They seem as ancient and integral to the landscape as the moss or the waterfalls. As you drive through the country, sheep are clustered in nearly every valley and mountainside. This resurgence in knitting had me wondering ( like with the Aran sweater from last month’s post) about the origins of the lopapeysa. It’s as close as one can get to the source without shovelling shit in a sheepfold. Furthermore it appeals greatly to the disillusioned and globalised 21st Century traveller. It resembles the country’s rugged nature and reminds us of the history of farming and fishing when it provided its wearer with a vital shield from the disastrous weather one can encounter in the wild. This quote from Árni Árnason in The Reykjavik Grapevine sums it up well:
This isn’t just a casual observation – Ístex, the country’s biggest wool manufacturer, is now producing twice the amount of wool yarn as it did nearly 10 years ago. Ragga Eiríksdóttir ( raggaknits on Ravelry) was interviewed during the recovery about just that, saying that following the collapse in 2008, “suddenly everyone started to knit Icelandic sweaters like crazy” as both a return to their roots and as backlash against the banking and globalization that had seemingly brought the country to this place. This was back in 2012, shortly after the country’s financial crisis, and that striking yoked sweater known as a lopapeysa seemed to be the uniform for all Icelanders - a source of national pride and identity.
But when yarn is being sold in grocery stores and sheep are everywhere you look, you quickly get the idea that understanding knitting’s place in Iceland is central to understanding the country itself. I knitted a little bit – mostly hats and fingerless gloves and things like that – but didn’t know anything about Iceland’s knitting history, its iconic yoke sweaters, the fuzzy skeins of lopi.
One of the great ironies of my twenties is that I went to Iceland before I was a knitter. EDITOR’S NOTE: All I’m gonna say about Jess’s column this month is it’s so beautiful I can’t even stand it.
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