Wardrobes of Whimsy: Fjord Fantasy

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So, back in June of last year, my husband and I went to Norway for a few weeks. Partly a work trip for me and partly a lovely vacation for the two of us. It was very fun. We went to several different cities and lots of museums. Norway is beautiful and reminds me so much of Alaska where I am from. The fjords, the mountains, the weirdly large number of stuffed polar bears in Tromsø, and the presence of lots of plants that looked familiar.

It was a really really fantastic trip.

While I was there, I did a lot of doodling of Viking inspired clothing (especially because I got to see actual dwarf broaches and they were just as beautiful as I suspect they would be) and so here’s a bit of that coming out in paper doll format.

So, these garments are inspired by “apron dresses” over under dresses. As I discussed at great length a decade ago when I wrote about Viking dress, no one really knows for sure what Viking women wore, but man there are a lot of people on the internet who get a lot of joy out of arguing about it. I’m not entering into that debate, but I did have fun creating these fantasy dresses inspired by my limited understanding of Viking clothing.

These aren’t very traditional mix and match dolls, which is kind of the point. As I mentioned last week, the whole concept of these was how layering comes together for a paper doll outfit. I really like the idea, but I’m not sure. There’s more than two outfits here- you actually have 8 different combinations, between the shoes and the various apron dresses that go over the dresses.

I don’t know if I’ll do more of these or not… I’m having many thoughts.