The cradle of the textile industry

Already in the Middle Ages there is evidence to suggest that farmers in Västergötland sold linen in the mining district of Sweden (Bergslagen), and in the 1500s the farmers in the Mark jurisdictional district are recorded as having paid their taxes in “ells of homespun”. During this period, flax cultivation also had great significance. One can well say that the cradle of Sweden’s textile industry was in Mark.

By the end of the 1600s and all throughout the 1700s, home weaving developed strongly and the products of farm womenfolk were distributed via pedlars. During the 1700s, a new system of ‘textile barons’ arose, where rich, large landowners purchased large quantities of yarn. The yarn was then provided to the weavers in the area, who wove it into cloth that the textile baron then sold to merchants and wholesalers, often in Gothenburg, or direct to travelling pedlars.

During the early 1800s, Sweden began to import cotton, which led to an increase in the textile baron system of outsourcing to home weavers. The biggest textile barons, such as Sven Andersson in Kinna, employed around 1500 weavers. The other big textile barons of the time were Sven Erikson and Andreas Andersson in Salgutsred. The success of this system made the textile barons wealthy, and they began to build stately homes for themselves, many of which can still be seen today at a number of places in Mark, primarily along the road between Kinna and Fritsla.

In the mid 1800s, the textile barons were constructing the first textiles factories, which became the foundation of today’s textile industry. One of these factories lay in Rydal, and is today a museum and monument to the beginnings of industrialisation in Mark. Most of the textile manufacturers in Mark today had their origins in the textile barons’ outsourcing system, including Kvadrat Sanden, Ludvig Svensson, Kasthall and Svensson Markspelle. These companies and many others like them are known around the world and export textile products today to the four corners of the globe.