By Sølvi Westvang Skirbekk

This essay from the Anno Glomsdalmuseet, “Du kan stole på ull,” was translated by Katherine Larson.

No textile fiber has as strong a presence in the museum’s historical collections as wool. In past times, it’s hard to imagine people’s everyday lives in the biting cold of Norway’s interior, along our damp, stormy coastline, or in the festive interior of a church, without the valuable fibers of Norwegian sheep. Can we learn something from the use of resources in former times?

Vital textiles

Through history sheep have given us materials from which we have made both work clothes and decorative textiles. Skilled hands have carefully transformed these fibers through shearing, washing, carding, combing, spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting and sewing. Thus have our foremothers and forefathers made for themselves the vital textiles that they could count on – in their work and in life in general. In Anno’s collections we find work mitts, coverlets, skin blankets, wadmal trousers, work shirts, leggings, jackets, cushions, blankets and several other types of textiles where wool is used as a material, either in total or in part. Cloth remnants and yarn samples show how valuable a material wool was, especially when you had to spin the yarn or weave the cloth yourself. All these articles offer clear witness to the role wool played in the lives of people in our area.

At Glomdal Museum we have a collection of nearly 100 houses. A person’s social status, the century in which they lived and their access to resources determined who lived in which houses, but there were some things most had in common. They were dependent on wool, and they had the knowledge of how to work it.

Adaptability

Sheep were domesticated over 10,000 years ago. Only the dog has been with us longer. Sheep played a key role as we developed agriculture, grazing in scrub and forested areas not easily reachable by farmers. Even today, this is one of a sheep’s capabilities that is highly valued.

The climate in our country, with its extreme changes in temperature and humidity, has contributed to the development of wool with a unique quality, a fine under wool [bunnull] and a protective outer hair [dekkhår].  Together these factors have made wool from Norwegian sheep quite effective at regulating temperature, but it also has a unique glossy quality, pills very little, and is better at holding its shape than its modern international competitors.

These are part of the reason that Norwegian wool is sought after by the modern textile industry. Its ability to “spring” back into its original form after being stretched makes Norwegian wool especially well suited to rugs, and furniture shows no marks as it does in those made of other fibers such as viscose. Did you know that statesmen walk on Norwegian wool every day in the White House in Washington D. C.?

Yarn qualities

In earlier times wool fibers were carded by hand. One could easily separate the under wool from the outer hair, sorting the fibers to suit the textile to be made. For clothing that would be close to the body the soft under wool was best, but for a rya or a wall hanging, the durable and glossy outer hair was preferred.  Today wool is carded by machine, with the result that carded yarn consists of both types of fiber. No one produces combed (worsted) Norwegian wool. As a result we lose the potential from Norwegian under wool. If you want a soft and comfortable under garment [trøye] made from that wool, you have to make it yourself.  It’s not impossible, but it requires a good deal of knowledge that is not readily available these days.

Thrifty livestock

Sheep were kept as domestic animals by all levels of society. The need for wool was large and sheep were thrifty animals to keep.  They could graze on growth that was not accessible to other animals – or to people. In this way households were outfitted with clothes and tools that were exclusively made from local resources. The fiber was local, work tools were for the most part locally produced, and knowledge of the steps in processing was also local. When a pair of trousers was worn out, one repaired it with yarn and cloth that was also produced of the same local resources. When a mitten could no longer be repaired, it was used as insulation around the windows. In this way people and nature, both in their home and in the community to which they belonged, adapted to one another.  Consumption was low, necessity could be great, but riches and possibilities were based on that which was to be found of resources and knowledge in the vicinity. Thus in the course of normal use, a piece of clothing could end up never leaving the community in which it was made.

A welcome income

Wool provided the basis for both home production of goods for sale and for larger factory production. The knitting of mittens and sweaters commissioned by the Handcraft Association [Husfliden] has provided a welcome extra income for families throughout the country. In 1785 the small industry Enighetsfabrikken was established in Stor-Elvdal, and it later become part of the basis for the successful textile factory Devold. 

The extraordinary in the ordinary

It is wool’s fiber properties that give it such a large presence in museum collections. Here we find stockings with clear indications of long and careful use, and beautiful decorative textiles for church and home.

Some of these have clearly been repaired time and again with coarse materials, while on others time and exacting skill have been lavished, seemingly with eternity in mind.  Wool fibers themselves are long lasting, and the tools for preparing yarn and cloth have traditionally been well cared for in homes and on farms. These are tools that carry with them stories of knowledge and resource utilization, of wealth and of hard times.

Environmental enemy?

In a well meant sidetrack in 2006, climate activists, basing their activities on a metric for measuring the international textile industry’s climate footprint (the Higg Index), accused Norwegian wool of being the least sustainable fiber in which you could clothe yourself. Now wool has resumed its rightful place as the lasting, sustainable fiber that it truly is – still just as perfectly adapted to the climate that we live in.

In the excitement of giving consumers guidance in their choice of sustainable clothes, people forgot to take into account a textile’s lifespan.  The Higg Index did not value a textile’s service life as a factor, and based its metric solely on the climate impact from production.  Sheep are ruminants, and like cows they release gas – a known argument against animal products and materials. What the Higg Index forgot to evaluate was that wool clothes are the ones in our closets that we keep the longest and of which we take the most care.  Many people have a national costume [bunad], an exclusive dress, costly to buy yet infused inside and out with life’s changes. One has a bunad for a long time.  Wool underwear is often kept until it completely wears out: darned, repaired and used again. To maintain wool clothing has again become something to admire, with social media tips for visible and invisible mending shared by eager enthusiasts.

Agricultural- and climate-aware consumers are now for the most part united in their view that wool is a sustainable choice of materials. The understanding that production based on local and regional resources is sustainable has established itself for both food and textiles.

Lasting and timeless

We can draw inspiration from an earlier time’s use of resources. We can shop for quality clothes, make clothes ourselves, and we can lower our climate footprint by increasing our knowledge about washing and caring for the clothes that we already own.

Unfortunately the Norwegian textile industry is only minimally accommodating of Norwegian wool. In order to fully utilize the sustainable properties that wool embodies, you would have to take up wool cards yourself. But on the road towards your finished sweater, you can enjoy becoming part of the long line of those bearing these traditions. The number of artifacts from which to take inspiration in the museum’s collection is enormous, a fact that many designers have discovered.

Museum collections of the future

The story of Norwegian wool stands in stark contrast to the modern consumer society in which we live. The textile industry has a higher climate impact than ship traffic and air traffic combined. The dust in our homes is dominated by textile fibers processed with carcinogenic and DNA-damaging flame retardants. The mountains of refuse from Europe’s internet-purchased and returned clothes coming from the other side of the globe is a cause for concern that draws major media attention.

We don’t yet know how the future’s museum collections will reflect the profusion and abundance of fibers with which we live. Perhaps the largest paradox will be that the future’s museums reveal few traces of today’s intense overconsumption?

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Sølvi Westvang Skirbekk is a museologist and curator with Anno Glomdalsmuseet, the cultural history museum in Hedmark. Anno Museum is a regional museum in eastern Norway; Glomdal Museum is a member of this regional museum.

Translated in April, 2023, by Katherine Larson, Affiliate Assistant Professor, Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Washington, Seattle

Editor’s note, Veronika Glitch, whose sweater design is featured in a photo, held a very interesting TED talk, “The Power of Favorite Garments,” basically arguing that well-fitting clothes are more sustainable because you will wear them longer. Smart!

Help support wonderful articles on Scandinavian textiles with a donation to the Norwegian Textile Letter. Thank you! Tusen takk!

March 2024