Ancient Cloth from Stinging Nettles

I thought cloth made from stinging nettles was just a theme of old folktales that allowed women to suffer a lot as they worked, like the sister who weaves nettle shirts for her brothers in "The Six Swans." But no. It seems that some of the oldest surviving woven cloth in Europe was woven from stinging nettles, which have fibrous stems that can be made into thread just like flax. Some contemporary wild-herb-gatherers still do this.

This is nettle cloth from Bronze Age Denmark, recovered from a cremation burial dating to around 800 BCE. This burial made the news this week because analysis of the strontium signature in the cloth suggests that the nettles did not grow in Denmark. The cloth must have been traded from someplace with hard bedrock, possibly Switzerland, where the bronze used in Denmark also came from, or Norway.