General discussion Admittedly this was probably a level of skill and practice that most any teenage girl would have acquired some 100-150 years ago. There is no reason to believe that this was any different 1000 years ago, during the Viking Age. What the different experiments have demonstrated is maybe especially the importance of doing experiments like this with skilled artisans. The practical work with the flax described here has been done under the guidance of Birgit Thomsen of Ribe Viking Centre, or for the difficult tasks directly by her. Had similar experiments been done solely by the team of archaeologists, the only result would probably have been a learning process. With the current setup out trials have at least better reliability. There was still learning process involved, and reliability is no absolute term. Throughout the tests, batch 4 behaved differently than the other three. There are several reasons for this. First of all, batch 4 was the last flax we processed within each set, meaning that we had already some experience when we came to this batch. Secondly it was treated differently. The retting time was much longer and more within the range of what is recommended historically. The retting time was shortened for the other batches because some retting had already taken place during storage, and we assumed that it was enough. In hindsight they could probably well have used a few more weeks outside. This would have delayed the start of project, though. Apart from a better retting the breaking of batch 4 also happened after drying it over a breaking pit. This meant a palpable difference for the process, and we can see that the loss of material is much less. When summarizing the results, batch 4 is probably the most reliable, then. Comparing to the techniques described in chapter 2, water retting combined with fire drying would probably have been the best option, throughout. That is for another time.
Summary of results The loss of material from dew retting varied from 7.5% in Batch 2 to 22.2% in batch 4. Batch was moved around several times, so some extra material may have been lost, but as discussed above, may have yielded the most precise result. The total loss for all four batches was 12.6%. The stalks were laid out in 6-7m long rows, two of which took in all 12 minutes to lay out, and then probably the same to take in. Turning the two rows took about three minutes. This was done every couple of days. Water retting was tried, but only late in the process. Therefore we have few data on this process. The breaking process gave a massive loss of material, as much as 82% for batch 2. The average loss was 71.7%. With more experience, the team used more time on breaking, so the time for batch 4 is possibly the most precise, although with the lowest amount lost. The speed was 712 grams/hour. Scutching is best calculated from batch 3 and 4. The loss in material was 23.6%. The processing speed between batch 3 and 4 was very similar, and had an average of 620 grams per hour. Heckling gave an average material loss of 44%, and could be done at an average speed of 308 grams per hour. Finally spinning could be done at an average speed of 55.8 m/hour. There is also a material loss here, as there will still be some shives in the material. We estimate this loss at c. 10%.
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