By Mary Skoy
Norway’s Knitted Heritage: The History, Surprises, and Legacy of Traditional Nordic Sweater Patterns. By Annemor Sundbø. Publisher: Schiffer Craft (May 28, 2023)
In 2020, Annemor Sundbø won a major Norwegian literary prize—the Sørlandets litteraturepris— for her book Koftearven: Historiske tråder og magiske mønster. In 2023, this extraordinary book was released in English as Norway’s Knitted Heritage: The History, Surprises, and Legacy of Traditional Nordic Sweater Patterns.
This review appeared in Fædrelandsvennen, a regional newspaper based in Kristiansand, Norway, when the Norwegian version was released in 2019. It provides a nice summary from a Norwegian’s point of view.
The Crown of a Life’s Work
With the book Koftearven, Annemor Sundbø has delivered a work of cultural history, religious history, philosophical history, and much more, and of course, also a knitting book.
It may well be that there will be more books from Annemore Sundbø’s hand, but if that doesn’t happen, then she has crowned her remarkable life’s work with a book that fills me with deep respect. She often repeats that it all started in a “pile of rags,” when she took over Torridal Tweed and Ulldynefabrikk in 1983.
Since then, she has spun threads, woven and knitted, carded and spun, and I mean all the expressions literally and figuratively. Because of course she is a master textile artist. But even more, she is characterized by an almost unruly and unrestrained interest in digging into the past. She also says at the outset that she is not an academic when she writes. And I’m tempted to say thank you and praise her for that assertion. Nothing wrong said about academics. But academics must always be rock-solid and objective in all their conclusions. Annemore Sundbø uses her rich experience with knitted garments in combination with a knowledge of patterns and symbols in textile art to dig deep into the fabrics she mentions.
If I now mention that the knitted “lice” jacket is perhaps the same as Christ’s drops of blood in bishops’ robes and the like, then maybe it sounds a little too fantastic? But not after you have read Sundbø’s adventurous walks in tracks and trails through history.
Night shirts, striped shirts, Fanakofter or Mariuskofter are all part of a tradition that for the reader grows and becomes interesting as they go from chapter to chapter in the voluminous book. We’re stopping by the workhouses in old Kristiansand, the ones older people remember as Handicrafts School and Karl Johans Minde Skole,with pictures for nostalgic recognition. And so we are in Egypt’s pyramids, Hindutemples, Jesus’ seamless robe, Italian altarpieces from the Renaissance, and back into the rag pile, the sweater.
The book is unusually rich in visual material, and the collection of this for Sundbø must have been at least as time-consuming as the writing process. And even as one who doesn’t knit and weave, the book is extremely exciting.
Emil Otto Syvertsen (via https://annemor.com/).
This is a big book. Meg Swanson, renowned knitter, teacher, author, purveyor of knitting supplies and books, and head of Schoolhouse Press writes, “Having known Annemor Sundbø (and the translator Carol Rhoades) for many decades, I should not be surprised by the excellence of this tome, but I am stunned nonetheless! 400 pages with nearly 900 images; I am nearly speechless.”
And the book weighs almost 5 pounds! I mention this to emphasize the grand scale of Annemor Sundbø’s comprehensive and richly illustrated history and analysis of iconic Norwegian sweaters.
Sundbø’s journey as “Norway’s Sweater Detective” came about when she applied for an internship at a “little shoddy factory that recycled wool.” The owner placed only one condition for her training: she first had to buy the factory (p. 302). In 1983, sixteen tons of wool rags including several tons of sweaters destined for the shredder entered Annemor Sundbø’s life.
In the introduction to Norway’s Knitted Heritage entitled “I Found, I Found,” she writes:
During the work of shredding that knitted wool into recycled wool, I wiped out pattern traditions from our knitting heritage.
The Norwegian sayings “to disappear like a spirit in a rag pile” and “with Handwork the Hands are at the Service of the Spirit” haunted me. They led me to believe that there was a spiritual dimension in the art of hand knitting. I set out on “the tracks of wandering souls.” The mind game of summoning a spirit or the souls in the sweater heritage awakened in me a hunting instinct. This was followed by a deep dive into the rich source materials I found in over 16 tons of knitted rags…
On this journey, I found miracles in legendary myths, Christian faith in salvation, the magic invulnerability of victory shirts, and star sweaters’ symbolic protection as a means of grace and a free ticket to paradise. Knitted sweaters in our time are a national treasure of Norway, and our sweater heritage is an adventuresome source for the power of creation and knitting happiness (p. 1).
The clues to what makes up the spirit of Norwegian sweaters are recorded in the 31 chapters. The titles themselves are enticing. For example, Chapter 3: “What Defines a Sweater;” Chapter 7: “Knitting for God and the Fatherland;” Chapter 19: “The Destiny of Sweaters, Nature, and Beings in Mythology and Etymology;” Chapter 28: “Patterns as Chaos Control;” and Chapter 31: “A Key to the Enigma of the Nightshirt.” Readers interested in language history will appreciate Sundbø’s amply-illustrated discussion of the words used to describe what we call “knitting” and “sweaters” today going back to the 16th century.
Each chapter is made up of short essays with illustrations (the book contains almost 900 illustrations), presenting the reader with what Annemor Sundbø has discovered in this journey through her ragpile.
Here are some highlights from the book:
(Left) “Finding an authentic sweater offers possibilities for assessing the wool and spinning qualities. In addition, we can see what techniques were used for casting on and binding off as well as being able to study the patten on the shoulders and cuff` .”(p. 85). (Right) “A sweater remnant that served as insulation in a doorframe on a farm. The pattern corresponds to a description of rose or star sweaters, also called “Nordland nightshirts” in advertisements. The night heavens shining stars have been used symbolically in all cultures.” (p. 254).
“From the moment I decided to save traditional sweaters from being recycled wool, it was only a few days before I was setting aside more than I recycled.” (p. 28).
A Norwegian wool knitted star-pattern night sweater (Nordland nightshirt) with decorative ribbons around the neckline. (p. 59).
Dance Chain and Eternity
“Three-leaf clovers are symbolic of the trinity in the Christian belief, but, in folk belief, they represented the life force, vitality, and vigorous growth. The ring dance can be interpreted as a “mandala,” a decorative circle to keep evil out.” (pp. 340, 341).
The Tree of Life, Wise Mother, and Art and Craft Tree
“Memories constantly turn back. Life’s wisdom and handwork knowledge are our heirloom silver. Helen Engelstad, rector of the National Teacher’s School in Design, was my “wise mother” in textile history, and I became one of the branches in her “art and craft tree.”…Reminders of her exquisite sense of form have turned up in different variations in the ragpile. Inspired by a pillow pattern from 1672, Helen Engelstad designed a sweater-jacket in 1939, a pattern heritage that wandered even further in gold and purple to honor her memory.” (p. 328). `
Lice Sweater
“Lice sweaters, a Setesdal tradition, are classic and immortal. The knitted sweaters were a common part of the men’s costume in the valley. If a new one was knitted for the wedding ceremony, the custom was that one would be buried in the same sweater.” (p. 342).
Many of the model sweaters presented in the book include graphed motifs. For adventurous knitters wanting to create their own Norwegian sweaters, Sundbø provides tables of measurements and stitch counts, graphed pattern designs, and 224 snapshots of individual sweaters that were “among the drop-offs“ from the rag pile (pp. 305-314).
Sundbø writes, “I have tried to recreate knitted sweaters for our time. You can choose the yarn that suits the models on the basis of your measurements, and you can knit the sweaters with shaping you like. The measurement schematics are, therefore, only suggestions.” (p.318). She encourages knitters to “design your knitted garment by choosing patterns from the past and knitting with joyful colors for the future.” (p. 387).
I found her instructions for neck openings particularly useful (pp. 318-319). She explains how to stitch and cut the knitting and then pick up stitches using a crochet hook to then knit a facing. The instructions are clear and smart.
Neck shapes. (p. 319)
From the Pattern Bank:
The sweaters in the ragpile offered many examples of iconic, traditional Norwegian sweater patterns, among them: dance lines, deer, domestics animals, cross and circle, birds, stars, roses, and zigzags. Sundbø has provided charted patterns in the “Pattern Bank” on pages 371-386 for knitters challenged to design their own sweaters. (So many reindeer!)
Annemore Sundbø writes, II have desired to reach the outer limits for uncovering new sides of our knitting history…..And at the same time, I want the rag scraps to be used as inspiration for new models in our common sweater heritage, so that they can become useful and joyful and bring fortune for all the future.” (p. 304).
This book is the extraordinary record of Annemor Sundbø, “Sweater Detective” and “Hunter,” discovering, illuminating, and sharing the spirit in the ragpile.
December 2023