Scottish Fishermen's Jumpers 

Long before “Scottish knitwear” became a fashion label, a fisherman’s jumper was a piece of working equipment.

Known as a gansey, these tightly knitted woollen sweaters were worn by fishing communities around the Scottish coast, particularly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were practical garments: close-fitting, hard-wearing and made from tightly knitted wool that offered protection against wind and spray. Many were knitted by the fishermen’s wives, mothers or other female relatives.

But the most fascinating thing about a traditional gansey was not simply the warmth. It was the pattern.

Knitting was rarely written down. Instead, patterns were learned by looking at existing garments and passed from one knitter to another, often through families and communities. Over generations, particular combinations of cables, diamonds, ropes, ladders and other geometric motifs became associated with particular fishing places. Peterhead, for example, is associated with diamond and rope motifs, while Eriskay ganseys developed their own distinctive arrangements of diamonds, trees and ropes. Fraserburgh was noted for particularly elaborate knitting.

The patterns weren't simply decoration. They could make a gansey recognisable as belonging to a particular place or tradition.

This has given rise to one of the most enduring stories in knitting history: that if a fisherman were drowned and his body washed ashore far from home, his gansey could tell people where he came from, allowing him to be returned to his family.

It is a wonderful story—and there is historical tradition behind it. The Scottish Fisheries Museum records the belief that drowned fishermen could be identified by their gansey patterns. In some fishing communities, it was also said that variations could distinguish individual families.

But it is worth treating the story carefully. Modern researchers have questioned whether gansey patterns were ever as rigidly geographical as the legend suggests. Patterns travelled. Fishing fleets moved between ports, and the women who followed the herring industry could carry knitting techniques and designs with them. As the Victoria and Albert Museum notes, patterns may have been passed between communities rather than belonging exclusively to one village.