Muskox wool – the softest of the soft

If one day you should be lucky enough to come to Kangerlussuaq (“Søndre Strømfjord”, which you can fly to directly from Copenhagen), you should go for a walk in the mountains.

Besides enjoying the beautiful scenery and the fresh air, you may also be lucky enough to see muskoxen, reindeer and many different birds living wild in the mountains.

When the muskoxen change from winter coat to “summer coat” and back again, they shed their wool in big tufts, in the same way long-haired dogs do.

That is why it is possible to find tufts of wool around the mountains where the muskoxen roam.
The tufts hang on branches, scrub and rock.
So the only thing you have to do is bend down and “pick” the wool when you are out walking.

So what makes muskox wool so special – and so expensive?

In one of the episodes of “Nak og Æd”, a combined food and hunting programme with the outdoorsman Jørgen Skouboe and the chef Nikolaj Kirk on Danish national television, the trip went with rifle and cooking gear to Kangerlussuaq in Greenland.

Their mission was to take a muskox and then prepare a delicious dish from the meat in the open air.

When, after a long and good day’s hunting, they stand by the muskox in snow and sunshine, Jørgen exclaims:

“the only thing I want to take home is the muskox wool, because it is the best wool in the world”.

What on earth makes a man with a passion for hunting talk about muskox wool when he has just taken the quarry he wanted?

Muskox wool is an exclusive product

The fact is that muskox yarn is an exclusive product that comes from the coat of the muskoxen.

As already mentioned, they live in the mountains, and you can come across larger or smaller herds in different places in Greenland.

Muskox yarn is some of the softest yarn in the world

It does not itch at all when you wear it, not even when you wear it directly against the skin.

It feels pleasantly warm and soft, a little like a caress, when you wear clothes of muskox wool

It can stand being washed and dried without felting, because the structures of the fibres are very small and fine.

On top of that it is said to be eight times warmer than cashmere

Muskox wool is only a by-product

The hunters are after all mostly interested in taking the muskox so they can come home with meat for the family.

A muskox is a big, heavy animal that is strenuous to drag home.

Until recently the hunters therefore left the large hides in the mountains. It all weighs something, and the hunters are tired after a long hunt.

Now they gladly take the hides with them and sell them to the spinning mills, which painstakingly separate the wool from the hide.

From mountain to knitting basket

Producing muskox yarn is an enormous job and a slow affair.

Much of the process is done by hand, on a light table, and that is why muskox wool becomes so extremely expensive.

The muskoxen wear two “coats”, as it were: a long-haired, smooth outer wool consisting of thick, coarse hairs that reach almost all the way to the ground. The long guard hairs can easily be one metre or more in length.

The muskox’s “overcoat” covers its “vest”, which consists of the softest and most down-like wool.

With that coat the muskox can easily stay out in temperatures down to -50 without being bothered by it.

Right at the end the wool is fine-combed with tweezers to get the last impurities and long hairs from the outer wool completely removed from the sought-after underwool.

Next the wool has to be washed, carded and spun before you get a fine, finished ball of yarn that can be turned into the softest of the soft and the warmest of the warm woollens.

That is why muskox wool is expensive, exclusive and an altogether fantastic yarn

Muskox wool in use.

Some people with arthritis have discovered that they feel better when they wear clothes of muskox wool.

One of our customers, who has a lot of pain in her joints because of arthritis, has said that:

“muskox wool keeps her warm in a quite different way from other wool yarn.
It warms her bones from the inside”.

That is why she chooses muskox wool to keep her wrists and shoulders warm, summer and winter alike.

Muskox wool is also a hit for baby clothes, because it is down-like and soft,

and those who find ordinary wool itchy will absolutely love muskox wool for the same reason.