Kroting

For centuries, Norwegian farmhouses had open fireplaces. A raised hearth was built in the center of the floor, with a smoke hole in the roof above. These “smoke houses” with a central hearth and/or corner fireplace were common along the western coast.

Tveismestova, the oldest building in the Hardanger Folk Museum Collection.

Kroting was a simple way of decorating a house with smoke-stained logs and few or no windows. In Fiddling With Fate, the 10th Chloe Ellefson Mystery, Chloe senses why it was important:

Chloe imagined living through a dark, cold winter in this dark, sooty room. Firelight flickered against the walls. Wind whistled through cracks, and sleety snow beat against the lone window. The air smelled of smoke and unwashed bodies. Somehow she understood that the designs brought comfort.

Kroting at Tveismestova.

Women mixed chalk with water or sour milk, and used their fingers to paint the geometric designs on the walls. Kroting was often done in conjunction with the major housecleaning undertaken for holidays or a wedding.

Kroting at Tveismestova.

Some of the geometric designs may have been decorative, but some employed symbols invoked to ward away evil and protect the inhabitants.

Another building at the Hardanger Folk Museum, Tronestova, dates to between 1650 and 1750. The kroting here uses white and a red derived from local minerals.

Kroting at Tronestova, Hardanger Folk Museum.

Several buildings now restored at Oslo’s Norsk Folk Museum also came from the southwestern part of Norway. The example below was copied in the 1940s from a pattern in a Hardanger farm.

The chalk decorations were not permanent. Very few original examples of kroting exist today, but fortunately some of the designs were saved. The reproductions found in these historic buildings provide a glimpse of life in dark Norwegian cabins hundreds of years ago.

Norwegian Shingles

One of the many wonderful things about taking a folkart class at Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum is meeting fellow students. Last summer I met Lynn Sove Maxson, who told me about a wonderful project.

Lynn is an active volunteer at the Norsk Museum in Norway, Illinois. The community, founded in 1834, marks the first permanent Norwegian settlement in North America.

Pastor Elling Eielsen preached in a log cabin, which burned in 1841. The congregation built a second structure in 1846, which today houses the museum.

Norsk Museum photo.

Many of the original construction features are still visiible.  Norsk Museum photo.

Marks made by the men who raised the building in 1846 are still visible on the old beams.  Norsk Museum photo.

When a modern roof was needed to protect the building, someone had the foresight to save those shingles hewn in the 1800s, and save them in a garage.

Lynn is a talented rosemaler. “While demonstrating Telemark rosemaling at the museum,” she wrote later, “I mentioned that it was difficult to find interesting wood to paint. Roald Berg, member of the board of directors, handed me an old dirty cedar shake roof shingle and asked if I could paint it.”  She began to paint, and to her surprise, people wanted to buy the shingles on the spot.

Lynn, demonstrating the Norwegian art of rosemaling. Norsk Museum photo.

The Norsk Museum needs a new roof, and Lynn realized she had a great fundraising project. She and other volunteers began cleaning one hundred and sixty-seven years’ worth of dirt from the now-porous, warped, knot-holed shingles.

Then Lynn got in touch with some of her rosemaling friends. Would they be willing to paint a shingle or two, which would be sold to benefit the museum?

As you can see, the collective answer was Yes. Talented painters from far and wide are participating, including some Vesterheim Gold Medalists. As Lynn says, rosemalers began to “raise the roof.”

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Each painter was free to decide what to paint. Lynn’s only request was that knotholes, cracks, etc. be preserved. Such elements are part of the character of each individual shingle.

Here’s Lynn with one of her works of art.

“The old shingles, which protected the church for so many years and through so much history, will now help the Museum and its Norwegian descendents in a new and original way,” Lynn said.

I think the original settlers would be pleased.

There is a limited number of shingles. All profits from the sale of the shingles will be used to repair the roof. Donations should be at least $25 per shingle. For more information, contact Lynn: sovmax <at> wowway.com