A pink conventional Faroese knit sweater was lately present in a stash of Nineteenth-century letters on the British Nationwide Archives of their Prize Papers assortment. The sweater, or jumper in British parlance, handknitted in vibrantly coloured nice wool, was supposed for a lady in Denmark, however by no means reached its vacation spot as a result of the vessel on which it was shipped was seized by the British Navy throughout the Second Battle of Copenhagen.
On August 20, 1807, carpenter Niels C. Winther from Tórshavn within the Faroe Islands put a package deal aboard the ship Anne-Marie. The parcel was addressed to a Mr. P Ladsen in Copenhagen and included a letter, in Danish, that stated, ‘my spouse sends her regards, thanks for the pudding rice. She sends your fiancé this sweater and hopes that it’s not displeasing to her.’
Mr. Ladsen’s fiancé by no means acquired the sweater. The Anne-Marie had sailed for Denmark with its captain Jurgen S Toxsvaerd unaware that battle had damaged out. She was focused by HMS Defence off the coast of Norway on September 2, 1807, the day the British started bombarding Copenhagen. The British crew boarded the ship, imprisoned Toxsvaerd and his crew, and grabbed each the cargo and the ship’s mailbox.
Affiliate Prof Erling Isholm, from the College of the Faroe Islands, and Margretha Nónklett, from the nation’s Nationwide Museum, travelled to The Nationwide Archives to see the parcel opened for the primary time, 217 years after it was mailed.
A assertion from The Nationwide Archives famous that the identical cargo contained a pattern of nice girls’s knee-length woolen stockings and material samples. The export of males’s stockings was a key a part of the Faroese economic system presently when ‘wool was gold’ for these island communities.
Margretha Nónklett stated: ‘It is a tremendously thrilling discover. There are only a few items like this and now we have none with this explicit design. It could have been handmade at house with hand-dyed wool.’
Dr. Amanda Bevan, of the Nationwide Archives, stated: ’It is a uncommon instance of a parcel surviving within the Prize Papers, which regularly comprise letters consigned to ships for supply by sea.’
Because of Alaric Bond for contributing to this put up.
