Rölakan and What to Buy

This module reconstructs North House Folk School’s four-day Rölakan Rug Weaving, taught by Christine Novotny of Grand Marais. It’s an intermediate class (you must already know how to warp a floor loom), and each student weaves “a small sample carpet” while learning to graph a design, blend colors in the weft “to achieve dynamic hues,” and finish the edges “in a classic fashion.” The style comes from Swedish rug weaver Ulla Parkdal ¹. The details below come from Novotny’s own account of studying with Parkdal and from Swedish weaving sources; North House’s lesson plan isn’t published.

What rölakan is

Rölakan (or röllakan) is a simplified tapestry in plain weave. The oldest dated Swedish piece is from 1710, and the tradition centers on Skåne, with work also from Blekinge, Småland, Halland, and Bohuslän. The name comes from Old Swedish ryglakan, “back cloth” ². Of nearly 2,000 Skåne double-interlocked tapestries studied, about 95 percent have a flax (linen) warp and wool weft ³.

Parkdal’s rugs are a modern, minimal take: weft-faced plain weave on a linen warp, the pattern “laid in entirely by hand, not with a shuttle,” and each pick a bundle of five strands of wool rug yarn in different colors, so solid areas shimmer with shifting color instead of flat blocks ⁴.

The numbers

A Swedish rule-of-thumb table for rug weft gives rölakan at 18 ends per 10 cm, about 4.6 ends per inch, using about 2 kg of weft per square meter ⁵. For a rug about 20 by 30 inches (0.39 square meter), that’s about 0.8 kg of wool. The same table warns that no rule replaces a sample ⁵.

Warp for that rug: about 4.6 ends per inch across 21 inches in the reed is roughly 96 to 100 ends, plus doubled ends at each selvedge. With 30 inches of rug, a fringe allowance at each end, and loom waste, allow about 2 yards of warp per rug; that’s about 220 yards of warp, well within one 500 g tube of 8/5 linen (492 yards) ⁶. These warp figures are this module’s calculation, not North House’s.

Yarns and where to buy

Warp: strong linen rug warp. Vävstuga in Massachusetts sells Bockens unbleached linen rug warp in 8/2 to 8/5 at $58 a 500 g tube ⁶; The Woolery carries a Belgian 12/4 linen rug warp ⁷.

Weft: wool rug yarn (Swedish mattgarn). Vävstuga’s Garnhuset 1.3/1 rug wool runs 142 yards per 100 g; it replaced the long-standard Borgs mattgarn, discontinued in 2024. For five-strand bundles, thinner 6/1 singles (600 m per 100 g) held together give finer blending control ⁶. The Woolery sells Norwegian Rauma Ryegarn and Swedish Klippan Fårö wool ⁷. Buy a range of related colors.

The loom

Any sturdy floor loom with a heavy beater and the ability to hold high tension works; rölakan is plain weave, so two shafts are enough. North House expects students to warp their own loom ¹.

Try it

Wrap a bundle sample: hold five strands of different colors together and wind them around a ruler for an inch. Make three, each with one strand changed. The difference between them is the whole idea of Parkdal-style color.