Flexible Flax

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Flax, one of humanity’s most useful plants, offers up its carefree blue flowers as a bonus. Photograph by Rita Buchanan

Bartholomew considered flax the most beneficial of all herbs: “None herbe is so need­full to so many dyurrse uses to mankynde as is the flexe.”

FEW PLANTS are as useful to humanity as flax. For 10,000 years, people have woven flax into linen fabric for clothing. Paints, varnishes, and enamels made from flaxseed oil—also known as linseed oil—have decorated and protected homes and furniture for centuries, and strong rope and twine have long been made from flax fiber. From medicine and food to fine linen papers and durable floor coverings, flax has been an essential part of our lives.

Archaeologists have discovered evidence that ten millennia ago the prehistoric Swiss Lake Dwellers spun and wove flax. The Book of Exodus mentions the cultivation of flax, as does the Talmud, and both forbid the blending of flax with “impure” wool. Ancient Egyptians grew flax along the Nile and wove linen fabrics for clothing, bed sheets, diapers, sails, even wrappings for mummies.

In contrast to the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans preferred woolen fabrics. Neither civilization cultivated much flax, but the Roman emperors wore some linen, imported from as far away as Egypt, Babylonia, Germany, and Spain. Culinary uses for flax were also known at this time: both the Greek historian Thucydides and the Roman Pliny mention the use of flax for food.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, flax cultivation dwindled until the eighth century. The French leader Charlemagne pronounced flax more sanitary than wool (because linen is so much easier to launder than woolen fabrics) and ordered his subjects to cultivate it. European production flourished, and with it, the uses for this versatile plant expanded. The medieval herbalist Bartholomew listed dozens of applications—clothing, sheets, sacks, purses, sails, fish nets, thread, ropes, bowstrings, measuring lines, matches, and even ships’ caulking. Bartholomew considered flax the most beneficial of all herbs: “None herbe is so needfull to so many dyurrse uses to man­kynde as is the flexe.”

The value of flax to these early cultures is reflected in the rich folklore that surrounds the plant. Flax was believed to be a blessed plant—one that could bring good fortune, restore health, and protect against witchcraft. To the ancient Egyptians, white linen was a symbol of divine light and purity associated with the great mother-goddess Isis. The Norse goddess Huldah was known as the Guardian of Flax Fields, no doubt because it was she who taught mortals the arts of spinning and weaving. It was believed that no evil witchcraft could be practiced in a flax field, only good magic.

German folklore also associated flax with luck. A German bride of old would often put a few flaxseeds in her shoes to protect her fortune, and she might tie a flaxen string around her left leg to make her marriage thrive.