Travels with Textiles June 2025

A new project is just getting underway in Western Norway to document the craft skills of the Arctic peoples that enabled them, down the centuries, to create beautiful handstitched clothing perfectly fitted to the environment. The University of Bergen is working in collaboration with people from the European Arctic, Greenland, and Western Canada to analyse and understand some of the incredible skills that go into making clothing that can withstand some of the harshest environments on earth.   For this episode, Jo and Bill travelled to Bergen to see the University's extraordinary arctic clothing collection which is housed in a special low-oxygen store deep below the mountains. It includes handmade sealskin and polar bear trousers, waterproof bird feather pouches, coveralls made from bear guts, handstitched leather anoraks with walrus toggles, fur boots, red woollen hats, and woven bands.   In an episode that encompasses clothing that stretches back to the time of Eric the Red, who settled in Greenland over a thousand years ago, we talk to Hana Lukesova, one of Europe's leading textile scientists, and Knut Rio, who is an anthropologist at the University of Bergen. Come with us to a completely different northern world where every stitch could help you survive.