Useful helpers for hygiene and cleanliness at the time of the Vikings.

The Viking hygiene pendants and toiletry sets from Pera Peris

At Pera Peris mail-order shop you can buy a large selection of Viking hygiene pendants and also find matching Viking toilet sets such as ear spoons, tweezers and nail cleaners, made as detailed replicas of high-quality bronze casting and in real silver-plated.

Hygiene and cleanliness were very important during the Viking times, unlike one might think, and it was not for nothing that the Vikings had their weekly bathing day every Saturday, "Laugardagur" in Icelandic, and also enjoyed regular saunas. Daily hair care with combs was also common among the Vikings.

The Vikings' need for cleanliness was so pronounced that it seemed downright suspicious to the Anglo-Saxons, who considered frequent washing to be vanity and therefore sinful.
The medieval chronicler John of Wallingford wrote that the Danes were too clean. According to the Arab chronicler Ibn Fahdlan, the Vikings living in the East, the so-called Varangians, even washed every morning.

It is therefore no wonder that archaeological material contains evidence of many Viking hygiene utensils, most of which are found in the graves of buried women.
Especially in the Viking town of Birka in Sweden's Lake Mälaren, a large number of toiletries from the Viking Age have been preserved, which today give us an impression of the ingenuity of the Vikings.

In our Viking shop, you can therefore buy a variety of hygiene utensils and toiletry sets from the Viking Age, including ear spoons, nail cleaners, awls, beard combs and tweezers in a wide range of shapes and designs, but also matching needle boxes and Viking keys, which were an openly displayed attribute of married women in the Viking Age.

Much like today, when there is probably a packet of cotton buds in almost every bathroom cabinet, the Viking woman often had an ear spoon attached to her garment.
The ear spoon was apparently an indispensable part of the female Viking garment and was generally worn on a ribbon or chain ready to hand on one of the bowl brooches that were part of the obligatory costume of the Viking Age.

The awl, tweezers, needle box and key could also be attached in the same way and were located next to the ear spoon at about hip level, as grave finds of Viking hygiene cutlery show.

Ear spoons and other parts of Viking Age toiletry sets were usually made of bronze and could also be silver-plated or even gold-plated, but other materials were also used for this purpose, such as bone, antler and walrus leg.

In the Viking Age, needle boxes in particular were often made from the tubular bones of animals instead of bronze and were used to store the delicate needles made of bone or metal.

As you can see, hygiene sets were an indispensable part of women's costume in the Viking Age and should therefore of course not be missing from any authentic Viking garb, as they are simply an important addition to historically correct garb in Viking reenactment.

You can buy ear spoons, awls, tweezers, keys and awls individually or as a complete toiletry set in our Viking shop. To make it easy for the ladies in the Viking reenactment to buy a ready-made set, we offer different versions of Viking toiletry sets including chain, distributor and fastening hook.

This way, you can simply hang the ready-made Viking hygiene set into your bowl brooch and use it immediately without having to attach the individual parts to each other in any way.

You can buy different versions, either as a chain with hooks and a ring or omega hook, into which you can individually hang an already existing toilet article or a key or a needle box, or as a two-piece Viking hygiene set with an awl and an ear spoon and as well a three-piece set with a nail cleaner, awl and tweezers.

Whichever type of Viking hygiene set you are interested in, we would be pleased if you could find something suitable for your reenactment at Pera Peris Viking mail-order.