Travel Across North America on an Icelandic Tapestry Tour

At the end of my article in PieceWork’s Fall 2025 issue, "A Bayeux-Style Tapestry Unfolds in Iceland," I mentioned that I would be taking a 5-meter-long (16.4 ft) “Traveling Tapestry” on tour of North America in the spring and summer of 2025. This tour was intended to promote The Njál’s Saga Tapestry Project of Iceland, a 90-meter-long (295.2 ft) Bayeux-inspired embroidery chronicling the medieval saga of The Burning of Njál—an iconic story that still resonates deeply in Icelandic culture 800 years after its writing.

As we approach November 16th, Icelandic Language Day—a day that honors the history and future of the Icelandic language—we wanted to update our readers on our exciting and eventful Traveling Tapestry Tour.

A scene from the traveling tapestry made with Bayeux stitch

The Tour Begins

Our tour began in April at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study (SASS) Conference in Minneapolis. We then headed to Gimli, Manitoba, for the Icelandic National League of North America Conference, and then to over twenty more stops from Metchosin, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island to the heartland of Canada and the United States, with our last stop in September in Boulder, Colorado, concluding our five months on the road.

Claudia with Avedan Raggio, in Boulder, Colorado. Avedan had traveled to Iceland and stitched part of the Tapestry, but she and Claudia did not meet in person until the Tapestry Tour; this photo was taken on the 5th anniversary of the completion of the tapestry in Iceland. Photo courtesy of the author.

In each of our locations, we offered presentations about the creation of The Njál’s Saga Tapestry Project of Iceland and a walk through the events of the traveling excerpt, replete with my husband’s Old Norse proclamation of the text, which was always a big hit! We also offered book studies of the saga and embroidery workshops. All events were wildly popular and filled to the brim. At one such embroidery workshop, we had over forty participants learning the Bayeux stitch—a stitch unfamiliar to most, even the most experienced.

A highlight of the tour was meeting readers of the PieceWork article about the tapestry, who made a point to follow us and meet up with us. It was also thrilling to meet people who had sewn on the main 90-meter-long tapestry in Iceland. They were so happy to learn that their work had advanced the project forward to completion.

Jacqui Ritchie read about the Tapestry in PieceWork and traveled from her home in Winnipeg to see it on display at the Icelandic Festival of Manitoba and met Claudia. Photo courtesy of the author

The Shared Love of Handwork

Our tour revealed so much about the state of handwork in our culture. While we do not make the front pages with our fiber dyeing or wool spinning, there is an ocean of folks across our nations who quietly go about the work of transforming and creating in ways that fulfill their souls and embrace their neighbors. Those we met embodied the ideal of being life-long learners, always willing to try something new and to encourage and support others in doing so. After several of our visits, communities considered how they could tell their own stories with a crowd-sewn tapestry, embodying these values of life-long learning and inclusion, as well as creating a venue to really live community—literally binding themselves together with and through the threads of their lives. We hope to see what they create!

A scene from the Njál’s Saga Traveling Tapestry

Our tour was also a fundraising venture, and we collected over $40,000 from folks who loved the idea of building a museum for a women-founded handwork project in a foreign land. Our Icelandic founders were also touched by the idea that donors they had never met would bind themselves through a shared love of handwork, fiber, culture, and cooperation. On our tour, we witnessed the gift of handwork: that wherever handwork is practiced, with whatever media, handwork transforms.

Þúsund takk, a thousand thanks, to everyone who came to see us.

Claudia Pétursson

You can learn more about the amazing Njál’s Saga Tapestry Project, in PieceWork's Fall 2025 issue.