This Blog follows on from A Vararfeldur for Auður the Deep Minded - PART 1, so if you haven’t already done so you might want to read that Blog HERE which will give you all the background on Auŏur’s saga and the context of a vararfeldur cloak.
Auður the Deep Minded lived in the 9th century, yet her story of flight, migration and strong female leadership is still as relevant today as it was then.
Auður fled tyranny in Norway and subsequently violence in the Outer Hebrides and the Highlands, before captaining her own vessel and guiding her people to safety and settlement in Iceland. She is one of the most prominent female figures in Icelandic medieval texts with her story written down in the Laxdaela Saga and Landnámabók (Icelandic Book of Settlement).
Auður’s story intertwined many aspects of my life, as a woman living in the Hebrides, a shepherdess of North Atlantic sheep and a seafarer, I have been inspired by her bravery, vision and honourable female leadership.
Having spent an artist residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre, in Blönduós, northern Iceland during February 2019 (you can read about this HERE) I was also intrigued by the strong historic and genetic links between Iceland and the Hebrides. Much of Norse history was swept aside in the Hebrides by the resurgence of Gaelic culture following the rise of the Lord of the Isles in the 13th century. I felt compelled to raise awareness within the Hebridean community of the wealth of their Norse heritage and to share, particularly with my fellow Hebridean women, Auður’s engaging and inspiring story.
In honour of Auður, I decided to weave a vararfeldur viking cloak. This would twine the various elements of Norse, Hebridean and Icelandic ancestry with aspects of my own life and would be made from fibre from North Atlantic sheep breeds found across the northern periphery.
I had never woven before so was in need of some expert help. This led me to spend three weeks at Osterøy Museum in Norway during February - March 2020. Osterøy Museum are the experts in warp weighted looms and vararfeldurs having recently published The Warp-Weighted Loom (2016) by Hákonardóttir, Johnston and Kløve Juuhl.
In advance of my time in Osterøy, I gathered and processed fleece from my own Hebridean sheep and other North Atlantic sheep breeds from Iceland, the Faeroes, North Ronaldsay, Shetland and the Lofoten islands, Norway. Then once in Osterøy, these were further combined with locally farmed Norwegian Spelsau sheep. The North Atlantic sheep breed have a distinctive double layered fleece with an oily, water shedding outer ‘tog’ layer and an insulating, fluffy ‘phel’ under layer. It was this ‘tog’ outer layer that lent itself to the nature of the vararfeldur piled cloak. The ‘tog’ fibres are woven into the textile but left long and it is these long fibres that give the vararfeldur its distinctive shaggy look like an animal fur but more flexible, lighter and quicker to dry. The processing of the fleece prior to weaving took around 1 week and involved: sorting the suitable fibres, separating the outer ‘tog’ fibres, washing and then carding these fibres ready for weaving.
The island of Osteroy, near Bergen in February - the Museum is situated at the bottom of this valley.
I arrived in Osterøy mid February and my excellent tutor Monika Ravnanger put me straight to work on one of their warp weighted looms. The process of weaving the vararfeldur took two weeks of long hours and very physical work. It is estimated that it takes 35 hours to hand spin enough yarn to weave for one hour so combined with the fleece processing of 1 week and weaving of 2 weeks this is an indication of the value in hours and materials embedded within a vararfeldur cloak.
The following photos chart the different stages of the weaving process better than any words.
Here is some of my own Hebridean fleece. Prior to weaving the ‘tog’ greasy water shedding outer fibres (pictured) must be separated from the ‘phel’ fluffy insulating under fibres. It is the long ‘tog’ fibres that are woven into the vararfeldur cloak.
Processing North Ronaldsay fleece (left) and gammel norsk sua sheep fleece from Lofoten, Norway (right).
Setting up the loom at Osteroy Museum, near Bergen.
Just love these warp weights, the stones are sourced from local riverbeds and made the most wonderful clanking chinking sound while weaving. They must be equally weighted front and back.
North Atlantic sheep ‘tog’ fibres from left to right: Hebridean, Faeroese, Norwegian, Icelandic, Shetland and a little North Ronaldsay.
The weft yarn and tufts are woven in from the top down. A ‘sword’ is used to beat the weft upwards to keep it tight. This is Salme weaving her own vararfeldur she was visiting from Oslo Museum, Costume Department so it was lovely to have her company for the first week.
As the weaving progresses the top beam is rotated to wind and lift the vararfeldur.
The completed vararfeldur in the process of being removed from the loom.
After two weeks of weaving and living in a small wooden cabin on my own at Osterøy Museum, I was ready for some civilisation and ventured into Bergen to visit art galleries. In Kunstall 3,14 Gallery, I came across a glass cabinet that contained a simple pencil, not particularly outstanding in itself. However, once I had sat and watched Thomas Inversen’s video the pencil became the embodiment of knowledge and skill gleaned through the ‘art of enquiry’ (Ingold 2013: 6).
Thomas Inversen - Making a pencil from scratch, 2019 (Photo - Inversen, T. 2020)
Inversen had spent 18 months making this pencil from scratch. The process had involved: digging up the graphite from an abandoned mine; chopping down a tree for the wood; and sourcing from their natural state clay, bees wax and fish glue (having first caught the fish). He had dug, chopped, baked, boiled, glued, planed and sanded the pencil into its finished state. In the process of making, he had come to understand all the constituent parts that make a pencil both in term of materials and skill. He had deconstructed and subsequently constructed, this simple tool that in our contemporary world we still rely on yet have no understanding of its making.
My encounter with his work triggered a perspective on my creative process of making Auður’s Cloak that I had somehow overlooked. Woven into the cloak were the fibres of my own Hebridean sheep that I had reared from lambs, tended into maturity and sheared. The additional fleece had been sourced from various breeds of North Atlantic sheep bred, incidentally mostly by women, across the Northern periphery. From these raw fleeces, I had processed with my own hands the dirty, greasy fibres into soft fluffy tufts then spent two weeks standing weaving. While, due to time constraints of deadlines, I had not spun the weft yarn, it had been sourced from locally bred Norwegian gammel norsk spel sheep.
My journey had been time consuming and physical - from Iceland, back to the Hebrides and on to Norway, as it happens Auŏur’s voyage in reverse, but most importantly it had been a process of ‘thinking through making’ (Ingold 2013: 6). What Heidegger termed ‘material thinking’ and ‘praxical knowledge’ (Bolt 2011: 90 & 93) where we learn through doing, the ‘privilege of art’ relevant to artistic practice, where ‘handling of and dealings with entities offers a special form of (in)sight.’ (Bolt 2011: 89). The process of making Auŏur’s vararfeldur had given me a particular form of knowledge, that as artists arises from our handling of materials and processes, resulting in experiential learning.
This is what the anthropologist Tim Ingold terms ‘the art of enquiry’, where:
‘the conduct of thought goes along with, and continually answers to the fluxes and flows of the materials with which we work. These materials think in us, as we think through them. … Thus the art of inquiry moves forward in real time, along with the lives of those who are touched by it, and with the world to which both it and they belong.
(Ingold 2013: 6).
Archaeology falls within the ‘art of enquiry’, as the process of excavation is again ‘a way of knowing from the inside: a correspondence between mindful attention and lively materials conducted by skilled hands at the trowels edge’ (Ingold 2013: 11). In a similar way to how artists follow the ‘fluxes and flows’ of materials, in the practice of excavation archaeologists are obliged to ‘follow the cut’ to ‘see where it goes, and in what direction it takes us – not passively but actively like hunters tracking their prey’ (Ingold 2013: 11). It is this form of ‘correspondence’ with the world, this ‘praxical knowledge’ that archaeology shares with artistic practice as we follow the materials and think through making [or digging].
At home on the Isle of Berneray, testing out my vararfeldur in the Hebridean breeze (photo - Finbar Rodger).
In their paper, Maori Weaving: The Intertwining of Spirit, Action and Metaphor (1996) MacAulay and Te Waru-Rewiri discuss the fusion of creative practice, ritual action and ceremonial presence in the weaving of Maori cloaks. It is not appropriate for me to compare my vararfeldur with the sacred kakahu cloaks that contain powerful and sacred associations for the Maori’s, however, it has stimulated some interesting considerations with regards to embodiment.
The spirit of the piece, the history of the weaving’s source, its resultant lineage, and the apparent tracings of descent and ownership, contribute to the idea of the woven cloaks as reliquaries - not primarily objects of devotion but containers of the relics of time, cultural survivals, aesthetic decisions, past use and former contexts. This is the notion behind the cloaks as treasures, taonga, as sacred and collective history (MacAulay & Te Waru-Rewiri 1996: 196).
In a similar way to the kakahu, Auður’s cloak embodies a very personal journey of discovery, geography, history and skill. The story of Auður, the migrant Norse people and their small, thrifty North Atlantic sheep are all woven into this cloak. It ties together who I am as an artist, shepherdess and seafarer with aspects of who she was 1000 years ago. It also binds together the women who provided the fleece and farm today in the extreme island environments that Auŏur visited on her journey north to Iceland.
This itself, however, was not enough. MacAulay and Te Waru-Rewiri make reference to how ‘The novice’s first weaving [kakahu] is usually given away. … launching the woven piece into the public arena of family, friends and destiny’. It is then as the weaving circulates that, ‘the object accrues value through its different associations and its travels over space and time’ (1996: 196).
In a similar fashion, I will let go of my novice weaving. Over the coming months, I will promote Auður’s story through social media and invite women throughout the Outer Hebrides to take part in the Auður project. Any woman inspired by her bravery and leadership, will be invited to be photographed wearing Auður’s cloak in a setting of their choosing. In this way, Auður’s cloak will accrue a new history, linking her ancient story to the lives of contemporary women. In Bergen, next June, the Auður project will work in this way with refugee women who have themselves experienced the need for bravery in flight and migration. It is hoped that this will give them a voice and show how their experience is sadly a story thousands of years old.
Auður’s Cloak will be the focal piece in an art exhibition to be shown at:
Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Art Gallery, North Uist, Outer Hebrides, 2nd October - 27th November 2020
Osterøy Museum, nr. Bergen, Norway, June - August 2021
I would like to thank Osterøy Museum who let me stay in their log cabin and gave me instruction on their warp weighted loom in exchange for exhibiting my work in their museum next year.
I am also very grateful for the Research and Development grant that I received from Creative Scotland which has enabled me to immerse myself in my research into Auður the Deep Minded and the vararfeldur viking cloak.
You can find out more about my Hebridean knitting yarn business through my website: https://www.birlinnyarn.co.uk/
Bibliography
Anderson, A. O. (1922) Early sources of Scottish history, A.D. 500 to 1286. Edinburgh & London: Oliver and Boyd.
Bender Jørgensen, L. (2012) ‘The Introduction of sails to Scandinavia: Raw materials, labour and land.’ Proceedings of the 10th Nordic TAG conference at Stikestad, Norway 2009 Oxford: Archaeopress
Bolt, B (2011) Heidegger Reframed. New York: I.B. Tauris
Chessa. B. et al. (2011) ‘Revealing the History of Sheep Domestication using Retrovirus Integrations Science’. Science 2009 April 24; 324(5926): 532–536.
Hákonardóttir, H. Johnston, E. and Kløve Juuhl, M. (2016) The Warp-Weighted Loom. Norway: Museumssenteret I Hordaland.
Helgason, A., Hickey, E., Goodacre, S., Bosnes, V., Stefa ́nsson, K., Ward, R., and Sykes, B. (2001) ’mtDNA and the Islands of the North Atlantic: Estimating the Proportions of Norse and Gaelic Ancestry.’ AJHG vol.68, pp. 732-737
Jennings, A. and Kruse, A. (2009) ‘From Dál Riata to the “Gall-Ghàidheil’. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia Vol 5 pp. 123-149
Thomas, I. (2020) Thomas Inverson [online]. Available from: <https://www.thomasiversen.com/making-a-pencil-from-scratch> [10/04/20]
Ingold, T. (2013) Making - Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Oxon & New York: Routledge.
MacAulay, Suzanne and Te Waru-Rewiri, Kura, (1996). ‘Maori Weaving: The Intertwining of Spirit, Action and Metaphor’. Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings: University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/858