Annichen Sibbern Bøhn and the 1929 Book That Made Regional Knitting Legible as Norwegian
Annichen Sibbern Bøhn and the 1929 Book That Made Regional Knitting Legible as Norwegian
Open a Norwegian knitting-pattern book and regional names can look like the names of stitches: Selbu, Setesdal, Telemark. But those patterns did not begin on the printed page. They had already moved and changed through the hands of many knitters. In the late 1920s, Annichen Sibbern—later known as Annichen Sibbern Bøhn—traveled among regions and museum collections to document knitted patterns; in 1929 she brought a selection together in Norske strikkemønstre. Her contribution was not to invent Norwegian motifs. It was to select, draw and edit dispersed material into a form readers could use again. Keeping those roles distinct helps us see the original maker, the collector and the editor when we look at a chart. [1][2][3]
The book and its editor
Annichen Sibbern was born in 1905 in Kristiania, the name used for Oslo at the time. According to clothing historian Ingun Grimstad Klepp in the Great Norwegian Encyclopedia, Sibbern studied at the National College of Art and Design from 1923 to 1926. In 1928 she worked with her cousin Else Poulsson in an office for craft patterns and also worked at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, where she could study objects in the collection. In 1931 she married Ole Bøhn; readers therefore often encounter her later as Annichen Sibbern Bøhn. Her 1929 book appeared under the name Annichen Sibbern, the name she used at the time. [1]
To prepare the book, Sibbern visited Selbu, Hallingdal, Telemark and Jæren and examined garments and patterns in museum collections. Her daughters later recalled that she drew roughly seventy old patterns herself. Klepp explains that the 1929 preface described a project of collecting and refining patterns considered beautiful and characteristic of different districts. The movement between those two verbs matters. A printed chart was not simply a transparent copy of a garment that had survived unchanged from the past. It was also the result of editorial labor: choosing, interpreting and making a motif legible on paper. The publication year and first edition can be checked against the book’s bibliographic record. [1][2]
This does not mean people in Norway only began knitting when Sibbern published her book. The Setesdal kofte in image 1, accession NF.1911-1228, had already entered the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History in 1911. The photograph’s record does not establish when the garment was made or name its maker; it does establish that the object was collected before the 1929 book appeared. Image 1 shows the garment itself. Image 2 shows a Setesdal motif later redrawn for a machine-knitting punch card in 2010. Calling both simply “traditional Norwegian knitting” would blur the age of a museum object with the date of a modern charted reinterpretation. [1][6][9]
Klepp interprets Sibbern’s book as a new way of bringing regional identity and knitting patterns together under the idea of something “Norwegian.” That interpretation is not a claim that garments or motifs developed in isolation within national borders. Nineteenth-century Norwegian clothing included imported garments and local variations on patterns that traveled internationally. In the broader history of Norwegian knitting, silk garments and the eight-pointed star motif also have histories that reach beyond Norway. “Norwegian pattern” is more useful when understood as a relationship: a motif used over time in a place, then collected, named and re-presented—not a frozen, pure point of origin. [1][4]
The makers behind the motifs
When a book celebrates one woman’s work, the people most easily left out are the women who knitted the garments in the first place. The catalog photograph of the 1911 kofte preserves a museum number but does not name its maker. A 2018 photograph of Selbu mittens laid out at a Trondheim market records finished objects, but the image alone cannot tell us who designed or knitted each pair. The fishermen’s mittens in the Norwegian museum collection preserve evidence of use and collection, not a work diary for every stitch. Sibbern made such garments visible as patterns that other people could study. That achievement should not turn the book’s author into the maker of every source object. [1][6][7][8]
The motifs are also not interchangeable labels for every Norwegian garment. Selbu mittens, Setesdal sweaters and the broader category of lusekofte belong to different histories and visual vocabularies. A place name can help us locate a tradition, but it does not prove that all objects carrying the name were made in one village, by one family or according to one unchanging chart. Museum catalogues are useful precisely because they can separate what is documented—the collection number, the recorded location, the object’s material—from what remains unknown. Reading those gaps is part of the work, not a failure of the archive. [5][6]
A designer as well as a collector
Sibbern was not only an archivist of other people’s garments. In 1930 she designed a circular-yoke sweater then titled “Eskimo.” The Great Norwegian Encyclopedia says the design drew inspiration from a film of the same name released that year and from Inuit beadwork. The historic title is quoted here because it was used in the period’s publications; it should not be mistaken for a respectful contemporary name for Inuit people. The pattern appeared in the women’s magazine Urd and later in a book. It was made by hand knitters and also produced at a knitting factory in Drammen. Records of its appearance in two exhibitions in 1930 show how Sibbern hoped to connect art, domestic craft and industry. [1]
A newspaper interview from the same year records Sibbern and artist Frøydis Haavardsholm calling for cooperation among art, craft and industry. Their language reflects the educational ideals of their period, which should not be repeated uncritically as universal praise. Yet the underlying question remains important: what happens when beautiful patterns are separated from the value of the labor that makes them? Who selects a design, who produces the garment, and who receives the income? Those were questions for the knitting industry in 1930 and remain questions for makers and businesses today. [1]
The book went through later editions and an English-language edition appeared in 1952. Designers who adapted older motifs for new garments extended Sibbern’s editorial method, but that does not make every later Norwegian sweater her personal design. The author of a pattern book, the maker of an original garment and the designer of a later adaptation may be three different people. Keeping those distinctions visible lets the archive become more—not less—interesting: it shows the chain of hands and decisions by which a motif reached us. [1][3]
A short timeline
- 1905 · Annichen Sibbern is born in Kristiania, now Oslo. [1]
- 1911 · The Setesdal kofte shown in image 1 enters the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History collection. [6]
- 1923–26 · Sibbern studies at the National College of Art and Design. [1]
- 1928 · She works in a craft-pattern office with her cousin Else Poulsson and at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. [1]
- 1929 · The first edition of Norske strikkemønstre is published. [1][2]
- 1930 · The circular-yoke sweater then titled “Eskimo” is introduced in a women’s magazine and at exhibitions. [1]
- 1952 · An English-language edition of the pattern book is published. [1]
- 1978 · Annichen Sibbern Bøhn dies. [1]
Looking again at a pattern chart
Sibbern made regional knitting patterns easier to see and use by bringing them into a book. That work helped readers remember the names Selbu and Setesdal, while some of the people who first knitted the garments remain unnamed. The next time you encounter a “traditional Norwegian pattern,” ask three separate questions: when and where was the original object collected? Who drew the chart, and when? Who redesigned it for the garment being knitted today? Between those moments lie both the history of knitting and the history of authorship.
Editorial note. The title “Eskimo” is retained only as the documented historic name of Sibbern’s 1930 design and is not used here as a current name for Inuit people. Museum collection dates are distinguished from garment-making dates; missing maker names are not inferred from photographs.
Sources and image credits
- Store norske leksikon · Annichen Sibbern Bøhn, by Ingun Grimstad Klepp
- Google Books · Bibliographic record for Norske strikkemønstre
- Cappelen Damm Agency · Annichen Sibbern Bøhn author record
- Store norske leksikon · The history of knitting
- Visit Norway · Selbu mittens
- Wikimedia Commons · Setesdal kofte NF.1911-1228, Norsk Folkemuseum; CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikimedia Commons · Selbu mittens; CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikimedia Commons · Fishermen’s mittens, Norsk Folkemuseum; CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikimedia Commons · Setesdal machine-knitting punch-card pattern; CC0
- Wikimedia Commons · Lusekofte; public domain