Bocksten tunic
Historical note
Under his cloak, the man wore a tunic of by now yellow-brown (reddish-brown on the inside) woolen fabric woven in three-handled twill. The fabric was originally felted. This is now only visible on the inside and at the seams. At the right side, the fabric is quite worn. A certain difference in quality can be distinguished between the head part, sleeves and gores, but the difference is not so big to indicate that these parts were made of different fabric.
Around the waist, about 56 cm below the shoulders, there is a 5 cm wide light marking from a belt. The bog’s chemical processes have not changed the color of the fabric here in the same way as on the rest of the tunic. A less clear mark on the shoulder from the hood is visible on the upper part the tunic’s main part.
Pic. 1. ft: Sandklef, Johan Albert, Hallands Kulturhistoriska museum
The front and back are cut in one piece, which means that the shoulder seams are missing. An almost round hole was cut out for the head. The tunic width was increased at the bottom with gores in the middle of the front part, in the back part and in the sides. In the middle of the front part and in the middle of the back part, the fabric’s width is 58 cm. In the middle of the front part, a 48 cm wide gore was inserted. It consists of two pieces, sewn in half, placed against the fold of the slit on the inside of the garment. The gore in the back is about the same size but cut in one piece. In order to match the appearance of the front gore, a fold was sewn along the midline of the gore, a so-called false seam. The gores in the sides, unlike the front and back gores, are sewn in in the opposite direction, i.e. in the weft direction according to the longitude of the tunic. The right side has two gores sewn in, the left side has only one.
Pic. 2. Hallands Kulturhistoriska museum
The wrist parts are even and have a slightly different cut. The arms have a straight cut at the top, where they are wide, and narrow at the wrists. The left sleeve is cut in one piece with two small gores inserted at the top of the bottom part of the sleeve. The right sleeve is joined by two parts: a larger front part and a narrower back part. Like the left sleeve, it has two inserted gores. At the bottom, the sleeves are finished with a 1 cm wide hem.
In the process of the garment’s reconstruction it was discovered that folds of sleeves and sleeve gores demonstrated the back gore of the right sleeve and the front gore of the left sleeve should be swapped. This means that the measurements of the upper parts of the sleeves correspond to the measurements of the wrist parts better.
There is also an opinion that the sleeves were split at the bottom, i.e. they were not sewn together all the way. However, any noticeable difference in stitch marks in the upper and lower parts of the sleeves that would justify this were not be found. Since the width at the wrists was sufficient for the garment to be put on and taken off unhindered, the sleeves were sewn together all the way down.
Examples of our work
