Exploring Scandinavia

The Norwegian artist Hannah Ryggen spent six years as a painter’s apprentice before turning to weaving, and her renegade use of traditional rural techniques was just as attention-grabbing in 1930s Norway as it is now. Making tapestries almost exclusively for public spaces. The woven politics by the Norwegian artist has been known across Europe and America.

Hannah Ryggen (b. 1894, Malmö, Sweden – d. 1970, Trondheim, Norway) was one of Scandinavia’s most outstanding artistic figures of the 20th century. Ryggen remains an important artist, as she dealt with the pressing social and political concern of her time. Her art has enlightened issues from the rise of fascism and the Nazi occupation of Norway, to the proliferation of nuclear power and the Vietnam War.

Trained as a portrait painter
Born to a working class Swedish family in 1894, Ms. Ryggen trained as a portrait painter. On a trip to Dresden, Germany, as a young woman, she immersed herself in the work of Vermeer, Goya and El Greco. She was likewise versed in the art of her own time, making repeat visits to the huge 1914 Baltic Exhibition in Malmo, Sweden, at which paintings by Kandinsky and the German expressionist group Die Brücke were shown.

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She later abandoned painting in favor of weaving, which became her area of expertise after having moved with her husband to a wind-blown farm on a remote Norwegian farming community Ørlandet near Trondheim. On this shore, with no running water or electricity, she learned the processes of treating wool, spinning and weaving from local tradition, and developed as an artist by experimenting with materials and techniques from the world around her.

Anti-fascist tapestries
Hannah Ryggen worked utterly from scratch on her anti-fascist tapestries. Spinning wool from her sheep, she dyed it with things she’d found by foraging: birch leaves, bark moss and bog rosemary. Urine, too, was an essential part of this alchemical process, and visitors were asked to leave their donations in a bucket.

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One of her earliest famous works is the frieze-like “Etiopia,” Ms. Ryggen’s furious response to the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in 1936. Portraits of the Emperor Haile Selassie and Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III are set above a large geometrically patterned rug panel suggesting Ms. Ryggen’s kinship with African weavers. “Etiopia” was shown by Norway at the Paris Expo of 1937 in the pavilion adjacent to Spain, where Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” offered a horrified response to the Nazi bombing of a Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

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Woven politics by a Norwegian Artist
In one 1936 work, Hitler, Göring and Goebbels pop up like murderous glove puppets with blood-red faces and hands. Three decades later, Lyndon B Johnson’s beagle – for the artist a fluffy media distraction from the Vietnam war – becomes a similarly scarlet hound of hell.

Her works can be seen at the Hanna Ryggen center, Brekstad, Norway

Since her death in 1970, the Swedish-born artist has remained a defining figure in Scandinavia, although she has only recently been rediscovered by the wider world.

Woven Politics by a Norwegian Artist, written by Tor Kjolberg

Feature image (pn top): Nazi occupation of Norway by Hannah Ryggen

He was never accepted admission to the Academy of Theatre in Oslo. However, that did not prevent Icelandic actor Gisli Örn Gardarsson from being accepted at Broadway or in West End and working closely with Nick Cave. Today the Norwegian-based actor is acclaimed by international producers.

Earlier this year, when an actor was unable to do the English version of a new comedy TV series titled One Night Stand due to a death in the family, Gardarsson was ready to step in.

“He did it in 3 days’ notice, which must be regarded as extremely brave,” says director Øystein Karlsen.

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Norwegian-based actor Gisli Örn Gardarsson is an international star
Following the recent success of Norwegian television series like Skam, One Night wanted international attention. For that reason, they chose to shoot in English. It is already creating buzz, having been named one of the top ten foreign ‘must see series’ by Deadline.

London audiences got their first glimpse of his restless ingenuity in 2003, when his rapturously received adaptation of Romeo and Juliet played at the Young Vic, before transferring to the Playhouse Theatre.

In 2005, the Reykjavik-based Vesturport theatre company, which Gardarsson co-founded with a group of friends while they were still at theatre school, was bringing an equally ambitious production to the Young Genius season, a collaboration between the Young Vic and Barbican BITE.

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Critical successes
“Gisli Gardarsson’s shows have been such critical successes, doing what is almost impossible in today’s multimedia society; attracting a new young audience to the theatre,” wrote BBC News and continued: “He made his directing début with a circus-themed production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet at the Reykjavík City Theatre in 2003, also playing Romeo. The production’s success led to a transfer to the Young Vic in London, from where it moved in 2004 to the Playhouse Theatre in the West End. He has since directed further stage productions all over the world, including an adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis in association with David Farr.”

Büchner’s Woyzeck at the BAM Next Wave Festival, directed by Gísli, was his work’s first appearance in the US. He has since been to Boston, Toronto, Winnipeg, New York and San Francisco with his work.

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Travel between Oslo and London
He has acted in, written and produced many theatre, film and TV productions, winning numerous awards, such as the Broadway World and Boston theater awards for The Heart of Robin Hood and Metamorphosis and the prestigious European theater awards in 2011. In 2007 he received the European Shooting Star for his acting in the film Children.

His productions of Woyzeck, Metamorphosis and Faust had the music specially composed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Gisli continuously works across the Globe, mounting productions of all sizes to a very broad audience. He is an associate director at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway and at the Young Vic Theatre in London.

The Saga of Norwegian-based Actor Gisli Örn Gardarsson, written by Tor Kjolberg