Is this Norway’s first guerilla embroidery?
When war broke out in Norway in April 1940, Caroline Moe bought linen fabric and black embroidery thread.
The teacher from Fjære near Grimstad resisted the German occupation in his own way. It looked like a perfectly normal canvas in the process.
It should happen as innocently as possible, according to Lena Sannæs. She is a historian and collection manager at the Archives for Peace and Human Rights Center in Kristiansand.
At that time, women took needlework with them when they went to coffee shops or to meetings of the Red Cross or the Sanitary Association. And there sat Caroline Moe with her crusades against war and for peace. Also when there were members of the National Assembly present.
– It will be a bit like pointing the finger at them. They didn’t know what she was doing, says Sannæs to forskning.no.
Cross stitch against occupation
She thinks it could be Norway’s first guerilla embroidery, which is a form of rebellious cross stitch embroidery. They became popular ten years ago, are often funny, but also political and critical, as Caroline Moe’s canvas was. She may have been way ahead of her time.
In the table around the tablecloth, it says with neat stitching:
Against dark forces, stitch by stitch is stabbed
In difficult times the doubt never extinguished
A comforting faith in the day to use
As the donkey is to this cloth
– Caroline Moe probably made the poem herself, says Sannæs.
People in the local environment familiar with the project. They asked how the cloth went, and it became a code for talking about the course of the war.
– The cloth was finished on Peace Day in 1945. And it has only been used once. That was when they celebrated Hitler’s death, says Sannæs.
Too small?
The cloth is part of the Archive’s collections from the Second World War. Some believe that it is too small, that the cloth does not show enough resistance, according to Sannæs.
– But it’s about experiencing resistance in yourself and those around you. The tablecloth becomes something to gather around. You defy the way you can, she says.
Many went to the woods to resist the Germans, but everyday resistance is also important, Sannæs believes.
– If all those who stayed at home did not resist at all, there would be no one left to fight for.
Women also fought actively in the war.
Invisible women in the history books
Author Mari Jonassen has written the book “Norwegian women in war, 1939-1945”. She attended a meeting in Arendalsuka about gender in war and history.
Jonassen has gone through the syllabus books at upper secondary school. Some of them don’t mention women at all, she said.
And in the books she found pictures and text about women, they are most often prisoners in concentration camps, housewives providing food or women who have fallen in love with German soldiers.
– The sum of this appears to be that women played no role during the Second World War, Jonassen said at the meeting.
She showed some examples of women who had made active efforts in the war.
Spies, sailors of war and paratroopers
Signe Viborg Andersen took over as head of a Milorg group after her husband was shot. She built up a liaison service with only women.
Margit Johnsen, also called Malta-Margit, is one of Norway’s most decorated people – with medals from both Norway, Malta and Great Britain. Johnsen was a war sailor and was torpedoed several times.
Dagny Sivlund was a partisan in the north. She made it over to the Soviet Union when the Germans came. First she was an interpreter, then she took a parachute course and became Norway’s first female paratrooper.
Anne Sofie Østvedt and Astrid Løken were secret agents. Both were in charge of XU, the largest intelligence group during the war, with 1,500 agents under them, according to Jonassen.
Equal with women’s tasks
– Norwegian women were involved in all previous acts of resistance and hostilities, including sabotage and planning of liquidations, Jonassen said.
Often they joined the resistance work together with a husband, brother, father or friend. The majority were single, young and working. 20 percent were housewives.
The women who took part experienced themselves that they were equal, according to Jonassen. But they were given typically women’s tasks, such as getting food and delivering messages.
Especially at the beginning of the war, many women were spies.
– The Germans did not realize that women were part of the resistance. That is why they were not checked when they brought messages in prams and on bicycles, Jonassen said.
It often says in the history books and encyclopedias that Milorg consisted of 40,000 men at the end of the war.
10 percent were women
– That is not true, because 10 per cent of those who participated in Milorg were women. We must rather say that Milorg consisted of 40,000 men and women, Jonassen said at the meeting.
Also, exhibitions about the Second World War should include the women.
– But we have to work harder to find the stories, according to Lena Sannæs from the Archive.
As many women as men deliver objects and documents to museums, but it is often men’s stuff.
– We bring in men’s history. To put it bluntly: Everyone delivers things after their father, says Sannæs.
One exception is collections of letters and diaries written by women.
– There we get closer and can read women’s own thoughts and experiences. And there the men are not as tough as they are portrayed on film, says Lena Sannæs.