By Karin Bøe

This article is from my book Rugger og Brossar. Åkle i Setesdal (2012). My research was built on many fine conversations with older folks who grew up with traditional weaving, on examining registered coverlets, and written records. I registered 233 coverlets with diverse weaving techniques: square weave (smetting), plain weave with pick-and-pick, rosepath, krokbragd, and diamond twill. They were from Bykle, Valle, and Bygland in Setesdal. Most were in private hands, and some in museums and other collections.

An åkle [“OH kleh] is a woven coverlet that was used on a bed. It adorned a bed in the main room by day and was a warm covering at night. But in Setesdal they didn’t use the word åkle. Furthest north in Setesdal, in Bykle and Valle, they called it a rugge (plural=ruggar); further south, in Hylestad and Bygland, they used the term brosse. 

Natural Dye Colors

I know of very few rugger dyed with natural dyes. The colors from natural dyes are somewhat less bright than those from chemical dyes, but it can be difficult to tell the difference.  Brown from stone lichen is, however, often used in coverlets, for darker and lighter brown. Colors such as pink, violet, and turquoise are typical chemical dyes. If you see a coverlet including any of them, it is likely that most of the other colors are chemically dyed too. 

Chemical Dye Colors

Chemical dyes were invented around the end of the 1800s. Violet came first and was discovered in the 1850s; blue came in the 1890s. At the beginning quality was poor, but it improved over time. Pink, violet and turquoise were new colors for Setesdal weavers, and they became popular. Mari Langerak wrote that lavender was very fashionable in weaving and embroidery in the 1920s, but after a few years people quit using it.   We often see these new chemical colors in the registered rugger. 

Many of the interviewees described purchasing powdered chemical dyes in small paper bags or metal boxes. Each packet included instructions for using the dye, so it was an easy process. 

But it was difficult to get the colors to hold. Birgit Byklum and Birgit Breive said that the home-dyed colors could easily bleed. Gyro T. Homme would not use white in a coverlet, for fear the other colors would run into it. She said that before the war there were some colors that were poor quality and would bleed, which of course was not good. Ingebjørg Bakken also thought it was difficult, but she did the best she could, adding salt to the dye to make it more colorfast. 

In several of the coverlets you can see that the colors have bled into one another. That which perhaps was white is no longer white, instead taking on a light pink or gray cast. In some rugger there can be a definite gray cast over the whole piece. It could be that poor quality dyes were used, and the colors have bled into one another. 

Some colors were especially prone to bleeding. Ingebjørg Bakken thought blue and gold were especially unstable, which you can definitely see in old coverlets. Blue and colors that included blue, like violet and green, have often completely faded and can look almost white today. Red-violet or deep pink is another color that fades a great deal. It is not as easy to see whether gold has faded. 

When the colors are faded the coverlets can appear to have been woven in pastels, but when you look on the back side, or in between the threads, you can often see the original colors. Sometimes the colors can be so faded that it is very difficult to determine what the original colors might have been. For example, you can only see a nuance of blue or green.

It was difficult for a weaver to determine how much yarn of each color would be needed for a rugge. Ingebjørg Bakken said that you could talk with someone who had woven the pattern before, and ask how many spools should be dyed in each color. When you spin yarn the thread goes onto a spool. When the spool is full, you have to stop and wind the yarn off into a skein before you can spin further. Therefore, spools could serve as a measure for how much yarn you have spun or that you need to spin for your weaving. 

Combining Colors

Jorunn Holum said, “I associate Valle-colors with those that are clear, fine, and bright,” Many of the interviewees said they like strong colors. And some said that they like duskier or matte colors better, but colors were stronger in the past.

If you have tried weaving, you know how difficult it is to put colors together. You can lay out the yarn in a variety of colors on the table and see what looks good. But when you weave the colors together it can become altogether different and not so great after all. To fix it means you must weave it again, so it’s best to get it right from the start. This was a problem the interviewees knew well. They say putting colors together is an art. If you don’t do it well, it can “destroy” the weaving. 

Gyro T. Homme said, “Putting colors together is of great importance.” Gyro Longerak said that “the greatest art is putting colors together, the right colors, colors that work well with one another.”  Tone Stavenes said, “It gives you a headache when you put colors together. It’s so awful.”  Jorånd Bø also said it was difficult “until you find the colors you want. But once you solved that, it went well.” And Ingebjørg A. Uppstad said, “They put together colors little by little  in  coverlets.”

So there’s a difference, depending on whether weavers are clever with color or not. When Anne Myrum examined several weavings she said, “They work well all together. It is as if it is all one border. They have the same color tones throughout. There isn’t anything that sticks out.” She also said that “the color tones follow through the whole way.” She showed one coverlet she wove and said, “See, here I put in one gold (zigzag) stripe at the end. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve been irritated by that gold stripe my whole life!” The gold stripe near the end stuck out clearly from the rest of the coverlet.

Gyro T. Homme looked at a coverlet with plant-dyed yarn and commented, “I think these colors don’t show up enough, the two dark ones (green and brown). It appears as it’s all one whole. I would have liked more striking colors mixed in. Look here, these are too similar (gold and green).” 

She meant the colors must differ enough from one another so they are properly visible. If the colors aren’t easily seen, there’s no point in putting so much work into your weaving. Another couple of weavers also said that the colors can’t be too similar. It’s a balancing act. The colors must be clearly differentiated, and at the same time they mustn’t stand out too much. They must be clear and evenly distributed so there is a sense of unity in the weaving. 

Some say that in the past weavers used the colors they had. And some say you can use the colors you want–just that they work together. But is it so easy? A Valle-kone (a woman from Valle in Setesdal) told about how she was once teaching a “city-woman” to do løyesaum (an embroidery technique with wool, mostly used on Setesdal national costumes).  She told the “city-woman” she could pick whatever colors she wanted, and the “city-woman” chose green tones. That was a problem for the instructor from Valle, because in løyesaum it is the red colors that are central. For the Valle-kone the red color was a given, but clearly that was not the case with the “city-woman.”  

I believe that in a small area with local traditions, local color preferences will develop. When people grow up and see the colors around them, they learn that’s the way it should be and they come to love those colors. I don’t think they are conscious of it at all. Of course there can be differences in taste, but it is within a certain unwritten and unconscious framework. When some people said they used the colors they had, I don’t think it was a fluke. They had those colors because it was the ones they liked and it that was the way it should be.  But there was something to be said for using what colors were available. During and after World War I, for example, it was difficult to obtain embroidery yarn in their preferred colors. Then they might have had to use pink instead of red, or blue instead of green.

Colors in the Registered Rugs

The colors in rugger are preferably clear and sharp. The base color is most often black and the main color red. There is some green and blue. Using a little gold and a little white brightens it up, according to Gyro T. Homme. Approximately a third of the coverlets have some orange, pink, dark red, and/or violet. Gray, brown and mossy-brown were sometimes used.

“Red and green belong together, and gold and blue belong together,” said Gyro T. Homme. Especially red and green were often used together in rugger, but also a similar amount of red and blue. Yellow and blue or violet were used sometimes. These are complementary colors, but also have a warm-cold contrast. Contrast between light and dark was also used, for example orange, pink, white, or gold together with red, blue, dark red or black. Closely-related colors and shades of the warm colors were also often used, but not the cold colors. We often see the warm colors–red, orange, pink and dark red–used together. Green and blue together was were not so commonly used in Bykle and Valle, but somewhat more common in Bygland.  

Colors in Løyesaum Embroidery

Now we will describe a bit about the colors in løyesaum embroidery on Setesdal national costumes, to compare them to coverlets. It was, of course, the same women who both wove and embroidered. Mari Langerak wrote about the typical medley of colors in løyesaum: mostly red, some blue and green and a little gold. There is also a little burgundy, a little white, and occasionally black. Red can be used every other time. Langerak wrote about the rhythm in the embroidery. Red characterizes the rhythm and it is red they begin with when they embroider.  In løyesaum the colors on the scroll designs are very often two red, one green, two red, one blue, and so on.  

The authors of Rette Klede i Setesdal (Correct Clothing in Setesdal)  wrote that the colors in løyesaum can should be sharp, with clear separation. Let’s look at several examples they wrote about. The scroll designs can be red, green, and blue. If you wanted more colors, you could trade out some of the red with pink or dark red. On flekkjesaum (“braided” satin stitch covering an area) it was written that the main color is red with green and blue in between. They believed that you shouldn’t have too many red colors close together or it would appear like a single red surface. “Ton i ton” (shades of the same color) don’t belong in Setesdalsaum (Setesdal embroidery). And when it came to trousers and vests for men, the rule was to use twice as much red as other colors. 

Other colors that were used a bit were orange, violet and lavender, Langerak wrote. While she wrote violet and lavender, she perhaps meant violet and pink? She wrote that in the 1920s it was so fashionable to use “lilla”, or lavender, in weaving and løyesaum. But after a while people tired of the color. One Valle-kone said that she couldn’t tolerate those colors: “They don’t belong in our embroidery.”

In Rette Klede i Setesdal, they wrote that pink was used a great deal around the First World War. The reason was that when people bought yarn they bought an equal amount of each color. They used red yarn the most and then they weren’t able to get more during and after the war. So they used pink instead of red, and later became so tired of it they stopped using it altogether. 

Langerak also described the oldest yarn they used for embroidery. It was called dyffelgarn and it came from Germany, as did løye yarn. But dyffelgarn had duskier, paler colors than løye. Red, blue, gold, green and black were used to embroider kinnplagg (baby shawls) and baptism caps. Many thought the old embroidery was finer and more beautiful, Langerak wrote. 

We have seen that the use of color in løyesaum and rugger is very similar. The colors are clear and sharp and are clearly defined. Red is most frequently used, with a good bit of green and blue in between. Then there is a little gold and white. In addition there is some pink and dark red in embroidery and weaving. Orange, violet and blue-green, or turquoise, were often used in rugger, but less frequently in embroidery. A bit of black was also used in embroidery. 

There can also appear to be more variation in the color tones in rugger than in løyesaum, for example green-gold, green-blue, blue-green, blue-violet, or gold gold-orange and orange-gold. That could be because the yarn for løyesaum came already dyed from the factory, while weaving yarn was spun and dyed by the weavers.

The base color in rugger is usually black. The base color in løyesaum can also be black, but also green. 

In Conclusion

The art is in putting together colors in the right way. The colors should be distributed across the whole weaving for a unified look; none should stick out. Red colors were used a lot with some green and blue, a little gold and white, all on a black ground. The colors were put together in such a way as to make each color clearly delineated. To do that, weavers used contrast such as complementary colors, light/dark colors, and warm/cold colors. The use of these contrasts against a black ground gave a colorful and exuberant expression to the rugger in Setesdal, at any rate around 1900. 

It’s exciting to work with these weavings and figure out how they would have appeared when they were new. Many surprises and color combinations turned up, ones I wouldn’t have thought of myself, or dared to try. That’s why it is important to conduct this research and display the results. The talented weavers of Setesdal deserve no less. 

Karin Bøe moved to Valle in Setesdal in 1995 as a craft instructor. She began to study weaving traditions in the Setesdal region by examining coverlets and interviewing older weavers. In 1996 she began her business, Valle Vev, creating traditional weavings. She has a certificate in handwaving and a masters in traditional folk art. In 2012 she published her book, Rugger og Brossar. Åkle i Setesdal (Rugger og Brossar: Coverlets in Setesdal).

Translated by Robbie LaFleur and Lisa Torvik

Would you like to purchase Karin Bøe’s book Rugger og Brossar. Åkle i Setesdal (2012) (Rugger and Brossar Coverlets in Setesdal)? It is written in Norwegian with an English synopsis at the end. Contact Ken Koop in the Gift Shop at Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum. The museum is currently out of stock, but more are on order.