It has come to my attention that not everyone knows what lovespoons are.

This is a lovespoon. They’re found in several cultures worldwide, particularly in Scandinavia, but most famously in Wales (that photo is a Welsh lovespoon) and, from at least the 17th century, they were given as gifts by a suitor to his intended lady. They’re supposed to be carved from one block of wood, and decorated with various symbols which have slightly nuanced meanings, all basically a variation on ‘you’re rad, want to get wed?’

Because marriage in poor, rural parts of Wales was often more akin to cohabitation at the time (i.e. you didn’t really have a big ol’ legal ceremony, you just sort of said ‘we’re married now’ and shacked up together) a lovespoon could act as a wedding ring of sorts; you’d put your goshdarn heart and soul into carving it and you’d give it to the dame you sought, and if she accepted the spoon, then you were essentially wed, or at least bound together in a meaningful way. It’s assumed that they were initially supposed to be at least somewhat functional, because people did in fact eat with wooden spoons back in the day, but they’re now purely decorative. And hoo boy, can they be decorative. These are some of the ones on display at St Fagans Museum:

Nowadays, they’re generally mass produced, and tend to look more like this:

Brings a whole new meaning to the sheer romance of spooning, doesn’t it?

It has also come to my attention that people keep reblogging this with the assumption that these are all Scandinavian lovespoons. They are not; these are all Welsh. Wales is not in Scandinavia. These are not Viking crafts!! I mentioned Scandinavia in the above post as an aside, but the rest of the info in the post above is specific to Wales.

In the interests of not hogging all the spoonfuls of joy, here is a Norwegian wedding spoon:

It’s super goddamn cool and I love it, but it is quite different to the Welsh lovespoon tradition, and I think it does both cultures a disservice to conflate them. For one thing, Norwegian wedding spoons were generally given by the groom to the bride on their wedding day or during the wedding ritual, and you’ll notice that the symbolism on the spoons is very different. For another thing, they generally consist of two spoons linked by a carved wooden chain, rather than one spoon with a carved handle. I don’t actually know if the groom would carve these himself or if they would be commissioned and made by a craftsman; either way, it’s too cool for school.

Like the Welsh variant, they’re either carved out of one piece of wood or the spoons are made from a separate piece and the chain is made from another, which is a feat of woodworking that I cannot even fathom, because look how intricate that chain is! Hoo boy!

I had to look these up, because I am Welsh and not Norwegian, but it seems that they may have formed part of the wedding ceremony in which the bride and groom ate their first meal as a married couple, which is so rad that I cannot cope.