Norsk Spaelsau (modern) - Norway

The Norsk Spælsau, also known as Spælsau, are a Norwegian breed of sheep that have been developed during the 19th century by cross breeding the original small Gammelnorsk Sau (The Old Norwegian Sheep) with Icelandic, Faroese and Finnsheep breeds to produce a much larger sheep that produces much more meat.

In 1912, the state bought 60 purebred Old Norwegian Sheep from isolated mountain flocks and flocks on a couple of islands and shared them equally between two breeding stations.  There, the breeding was planned and managed and the sheep were better fed which resulted in a significant increase in their weight.  To increase their size further, in 1920, Faroese rams were crossed with them and then later on Icelandic rams were also used.  There were also sporadic crossings with Finn, Leicester, Blackface and Gotland but these had little influence on the size of the lambs produced.

Raised primarily for meat and wool production, it also produces good quality milk.   Individuals are usually polled with just 10% occurrence of horns in either sex. The adult ewes reach a weight of 65kg-70kg, about double the size of The Old Norwegian.  The fleece that is produces is also about twice the weight of the original breed at 2kg-3kg.  It still produces a double coated fleece, like the old breed, but with all the cross breeding the quality of the wool has declined significantly.  The length of the two coats are no longer about the same length as they were with the old breed, the outercoat is now much longer and can be twice as long as the undercoat or even longer and is really coarse so the fibre diameters are recorded separately for the different coats.  The undercoat is about 31.5 microns whilst the outercoat is 57.1 microns.  It protects the sheep from the weather and can be spun tightly for weaving but is not good for spinning into yarn for knitting.  The undercoat is still quite fine and soft.  Most of the new Spælsau are white, although their ancestors black, grey and brown colours still appear.

I bought this breed in as 100g of pre-washed fleece in May 2022 but I decided to re-wash this as a precaution, even though it was from a completely different source to where I have bought lots of fleece sample amounts from that weren't as clean as I would expect.  After washing I was left with 91g of clean fleece.

There is a lot of really coarse white guard hairs in this fleece.  I combed it in January 2024 anyway in the hope that I will  have enough of the soft black wool for my project.

It gave me just 31g of hand combed medium soft wool top with just a little bit of the hair left in for texture.  I have been looking for more of these fleece on and off since I prepared this one but I have never found any except for one person who wants over £70 for a small bit of fleece and that doesn't include the sales tax or international delivery, which pushes the cost to well over £100 and is a ridiculous price.   This small amount of fibre might not make enough yarn for my project so my only option is to spin it as fine as I can and hope for the best.

I spun both singles and plied them on 28th May 2025 and managed to make a 16wpi yarn, light fingering weight, of about 30g/102m.  It is softer than I expected and is really nice.

Over the past month or so I had created and printed out all of the charted designs for all of the breeds that I have acquired for this project.  I knit the first piece for my project, and there was enough yarn for the piece with a small amount of leftovers, but I couldn't read the lettering.  So not being sure if it was because its an almost black yarn or because I didn't use all uppercase lettering for this project, I put it aside and made the next project piece using the yarn I spun from the next breed.  I couldn't read the lettering on that one either, and that is a white wool, so I took the decision to undo both pieces of knitting and re-do all of the designs for the entire project again but in all uppercase, just like the first breed project that I did a few years ago.

Somehow, most of the designs work out a few less rows and a few less stitches now that they are all in uppercase and yet it is the same font and same size.  I re-knit this one and this time was left with enough yarn to knit a little sample square for a scrapbook that I am doing for my spinning.  By the time I had finished there was such a small amount left that it wasn't worth keeping it.

It's not very clear in the photo but it does say Norsk Spælsau on the top line and Norway underneath it.