Mountain Looms and Tidal Threads: Ós Textile Residency in Iceland
In Blönduós, on Iceland’s northwestern coast, textiles seem to belong to the landscape as much as to the studio. The Icelandic Textile Center sits beside the glacial river Blanda in a former women’s college where weaving once formed part of everyday education. That legacy lingers in the long corridors and in the presence of hand looms that have anchored the building for decades. Today the centre hosts a residency that draws artists, researchers and textile practitioners from around the world, each arriving with a personal question and leaving with new threads of enquiry.
The Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós, located in the historic building, Blönduós Women's College. Image: Textilmidstöd Islands.
The facilities support both tradition and experimentation. The weaving studio forms the heart of the residency in a generous room lined with Glimåkra and Öxabäck floor looms, table looms, warping mills and winding equipment. The steady movement of treadles and shuttles gives the space a quiet rhythm.
The Loom Studio at The Icelandic Textile Centre in Blönduós
Across the hall, a dye kitchen offers stainless steel vats and burners for work with natural or synthetic dyes. Some residents bring pigments from home; others harvest colour locally from seaweed, iron-rich earth or hardy Icelandic flora. A making studio houses sewing machines, felting equipment and cutting tables, while a small library provides books on Nordic textiles and fibre history for those working in theory as much as in thread.
Mackenzie Kelly-Frere‘s “Vararfeldur”, a pile-woven cloak woven on a warp-weighted loom and photographed at the edge of glacial river Blanda. Featured in the 2024 Ós residency catalogue.
Outside, the environment becomes a collaborator. The estuary, a short walk from the centre, shifts colour by the hour from slate grey to silver to glacier blue. Wind moves against the tide, leaving behind driftwood, fishing rope and tide-spun wool from nearby farms. Residents often gather these fragments, testing them as raw material: rope unmade into fibre, wool washed and carded, stones wrapped as anchors for sculptural warp. In winter, darkness invites slow, reflective work; in summer, long daylight encourages larger experiments.
Emma Göransson, "Spirit Land/Vuoiŋŋalaš Eanadat", featured in the 2024 Ós residency catalogue.
The residency does not aim for spectacle. It offers tools, space and continuity — time measured in warp length, dye batches and the patient accumulation of stitches. Evenings are communal: meals in shared kitchens, informal studio visits, the exchange of techniques across borders — Sámi band weaving, Japanese shibori, Italian bobbin lace, Icelandic þráður thread traditions.
Residencies at Ós run for one to three months and are offered year-round except in December. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and are open to artists at all stages. There is no fixed outcome; proposals are chosen for clarity of intent and engagement with textile practice, whether practical, conceptual or research-led. Details and availability are published through the Icelandic Textile Center, along with an invitation to work closely with material and place in northern Iceland.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead: Hélène Magnússon (The Icelandic Knitter), from 'FIRE AND ICE AND WOOL: Hélène Magnússon takes us on a tour of Iceland', Selvedge Issue 80, Craft
All further images as credited in photo captions.