The Bayeux Tapestry: Embroidery, Art — or 70 Metres of Propaganda?

The Bayeux Tapestry is suddenly everywhere again.

Nearly a thousand years after it was created, it has returned to England and is being displayed at the British Museum. We all think we know it. Most of us learnt about 1066 at school and would recognise those distinctive horses, ships, soldiers and strange little figures instantly.

But the more I have looked into it, the more interesting it has become.

Because this isn't simply a picture of the Norman Conquest stitched onto a very long piece of linen.

There are questions about what we should call it. We don't actually know who embroidered it. There are tantalising clues about how those embroiderers worked. There are mistakes. There are unfinished areas. There may have been experienced embroiderers sitting alongside complete novices. And then there is perhaps the biggest question of all.

Are we looking at history — or propaganda?

First, is it actually a tapestry?

One of those little facts textile people love to point out is:

"The Bayeux Tapestry isn't a tapestry at all. It's embroidery."

Technically, the stitching part is absolutely correct.

The design was embroidered using wool thread onto linen. It wasn't created as the cloth itself was woven, as we would normally expect with a woven tapestry. The Bayeux Museum describes it as a narrative embroidery measuring around 68 metres, made from nine sections of linen.

I was therefore quite happily going to tell you that everyone has been calling it the wrong thing for hundreds of years.

Then I contacted textile artist Mia Hansson.

Mia lives near Wisbech, just up the road from Eau Brink Studio, and she has spent the last ten years making an extraordinary full-size replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.

She immediately challenged me.

For Mia, the tapestry-versus-embroidery discussion is particularly important.

She explained that its French name is La Tapisserie de Bayeux, and the French word tapisserie has a broader meaning than the narrow technical meaning we tend to give the English word tapestry.

And she is right.

The French Larousse dictionary includes within tapisserie not only woven tapestry but textile work intended for wall decoration regardless of whether it is woven, embroidered, appliquéd or made using another textile technique.

As Mia told me:

"The Bayeux Tapestry is both and I find it's time to re-educate the nation."

So perhaps those of us who enjoy announcing that the Bayeux Tapestry isn't really a tapestry need to be a little more careful.

It is unquestionably embroidery in the way it was made.

But the name isn't necessarily the ridiculous historical mistake we sometimes make it out to be.

I rather like having been corrected on that one.

Because it illustrates something that happens repeatedly when you investigate this remarkable textile.

The simple answer isn't always the whole answer.

Who actually held the needles?

This is the question that fascinates me.

We know an enormous amount about the men represented in the Bayeux embroidery.

William, Harold, Edward the Confessor, Odo, Kings, bishops, soldiers and nobles.

Yet we cannot confidently name a single person who actually sat down and embroidered it.

The old romantic version of the story credited William the Conqueror's wife, Queen Matilda, and her ladies.

It's a lovely image.

A queen surrounded by noblewomen, quietly stitching her husband's great victory.

Unfortunately, there is no convincing evidence for it. The Bayeux Museum itself says that the traditional attribution to Queen Matilda and her ladies is unlikely.

Modern scholarship generally places its manufacture in England. The British Museum describes it as probably commissioned by a Norman patron but made by English embroiderers, with connections to manuscript imagery from Canterbury.

And that makes things considerably more interesting.

English people may have embroidered the story of England's defeat.

But who were they?

High-born women?

Perhaps.

Embroidery was a highly developed skill in Anglo-Saxon England and English needlework had an international reputation.

We shouldn't imagine embroidery at this level as a little leisure activity undertaken when someone had nothing better to do.

This was skilled textile work.

Producing something on this scale required planning, materials, consistency and organisation.

Women within wealthy households certainly could have possessed considerable needlework skills.

So perhaps there were high-status women involved.

Just not necessarily Queen Matilda and the ladies traditionally associated with the story.

Nuns?

That is another possibility frequently discussed.

Religious houses contained educated women and provided an environment where large projects could be organised and skills passed between experienced and less experienced makers.

It isn't difficult to imagine a group of women working collectively on sections of an enormous embroidery.

But again, we don't have the document we would dearly love to find saying:

These are the women who made it.

Instead, the hands survive and the names have disappeared.

And that happens so often in textile history.

Or was it much more like a workshop?

This is where Mia's experience becomes particularly interesting.

For the last decade she hasn't simply been studying pictures of the Bayeux Tapestry.

She has been making it.

Mia began her replica in July 2016. By September 2026 she had reached around 59.4 metres and hopes to complete the whole project in 2027.

Think about that.

Ten years, Nearly sixty metres.

One modern embroiderer attempting to follow the work of those unknown medieval makers.

That gives her a very different relationship with the original.

And when I asked what recreating it had taught her about the original embroiderers, her first answer was wonderfully straightforward:

"That they were human and they made mistakes, many of them."

I love that.

Historic textiles can acquire an almost untouchable quality, We put them behind glass, We write books about them, Experts study tiny details, They become masterpieces, But somebody still had to sit there and make them, Someone got tired, Someone misunderstood a line, Someone put a stitch somewhere it probably shouldn't have been.

Someone perhaps looked at a mistake and thought:

That will have to do.

Suddenly the Bayeux Tapestry becomes less of an untouchable museum object and much more recognisably human.

Were they under pressure to finish it?

Mia believes they were.

And this is where her latest observations are particularly interesting.

It isn't simply that some areas contain exposed linen. Sometimes the linen was deliberately incorporated into the design.

Mia points instead to specific places where something seems to have stopped before it was completed.

One example is a horse.

Normally, she says, you might find one element of the tack left without coloured infill and accept that as a deliberate feature.

But on this particular horse, the bridle, girth and stirrup leather have all apparently been left unfilled.

One of those?

Possibly deliberate.

Even two?

Perhaps.

But all three on the same horse is different.

Mia says she hasn't seen that treatment repeated elsewhere across the work.

Her conclusion is that this is not simply an artistic choice.

In her opinion, it is evidence that the embroiderer ran out of time and had to move on.

She has also identified other examples, including a small tree in the border where the infill appears to have been abandoned.

That immediately makes me imagine the circumstances in which it was being produced.

Was there a deadline?

Was someone supervising progress?

Was a particular event approaching?

Was an embroiderer simply told:

Leave it. We need to move on.

We cannot know.

And it is important to say that this is Mia's interpretation from recreating the work rather than established historical fact.

But this is precisely why talking to makers is so valuable.

A historian might see an unfinished shape.

An embroiderer who has just spent thousands of hours reproducing those same stitches may look at it and think:

I know what happened here.

It looks as though lots of people were working at once

This was another of Mia's observations that I found fascinating.

She sees signs that several embroiderers may have been working simultaneously, potentially sitting beside and opposite one another.

And apparently they didn't always communicate terribly well.

Mia has noticed differences in colour choices, Differences in stitches, Differences in the way details were interpreted, Even the patterns of roof tiles and architectural details can change.

She believes there are areas where embroiderers have effectively worked towards each other from opposite directions and met somewhere in the middle.

Chain mail is one of the places where she feels this can be particularly obvious.

And suddenly I can see the room.

A huge piece of linen, Several people working on it, Someone over here has decided to stitch something one way. Someone opposite has approached it differently and eventually they meet. The two versions don't quite match.

Anyone who has ever worked on a group textile project is probably smiling at this point.

Nearly a thousand years have passed.

Apparently some things never change.

And they weren't all brilliant embroiderers

I found this particularly interesting.

Mia sees substantial differences in the standard of work.

Some sections are beautifully executed.

Others aren't.

She told me:

"Some were skilled needle women, others were novices or embroiderers that simply never improved their skills."

That opens up all sorts of possibilities.

Were experienced embroiderers working alongside apprentices?

Were less experienced women brought in because there was so much to complete?

Did new people join the project as it progressed?

Did skilled embroiderers do the difficult areas while beginners filled simpler sections?

Or were some people simply better at embroidery than others?

Again, Mia cannot prove which explanation is correct.

But she can see different levels of ability because she has spent ten years studying how every part of the thing was made.

As someone who teaches textiles, I find this particularly believable.

Give a room full of people the same fabric, the same threads and the same instructions and you will still end up with different results.

Different tension.

Different stitch lengths.

Different interpretation.

Different confidence.

Why would a group of embroiderers in the 11th century have been any different?

Were they working from drawings?

Almost certainly some form of guide existed.

The Bayeux Museum notes that the regularity of some of the embroidered lines suggests guiding marks or drawings were made on the linen.

Mia thinks the prick-and-pounce method may have been used for transferring at least some of the imagery.

But she wonders whether every detail was transferred or whether certain parts were completed freehand.

Again, she has found curious little clues.

There are sections where she feels the original embroiderer may not have completely understood what a line represented and simply did her best to interpret it.

In other places, Mia wonders whether a template could have slipped slightly, producing an additional line.

The embroiderer then apparently did what most of us would probably have done.

She stitched it.

Imagine that.

Nearly a thousand years later scholars might be examining a mysterious line and debating its significance.

Meanwhile the truth could simply be:

the pattern slipped.

I rather hope that is true.

Were the embroiderers women?

We still cannot say for certain.

But Mia strongly suspects they were.

And some of her reasoning is considerably less academic than you might expect.

Have you ever looked carefully at the borders of the Bayeux Tapestry?

There is some rather graphic nudity amongst the animals, foliage and decorative imagery.

Mia can imagine women sitting together working, talking and having a laugh while adding some of those details.

She also wonders about the stories represented in the borders.

Images associated with fables appear there, and Mia speculates that women working collectively might have told stories while stitching — perhaps including Aesop's fables — and allowed some of that shared storytelling to creep into the edges of the piece.

Can we prove it?

No.

But I love the idea.

Because perhaps we have spent too much time staring at the kings and battles running through the centre.

Maybe we should be paying more attention to what was happening around the edges.

And then we come to propaganda

This is the part of the Bayeux Tapestry that really fascinates me.

We tend to think of propaganda as something modern.

Newspapers. Political posters. Radio. Television. Social media.

Carefully selected words and pictures designed to influence how we interpret an event.

But people understood the power of visual storytelling long before any of those things existed.

The Bayeux embroidery tells a story about the events leading to William's conquest of England.

But is it the story?

Or simply a story?

Harold travels to Normandy. He apparently swears an oath to William. He later becomes King of England. Then William invades.

The resulting narrative allows William's actions to be presented as justified.

Harold broke his oath.

William was claiming what should have been his.

That's a remarkably useful version of events if you happen to be William.

The Bayeux Museum itself acknowledges that narrative hangings such as this could operate as propaganda for a victorious conquest.

Visual storytelling for people who couldn't read

There is something else we sometimes forget.

Most people seeing this work in the 11th century could not read.

But they could understand pictures.

A king.

An oath.

Ships.

An army.

A battle.

Death.

Victory.

The story unfolds almost like a medieval strip cartoon.

You didn't need to read a lengthy political argument explaining why William was entitled to invade England.

You could see the story.

Almost a thousand years before television, Instagram, Facebook or the 24-hour news cycle, someone understood exactly how powerful carefully chosen images could be.

And their version of events survived.

But what did the embroiderers themselves think?

This becomes even more intriguing if English embroiderers really did make the work.

Imagine being asked to embroider the conquest of your own country. And, from the victor's point of view.

Did they believe the story? Did they care? Was it simply a job? Were they pleased to have prestigious work? Did they have any choice in the matter? Were the people who designed it also English? How closely were the embroiderers supervised? Could they alter details? Could humour creep into the borders? Could sympathy? Could irritation? Could boredom?

We simply don't know.

But Mia's observations add another possibility.

If numerous people of different abilities were working simultaneously, sometimes apparently misunderstanding lines, using slightly different stitches and failing to communicate perfectly with the person sitting opposite them, how much control could any single designer really exercise over every little detail?

Anyone who makes textile art understands this.

There is the idea.

There is the design.

And then there is the making.

And somewhere during that process, the maker gets into the work.

History remembers the important men

There is a strange irony in all of this.

The Bayeux Tapestry is filled with men.

Kings.

Bishops.

Warriors.

Soldiers.

Messengers.

We know many of their names.

Yet if women did produce much or all of this extraordinary embroidery, their identities have almost completely vanished.

We know who won the battle.

We know who lost.

We know the year.

We know the major political figures.

But we don't know the name of a single person who can definitely be identified as having pushed those wool threads through the linen.

Textile history is full of anonymous hands.

Embroiderers. Weavers. Spinners. Seamstresses. Makers whose skill survives when their names do not.

That is perhaps why textile artists sometimes look at historic objects slightly differently.

Someone else might see the Battle of Hastings.

We see the stitch.

The change in tension, the abandoned infill, the oddly positioned line, the difference between one embroiderer's work and another, the section where two people appear to have met in the middle, the mistake someone decided wasn't worth undoing and the human being behind the history.

And almost a thousand years later, someone is following those hands

That is what makes Mia Hansson's project so fascinating.

She isn't simply copying an historic picture, she is retracing an enormous piece of textile work stitch by stitch.

Over ten years she has begun to recognise patterns in the way those unknown embroiderers worked.

She sees their different abilities, their inconsistencies, their unfinished areas, their mistakes.

Perhaps even their deadlines.

And every now and then, she encounters something that makes her stop and wonder what on earth the person nearly a thousand years ago was trying to do.

There is something wonderful about that connection.

The medieval embroiderer's name may have disappeared.

But the physical decisions she made with a needle are still there for another embroiderer to discover.

Tapestry, embroidery, art or propaganda?

Perhaps trying to choose one answer is the mistake.

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidery.

It can also legitimately be called a tapestry.

It is a remarkable piece of textile art.

It is an historical document.

It is visual storytelling.

It presents a particular interpretation of a conquest.

It may contain humour, mistakes and improvisation.

It may show evidence of people working under pressure.

And it was certainly made by real human beings.

People of different abilities.

People who occasionally got things wrong.

People who perhaps talked while they stitched.

People who may have laughed.

People who possibly became thoroughly fed up with embroidering yet another horse.

And people whose names we will probably never know.

Nearly a thousand years later, their stitches are being examined again, not just by historians but by another embroiderer sitting near Wisbech with linen, wool and a needle in her hand.

History remembers William and Harold.

Textiles remember the hands.

If your interested in more just go to Mia's website - https://www.facebook.com/groups/miasbayeuxtapestrystory