Slöjd, in the most straightforward sense, is the Swedish word for handcraft. This general definition is very old and commonly used. Slöjd can refer to woodcarving, sewing, leatherworking, wirework, metalwork, basketry, knitting, or any other traditional handcraft using natural materials.

From Jogge Sundqvist's book Slöjd in Wood:

In the mid-1800s, Europe began to industrialize. One of the people that resisted this mechanization and same-ification of everyday products was Lilli Zickerman.

Zickerman was a very talented and accomplished textile artist, trained at the Handarbetets Vänners Sy och Vävskola (Friends of Handicrafts Society Sewing and Weaving School) in Stockholm. She was inspired and amazed by the skill of rural textile artists, but recognized that industrialization posed an imminent economic threat to long-lived craft traditions. She founded the Föreningen för Svensk Hemslöjd (Swedish Handcrafts Association) in 1899. Zickerman and her Association created a craft store, craft catalogues, a craft documentary (in 1917!!), and ran many well-documented experiments and research into natural materials and traditional techniques. Her work to preserve traditional crafts still influences Sweden today. A significant amount of private and public funding is used to support traditional knowledge and the preservation of cultural crafts.

Partly because of the efforts of Lilli Zickerman, the idea of teaching slöjd to adults and children spread across Sweden. At first, it was mostly adults learning traditional crafts as a sort of side hustle or professional practice. The practice grew and grew, and before long slöjd began to be taught in schools. Enter our next slöjd hero, Otto Salomon.

Salomon was inspired by the slöjd movement and started a school of his own for children to learn handcraft, but moved on after a few years to teach teachers how to teach slöjd. Salomon's mission was to merge the practical, economic, home industry practices of slöjd with educational institutions and pedagogical values.

Salomon was also a writer, and in 1892 published a brilliant guidebook to teaching slöjd: The Teacher's Hand-Book of Slöjd. This book focuses almost entirely on woodcraft, as this was the aspect of slöjd that was most integrated into the school system at the time. 

Salomon was inspired by the folk school movement, which was pioneered by Nikolai Grundtvig. Grundtvig was a Danish preacher, writer, poet, teacher, and social revolutionary. His work is a bit outside the scope of the slöjd story but I admire him enormously and his words inspire me greatly.

I participated in the North House Folk School internship program in 2020. Before that, I had only a small bit of experience with pottery, and a little bit of knitting, and otherwise I was totally clueless about the craft world.

During the course of the internship, I practiced woodworking, spinning, blacksmithing, sailing, knotwork, chairmaking, crochet, nålbinding, hide tanning, basket weaving, natural dyeing, bread baking, traditional cooking, and so, so, so many more crafts and techniques and materials that it would take a whole day to recite them all. I was hooked for life.

My capstone project for the internship - also known as The Slöjd Project - was to recreate the tools and clothes of the 5,000-year-old ice mummy known as Ötzi. I wrote about my experiences and my research here on my website if you're curious. This capstone project was also my graduate thesis, as I was finishing my Master's of Experiential Education at the time.

Can you even tell us apart?

I was also lucky enough to participate in a slöjd teacher's training program put on by Anna Sharratt and Andreas Sohlberg, two slöjd educators whose work I really admire. Through that course I learned how modern slöjd educators in Sweden and America approach craft education through the lense of sustainability and inclusivity. Andreas helped to run a national program in Sweden known as the Slöjdcirkus, which traveled around the country teaching kids traditional crafts through play.

Please enjoy a couple of my doodled notes from Andreas and Anna's course on youth slöjd pedagogy.

Our school is project-based, which means students work on their own independent projects instead of attending classes. Students find research sources, create products, present information, and all the rest mostly independently. Slöjd projects feed into this process well because direct instruction of traditional craft techniques is very hard to replace with independent learning. It's just so extremely hard to learn to knit or carve wood through YouTube or WikiHow.

The more I teach slöjd at our school, the more I see traditional skills weaving their way into the final products that students create.

I hate fidgets. I think everyone has the right to move and all hands have the urge to manipulate objects. Fidgets take that impulse and waste it on ball bearings and pop sockets.

When students learn a skill like knitting, their busy hands are engaged in a repetitive motion that is engaging, but does not entirely absorb their attention. I know many people who say they pay attention much easier with some knitting needles moving in their hands.

Students engaged in slöjd and craft become dependent on the forest and the natural landscape. To carve wood, we need to cut down a responsibly-chosen tree. To weave baskets, we need to gather willow twigs from over-abundant riverbanks. It goes on and on. Students learn to recognize species, to live in the cycles of the seasons, and to grow into an interdependent relationship with the land.

A great example of what we are returning to is demonstrated by the experimental archeology and living history of the BBC Living History series.

Our school sits right on the Minnesota River. Stands of willow run for miles along the sandy riverbanks. When we cut willow for wood or basketry materials, the roots grow deeper into the soil, and willow roots are like fine webby nets that hold in the silt and sand. These roots protect the banks from erosion.

There are multitudes of opportunities in slöjd to connect with biological standards. Tree anatomy, for example, is critical to understand when making something out of freshly-cut wood. Splitting a branch along wood fibers demonstrates a hands-on understanding of the growth pattern of that tree.

It is extremely fun to make slöjd games. One of the first activities I like to do is to sharpen a stick into a spear, add on some feathers, and see who can throw it the farthest. This activity binds together the slöjd techniques of woodcarving and the way that an object behaves in the world.

Students also help each other to improve. Techniques are shared. I notice that when I attach games and competitions to slöjd lessons, students jump in with high engagement to make The Best Stick or to sew The Biggest Juggling Ball or carve The Most Stable Egg-Carrying Spoon.

Grundtvig's idea of the living word really inspires my work. When students work together and teach each other, I can see the transmission of living knowledge from one person to another.

There are many opportunities for this kind of teaching in slöjd. Students can hold a piece of wood while another student drills or saws the piece. Two or three or four students can work together to split a big freshly-cut log. I always teach knitting and crocheting and spinning in pairs, where all four hands are engaged at once and students can help each other master each part of the technique.

Slöjd is the direct manipulation of raw materials. This is something so simple but so difficult to find in the modern, industrialized, commercialized age. Rather than buying your identity in the form of stickers, labels, or clothing designs, slöjd allows students to put their hands to the world directly with no commercial middleman. Individual characters come out right away and the nature of the inner life is expressed freely.

Slöjd is quiet. We always sit in a circle whenever possible. We always sit outside when the weather allows. Conversation flows freely, and it really is easier to talk and listen when you have a project in your hands. I am confident in saying that there is nothing more ancient or more fundamental to the human story than sitting in a circle, crafting, talking, and participating in your community.

Through slöjd, students are actively engaged with all senses in the landscape. We learn how to responsibly use the trees and bushes and plants and animals and materials all around us. Students learn to make useful and beautiful objects using free, accessible materials and a minimum of tools. My hope and joy is that slöjd students don't ever need to buy a spoon, spatula, bowl, or a toothpick ever again.

There's nothing like swinging a big axe or sledgehammer to bring your awareness of yourself into a high radiance. From start to finish, students engaged in traditional crafts are responsible for all the choices and all the work of making a new, beautiful object. I see the pride in their eyes every time they use something they've made!

Other than the knife, the most powerful tool in woodslöjd is the pencil. Once you make a cut, you can't go back! Craft techniques have no undo button (unless you count frogging yarn).

I usually open slöjd circles with the prompt, "tell us your name and tell us about one object you have at home that was made by hand." There are almost always several students who can't name a single thing they own that is handmade. What a strange world! For all of human history there was no other option that for things to be handmade. There was no other way to make things! And in only 150 or so years of industrialization, the power to create our own material reality was almost entirely taken away.

Slöjd can be exhausting! Splitting a big log, carrying a bundle of basketry materials, or twisting huge amounts of rope fiber can work muscles you didn't even know you had.

No matter who you are and no matter your ancestry, your heritage includes basketry. And woodwork. And leatherwork. And herbal knowledge. All these things connect us as human beings and are the direct content of slöjd education.

At our school, most of our project reflections are done through the medium of writing a short essay on the journey of the project. This is a valuable exercise, but it does not feel very appropriate to the slöjd experience. I was inspired by the old Norse idea of the primstav, a story stick calendar of important days of the year.

At the end of a slöjd experience, we take time to create our own primstavs which tell the story of the day or week or activity. I've found that this activity is hugely rewarding, because students are using the very craft skills they learned to reflect back on the experience of learning those skills.

I have taught traditional crafts at North House Folk School, the American Swedish Institute, Blue Earth County Library, the Mankato Makerspace, and the Arts Center of Saint Peter.

All ages engage with slöjd and people always bring their own skills, experiences, and stories to enrich the group. It is enriching to my soul to pass on the crafts that have been passed on to me through the living word of slöjd.

On Sundays at 3pm at my house, every week, I host a craft evening that we call Folkrum. It started very casually, but now has become a regularly-attended hangout with many friends stopping by to work on all kinds of projects including shoemaking, puppetry, patching clothes, making notebooks, carving spoons, knitting scarves, and so much more.

The name of Folkrum comes from the idea of a Folk Room, as in, a room where the living word is transmitted from folk to folk. It is also a fulcrum, a balancing point for me and my community where we can find calm and comfort and inspiration in an unbalanced world.

The mission statement of Folkrum is this: Craft is Liberation. Through slöjd is the path to independence, interdependence, community, freedom, and self-actualization. This I firmly believe.

You are always welcome.