Iceland review - 2014, Qupperneq 34

32 ICELAND REVIEW
faldbúningur costume, which is quite amazing. But we
have to remember that Icelandic women were quite
isolated; they didn’t really get to travel abroad.”
A MIrAculOuS rEScuE
All evidence suggests that the V&A Museum’s bridal
outfit was made for the 1780 wedding of the 16-year-
old Þórunn Ólafsdóttir, to future bishop Hannes
Finnsson, 25 years her senior. Þórunn died of the pox
in 1786, at only 22 years of age and after that, her
parents Sigríður Magnúsdóttir and the prefect Ólafur
Stephensen kept the outfit. Parts of it may have been
worn by Þórunn’s younger sister Ragnheiður at her
wedding in 1804.
The story of how this national treasure ended up at a
London museum begins with a young English botanist
by the name of William Jackson Hooker. Unlike most
explorers of Iceland, he was neither noble nor wealthy
but had earned respect within the English scientific
community. In the summer of 1809, he sailed to Iceland
on the invitation of a soap manufacturer named Samuel
Phelps who intended to purchase cheap animal fat for
his products. For two months, Hooker traveled Iceland
studying its flora. But he also became interested in the
dress of Icelandic women, describing it in detail in his
journal.
During his stay, he befriended the late Þórunn’s
father, Ólafur and her brother Magnús, becoming a
frequent guest at the family’s Viðey island mansion.
to the owner’s changing physique, for example during
pregnancy. Notably, this was the outfit for women of
all classes, the main difference being in the quality of
the fabric. Of course, women with lesser means only
had one outfit, usually recycled from older garments.
What really makes the faldbúningur costume unique is
the headgear that its name is derived from, faldur, con-
sisting of several pieces of white cloth rolled up into a
cone, completely covering the hair. Saga heroines such
as Laxdæla’s Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir, are described as
wearing it. Eventually this became simply a piece of
cardboard stuck to a cap. Generally, women wore a kind
of faldur, even when gutting fish or doing other kinds
of manual labor. It is not known when women began
using tasseled caps. Probably not until the 18th century.
According to sources, girls used tasseled caps but began
using faldur when they became adults. In the early 19th
century grown women began to wear caps.
With the Enlightenment movement as well as a string
of natural disasters and epidemics, the faldbúningur saw
a decline in the 18th century. In 1850 it all but disap-
peared when Sigurður Guðmundsson, usually referred
to as Sigurður málari ('painter'), an artist and a great
supporter of the Icelandic craft tradition, presented the
skautbúningur, a costume which incorporated elements
from the original one but was more informal. “The
skautbúningur was really a fashionable garment. It hadn’t
evolved with the nation in the same way as for example
a folk song or a folk tale,” explains Sigrún. “This makes
for 350 years of continuous and exclusive use of the
hIsTORY
sigrún helgadóttir.
“The V&A costume has such an aura of
adventure and the fact that it is still here is
amazing. And so inspiring”.