Sju kvinnor från Nås : Deras sociala liv med hjärtvärmaren som utgångspunkt

Sammanfattning: This essay, Seven Women from Nås: Their Social Life Based on the Heart Warmer, uses an object as the base when investigating the social conditions of seven women. The women lived in Nås, Dalarna, during the 19th century. These women had different positions in society and thus different financial opportunities to invest in clothes, which is also reflected in their clothing possessions.What the women had in common was that they all owned a heart warmer when they passed away. The heart warmers are listed in the women’s estate inventories. The heart warmer is a part of the attire used by women from the 1860s until the turn of the century 1900. It was at the turn of the century that clothes, which today are called national custome, ceased to be everyday clothes. The heart warmer in Nås is crocheted in several colors, in simple stripes orcomplicated patterns. The technique of crocheting came to Nås in the late 1860's and turns up, for the first time, in an estate inventory in the year of 1870. The object, the heart warmer, piqued my interest for the women who owned them. Who were they? What clothes did they have? What social classes did they belong to? The hart warmer has been studied from an object-based, textile science perspective where Material Culture in the spirit of Jules David Prown has been used as the basic theory and method. Prown states that the actual objects might not be interesting from a historical perspective, but that they are important since they carry information that we can interpret. The objects can tell us about the historical context where they belonged. This investigation has tried to find answers to the questions about who these women were, how they lived, and when they carried their heart warmers. The answers have been found in old archives and with the help of a surveyor, a topographer, a curator, an educator as well as a folklore researcher. The above listed persons have all written about the Nås district and have contributed with their knowledge and opinions about the people and living conditions in Nås during the 19th century.