Eighties Sweaters Are Back, Part I.4.: Iceland (and Greenland)

Culturally Iceland is Scandinavian, but what about Greenland? Old drawings show that Greenlanders developed a style of wearing bands of beads around their shoulders. Beads were apparently strung separately and tacked on to coats or shirts. The leather coats people wore back then could support large masses of beads, and the urge to distinguish their own coats from everyone else's led people to string beads in separate groups, by color, shape, and size where possible, and then to festoon clumps of beads in decorative patterns around these "yokes" of beadwork. Icelanders apparently saw pictures of these Greenland coats and, having picked up the idea of knitting sweater tops in two colors for better snow resistance, realized that they could knit the styles Greenlanders were wearing too. The resulting knitting tradition is distinctive enough to deserve a separate article in this series, though a short one.

Many (some have said most) Icelanders knit, and they knit all kinds of things, but the distinctive Icelandic sweater style is a thick, fluffy wool jacket with a circular yoke of two-color stitch patterns around the shoulders. Often, though not always, these sweaters were knitted mostly of undyed wool from white sheep with undyed wool from black, brown, or gray sheep for contrast colors. That was the cheapest and easiest way for many people to produce this type of sweaters, if not the most flattering to the typical Icelander. In the twentieth century yarn manufacturers encouraged knitters to play with colorfully dyed yarns.

In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the Reynolds/Istex yarn company sponsored knitting competitions in Iceland. Prize designs featured in their regular pattern collections were for yoked sweaters. The Best of Lopi, published in 2002, is a big hardcover book that "updates" the prizewinning designs of the past, showing the original design as published in some previous year and a new version knitted with different colors and/or lighter yarn. Click or paste this link for more about the book: https://amzn.to/37ALJE5 . 

Contest entries, including some of the "honorable mentions," show that real Icelanders read foreign pattern books (Iceland, otherwise cut off from the world for centuries, also has a tradition of reading and collecting books) and wanted recognition for other types of knitting too. Knitting with Icelandic Wool, by an Icelander whose designs Reynolds was starting to publish in the 1980s and 1990s, reflects the knitters' desire to mix tradition with innovation. Two of the sweaters on the cover are the distinctive Icelandic style and would pass as Eighties Sweaters today; the third is a new design that reflected more recent fashions. (Click or paste: https://amzn.to/3mBrdr1 .)

One other knitting tradition that seems to be distinctly Icelandic was over-socks knitted for the purpose of putting over boots for better traction on ice. Over-socks obviously wore out very fast so it's hard to say how old this tradition may be. It was published to the world in the 1990s. Other Icelandic knitting traditions included "sets" with caps and mittens to match the sweater, also in Icelandic wool.

What made Icelandic wool special was not just the sheep, although the island's sheep produce a nice soft wool knitters love to handle, but the way the wool was processed. Because the arctic air was cold, the knitters were in a hurry, and the wool grows in nice long strands that hold together well without being spun, knitters traditionally knitted the thick "rovings" without bothering to spin the yarn. The Icelandic word for wool rovings was lopi so Reynolds called the yarn that sold best in the United States "Lopi," though they did spin it--a little. Though wool rovings pull apart if handled carelessly, once knitted they make a nice durable fabric, especially after that fabric has been wet and dried. It's very thick but light, fluffy more than prickly. Most people could wear it next to their skin if they wanted to.

What makes a sweater Icelandic? 

a. To be really Icelandic, a sweater should be knitted of Icelandic wool. Though Reynolds Lopi was spun, and usually dyed, Icelanders working or going to school in the U.S. and Canada in the Eighties accepted it as their kind of yarn. (A few of them went to the university I briefly attended in Michigan, and advertised "Real Iceland Sweaters Knitted by Real Icelanders" for $100 each, for pocket money.) 

b. To be recognized as distinctively Icelandic, even if it's knitted of Icelandic wool by an Icelander on Iceland, the sweater must be knitted mostly in one color with up to three contrasting colors worked in a band of patterns around the shoulders. These sweaters are begun as three pieces (waist and sleeves) and finished as one piece.

c. Icelandic sweaters were often knitted as pullovers. They are more comfortable to wear as jackets, so they might be knitted that way, or knitted as pullovers and cut down the front. Either way, the edges were finished with a simple line of knitting, crocheting, or sewing along the front edge, to which thin metal clasps, buttons and button bands, or a zipper could then be sewn. 

d. Caps and mittens were often knitted to match sweaters. The wool and patterns can be used to make scarves, socks, and blankets too, but this is a departure from tradition.

The Icelandic influence in North American knitting

In the Eighties, knitters looking for patterns they could use to make jackets out of widely available blanket yarn often took their inspiration from Icelandic patterns. Real Eighties sweaters with round yokes were designed all around the world. (In the Nineties, some of the hand-knitted sweaters sold in Europe and North America were even knitted in Africa, by people who seldom had any use for the thick warm knits they sold.) Jackets made of acrylic yarns like Dazzle-Aire, Red Heart Super Saver, and Canadiana were so popular they inspired more up-market variations--thick cotton pullovers, or lighter-weight wool sweaters, with yoke patterns copied from Icelandic designs. 

Amazon does not currently show a copy of Patons' 1982 Around the Seasons available, and I'm not about to sell my copy either, but you can order it at https://amzn.to/38nemDH . 

A lot of these designed-for-acrylic sweaters were made, some in Patons Canadiana and some in other yarns, in the 1980s. I also remember making and selling sweaters from a Leisure Arts collection, which iirc was called simply Yoked Sweaters, that's not even listed on Amazon--it was a flimsy little paperback that might have been classified as a pamphlet or magazine rather than a book. 

The round-yoked style was reclaimed as "Scandinavian." Since this sweater is knitted of relatively lightweight, spun wool, it might be classified as an example of either Scandinavian or Icelandic influence on U.S. knitting.

I knitted this cotton sweater from a design by Meg Swansen, which makes it American as apple pie, but it shows the Icelandic influence.

This one, knitted in chunky (U.S.) wool with (Canadian) acrylic contrast colors, is closer to its Icelandic inspiration, and the colors are very much of the late Eighties.

Pushed to be "original" by the London and New York markets, designers often carried Icelandic inspirations far beyond their original sources. To be fair, Icelandic designers did this too. Patricia Roberts' designs were known for being madly original, even "fatalistic." This one was published in 1989 and, when knitted and worn, was probably knitted and worn only in the 1990s, but it's definitely "all about the excess"--extra-large, with bands of ten different brilliant colors all over. 

Knitters began to experiment with cable and lace patterns, as well as color patterns, in yoked sweater designs in the 1980s. This design by Michele Rose was first published in a Vogue Knitting magazine, then reprinted in a collection of the magazine's most evergreen designs in 2000. (Click here to see the collection...Amazon's photo looks so bad it might almost be one of mine, but it's not: https://amzn.to/3aq0nQl .)

Pattern books to look for: 

1. Any of the old Reynolds Lopi collections you can find. Only pattern collectors will know which of the patterns were first printed in the 1970s, 1980s, or later. 

2. The Best of Lopi, discussed above.

3. Vedis Jonsdottir's Knitting with Icelandic Wool, discussed above.

4. Another Ringer: Lars Rains doesn't have an Icelandic name, his book Modern Lopi was published in 2015, and he wasn't on the scene in the Eighties, but check out his patterns and see if people you know don't see the sweaters as Eighties Sweaters.

(To buy, click or paste: https://amzn.to/2KqrBvr )