The original of this dress (Museum No. D 10581) (l) is carbon dated to c.1434 and is excavated in Herjolfnes, Greenland. It is on display in the Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen, Denmark, where you can buy a pattern of this dress, a male tunic, a male coat and hosen. The patterns can also be ordered per e-mail from the Museum. For more information on this tunic see: http://www.forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/garments/H39/H39.html and http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/cloth/herjol39.html
The green overdress (r) is made from that pattern, in the size of the excavated original. The woman who wore this dress was estimaded to be 1.48 cm in size, although I am small, I am not that small. This could explain the shortness of the dress. Most dresses found at the same site had long sleeves, sometimes even with slits, so that the sleeves of the dress had to be sown together, each time a lady would wear it.
More information on this dress and the garments found at the same site,
can be found at on the website Clothing of the Middle Ages from Marc Carlson
and in; Woven into the earth, textiles from the Norse Greenland a book written by Else Østergård. In the back of this
book you can find a diagram for dress #45 (museum No.D10587) which has short sleeves and is quite similar in
construction.
The short green wool overdress is completly hand sewn by my husband.
The longer underdress is made out of undeyed, unbleached linen, all visible seams are handsewn.
