Why Nordic Wool Is Different: 10 Throws, Blankets and a Rug
Mountain mills, merino, sheepskin and recycled yarn: 10 Nordic wool pieces for the cold half of the year, and how to choose one that lasts.
Read More →Blanket Hour: 10 Nordic Pieces for the Sofa in October
There is an evening in October when the blanket stops being folded away. It comes off the shelf for one cold hour, gets left over the arm of the sofa, and is still there in March. Nobody decides this. It is the point at which the sofa changes job: from the thing you walk past on the way to somewhere else to the warmest seat in the flat, where the next five months of evenings are going to happen.
Nordic homes prepare for that evening rather than endure it. Wool within arm's reach, cushions that hold a back instead of decorating a corner, something at the right height for your feet. The ten pieces below are the ones you actually touch: three throws, six cushions and a braided stool. All are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and every one can be compared on price on ScandiDeals.
⸻
1. Røros Tweed Mello Throw – Enough Wool For Two
Most throws are cut for one person sitting upright. This one is 150 by 210 centimetres, the size at which two people stop negotiating and a tall person can cover their feet. The wool is a deep leaf green with a short pale fringe at each end, and it has weight: it lies across your legs rather than floating over them. The Mello throw is woven at the Norwegian mill in Røros, where blankets for cold rooms have been the business for generations.
⸻
2. Klippan Yllefabrik Domino Wool Throw – Caramel, Flecked With Cream
Klippan has been weaving wool in southern Sweden since 1879, and Domino is the pattern for a room that has gone grey outside. Two yarns work against each other, so the cloth reads as warm caramel from across the room and breaks into cream flecks once it is on your lap. It is lighter than the Norwegian throw above, which makes it the one that migrates: sofa in the evening, foot of the bed at night, over your shoulders at the desk. The Domino throw is the sort families own two of.
⸻
3. Marimekko Unikko Throw – Poppies, Sixty Years On
Maija Isola drew Unikko in 1964 and the poppy has been in production ever since, which is a long time for a pattern to stay interesting. At 130 by 180 centimetres the flowers run the full width in pink on cream, with fringes at both ends. Because the colour is soft rather than hot, it survives being looked at every evening for a season. The Unikko throw changes a plain sofa more than a set of new cushions would.
⸻
4. &Tradition Collect Cushion SC48 – Bouclé In Deep Moss
Forty by sixty centimetres is the useful shape: it sits in the small of your back and stays there, instead of being moved to the floor every time somebody sits down. The face is soft bouclé in moss, a green dark enough to pass for charcoal until a lamp catches it, and the looped yarn gives it a texture your hand finds before your eye does. The Collect SC48 is the one to buy if you buy a single cushion, because it is the one doing a job.
⸻
5. Design House Stockholm Knot Cushion – A Rope, Tied Once
A thick knitted tube tied into a single round knot, here in a rust ochre that sits well against brown and green. It behaves like a sculpture when the sofa is empty and like a bolster when it is not: wedged under a neck for reading, pushed into the corner of an armchair, handed to whoever wants to sit on the floor. The Knot cushion looks like a joke in a photograph and makes complete sense in the room.
⸻
6. Ferm Living Loop Cushion – A Hill, In Tufted Wool
Fifty centimetres square, cream, with a navy shape rising from the bottom edge like a hill seen from a train, a small rust spiral beside it and a black band down one side. The shapes are tufted, so they stand proud of the ground and catch the light differently as the evening goes on. The Loop cushion is quiet in colour and busy in surface, which is the right way round for something you lean on in a dark room.
⸻
7. Almedahls Ailanthus Cushion Cover – Leaves, Printed Dense
The cheapest decision on this list, and the one that moves a sofa furthest in an afternoon. The cotton is printed edge to edge, 47 by 47 centimetres: green leaves, small orange flowers and dark red pods crowded on cream with no room left for a background. Almedahls is a Swedish textile house with a deep archive and a habit of reissuing it. Put the Ailanthus cover on a cushion you already own and keep the plain one for spring.
⸻
8. Ekelund Rävar Cushion Cover – Two Foxes, Woven In
Rävar means foxes, and there are two on this 40 by 40 cover, facing each other across a grey-blue ground scattered with dandelion clocks and one small toadstool. The picture is woven into the cloth rather than printed on top of it, which is why the colours break up slightly at close range and why washing will not fade it to a rumour. The Rävar cover comes from a Swedish mill that still weaves its own pictures.
⸻
9. House Doctor Nula Cushion Cover – Three Stripes, Nothing Else
The colour in the name is the stripe, not the cloth. The ground is a natural, slightly rough cotton, 50 by 50 centimetres, crossed by three narrow dark brown bands running top to bottom. That is the entire design, and it is what a sofa needs once there are foxes and poppies and tufted hills on it: one cushion that says nothing. The Nula cover is also the easiest to live with when the room changes colour again in spring.
⸻
10. Dixie Lily Pouf – Braided, And Firm Enough
Fifty-nine centimetres across, braided from water hyacinth into a low drum the colour of dry straw. It is firm, which matters: a soft pouf swallows your heels and this one holds them. The flat top takes a tray when there are more people than table, and in a small flat it becomes the seat that appears when a fourth person arrives. The Lily pouf brings a dry, woven texture to a corner otherwise made entirely of wool.
⸻
Final Thoughts
A sofa corner is built by subtraction as much as addition. Two good throws beat five thin ones, four cushions beat nine, and the ones that stay are the ones that hold a back or cover a pair of feet. Everything here can be washed, carried to another room or handed on, which is the only real test for something used every evening between now and spring.
Start with the piece you will touch most. For most people that is wool, large enough to share, and the rest can arrive slowly: a cover swapped in October, a pouf when the room finally asks for one. Prices move week to week and differ between the four countries, so compare them on ScandiDeals before the evenings get properly long.
