Welcome to the exhibition
TEXTILE MARK

In Rydal’s spinning mill, thread has been manufactured since 1854.Production ceased in 2004. Now the museum makes the thread. Welcome into our spinning hall and the TEXTILE MARK exhibition.

1. At the border

Today we often talk about Mark Municipality (Marks kommun), but the current municipal borders are not the same as the borders of the historical Mark. That was larger.

The name Mark itself means border area or border forest. The name probably derives from the fact that for a long time, the area was situated on the border between Denmark and Sweden. Halland, which borders on Mark and Västergötland, was Danish territory until 1658.

The area between danish Halland and swedish Västergötland was characterised by large and mountanious forests. These parts were well known by the local people, but to strangers they were frightening and difficult to cross.

For this reason they preferred to travel through Mark in the valleys along the major watercourses Viskan, Häggån and Surtan.

Mark is one of the seven counties in the geographical area in Västergötland that is often referred to as ”Sjuhäradsbygden” (The region of the Seven Counties).

2. Conflict zone

As a borderland between Sweden and Denmark, Mark has been a troubled area throughout history. Already in the 13th and 14th centuries, armies frome the two nations battled for the control of Västergötland.

Soldiers from both sides often passed through Mark and the valley along the stream Viskan. The farmers living here were forced to provide the troops with food, beer and other necessities.

These were hard times for the people of Mark, who were already poor. Eventually the Swedes and the Danes agreed to make peace. This took place in Roskilde in Denmark in February 1658. This is when Skåne, Halland and Blekinge became part of Sweden.
The peace made the situation somewhat better for the inhabitants of Mark.

3. Trading Centre

Mark’s location close to danish Halland, the coast and the ports in the west made this area suitable for trade. Goods and new ideas from abroad spread quickly and inspired the local handicraft.

Among other things, the farmers in Mark traded in livestock (mainly oxen), fabrics and various kinds of handicraft products. For these goods, they traded for example herring, cereals, salt and wrought iron.

The farmers of Mark preferred selling their oxen to the danes in Halland because they offered better payment and it was nearby. This cross-border trade was outlawed by the swedish king Gustav Vasa in 1524. The punishment for those who dared to defie the royal ban was beheading!

This led to great discontent among the farmers. Despite the threath of being punished with death, many farmers continued their lucrative trade with the danes.

4. The multitasking inhabitants of Mark

All the steep hills, rocky grounds and swampy peat bogs made it almost impossible to subsist solely on farming in these parts of the country. It was therefore necessary to combine farming with other kinds of activities.

During the medeival ages, many farmers in Sjuhäradsbygden were engaged in breeding of oxen. It was possible to combine this with for example woodworking, forging and weaving.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the decidous forests in the area had been devastated to the point where it was no longer possible to keep large herds of cattle here. There simply were not enough leaves – at that time an important source of forage for the animals.

The majority of the largest trees had been cut down to be used as material for the manufacturing of warships for the Swedish Navy!

5. Textile farmers

As the farmers of Mark no longer could trade in oxen, the textile craft became even more important. The people in the region had since way back been known for their skills in textile manufacturing, for example the kind of woolen fabrics called wadmal.

In the 16th century, common people in Mark were even allowed to pay their taxes in cloth rather than in cereals and other agricultural products which otherwise was the usual practise.

During the 18th century, a lot of local farmers swiched from sheep and wool production to growing flax and weaving linen cloth. For the rapidly increasing number of poor crofters who owned no land of their own, the practise of home weaving became a matter of survival.

6. Wealthy farmers become Cloth Agents

Through the trade of various goods from the region, some farmers made enough profit to be able to purcase raw materials for textile manufacturing, such as flax and wool, instead of producing it themselves. These materials were then distributed to others in the vicinity who spun and wove on behalf of the farmer.

The finished products, yarn and woven fabrics, were then handed back to the farmer in exchange for some renumeration. In his turn, the farmer could pass the goods on to a traveling pedlar, locally known by the name ”knalle”. As the pedlar returned from his ”sales trip” he paid to the farmer what he owed.

Over time, this way of outsourcing the manufacturing of textile products became very common in the region and is known as the ”putting-out system”. The farmers who bought the raw material and handed it out to the contracted home weavers are known as cloth agents (in swedish: ”förläggare”).

7. Pedlars trading throughout the country

The travelling salesmen were key persons of the cloth agents trading system.
These pedlars from Sjuhäradsbygden became known as ”knallarna”. The tradition of travelling salesmen goes back a long way, but it is primarily at the beginning of the 19th century that the number of pedlars grow significantly. This mainly as an effect from the the expanding trade of the cloth agents.

The trade journeys could last for several months and extend across almost all of Sweden. Many pedlars also sold their goods in Norway.

The travelling pedlar often combined his sales business with farming. Therefore he preferred to leave home in the autumn or during the winter when there was less to do at the farm. His wife and children had to take on great responisbility for the work back home. A pedlar usually made at least a couple of journeys each year.

He collected his goods from the cloth agent. In general, he had one year to pay what he owed. Some sucessful pedlars also had their own warehouses along the way.

The pedlars rarely went alone on their trips. Usually several of them travelled together and sometimes they formed long caravans with oxen, horses and fully loaded carts along the roads.

Sometimes this even litteraly caused trafic jams and crowded inns. In 1803 it was therefore decided that pedlars were from then on should only be permitted to travel in groups of maximum six people.

As their journey continued, they spread out in their various trade districts. The pedlard did not only visit customers in farms and villages at their district, but could also sell their goods at marketsplaces in the cities as well as in the countryside.

8. Order now - delivery at your doorstep in a year!

The pedlar brought a variety of product samples to temt his customers. He also brought the products ordered by the customers at his previous visit, mostly about one year earlier.

Not only did the pedlar bring the goods, but also news, gossip and exciting stories from near and far that he had picked up along his many journeys. Not all pedlars traded in textiles, but they tended to be specialised in certain types of products. Besides the ”cloth pedlars”, there were for instance also pedlars who brought wooden bowls, tin pails or baskets.

In a way one could say that the pedlar was the predecessor of the mail-order and web shops of later days.

9. Cotton comes to Sweden

At the beginning of the 19th century, a great amount of cotton cloth had begun to be imported into Sweden, mainly from England. This kind of textile was a novelty to most swedes, and it soon became very popular due to its variety in qualities, colurs and patterns – and at prices that were affordable to many customers. And, not the least, they also proved to be durable and easy washable!

The cloth agents of Mark quickly understood that there was money to be made from cotton textiles.

The downside of it was that cotton could not be grown in Sweden. And to start with there were no swedish mills that produced cotton yarn. The cotton was grown in the US and the yarn had to be bought from british manufacturers. Nevertheless, an increasing number of cloth agents switched to cotton yarn and in just twenty years the production of wool and linen cloth in Mark had almost ceased entirely. Now it was all about cotton!

10. Across land and Sea

The cotton’s journey from southern USA to the cloth agents of Mark was long. It had to pass through many intermediaries before it reached the weavers.

First, the cotton was harvested by slave workers on the plantations in the southern states of the US. After cleaning and packing, it was transported to the port cities of the american east coast. From there, the cotton was shipped across the Atlantic ocean to England, where it was spun to yarn in the british spinning mills. The finished yarn was then loaded onto ships taking it further over the Northern Sea to the importers at the port of Gothenburg, Sweden. The cloth agents bought the yarn from the importers and took it by horse- or oxen carried carts the seventy kilometres tho the farmers estates in Mark.

If any logistic problem arouse somewhere along the way from the United States to Mark, it affected not only the cloth agents but also in the end the weavers and the pedlars.
They now all became part of a globalized trade.

11. Stop the cotton invasion!

In 1816, the swedish parliament decided to greatly increase the duty on imported cotton fabrics. It even became illegal to bring certain kinds of cotton cloth into the country. The reason was a concern that the foreign fabrics would totally outcompete the swedish manufacturers of wool and linen goods.

But, if anything, these measures had the opposite effect: The smuggling of cotton fabrics across the border increased significantly. Moreover, the prohibition did not apply to ready-spun cotton yarns, which instead had its import duty decreased and thus became even more attractive for the swedish buyers.

12. Beneficial to the cloth agents

When the duty on cotton yarn was decreased from 1816, it became cheaper for the cloth agents to buy it. At the same time, it had become more difficult to import ready made fabrics from abroad. But the demant kept growing. It now became profitable to produce cotton cloth in Sweden and many cloth agents expanded their business, and further more agents appeared on the market. Some of them eventually became very wealthy.

In just fourteen years, 1830 – 1844, the production of cotton cloth in Mark increased fivefold. Most of it was still woven by hand by the home weavers in cottages and farmhouses. in 1830, there were a total of 50 cloth agents in Mark alone. The majority of them were dealing with cotton fabrics. Together these agents employed around 4000 adults and also a great number of children.

13. Cloth merchants Manorhouses

The cloth agent also had his warehouse on the estate, where yarns, finished fabrics ribbons and other textile goods were stored.

These kind of manorhouses are typical of Sjuhäradsbygden (The Seven Counties region).
The major part of remaining houses of this kind are to be found in Mark. Many of them are located along the valley following the stream Häggån, between the small towns of Fritsla and Kinna.

14. Mother Kerstin and her son Sven

Kerstin Andersdotter had, together with her husband Erik Andersson, a farm called Stämmemad close to the small village Kinna in Mark. Erik died 1813 and Kerstin then continued developing their cloth agent business. In 1816 she married Nils Andersson.

Kerstin came from a family with a long history of cloth trading in Mark. Her father as well as her uncles were cloth agents. It is said that, by the end of the first decade of the 19th century, Karin bought a few skeins of cotton yarn during a visit to Gothenburg in order to try out weaving with this new material. She is said to have been the first weaver in Mark to use cotton. She was satisfied with the result and she started to sell her home woven cotton cloths. Kerstins cloths became popular and she made good money from them.

Encouraged by this pioneer in swedish cotton textile trade, it did not take long before other cloth agents started to buy cotton yarns and hand it out to their home veawers. The new material soon outcompeted the traditional wool and linen textiles of the region.

In 1801, her son Sven was born and, as was customary in those days, he was given the surname Erikson after his father’s forename. When Sven was 12 years old, his father died and from an early age he had to help his mother and his five younger siblings with both farming and textile trade.

In 1825, he married Anna Johansdotter from Storegården in Kinna and that same year he started his own cloth agent business. The newly-weds settled at Kinna Rättaregården, an estate that he had bought in 1824 during his engagement to Anna.

Sven invested heavily in cotton cloth and soon became one of the most successful cloth agents in Mark. Over time he accumulated a very large fortune. Besides his business acumen, Sven was apparently also a person who was curious about new things and open to opportunities for development. It did not take long until he was ready for new challenges.

15. Practice makes perfect

Out in the cottages and farms in Mark, girls learned the art of weaving at a very young age. They started by helping the more experienced weavers with simple tasks, for example winding yarn onto bobbins. It took many years to master the different stages of weaving. The skills were passed on from mothers to daughters through the generations.

There are a vast variety of weaving techniques and methods, depending on what quality and pattern is desired in the final fabric. The weaver often specialised in certain varieties of weaving. The weaver would write down patterns and useful notes in her highly valued heddle book. But still, most of her knowledge was in her mind and hands.

The weaver had to maintain high quality in her work. The cloth agent inspected her finished products closely. If he decided that the result was not good enough, he would make a deduction from the payment agreed.

16. Weaving for life

Weaving was of vital importance for many hoseholds in Mark.Even though the weaver was usually not particulary well paid by the cloth agent for the finished cloth, the income was still essential for the family’s economy. It was important that she could spend as much time as possible in her loom. Other chores in the home and at the farm were therefore taken care of by the rest of the family members.Everybody had to help out, even the small children.

Boys and men also had to take care of chores that were traditionally regarded as ”womens work”, such as feeding the animals and spinning yarn.

17. 8 – 10 Cubits per day

In the Crown Sheriff’s report for the years of 1865 – 1870 it is said that ”a maid weaves an average of 8 to 10 cubits of cloth a day”. This corresponds to almost unbeleivable 9 to 12 metres.

The skill of a weaver who had practised since childhood and developed her technique to perfection over the years allowed a production rate that is hard for us today to comprehend. One should also bare in mind, that for the home weaver there were no such thing as fixed work hour workdays. She spent as much time in the loom as possible.

18. The gate to a new age

In the early 19th century, the first textile factories started appearing in Sweden. They were opened by wealthy merchants, landowners and others with capital to invest. Here in Mark, several of the factories were founded by successful cloth agents, such as Sven Erikson. More and more people, both children and adults, left their life as crofters and farmers and instead became factory workers.

It was an enormous change that affected a great number of people when the old textile tradition stepped into the industrial age.

19. Sven Erikson’s first factory

With capital from the cloth agent business and inspiration from the English textile industry, Sven Erikson started Sweden’s first mechanised cotton weaving mill. He chose the site of Rydboholm by the Viskan River, south-west of Borås. The factory was named Rydboholms Konstväfveri.
The year was 1834.

20. The dream factory

We do not know exactly when and how Sven Erikson had the idea to open Sweden’s first mechanised cotton mill. But in the winter of 1833, he went to Stockholm to meet the industrialist John Barker. Mr Baker from Lancashire in England knew what was required to start a factory. He had previously been employed at Cockerill’s mechanised factories in Belgium. There they made everything from steam locomotives to textile machines.

It may have been Barker who showed Sven Erikson a drawing of an English weaving mill. At that point, Sven is supposed to have said: “Great scot, there I’ll have fifteen thousand instead of fifteen hundred weavers!”

21. Heavy Metal

Sven Erikson commissioned John Barker to deliver mechanical looms and drive mechanisms to the cotton mill in Rydboholm.Barker ensured that the necessary parts were made according to his instructions at Åkers iron works outside Strängnäs and Munktell’s workshops in Eskilstuna.

Nobody had done anything like this in Sweden before, so they had to use English rawmodels.

The drive shafts, gear wheels and other parts from Åkers cannon factory weighed over ten tonnes. The mechanical looms from Munktell’s weighed about 500 kilos (1 102 pounds) each.
A total of 25 looms were in place when production started in December 1835.

22. Transport route

In November 1834, the first machine parts were transported by steamship across Lake Mälaren to Stockholm. From there, the journey continued south along the coast to Söderköping, and then they reached Jönköping via Göta Canal and Lake Vättern. After this, the heavy transport continued on rough roads, uphill and downhill, with carts drawn by oxen or horses. Where snow had already fallen, they had to use sledges. Finally, they reached the building site in Rydboholm.

23. Culture clash

The mechanised weaving mill in Rydboholm was the first of its kind in Sweden. Therefore, they had to get help from abroad to get the business running. Most employees had never worked in a factory before and were unfamiliar with both the environment and the new technology. In addition, many of the foremen were from England and did not speak Swedish.

24. Top of the class

Before the mid-19th century, there was no other factory in Sweden that could produce as much cotton cloth as Rydboholms Konstväveri. The factory was gradually expanded with more looms and a unit for dying the cloth. At its peak, the weaving mill in Rydboholm produced almost 95 % of all machine-made cotton cloth in Sweden.

25. A spinning mill comes into being

During the first half of the 19th century, the demand for cotton yarn increased rapidly. Buying from abroad became more and more expensive. The few Swedish cotton spinning mills that had come into operation were not able to deliver enough. Together with local cloth agents, merchants and factory owners, Sven Erikson founded the limited company Rydsdals Bomullsspinneri (cotton mill) in 1853. Soon after, the name was changed to Rydahls Manufaktur Aktiebolag.

Only wealthy people had the possibility to become partners in the spinning mill. It cost at least 1,000 riksdaler, which is the equivalent of about 100,000 Swedish kronor today. Sven himself invested most of all, 40,000 riksdaler. He was also elected chairman of the board of the company. The construction of the factory started in the summer of 1853 and already one year later, the yarn production could begin.

26. Rock blasting and potatoe boiling

It took about a year to build the factory in Rydal. It was built completely without machinery. In the beginning, most of the work consisted in blasting rocks and levelling the ground.

Dynamite had not yet been invented, so they used so called blasting powder. They drilled a hole in the rock with iron bars and sledgehammers. Then it was the blaster’s task to fill the holes with powder, insert a fuse and light it. And leave quickly!

They dug and hacked by hand. Heavy boulders were hoisted with ropes, blocks and tackles that were mounted in simple wooden lifting devices. Everything was transported by carts and sledges drawn by oxen or horses. About twenty bricklayers and a blacksmith were present during the whole construction period, but the largest group were just called “the workers”, around 230 people during the summer of 1853.

Most workers came from farms and cottages nearby. Some lived further away. If you ran out of provisions, you could go to Kok-Eli (“Boiler-Eli”) and buy potatoes that were boiled over an open fire.

27. The new construction by Viskan

The new factory was built here for several reasons. Most important was the access to hydropower from the stream Viskan . The site was well-placed for many cloth agents who needed cotton yarn. Sven Erikson’s own weaving mill in Rydboholm was also nearby. Rydal did not yet exist. The land needed for the factory was bought from two farms; Ryds Övregård and Ryds Nedregård. The purchase included a sawmill and a gristmill, both water-powered. The factory owners probably got the idea for the name “Rydal” from the names of these farms. Ryd is a very old swedish word meaning a cleared place. Soon, a small community started to develop around the factory.

28. Powerful

To power the newly built spinning mill in Rydal with all its machinery, a very large water wheel was ordered in 1853 from the English company Fairbairn & Sons in Manchester. According to Rydal’s spinning master Davies, himself an Englishman, this was supposed to be “the bäste water-hjol i werlden” (the best waterwheel in the world) as he expressed it.

Unfortunately, the best water wheel in the world proved not to be enough to keep the machines running all the time. The water flow in the river was often insufficient. To secure the power supply, they bought a 25-horsepower steam engine from Motala Mekaniska verkstad (Motala Mechanical Workshop) in 1861.

At the end of the 1860s, the water wheel was replaced by turbines, which were much more effective in making use of the water’s power. In 1881, the turbines were connected to a generator, which converted the hydropower into electricity. This is also when the arc lamps in Rydal’s spinning mill were turned on.

This was not only the first time that a Swedish factory had electrical indoor lighting, but also the first time in Sweden that electricity was produced from hydropower.