an overwhelmingly female workforce both in urban areas and in rural areas, including all the connected work processes in the countryside and directed toward an expanding market. It also added significant income and value in rural production and included female weavers using both new and old technology. That old technology based on the warp-weighted loom could contend in the new market economy is also shown by the specialised production of the multipurpose, functional, and relative reasonable vaðmál.

Dairying

The case of dairying highlights skill requirements outside towns and guilds. Training in the guild system, with apprentices, certainly was an advance in transferring of certain kinds of knowledge. It would indeed be a serious underestimation of the skill-requirement among the rest of the population if one assumed that food production was generally easier than production of shoes, for example.

Butter had been made for millennia, but in the centuries around 1000 AD the growing trade affected technology and methods of production. A precondition was a growing use of and trade with salt, as salted butter could be kept for a long time. Another important novelty was new technology mainly concerning the churning.

In Scandinavia, evidence for butter being produced to pay taxes and rents and also for sale comes from extensive written documentation in law codices and charters, which date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Long-distance trade with butter was sustained from Norway and Denmark from the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, respectively, but from Sweden not until the fourteenth century, but then on a scale that indicates a longer history. Cheese was less important and regarded as luxury product in Scandinavia.⁵³ In the Late Middle Ages livestock production increased and hence also dairy production.

In England, on the other hand, cheese was more important than butter, although butter production was not insignificant. Cheese was considered as common food and was given to harvest workers and others.⁵⁴ Most of the dairy products were consumed locally but a considerable amount was also sold in the towns, not the least in London. Especially from the late-thirteenth century many manors sold cheese. After the Black Death, this manorial production increased for a period, but with higher salaries, dairying gradually became a peasant activity, but still partly directed to the market.⁵⁵

Normally, butter was made from the cream of cow’s milk, but could also be made from the milk of goats and sheep. The product chain for butter comprised milking, cleaning the milk with a sieve, letting cream to rise to be skimmed from the buttermilk, churning the cream, kneading the butter thoroughly and washing it, salting it, and storing it properly. When production was extended to serve a market, it not only required a more efficient production but also that the products should reach a certain level of quality.

All animal husbandry demands a skill labelled as ‘an eye for animal’. This means to be able to read the animal; see if it is sick but also to control it mentally. Milking is a part of this, and can be compared to riding, as it entails a relationship between a human and a large mammal. An unruly cow must be calmed and the cow has to give off its milk. In primitive and less efficient milking a calf is needed (the cow licks the calf and believes she is giving the milk to the calf, or a calf dummy). In Scandinavia, there is no evidence of this method during the medieval period, when it seems to have been abandoned. In Ireland, milking with a calf was common until the Middle Ages, and also in England there is evidence up to the thirteenth century.⁵⁶ It can be assumed that this was not common in large-scale dairy production at the manors.

To reach a high quality of butter (and cheese), cleaning from dirt is essential. This also makes the product more sustainable. Normally, this was done by pouring the milk through a sieve made of hair. A dense hair-sieve is less suitable for cleaning grains than liquids, and it is possible that the hair-sieve mentioned in Gerefa from the tenth century was for liquids, wine, or milk.⁵⁷ This may also apply to some sieves mentioned in manorial accounts (cheese cloth was used for pressing). In Sweden, there is medieval archaeological and written evidence not only of the hair-sieve but also for the frame in which a sieve was put; a wooden bowl with a hole in the bottom.⁵⁸ This wooden milk strainer is easy to identify and has not yet been found in other European assemblages of wood materials.⁵⁹ A Danish-Swedish collection of proverbs from the first half or the middle of the fourteenth century refers to the necessity of cleanliness in dairying, and other written Swedish sources also mention this as essential.⁶⁰ Creaming of much milk demanded many bowls, which is evident from inventories,⁶¹ and thus washing with hot water was an important task. Presumably, the need for cleanliness, and thus also skills, increased with production for the market.

Salting became an available method with increasing trade. Already in Aelfric’s colloquy, from around 1100, the salt trader mentions that butter and cheese would be ruined without him. Sources from the rest of the Middle Ages also often refer to the connection between salt and trade in dairy products.⁶²

When churning, the cream is stirred to make the small globules of butterfat pool together. The oldest method was to shake the cream in a small container – the shake churn. A more efficient method was the plunge churn, where a staff, with a disk or a cross, was plunged down into a high and narrow wooden vessel to make the cream spray up. The disc had holes to make it more efficient, and even the cross could have holes. Basically, this is the same method that is still in use in mechanical churning.⁶³

Working with the shake churn is rather easy and demands only small amounts of cream. Churning with a plunge churn is another matter. It requires hard work and skill. The cream must not become too sour, and most often cream from several days had to be collected to get a sufficient amount to work in a plunge churn. An optimal temperature (15°C–20°C) must be obtained. The plunger should be mowed correctly at an appropriate pace and lifted just over the liquid surface. The time required could vary, and if not done properly churning could be a complete failure.⁶⁴ Along with other skill-related tasks, churning was connected with magic beliefs. Everybody used some harmless white magic, and very often successful neighbours were suspected of using black magic. Skill-related activities have often been assumed to depend on magic, as it is hard to understand why some succeed, and others not. This relates to hunting, fishing and also producing of butter: “butter-luck”. (Today we find the same touch of magic in many elite-sports, where some of the top ranked do weird things before entering the game.) In Northern Europe, magical stealing of milk was one of the most common accusations of witchcraft. Persecutions became copious in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, probably in connection with increasing importance for dairying.⁶⁵ Instead of causing envy, female skills, both in handling cattle and in producing butter (and cheese), later became of interest for early scientific farming, which is another story.

Use of the plunge churn spread across Eurasia, from Mongolia and Tibet in the east to England and Scandinavia in the west. It has been assumed that the oldest evidence for the plunge churn stems from around the beginning of the Common Era and from Britain. A closer look at the evidence, mainly images, shows that this is not totally correct. The implement shown has a staff that was put into a vessel, but the staff and how it is held shows that this most likely was used to whip the cream, and thus was a proto-from, a forerunner, but not a plunge churn. Pieces of wood have also been invoked as evidence, but they can all be interpreted as other tools and there is no evidence of a disc nor a cross as for a plunge churn.⁶⁶ The existence of a possible forerunner, a technical solution used before the final and more perfect solution with the plunge churn, is interesting as it shows that technical change is often much more complicated than assumed.

The disc or the cross is easy to identify in archaeological finds of wood, and thus reasoning e slientio is possible for some regions. The plunge churn did not exist along the southern North Sea coast and probably not in England during the first half of the first millennium. The earliest evidence both in images and in archaeology are from the ninth and tenth centuries in a region from southern Denmark to northern France and southern England.⁶⁷ In an Old English-Latin glossary from the sixth century, the shake churn is mentioned, and in a famous English collection of riddles from the tenth century, the plunge churn is regarded as something everybody ought to recognise.⁶⁸ The first breakthrough for the new implement, the plunge churn, in the North Sea region came around the ninth century, but we must be aware that we do not know anything about larger regions – such as most of Central Europe – and cannot conclude that this actually represents the first occurrence of the new implement. The history of technology has shown that tools and methods could exist for centuries in restricted regions before they became more widespread.

Along the southern Baltic, a number of wooden findings come from this same period, the century before 1000, but with no traces of plunge churns. In Norway, there are finds of wooden household artefacts from around 1000, but without any evidence of the plunge churn. Then, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we have a mass of finds and also written evidence all over Northern and Central Europe: in northern Russia in the east, Scandinavia in the north, Britain in the west, and evidence appears in the Netherlands and Germany, including the southern parts of the country. This overall spread must clearly be related to an increase in production, and a need for a more efficient tool. In Ireland, both types of churns existed up to the High Middle Ages,⁶⁹ but in the rest of Northern and Western Europe the shake churn went totally out of use.

When it comes to technical change in cheese production, we will be more succinct, because much research still has to be done about the details. The easiest cheese to produce is cottage cheese where whey is pressed out of fermented milk. This type of cheese is normally consumed fresh, but dried varieties could be preserved for a long time. In Norway and north Sweden such an ‘old cheese’ was produced in Middle Ages (and is still important).

The most common cheese today in Europe make use of rennet. Using rennet makes fermentation go faster and thus preservation is easier, as the cheese can be pressed fresh and more whey can be squeezed out, which turns it into a “hard cheese”. Rennet cheese is very old and was a commodity in the Mediterranean already in antiquity. However, large hard cheese as we know today did not exist in the Roman time. Paul Kindstedt, who has written a good overview, assumes that such cheese was introduced by the Celts, but does not provide any evidence. The earliest large hard cheeses, where there is firm evidence, are those made on English manors, mentioned in the accounts from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.⁷⁰ Presumably the innovation, the large hard cheese, belongs to the High Middle Ages. A large hard cheese demands a significant amount of milk. Perhaps such a cheese was a specialty for the manors before the Late Middle Ages when peasant flocks increased in number and manors gave up dairy production. Such a large hard cheese demands highly developed technical know-how, especially to avoid rotting (all whey has to be pressed out). On the English manors in the High Middle Ages, this production was mainly a female task. Here we have to be somewhat detailed about the skill needed for producing a large hard cheese. The production chain after rennet has been added to the warmed milk is then: the curd produced is cut into pieces; the whey is pressed out often several times and using cloth and wooden moulds; the cheese is salted. A last and very important part of the process is to dry the cheese, which can be done in different ways. As Kindstedt points out, the climate in Northern Europe favours the keeping of milk several days, which not only affects the butter production but also the large hard cheese production.⁷¹

Sometimes you can come across modern advertising claiming that cheese varieties are very old, but this is basically false. Modern famous varieties were developed in the Late Middle Ages, the Early Modern period and more recently. Cheese production in the Alps has been well studied and it has been proven that the famous varieties, such as Gruyer, were not developed as a specific type until large-scale trade followed from the increase in livestock production after the Black Death. In the Alps, there are examples of earlier large hard cheeses, indicated by huge kettles, but this was not the dominant form.⁷²

In Sweden, a questionnaire was sent to all medieval archaeologists about wooden pieces that could have been used as moulds for cheese production. By combining the information with written sources, a fairly good overview of cheese production in the High Middle Ages can be acquired. From at least the late-thirteenth century, a small hard rennet cheese was produced, often from sheep’s milk. This has a later equivalent, presumably a relict, in the Sami reindeer cheese, and etymology shows that Sami cheese technology has been taken over from the early Swedish hard cheese production. In the Late Middle Ages, production of large hard cheese started, often using milk from several farms.⁷³

Increased cheese production was a trend all over Europe in the High Middle Ages, with England likely the most developed region. We do not know when large hard cheese was introduced in England, but an established market economy was probably a prerequisite. In the rest of Europe, cottage cheeses and small hard cheeses were the common types, but in the Late Middle Ages new production centres developed oriented to long-distance trade.

After having described technology and production, the next question is then: who produced these dairy products? Worldwide, women have been in charge of milk and refining of milk. Men and boys have taken care of the milk as shepherds, when the animals could not reach the farm to be milked. There are examples of such from Anglo-Saxon written sources.⁷⁴ Manorial accounts provide evidence that women were responsible for all the large cheese production and other dairy activities. The woman in charge was called the dey (‘daege’) in England (‘deja’ in Scandinavian languages) – a word that goes back to an old denomination for the woman who kneads the dough for bread (and handles it out), with the meaning changed, however, to ‘dairy-woman’. Debby Banham assumes this changed meaning was related to with dairying becoming more complex,⁷⁵ and here we would like to add, also because it became economically more important.

A hypothesis is that the relatively low wages paid to women working with dairy was related to the lack of skills needed in these tasks.⁷⁶ As seen from above, this cannot be the reason; instead, we have to discuss it from a gender perspective to see the low wages were a part of suppression.⁷⁷ Deborah Simonton has remarked, for a later period, that dairying was a typical part of female skill training and intelligence; it was recognised as a craft and involved the passing of skills from mother to daughter.⁷⁸ Though men could take part, especially when cheese production in some regions became a large-scale activity engaging most of the family, such as in Late Medieval Switzerland,⁷⁹ all of the changes we have described above took place in a nearly exclusive female work sphere.

Concluding remarks

The changes and technological transition represented here was not a shift from a female to a male sphere and from a domestic to a commercial enterprise. Within the new guild structure and associated production, women both in towns and rural areas still constituted a basic workforce, although with a subordinate and less regulated status. The guilds and other actors in the growing market economy depended increasingly on the labour of female workers both in urban and rural environments. Their diverse skills in textile production were needed even more when the production grew larger in scale and was directed toward an expanding market. Dairy production also became a part of the growing commercialisation but remained a rural activity in the female sphere. When butter and cheese were traded on a larger scale, women played an even greater role.

This technological change 1000–1300 in textiles and dairying could not have been identified without going into detail and analysing the whole production chain, and the underestimation of women’s role is partly due to a simplified view of everyday technology. If we understand the technological system in relation to social structure and gender in society, technological change could have other percussions than what happened in Europe. Francesca Bray, in her seminal book on gender roles in China, showed how women lost a part of their work sphere when textile production expanded and was moved outside the household, as women were strictly confined to work within the household. However, we also have examples of expanding textile production in China which strengthened women’s role in that sector.⁸⁰ In North-Western Europe women’s work was regarded as crucial to run the household, partly because necessities built into the technical structure. Men could not both manage the arable farming and cumbersome parts of animal husbandry such as dairying. When these sectors expanded; dairy production and textile production, they to a high degree remained in the female work sphere.

Several historians have argued that women’s active participation in the production was an asset in the general European economic expansion from the Early Modern period and onward, for instance Luiten van Zanden who labelled this as ‘girl power’.⁸¹ The reasons for women’s increasingly active role in the labour market in North-Western Europe are certainly multifaceted, but one could be the dynamic technology in a technical structure, which utilised female work power and skill. This high degree of technological know-how and competence increased with the increased demand in the High Middle Ages when the production was directed to the market. Underestimation of the role women played during this period of expansion could thus also hamper more general interpretations about the content and direction of this crucial period.

Notes

1. See G. Astill and J. Langdon (eds.), Medieval Farming and Technology. The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe (Leiden, 1997); E. Thoen and T. Soens (eds.), Struggling with the Environment: Land Use and Productivity, Rural Economy and Society in North-Western Europe, 500–2000 (Turnhout, 2015), and for a summary of the debate, J. Myrdal, ‘The Middle Ages: Agrarian Revolution or Slow Evolution? A Research Overview’, in M. Gustavsson and D. Retsö (eds.), Långa linjer och många fält (Stockholm, 2015), 19–49.

2. See chapters in L. van Molle, and Y. Segers (eds.), The Agro-Food Market: Production, Distribution, and Consumption (Turnhout, 2013).

3. The most detailed study based on a superior source material concerns England: J. M. Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (New York,1996); For Germany: see E. Uitz, Die Frau in der mittelalterlichen Stadt (Leipzig, 1988), 66–8; for Scandinavia: E. Kjersgaard, Mad og øl i Danmarks middelalder (Copenhagen, 1978), 89–98; K. Malmsten, ‘Bryggestol’, in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. Fra vikingtid til reformasjonstid, vol. 2 (Oslo-Malmö-Copenhagen, 1957), 276–8.

4. E.g. M. E. Mate, Women in Medieval English Society (Cambridge, 1999).

5. See I. Øye, ‘When Did Weaving Become a Male Profession?’, Danish Journal of Archaeology 5:1–2 (2016), 34–51.

6. Mastery of skill in women’s work is sometimes mentioned in passing, e.g., L. L. Frader, ‘Gender and Labor in World History’, in T. A. Maede and M. E. Wiesener-Hanks (eds.), A Companion to Gender History (Oxford, 2004), 26–50, 34, but seldom this is further developed.

7. F. Bray, ‘Gender and Technology’, The Annual Review of Anthropology 38 (2007), 40–2.

8. E.g., D. Herlihy, Opera muliebria. Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York, 1990); C. M. Woolgar, ‘Meat and Dairy Products in Late Medieval England’, in C. M. D. Serjeantsin and T. Waldron (eds.), Food in Medieval England. Diet and Nutrition (Oxford, 2006), 88–101.

9. P. J. P. Goldberg (ed.), Women in England c. 1275–1525. Documentary Sources Translated and Edited by P.C.P. Goldberg (Manchester and New York, 1995); P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c.1300–1530 (Oxford, 1992), 289–91; J. L. van Zanden, The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000–1800 (Leiden, 2009), 120–38; M. E. Mate, Women in Medieval English Society, 57–9.

10. T. P. Hughes, ‘The Evolution of Large Technological Systems’, in W. E. T. Bijker, T.P Hughes and T. J. Pinch (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, 1987).

11. P. Lemonnier, Elements of an Anthropology of Technology (Ann Arbor, 1992), 7–9, 23; J. Myrdal, ‘The Agricultural Transformation of Sweden, 1000–1300,‘ in Astill and Langdon (eds.), Medieval Farming and Technology, 147–71.

12. Lemonnier, Elements, 26–35.

13. F. Sigaut, Comment Homo devint faber: Comment l’outil fit l’homme (Paris, 2012).

14. Lemonnier, Elements; J. Munro, Wool and Wool-Based Textiles in the West European Economy, c. 800–1500: Innovations and Traditions in Textile Products, Technology, and Industrial Organisation. Working Paper no. 5 UT.ECIPA-MUNRO-00-05 (2000).

15. M. L. Ryder, ‘Medieval Sheep and Wool Types’, The Agricultural History Review 32:1 (1984), 14–28; M. L. Ryder, ‘The Human Development of Different Fleece-Types in Sheep and Its Association with the Development of Textile Crafts’, F. Prichard and J. P. Wild (eds.), NESAT VII (Oxford, 2005), 122–8; H. Þorláksson, Vaðmál og verðlag. Vaðmál í utanlandsviðskiptun og í búskap Íslendinga á 13. og 14. öld (Reykjavík, 1991); M. J. Church, S. V.Arge, S. Brewington, T. H. McGovern, S. Perdakaris, I. T Lawson, G. T.Cook, C. Amundsen, R. Harrison, Y. Krivogorskaya and E. Dunbar, ’Puffins, Pigs, Cod and Barley: Paleoecology at Undir Junkarinsfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands’, Environmental Archaeology 10 (2005), 179–97; S. D. Brewington, Third Interim Report on Analysis of Archaeofauna from Undir Junkarinfløtti, Sandoy, Faroe Islands. NORSEC Zooarchaeological Laboratories Report No. 46 (2010).

16. E. A. Strand, ‘Textile Production in Western Europe’, in M. Carver and J. Klápste (eds.), The Archaeology of Medieval Europe, Vol. 2. Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries (Aarhus, 2011), 315–20.

17. E.g., P. W. Rogers, Textile Production at 16–22 Coppergate, The Archeology of York AY17/11 (York, 1997); P. W. Rogers, ‘Textiles, Wool and Hair’, in G. Sveinbjarnardóttir (ed.), Reykholt. Archaeological Investigations at a High-Status Farm in Western Iceland (Reykjavik, 2012), 196–217; M. H. Smith, ‘Weaving Wealth: Cloth and Trade in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland’, in A. L. Huang and C. Jahnke (eds.), Textiles and the Medieval Economy. Production, Trade and Consumption of Textiles, 8th–16th Centuries (Oxford, 2015), 23–40.

18. I. Øye. ‘When Did Weaving’.

19. J. Munro, ‘Medieval Woollen Textiles, Technology and Organization’, in D. Jenkins (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), 181–227.

20. M. Hoffmann. The Warp-Weigthed Loom. Studies in the History and Technology of an Ancient Technology of an Ancient Implement (Oslo, 1964).

21. L. Mårtensson, E. Andersson, M, -L. Nosch & A. Batzer., Technical Report. Experimental Archaeology Part 1a. Tools and Textiles – Texts and Contexts (Research Program. The Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research, CTR) (Copenhagen, 2006).

22. E.-M. Pfarr,‘Handwerk oder Industrie? Erfahrungen bei Herstellung eines hochmittelalterlichen Wollgewebes auf dem Gewichtswebstuhl’, in F. Pritchard and J. P. Wild, (eds.), Northern Archaeological Textiles NESAT VII (Textile Symposium in Edinburgh, 5th–7th May 1999) (Oxford, 2005), 58–64.

23. Pfarr, ‘Handwerk oder Industrie’; Mårtensson et al., Technical Report. Experimental Archaeology Part 1a.

24. Munro, Wool and Wool-Based Textile, 27.

25. A. Rast-Eicher and R. Windler, ‘Mit den Füssen weben. Tradition und Innovation in der mittelalterlichen Websthlgeschichte‘, Zeitschrift für Kunst und Kultur in der Schweiz 57:4 (2006), 29–35.

26. Munro, ‘Medieval Woollen Textiles’, 196; Rast-Eicher and Windler, ‘Mit den Füssen weben’, 32.

27. J. Oldman, ‘Guilds’, in E. Crocker, M. Coatsworth and M. Hayward (eds.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the British Isles c. 450–1450 (Leiden, 2012), 254.

28. P. W. Rogers, ‘Textile Production’; in Encyclopedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles, 1753.

29. Rogers, ‘Textile Production’.

30. K. G. Hagen, Profesjonalisme og urbanisering. Profesjonalismeproblemet i håndverket belyst ved et tekstil- og vevloddsmateriale fra middelalderens Trondheim, fra 1000-tallet frem til slutten av 1300-tallet (Oslo, 1994), 83 with references; Pfarr, ‘Handwerk oder Industrie’.

31. H. Clarke, The Archaeology of Medieval England (London, 1986), 133.

32. E.g. D. H. Evans. ‘Craft and Industries in Beverly and Hull from 1200 to 1700’, in Das Handwerk. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäeologie im Hanseraum V (Lübeck, 2006), 71–92.

33. E.g. S. R. Epstein. ‘Craft Guilds in Pre-Modern Economy: A Discussion’, The Economic History Reviews. New Series. 61:1, 155–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4005760.

34. C. Crowston, ‘Women, Gender, and Guilds in Early Modern Europe: An Overview of Recent Research’, International Review of Social History (IRSH) 53 (2008), Supplement, 19–44, 20–2.

35. G. Rosser, ‘Crafts, Guilds and the Negotiation of Work in the Medieval Town’, Past and Present 154 (1997), 14.

36. B. S. Ayers, ‘Craft Industry in Norwich from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century’, inM. Gläser (ed.), Das Handwerk. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäeologie im Hanseraum V (Lübeck, 2006), 27–46.

37. Goldberg, Women in England, 205.

38. Goldberg, Women in England; M. Rech, Gefundene Vergangenheit. Archäeologie des Mittelalters in Bremen. Mit besonderers Berücksichtigung von Riga. Bremen (Der Landesarchäologe Bremen. Archäeologische Blätter. Beiheft 3) (Bremen, 2004), 290–1.

39. G. Grenander-Nyberg, ‘Looms for Linen’, Laborativ arkeologi 7 (Lund, 1994), 75–7.

40. I. Øye, Textile Equipment and Its Working Environment, Bryggen in Bergen c 1150–1500, The Bryggen Papers. Main Series, vol. 2 (Bergen, 1988).

41. A. Caune and I. Ose, ‘Archäologische Erkenntnisse zum Handwerk in Riga’, in Gläser (ed.), Das Handwerk, 459–72.

42. I. Øye, ‘Tekstilproduksjon i middelalderbyene – mer enn bare husflid?’, in L.-M. Bye Johansen, E. L. Bauer and K. Paasche. (eds.), En aktivist for Middelalderbyen Oslo. Festskrift til Petter B. Molaug i anledning hans 70-årsdag 19. Desember 2014 (Oslo, 2015), 27–54.

43. A. Reisnert, ‘Craft in Malmö during the Medieval and Renaissance Period’, inM. Gläser (ed.), Das Handwerk. Lübecker Kolloquium zur Stadtarchäeologie im Hanseraum V (Lübeck, 2006), 553–65, 562.

44. A. Sjöbeck, The Important Craft. Textile Tools and Production in kv. Trädmästaren in Sigtuna. Unpublished master thesis (Lund, 2014); P. Carelli, En kapitalistisk anda. Kulturella förändringar i 1100-talets Danmark (Lund, 2001).

45. E.g. A. Kjellberg, ‘Tekstilmaterialet fra Oslogate 7. Feltene Oslogate Bebyggelsesrester og funngrupper’, in E. Schia and P. Molaug (eds.), De arkeologiske utgravninger i Gamlebyen, Oslo, vol. 2 (Oslo, 1979), 87, Kjellberg and Hoffmann, ‘Tekstiler’, in E. Schia and P. Molaug(eds.), Dagliglivets gjenstander, De arkeologiske utgravvninger i Gamlebyen, vol. 8 (Oslo, 1991), 13–80.

46. A. Nedkvitne, The German Hansa and Bergen 1100–1600 (Köln, 2014), 28–31, 60–1, 82.

47. K. Helle, Kongssete og kjepstad. Fra opphavet til 1536 (Bergen bys historie, 1) (Oslo–Bergen–Tromso, 1982), 317; G. A. Blom, Hellig Olavs by. Middelalderen til 1537, Trondheims historie bd.1 (Trondheim, 1991), A. Nedkvitne. Byen under Eikaberg. Fra byens oppkomst til 1536, Oslo bys hisorie bd.1 (Oslo, 1991); H. Þorláksson, Vaðmál og verðlag.

48. M. Hoffmann, H, Søgaard, J. Granlund & T.I Kaukonen., ‘Vever’, Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. Fra vikingtid til reformasjonstid, vol. 19 (Oslo–Malmö–Copenhagen, 1975), 679–80.

49. Þorláksson, Vaðmál og verðlag, 206, 223, 228, 234–5, 247.

50. M. H. Smith, ‘Weaving Wealth’, 23–40.

51. Þorláksson, Vaðmál og verðlag, 309.

52. R. Harrison‚ ‘Möðruvellir in Hörgurdalur, N. Iceland. General Overview of the Archaeofauna Analyzed from 2006–08 Midden Mound Excavations’, HERC/NORSE Zooarchaelogical Laboratory Report No. 59 (2011).

53. Yrwing et al., ‘Smörhandel’, Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. Fra vikingtid til reformasjonstid, vol. 16 (Oslo–Malmö–Copenhagen, 1971), 322–35; A. Oja et al., ’Smörskatt’, Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder. Fra vikingtid til reformasjonstid, vol. 16 (Oslo–Malmö–Copenhagen, 1971), 336–42; S. Gissel, ‘Rents and Other Economic Indicators’, in S. Gissel et al. (eds.), Desertion and Land Colonization in the Nordic Countries c. 1300–1600 (Stockholm, 1981), 143–71, map 151; Nedkvitne, The German Hansa.

54. H. E. Hallham, ‘Life of the People’, in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales vol 2: 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 818–53, 831, 835.

55. H. E. Hallham, ‘Farming Techniques: Eastern England’, in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales vol 2: 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 272–312, 310; H. E. Hallham, ‘Farming Techniques: Southern England’, in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales vol 2: 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1988), 341–68, 356–61; B. M. S. Campbell, English Seigniorial Agriculture, 1250–1450 (Cambridge, 2000), 143–51, 159–60; Cf. Woolgar, ‘Meat and Dairy’, 95–100.

56. A. T. Lucas, Cattle in Ancient Ireland (Kilkenny, 1989), 51–5; A. Grant, ‘Animal Resources’, in G. Astill and A. Grant. (eds.), The Countryside of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988), 157.

57. Cf. M. Gardiner, ‘Implements and Utensils in Gerefa and the Organization of Seigneurial Farmsteads in the High Middle Ages’, Medieval Archaeology 50 (2006), 260–6.

58. J. Myrdal, Boskapsskötseln under medeltiden: en källpluralistisk studie (Stockholm, 2012), 137.

59. A list over the most important wood findings in Eurasia is included in J. Myrdal, ‘Transmission of Technology along the Silk Road: Theoretical Reflections and Three Examples’, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities Bulletin 81 (2020), 179–222, 209–15.

60. Myrdal, Boskapsskötseln, 12, 137–8, 279–80.

61. E.g. England, Cf. Campbell, English Seignorial, 145; for Sweden, seeMyrdal, Boskapsskötseln, 135–6.

62. The correlation between increased salt trade and butter was of paramount importance in Scandinavia and has been much discussed, for an overview see Yrwing et al., ‘Smörhandel’. In other countries this relation has been taken for granted, see for instance for England A. R. Bridbury, England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1955), xv–xvi; for Northern France F. Quellier, ‘Northern France, 1000–1750’, in van Molle and Segers (eds.), The Agro-Food Market, 135–62, 146; U. Dirlmeier, ‘Butter’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 2 (München, 2003), 1162, remarks that when salting was important in northern Europe clarified butter was more common in Southern Central Europe.

63. The plunge churn is related to larger quantities. When comparing with whipping cream today we must be aware of the fact that modern whisks are much more efficient than those used in the preindustrial culture (in the north often made of a top of a spruce), nevertheless plunging down into the cream is a more efficient working principle for larger quantities even today.

64. J. Myrdal, ‘Women and Cows – Ownership and Work in Medieval Sweden’, Ethnologica Scandinavica 38 (2008), 61–80, 69.

65. Myrdal, ‘Women and Cows’, 75–8.

66. Myrdal, Boskapsskötseln with references, and for a revision, Myrdal, ‘Transmission’ with a list of finds from northern Europe in the High Middle Ages, based on the catalogue mentioned in note 59.

67. J. Myrdal, ‘The Plunge Churn from Ireland to Tibet’, in F. Alexander and J. Myrdal (eds.), Food and Drink and Travelling Accessories (Edinburgh, 1988), 111–37; Myrdal, Boskapsskötsel, 139–44; Myrdal, ‘Transmission’ supplemented with more evidence from Central Asia, and also from Europe as mentioned in the foregoing note. Here is also a thorough discussion about evidence from Roman Britain, interpretad as protoforms to plungchurns, and not as the plunge churn proper. Protoforms did also exist in Central Asia.

68. A. Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink (Ely, 2010), 263.

69. C. A. Morris, Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Wood and Woodworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York (York, 2000), 2277; C. Earwood, Domestic Wooden Artefacts in Britain and Ireland from Neolithic to Viking Times (Exeter, 1993), 237–8; F. Kelly, Early Irish Farming: A Study Based Mainly on the Law-Texts of the 7th and 8th Centuries AD (Dublin, 1998), 325.

70. P. Kindstedt, Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and Its Place in Western Civilization (White River Junction, Vermont, 2012), 104–11, 135–14, and from research about the accounts e.g. K. Biddick, The Other Economy: Pastoral Husbandry on a Medieval Estate (Berkeley, 1989), 42–3, 94–5.

71. Kindstedt, Cheese, 125.

72. D. Flammer, Schweizer Käse. Ursrpünge, traditionelle Sorten und neue Kreationen (Baden, 2009), 13–5, 25–8; N. Carrier and F. Mouthon, Paysans des Alpes: les communautés montagnardes au Moyen Âge (Rennes, 2010), 60–9, 228, 246–8, 286–7; Kindstedt, Cheese, 148–52 about the development of different cheese variants in Europe.

73. J. Myrdal, ‘Ostar på medeltiden’, in M Gröntoft (ed.), Biskop Brasks måltider: svensk mat mellan medeltid och renässans (Stockholm, 2016), 238–57. The success of the questionnaire regarding recent finds is based on the fact that the medieval archaeologists are well organized, and also maybe that they know Myrdal. He has also, many years ago, gone through most of the collections in different museums.

74. J. Myrdal, ‘Women and Cows’ as for general pattern, Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, 261 about Anglo-Saxon and Mate, Women in Medieval English Society, 3, 14–5 about medieval England.

75. D. Banham and R. Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming (Oxford, 2014), 111.

76. Mate, Women in Medieval English Society, 31, 50.

77. M. Müller, ‘Peasant Women, Agency and Status in Mid-Thirteenth to Late Fourteenth Century England: Some reconsiderations’, in C. Beattie and M. F. Stevens (eds.), Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe (Woodridge, 2013), 91–113, 101.

78. D. Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work: 1700 to the Present (London, 1998), p. 30.

79. W. Bätzing, Die Alpen: Geschichte und Zukunft einer europäischen Kulturlandschaft (München, 2003), 74.

80. F. Bray, Technology and Gender. Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkley, CA, 1997). In B. Li, Agricultural Development in Jiangnan, 1620–1850 (London 1998), women are described as taking more active part in textile production in the Yangtze delta region around the eighteenth century, that is during the first half of Qing dynasty.

81. Zanden, The Long Road.