Summer travels - Norway again to learn spinning nettle!

After loving our trip to Norway last year, and becoming intrigued by the courses offered at the Rauland Academiet, AND having continued to study Norwegian with Duolingo, we decided to return to Norway for our summer vacation.

This trip did NOT go quite as planned. The resident entomologist is suffering from mystery leg and hip pain, and stayed home. Leaving me to travel solo.

Norway is beautiful. Driving there is stressful. Especially when they upgrade you to what I began calling the Beast: Ford Explorer, fully electric. This car was too smart for its own good, but could not differentiate between long grass and a more solid obstruction. Parking and three point turns were a headache. As was the flat tire I got in Odda.

But it seems that if one is going to get a flat tire, Odda is the place to do it. There is a big garage there, that is featured in a reality show called 'Road Rescue'. My problem was NOT featured on this show. In fact, they only film in winter. (By the way - get the Roadside assistance insurance!) A kind woman allowed me to phone the rental company with her phone (although Nomad provides data, it does not provide a local phone number.). It only took about 20 - 30 minutes for the tow truck to get there, haul the car away, and then another 45 minutes to change the tire. I was lucky that they had one to replace the destroyed tire!)

Buer glacier

I do recommend Odda as a place to stop, though. As I did on the way back through for a night. It has spectacular scenery, and I walked along a glacier river (i.e. not to the glacier, but in view of the glacier, along the river its melt created.)

I spent much of my time worrying about the car - how and where was I going to charge it? Would I be able to drive it without incident on the narrow roads? How will I turn off the car movement alarm on the ferry?

I was very glad to drop it off at the end.

The course I chose at the Rauland Academiet was spinning nettle. Who knew, right?

My original plan was to do a weaving class. But I have become interested in fibres, and had been thinking that I would like to try growing linen. Then I saw this course, and was sold. Linen and nettle are both baste fibres, meaning the fibre comes from the stem (NOT like cotton, which comes from the 'flower'). The processes used for both plants are similar.

you can see the fibres emerging

I had also been looking for hemp yarn, to make more dishcloths. The 'Hempster' by Patons that I used to buy has been discontinued, and the hemp I bought from an Etsy sellar was more like string than yarn, so I wondered if I could do it myself. (Spoiler - I did NOT spin enough nettle to make a dishcloth, and mine is a bit rough like string too!)

I found some jute/cotton, made in Turkey, yarn in a shop in Bergen, and bought one skein. It will be a while before I am knitting dishcloths from my own hand-spun yarn!

In a nutshell, preparing these plants for spinning is a long, laborious project. We took part in each step, but had to use nettles that the instructor provided, because there was not time in a week to prepare the ones we cut.

The fibres need to be 'retted', which means allowed to begin the decomposition process, usually submerged in water, or just on the ground letting dew do its work. The fibres begin to separate from the outer layer of the stem, so that one can remove them.

Then you can use a scraping method to separate the next layers, or you can use heckles and 'carders'. The scraping method produces the nicest result, but is, of course, a longer process. And all of this is especially slow when you are spinning with a hand spindle, rather than a spinning wheel.

 

 

early efforts with linen

my production samples!

After the course I visited Gaustatoppen (a spectacular mountain top that you can climb up OR take the train and funicular in the mountain. I did that, then walked down), I visited the Buer glacier (near Odda), and spent a few days in Bergen, where I climbed Ulriken, and visited a textile industry museum, and went for a swim at Sandviken Sjøbad.

view from Gaustatoppen

view of the trail down

looking back up to the top

one of her looms

In Bergen I visited the Bryggen museum which is mainly a museum of local archeological finds. But there was a temporary exhibit dedicated to the textile artist Ragna Breivik, who wove wonderful tapestries with wool that she sheared, then dyed with plants, spun and wove. She worked with the artist Gerhard Munthe who had done water colours depicting traditional Norwegian sagas. On display were samples of her materials and tools, and a ten-part tapestry series illustrating the story of Asmund Fraegdegjeva. These were awe-inspiring! Apparently, it was fairly 'common' in the first half of the XXth century for weavers to copy paintings, and there is therefore debate about whether these weavers are artists or simply 'crafters'. Copy or not, the artistic talent that had to go into all the steps of these tapestries is art in my eyes. There seems to be a bit of patriarchal judgement, there, since women's 'crafts' have often been underappreciated as art. Think of the incredible artistry in some patchwork 

sample of plant dyes

quilts, as another example. The practical beginnings of these arts and the fact that they are mostly done by women likely informs this type of judgement!)

one of her prep samples 

one of ten pieces

view from Ulriken

view of Sanviken Sjøbad