Most Americans see the selburose as a snowflake or a star; few know it as a flower or sun motif, which it was for centuries before its Nordic adoption.
“Think about how many got made and how far they went,” Martinson said. Norway’s rising nationalism focused on a sometimes idealized folk culture, seeking to preserve traditions and resist full industrialization. Under that system, women were responsible for things like staying at home, tending to livestock, and raising children. But early globalization didn’t make those especially profitable activities.
....the selbuvotter cottage industry helped make traditional farming life economically feasible. “Something that was portable, something that didn’t take a lot of money to get started, something they already knew how to do and could do it while they were walking—you see a lot of equipment from that time so that you could walk, belt loops and bracelets, and so on. They could do it when they were talking. It didn’t necessarily need a lot of light, so you could do it after dark.”
For decades, Selbu’s economic health depended on thousands of women knitting hundreds of thousands of mittens; the home industry supported family farms and allowed for unprecedented independence for women, who were taught to knit the pattern from girlhood
