Tall flax!

“Pitkiä pellavia!”

Lack of natural slow in Southern Finland this winter
did not stop the traditional sliding festivities 

That is the traditional Finnish shout calling for 'tall flax', on this Quinquagesima or Shrove Sunday, as we celebrate the beginning of the fast by sliding down the hill on a toboggan. The longer the slide, then longer the flax would be in the coming season. Though families still go out seeking for a good hill on this winter Sunday, this traditional shout is all but forgotten, as is the cultivation of flax in Finland. 

Flax was once an important fiber for producing everyday clothing in rural communities, as well as the valued treasures in every self respecting household’s linen closet, and processing flax fiber into textiles was a common chore for women during the winter months still at the 19th century. Quinquagesima also marked the day when the preparation of flax fiber into yarn from the previous harvest was ready, and weaving into fabrics started.

But as in many other countries, linen was replaced by the import of cotton from overseas, and the traditional skills in cultivating and processing flax have been nearly forgotten. Some 40.000 hectares of land once reserved for flax cultivation have come down to 1200 or less than 0,05% of the entire cultivated area in the country (2017 figure). Vast majority of this is actually of varieties of the linum usitatissimum plant not intended for fiber but for linseed. Today there is practically no flax fiber production left, and no processing of the fibers since the closure of the last flax spinning mill in 2008.

I have a dream of reviving these skills and start producing linen in Finland again.

You might ask why, and rightfully so – in a global economy this makes no financial sense. But the answer is more emotional than anything else: for the love of this beautiful and ecological material, and the respect of the age old artisanal traditions. For the love of the soil around us and it’s capabilities of giving us the food that we eat as well as the fibers we need to clothe us. And perhaps as a more personal agenda, to find a meaning in something more down to earth (in quite a literal sense), amidst the growing concerns of climate change and loss of biodiversity – to work on something regenerative rather than destructive.

In this blog I plan to write about the journey towards realizing this dream. I plan to talk about the history of linen and the artisanal traditions, of sustainable fashion and the global value chains in textile production, of regenerative architecture and fibersheds. This summer I will also hopefully share details of cultivation experiments with flax varieties. So stay tuned if you share my interest in linen or the topics above. You can also follow me in Twitter (@linen_stories) .