By Robbie LaFleur

The rediscovery of Southward (Sørover) is an excellent occasion to celebrate Frida Hansen (1855-1931) and Norwegian tapestry traditions once again. Southward displays her mastery of the Art Nouveau style she loved, yet centers on a theme of Norse mythology. The abundance of pattern and areas of clear, strong color echo historical Norwegian tapestries, as does the beautifully finished reverse side, with sewn-in threads making the back as lovely as the front. So Art Nouveau, so Norwegian, so beautiful. How did this tapestry  fit into her life and career?

Her early life remained influential

Frederikke (Frida) Bolete Petersen was born in Stavanger, Norway, in 1855. Her father was one of the wealthiest businessmen in town and she led a sheltered and privileged early life at Hillevåg, an estate outside Stavanger. She planned to be an artist early on, and had private lessons from local prominent artists, including Kitty Kielland. At age 18 she married another of the wealthiest businessmen in Stavanger, Wilhelm Severin Hansen. Her father died soon after and Frida and Wilhelm moved back to Hillevåg. 

As a young wife, Frida Hansen threw her artistic ambitions into planning extensive gardens with roses and peonies, exotic flowers and birds—motifs she would weave her whole life. She had three children; tragically, two would die. Her life of ease and privilege ended ten years after her marriage. Her husband’s business went bankrupt during an economic depression in the 1870s and they were forced to move from Hillevåg. Her husband went abroad to seek business opportunities. Frida was entrepreneurial and opened an embroidery shop in Stavanger.

Frida Hansen was familiar with historical Norwegian weaving; her brother-in-law Carl Sundt-Hansen had an extensive collection of old pieces.  One day, as she described many years later, a person came to her embroidery shop and asked whether Frida could repair an old weaving. 

Suddenly I remembered my brother-in-law’s words, You should weave like that. It went like fire through me. That’s what I wanted to do! I would take up the old Norwegian weaving, renew it, make it available, and also make it a means of employment. And so began my life’s work, which has fulfilled my mind, my artistic desires, and my life.
–Quote from Frida Hansen family papers, as reported in Anniken Thue’s biography, Frida Hansen: En europeer i norsk tekstilkunst (Frida Hansen: A European in Norwegian Textile Art) Universitsforlaget, 1986.

1889-1899. Frida begins her life at the loom and in the studio

Still, Hansen needed to learn how to weave, and it took some time for her to find anyone still weaving in the old techniques. She heard of a teacher in Sogn, Kjerstina Hauglum, and arranged to visit her in 1889.  After brief instruction and the purchase of an upright loom, she confidently began work on her first tapestry, over two meters high. Within a year she not only wove the huge tapestry, Birkebeiner Soldiers Smuggling Haakon Haakonson Over the Mountain, but also investigated the plant dyes she used for her yarn by interviewing elderly women in the regions of Jæren and Ryfylke, south of Stavanger. Her first foray into tapestry was very instructive, and she resolved in the future to not imitate paintings, but to create designs and figures that were more suited to the medium of weaving.

During the 1890s Frida Hansen worked to rediscover old Norwegian weaving techniques and to build a thriving weaving business to support herself and others. She was deeply interested in the qualities of Norwegian wool and historical Norwegian tapestry techniques. This was during the era of National Romanticism, when strong patriotic feelings led to the search for authentic, historical folk art. 

In 1890 she opened her first studio and dye works, “Mrs. Hansen’s Studio for Handwoven Norwegian Rugs” (Fru Hansens Atelier for haandvævde norske Tepper). After she moved her studio to Kristiania (Oslo) in 1892, she added weaving courses.  

Early in Hansen’s career, her work in reviving traditional Norwegian weaving was recognized, even in American newspapers. In 1893 she traveled to the Chicago Worlds Fair to oversee the installation of textiles in the husflidutstilling, or handcraft exhibit.

Handsome work indeed are the embroideries and tapestries which the Norse women are producing under the leadership of Mrs. Frida Hansen who furnishes artistic design and teaches the peasant women how to work them out. (Topeka State Journal, August 3, 1893.)

Hansen also exhibited a large tapestry, Dandelion (Løvetand, 1893) in the Women’s Pavilion at the Fair, commissioned by the Norwegian Feminist Association (Den Norske Kvindesagsforening). The tapestry has complex symbolism surrounding the emancipation of women, with a dandelion as the central feature, the plant that grows the more it is trod upon.

While Hansen was dedicated to renewing traditional Norwegian weaving, she also followed her own path as an artist. In 1894 and 1895 she took study trips abroad. She studied Medieval German art in Cologne and figure drawing in Paris. She saw the work of Symbolist artists such as Gustave Moreau and Puvis de Chavannes, and Art Nouveau artists such as Eugene Grasset, Alphonse Mucha and Paul Berton. Her affinity with Art Nouveau imagery made sense; the birds and flowers in the exotic gardens of her youth fit right in. Throughout her career she remained connected to artistic movements abroad; for example, she subscribed to the British art periodical The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art.

As Frida Hansen’s artistic vision evolved, some of her works were criticized for not being Norwegian enough, for having foreign influences, or for using a color palette that was not considered Norwegian. A tapestry like The Pharaoh’s Daughter (Faraos Datter, 1897) showed Hansen did not limit herself to images of Norwegian tales or myths.

In 1897 Frida Hansen was awarded a patent for a special form of transparent tapestry. Wool weft for the pattern was woven on warp of plied wool, leaving portions of the warp unwoven. The open threads allowed light to shine through. The technique lent itself well to portieres (curtains), so the transparencies were often functional, as opposed to her large billedvev tapestries. While Frida Hansen wove her own art tapestries, she designed the transparencies and had them woven by others in series. Hansen’s transparencies were popular both in Norway and outside the country. 

Also in 1897 Frida Hansen established the Norwegian Rug and Tapestry Workshop (Norsk Aaklæde og Billedtæppe-Væveri, NABV) together with Randi Blehr. Two years later the name was changed to The Norwegian Tapestry Studio (Det Norske Billedvæveri, DNB). Hansen was the director until the studio dissolved in 1904. With around twenty weavers, the DNB became one of the most important weaving studios in Europe; Frida Hansen brought Norway into the center of European textile art. 

It is important to note that Frida Hansen was a new type of artist, the first Norwegian (and perhaps the first anywhere) to both conceive her own designs and weave her own tapestries. Her accomplishments and growth as a businessperson, weaver, and artist through the 1890s were stunning. She began her first tapestry in 1889, and by 1898 wove perhaps her best known work, The Milky Way (Melkeveien). The Milky Way was exhibited at the Bergen Exhibition in 1898, in Berlin (1899) and London (1900), and purchased by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

International Recognition

Both Frida Hansen’s tapestries and her transparent weavings had their biggest international breakthrough at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. The Norwegian Tapestry Studio (DNB) was awarded a gold medal for its collection of 45 pieces, and Frida Hansen was awarded a gold medal for her artistic merits. Four of her large pictorial tapestries were included: The Dance of Salome; The Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins; and two tapestries from Gerhard Munthe designs, Sigurd’s Entry into Myklegaard (Constantinople) and Sigurd and Balduin. Seven of her transparent wool tapestries were shown. As a result of the fair, her works (tapestries and transparencies) were purchased by museums in Vienna, Zurich, Hamburg, Budapest, London, Stockholm, and Copenhagen–but not by Norwegian museums.

When Frida Hansen wove tapestries using themes from historical Norwegian tapestries, they were in a contemporary style. In The Dance of Salome (Salomes Dans, 1900), a sinuous Salome stands in the center of the seven-meter wide (!) tapestry.

It might be an understatement to say that Hansen’s Salome has a very different feel than the Salome in the lower corner of this tapestry woven during Norway’s “golden age” of tapestry, from 1550-1700.

Southward (Sørover, 1903) was purchased privately. Berthea Aske Bergh, a Brooklyn weaving instructor and socialite, was responsible for bringing Southward to the U.S. As described in a House Beautiful article in 1929, Bergh was telling a group of American art connoisseurs in New York City that Norway had a highly developed art of weaving, and that it predated many other European countries. The audience was skeptical, the article stated, so she sailed to Norway the very next week to get proof of her statements.

“Straight to Mrs. Hansen’s studio she went, where the magnificent tapestry “Southward” stood on the loom, nearing completion. To Mrs. Hansen she said, “I must have that tapestry to take back to America.”
Munson, Miriam Ott. “An Old Art for the New World.” House Beautiful, July 1929. 

Bergh may have varied her description of Southward’s purchase at times. 

“To Mrs. Bergh, a native Norwegian living in this country, Frida Hansen owes her real introduction to the United States. At an exhibition of artists in New York, Mrs. Bergh heard William Chase say disparagingly, “But Norway has no art.” On her next trip to the land of her birth Mrs. Bergh began the collection of Frida Hansen tapestries…”
“Art of Old Norse Tapestry Shown at Woman’s Exhibition,” St. Louis Star & Times, March 6, 1929.

Southward has some interesting design similarities to Salome’s Dance, woven three years earlier. The spiral snakes on Salome’s skirt resemble the roses on the gowns of half the maidens in Southward. The gown of a woman at the edge of Salome’s Dance has a filmy covering, mimicking the bonnets of the Southward maidens.

In the Rose Garden (I Rosenhaven, 1904) shows eight women wandering in a garden, wandering in nature, a dream of a golden age. It may have been influenced by the work of Gustav Klimt.  Anniken Thue, Frida Hansen’s biographer, felt it has clear parallels to an early Norwegian tapestry from the 1500s or 1600s. Many of Hansen’s tapestries resemble medieval Norwegian tapestries in her use of pattern everywhere—in the background, and in the richly decorated clothing of the figures. 

In 1905 Hansen wove Semper Vadentes. When it was displayed at the Paris Salon the following year, Hansen was awarded membership in the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, which meant she no longer had to be juried for inclusion in the annual Paris Salon. Frida Hansen’s weaving was very prolific in the first decade of the 1900s, and she sent a large tapestry to the Paris Salon each year from 1900-1909.

This brief biography does not discuss all of Frida Hansen’s tapestries, nor include the full scope of her exhibitions. Many of her works that are now in museums have links to digital images. A list at the end of this article includes those I could discover.

Frida Hansen’s Last Tapestry

Frida Hansen’s last monumental tapestry had a Norwegian theme, created to celebrate the 900th anniversary of Christianity in Norway. She wove it from 1927 until her death in 1931, and it was completed by her daughter, Elisa Levy, and granddaughter Signe Levy. King Olav kneels in the center, flanked by representatives of the state and church. The Norwegian glacier, Folgefonna, is in the background. In 1934 the citizens of Stavanger, Hansen’s home town,  raised money for the tapestry to be hung in the Cathedral in Stavanger. 

With this tapestry Frida Hansen came full circle. She began her career by working to reinvigorate traditional Norwegian weaving. She continued to draw on Norwegian themes in her own tapestries, but also followed her heart and ever-curious nature and wove images of exotic Egyptian women and mermaids along with themes from Greek mythology. In all, she wove 30 large tapestries and designed around 80 transparency designs. She was an internationally-recognized Art Nouveau artist, but in the end she spent the last years of her life weaving a noble Norwegian historical image.

For several decades the work of Frida Hansen was not in the Norwegian limelight. The Art Nouveau style of most of her work fell out of fashion by the time of her death. Much of her work was held privately or by museums outside of Norway. It wasn’t until a large exhibition of her work in 1973 that she was discovered anew in her home country. She gained even more attention with the retrospective of her work at the Stavanger Art Museum in 2015. Today the Stavanger Art Museum has an excellent and varied permanent exhibition of her work, and the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) has several tapestries and transparencies. 

Read more about Frida Hansen in English: 

“Frida Hansen and the Making of Art Nouveau.” FJ Hakiman (blog). January 19, 2018.

Gudmundson, M. Lund. “Frida Hansen – Art Nouveau in Full Bloom.” Textile Forum Blog, 2015.

Hansen. Vibeke Waallann. “Encounters between Art and Folk Art around 1900 in Norway: Gerhard Munthe, Theodor Kittelsen and Frida Hansen.” European Revivals: From Dreams of a Nation to Places of Transnational Exchange. FNG Research 1/2020.

LaFleur, Robbie. “When Frida Hansen Sought a Tapestry Teacher.” Robbie LaFleur (blog). November 16, 2018. This post includes a longer passage translated from Anniken Thue’s biography about Frida Hansen learning to weave.

Simonnæs, Anne Sommeren. “Frida Hansen: A Leading Star in European Textile Art.” Oslo: Nasjonalmuseet. (web page)

List of Frida Hansen tapestries (excluding transparencies), with links to museum records when available. The list corresponds to the list of tapestries in the catalog of works compiled by Anniken Thue in 1973, Frida Hansen: Europeeren i norsk vevkunst. Oeuvrefortegnelse og biografisk innledning. Oslo: Kunstindustrimuseet, 1973.

1. 1889/90. Birkebeiner Soldiers Smuggling Haakon Haakonson Over the Mountain. (Birkebeinerne fører den unge Haakon Haakenson på ski over fjellet). Owned by the family of Frida Hansen.
2. 1892. Flying Wild Ducks (Flyvende villender). Missing.
3. 1893. Mermaids and Swans (Havfruer og svaner). Missing, presumably sold to a buyer in California.
4. 1893. The Life and Flora of the Forests. (Skovenes liv og flora). Missing?
5. 1893. National Coat of Arms. (Riksvåpenet). Missing.
6. 1893. Dandelion (Løvetand). Owned by the Stavanger Art Museum.
7. 1894. Olaf Liljekrans I. Private ownership.
8. 1894 Olaf Liljekrans II. Owned by the National Museum of Norway.
9. 1895. Mermaids who Light the Moon (Havfruer, som tænder månen). Owned by the Stavanger Art Museum.
10. 1896. Mermaid Dance. (Havfruedans). Private ownership.
11. 1897. Pentecost Choir (Pintse-Chor). This is a diptych. The left panel is owned by the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest.
12. 1897. Pharaoh’s Daughter (Faraos datter). Owned by the National Museum of Norway.
13. 1898. The Milky Way (Melkeveien). Owned by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg.
14. 1900. The Dance of Salome (Salomes dans). Owned by the Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich.
15. 1900. The Five Wise and the Five Foolish Virgins (De fem kluge og de fem daarlige jomfruer). Missing.
16. 1901. Dance of the Dragonflies (Libellenes Dans). Owned by the Nordiska Museet, Stockholm
17. 1902. Yon Red Evening (Kveld hiin Røde).  Private ownership.
18. 1903. The Proposal (Frieriet). Only known as a cartoon. Not woven?
19. 1903. Southward (Sørover).
20. 1904. The Rose Garden (I Rosenhaven) Owned by Drammens Museum (Norway).
21. 1905. Semper Vadentes. Owned by the Stavanger Art Museum.
22. 1907. Fairy Tale Castle (Eventyrslottet). Owned by the National Museum of Norway.
23. 1908. In the Rose Garden (Im Rosengarten, woven from the same cartoon as I Rosenhaven, 1904). Missing.
24. 1909. The Swineherd. (Svinedrengen). Displayed and sold in Berlin in 1910, but missing.
25. 1913. Jephthah’s Daughter (Jeftas Datter). Owned by the National Museum of Norway.
26. 1914. (Danaidernes kar) Owned by the Stavanger Art Museum.
27. 1919-1922. An Autumn Day at Akershus (Høstdag ved Akershus). Private ownership.
28. 1925. The Little Mermaid (Den lille havfrue). It was purchased by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, but is now missing.
29. 1925. Bird at Sunset (Fugl i solnedgang).
30. 1926. Fuga. Privately owned, likely in Scotland.
31. 1927-31. (Olavsteppet) (more photos in this blog post) In the cathedral in Stavanger (although currently in the Stavanger Art Museum while the cathedral undergoes renovations)

Awards and Recognition

• 1891. Wins the King’s Silver medal for her traditional Norwegian weavings at a national exhibition in Skien, Norway.
• 1898. Wins a gold medal at the Industrial Exhibition in Bergen.
• 1900. Paris Worlds Fair. The Norwegian Tapestry Studio (DNB) wins a gold medal for their collection, and Frida Hansen wins a gold medal for her artistic merits.
• 1901. Won a competition for wallpaper design sponsored by Vallø Tapetfabrik.
• 1902. Won the gold medal at an exhibition in Turin, Italy, the “Prima esposizione Internationale d’Arte Decorative Moderna.”
• 1906. Hansen was awarded membership in the French Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, which meant she no longer had to be juried for inclusion in the annual Paris Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
• 1915. Awarded the King’s Gold Medal.

Southward, in all its restored glory, will be exhibited and for sale by Peter Pap at the Winter Show in New York City from April 1-10, 2022, the first public opportunity to see this magnificent tapestry in 91 years.

A few posts from the Winter Show, with further discoveries and visitor reactions: Tonight Frida Hansen’s Rediscovered Tapestry will be Revealed (March 31, 2022), Sørover (Southward) at the Manhattan Winter Show (April 2, 2022), Frida Hansen’s Southward: Musing on the Border and People Who Live Near the Ocean (April 3, 2022), and Frida Hansen’s Southward Tapestry: A Conversation Recap (April 4, 2022).

Robbie LaFleur is a weaver and writer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been following a thread of Scandinavian textiles since she studied weaving at Valdres Husflidskole in Fagernes, Norway, in 1977. She is a Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum Gold Medalist in weaving, coordinates the Weavers Guild of Minnesota Scandinavian Weavers Study Group, and publishes the Norwegian Textile Letter. In 2019 she received a fellowship from the American Scandinavian Foundation to study the transparency technique of famed Norwegian tapestry weaver Frida Hansen. Contact: lafleur1801@me.com. Blog: robbielafleur.com. Instagram: robbie_lafleur

February 2022; updated April 2022