Early Middle Ages and Barbarian Men’s Hairstyles

This week, I am looking at hair in Medieval history, and I am starting with the dudes. It turns out that the barbarians of the Early Middle Ages cared a great deal about styling their locks. Careful attention to cut and style announced a “je ne sais quoi” about masculenity and power.

For instance, featured in this first slide is the Osterby head (70-220 CE), preserved as a mummy in the acidic bogs of northern Europe. This man had been executed, but was probably of high standing, and his lovely braid demonstrates the hairdo known as the “Suebian knot.” It was like a man-bun, but just worn to the side. Fierce.

The second slide is from a large silver plate known as the Missorium of Theodosius (late 4th century), and is the closest approximation in art that I could find suggesting the “Hunnic haircut” favored by that barbarian tribe. In the sixth century, it was so popular that some Romans were copying it. The writer Procopius gives it this description: “the hair of their heads they cut off in front to the temples, leaving the part behind to hang down to a very great length in a senseless fashion . . . “. The mullet abided with these folk.

I of course must mention the “long-haired kings” of the sixth-century Merovingian dynasty. Contemporary images do not serve the description as well as the written sources. The aristocracy of these people attached so much status to men’s long hair that cutting it off was considered a serious punishment, and having it shorn a substantial humiliation (they may have been deliberately reflecting the Hebrew Bible’s story of Samson in their fashion sensibilities).

These three snippets (pardon my wording) illustrate the ways that culture constructs gender and power very differently among peoples, and that masculine attention to looks has not always been the domain of the urbane.