Magic or fashion?

People have always had the idea that travel accessories and household items should not only be functional, but also beautiful to look at.

Often it was to show wealth and status that trunks and contents were decorated with roses, or wooden shavings. It also showed skills. It was to the girl's honor to show off a richly stitched groom's shirt, or for the suitor to make a carved mangle tree. Sometimes it was to praise and influence higher powers. In many cases, these reasons have merged into distinctive pattern traditions.

If we go back to the time before 1900, folklore beliefs about hulder, underground creatures and dangerous forces in nature were still alive. It could also be possible to awaken love in a suitor, or a good harvest through magic.

Symbols such as crosses, eight-petalled roses, valknut or checkered patterns were used for protection, or to promote other goals. Sometimes we find these alone and other times they have merged with fashion impulses from Europe and has become part of the decor.

When such motifs also have a decorative function, they will live on through copying on to new objects, long after the symbolic magical meaning is gone.