Thanks, Roskilde.
I think we should have a closer look at the local costume as worn by the woman seen talking to Mary. (You can tell Mary is Frederik's wife, BTW!
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It is considered the most beautiful of the local costumes in DK, it's certainly among the most expensive.
https://www.visitlaesoe.dk/sites/def...?itok=HWwqt5y7
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It is said it was QMI (back in the 1400's) who gave the women on the island permission to wear this special costume after they helped her after her ship went aground on the island.
The fashion has of course changed over the centuries, and now the costume looks like it was in the 1800's.
But you can see remnants of the 1500's fashion at the shoulders and upper arms.
Black, especially deep black was an expensive dye.
Silver brooches has since ancient times been worn as a status symbol of the wealth of your family, and it is indeed silver, this woman is wearing.
This costume predates the fashion-craze that began in the 1600's with buttons and as many buttons as possible! Preferably from silver.
This costume is closed with silver-buckles/clasps.
The laples are made from silk with an embroidered flower-pattern, and kept in place by silver-chains. Around her neck she wears a colored silk-scarf, blue in this case.
The woman wears a blue underskirt, normally it would be white actually, made from fine wool and with an embroidered bort with a flower pattern. On top of that she wears an apron made from silk, also with a bort with embroidered flowers. The apron is tied on the back, with colored (what-do-you-call-it) strings.
Her top - vest/blouse is also made from silk.
On her feet she would wear shoes. Not wooden-shoes, but real genuine shoes made from leather and with wooden soles! Initially there would have been no such thing as a left and right shoe, that only came about during the 1700's. But that has of course changed nowadays.
The cuffs are made from lace.
The white head-scarf is deceptively complicated! It's huge and held in place by pins, and you need help to put it on.
Beforehand the women, in addition, to all this also wore a narrow, almost medieval belt, made from silver. But they have nearly all gone by now.
The reason why the costume is so elaborate and expensive is that DK is an ancient merchant nation, with countless boat going out from not least the islands. So the menfolks were able to bring back expensive fabrics from far away.
Now, a costume like this not only displayed the wealth of the family of the woman who wore it, it also told people about where she came from. Sometimes down to the individual parish. It would tell you whether she was married, unmarried, a widow, head of the household and whether her family owned their own farm. And the women would wear a full costume at festive occasions of course, but also to church on Sundays, to market in the nearby market-towns or on the relatively rare occasions a woman (from an island) went visiting to other parts of the country.
For young unmarried women (in their mid-teens to early twenties) it was far from uncommon to travel (walk!) pretty far around. Not least in up and down Jutland and they also wore such costumes. And people looking at them could tell where they were from - and girls from one part of DK were perhaps known to be very virtuous and as such wife material. From another part of the country the girls were perhaps known to be dependable and trustworthy workers. From a third part of the country the women were perhaps known to be very skillful in a particular trade. - So in a sense wearing their local costume they were also living billboards so to speak.
A married wife would almost invariably wear a headscarf as a sign of her status. Unmarried girls were more at liberty to wear their hair more visibly. With a smaller headscarf or no scarf.
A widow would typically wear a black headscarf as a sign of her status in life.
But the highest ranking of all women, who wore such costumes, would be the mistress of the household.
From around the Viking Age, the mistress of the household would wear the keys to the house, the chest with the fine linen and the cupboard with the fine china, that was only used after church on Sundays and at special occasions and when the local priest paid a visit. - And last but no least, she would wear the keys to the money-chest. In contrast to men, who were prone to get drunk, it was encouraged and considered prudent to let the mistress control the access to the family-money. Women, while having lots of other flaws according to the church, were after all by nature considered to be more responsible and sensible in regards to family-matters and preserving the family-cash...
Of course on islands like Læsø, it made much more sense to let the mistress have access to the money, with the husband often away to sea.
And in other parts of the country, it was also prudent to let the mistress keep the keys, because the husband might often be away driving cattle south or away to market.
But the mistress of the household had undisputed control over the household! That included children, maids, relatives and tenants - all came under her authority! As well as the inside of the house, smaller domestic animals and poultry and the kitchen garden.
It was frowned upon if the husband was meddling in domestic matters, or worse, had to meddle in domestic matters.
So should the mistress die or fall seriously ill (or in some case when becoming a widow) the keys would not go to the husband, but to the next in line in the domestic pecking order.
I forgot to mention: Apart from the money chest, the mistress also had the keys to the cupboard with the liqueur.
Additional: According to Old Danish Law, if a woman had held the keys to a household for three years and was generally acknowledged to be the mistress (that came with the job) she would have the same legal rights as if she was married to the owner of the house. (Unless of course they were related by blood.) Even if both of them were still married to someone else.
The laws before the mid 1600's were often surprisingly pragmatic. But the less tolerant Lutheran church managed to put and end to that, when a common law for all of DK was introduced in the mid 1600's. The Danish Law.
This island strikes me as a wonderful place to write one of your famous dark Scandinavian thrillers...can you recommend a writer?
Well, in these times, where the climate is very much on the agenda, you can hardly be much more environmentally friendly than this! Sea reed being even more environmentally friendly than straw I imagine.
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