Selbu Mittens

In 1857 a young woman in Selbu named Marit Emstad knitted a pair of mittens in two-colour patterning with an eight-petal star, and the design spread through the village, then the district, then the country. Selbu became a knitting economy: by the early twentieth century hundreds of women in the district were producing mittens and stockings for sale, and the export ran into the hundreds of thousands of pairs annually at its height, giving rural households a rare independent income. The eight-petal star, selburose, became a general Norwegian motif, appearing on ski sweaters, national team kit and airline branding, usually without any connection to its origin. The village museum holds thousands of pattern examples.

What you actually see

• The selburose - the eight-petal star that became a national motif.
• The pattern collection - thousands of documented designs at the village museum.
• The knitting economy - the story of a rural industry run by women.
• The mittens themselves - still made and sold in the district.

When to go

Year-round for the museum, which keeps limited hours outside summer; winter is when the mittens make most sense to buy. Knitting demonstrations and courses are held seasonally.

Honest expectations

The museum is small and in Norwegian, with limited English interpretation. Selbu is an hour from Trondheim by car with no practical public transport. Machine-made imitations of the pattern are sold everywhere in Norway.

Nearby

Selbusjoen lake is beside the village; Trondheim and Sverresborg lie west.