Special Exhibitions
Knitting along the Viking Trail
July 12 through October 11, 2009 • Main Building, third floor
Opening reception and Gallery Talk with Elsebeth Lavold—July 12 , 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the museum’s Main Building
Knitting along the Viking Trail is a traveling exhibition designed by Elsebeth Lavold and developed by The Textile Museum of Borås, Sweden. It was first shown there in 1997 and has since traveled throughout Sweden, Denmark, and the United States. The exhibition will be on view at Vesterheim in the Hong Gallery in the museum’s Main Building from July 12 to October 11, 2009.
Elsebeth Lavold has Norwegian and Danish ancestry and lives in Sweden. Already a knitwear designer, she began to adapt Viking and Iron Age interlaced motifs into her knitting after she illustrated a book on archaeological sites near Stockholm. The result is exceptional design based on ornament analysis and a thousand years of cultural history. Her work also shows an innovation in knitting to create the intertwined motifs. In 1998 she published a book of Viking patterns for knitting that has been translated into five languages.
Elsebeth Lavold and Anders Rydell, her husband and creative partner, will come to install the exhibition, which consists of knitwear designs alongside the sources of inspiration for the patterns. There will be more than 50 knit items plus photographs and sketches of archaeological finds from all over the Viking world and eight replica rune and picture stones. Lavold will give a gallery talk at the exhibition opening on Sunday, July 12. She also will teach four knitting workshops. Programs, focused on design and Viking culture, will be scheduled throughout the run of the exhibit.