Textile Dyes from Gokstad Viking Ship’s Grave

The grave from Gokstad in Norway, dating to ca 900 AD, is one of the best-preserved Viking Age ship graves world. mound contained a variety goods along with human remains, buried ship. Several textiles, including embroideries and shreds what might have been ship’s tent, were also found. colors textile fragments are now severely faded, but high quality embroidery made gold silk threads still apparent. style exceptional, having no equivalents other Scandinavian graves. analyses by HPLC coupled both diode array mass spectrometric detectors revealed that striped “tent” cloth as well thread used for originally dyed anthraquinones plant origin (alizarin, purpurin, pseudopurpurin, anthragallol), markers madder-type dyestuffs.