Handmade History, Episode 4: Nalbinding

Handmade History Podcast, Episode 4: Nalbinding (aka nålebinding)

Shownotes

Question: Is nalbinding an ancestor of knitting?

Answer: No! It’s something else.

How do you say it?

Google Translate in Danish: Nol-eh-binning
Can spell it nålebinding or naalbinding, among other ways. (Å is called a - overring or a - ring)
It has been anglicized to nalbinding (and things that are made from it are called nalbound) by Emma Boast of a British company called Nidavellneer

What is it?

It translates to Needle Binding
It is a method of making fabric using only a needle and a length of yarn
You cut a length of yarn (like in sewing you cut a piece of thread) and then you have to splice the ends together or weave them in at the end.
It is a very old method
It’s not knotted, but it doesn’t unravel
Related to needle lace

What does it look like?

It looks like knitting–or, it can

How is it different from knitting?

You do not use a ball of yarn–you use lengths of yarn
You can use one needle, like a big sewing needle
Because you splice the ends together, it works well for not very tightly spun yarns (singles or single-ply yarn work well for this)
However, “Nalbinding can produce a true knitted structure, but by a different method of manufacture.” (From A History of Knitting by Richard Rutt)
“Detecting whether a piece of fabric has been made [with nalbinding] can be difficult.” (Also from A History of Knitting)
The way that you can tell it apart is by the method of increases and decreases

So it is two things:

A method that is different from knitting that can produce the same fabric that knitting does
A method that can be used to produce a fabric that is different from knitted fabric

A brief history of nålebinding:

Oldest fragment found in a cave in Israel, Nahal Hemar, that was around 10,000 years old
However, the oldest needle that has been found is 30,000 years old
You don’t actually need a needle to do nalbinding
So it could be older than all of these things

Fragments of nalbinding have been found in:

China (oldest garment, a cap) - 3000 years old
Germany, the Halsschnur of Bunsoh (Halsschnur means neck cord, and it was found on a bog man)

the neck cord was woolen, so researchers thought it might be a necklace, but it could also have been an edging on a piece of linen, which could have dissolved in the bog

Netherlands (3000-1000 BCE)
Italy (3000-1000 BCE)
Peru (900-200 BCE)
Egypt (200-500 AD)

These are the famous “Coptic socks” you might see online–they are red and have a split foot for wearing with flip flops.
Were thought to be knitted but are actually nalbound
There are several pairs at museums in Europe and Canada, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London
From the period of Roman rule of Egypt
Different colors, including red, brown, purple, and red with yellow stripes
One multicolored: blue, red, purple, yellow, and green
All made from the toe up
Four pairs in the V & A museum were found in Oxyrhynchus burial grounds, a Greek village on the Nile that became a monastery by 400s CE

York, England (800-1050 AD)

The stitch found here has only been found here, and it’s called York stitch now and it’s taught at a local heritage crafts foundation

American Southwest (before the year 1000 AD)

Also found in:

Mongolia
Central America
Peru & other parts of the Andes
Syria
Sudan
Sweden
Switzerland
Africa

“There must be numerous nalbinding textiles that slumber unpublished, unanalyzed, and undisplayed in the archives of museums all over the globe.” (From Nalbinding: What in the world is that? by Ulrike Claßen-Büttner)

Nalbinding today:

In the UK, it’s a heritage or Viking era craft that people learn in historical settings that is currently experiencing somewhat of a resurgence
In Scandinavia, it’s a heritage craft that people can learn, but has not necessarily been passed down to them - done until the 1600s

However:

It was actually done all over the world, spontaneously invented on almost every continent
Has continued to be done today
For example:

In Papua New Guinea, women today nalbind basket-bags called bilums from bast fibers
West Africa, used to make costumes

Nalbinding in America & the first nalbinding notation

Nalbinding was done in the American Southwest in the first part of the millennium by the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans
Nalbinding may have come to the US with Scandinavian immigrants in the 1800s
Larry Schmitt, came up with the first notation for nalbinding.

He also named stitches, wrote books on nalbinding, and taught it for many years

A bit more about Larry Schmitt (case study in how a craft is learned and passed down)

He learned from his parents
His parents learned it at Hull House, an organization that offered education and workshops to poor people
Larry’s father led a WPA (Works Progress Administration, program started by FDR to employ Americans during the Depression) workshop of 150 weavers in Milwaukee. They would also nalbind rugs

Schmitt’s system in the 1990s for writing down how to nalbind was the first method of writing down this information that was useful to knitters (other methods captured what the stitches looked like and were used to categorize samples found in archaeological digs)
This notation is also not perfect and can’t capture the detail of every stitch (for example, twisting)
How the notation works:

U means under
O means over
F means front loop (F1 means first loop, F2 means second loop)
B means back loop (B1, B2…)
You could have a pattern like U1, F2, O, F1 (and that would mean go under the second front loop, go over the first loop) - that is a completely made up pattern

Takeaways

Since Larry Schmitt made his system in the 90s, that means that it wasn’t written down, ever, before then!
So there’s a bit of a myth around this craft–that nalbinding is or was a lost art, and that we are resurrecting it.
That is true in the UK: some people are popularizing it now and maybe in some places it is experiencing a resurgence in popularity
But the global story is that is has been around for tens of thousands of years and we didn’t have to rediscover it - someone has always known it somewhere–because it couldn’t be written down
Someone somewhere on planet Earth has known how to do nalbinding for at least 10,000 years
The exact same technique is done in so many places.
Humans have a tendency to invent nalbinding.

Listen and subscribe to Handmade History wherever you listen to podcasts!

Email us at handmadehistoryhosts@gmail.com - we’d love to hear your suggestions!

Thanks for listening!

Sources:

https://nalbound.com/2024/08/27/now-peruvian-feathered-cap-1994-35-136/

https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/nalbinding/#:~:text=The%20earliest%20example%20of%20nalbinding,English%20speaking%20audience%20by%20Nidavellnir.

https://www.facebook.com/nidavellnir/about

https://www.medievalists.net/2019/05/nalbinding-protecting-endangered-heritage-craft/

https://books.google.com/books?id=eqlsCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA5&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.britannica.com/event/Bronze-Age

https://www.scarlette.net/sigridkitty/history.html

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/