Object of the month: Tablecloth from 1920

January, the month for new beginnings and New Year's resolutions! The choice of this object is inspired by a poem by the Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge, where he describes some of this optimistic and hopeful feeling many of us share every January.

New Tablecloth!

New yellow cloth on the table.

And clean white pages!

Here the words must come,

such a fine new cloth here

and such fine paper!

The ice settled on the fjord,

the birds came and alighted.

         - Olav H. Hauge, 1980 (tr. Robin Fulton).

Anne Klippenvåg Pettersen - curator