My job: identifying the newcomers (I)

Good evening everyone!

Living and working at Niflheim is really hard, and it sometimes can make even the most experimented people fail.
As I told you in my previous post, in early times, I used to walk through the streets wearing my bull disguise and looking for new Niflheim's guests.
My strategy stopped to be useful when in XVth century, people realized that as a bull, the oat was so irresistible to me that I would not take them to Niflheim if they gave me some... This rumor spread so quick that I had to change my strategy and decided to get a granny's disguise.
In the beginning I walked through villages with my granny's look and a broom or a rake, but nowadays I decided to get a more modern version of this fancy dress and I decided to adopt this look:

Hella's actual image while looking for Niflheim guests. 

Actually between IX-XIth centuries it was not that easy to know if the right guest of Niflheim was in front of you, and I had to become a gossip girl good observant to avoid mistakes.

A good technique to know where this person might roam, was to know is social status, which we could know easily thanks to his/her clothing.
Viking clothing colors were limited due to they were created through natural dyes made of ingredients like the scarce rubia tinctorum (it turns white clothing into a reddish one) or something as simple as the red onion's rind, which gives clothing a yellow-like color. Here you can see an image of Nille Glæsel, where you will appreciate the main colors that you could make thanks to natural dyes.

Check out this  link  to find more info

Reddish, purple and bluish colors were the hardest to get due the scarcity of elements to elaborate them, and as you probably have already guessed, only people with a high status owned clothes of these colors.
Another indicator of the status of a person were the jewels that he/she wore. Most of European people were fascinated by gold, but vikings preferred silver.
A woman whose brooches were made of silver, indicated that she belonged to a wealthy family and the bigger the brooches, the higher her social status was.
Here you can see a good example of silver brooches:

Brooches made by Alban Depper

As you can see in the picture, between both brooches hangs a kind of necklaces with colorful beads (they were made of different minerals and amber). 

Again more quantity means more status, so in a nutshell the more necklaces the richer its owner was. 

It means that when I had to go and pick up someone who belonged to rich family, like a jarl's daughter, I only had to look for someone with colorful clothing, who wore several layers of clothing and wearing a lot of jewels. 

On the other hand if I had to pick up someone who belonged to a humble family, I had to look for someone who did not wear silver jewelry (this person might wear bone or brass jewels), plain colored clothing (green , brown, white...) without any embroidery. 

In this picture of Clan Hávamal  reenactment group, you can appreciate 3 different social classes. On the left there is a jarl's wife, and next to her sit two Smáboendr (a social class a little bit humbler than a Boendr) ladies.

In a viking village, you could also distinguish traders or craftsmen thanks to their tools and their daily routines.

Here are a pair of examples: 

  

I would like to tell you more about how to distinguish the social class of a warrior by looking at his clothing but I must admit that it is something that I am still learning, due my "beloved" Odin is the one who always steals the fallen in battle warriors before I arrive  and pick them up... Damn! If he could only turn into a fat bull or a granny, or had to ride three legged a horse or a goat and half of his body was skull-like, we'll see who would get the best warriors!

Despite of my "love" for him, I might consider ask him to collaborate in this blog to tell you more about warriors...