An appreciation of ethnic jewellery and adornment

My birth gift Sølje (small).

Sølje, the traditional brooch worn on the Norwegian folk costume, Bunad, contains features that can be traced back to brooches from the Iron Age.

This is the smaller of my two birth gift Sølje. These smaller Sølje brooches are worn on Bunads that have undergarments with neck collars. It is used to close the garment in the neck. Bunads that have Sølje in the neck also have a larger Sølje brooch on the chest.

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Albums: Søljer for the Norwegian Bunad.

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Comment by Harald on February 4, 2012 at 16:21: So nice to see those Norwegian brooches here! Very nice a heirloom.

Comment by Annka on February 2, 2012 at 0:02: Thanks for the comments.

In Norway, most people still dress in the ethnic clothing Bunad and wear appropriate jewelry around 1-2 times a year. Often the jewelry (mostly brooches) are family heirlooms. My Bunad vest is from around 1950 (?) and the brooch from around 1880 is still in use as well. I suppose some of the silver has been melted down. The demand for Søljer (as the brooches for the Bunad is called) is high, and many silversmiths are still making them. You can actually see the evolution of the brooches from the Iron Age to todays Sølje, which still have features from the Iron Age. So I guess you can't really call the Sølje made today replicas, as they have been made continuously, and haven't changed much since the 1880's. There is still schools in Norway just for learning to sew Bunad. The Sølje is never worn on anything but the Bunad. And there is still a somewhat practiced code of proper behavior when wearing a Bunad. It is no uncommon to pay more than 25.000 NOK for a Bunad. That is around 4.500 US Dollars...

Comment by Eva Baby on February 1, 2012 at 14:47: Nice to see! thanks for posting.

Comment by Joost Daalder on February 1, 2012 at 0:25: Very interesting, thanks, Annka. It is always very gratifying to see traditional ethnic pieces from Europe, which does not happen often enough, showing for one thing how quickly Europe appears to have moved away from its own former indigenous traditions. So that makes it the more important that the world be made aware of this now largely "vanished" heritage - "vanished", I mean, in that you hardly see it: not even much in museums, where surely a lot would have ended up, though one fears that probably much has been melted down. Certainly it is not easy, these days, to see traditional European reality - particularly from Western Europe - "in the flesh". The situation is better in the case of Russia and the Balkans, for example. In many countries people have moved away from their regional dress and ornaments at frightening speed. The Netherlands, where I come from, still excelled in preserving ethnic jewellery for wear (more so than in most places) when I was a boy around 1950 or so, but today much is no longer on show, even if you go to those parts of the country which held on to their jewellery for so long ...