Hedebo Embroidery and Motifs

Hedebo Embroidery contains many varied motifs, which refer to Christianity, other religions, and Norse mythology. We do not know if the women who made the Hedebo Embroidery recognised the symbolic significance of the motifs. Maybe the women reproduced the motifs because they were pleased with their beauty, they matched the women’s abilities, or they went well with the composition of the embroidery. Still, it is interesting which symbolic connotations the women mirrored in their embroidered textiles. The motifs often appeared in pairs in a symmetric composition.