Looking at Hardanger

The Embroiderers’ Guild of Victoria (BC, Canada) has just started a new series looking at Hardanger on their Facebook page. This is great news, and I shall enjoy following it!

I’m going to be controversial here. I believe that the first post with which they have introduced this next focus, doesn’t actually show any Hardanger at all. That’s right, I don’t think there is any Hardanger on that outfit.

The outfit shown is a bunad (traditional clothing/folk dress) from Fana, which is in Hordaland. Hordaland is the region where Hardangerfjord also is. Hardanger embroidery comes from around the Hardangerfjord, in some of the towns along the shores. However, the bunads from other towns in the region share similarities with the Hardanger bunad. The Fana bunad does look similar to the Hardanger bunad.

If I’m looking for Hardanger embroidery on a bunad (see the examples above), the places I’m likely to find it will be a band of Hardanger embroidery across the white apron; on the cuffs of the shirt, the collar of the shirt, and the front yoke opening of the shirt. If the woman is wearing a headdress, there may be a band of Hardanger around the headdress.

So, looking at the Fana bunad (via the link to the FB post, but also shown here), the places I’d look for Hardanger embroidery would be the same. The cuffs, collar and yoke do not show Hardanger. They possibly have some embroidery (the yoke definitely has some), but it isn’t Hardanger.

So, let’s look at the apron. There are three inset bands across the apron. But are they Hardanger? I don’t think they are.

The first clue that I had was that the design isn’t quite typical of the many apron band designs that I have seen. Sure, I haven’t seen all that there are, but this just didn’t look “right”. I can’t recall ever seeing a Hardanger apron with more than one band of lace, either.

We can think of Hardanger in terms of dense and open, with the most dense (whitest) parts being the satin stitching, the next less dense parts (slightly less white) being the unstitched ground fabric, and the most open (dark/black) parts being the cutwork. If we apply that to the bands in the photograph we can see three levels of density, of white, grey and black. However, the grey part is too dark, and looks way too open to be the ground fabric.

When you insert a band of Hardanger embroidery, the embroidery has to be worked on evenweave linen. Traditionally, they would have used up to 55 or even 60 count linen. It is more common these days though, to use 35/36 count linen. The information in the caption on the FB page said it was made by a retailer that makes bunads, so is likely to be on 35/36 count.

35 count linen isn’t gauzey. It’s quite opaque. Therefore you would expect the ground fabric parts of a design to be opaque. The parts on this design that would be the unstitched ground fabric would be the areas around the attebladrose (the thing we often think of as an eight-pointed star, which is actually a rose). But they’re not the dense white you’d expect them to be; they’re quite grey, making them look like they have some sort of pulled thread work IF they’re embroidered.

I looked up the Fana bunad in The Written Authority on Bunads, “Norsk Bunadleksikon” (ISBN 978-82-04-10819-7, but very hard to get hold of because it is out of print) which is a three volume set on the many, many bunads from across Norway. According to it, when a white apron is used, it usually features crochet bands.

So is it actually crochet that we’re looking at? I think the answer is yes. I went searching for images of similar aprons (using the search term “Fana bunad forkle” because forkle means apron). The clincher for me was this image. It shows a band which is clearly based on the same design, and it is clearly is made of crochet.
A note on the image: I have searched for this particular image to see where it comes from, and I can only locate it on Pinterest. It is captioned “Made by Inger Johanne Wilde”. Just wanting to give appropriate credit.

I therefore make the considered suggestion that the apron shown in the photograph has crochet bands, not Hardanger.

I don’t make these assertions to show up the people/person behind the wonderful Embroiderers’ Guild of Victoria. Their work in spreading the joys of embroidery around the world are LEGENDARY, and we embroiderers love the things they present for our enjoyment and education. (If you’re on Facebook and don’t yet follow them, you should!) I merely point out that not all lace from Norway is Hardanger. 😉 There are actually many other types of whitework done in Norway, and also crochet, as we have now seen.

I have said many a time that I could spend the rest of my life exploring the embroidery of Italy, as there are so many types. The same could easily be said for Norway, as there are so many different types there too. And I have been spending significant time on Norway, having written two books on Hardanger, and am now working on a book on smøyg, which is Norwegian pattern darning.

In the meantime, let’s enjoy the Hardanger series from The Embroiderers’ Guild of Victoria.