Istex is the business that processes most of the fleece in Iceland.* I am quite sure I have never seen so much wool in one place.
There is only one scouring facility in Iceland and it is in Blönduós where I did my artist residency. Istex is the largest wool processing organization in Scandinavia and exists in Iceland in a couple different locations. In Blönduós they do the scouring and at the end of that process, the fleece is baled in 300 kg lots for shipment either to Europe to make carpet in the case of the lowest grade winter wool, or to the next Istex facility to be spun into yarn.
Huge bags of wool arrive from all over Iceland awaiting processing. I have no idea how much wool was here waiting, but countless bays like these full to the ceiling plus shipping containers outside.
Raw wool waiting to be processed at Istex in Blönduós, Iceland.
I am not sure it is possible to state how much joy I got out of visiting a place that has this much raw wool in one place. There is a whole grading system for it. Winter wool, usually shorn in February, is low grade because the sheep are in the barn so the fleeces are dirtier and more felted. The fall wool clip is the highest grade. Wool is downgraded for dirt and vegetal matter and there are separate ratings for the different colors and for lambs wool.
This place smelled like sheep. It was also very humid because they’re washing the fleece here. It is hot and wet and the sheep fragrance is definitely powerful.
The 3-minute video below gives you a feel for this place and how the fleece is washed. Enjoy this brief look inside a wool scouring facility… the largest one in Scandinavia.
They’re using soda ash to wash this fleece. I was able to compare some of the fleece before and after scouring. They definitely get it clean! It is snow white when it comes off that line. But soda ash is pretty rough on fleece for handspinners. I preferred to acquire my fleece straight from the farm and wash it myself as I think most handspinners do.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to wash this much fleece though!
There is raw Icelandic wool in those bags. Istex scouring facility, Blönduós, Iceland.
The video above shows you the scouring line in detail. The wool goes through a picker then through at least 4 rinses on the scouring line, spends some time in a great big dryer, and then gets blown into a huge room. From there it gets baled. I’m not sure if only the fleece that was going to be made into carpets got baled or if everything does. I did see a bale with an H1 tag on it (the highest quality wool), so perhaps all of it gets compressed like this.
The gallery below has some of the photos that are also in the video. Click to enlarge and hover for captions.
I realize I have a bit of a fiber stash problem, but I felt much better after visiting this facility. The sheep are indeed making more fleece right now and there will always be more as long as we take care of our animals and our production lines as well as our environment. Those are big asks, but we can do it!
*There are two mini-mills that I know about in Iceland. One is the Gilhagi Farm mill which I visited and wrote about in THIS blog post. The other is UppSpuni in the south of the country. I was able to meet Hulda Brynjólfsdóttir who owns Uppspuni when she was visiting Blönduós and I also bought some yarn she spun from Akur farm’s sheep. It is beautiful stuff.