Knitting in Iceland

   

     "I've meant to find out more about Icelandic knitting all year. Icelanders knit everywhere. On buses, in restaurants, during meetings, in class. In the first week of term, several students came into the classroom, put down their cups of coffee, took off their coats, hats and scarves and pulled out laptops, power cables, poetry anthologies, knitting needles and wool. I didn't, I decided, mind. (Not that I would have dared, then, to say if I did.) I can crochet while watching a film. Women in Shetland and St. Kilda used to knit, often rather complicated patterns involving several colours, while walking miles with toddlers over rough ground to milk the cows. Icelandic undergraduates, it turned out, can knit while drinking coffee, taking notes on their Apple Macs and making enlightening contributions to discussion of Lyrical Ballads. I watched the pieces grow from week to week, comforted, somehow, by the progress of socks and matinee jackets as we worked our way through from Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' towards The Prelude, as if knitting were a manifestation of accumulating knowledge. Colleagues knit in meetings, which seems a far more constructive use of time than the doodles produced in the English equivalents. I wonder if anyone would say anything if I tried it in committees at home, instead of drawing borders of trees and wonky geometrical patterns around the minutes. A couple of cafés have a kind of free-range knitting, left in baskets for anyone to continue, although the results aren't as exciting as you'd hope. Every Icelandic girl, the students tell me, has to make at least one Icelandic sweater. It's a rite of passage, a step on the road to full Icelandic status."

From Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss - a book I recommend.

 

    During her year in Iceland, Sarah goes to visit local 'knitting goddess' Ragga Eíriksdottír, the force behind Knitting Iceland. Ragga talks about the benefits of knitting:

    "It's good for people's self-esteem, especially now people don't make things much, they sit in front of a screen all day. Lots of knitters say they're not creative but they are, even if they follow a pattern they choose the yarn and the colour, make it new and different from anyone else's sock or sweater. And then there's the second step, the activity, and that's a kind of physical mantra, monotonous, repetitive, or of course with a more challenging pattern it can be quite complicated mathematics or like chess: you're thinking ahead, three, four, five moves. And then you get the results, and that's where you find your self-confidence."

Comments

[Tony]

It was OK, but I found it a little whiny in parts. Having lived in Japan and Australia, I found her first-world problems a little annoying at times...

A better book on Iceland I just read is Kári Gíslason's 'The Promise of Iceland', a fascinating memoir :)

[Cornflower]

That's interesting, Tony, and many thanks for the recommendation.
Having lived abroad with my family for a time, I recognised a lot of what Sarah Moss experienced.
I'm just about to read the final few pages, and I'm keen to see what her 'conclusion' - if there is one as such - will be.

[Claire]

As a very basic pattern person, the phrase "physical mantra, repetitive and monotonous" rings a bell. That sums up a lot of what a like about knitting. Plus it's good to have something nice at the end. On the wishlist.

[Shirley Van Clay]

I began knitting when I was eight years old. A LONG time ago when I was in university, I was knitting in my philosophy class -- nevertheless, paying close attention. The near-sighted professor, walking back and forth while lecturing, strode to the end of the platform and did an astonished double-take when he saw what I was doing. Apparently no multi-tasker (or Icelander) himself, he lowered my grade a notch.

[Dark Puss]

I cannot believe that you have written about Icelandic knitting without mentioning the amazing trio that are the Icelandic Love Corporation. I am especially fond of their crochet work for Bjork WildWomanWoodooGrannyDoilyCrochet.

[Helen]

I am dipping into this at the moment and enjoying it, but feel it reveals as much about her English middle class concerns (some of which i find hard to identify with) as it does about Iceland. Nonetheless it is an interesting picture of a year abroad and trying to understand another culture.

[Rosie]

I enjoyed the book and was fascinated by the attitudes to secondhand goods. (Not to mention being quite taken aback by the way the needs of trolls etc are taken into account in the planning process).

[adele geras]

Have come to this very late indeed. I loved this book....I knew Sarah Moss as a small child and it's precisely her own concerns, middle class or not, which I liked about this book. It was very personal and sincerely felt! And written so well that it transported me there! Love the stuff you've put up about the knitting, Cornflower!

[adele geras]

I really must stop using so many exclamation marks. I am worse than Queen Victoria.