The size suggests that the shirt must have belonged to a young man. But why had this hopeful youth stuffed his costly linen shirt into a posthole? Clearly the shirt was in a sad State when found, but it was far from wom out from use. Some have conjectured that the shirt -was an offering to the gods, examples of which are known from the Iron Age and even up till the present. Medieval fertility rites as we know them were associated with women's shifts and men's shirts, so it is possible that the Viborg shirt played some part in such a rite.
The viking shirt in use. Linoleum cut: Thomas G. Andersson.