Textile Workshop at Lejre Land of Legends | 莱尔史诗之地的纺织工坊

Thanks to Eva’s class, I got an opportunity to take a close look and do some practice at the textile workshop of Lejre Land of Legends (Danish: Sagnlandet Lejre), after the Easter holidays. It was my first visit to Lejre. I did finger knitting, flax processing, wood cutting, clay shaping and a little yarn dyeing, with a group of undergraduate girls.

由于旁听外导的课，我得以有机会在复活节之后前往莱尔史诗之地，近距离看看他们的纺织工坊并参与实践。这是我第一次到莱尔参观，这天我和一群本科女孩一起做了手指编、处理了亚麻、削了木头、捏了陶土，还操作了一点纱线染色。

On the train to Lejre from Copenhagen, I sat with two girls who were students in this class. When the train started to move, one of them took out a big broken sock and started mending it by carefully braiding and sewing. I asked whether it was normal here for people to make textiles like this because I often see people knitting in their class, meeting or on their way of travelling. They told me it was not usual but knitting started to be popular in Denmark about 10-20 years ago, crochet too. There are even knitting cafes where people can buy materials and knit while drinking coffee. Then the girl sewing the sock recommended me a knitting café in Copenhagen which I planned to take an experience in the near future.

在哥本哈根至莱尔的火车上，我和两个选了这门课的女生坐在一起。火车开动之后，其中一个女生掏出一只很大但破了的袜子，开始小心地缝编修补。我问他们在这里像这样做纺织手工是不是很普遍，因为我经常看到人们在上课的时候、开会的时候或在他们旅行的路上织东西。她们说这不是很普遍，但十几二十年前针织开始在丹麦变得很流行，钩编也是，现在甚至还有“针织咖“可以让人们在咖啡馆里边喝咖啡边做针织，店里还可以买针织材料。然后缝袜子的女生给我推荐了一家哥本哈根的针织咖，我计划之后要去体验一下。

Arriving the textile workshop at Lejre, we met Ida who is the manager of this part working with textiles, and Johanne who specializes on the dyeing part. They introduced themselves and the story of Lejre Land of Legends to us. Then we were divided into two groups to take different practices and exchanged later.

抵达莱尔的纺织工坊后，我们见到了这块的主管Ida和主要负责染色部分的Johanne。她们向我们介绍了她们自己，也介绍了莱尔史诗之地的故事。之后我们被分成两组去做不同的实践，结束后交换。

I chose to stay with the group starting with dealing with flax first. Since the space and tools were limited, some were braiding with colourful wool yarns in the house while others were processing flax. I didn’t know what they were braiding until I tried to join them and was told that was finger knitting.

我选择了和先处理亚麻的小组待在一起。由于空间和工具有限，当一部分人在处理亚麻的时候，另一些人在用作坊里五颜六色的毛线编东西。一开始我不知道她们在编什么，尝试加入后，我被告知她们做的这种叫手指编。

It is simple because you don’t need any tools except a fixed point and your fingers. I was taught by a kind girl and got started quickly. I enjoyed the process well and in a little while I finished a braided rope.

还挺简单的，除了找到一个固定点并用上十指进行编织，你不需要任何工具。一个好心女孩教了我一下，我很快就上手了。由于十分享受这种编织过程，不一会儿我就编完了一条绳子。

There was space for me to deal with flax. I had never seen real flax before I came to Denmark. It was so fine of its stem, much finer than that of ramie I had seen, which would never be felt from pictures. The way to separate fibres from flax is also different from that of ramie I had practised before.

有空位可以让我去处理亚麻了。来丹麦前我从未见过亚麻的真身，没想到它的茎秆那么细，和我见过的苎麻茎秆比起来是相当细，这是在任何地方看图片都感受不到的。其纤维分离方式也和我之前操作过的苎麻不同。

For practice this time, we learned the medieval way of processing flax fibres. Firstly, we heated flax stems on a stove to make them dry. Secondly, we used a wooden flax break to break the hard core inside the stems and release flax fibres. Thirdly, a wooden sword was used to remove broken woody pieces and other impurities, which was called scutching. Then we used coarse to fine hackles to comb flax bundles until short or brittle pieces were removed, which were called heckling. Finally, we got relatively long and parallel flax fibres.

此次实践过程我们学习了中世纪的亚麻纤维加工方法。第一步，我们将亚麻茎秆放在一个炉子上加热干燥；第二步，我们用一个木制的亚麻拍打器打碎亚麻茎秆中硬质的部分，释放出亚麻纤维（束）；第三步，我们用一把木刀除去亚麻茎秆中的木质碎片及其它杂质，被称为除杂；然后我们依次用疏密程度不同的梳针对亚麻纤维束进行梳理，直到其中的短纤维和易断部分都被分离掉，这一步被称为梳麻；最后，我们得到了相对长且平行排列的亚麻纤维束。

（Pictures from Wikipedia）

（ 图片来自维基百科）

Due to the limited time, I hadn’t hackled my flax to finer fibres but moved to the next experience: making a spindle. A spindle has basically two parts: a shaft and a spindle whorl (or flywheel). Both can be made of different materials but in this workshop, we made the shaft with wood from a trunk (sorry I forgot the tree’s name) and the spindle whorl from clay.

时间有限，我还没将我的亚麻纤维梳理地更纤细，就到了下一个环节：制作纺专。纺专一般由两部分组成：一支捻杆和一个纺轮，两者都可用不同的材料制作，但本次实践我们用从树干（很抱歉我忘了树种名）劈出来的木头制作捻杆，用陶土制作纺轮。

I started by chopping the wood thicker than my thumb into a stick. Then it took me most of the time of making a spindle. When I was still endeavouring to make my wood finer I saw the girl sitting next to me had already processed her wood into a chopstick size. I think I had witnessed the competence of Nordic girls. Fortunately, it didn’t take a long time to shape the clay into a round one and pierce a hole in the middle to be fixed to the shaft.

我从削这根比我大拇指还粗的木头开始，结果这一过程消耗了我制作纺专的大部分时间。当我还在费劲将我的木头削细点时，坐我旁边的女生已经把她的木头削得跟筷子一样细了，我算是见证了北欧女孩的能干。还好，用陶土捏纺轮不需要太长时间，只需要将其捏成圆饼形，中间穿孔以插入削好的木杆固定，一个简易纺专就完成了。

My final practice was about dyeing. I didn’t have any knowledge about this part but I was deeply attracted by various natural dyes and colourful dyed yarns hanging there. Johanne, who introduced different colour dyes from natural materials, demonstrated preparing indigo dye and dyeing bundles of wool yarns for us, had also shown me the charm of nature.

我的最后一项体验是关于染色。对此我没什么知识储备，但还是被各种天然染料以及挂在这里的各色纱线深深吸引。Joanne向我们介绍了来自不同天然材料的各色染料，演示了靛蓝染剂的配制以及毛线染色，也让我感受到了大自然的魅力。