National costume

There are basically three versions of the national costume, all derived from "Faldbúningur" which dates from the early 16th century.  Prior to that women wore a long loose fitting one piece dress, probably with a belt.  This changed, and it became the fashion to wear two pieces of clothing, a pleated skirt and a narrow fitting jacket.  There was also some jewelry made of bras or silver, the silver often gilt.  An apron was worn, hanging in an ornate silver belt with the help of fairly large round buttons.  A piece of cloth, preferably ornately embroidered, also hung from the belt, and a rather peculiar, chimney shaped headdress.  Doubtless there were some undergarments, but since no garments have survived from this time, the knowledge of the dress is derived purely from illustrations of the time.  Since most of the texts were religious in nature, there aren't any illustrations of people in their underclothing and therefore the
knowledge is limited.  Not much is known about the dress in the 17th century, since most pictures show the women wearing a large overcoat and what is underneath is hardly visible.  But in the 18th century there are some illustrations that show the women's dress  Again, no dresses have survived from this time and the oldest surviving dress dates from 1809.

At that time, there don't seem to have been that many changes since the 16th century.  There was still the narrow jacket, either embroidered or embellished with gold or silver bands, or both.  Under the jacket there was underwear, a lightweight white linen shirt and a corset.  Women also wore up to 7 underskirts, according to some sources.  I guess they needed to keep warm.  The corset which could be in blue, red or green was embroidered with colourful silks with flower motifs and/or embellished with gold or silver embroidery and ribbons.

The corset was closed with filigree silver loops through which a silver chain was threaded.  The skirt was still bulkily pleated and always worn with an apron.  Both the skirt and the apron were embellished on the bottom with embroidery or velvet.  The clothing could be blue, red, green or black, and all the colours could be used together in the same costume.  The colours, naturally, all derived from natural sources, indigo for blue, madder for red and perhaps cochineal (although that was much more expensive) and a combination of weld and indigo for the green.  Black was a difficult colour to achieve, but George MacKensie describes dyeing in an account from 1810.  It was obtained by dyeing with Sortulyng, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (Bearberry) and black earth, which undoubtedly contained a lot of iron.  It is also apparent that there was a lot of variation in the dress and women used whatever materials they could find, local or imported.

The headdress is a whole story in itself.  Faldbúningur derives it's name from the headdress, which was was originally a white cloth, shaped like a chimney and called "Vaf".  But in the 17th and 18th centuries that evolved into "Faldur", an elongated cone shape that had a forward bend in it.  This then changed into "Spaðafaldur", a flat spade like form, held in shape by pins.  For every day women used a knitted hat with "Skúfur" a kind of tail hanging down on one side.  This was decorated with silver.

There are now more or less three variations of this costume in use as a national costume.  One is "Upphlutur" which consists of the long skirt with a white shirt, a corset and an apron.  In this version the undershirt and corset are used as outer garments.  This verison is really the working garments of ordinary women of the olden day.  They would often take off their jacket and even the thick, heavy skirt and work in their undergarments.  Nowadays there is a 19th century version and a 20th century version.  Both use quite a bit of silver, both on the front of the corset and in brooches and a heavy belt.

The second version is Peysuföt, a tight jacket, almost always black nowadays, hooked in the front but gaping slightly over the breasts.  This version has lost the embroidery of the old jacket, but is always worn with a bow.  The skirt is the same heavy pleated skirt, again always black and there is the same type of apron, although Peysuföt were, by the 19th century considered better clothes and therefore the apron would not be a course woolen one, but made of silk or linen.  With this there is little jewelry, only a brooch and the silver for the hat.

The third type is a revival of the 18th century Faldbúningur and is in my mind the most spectacular.  It is colourful and ornate and it isn't a depressing black.  I want to make one, but it takes someone diligent about 3 years to make it.  And that's assuming one buys the silver.

I have already made a silk apron and knitted a hat.  I am in the process of sewing a shirt and wills take a course in sewing an underskirt (petticoat - I love that word.  I used to buy a British magazine with that name back in the seventies) next week.  I have studied the construction of the other pieces and can hopefully make some practice pieces for fun this summer and start in earnest to sew next winter.  I want to start the silver work soon, though.  I'm really holding back not jumping into that, but there is a lot of stuff to do before I allow myself to do that.

Filigree - Víravirki

I have been blessed in my life to have had some of the best teachers.  Really.  And many of the best teachers have been a lot older than I.  So I was really thrilled to get an opportunity to take a class from one of the oldest working goldsmiths in Iceland. She is over 80 years old and has been untiring in keeping the old traditional silver filigree making alive.  Silver filigree adorns the old dress that women wore and the art of making filigree goes back all the way to the vikings who settled Iceland.

I do not own a dress myself and I guess one of the reasons is that the cost of the silver is high, anywhere from US$ 3.000 - 5.000.  I have become more interested in making a dress for myself, using natural materials, like they did in the olden days.  Today it's not usual to use natural dyes, but I think the dress would be even more charming if one did.  But I saw the course for the filigree and decided to sign up.  I did two courses of jewelry in my fine art studies in the 80's, but I haven't touched a torch since.  I am not really a fan of taking courses in order to learn stuff.  I'm much more of a do it yourself type person so I tend to just dive into learning on my own.  But learning from the very master was too tempting, and sometimes it's just a lot quicker to have someone teach you the right way to do things.  It was fun.  More fun than I remembered.

The course was a short one, just two weekends and we were expected to do a brooch in that time.  I did a small one and turned it into a ring.  Brooches are an essential part of the dress, but I do not wear brooches really ever, but I have been wanting a large cocktail ring.  I also did a pair of earrings.

I was really surprised by the process.  It is very simple, but also very fiddly.  I got the bug very badly and although I hadn't thought about doing it myself, I decided to make the silver for my dress myself.  It is of course a lot more economical, even if here is some cost involved in equipment.  Most of the cost is in the amount of time it takes to make.

The Icelandic filigree is made out of two sizes of wire, an outer wire (Höfuðbeygjuvír) and an inner wire (Innanbeygjuvír).  The outer wire is a round 1mm silver wire that is rolled into 0,5mm.  The inside wire is especially textured and much finer.  To start to make a shape that is round, one bends the outer wire around two nails that have been hammered the desired distance into a piece of wood.  It is a humble beginning, and doesn't look like much.

The next step is to use pliers to coax the silver wire into a nice round shape with a small center and then this is soldered.  The resulting round shape is then worked with the pliers to make it into the shape one wants and to make it even and then it is ready for the finer filigree to be filled into the shape.

I chose to make mine in a heart shape and filled it in with little round shapes (Snirkill) which always get a small ball of silver (Korn) on top.  I had planned to fill in with leaves (Lauf), but that proved difficult so I choose another traditional shape, whose name I do not know.

I have since this time spent a lot of time reading about the dress and the silver that accompanies it in order to choose what type I want to do.  There has been some change in the style of dress and also the style of silver and one has to make a lot of choices.  I have chosen to do an older version, 19th century rather than 20th century.  There are no surviving dresses until around 1800, but there are illustrations of dresses back to the 16th century.  One day I want to do an 18th century dress (Faldbúningur), but that takes about 3 years, if one is quite diligent and I don't have the time right now.

I signed up for a course in sewing the shirt and the apron.  I started the 19th century shirt, which is made of a very fine linen (can also be cotton), but I can't find a linen thread here so I can't finish it.  I've almost finished sewing the apron, with thread from the fabric.  I just have to do buttonholes and slight finishing.  In the olden days it was either made from local wool, striped or checked, imported silk or, rarely, white linen.  I would love to weave the fabric for my apron, but then it also becomes tempting to spin the yarn for it and dye it myself.  So silk apron it is.  I have also started the knitted hat, which is most often done in black, but the older hats were more commonly blue and even red or green.  Since I didn't want black, I used the woad dyed alpaca from last summer, very happy to have found a worthy project for it.  I'm waiting for a course in sewing the very delicate embroidery for the corset, as well as a course in sewing an underskirt.  But the overskirt and the corset itself may have to wait a while.

This project is taking on a life of it's own.  It's my goal now to make a dress for July 19th which is my grandmothers birthday.  This year we will celebrate the centenary of her birth and I plan to finish some form of a national dress to wear that day.  It will undoubtedly deviate quite a bit from what is most often done, a lot of black, but it will be handmade and I will stay true to the handiwork and even more correct in terms of the colours I use since I plan to use mostly indigo dyed wool and a lot of white.  The white is not very traditional, but I don't care.  After all it will be summer.