Revisiting the Norwegian Textile Letter Volume 1, No. 2, January 1995

By Lila Nelson

Of the various types of coverlets produced and used on the farms in Norway during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, those with geometric forms woven in certain tapestry techniques have been surprisingly neglected.  Much more interest has been taken in the two major pile weaves, flossa and rya, and more is known of their history.  This parallels the situation in the Orient, to which the rya knot can be traced, where pile woven carpets have until recently eclipsed concern with flat woven types.  Marit Wang’s Ruteaklaer (Oslo: Univeritetsforlaget, 1983) is the first in-depth study of Norway’s geometric patterned tapestry coverlets.

Like many folk textiles, the coverlets have been known by a variety of names, and recently scholars have tried to arrive at one generally accepted and understood term. Aklae¹ has been in common usage to denote coverlets of which the geometric are only one example.  In Akleboka (Gauslaa and Ostby, Landbruksforlaget, 1977), aklae included twills, overshot, bound weaves and double weaves in addition to the tapestry types.  Smettaklae infers the technique; this refers to aklaer woven with small butterflies or bobbins with discontinuous wefts.  Ruteaklae identifies the design as being built up of square blocks (Janice Stewart in her FOLK ARTS OF NORWAY uses the term “square weave” in identifying geometric tapestry coverlets), while Vestlandsaklae indicates the area in Norway where most of the coverlets were produced. 

Recently the Swedish term rolaken has been used in an effort to standardize nomenclature on a broader level (Nordisk Tekstilteknisk Terminologi by Stromberg, Geijer, Hald, and Hoffman, Oslo, published, 1974, and Wang, Ruteaklaer).  However, since I believe that weavers in this area still generally identify rolakan with one specific type of tapestry coverlet from Sweden, I will use the term chosen by Wang for the title of her study, ruteaklae.

When interlock tapestry, of which ruteaklae is a type, came into Norway is not known.  Archaeological finds in Sweden from the eighth and ninth centuries have included fragments of rolakan considered by some scholars to be indigenous.  Anna-Maja Nylen states that it is generally believed rolakan existed in an unbroken tradition in Sweden from prehistoric times.²

Janice Stewart equates the development of ruteaklae with that of chip carving in Norway,³  both appearing in the Middle Ages, although no examples from that period have been documented in any of the Nordic countries.  Einar Lexow, in his 1914 study of the 280 rutaeklaer then in the Bergen Museum, speculated that the technique might have begun  at a time when a sharp demarcation between rural and urban did not exist; that the eighteenth century marked the period of development among the Norwegian peasants and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a time of gradual decadence and decline.⁴ The date of production for most extant ruteaklaer can only be surmised. Lexow dates one Sogn coverlet in the Bergen collection as no older than 1700 on the basis of the dress and pipe styles of two smoking figures in the upper center.⁵ Unfortunately, such figures are rare in ruteaklaer and, equally unfortunately, dates were seldom woven into them.

A little more is known about the locus of production.  Of the 346 coverlets now in the Bergen Museum (the largest individual collection in Norway), the provenance of 205 is known. Practically all come from the west coast fjord area as far north as Sunnmore and south to Mandal on the southern tip (see map, fig. 1).  The highest concentration within that area is midway, in Sogn (49 aklaer) and Nordhordland (45), and in their bordering regions, Sunnfjord (23) to the north and Hardanger (19) to the south.  Lexow’s additional examination of aklaer in the collections of the Kristiania Museum of Industrial Arts, the Norwegian Folk Museum and the Maihaugen collection confirmed these conclusions.  The few having inland provenances were believed to have been imports from west Norway. 

General characteristics of ruteaklaer include a rectangular shape around four feet in width and five feet in length.  The majority are made in one piece, indicating the use of a wide loom; but in the southern areas many are woven in two equal sections joined down the center.  The warp is generally of linen or hemp in the earliest pieces, but a tight twist cotton appears later.  A small number throughout the west coast area have wool warps.  The warp, generally single but sometimes double stranded, is spaced so that it is completely covered by the wool weft, which is packed down to produce a satisfactorily tight and warm coverlet.  The occasional appearance of heading cords suggests that some aklaer were woven on a vertical loom; Marta Hoffmann has written about a west coast loom with both upper and lower beams, as well as the warp-weighted loom, which was in common use throughout the country long after the introduction of the horizontal loom on the European continent.⁶ Fringed upper and lower borders probably indicate revival pieces made for decorative use only; the early aklaer were simply turned under and firmly stitched.  The designs making up the body of the pieces are built up in blocks of two, four or six warp widths, with four being the standard.  Upper and lower borders are generally present in widely varying designs and sizes; four-sided borders seem to occur only in pieces from the southern areas.  The ruteaklaer which, unlike the above, have an all-over banded composition, appear to be unique to the area of Nordhorland.

From the standpoint of tapestry techniques, the body of ruteaklaer were executed in four ways.  Of these, the single interlock method seems to have predominated.  In this method, meeting wefts are linked between warps when moving one direction only, fig.1.  Double interlock, a linkage of wefts in both directions as in rolakan, fig.2 was a close second, although it appears that single interlock has been more common in late nineteenth and twentieth century coverlets. 

A considerable smaller group has single dovetailed joins (meeting wefts share a common warp), fig.3, and a very few represent mixed techniques.  Of 345 aklaer in the Bergen Collection, grouping according to technique was follows:⁷ 

 

Reasons for method choices are speculative.  One could presume that a practical-minded housewife would prefer aklaer woven in single interlock because these were reversible.  They were not however, as heavy as double interlock pieces, a factor to consider in cold climates.  Marit Monsen in the 1975 yearbook of Sunnmore Museum, points up the possibility of a relationship between design and method. She noted that of the twelve ruteaklaer from Sunnmore in the Bergen collection, the seven with eight-petaled flower motifs were done in single interlock; the four with diagonal line compositions were double interlock; and the one with both motifs included both techniques.  Wang found that the eight-petaled flower “appears proportionately more frequently in coverlets woven with single interlocking’.⁸

Professor Lexow from his 1914 study came to the conclusion that the wide variety of designs found in ruteaklaer developed from an originally uniform motif, the eight-petaled flower.  He describes it quite explicitly:

The motif repeated in all coverlets of this older type is the eight-petaled flower with two dark colors alternating in adjoining petals. The space between the petals is yellow at top, bottom, and on both sides, and white in other spaces. Around the flower is always found an octagonal frame of darker color. This figure is almost identical on these coverlets, with insignificant variations only in color. Four of the petals are always of a reddish-violet color (from a vegetable dye made from lecanora tartaria). The other four petals are usually green or brown but now often faded completely gray; occasionally they are also blue.The frame is woven in the same colors as those of the flower. Yellow and white are the unchanging ground colors. The same rule for color placement is adhered to here as in heraldry: ‘either color on metal, or metal on color’; that is, darker colors must never be placed close to each other but must always be separated by light colors (gold and silver in heraldry, yellow and white in square weave)’⁹

Variation in the arrangement of the flowers occurred early and developed in some cases as clearly localized character.  In Hardanger they became smaller than in Sogn and Sunnfjord and were repeated, often in white, up to 24 times, while broken-up diagonals with complex color and design arrangements dotted the divisions between the flowers. 

The colors were usually the standard red, yellow, and natural white and black, but in brighter shades than found to the north in Sogn, with sometimes blue or green included.  Eventually the division blocks between petals as well as the alternating color arrangement disappeared, leaving a simplified form of an eight-pointed star.  Generally speaking, the coverlets of Sogn and the north have big bold flowers in larger blocks of color than are usual in Hardanger and the south.  In Nordhordland a distinctively horizontal orientation developed, with the eight-petaled flower only one of other motifs and techniques occurring in narrow bands across an entire piece.  Relatively dark shades of red and blue also distinguished many of these coverlets.

The Celtic knot motif has been found often though not exclusively, in Sogn.  It is a motif to which magic properties were once ascribed, but it is not known that this or any other motif had symbolic significance as used in aklaer.  While in some media the knot has circular loops in each of the four corners, in geometric weaving these have become squares.  The knot has appeared within the center of an eight-pointed star, in a double form in horizontal rows, and in a highly complex structure of 20 interlocked knots rather than the standard four. 

In other variations the knots have been opened to form a motif called the nine crosses. 

In still another, referred to as the nine-flowers motif, the crosses have each become closed triangles.  Finally, it has been combined with a variation of the lily cross in which the Celtic knot is practically obscured.

While crosses and diamonds fill the diagonals between flowers and knot motifs, they also comprise the only motifs in some aklaer.  Four diamonds clustered together to form a large diamond called a hodnrose (horned flower) sometimes alternated with a five-diamond arrangement known as kollerose or hornless flower.  These seem to appear in all of the west coast areas where ruteaklaer were found.

The ornamentation on upper and lower borders, which can be found in practically every rutaklaer, varies considerably in width, design, and technique.  By far the most widely prevalent – and often the only- border designs are narrow stripes and two-color alterations called kjerringtenner (hag’s teeth). All the colors of the piece are picked up and blended in what is usually a pleasing contrast to the bolder blocks of color and design in the body. Other borders, which occur in approximately decreasing frequency in the order of their listing, include:

This brief introduction points up how much is left to be studied about ruteaklear.  The extensive collections in Norwegian museums other than Bergen, as well as the many in private possession, need to be catalogued.  Microscopic examination of warps to determine the nature of what Wang describes only as non-wool could answer questions about the introduction and distribution of cotton in rural Norway.  The relationship of ruteaklaer to the pictorial tapestry tradition in Norway is a field of further exploration. Very little has been done to relate ruteaklaer to geometric flat weavings of Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and parts of western Europe.  And of particular interest here, the number of ruteaklaer in private and public collections brought to this country as a result of the Norwegian immigration should be located and researched.  They are a part of that complex and diverse entity which comprises the folk art tradition of America.  

¹The spelling of aklae varies according to chronology and place.  Akled, for example, is an early form.

²Ann-Maja Nylen. Tr. Anne Charlotte Harvey.  Swedish Handcrafts, New York:  Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1977, p.151.

³Janice Stewart. The Folk Arts of Norway, New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1972, Second edition p.164.

⁴Einer Lexow. Tr. John Gundersen. Vestlanksk Vevkunst. Monograph reprinted from the Bergens Museums Aarbok, 1914. P.27.

⁵Lexow,p.7.

⁶Marta Hoffmann, En Gruppe Vevstoler pa Vestlandet, Oslo: pub, 1958; ibid, The Warp-Weighted Loom Studia Norwegica No 14, Oslo, 1964.

7Marit Wang, Ruteaklaer, Universitetetsforlaget, 1983, p. 147.

8Wang, p. 148 (English summary)

9Lexow, pp. 5-6.

Reprinted with permission form THE TEXTILE COUNCIL of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Spring 1994

Would you like to see more rutevev coverlets?  

Here are a few from the virtual galleries of Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum. 

The Norwegian Digital Library, digitaltmuseum.no, includes artifacts from many museums in Norway. If you enter “rutevev” in the search box, you can see almost 400 pieces.