A Personal History of Splint Basketry
in Denmark and Sweden

In the Dalarne region in Sweden, 200 km north of Stockholm, they started in about 1830 to make splint baskets, perhaps inspired by the Finnish baskets. I have recently discovered a fresco dating from about 1520 in the curch of Rasbokil in Uppland, Sweden, where you can see 12 splint baskets of the Finnish type which illustrate Matthew Chapter 14 v 19-21. So far as I know, this is the earliest evidence of the existence of splint baskets. 

The parish Våmhus is the main place for the production in Dalarne. The baskets were made at home and sold around Sweden, especially in Stockholm. Often makers brought the raw materials with them. Several people would work together, but only one person made the whole basket. In about 1845 this inspired a person in the southern part of Sweden, and production started there. In contrast to Dalarne, the production in Skåne was rationalized. The main place for this production was a parish called Örkened, maintown Lönsboda, today a part of Osby District. This will also explain the difference between the handicraft of the north and the industry of the south:  1. In Skåne they made the splints with a plane, where in Dalarne they used a knife and split the wood along the grain. 2. In Skåne they used a nailing machine to fasten the inner and outer rims and the handle, whereas in Dalarne they tied it up with a narrow splint, or fastened it by hammering in nails.Handles were made by starting at one end of the wood to make three or four splints, which you do not split free at the other end. This will allow you to bow the handle and place first the one end in the side of the basket and nail it, and then the other end in the opposite side and nail this. 3. 1 and 2 gave the division of labour which made mass production possible.
 

Even the basket makers of Skåne wandered around northern Europe selling the baskets in Denmark, Norway, Germany,and England. 
In England in the 1880s there were perhabs 12 to 14 Swedish splint basket salesmen, who competed with each other, but in 1903 they decided to co-operate by making a firm called the Swedish Basket Company. Four af the salesmen lived in Hull: Olof Myrberg, Olof Olsson and the Nilsson brothers. The fifth, Bengt Nilsson, was from Grimsby. The firm was dissolved in 1911. 
Many settled down in Germany after 1880 and made factories. 
A few also made factories in the USA, as did two brothers in Minneapolis, James S. Sandberg and his brother Bengt. A third brother, Martin, joined the brother James in 1890, and moved later on to Duluth, Minnesota. In 1904 he ended up in Los Angeles, where he called his firm the Pacific Coast Basket Factory. Martin closed the production of baskets in 1920 and started up with furniture. 
In Denmark the government tried to stop the Swedish basket-sellers, and did so in 1890 with a statutory instrument which forbade them to go around selling splint-baskets. The consequence of this was that the Swedes settled down in Denmark as wholesale dealers of splint-baskets! Carl Johansson did so in 1891 at a place called Kvistgård, and his brother, who is my grand-father, came to Denmark in the year 1900 to join him. Before this, my grandfather had been the manager of a splint-basket factory in Wolgast, Germany for 11 years. In the year 1902 the brothers moved the factory to Lillerød, approx. 30 km north of Copenhagen, a place today called Allerød. Carl Johansson was the dealer and my grandfather Per Martin Johansson was the manufacturer. This system was carriet on by their children until 1956, when my father Arvid Johansson, until then manufacturer, also became the dealer! Carl changed his surname to Johansen, which is the Danish spelling, and thus he could advertise: The only Danish splint basket factory! 

The days of glory for the splint-baskets was the period 1890-1950, when millions of splint- baskets were produced and sold. From 1902-1970 the main part of the Danish-produced splint baskets were produced in Lillerød. Many splint-baskets were imported from Skåne, without the handle. The handle was then obtained in Denmark through a dealer. The custom-duties were less on the baskets as semi-manufactured, and the transportation was easier. In this way we had three competitors, Persson in Copenhagen, Elmose and later his son-in-law Gertsen in Aarhus, Jutland, and the son of Elmose in Odense, Fuen. In about 1950 we and they together provided the Danish market with at least one million splint baskets a year, and at that time the population of Denmark was about 4 million. It was not handicraft, but a blind alley in the industrial evolution. It is therefore an amusing fact, that in Sweden you call a plastic bag kasse, which was the usual word to describe a splint basket. In my childhood I thought it was a dialect word from Örkened, but in fact its origin is Finnish. A plastic bag is just the carry tool which replaced the splint basket in this region of the world. Today a splint basket is more often used as an icon for something nice, old fashioned, ease & peace, peacefully gardening etc., than seen in the real world. 

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