This week I noticed an uptick in sales online of one ball or skein of red yarn which seemed odd until I realised that my social media had been full of calls to knit the ‘Melt the ICE’ Hat, with the proceeds of the pattern sales going to the immigrant aid agencies in the United States to help those impacted by the actions of ICE.
There is a history behind these particular red hats. As the pattern designers inform us, in the 1940s, Norwegians made and wore pointed red hats with tassels as a form of visual protest against the Nazi occupation of their country. By 1942, the Nazis were so annoyed by this, that they made it illegal to wear, make or distribute these red hats, threatening severe punishment for any breaches of the law.
As it happens, the Norwegians were not the first to think of using hats as a demonstration of resistance. As soon as I saw those social media posts, I thought of the Phrygian cap, or Liberty cap – a soft, conical cap with a bent over apex, originally worn in antiquity by the Thracians, Dacians, Persians, Medes, Scythians, Trojans and, of course the Phrygians. Obviously these caps did not originally function as liberty caps, but they came to represent freedom and the pursuit of liberty in both the American Revolution and then in the French Revolution.
The original Liberty cap was the Roman pileus, which freed slaves wore in Ancient Rome, and which signified their freedom as citizens with a right to vote. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, the conspiritors wore the pilaus to symbolise the end of the Caesar’s dictatorship and a return to the Roman Republican system. The cap was an attribute of the Roman goddess Libertas and when the Roman iconography of liberty was revived in the 16th century, Libertas was depicted as wearing the pileus although this later became confused with the Phrygian cap, which had by then become a symbol of the values of liberty and republicanism to the extent that Doge of Venice wore it instead of a crown.
In 1675 a revolt erupted in Brittany and North-Western France which became known as the bonnet rouges uprising after the blue or red caps worn by the insurgents. Although there was not any particular preference initially, it was the colour red that stuck as symbol of revolt against the nobility and the establishment and it carried all the way through to the French Revolution a hundred years later. The bonnet rouge made the revolutionaries instantly recognisable and became important to the imagery of the Revolution, to the extent that Marianne, the national allegory of France is to this day depicted as wearing a Phrygian cap. It may be that some of the Phrygian caps were knitted, although they may equally have been made from woollen felt or other kinds of cloth. As always, with fabric, there is little evidence left.
(There is an assocation with the French Revolution and knitters (tricoteuses), perhaps exaggerated by Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, but I will leave that for another day and another discussion about revolutionary knitting.)
At the same time as the French Revolution, the Phrygian cap was being used in America as a symbol of liberty from Great Britain, appearing on coins and on statues, and it is featured on the coats of arms or national flags of a number of South American countries, such as Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia.
Of course, this is not the first time in recent years that knitters have been producing hats as a symbol of defiance. I remember attending the Womens’ March in London in 2017 after the election of Donald Trump the first time round (the only demonstration I have ever been on) and loving the sea of pink ‘pussy hats’ that everyone seemed to be wearing. Had I been as keen a knitter then as I am now I have no doubt I would have been wearing one too.
I have purchased a copy of the Melt the ICE pattern in solidarity with the people of Minnesota who I think are doing an amazing job of standing up to what is fast becoming an authoritarian government. Whether I get around to knitting the hat is another question altogether! I only hope that we will never feel that we have to wear them here.