Aran Knitting Knugget

My good friend Linda has recently introduced a new weekly meme via the Markeroni Blog. The goal? To compile a weekly list of “History Nuggets” from participating blogs. These can be any type of post, so long as they have some connection to history. I thought I’d contribute this week by taking a brief look around into the history of Aran sweaters.

Photo used under a Creative Commons license, courtesy of druzziel, on Flickr.

Since I’ve taking up knitting again, and have gotten up the particular urge to start my first-ever sweater, it’s hard to ignore the many Aran sweater patterns that are out there, and the history and mythology behind them. (There appears to be a lot of information out there about these sweaters, and it’s hard to tell where history ends and myth begins, so forgive any errors and my vastly incomplete knowledge of the subject.) These recognizable sweaters originated from the Aran islands in Ireland. Originally given to the fishermen of the islands, these sweaters were relatively more water-resistant, since they were knit with wool that still contained lanolin from the sheep. The sweaters are complex, and richly textured – usually having distinct columns with varying patterns. The columns are symmetric around the center of the sweater, and each stitch pattern carries its own significance. Cables are reminiscent of the fisherman’s lines and are a desire for good luck; other patterns may represent hard work, success, a good catch, etc.

One of the pervading myths about these sweaters is that each of the Irish clans had their own distinctive pattern, and that the bodies of fishermen lost at sea could be recognized by their sweaters. This was prompted by a 1904 play by J.M. Synge where a drowned fisherman was recognized by his hand-knit socks – his wife remembered dropped stitches from when she had made them. There is no record of anything like this actually occurring, however, and most research seems to indicate that connections to particular clans are mostly marketing ploys to sell sweaters to unsuspecting tourists. Aran sweaters are often thought of as ancient, traditional patterns, when it seems that they were perhaps invented in the early 1900s to be knitted and sold by the women of the islands. The first commercial patterns for these sweaters appeared in the 1940s by Patons of England, and they appeared in Vogue in the US in the 1950s.

These sweaters are beautiful, and a wonderful souvenir of a trip to Ireland (or a beautiful, hand-knit garment from a friend), but it seems that most of the marketing behind them relies on legend rather than history.

Aran Isle Sweaters
Aran knitting tradition
Wikipedia’s entry on Aran sweaters
The History of Aran Knitting