In the course of searching our collections for images for my recent Flickr album, Needlework of All Kinds, a specific type of embroidery caught my attention – Hardanger. In the stereograph below, the original caption tells us we are watching a woman from the Telemark region in Norway create a piece of Hardanger embroidery:

Below is a close-up of her embroidery. The reason it caught my attention is that I’ve seen a piece of Hardanger embroidery created by my mother hanging in my family home for decades, and the name and look of it in this 1907 photo matched. Hardanger embroidery is made by creating patterns of stitches in the fabric that then allow the maker to cut through the threads of the woven fabric, creating a pattern of holes with stitched edges. There is far more to it than my basic explanation, of course! The repeating patterns of holes make this type of embroidery easily recognizable.

A question I had never asked before is: Why is it called Hardanger? The photo above finally sent me on that journey of discovery and as usual, the depth of our visual collections served me well in expanding the story. I searched for Hardanger in the online catalog as well as elsewhere and found the name comes from the Hardanger district in western Norway. It is traditionally a combination of white stitching on a white woven fabric, such as linen. These detailed works are then used to trim garments, particularly women’s clothing worn as part of Norwegian national costume in that area.

Knowing what this type of needlework looked like allowed me to find other examples of Hardanger embroidery by studying the women’s clothing in photos from that region.

In the two images below, the young ladies are both referred to as a “Hardanger girl” and their skirts have telltale signs of Hardanger embroidery, but with very different patterns.

This group enjoying Lake Sandven in Hardanger both shares more examples of Hardanger embroidery in the women’s skirts, but also a hint of the beautiful landscape in that region.

In this detail of the above photo, the elaborate designs on the skirts are more visible.

The lake behind this group is connected to Hardangerfjord, one of the longest fjords in the world. I’ll leave you with some late 19th-century images of the region that is the namesake of this unique embroidery style.

Learn More:

• Enjoy the variety of embroidery and other needlecrafts in the Flickr album, Needlework of All Kinds.
• View over 1,000 stereographs of Norway from our collections, including some of Hardanger.
• See more photochroms of the Hardanger region. Read more about how these early color images were created: The Photochrom Process.