By Ingrid Berger

What did people wear next to their skin here in Nordfjord in the 1800s and earlier?  What were the common customs?  In pictures, drawings and descriptions from the 1800s, it is most often the outer clothing that we learn about.  It is also the visible clothing that is most researched and described in writing.

Sparse information

There is a good deal of underwear in the collection of Nordfjord Folk Museum (NMF), but the cultural history that surrounds these items is more difficult to determine.  Naturally, perhaps.  But information does exist, for example in the folk-life observations of Eilert Sundt, who travelled around Norway’s rural communities in the 1800s gathering information about how the “common people” lived.  In his book Om renligheds-stellet i Norge [On Cleanliness in Norway], there is much to read about the subject.

Underpants – a new invention

And, brace yourself, underwear was simply not common in the countryside before the middle of the 1800s!  This applied to both women and men.  Among other things, Sundt reported that in a rural community in our county there was a “tauskone” [old maid] who first began to use underwear sometime around 1830, and that “hun blev riktignok hedende Brok-Kari for det samme, ja, da en mand siden fulgte exemplet, fik han også samme navn” [she was, in fact, called Underpants-Kari for that; and yes, when a man later followed her example, he got the same name].  It was so unusual to use underpants at that time that one received a nickname for doing so.

A woman of today would not go without underpants under her skirt, even if the skirt was ever so long.  It would most certainly clash with her understanding of what was seemly.  But early in the 1800s it was completely the opposite: it was unseemly for a woman to wear underpants under her skirt!

Airy women’s underpants

Remarkable for us today is also the fact that women’s underpants could be open in the crotch.  Such underpants were called open pants.  Open pants had two legs that were only held together at the waist and that were not sewn together in the crotch.  Women today would consider such open pants to be highly risqué, but such was not the case for women 150 years ago.  That which is considered seemly has completely reversed on this point.

But why didn’t they use underpants in the early 1800s?  Looking at some practical conditions at the time may not give the entire explanation, but it can make that convention more understandable.

The skirt as a private toilet

The toilet rarely existed as a private room at that time.  The toilet was usually communal, or people did their “business” outside.  When women would “relieve themselves”, they could simply go a little way from others, stand upright with a slight curve in their back, slightly bend their knees, and hold their skirt a little out from themselves. Women could thus, rather unseen, take care of their “business.”  This usually happened in fixed places.  It goes without saying that for this errand, it would not be practical to have underpants, or have pants that were sewn together in the crotch, when the alternative was to draw up your skirt, pull down your underpants and squat.  Seen in this light, one can understand that it was, in fact, quite seemly to go without underpants, or to have them open in the crotch.

To save cloth and work

We can also gain an understanding of “underpants resistance” when we realize that fabric and yarn for the production of cloth was much more highly valued by people in the 1800s than it is by us today.  A finished piece of clothing was the result of a long process.  Cloth of wool, hemp and linen had traveled a long way from raw fibers to finished cloth, and by way of people’s own hands.  Nothing was in abundance.  Regular people in rural Norway had very little, which meant that one managed with the little one had.  Seen in this light, one can understand that underwear was an unnecessary luxury.

How to keep warm

How did they keep warm, especially in wintertime, without underpants?  Long upper garments of wool were usual during winter for both women and men.  These were long, preferably extending down a little over the thighs.  In this way the body below the waist was kept warm.  Men had pants and women had wool skirts and wool underskirts, and both men and women had wool stockings.

For women it must have still been drafty and cold under their skirts during the cold winters. Sundt confirms this when he writes that various abdominal complaints were a frequent problem with women.  Eventually recommendations were forthcoming from the health authorities to use underpants.  For women’s health, the absence of underpants was not good.

Materials and technique

When underpants eventually came into use, they were first hand sewn from woven wool cloth.  Knitted undergarments from wool yarn came into use around the mid 1800s, first as knitted undershirts, then as knitted underpants.  When the knitting machine came into use, knitted underpants became the rule.

In the beginning, women preferably went pants-less under their skirts during the summer, but used wool underpants during the winter.  Eventually, as cotton became common, they used wool and cotton alternately, depending on the season.  In a reminiscence from Gloppen, the underwear of an older women born in 1838 was described.  This woman used a wool undershirt nearest the skin, had gathered wool underskirts in tabby and underpants of wadmal during the winter, and home woven cotton twill during the summer.  As described, these were sturdy clothes, in the shape of “half pants” of the knickers type.  These were garments elderly women used in the beginning of the 1900s.

“Despite the prejudice against it”

It is possible that the more widespread use of underpants may be associated with the more common use of cotton from about the middle of the 1800s.  One could buy yarn and weave the cloth oneself, or buy ready-made fabric, although the latter was likely a luxury in the beginning.  One could also buy cotton and spin it at home.

Eilert Sundt believed, in any case, that there was great benefit with the appearance of cotton tabby cloth: “Ikke alene til skjorter og særker, men også til underbukser – et plag som i det sidste halvhundrede år har holdt på at komme i brug selv blandt almuekvinderne, trods den fordom, som var i veien” [Not only for shirts and shifts, but also for underpants – a garment that in the last half century has been coming into use, even among rural women, despite the prejudice against it].

Mostly unused underwear

Most of the underwear in the museum appears to be unused, and perhaps the explanation is that they were so old-fashioned during the time they were produced that they were left unworn? As a rule, underwear was not taken care of for posterity.  For the most part, it is finer clothes that we have left from our ancestors.  Underwear was “used up.”  For example, we have no open underpants in the collection, so if anyone has some in a closet, please contact the museum (Nordfjord Folk Musuem).  

Sources:

Frykmann, Jonas: Den kultiverade människan. Gleerups, Kristianstad. 1979.
Ryssdal, Marie: Husflid og handarbeid i tida ca.1850-1940. Særtrykk av Soga om Gloppen og Breim. Sandane. 1979.
Sundt Eilert: Om renligheds-stellet i Norge. Gyldendal Norsk forlag, Gjøvik 1975.
Riddervold, Astrid: – Og hva hadde de så under -? Undertøy i Norge 1860-1930. I Dugnad ¾. Novus forlag, Oslo 1987.

This article originally appeared in the Kulturhistorisk Leksikon published by the Fylkesarkivet i Sogn og Fjordane and is reprinted in translation by permission.

Translation by Katherine Larson and Marta Kløve Juuhl