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About the Råda quilt, an example of Finnväv or Bohusväv

The text below is a transcript written down by Kristina Eriksson, who researched the old Rådatäck and then reconstructed the new Rådatäck that can be seen today in Södra Råda timmerkyrka.

In October 2009, Hembygdens Helg was organized at the Historical Museum in Stockholm. They produced objects that the local history associations wanted to see. Carin Rehnberg and I met there. There would be:

• Ten in gold from Hjälmkärr
• Woven fabric in textile
• Bronze watch
• Wooden altarpiece
• Incense burner
• Fabric printing
• quilts

The hometown weekend was a great event. We saw the textile fabric called antipendium in a stand. We did not find the arm ring. The censer was on loan to Karlstad museum.

We were shown what is called The Quilt. It was laid out on a table. It felt incredibly solemn to stand before a treasure that still exists despite the fire. The quilt was brought to the Museum in 1960. The quilt looks old, worn and in tone like old rose petals. The edges are repaired with strips on the underside. Some of the figures are filled with wool yarn so carefully that it is hardly noticeable. The blanket is woven as a finery or bohemian weave.

There is some literature to study about this technique, for example Bonaderna från Skog och Överhogdal och andra medeltida väggbeklädnader by Anne Maria Franzen and Margareta Nockert from 1992. The blanket from Södra Råda is woven with unbleached linen and red wool yarn. The pattern of the mirror, which is the right side, appears in the white linen yarn, which is divided into rows, each with birds on either side of a tree, each with four-footed animals in a square. As a frame there is a simple meander border, which occasionally alternates with a row of square rosettes. At the bottom is a wider border with diagonal bars.

Earlier, the Rådatextiles were described by Vivi Sylwan in Fornvännen, Meddelande från Kungliga Vitterhets-, Historie-, och Antikvitetsakademien, 1924. She says about the antipendium that the pot and lily resemble 14th and 15th century Italian art. She cannot state with certainty either the date or the place of manufacture.

In Södra Råda, the blanket has been called an altar cloth because it was used as such. One long side is cleaner, the one that hangs down. Vivi Sylwan describes that the quilt is sewn together from two waves. Each weave is approximately 65-68 cm wide and 189 cm long. The weave is of the same type as the Bohuslän "Finskevävnaden", a term commonly used in the 1500 inventories. The oldest known double weave in Sweden is the Grödinge weave. We saw it displayed on a wall in the museum.

The linen in the Roda blanket is left-hand twisted, coarse, unbleached and probably ashlar. The wool yarn is coarse, dyed red, right-twisted in the warp and left-twisted in the weft, untwisted. The wool is assessed as fine down hairs and coarse shedding hairs, i.e. land sheep's wool.

Vivi Sylwan compares trees and animals with, among others, the Grödinge tissue and a red salmon tissue from Skåne, known there as the Bäckahäst. This applies, for example, to the flower shape of the tail and the raised front paw. She is more inclined to see the animal's model as a lion. It is difficult to conclude from the pattern of the cover when it was made, especially as it appears to be pure handicraft.

The earliest documentation of the quilt in Södra Råda is from 1702: "Päll utgammalt". In the edge is later attributed "finns ej". In 1724 it is noted "Altar cloth cloth. Red, slightly worn, a smooth cloth on the altar slightly worn".

Vivi Sylwan has not found any supporting information from Södra Råda parish's older estate inventories that the word finske occurs.

The blanket may be a product imported from Bohuslän through the traders. She can place the date of manufacture in the 16th or early 17th century. But the type, which bears the stamp of a folk art of some choice, belongs, if one can speak of type here, to the medieval, often Romanesque, form-dominant fabrics of the 15th and 16th centuries.

She discusses the weaving industry and the Råda grant and double weaving. The statement about the Nordic woman's weaving skills has become an axiom, and probably rightly so. This skill goes back to pagan times.

One woman, Selma Johansson, was born in 1889 in Torsby in southern Bohuslän. She was a weaver and produced information about life in her home village from the mid-19th century. She has written about Finnish weaving. Patterns and material preparation were passed down from family to family in older times. These Finnish quilts were woven to decorate the home and to hold house hearings, or when the captain came to the root master and drew up protocols of the holdings of the soldier's huts.

I am interested in crafts and wanted to go further and weave a quilt according to the original at the Museum. Anita and Lennart Ericson and I met there. Lennart photographed the quilt, divided it into squares, numbered it and sent clear pictures that I traced. I have had contacts with the Museum, sent samples and received good advice. The libraries provided historical sources and knowledge about the craft.

The cover was ready in summer 2021.

Södra Råda in June 2022

Kristina Eriksson