Norwegian Folk Arts

Last night, the Sons of Norway Lodge I belong to held it's annual display of traditional Norwegian Folk Arts. The embroidered piece here was done by someone's grandmother based on a painting she'd seen. It's just gorgeous!





Melanie showed her traditional Nordic weaving. It's absolutely gorgeous. She uses a special wool from Norway. She only has to complete the lightning weave to get her certificate! Wahoo!



Hardanger embroidery and needlework are a well known traditional Norwegian art. All the examples were even lovelier in person than in my photos. The display was accented by several lovely examples of Norwegian porcelain. Several of the Hardanger pieces on display were Emile's. Her Hardanger embroidery took first place at the convention in Norfolk this past June - congratulations Emile!






This display was fabulous! Solveig is an extremely talented tapestry weaver. The three women in the tapestries represent the 3 stages of a woman's life:

• The Young Woman
• Motherhood
• Old Woman (this one is a work in progress)

This shows a close-up of the first two stages - as a young woman and as a mother.






This shows the drawing that the tapestry of the girl with the candle was designed after. The transformation from "pen" to "wool" is fascinating! Again, this was one of Solveig's creations.






Solveig also spends here time carving, painting, and bookbinding - what a busy woman!

















One of the displays was of photo restoration - some of the photos are more than 100 years old! Several family pictures form Norway have been restored - if you look closely, you can see the originals and the final restorations. The quality of the resulting restorations was fabulous!

A couple of the folks had fabulous stamp collections of Norwegian Stamps. Both Pat D. and Rick N. had impressive albums of stamps.





Pat's husband, Bill, has recently started wood carving. Several of his finished items as well as a number of "works in progress" are shown here.











The carved girls (above right) represent the various Bunads of Norway. Bill did the carving, and Pat did the painting. How perfect that their talents complement each other so well! The clock in the above photos is being donated to the lodge...what a great idea!

There was also a literary display. Christine was awarded a medal tonight for her accomplishments in Norwegian literature. Thankfully, she was permitted to read them in English and write her essays in English as well. She's planning a reading group with the lodge. Congratulations to Christine for her medal!



Ellen had a display of the lovely scrapbooks she keeps which chronicle various Norwegian events. She also has a scrap booking group that meets at the lodge.


I demonstrated spinning with both the spinning wheel as well as with the drop spindle. I had several of my hand spun yarns in baskets on the table as well. I also displayed a number of my knitted and felted items - including shawls and numerous socks. Coincidentally, I still hadn't felted the "Skully Bag" and included it in my display at the last minute. It turns out that Sept. 19th was "Talk Like a Pirate Day" - so I had the perfect knitted item on display!










While both knitting and spinning are traditional Norwegian arts, none of the finished objects I displayed were "traditional Norwegian" items. Next year, I plan to have completed either the Norwegian Socks (Norwegian Lusekofte Socks) or the Norwegian Mittens from patterns by Beth Brown-Reinsel.