Reinterpreting Norwegian tradition: Arne and Carlos

Arne Nerjordet is the son, grandson, great-grandson and probably more of generations of Norwegian farmers, while Carlos Zachrison is the son of Swedish and South American parents who has now lived in Norway for so long, he feels Norwegian. The duo has been knitted fashions together for decades, long before the 55 Christmas Balls book took the knitting world by storm. And in a really interesting lecture at Vogue Knitting Live yesterday, the two of them explained their design process.

Arne said he studied fashion at a school of French design in Norway. In between bouts of farming, he has been finding ways to reinterpret Norway's rich cultural heritage. For example, he has taken old sweater-jackets knitted by his grandmother and reinterpreted them for today's fashion, pulling out some of the graph designs and making them smaller or simpler or moving them around. Carlos has been a part of that process for years. The two of them feel very fortunate to live in a country where virtually everyone has a folk costume that they wear relatively often.

"You can wear a folk costume to a wedding, or to meet the king, or to any special occasion," Carlos said. "In Norway, our crafts are alive today. Folk costumes come from different areas, so there are plenty of regional designs, and there's even an archive of designs we can turn to."

Arne said that Norwegians went through a renaissance in the 1950s when everybody was experimenting with traditional Norwegian designs and making them fresh, and to some extent, they're going through that again now. But a lot of Norwegians will immediately recognize something as Norwegian and be bored with it, so their challenge is to do something new with it. He said the Christmas balls were a big hit because young knitters could recognize the Norwegian designs but they could make them in a few hours, rather than spend weeks or months on a sweater. But some of their designs have been very popular in Japan or other countries but not done so well in Norway because Norwegians immediately recognize them and don't think they're as interesting as designs from elsewhere.

"Sometimes someone in Milan will reinterpret a Norwegian sweater and then everybody in Norway loves it, beause it's from abroad," he said.

One idea that was very popular in their production line was a patchwork that Arne made of old sweaeters of his grandmother's. Some of the pieces were from a worn-out sweater, while others were from a sweater she never finished. Put together, the designs were out of symetry, but there was something pleasing about it, like a crazy quilt. Carlos said it was prohibitive to commission knitters to remake all the pieces and sew them together for their product line, so they redesigned the sweater, making it in the trditional pieces but knitting them to look like they were a patchwork of smaller pieces. And now that sweater has been in their product line for a few years and is still doing well.

They get commissioned to design sweaters for all sorts of reasons. For example, the Space Invaders sweater Arne wears on the cover of the Christmas Balls book is something they designed for an ad campaign for a traditional product that was reinventing itself. Later, that sweater became very popular in Japan. But they said the Norwegians liked it because it was immediately recognizeable as Norwegian and yet it was fresh and new. Later, Arne and Carlos introduced sweaters with skiing Space Invaders and Reindeer Space Invaders with antlers.

They also said that they've designed sock yarn for Regia that will be coming out in February (next month) that will knit up with patterns reminiscent of Norwegian stranded knitting. They were very particular about the colors in the yarn because they wanted them to be Norwegian. To do this, they went not only to Norwegian sweaters but also to their own photographs from travelling around the country and from the paintings of Edvard Munch.

Their greatest sourcebook for Norwegian stranded-knitting graphs, they said, was a book written early in the 20th century by a woman named Anichen Siebiechen Berne. I am probably spelling this name incorrectly, because I wrote it down by studying a slide they posted of the book cover, and her name was incredibly difficult to read. I googled her later and couldn't find any reference to her, but they said a Norwegian museum is selling a new edition of her book. They like the old versions, though.

And speaking of books, they said they only publish their own patterns in books because they like explaining their creative process. But they have designed items for Dale of Norway and some of the other Norwegian wool companies. They also said that a couple of years ago, Dale sold out to a new buyer who took their wool production to China, so it's no longer an Norwegian company and they don't design for it anymore.

All in all, their lecture was a delightful journey into their design process, and whoever thought of bringing them to Vogue Knitting Live was truly inspired. I can't wait to explore their Christmas Balls book more when Vogue Knitting Live is over.