NORWEGIAN ROSEMALING

ROSEMALING has had a unique relation to America for almost a hundred and fifty years. It was the last of the folk arts to develop in Norway and was therefore still at its height when mass immigration from that country began in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It was also most highly developed in the inland valleys of Norway from where the great majority of early immigrants came. Since the possibilities of agricultural or other industrial expansion in these areas were too limited to absorb the increasing population, exodus was the only means of survival. Most of the painters were also cotters, or small landholders, the group that suffered most from population growth and therefore the one from which emigration was greatest. In his study of rosemaling in the province of Telemark, Oystein Vesaas makes reference to about twenty established painters who immigrated to America.

The favorite object for rosemaling decoration in Norway was the dowry, or storage, trunk. This piece of furniture became the standard luggage of the immigrant. As a consequence, examples of rosemaling came to America in even greater numbers than the painters who produced this art. Though none of these circumstances led to a rosemaling tradition's developing in the early pioneer settlements, rosemaling has been the folk art that has enjoyed the greatest revival among Norwegian-Americans since the 1930's.

The connections between rosemaling and America in the past have been largely due to historic circumstances. Now a more significant relationship is being established. The revival began in the immigrant group, but it soon attracted the attention of a broader American public. Rosemaling is now found in adult education programs, and arts-and-crafts schools in many areas where the Norwegian immigrant population is nominal. Arts and crafts such as crewel embroidery and overshot weaving, which came to America at the time of its early settlement, have long since become a part of American tradition

and are not ordinarily associated with the group who introduced them. This is not generally true of the arts and crafts introduced by the later immigrants, though some of these, such as the egg dyeing of the Slavic peoples, are still extensively practiced within the immigrant communities. It appears that rosemaling may be among the first of these skills to be absorbed into the New World culture, and one cannot help but speculate on why it should enjoy this distinction.

For having originated as a folk art, rosemaling is an astonishingly sophisticated style of decorative painting. Firmly rooted in baroque and rococo traditions, and given its distinctive form by the people who seven centuries earlier carried the great animal style of northern Europe to its highest development in such monuments as the portals of the Urnes stave church, rosemaling is a free and flexible art that allows for considerable individual expression. It is a dynamic art in which "C" and "S" curves are combined to form either symmetrical or asymmetrical designs. These gain their unity from having one focal point in which all movement originates and from being painted in a rather limited number of consistently toned-down colors that are well balanced one against the other. The decoration acquires its expressive quality largely from the nature of the movements and counter-movements established by its ever-curving lines. Unlike most folk painting, rosemaling also allows for the blending of colors to add richness and subtlety to its decorative and expressive character.

Because of its maturity as a style, rosemaling can relate rather directly to twentieth-century Americans and need not depend for its appeal on national or romantic associations. This undoubtedly accounts for the rapidity with which it is acquiring a place among the popular decorative arts of America.


December 14,1972 MARION JOHN NELSON
Professor of Art History
University of Minnesota and
Director, Norwegian-American Museum Decorah, Iowa