Talking to Gunnveig Sigurdsdatter Helland and Einar Kristensen Sjølingstad Woollen Mill, November 2014
- On background and training
Gunnveig: I started in August 1992. So, some years have passed now. Håkon Ås and Karl Orre were the two first people I met when I came here. I started in the weaving department. I did some spinning too, to try it out. But I liked it best here, so here I stayed. Before I started at the mill, I took three years of vocational school and worked a year at a factory in Mandal, manufacturing carpets.
I learned from Håkon, and from observing him and Orre, but also a lot from trying things on my own. It went very smoothly. I was, like, just being around all the time. I remember that Orre instructed me on one of the first looms over there. He went back and forth, and if I stopped the loom he said, "Who stopped the loom now?" Sometimes he could say, "That was nice!" And then he just walked on. I remember it clearly. He just sort of wandered around. He was not, like, hanging over me at all. No, he just listened to the sound, the rhythm of the machines. I thought it was a little funny. I don't know how long Orre had worked here; he had somehow always been around. He made the wonderful patterns for the jacquard here in the workshop. I asked him about them once, and he said that they were made here.
In the beginning I wove cloth and fire blankets. It was basically much the same as we do now. And a lot of the chequered McDonald blankets. We fringed them by hand before we got a fringing machine. We did the work in inspection and repair room using a nail. It was fun. I worked there too, and I continued doing some spinning.
In October 2011, Einar and I got a certificate of completed apprenticeship. It made a real difference. Some things you have done so many times that you do it without thinking, out of habit. But now we had to gather the knowledge in our heads, and then show what we were able to do. We felt that it was a real accomplishment when we passed the test. After we got the certificate, we took more responsibility. It is about evolving and becoming more confident. Then you take more responsibility for the things you do. Before, I sort of just worked here without really engaging. But now, I work with both body and soul, and everything. That's what we do, Einar, don't we?
Einar: I came in November 2002 after having worked many years in prosthetics, that is, the manufacture of artificial limbs. We had a workshop in Kristiansand and, yes, it was a real craft profession. We used different materials: textile, plastic, metal. I had a certificate in the production of prosthetic arms but moved into working with both arms and legs. Actually I am a machine technician and a tool mechanic, but my certificate is as an orthopaedic technician. After a few years here at Sjølingstad I took a certificate in spinning too, after training at both Hillesvåg and Gudbrandsdalen Woollen Mill [GU].
I began weaving in 2007 after a break when I worked in a shipyard for a year. A few months after that, we started a one-year training program with Johan Dal, with funding from the Norwegian Crafts Institute. At a time when we were fighting to keep the knowledge alive this was a real boost for documentation and for knowledge on the use of the equipment. Johan had worked at GU as a technician. He was retired when he came to us. Gunnveig had good knowledge on weaving, which I did not. We complemented each other as best we could. I tightened screws and Gunnveig did the weaving. Now we were in a way crossing lines: I would learn to weave and she would learn mechanics. The year with Johan we finished by writing a manual to get documentation of the settings and use of the looms. We had actually promised that this would be the document that proved our understanding of what we were doing. Building on this experience we got the certificate two years afterwards. We went through with this in 2011.
Preparations to take the certificate were essentially through self study. And we collaborated with Mandal Weaving Mill. Erik, in the weaving department down there, had acquired some books for us that we read on our own. And then we read some of the books by Frode Svarstad, and we were in contact with him at GU. We had a written plan on the theoretical side: we should go through the production line from spinning yarns to finished goods. We looked at existing spinning methods, the warp making and how to prepare the loom.
- On machines and equipment
Einar: We weave using old shaft power looms from the 1930s and 1940s. I would think that the construction could be dated almost a hundred years back, maybe even earlier than that. Some were bought used, some were new, but the construction is old. Sjølingstad continued to produce on these looms, and that is probably one of the reasons why it went out of business. Neither the opportunity nor the willingness to replace the machines was apparent. They saw the negative signs in the market and did not invest in any new equipment. They would have had to modernize the whole production line. It was too old. A part of the problem as well was probably that the new generation in the Hoven family was not prepared to continue the business, and regular production at Sjølingstad ended in 1984. Today we get funds from Directorate of Cultural Heritage to keep the machines running and to maintain the production knowledge.
Gunnveig: We operate like a living museum, and the main thing is to preserve. But we need to produce something to preserve, particularly with the looms and machines. In this way we can show future generations how it was in earlier times. But every so often parts fall from the looms. Then we must use spare parts or find other good solutions to get the looms up and running again. We have some spare parts.
Einar: Yes, our goal is that when something goes wrong it will be repaired. Another motivation is that all those looms that are complete and technically capable of being used will eventually be put into use, producing a material that is connected to our history. It is, as Gunnveig says, important that we have an understanding of what we weave and that we try to make the woven fabrics similar to what has been produced here before. That is our motivation.
- On 727
Einar: In the last two years we have restored a loom that has not been used since 1948, and we are doing a reconstruction on it. It has been very interesting for us to see that it is possible to assemble a machine from scratch, getting an understanding of how a loom should be put to work.
Gunnveig: I guess you know about this, Franz? You could probably write a book on that loom? It has been very interesting to work on this project. Exciting too. I've been wondering ... will it work, will it? And are we able to pull through? Yes, I have. It has kept us awake for several nights, we've been thinking, why does the loom stop, why doesn´t it work? But it is always like that with Einar and me. We are not able to let go of work at home.
Einar: What I say now is not to tear down how the relationship between us has been. Because I feel, at least from my side, that this relationship has grown gradually on this project. However, it has been challenging, I must say! And it has sometimes kept me awake at night when I have been making plans on how to solve problems we've had. If we had been even more focused when we started this project, we would probably have reached our goals earlier. But it is a complex thing. What I would have liked to do differently was not to start on as ambitious a level as we did. It would have been better to get the loom going with a more regular and ordinary quality, a different weft yarn, to get rid of errors before we started with the 727-quality.
I felt I perhaps failed to meet your expectations because I was not completely confident using the machine. An example is those times you have been here without really being able to produce what you wanted. Perhaps that could have been avoided. There were too many situations where we hoped and believed instead of knowing. The loom needed time to get going, and so did we, of course, to learn and to see the signals.
Gunnveig: Yes, but it's not easy to see this in advance. It was a machine in several parts, you cannot expect anything else, and it was in bits and pieces when we started working on it. We were supposed to put it together and get it going. We never had the thought that it would not work. We've known all along that we would make it. I have believed in this all along.
Einar: Franz, I hope you understand that we are very pleased that you have spent so much time on us, and pushed us forward. If you had not been here I don't think that we would have come to where we are today, neither for motivation nor knowledge. And I guess we can say that we still have a long way to go. But you have motivated us, and you have believed in us and in our ability to achieve something together. And I can say, and I think that you know this too, that the managers both here and in Kristiansand appreciate that you are here. And you give a lot back, both knowledge and self-esteem. It means a lot.
- On knowledge
Einar: Now Gunnveig has been working here for plus or minus twenty years. We have to make sure that her knowledge will be kept alive, let's say twenty years into the future. We should have a plan for the time that lies ahead. How do we want Sjølingstad to look in ten or twenty years?
It is a question of education, and we must enable the employees that will work here after us to learn everything we know. I am really not sure how this should be done. For quite some time now my intention has been to write a curriculum. This is something we lack in all departments here at the mill. If someone quits, how do we convey their knowledge to future workers? We must ask ourselves what we want the ones who will continue running the mill to know, and create a system that makes it clear that they have achieved the right level of knowledge. I would really like to write curricula now before we hire someone new.
Gunnveig: Sometimes we hope that it will be solved easily; other times we lose faith. We may get an apprentice, an intern who really wants to be here. It is important to have mechanical insight. It doesn't have to be a modern mechanic, but insight into the mechanics is very important because otherwise the looms will not work for long.
Einar: There must also be a willingness to create textiles. Otherwise it will all be in vain, even if the level of mechanical understanding is ever so high. The one who comes must have a willingness to take an interest in both mechanics and textiles. Therefore, we must emphasize that we have two different cultures here, some who think textiles and some who think management, and they have to communicate as well as possible.
Gunnveig: There must be both, to create something new and to take care of the heritage. But we can't expect that someone who has been studying at the Academy in Oslo will move down here ... can we?
Einar: It is very important that someone has the motivation to keep Sjølingstad at a high level. It can be very exciting. We realize that what you have done, moving fabrics from the archive to production, also provides an understanding of authenticity. We can build on the fabrics that have been made here before, and not just create new qualities without this historic link. But to recreate based on what has been, we should probably activate the archive. Do something about it.