I made a pair of iron age/Viking shoes

Now that the worst heatwave has gone, I have started to plan for future projects. I have admired the work that goes into iron age re-enactors garments and decided that I want to make my own outfit. It’s particularly interesting as the iron age Finnish woman’s dress differed from a more well-known Viking woman’s apron dress. However, I need to start from the basics, and while searching for period-appropriate fabrics for the actual clothes I have plenty of things to make. What could be a better starting point as a pair of iron-age shoes?

To be honest, there are no surviving samples of pre-medieval shoes found in Finland. Therefore the model of the shoe re-enactors wear is the best guess and based on European sources and later finds in Finland. I found this tutorial online and decided to follow it. However, there are several different ways one can make a functional shoe out of one piece of leather. Here is a tutorial from Estonia for a different kind of shoe.

Here is a video in which I chat about my hobby and make the shoes:

Now I have to practice some nålbinding to make socks that go with the shoes. This time I wore my shoes with knitted socks but knitting as a craft is a much more recent invention.

And here are some more pictures:

I am particularly happy that I used light-coloured leather strip to sew the heels together. The different colour looks decorative to me.

Of course, these are not shoes for wet weather or for winter. But I can imagine going around wearing things like this during the summer or when inside.

I still should coat the shoes with some beeswax to make them more waterproof but I’m not in a hurry to do it.

Thank you so much for reading and please comment and subscribe to my blog and my YouTube channel! Happy Sewing!

Katja