Twelve miles and a world away from Galway Bay, the Aran Islands sit like ducks in the Atlantic Ocean.  Off the west coast of Ireland and unsheltered from the elements, residents of these three spartan islands subsisted for centuries on what little was available to them, harvesting seaweed and exporting lime slabs for gravestones.  And, naturally, they fished.

The men went out to sea in curraghs, Celtic-influenced boats made of wooden slats and covered in layers of hides or tar, trolling the waters for salted fish and blue shark.  The tough climate called for tough clothes, and the women knitted sweaters that could withstand the weather.  Coarse cream-colored sheep’s wool called baínín was sheared and soaked in an acid solution of water and sheep urine.  Brushed and spun, the yarn retains some of its natural oil lanolin, which insulated against the rain and whipping wind.

Dense stitching allows the sweater to absorb a third of its weight in water before feeling wet, and the Aran islanders became known for their skillful blend of stitching and resistance in an elegant (for the times) garment known as the fisherman sweater, or geansaí in Irish.

Each sweater itself had its own “code,”  formed by the 100,000 stitches in a single sweater. These different patterns – cables, trellises, diamonds, honeycombs – were woven in combinations that symbolized hard work, a fruitful voyage, success in the fields, even the highs and lows of married life,  in the life by its maker.

Ironically, many of the fishermen didn’t know how to swim and the fierce tides they dealt with made for constant worry over their safe return.  Women often knitted prayers for fortune and happy homecoming into their designs. Men wore these hand-knitted sweaters both their warmth and as a kind of talisman for good luck during trips out to sea. When the rough Atlantic showed no mercy, the sweater patterns identified drowned fisherman, washed up on shore.