The Uppsala sock now joins our Nalbound Object of the Week collection. I had the pleasure seeing this sock on display during my first trip out to view extant objects back in June of 1999.
Object name: Uppsala Sock
Description: A light brown sock with a spiral heel (10 rows), slit at the ankle (7 rows), and a darker brown embellishment along the cuff/slit. The toe of the sock has 17 rows.1 The heel is worked in a beautiful perfect spiral; a photo of which is included in Anne Marie Frazén’s article “En medeltida socka i nålning” linked below (as well as other photos taken during conservation). The sock is 21 cm long with a 5 cm ankle shaft.2
Dated to: Found in late medieval layers3
Find location: Excavated in December of 1961 in plot 8 of the excavations of Duvan quarter in Uppsala, Sweden, amongst a large quantity of leather shoe remains.4
Material: now light brown S-spun Wool. The ankle decoration is a now dark brown S-twisted, fairly thick, wool yarn.5
Stitch(es) used: Mammen, UOO/UUOO [F2] (Frazén’s article shows a diagram of the stitch (upside down), but does not specify the connection used. However, she does say it is the same stitch found in the Mammen pennants and in the Egyptian sock described by Schinnerer in Antike Handarbeiten.)6
Inventory number: Uplandsmuseets inventarienummer UM11107
Current location: Upplandsmuseet (not on display)
Link to museum catalog or other data: https://digitaltmuseum.se/011023866712/socka
Some sources in which more information can be found:
Frazén, Anne Marie. “En medeltida socka i nålning” in Uppland: årsbok. Upplands fornminnesforening, 1963. Pgs. 38-47.
Kania, Katrin. Kleidung im Mittelalter: Materialien, Konstruktion, Nähtechnik : Ein Handbuch. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. ISBN: 978-3-412-20482-2.
Rothquist, Linnéa, Anita Andersson, Håkan Liby och Olle Norling. “SÖMA, NÅLA, BINDA nålbundet från Uppland”. 2003.
Additional Photographs:
Photo: Upplandsmuseet Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
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- Frazén, Pg. 39. ↩︎
- Frazén, Pg. 39. ↩︎
- Frazén, Pg. 41. ↩︎
- Frazén, Pgs. 38 & 41. ↩︎
- Frazén, Pgs. 38-39. ↩︎
- Franzén, Pgs. 40 & 44. However, Katrin Kania lists UOO/UUOO F1, which would be Korgen, in the entry in her book Kleidung im Mittelalter: Materialien, Konstruktion, Nähtechnik : Ein Handbuch. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2010. ISBN: 978-3-412-20482-2 on page 398 when citing from Anne Marie Franzén’s article. ↩︎
Ahhh, how things have changed…to hold an object with our bare hands…..sigh. I am glad it changed so we can conserve these things…..but, man what a feeling!
And are changing back as they are finding in some institutions that clean bare hands are safer than gloves.