A 200-year-old sweater in a style closely resembling Faroese national dress has been found in “pristine” condition among a stash of 19th-century letters at the National Archives.
The jumper was intended for a woman in Denmark but never reached its destination because the vessel on which it was being transported was seized by the Royal Navy during the second battle of Copenhagen in 1807.
Margretha Nónklett, the head of ethnology at the Faroe Islands national museum, saw the packages being opened at the National Archives. She called the find “tremendously exciting”, marvelling at the rarity of the design.
“There are very few pieces like this and we have none with this particular design. It would have been handmade at home with hand-dyed wool,” Nónklett said.
The red sweater was shipped from Tórshavn, the Faroe capital, on the cargo ship Anne-Marie on 20 August 1807 by a carpenter called Niels C Winther with a letter that reads: “My wife sends her regards, thank you for the pudding rice. She sends your fiance this sweater and hopes that it is not displeasing to her.”
The package was addressed to a Mr P Ladsen in Copenhagen and its contents were described by the sender as a “sweater for sleeping”. The note was written in Danish.
The same shipment contained a sample of women’s knee-length fine woollen stockings and fabric samples. Men’s stockings were a key part of the Faroese export market at this time.
The Anne-Marie’s captain, Jurgen S Toxsvaerd, set sail for Denmark unaware that war had broken out. The ship was targeted by HMS Defence off the coast of Norway on 2 September 1807, the day the British began bombarding Copenhagen. The British crew boarded the ship, imprisoned Toxsvaerd and his crew and grabbed the ship’s cargo and mailbox.
The cargo included 49,000 pairs of woollen stockings, eight tons of dried fish, 100 cases of candles, 250 barrels of tallow, 19 barrels of train oil and 10 barrels of feathers.
Paper rixdollars were found among the letters, with a wad of them wrapped about 18 silver coins, which included Danish skillings dating back to the 17th-century reign of Frederick III of Denmark.
Erling Isholm, an associate professor at the University of the Faroe Islands, said: “The Anne-Marie was one of two owned by the Danish king, who monopolised all trade to and from the islands. If all the contents of this mailbox are here, it represents a quarter of the communication between the Faroes and Denmark in 1807.”
The Prize Papers Project at the National Archives is planning to digitise the letters and contents of the packages, making them available online in open access. Over a period of 20 years, the project will make an estimated 3.5m document images available online.
Dr Amanda Bevan, of the National Archives, said: “This is a rare example of a parcel surviving in the Prize Papers, which often contain letters consigned to ships for delivery by sea.”
