Masterful Book About Norwegian Bunads

Laila Durán is a Norwegian-Swedish author and photografer who has devoted several years and no less than six magnificent books to documenting mainly Swedish and Norwegian folk costumes and bunads. In her latest book – Bunader og tradisjoner fra Setesdal (Costumes And Traditions From Setsdal) – she has focused on the Setesdal area in south Norway. The lavishly illustrated book is not only delightful to browse, it displays a extremely knowlgeble insight in the history and culture of the Setesdal bunad.

The book’s costumes are copies of original bunads dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of the photos are shot in old farms with interiors dating back to the late 1500’s. All texts are in Norwegian and English and run parallell on every page. They explain the dresses and the environments in which they are photographed in detail .

One example is how Durán uses a farm dating back to the 16th century as background and for exterior and indoor pictures. Here Duran shows a bride with complicated head-dess. This resembles a bride's crown, but is something else. The bride’s dress is multi layered and richly decorated with silver jewelry and extremely long silver necklaces.

A pendant to the bride’s dress is a bride groom’s costume. The original owner was a man by the name of Kjetil Kyrvestad and who lived 1761–1847. The costume is tailored in a fashion that was highly modern i Spain and France in the late 17th century. In the 1950s a reconstruction was made, but it was decided to make the pants in a traditional 18th century model, used in many men’s costumes today. The jacket more closely resebles the original with a 17th century silhouette, according to Durán.Both the bride's and bride groom's costumes are on display in the Setesdal Museum.

Laila Durán ends her beautiful book with a description of an unusual and fascinating documentation dating back to the 1920s. In those years a national project, cleansing Norwegian from centuries of Danish influence, creating the Norwegian Dictionary, was under way. Volunteers all over Norway helped the official Government Committee finding, documenting and suggesting local words and expressions in order to create a new and genuine Norwegian. In Setesdal, a local schoolmistress by the name of Bergit K. Rike (1883–1944) in her spare time went to great lengths sending in suggestions. She supplied the committee with some 50 000(!) individual cards, each suggesting a new word or expression, each with an explanation of how and when these were used.

Her interest in the Setesdal local dialect and the Setesdal bunad led her to sewing a doll dressed in an exact replica of the dress. She attached a small label to every single detail of the bunad, giving its specific name. The bunad alone has 130 such labels, the shirt 25 and one stocking, knitted in minute detail, no less than 22 small labels.

The section about Bergit K. Rike is illustrated with original black and white photos from the decades surrounding 1900. Some of the photos date back as far as 1888. They all show local people, in some cases whole families in their characteristic dresses, even when attending to their every day chores.

Durán’s photos of bunads and apparel use are magnificent! Laila Durán is a highly skilled photografer and author. The actual bunads belong to the fine people of Setesdal who also volunteered as photo models for the book. In addition, careful selection of sites for the shooting gives further depth to her story. Through close collaboration with the Setesdal Museum she has had access to to farm interiors with a history of almost half a millenium.

But the photos are not only interiors. Out door pictures offer a lavish splendor of the colorful bunads against the breathtaking Norwegian mountain scenery in both sunny summer and snow-covered winter. Obviously, photography has been enormously time consuming, each picture demanding hours or days of preparation on site, not to mention months of preparatory work like research, production of costumes, finding correct jewelry and – not least – the search for perfect photo venues. But then, the result is enchanting.

All texts are in both Norwegian and English. Although written with great expertise, they are easy to understand and rewarding both to the amateur layman and the expert. For anyone interested in Scandinavian and in particular Norwegian bunads and folklore, this book is a must.

Kenneth M Linton

Laila Durán: Bunader og tradisjoner fra Setersdal
All texts in Norwegian and Engish
Published by Duran Publishing AB, Stockholm, Sweden, 2015
Published in collaboration with the Setersdalmuseet and Norsk Ordbok 2014
Books available at
http://folklorefashion.durantextiles.com/

måndag 29 juni 2015

Masterful Book About Norwegian Bunads

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