In another country - or, a Norwegian in Oslo

so I've got, ehm, a beard, and, eh, Viking horns 

- Rachel Riley, 8 out of 10 cats does countdown S17E02  



It is common for people who come from outside Oslo to say that Oslo is not really Norway. It is also common, I was told my a colleague before beginning my new job, that to people in Oslo, everything outside the city is abroad. Such a dynamic is, I believe, quite typical between capitals and the rest of the country. Perhaps the dynamic is particularly strong in Norway because we do not have great cities, and because so many parts of the country remain districts despite the ongoing urbanisation. 

Considering this dynamic, it is always a curious experience to saunter about in the cityscape, and to explore the various attempts at metropolitanism that can be found in the city, and also to see the many examples of why those of us who do come from the district struggle to see Oslo as part of our country. For instance, there are the neo-classical facades of public buildings, the neo-romanticism of the villas in the city's posher quarters, or the cutting-edge modern of the opera house, and the various shops and restaurants that allow the residents to sample different corners of the world in their everyday life. These are all good things, each in their own way, and there are aspects about the city that I have very much come to enjoy even after only two months of residence. But every once in a while I am reminded that Oslo tries to be more Norway than the rest of Norway - that when communicating to tourists and exploiting the various preconceptions that non-Norwegians have about the country, things tend to go a bit awry. 

Contemporary medievalism

This Thursday I was in town in the late afternoon to get something to eat. As I made my way through some of the more crowded streets close to various sights and popular tourist spots, I noticed that one of the shops was offering a selection of stereotypical Viking helmets, the ones that you often see either used by football fans at the stadium, or by children dressing up. Even though I do not specialise in Viking history, I am, as I believe most medievalists are, often plagued by this recurring trope of medievalism, as it is both widespread and impossible to root out, no matter how often experts will say that the Vikings did not have horns on their helmets. But the tourist industry knows very well that this is what foreigners expect to find in Norway, and this is what they are given.   

On my way home from dinner, I passed by another souvenir shop. Although I had passed it before, this was the first time I had seen it lit up in the twilight in this way, and the lighting made some of its aspects stand out more strongly against the surroundings. One such aspect was, of course, the polar bear. I also could not help noticing the reindeer on the first floor. Both these animals are quintessentially Norwegian according to the canon established by the tourist industry. It does not matter that polar bears do not live in mainland Norway, or that reindeer are nowhere to be found in the hinterland of Oslo, they are both avatars of archetypal Norwegianness, and therefore they are to be found in the heart of Oslo. 

As much as I see the logic behind such displays, and as much as I know that this catering to prejudice and expectation has little to do with, and cannot be countered by, facts and reality, there is something slightly carnivalesque about such shops and such assemblages of elements that have nothing to do with Oslo. And this carnivalesque sensation is exactly one of those reasons why I, as a Norwegian in Oslo, feel like I am in another country altogether. 

Balthasar the wise king in fifteenth-century Norway

 
One of the many phenomenal treasures housed by the Oslo Museum of Cultural history is this section from a fifteenth-century altar. The scene is a fascinating, although not unusual, compression of various elements from the Nativity story, where all the actors are gathered but still on their way to the scene, as it were: Mary and Joseph are travelling to Bethlehem, the shepherds have not yet been accosted by the angels, and the three magi and their retinues have not yet arrived at their destination.

The altar is also interesting, although still not unusual, for its depiction of Balthasar the king, who was a black man according to the medieval tradition. In this way, the altar is a good reminder that people in medieval Norway knew very well that there were people of different skin colours than their own in the world. For anyone familiar with medieval Norwegian history, this comes as no surprise at all, and it is indeed incredibly banal to point it out. However, because we are in a political climate where the Middle Ages are re-imagined by right-wing forces as a place in time where ethnicities did not mix and that Europeans were pure-blooded and white-skinned, even such a banal reminder of reality serves a purpose. (Granted, this anachronistic racist vision of medieval Europe is not new, but it has gained greater political currency in the past few years.) 

Piece of an altar from Borre Church, Vestfold, Norway
Produced in the fifteenth century, probably Northern Germany 
Oslo Museum of Cultural History, C6131

Within scholarly circles, the idea that the Middle Ages - however you want to define that term in space and time - was a multicultural period, i.e., a period in which several cultures met, interacted, inhabited the same areas, and influenced each other. This is not to say that these cultural interactions were necessarily peaceful or marked by mutual respect - very often they were the opposite. But that the world was multicultural was not solely a fact, but also something that was well known even in a geographical periphery as Norway. Granted, in the second half of the fifteenth century, when this altar was made, it is most likely that most Norwegians had never seen a black person. It is even possible, although to a significantly lesser degree, that the woodworkers who carved this altar - probably somewhere in Northern Germany, such as Lübeck - might never have seen a black person in their lives. Even so, knowledge about other cultures circulated as part of the cultural impressions conveyed through art, literature and stories, and informed the worldview of Northern Europeans. This worldview included people very different to themselves. And even though this rendition of Balthasar, once featured in Borre Church in Vestfold, was not produced in Norway, the altar, and the figures in it, conveyed an image of the wider world to the Norwegian congregation. And it is not a hazardous guess to suspect that they had already heard about this black king long before the altar was brought to Norway.

Surrounded by simulacra - my first encounter with Warsaw

This week I spent two days in Warsaw for a work trip. Since we – my colleagues and I – had a short timeframe for discussing professional matters, most of the time I spent in Warsaw was taken up with discussions, later followed by talks and even later by chats. It was invigorating, inspiring and pleasant, as good work trips are in academia, but one consequence of this tight schedule was that my encounter with the city itself was relatively brief. However, thanks to the generosity of some of my Polish colleagues, those of us who had travelled to Warsaw from Norway were given a guided tour from the outskirts of what was once the early modern city to the interior what was once the medieval city. It was a crash course in the city’s history. It was very interesting. It was also profoundly moving.

Warsaw is in many ways a complex city, as it blends elements from late medieval cityscapes, the vulgar Baroque of the eighteenth century, the seemingly French-inspired neoclassicism of the nineteenth century, the vestiges of the Communist past, and the scattered skyscrapers of a modern city. But this complexity is in its way deceptive. Or perhaps I should rather say that this complexity is deepened by the illusory sense of history that envelops the flaneur as they make their way through the broad streets of the early modern city into the squares and alleys of the medieval city. This illusory sense of history is then shattered whenever one remembers that all of this – or at least almost all of it – is simulacra.

The medieval town, Warsaw

The great watershed in Warsaw’s history is the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, a sixty-three-day struggle in which Polish resistant fighters tried to take Warsaw from German control. The uprising failed, and on orders by Hitler almost all of the old town was levelled to the ground. The city was later rebuilt, and from photographs and paintings the individual buildings were replaced with replicas of astounding likeness to their originals. The effort was so successful that when walking through these streets, it would be impossible – at least for the non-expert in, say, architectural history – to see that what surrounds the viewer in as good as every direction is a collection of simulacra. 

It was a very eerie experience walking through these replicated layers of history – layers that were in one sense coeval with one another, but which alluded to different epochs and created an impression of layers that once existed. It was on the one hand marvellous, because the recreation was done so immensely well – I could definitely sense something of the same atmosphere that I have sensed in cities where such layered history is preserved and strongly visible, cities like Rome, York, Salamanca, Split. Yet once I noticed that feeling of giddy joy that overtakes the enthusiast, that feeling was immediately followed by a strong note of sadness. The sadness came from the realisation that this was, despite an incredible effort, not real. There was something not quite genuine, something that was not quite guaranteed about the verisimilitude of this assortment of simulacra: buildings, streets, horizons, nooks and crannies. 

It is not that cities like those mentioned above are not also grappling with some of the same issues. Wherever history is preserved in layers, there is a degree of uncertainty connected to it. There is always some restoration that has gone into the work, there is always a selection and discarding that has been done in order to decide what to preserve and what to give up to the changes that must happen in a cityscape. The preservation efforts are also hostage to the whims of human judgement, and it can be difficult to assess whether a restoration is actually a restoration or a creation: whether the past is presented on its own terms – whatever they might be in any given situation – or whether what we see is in actuality the fantasy image of the past as envisioned by an individual or several. Such uncertainties abound, even in the most historical of cities, however we want to understand that term. But in Warsaw, that uncertainty is different. Because on the one hand, we are certain that this is a reconstruction, and on the other, we cannot be certain about the number of liberties taken, or the number of gaps of knowledge that had to be filled by educated guesswork. This uncertainty is in a different configuration as that of other cities with a long history, and it makes for a very different experience when brought face to face with the city as it stands now.

The royal palace, Warsaw

The Trinity Church, Warsaw

There is no doubt that the reconstruction of Warsaw is impressive and based on materials that can be checked and compared with, and this post is in no way intended to denigrate that effort. Quite the contrary, I wholeheartedly applaud the effort, and it has given visitors to Warsaw an immensely beautiful scene. But it does come with a feeling I have never felt before, because never has the unreality of my surroundings been so clear, so well-known, so overt. These simulacra entice emotions that are similar to when I visit other cities as those mentioned above, but there is that constant and ever-returning knowledge that these emotions are based on replicas. (I studiously avoid the term “fake”, because that is not what these buildings are.) These feelings, brought on as they are by reconstructions, make me wonder what the difference is between the original and the reconstructed in terms providing that kind of emotional connection with a place and its past that people often encounter – willingly or unwillingly – in certain locations. These feelings also remind me that there is a very complex discussion to be had about the reality of the past, and about expectations, and about the value of simulacra in the absence of the original – and whether such differences matter all that much in certain situations.

My encounter with Warsaw often caused me to become stunned at various moments as I reflected on this resuscitated reality and the sadness that lingered in the very fact that what I saw around me on every side was an attempt to preserve what had been irrevocably lost, at least from the material point of view. 

The Church of the Holy Spirit, Warsaw

Link: The King’s Three Images: The representation of St. Edward the Confessor in historiography, hagiography and liturgy

I am writing this just past midnight of October 14, but the post itself pertains to October 13, which is the feast of the translation of the relics of Saint Edward the Confessor. 

Long-time readers of my blog might know that I wrote my MA dissertation on the development of his cult in the period 1066-1400. The dissertation was finished in the autumn of 2012, and the work that went into the dissertation is still to this day shaping a lot of my research.  

Since I was reminded of my dissertation today, I was also reminded that I never provided a clear and easy to find weblink to the document itself. The dissertation, "The King’s Three Images: The representation of St. Edward the Confessor in historiography, hagiography and liturgy", is still available on the Internet, and a Pdf file can be downloaded from my alma mater, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. The link is here: https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/handle/11250/243071.