Lopapeysur or Icelandic wool sweaters
Updated on the day: 01/19/2021. Few things –except Björk– are more Icelandic than lopapeysur, the typical wool sweaters. Elaborated with lopi –a local sheep's wool that is used without spinning, so that it contains more air and thus better insulates from the arctic climate–, wearing one of these peysur (jerseys) is dressing up in a piece of Icelandic scenery.
It is the perfect garment both to work on the farm and to go to concerts or attend national pride parties. But if you look at them carefully, maybe the fretwork lining the collar and cuffs remind you of another place. In fact, they look quite similar to the alpaca sweaters that are sold in craft shops in Bolivia and Peru.
And it is that, according to a theory that is gaining more and more strength, The origin of these patterns is found in a book on the Inca culture that the Nobel Prize for Literature Halldór Laxness He brought his wife Auður –also a writer and, as a good Icelander, an excellent weaver– from one of his trips to America In the late '40s.
Today it is possible to buy lopapeysur even in the most remote places in the country, but if you want a reliable address, try at the Handknitting Association of Iceland, an institution since 1977, in Reykjavík. The fame of these sweaters is such that it is also possible to find them in unexpected places, such as Venice, where Katarzyna Plachta, owner of Jigsknits, uses two types of Icelandic sheep wool: y léttlopi, finer, and álafosslopi, coarser.
This article was published in number 144 of the Condé Nast Traveler Magazine (January-February 2021)