Reynir/ Rowan magic

The exhausted dye pot of rowan berries, along with some random forest berries.

Reynir is the Icelandic (Old Norse) name for the Rowan tree, thus my Icelandic friend Reynir Katrínar is, in English, named Rowan. The pot of reynir baer (rowan berries) above was picked for me and delivered by surprise one day, by Reynir himself. This tree, also called (confused with) Mountain Ash, has long been used for dyeing textiles. See more on uses on Wikipedia, here. Folklore also calls this tree, service-tree and the berries, service berries.  See more on rowan tree folklore on Wikipedia, here.

The wonderful Reynir (right), who contributed so much to my work.

According to Wikipedia, “The Old English name of the rowan is cwic-beám, which survives in the name quickbeam (also quicken, quicken-tree, and variants). This name by the 19th century was reinterpreted as connected to the word witch, from a dialectal variant wick for quick and names such as wicken-tree, wich-tree, wicky, wiggan-tree, giving rise to names such as witch-hazel and witch-tree.” I do know that the rowan tree is considered to be one of the most magical trees for use in ritual and spell-casting, likely due to its etymological roots, but also due to the fact that on its underside, it bears a 5-pointed star, connected to the symbol of the pentagram.

The rowan berries gave a pinky fleshy-colour on silk, and a warm, light-beige on the Lopi wool.

The reynir baer dyed silk is top left, above the black crowberry dyed silk. Next to it is silk dyed with moss, above a light pink silk dyed with a very small number of black crowberries. Some of the colours obtained from the Icelandic landscape in September.

Kvennaskólinn living history

The Icelandic Textile Centre is situated within the former Kvennaskólinn, a women’s college, where young women around the ages of 16 or 17 would traditionally attend for a summer, in order to learn textile arts such as weaving and embroidery, as well as cooking. The entire residence (for artists) is filled with year photos of all of the girls from past decades.

Nearly each day of the residency, I went to the Blönduós pool, typically in the morning, since they serve free coffee in the hot pots (the Icelandic term for a geothermal hot tub, whether a natural hole in the ground, or from geothermal water piped from the ground into a manmade pool). This pastime was not mine alone. In fact, a number of very classy senior and elderly ladies had the same idea in mind, and eventually I made friends with a number of them. The friendliest of them all was a woman named Sigurður Baldersdóttir (or Sigge for short). Sigge told me that she had attended Kvennaskólinn in 1963 or 1964, and that it was a shame that it closed down and young women no longer knew the traditional skills, nor were many of them interested. I found Sigge’s photo, in one of the other residents’ rooms (shown above).

It was humbling and incredibly fulfilling to make the acquaintance of these ladies.

My hot pot ladies: Sigge (far right) and Ragnheiður (centre). They attended the opening reception of our month-end exhibition at the Bilskúrs Gallerí. Shown here with me in front of my weaving produced using my Nordic genomic data as pattern.

A few photos of the former Kvennaskólinn, now Icelandic Textile Centre:

The Textile Museum.

The weaving studio.

View from my ancient loom.

Main studio.

Dye kitchen exterior – a series of rent-able garages.

Dye kitchen interior, where I spent most of my time. This is about half the space, which doubles as a white cube gallery.

Plucking inky caps/ no night caps

Shaggy mane, lawyer’s wig, tippler’s bane… Coprinoids with inky spores, apparently useful for dyeing wool. An old, black horseshoe appeared, to try out for use as an iron mordant, in addition to the pre-mordanting with alum.

Video still. Plucking inky caps in Blönduós, Northern Iceland.

Inky caps found in abundance in Blönduós.

Reference for dyeing (not dying) with mushrooms.

Horse magic. The shoe used for iron mordanting, though it’s possible it’s not made of iron…

The mushroom dye pot. Had the yarns kept this colour, it would have been a lovely grey. However, they only retaining a light hint of the colour, despite being pre-mordanted with alum.

Mushrooms, yet another material associated with magic, due to the sometimes hallucinatory effects they cause. This particular mushroom is fascinating, biologically, in that it has a chemical compound which inhibits the enzymes that break down alcohol, causing prolonged and severe drunkenness if one imbibes and eats them in the same go, or within a close timespan (hence the name, ‘tippler’s bane’). This is referred to as “disulfiram syndrome”. Despite the fact that I picked the mushrooms while wearing mittens, to prevent from absorbing any of their compounds through my skin, and I did not eat any, I still avoided that g&t nightcap afterwards.

More information on Wikipedia, here.

Black Crowberry crush

Black Crowberries picked in Northern Iceland. One blueberry is included for comparison. The Icelandic name is krækiber, which sounds like ‘cranky-berry’. Crowberries are found in other northern ecosystems as well, such as in Canada.

A page from the book, Medicinal Plants of Iceland; Collection, Preparation and Uses by Arnbjörg Linda Jóhannsdóttir (2012).

Berjamór is the tradition of wild berry picking in Iceland. More info here.

Of all my dyeing experiments in Iceland in September, the berry dyes are the best, because the berries are all super ripe, in season right now. It strikes me that textile artists who visit the textile centre in the summer specifically because they are interested in natural dyeing, miss out on the gorgeous colours obtained only during berry picking season!

The sugar trick worked very well. I did not use flour, nor do I think it’s needed. A page from Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens of the Northeast by Karen Leigh Casselman.

Video still. Collecting black crowberries during the annual horse round-up.

My results, completely colour-fast. Delicious.

Wildcrafting the invaders

Video still. Collecting lupins.

A page from the best dye book I’ve ever seen: Reference Collection of Local Natural Dyes; #1 Blönduós – Iceland by Maaike Ebbinge (June 2014). A handmade artist book.

The results achieved with lupine dyeing in autumn were much softer than those shown above, which were achieved mid-summer. It seems that the plants are already on their way out, even though certainly many of them were still blooming. While the colour comes not from the flowers, but mainly, in the case of lupine, from the stalk, there was still only a very light dye result despite the huge quantity of plant used (no need to be economical with these plants). My magical friend and textile centre co-resident artist, Reynir, informed me that the lupine is not native to Iceland, but a Canadian import, now an invasive species. They were brought in to fill the land areas where nothing else wanted to grow.

The final (dry) colour was the same on wool, silk, and cotton – all were mordanted with alum, according to the recipe for pre-mordanting in the above resource book. I had the opportunity to meet one of the residents who was at the textile centre in August, as she stayed for a few days into September. The bulk of her project was lupine dyeing, and her results were the vibrant yellow one would expect, from only using one stalk of the plant.

The first square knit sample of natural dye results. All of the dye samples will be knit one after the other, to create a long, knit, colour legend of the Icelandic landscape. This is the most vibrant yellow one can hope to achieve when using the plant in September.

Lupine seems appropriate to include in the overall work, given my own nationality.

DULSE GATHERING FOR THE POT

Video stills. What I have in hand isn’t actually dulse but I thought I’d try it, too.

A page from Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens of the Northeast by Karen Leigh Casselman.

Following the advice to leave dulse soaking in a bucket for a number of days was not wise. The dulse rotted and foamed, possibly fermented, and no worthy colour came of it. It was eventually dumped out at the side of the dye studio and left to fertilize the grass. This is an experiment I’ll have to return to at a later date, and entirely possible to do on the east coast of Canada as well. Dulse is something I’ve grown up eating as a snack, picked fresh from the Fundy shoreline.

sunburst

The sunburst lichen, found growing prolifically all over the rocks along the shore.

Scraping lichen from rock. Video still.

The loot. One must be careful not to take too much from one location, as lichen takes a very long time to grow back.

To be continued.