tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41420085559669815072024-03-18T12:46:37.673-07:00My AlbionA chronicle of sundry adventures in England.Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.comBlogger672125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-62590490627238218362024-03-17T13:48:00.000-07:002024-03-17T13:48:17.120-07:00Utopia, technology, and the nebulous borderlands of truth<p> </p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In the past few months, I have tried to keep up
with the ongoing discourse concerning the phenomenon inaccurately labelled ‘Artificial
Intelligence’, and its potential for warping our sense of reality and further obscuring
the already-nebulous boundaries between reality and fantasy. Whenever I have
come across an article or news report related to this issue, I have bookmarked
it in a folder in my browser, hoping against historically attested practice
that I will some day return to these texts and have some intelligent thoughts
about them. The folder in which I put these bookmarks is labelled ‘Utopia’, and
the folder was created as a way to collect materials related to my current teaching.
I thought it fitting at the time, but did not take the time to articulate why I
thought so, and so I continued to use this folder while the justification for
using this particular folder continued to grow in the back of my mind. In this
blogpost, I will try to formulate some of the ideas that have crystallized in
the course of this week. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The connection between Artificial Intelligence
and utopian thinking seemed at first intuitive, obvious, and so I did not
bother to formulate it properly. However, as I am now reading David Fausett’s
1993 monograph on utopian literature in the seventeenth century – <i>Writing the
New World: Imaginary Voyages and Utopians of the Great Southern Land</i> – a few
aspects have become much clearer to me. Fausett makes a compelling point about
how utopian literature of the 1600s came to employ textual elements belonging
to news reports, pamphlets and broadsides, causing readers to often confuse texts
of prose fiction with texts claiming to present factual content. Naturally, the
motif of authenticating elements has a long history in fiction, perhaps best
illustrated by the topos of the found manuscript (as in <i>Don Quijote</i>), or
the now-lost written report translated from another language (as in Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s <i>The History of the Kings of Britain</i>). What was new about this
obfuscation of the boundaries between true reports and novels in the
seventeenth century, was the changing media landscape. As knowledge of the
wider world expanded through journeys of exploration and the growing networks
of trade that brought European powers into contact with cultures across the
globe, increased literacy and a broadening market for literature gave rise to a
greater circulation of information about the distant regions of the world.
Since there was an expectation of new encounters and new discoveries, audiences
were better disposed to accept fantastical tales as either true or at least
based on true events. The knowledge that there was new information to be had,
conditioned readers and listeners to blunt their scepticism and become more receptive
to the claims of authenticity utilized by authors of utopian fiction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">The confusion about truth and fiction in seventeenth-century
Europe is not unique to that time or that place, and it is not an indication of
people being stupid or less critical in their thinking. The more I research
historical matters, the more convinced I am that humanity has neither become
more intelligent nor more stupid as time as passed, only that intelligence and
stupidity have played out in different ways and through different means. What
is crucial about the confusion described by David Fausett is that the confusion
came about through developments in mass media. The confusion, I believe, was a
consequence of rapid technological development that did not fit with the slow
maturation and the incremental adaptation to novelty that humanity as a species
requires in order to understand things. It is this contrast between humanity’s
need for slowness and the rapidity of technological innovation that highlights
the utopian aspect of the contemporary discourse on Artificial Intelligence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Those who champion the virtues of Artificial Intelligence
and the use of AI in writing, journalism, research and so on, are themselves
proponents of a utopian vision, one in which humanity has released themselves
of the drudgery of knowing and thinking to the machines. Not all these
champions view the future in this framework, but even the more restrained and
reasonable among the AI enthusiasts still tend to demonstrate attitudes towards
art, critical thinking and factual knowledge that lean very strongly in this
direction. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This utopian attitude towards
technology is nothing new. One of the hallmarks of utopian thinking is exactly
the high levels of technology that are available in utopian societies. Perhaps
the most famous example of this idea is Francis Bacon’s <i>New Atlantis</i>
(1626), which lists a long range of technological advances, including
artificial meat and laboratories for all kinds of different research. The motif
goes further back in the history of utopian thinking, however. In the Middle
Ages – a period not widely accepted as one of utopian thinking, yet nonetheless
rife with examples of it – the idea of technologically advanced societies in faraway
places appear in several texts. In the <i>Letter of Prester John</i>, a hoax from
the 1160s that purported to describe the realms of a Christian ruler in distant
India, the technological marvels of this imaginary kingdom are expounded in
great detail. Similarly, the Alexander tradition – a collection of texts
claiming to narrate the life and deeds of Alexander the Great – contains
several descriptions of technological marvels, such as Alexander’s submersible
for exploring the depths of the ocean. Other medieval texts that were less
fantastical and which had a stronger claim to truth, similarly spent much
detail in recording the technological marvels of distant, exotic places. Liutprand
of Cremona (d.972), in his chronicle <i>Antapodosis</i>, describes a mechanical
throne in the court of the Byzantine emperor. William of Rubruck, who travelled
to the court of the Mongol khan in Karakorum in the 1250s and wrote an account
of his experiences, tells about a fountain of marvellous ingenuity, built by a
French smith who had lived among the Mongols for some time. Similarly, Marco
Polo’s famous account of Kubilai Khan’s empire contains a number of examples of
advanced technology. There is, in other words, a long-standing expectation that
utopian societies – whether they are ideal or just simply better than the point
of comparison – are technologically advanced. The presumption is perhaps
strengthened by changes in the media landscape, and the idea that technological
improvement is the same as social improvement is easily accepted when one is
condition to connect technology and utopian thinking, and also when one is
living through a changing media landscape that one does not have the time to
properly adjust to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">That technological change requires adjustment on
the part of the humans affected by that change is perhaps a fairly
straightforward claim. Often, this adjustment has been a core aspect of the
enthusiasm and the justification surrounding technological change. There is
talk about transhumanism, of technology allowing humans to transcend their
humanity, of technology ushering in a new era in the evolution of the human
species. Technology is often seen as the key to unlock Utopia, and in our
contemporary discourse that technology is Artificial Intelligence. Yet the
utopian aspect of technological change is two-sided. On the one hand, it is
absolutely indisputable that technological change has allowed a vast number of
people opportunities for a better life than they would otherwise have. The best
argument for our current level of technology is that it allows those who are
handicapped in one way or the other to reduce that handicap, to open up new
opportunities for living that would have been impossible without the technology
in question. On the other hand, technology can be used to either oppress or
numb the critical faculties of people, and when that technology is controlled
by someone with authoritarian tendencies, the technology in question can easily
be used to obscure the distinction between reality and fantasy, between truth
and fiction, between veracity and lies. The potential for abusing technology is
strengthened when technology means changing how we receive information. Changes
in the media landscape means that we, humans, need to reflect on how we can use
our faculties to convert the information given to us through this changing landscape
into knowledge. We need to learn how to distinguish between claims and facts,
between lies and truth. If we do not reflect on this challenge, if we forfeit
this process of critical reflection, or if we outsource it to those who control
the changing technology, we become less able to understand the basis of truth
and the signs of duplicity. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">With the current proliferation of AI programmes
that can create images and texts by stealing from existing works of art and
existing texts, we are becoming less well-equipped to ascertain what is true
and what is false. This blurring and warping of the already nebulous
borderlands between truth and falsehood can be, and is already, weaponized by
various individuals and groups with authoritarian motives. The utopian
scenarios presented by these would-be dictators and hobby-authoritarians might
seem appealing, but we do well to remember that several works of utopian
fiction have already highlighted the inherent risk of abuse in utopian societies.
One example is Gabriel de Foigny’s <i>La Terre Austral Connue</i> (The Southern
Land, Known, translated by David Fausett), where the novel’s narrator lives
thirty-five years among the Australians, a people of highly advanced
technology. However, these technologically advanced people, who consider
themselves and their society perfect, tolerate no other form of human life than
that of their own. Since Foigny’s Australians are giant hermaphrodites, this
intolerance means that they commit genocide on their non-giant, non-hermaphrodite
neighbours, and use their advanced technology to obliterate the very ground on
which their neighbours sought to establish a living. In the novel, the
Australians have also employed their combination of technology and force in
numbers to establish an ecosystem that is devoid of insects. Such a manoeuvre stems
from an idea of gardens as locus of perfection, where insects are seen as noisy
intruders, and fits perfectly well within a branch of utopian thinking that
equates perfection with homogeneity. While the realistic consequences of this
insect-less world are not touched upon by Foigny, our twenty-first century
perspective – an era of mass-disappearance of bees and other insects, and where
the consequences of extensive and often unbridled use of pesticide have made
themselves clear – notifies us of the impending ramifications of technologically
crafted homogeneity in Foigny’s Australia. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Utopian thinking and utopian literature often
rely on a blurring of the border between truth and fiction, between the
possible and the impossible, in order to make rhetorical points, or in order to
push an agenda or proffer suggestions for how to improve society. On other
occasions, utopian thinking and utopian literature showcase how illusory the
perfection of utopian society actually is. Thomas More’s Utopia is a slave society,
relying on prisoners of war to do the most basic tasks of a functioning commonwealth.
Tommaso Campanella’s city of the sun in distant Taprobane is a eugenicist
society where the individuals are governed to such an extreme degree that the
leaders decide which individuals should have children together. And Foigny’s
narrator, the hermaphrodite Sadeur, returns from Australia completely
disillusioned with a society that believes itself to be perfect, and allows
that perfection to justify horrible acts. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">In our contemporary discourse, the utopian implications
of Artificial Intelligence tends to dominate. Yet utopian societies can often
be illusory, and more often than not they are deeply authoritarian. One way of perpetuating
authoritarian government is to confuse people’s perception of reality, whether
it is through mass delusion or through a blurring of fact and fiction. Nowadays,
the media landscape is changing too rapidly for us to easily adjust to the new
ways of ascertaining truth and discovering lies. In such a confusion, utopian solutions
might appear more realistic than they actually are. Indeed, these utopian
solutions are based on the perpetuation of a tool – Artificial Intelligence –
that is programmed to create an alternate reality from stolen fragments from
the real world. The question we need to ask at every juncture when AI is lauded
as the key to the future is as follows: Whose utopia is being heralded by AI’s warping
of reality? The answer is most likely going to be very unpleasant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p><p></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-73843637163240279982024-03-12T10:04:00.000-07:002024-03-12T10:04:57.280-07:00Podcast appearance: Bishop Grimkell, and Anno 1024<p><br /><br />Earlier this year, I was invited to participate in an episode of the podcast <a href="https://moster2024.no/prosjekter/historie-podcast-anno-1024" target="_blank">Anno 1024</a>, a podcast dedicated to topics pertaining to the millennium anniversary of the so-called Moster thing, or Moster assembly, in Western Norway. The episode is available <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/1qB6olb0D5oRYxhEqd27nz?fbclid=IwAR2-yekBCsdbL64RrQZGUs5C9slD3Cef5KrKhEKkBXkS9g-_pntnzM3kbKo" target="_blank">here</a> (in Norwegian only).<br /><br />The anniversary is based on the texts of two law collections which were written down sometime in the second half of the twelfth century. These collections are known as the Gulathing law code and the Frostathing law code. They are named after the two major law provinces of eleventh and twelfth century Norway. Gulathing - or the Gula assembly - covered most of the western seaboard of Southern Norway, from Sunnmøre to Agder, as well as various parts of the central valleys of the interior. Frostathing - or the Frosta assembly - covered the western seaboard from Romsdal and northwards, eventually also including Hålogaland, as well as parts of the hinterland of the Trondheim fjord. <br /><br />In the law codes, we read that the Christian law was introduced by King Olaf Haraldsson - the later Saint Olaf - and Bishop Grimkell at the Moster assembly, which has traditionally been dated to 1024. There is an ongoing debate about whether this claim is actually true, and whether there was an assembly at Moster, and also whether this was the starting point for introducing Christian legislation in Norway. It is clear that King Olaf did collaborate with ecclesiastics to strengthen royal control over the Norwegian juridical infrastructure of the time, and also to strengthen his legitimacy among the people. However, whether the introduction of Christian rules can be dated as precisely to one assembly, and whether there was an effort to reform the laws in the way described by the twelfth-century texts of the law codes, is highly uncertain. <br /><br />These are some of the questions that are discussed in the episode. While the host, Torgeir Landro, and I agree on the main issues, there are also other scholars who interpret the material differently. <br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-50830487046604646712024-02-28T11:52:00.000-08:002024-02-28T11:52:12.311-08:00The vanity of exploration - or, The discovery of Bouvet Island prefigured?<p><br /></p><p>This spring, I am teaching a course on utopian thinking in the Middle Ages. The course is designed for MA students, and to prepare a good foundation for delving into details and focusing on specific themes within the vast umbrella of the course's main topic, my co-teacher and I have dedicated the first seminars to a chronological walkthrough of utopian material, ending with the Early Modern Period and stopping around 1750 for purely practical reasons. One important reason for bringing the early modern material into discussion with the medieval texts, was to highlight how increasing geographical knowledge affects the way utopian places are imagined, and where they are placed on the map. <br /><br />Thinking about the development of cartography and geographical knowledge, I was reminded of a detail I noticed in a painting I had the pleasure of seeing up close in January, namely Antonio de Pereda's allegory of vanity, exhibited in Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The painting is an exquisite example of the vanitas genre, one of my favourite types of paintings, as it combines the exuberant display of skill typical of the still life with the sombre and melancholic note of the memento mori artwork of the Late Middle Ages. The genre takes its name from the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is an immensely beautiful and human reflection on the pointlessness of human endeavour: All is vanity, all is in vain. Since part of the point of a vanitas painting is the juxtaposition of numerous and often contrasting pursuits, the genre also offered artists an opportunity to show how skilled they were at drawing complicated things, while also adhering to the iconographical standards of the genre (such as a skull, an extinguished candle, and an hourglass with all the sand in the bottom). <br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87HklU1s0PN69yldl1GXLxbEHrzi9LAHh8Q1aY4ohVlcumBlQR2LjZvX8ADo_sgsJX_y3DKDgW_T-DMjDDF6PkO588khzgS3gOX0k7P_pbBV0h8I0NH41YTnyzrA5voI4rnXD76MSXbHtAu9z8l2yNOMQWxvoekEPQ1QTPsiBZQaKagNZ6Qv4qiWFdjnc/s4160/IMG_20240120_121932_HHT%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi87HklU1s0PN69yldl1GXLxbEHrzi9LAHh8Q1aY4ohVlcumBlQR2LjZvX8ADo_sgsJX_y3DKDgW_T-DMjDDF6PkO588khzgS3gOX0k7P_pbBV0h8I0NH41YTnyzrA5voI4rnXD76MSXbHtAu9z8l2yNOMQWxvoekEPQ1QTPsiBZQaKagNZ6Qv4qiWFdjnc/s320/IMG_20240120_121932_HHT%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Antonio de Pereda (1611-78), <i>Alegoria de la vanidad</i> (1632-36)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inventory no. GG 771</div><p><br />One detail that particularly fascinates, and pleases, me about Antonio de Pereda's rendition of the vanitas motif, is the way that he has rendered the globe, a detail I only properly realised when I was standing right in front of the painting. As seen below, the globe is placed on its side - its imagined side, rather - with north facing east and the west facing north. The hand of the genius representing the passing of time and the eventual pulverisation of all things mortal and temporal, is pointing towards the tip of the African continent, to a point between Africa and Antarctica. <br /><br />The detail is particularly interesting to me in light of the time when the painting was made, namely the 1630s. At this time, the Portuguese had spent generations mapping the coastlines of Africa and the Indian Ocean World, and there had been great strides in cartography. Madagascar - which was merely a a rumour to medieval Europeans, if even that - is slowly receiving its actual shape, and the interior of Africa is mapped in the minds of European traders through stories encountered in the great Swahili trading cities such as Sofala and Mombasa. Indeed, if we look very closely on the globe in Pereda's painting, we see that the map of Africa represents two cartographic stages, with an earlier phase rendered in a strong green colour - reminiscent of the way Africa is depicted in early sixteenth-century maps - and a more modern, broader outline in weaker grey-green colour, which seems to represent the extent of Africa as known by modern cartography. Further south, moreover, is the great southern continent that was hypothesised by numerous cartographers throughout the medieval and early modern periods. This was a continent expected to exist to the south of Africa, based on the knowledge that the earth was round, and that the lower hemisphere should resemble the upper in climate, and perhaps also in having a large continent that would correspond with Eurasia. It is important to note, however, that by the time Antonio de Pereda painted this allegory, no European had been far enough south to ascertain the existence of this continent. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJJ3ae0Qvxy3Ug56BLhBCG918oQN8sGN-UW0WXpuBF2gO7Ce_XKmL5D5fude3uoih9GREGcmzpXD0FV_6HtZpQMlan3t2g9GVOiFbTtvYttqDf6nbHgfDpUJK9_TcFSRWeEdpxZEj3EtWo0Ma5AKYHj98xjyuGEIZ3M4EEh446hKIQ9e0gkYPf-VVyIsn/s4160/IMG_20240120_121940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyJJ3ae0Qvxy3Ug56BLhBCG918oQN8sGN-UW0WXpuBF2gO7Ce_XKmL5D5fude3uoih9GREGcmzpXD0FV_6HtZpQMlan3t2g9GVOiFbTtvYttqDf6nbHgfDpUJK9_TcFSRWeEdpxZEj3EtWo0Ma5AKYHj98xjyuGEIZ3M4EEh446hKIQ9e0gkYPf-VVyIsn/s320/IMG_20240120_121940.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br />In light of Antonio de Pereda's own times, and the increasing cartographic knowledge of the era, how are we to understand the way that the globe is included and rendered in the painting? While I do not know for certain, I suspect that in an age when voyages for trade, domination and conquest were still an important part of the geopolitical and even everyday life of Europe, the mapping of distant shores would be a natural part of the register of motifs that could emphasise the pointlessness of human endeavour. That the outline of Africa is rendered in two versions might be understood as a shorthand of the recent cartographic development of Pereda's times, which, ultimately, is as pointless as the game of cards or the possession of jewelry, since it does not ensure humans that eternal peace and afterlife which can only be attained through spiritual pursuits. Essentially, the painting seems to say: Yes, we know more about the world, but so what? <br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6zMuW52JjZj4XGbIcSnMEeztN4DbXkCOl0q39sEEEcl94_gCc6hcG8Pw9xJQQMWU4rZ7UsQJ-R02R-NOsJIhZWhnLA2pqb3HUdrC7BWyUilLYn8b2q14AuDEPOjVphVZSaMb9loDgydYshyoz24xqu6uWndYqoAfaYOc1EKSHrUcITt6fmDTICxAVPS1N/s4160/IMG_20240120_121945%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6zMuW52JjZj4XGbIcSnMEeztN4DbXkCOl0q39sEEEcl94_gCc6hcG8Pw9xJQQMWU4rZ7UsQJ-R02R-NOsJIhZWhnLA2pqb3HUdrC7BWyUilLYn8b2q14AuDEPOjVphVZSaMb9loDgydYshyoz24xqu6uWndYqoAfaYOc1EKSHrUcITt6fmDTICxAVPS1N/s320/IMG_20240120_121945%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <br /><br />One detail in the rendition of the globe is particularly amusing to me, as it is a pure coincidence. The finger of the genius is pointing to a location between the southern tip of Africa and the great southern land, the Terra Australis, that corresponds roughly to what we know now to be Antarctica. If we look at a modern map of this area, the finger is placed on, or at least very near, Bouvet Island, known as one of the most isolated places in the world. The first known sighting of Bouvet Island, currently under the jurisdiction of Norway, happened in 1739 during a voyage under Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier (1705-86), and the first known landfall happened in 1822 by American whalers. Consequently, Antonio de Pereda did not know about Bouvet Island, and the placing of the genius' finger is purely coincidental. But it pleases me to think about how human speculation and imagination very often does manage to envision the real world despite lack of certain knowledge. <p></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-80605673257789627452024-02-27T03:54:00.000-08:002024-02-27T03:54:51.367-08:00Lecture: Science, faith and superstition in Utopia<p> </p><p>Last Tuesday, February 20, I had the honour of giving a lecture in the lecture series of the Science, Faith and Superstition seminar series, hosted by the University of Belgrade. My lecture highlighted various continuities in the way that medieval and early modern texts about ideal societies or exotic locations were imagined or formulated. The lecture was recorded, so I'm pleased to share it with all of you. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/11Xqw_nT5as" width="320" youtube-src-id="11Xqw_nT5as"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Science, faith and superstition in Utopia</div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-26740723512442761292024-02-22T14:54:00.000-08:002024-02-22T14:54:47.211-08:00Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Vienna<p><br /></p><p>The past few months have been a blur of travels and museum visits, so I am still sorting through the photographic souvenirs to decide which wonders to share, and when. When working my way through a museum, my eye is often caught by the unfamiliar, unknown or unusual, and so I am more likely to capture an artefact of which I have not heard before. Part of this impulse appears to be either rooted in or otherwise related to my scepticism towards canon formation, and the typical focus on the big famous items that museums often tend to embrace when marketing their collections. <br /><br />Today's overlooked jewel comes from the medieval collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, an institution most famous for its late-medieval paintings - what some call "Renaissance" - but where one can also find some absolute treasures that once adorned various churches and chapels. One such treasure was a wooden bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Michel Erhard (active c.1469-1522), holding a fragment of wheel intended for her torture (but broken by an angel before the torture could commence). <br /><br />The sculpture can be called a minor treasure in that it is not in any way highlighted in the museum's collection - at least not that I could see - and because it was just one item out of many in the unjustly downplayed medieval section of the museum. Yet this relative obscurity is deceptive, because Michel Erhard is one of the most famous Gothic sculptors active in the late-medieval German-speaking area, and we should imagine that the bust was originally a revered work of art, enjoyed not just because of its obvious beauty and craft, but also because of its association with a feted artist. <br /><br />The bust of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Kunsthistoriches Museum is a good reminder of how beauty might very well be objective to some degree, yet that objectivity pales in the absence of a subjective marker of quality, such as fame. So when the fame once attached to the item has faded, so the artwork - despite its artistic qualities - fades into a relative obscurity. </p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiymUhLMJyd9QK6czTUbBPwOuLlUpA6FRZhpcXnnKRRuYi0IxEtpvBx6cq4oivzyHZKMZHBN4xtTRsqow2nEmn1FAzv2VOD1ZG5oOvUcOp00i2fev1yrt0bE7TRNZaUCESHVbNJHuBb1PQvzhmLutl8p65DmAQomKg6UVyA-YuyzzxUjZaPb6qKF96iIyeJ/s4160/IMG_20240120_105816.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiymUhLMJyd9QK6czTUbBPwOuLlUpA6FRZhpcXnnKRRuYi0IxEtpvBx6cq4oivzyHZKMZHBN4xtTRsqow2nEmn1FAzv2VOD1ZG5oOvUcOp00i2fev1yrt0bE7TRNZaUCESHVbNJHuBb1PQvzhmLutl8p65DmAQomKg6UVyA-YuyzzxUjZaPb6qKF96iIyeJ/s320/IMG_20240120_105816.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, KK 9938</div><br /> <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-41328458624396817882024-02-20T14:05:00.000-08:002024-02-20T14:05:48.832-08:00Saint Olaf in Frogner Church - medievalism as a form of protest?<p> </p><p>This weekend, I attended a service at Frogner Church in Oslo. It is a beautiful structure, consecrated in 1907, and built in a neo-Romanesque style that was very common in Scandinavia around the turn of the century. The fondness for this style should probably be understood in light of the wider cultural framework of medievalism at the time, a framework in which the medieval past was used as a pool from which to draw resources for building a national identity, and thereby positioning Norway in a wider historical and geographical setting. The medievalism of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth century Norway was expressed in many different ways. Various such expressions were often relying on a lot of the same motifs or figures, but the medieval elements seen as uniquely Norwegian could often be blended with medieval elements from elsewhere. In the case of Frogner Church, we see how some various aspects of the Norwegian medieval past has been melded into one. <br /><br />The first of these aspects that came to my attention was a wooden figure on a plinth on the southern side of the nave, just beneath one of the two galleries of the church. The figure, as seen below, shows Saint Olaf with one foot on a vanquished person, while his hands are resting on the sword whose point is placed just atop the person underneath the saint. The identity of the saint-king is made clear from an inscription in gold on the foot of the statue. This motif - of Olaf standing on a figure, a so-called underlier - is widely common in Scandinavian medieval art, and one of the most recognizable iconographical features in the entire medieval Nordic sphere. As far as I know, the earliest surviving example of this motif dates from the early thirteenth century. <br /><br />The statue in Frogner Church is clearly meant to tie into the medieval motif, but it also shows itself as a product of a different time, a time that had its own ideas about the medieval past. The statue is, in other words, not so much a continuation of a medieval motif, but an adaptation of it. There are two elements that point us in this direction. First of all, the saint-king carries a sword, which he uses to subdue to defeated opponent. To my knowledge, this combination of iconographical features does not appear in medieval art. Olaf is typically seen holding an axe, which became is primary attribute at a very early stage, possibly already in the mid-eleventh century. The sword is very rarely associated with Olaf, and, as far as I know, never in the motif of trampling an enemy underfoot. <br /> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJw-lWHgMrfT1-H0dRKrM5Do7A8rcpozh75lJOKzGF4P_0d1ivenB43yzG3Vo3h3HzAQ08zv5_R-yt_YD9akuFGFi5-YOhhml7LZlc_wHfjPXEndE505snxnXOpRWRTVA1e58p_1AipwyflhABs0Qr3SZqwK31R9GIDCNc_08B03bdO5HBYJfgOfXqF_uK/s4160/IMG_20240218_104202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJw-lWHgMrfT1-H0dRKrM5Do7A8rcpozh75lJOKzGF4P_0d1ivenB43yzG3Vo3h3HzAQ08zv5_R-yt_YD9akuFGFi5-YOhhml7LZlc_wHfjPXEndE505snxnXOpRWRTVA1e58p_1AipwyflhABs0Qr3SZqwK31R9GIDCNc_08B03bdO5HBYJfgOfXqF_uK/s320/IMG_20240218_104202.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CWmLRQ_oP4XKWbsgFLT8m5OLJud_oPcsszmyXWPmVvFk_jQ79JnmJbt1UZq8q5s9q0749lDi0niO_ytKAPgLndDYAK-SvXMpn8icKV8htrCqpK0lg1hT37DPSDbt4qKH5zsflphvHnF7Bo1QTzBx9K_phmT1mL4uh2vtnDlLOCI-YvJ7zm_gSQIDxjdb/s4160/IMG_20240218_104210.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4CWmLRQ_oP4XKWbsgFLT8m5OLJud_oPcsszmyXWPmVvFk_jQ79JnmJbt1UZq8q5s9q0749lDi0niO_ytKAPgLndDYAK-SvXMpn8icKV8htrCqpK0lg1hT37DPSDbt4qKH5zsflphvHnF7Bo1QTzBx9K_phmT1mL4uh2vtnDlLOCI-YvJ7zm_gSQIDxjdb/s320/IMG_20240218_104210.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br />The second modern feature of the statue is the shape of the underlier. In medieval art, this figure is typically a human of uncertain identification (especially in the thirteenth century), or a dragon with a human head (mainly fourteenth century onwards). The figure in Frogner Church, however, is holding a hammer, which suggests that this is the Norse god Thor. The statue is, in other words, intended to summarize Christianity's conquest of Paganism in Norway, exemplified by Saint Olaf forcefully replacing the god of thunder. While medieval Norwegians did indeed emphasize Olaf's violent expulsion of Pagan elements during the Christianization period - an idea possibly invented in the twelfth century, as part of the Norwegian Church's efforts of identity-construction - this expulsion is not, from what I know, expressed as a battle between a saint and a god. Consequently, the scene in Frogner Church looks very much as an ecclesiastical response to the ongoing enthusiasm for the Norse Paganism that was part of the medievalism of the era, where the pre-Christian elements were made to represent Norway and confer antiquity and glory on a nation eagerly expending time and resources to construct an identity. <br /><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2N2YCB8qIR2ECg2_Q6m1hjP3kbE6VdPAKZ6ehdxBx-RHvIZo9Wbx6kA8ynbxjFI_XxVUCvyZge0MD7CwHUQkdybbKwzXOvEVeKj95Dp8XlVsHE9EFzNXMjHUsadz7oKvLjgHKGT8_D5HeoVKLUkrpI6usYLvQVeznatJH0YA4Rlm7MbBr_uWdqrry9vz/s4160/IMG_20240218_104436.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP2N2YCB8qIR2ECg2_Q6m1hjP3kbE6VdPAKZ6ehdxBx-RHvIZo9Wbx6kA8ynbxjFI_XxVUCvyZge0MD7CwHUQkdybbKwzXOvEVeKj95Dp8XlVsHE9EFzNXMjHUsadz7oKvLjgHKGT8_D5HeoVKLUkrpI6usYLvQVeznatJH0YA4Rlm7MbBr_uWdqrry9vz/s320/IMG_20240218_104436.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcFjA3A1CCSzyV3SsyMywlbZ_G3xjBMftRosvgDck5zPM_hjrx8KB4iCk4uC50JB9wRiOikRpL5lRmJ_lg9grRQNUJuCPJuhb2E9zlqWz3srKA4lAk0qvLwRpIB8_d_CJ_ioO_K1x0N8OSGCcS2PvllCfETuMeeFMzPmVz-sHlIMNLPzQnO6cCumNJR4c/s4160/IMG_20240218_104439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcFjA3A1CCSzyV3SsyMywlbZ_G3xjBMftRosvgDck5zPM_hjrx8KB4iCk4uC50JB9wRiOikRpL5lRmJ_lg9grRQNUJuCPJuhb2E9zlqWz3srKA4lAk0qvLwRpIB8_d_CJ_ioO_K1x0N8OSGCcS2PvllCfETuMeeFMzPmVz-sHlIMNLPzQnO6cCumNJR4c/s320/IMG_20240218_104439.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />Another feature of Frogner Church that makes me suspect some sort of ecclesiastical reaction to the ongoing medievalism of the time, is the exterior. The neo-Romanesque features of the tower and the front are both strongly reminiscent of an actual medieval church in Oslo, namely that of Old Aker Church, which is heavily restored yet contains some surviving features from the twelfth century. The Romanesque style is a marker of European belonging, since it is an architectural vogue imported from abroad, and initially performed in Norway by foreign masons. The use of neo-Romanesque for the church exterior can be understood as a nod to Old Aker Church, by which the new church draws prestige from an earlier church, and provides a sense of continuity, which in itself is an important element of identity-construction. Furthermore, however, it might also be that the use of neo-Romanesque serves the same purpose as the statue of Saint Olaf in the nave, namely to signal a European belonging and to mark a certain distance to the enthusiasm towards the Pagan Norse heritage. <br /><br />If I am right in thinking about these features as a pushback against the Pagan aesthetic, it is nonetheless doubtful whether a lot of people would have the toolkit for decoding this protest message. Yet this does not in and of itself mean that the protest would not have been legible to a certain section of society, whether it would be academics, clerics, or others. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqijm1_ZWPi8ovrGxF64TizIyOhKRzErrcu9KJNTvEtxW-sF2a8VAPXVUiSyngPZPqHtqlYcIPKMbt33f7yhFMIgIyBFc_HN3SzIC_LX7dmx7MDs5TriTmgpNcaVyEcdHGEYwUbFDrVL-lCUAZ9EjZr0htaKTpvXiXTNpV7nCs0d2r4HmvBWhQcFL2Jb4m/s4160/IMG_20240218_122344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqijm1_ZWPi8ovrGxF64TizIyOhKRzErrcu9KJNTvEtxW-sF2a8VAPXVUiSyngPZPqHtqlYcIPKMbt33f7yhFMIgIyBFc_HN3SzIC_LX7dmx7MDs5TriTmgpNcaVyEcdHGEYwUbFDrVL-lCUAZ9EjZr0htaKTpvXiXTNpV7nCs0d2r4HmvBWhQcFL2Jb4m/s320/IMG_20240218_122344.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-47422922213985366102024-01-30T15:11:00.000-08:002024-01-30T15:11:19.850-08:00The moon over Saint Rupert's Church<p><br /></p><p>In the middle of January, I spent ten days in Vienna as part of a work-stay organized by the project where I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher. The days in Vienna were quite intense, as there were a lot of different work-related tasks that needed my attention, and so there were only a few times I could really indulge in the many different sights of the city. With what time I had, however, I still managed to take in quite a lot of things big and small, and I hope to delve deeper into some of them in future blogposts. <br /><br />One of the highlights for me was the Church of Saint Rupert of Salzburg, <i>das Ruprechtskirche</i>, which is situated close by the Danube canal on the northern edge of the old city centre, the so-called Ring, where we were staying. The church is dedicated to the patron saint of Salzburg, the seventh-century bishop Rupert, who is also considered to be its founder. In the Later Middle Ages, he became the patron saint of salt miners and salt traders, and in art he is frequently depicted holding a salt cellar. Saint Rupert's Church in Vienna is believed to have been built close to where the salt traders had their stalls and headquarters during the medieval period. <br /><br />The Church of Saint Rupert became something of an obsession of mine during my days in Vienna. Partly, this obsession stems from my constant fascination with saints, and since I knew very little about Saint Rupert prior to my arrival in Austria, the tantalizing opportunity to learn more was impossible to resist. Another part of the obsession came from the fact that the church is believed to be the earliest church in Vienna - dated to the eighth century - and, more importantly, that part of the church retains some elements from the twelfth century, namely the tower and the northern wall. Despite these objectively good reasons for my fascination with the building, I think one aspect that was just as important was the rather ludicrous feeling of ownership that came from the chance act of stumbling across it as a friend and I were wending our way through the streets in search of a good place to eat. This happened on the first day, just shortly after the hotel check-in, and as I had not done much to prepare for my trip by reading up on Vienna's history, the sudden appearance of a church with unmistakably Romanesque elements - my favourite architectural style - was both arresting and exciting. <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivWyPPuLVTSt6SIL5Xjiz6vZLgEBlRlWNa3NbS2fmhyphenhyphenWBdBNKSxzYlyndhgp83p-MiIfqTGY_478Vph5VtsZvOb19cbAmnz_j6_gSnkbHBb2HfjHEPVcmE_gWwa1Yktneh3cl8XLykNlMtl2qPqvuteY9qZ0eGghPluTIXcd6T_xlNUkGivceA-RM8mTFh/s4160/IMG_20240119_203323_HHT%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivWyPPuLVTSt6SIL5Xjiz6vZLgEBlRlWNa3NbS2fmhyphenhyphenWBdBNKSxzYlyndhgp83p-MiIfqTGY_478Vph5VtsZvOb19cbAmnz_j6_gSnkbHBb2HfjHEPVcmE_gWwa1Yktneh3cl8XLykNlMtl2qPqvuteY9qZ0eGghPluTIXcd6T_xlNUkGivceA-RM8mTFh/s320/IMG_20240119_203323_HHT%20(1).jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjame57RrjeA9Yn7kLP11-3uFZqUufxXTPdlTP7qL7Js6U1GRVZo0R4WvHWxc8_bZ8OKQjZv8aLxwvkKa7hF-f_ueMzvIFR1PYjZlitSepkIOdUvzVbjKkbKA5ghLxKKYJfUH2F6qN0dPsY1Nfg0AVR-l9iCEBy0bJ2haXurFatXDthGyrDqW-uRBOPygA8/s4160/IMG_20240119_203407_HHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjame57RrjeA9Yn7kLP11-3uFZqUufxXTPdlTP7qL7Js6U1GRVZo0R4WvHWxc8_bZ8OKQjZv8aLxwvkKa7hF-f_ueMzvIFR1PYjZlitSepkIOdUvzVbjKkbKA5ghLxKKYJfUH2F6qN0dPsY1Nfg0AVR-l9iCEBy0bJ2haXurFatXDthGyrDqW-uRBOPygA8/s320/IMG_20240119_203407_HHT.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><p>Since the church is closed most days, except for Fridays and special occasions, I had to wait a full working week before being able to see the inside of the building. Although I was assured by another friend that the interior was much less interesting than the exterior, I could not help feeling a certain yearning to get inside, not because I expected the interior to be full of exciting details, but because I steadily built it up in my head as a unique chance to see something medieval in a city whose remaining architecture is mostly eighteenth-century and later. <br /><br />I did eventually get inside, and I managed to go twice. And while the church does not hold many exciting details, there turned out to be plenty of them to explore. For the present blogpost, however, the interior will have to wait, and I will instead provide you with some examples of the kind of pull that this building exerted on me, as I walked past it a few times during January afternoons under a waxing moon. In the combined light of the city and the moon, the Church of Saint Rupert acquired an aura of peace and stability, as of time having turned to stone, and it lay like a promise in the folds of city, in marked contrast to some of the more ostentatious buildings that have become famous hallmarks of Vienna. I have always preferred the Romanesque simplicity to the exorbitant Baroque, and although I also appreciate the latter in many of its forms, the different space offered by the Romanesque is always preferable to me - and I say this, knowing full well that Romanesque churches and cathedrals in their original state would have been both ostentatious and gaudy, and quite different from their current surviving forms. In short, the Church of Saint Rupert became something of a point of orientation for me during my days in Vienna, and I treasure the memories of its beauty and gravitas. </p><p><br /></p></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEftSCjWlgnNOIMDijrmx-L-RPtaUnTAS_9rRmkdhVb9I6dcimHVfachtNlOthm-FP2wJ7-cz2miq7qp-7X8QaerTZrK_PumEScRBweMweg6tITEruN1wAMecvKhFoqzpzGIHYfDEcQYks8GqnV76q0xcnD_byuMYFUAXIjr-80JH5TFEmReLyUn8lxGv/s4160/IMG_20240119_210102_HHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXEftSCjWlgnNOIMDijrmx-L-RPtaUnTAS_9rRmkdhVb9I6dcimHVfachtNlOthm-FP2wJ7-cz2miq7qp-7X8QaerTZrK_PumEScRBweMweg6tITEruN1wAMecvKhFoqzpzGIHYfDEcQYks8GqnV76q0xcnD_byuMYFUAXIjr-80JH5TFEmReLyUn8lxGv/s320/IMG_20240119_210102_HHT.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-1973211208388117332024-01-27T03:05:00.000-08:002024-01-27T03:05:13.722-08:00My quest for Austrian poetry<p> </p><p>Wednesday, I came back from a ten-day trip to Vienna. For the most part, it was a work-stay, where I and some colleagues spent our time preparing for a workshop in the city, and giving each other feedback on drafts of articles and applications. Luckily, however, there was still time to do some extracurricular activities, and my days were marked by a quest for books. Whenever I am in a country whose language I can read, I want to buy some reading materials, both as a souvenir and as a way to learn more about the country. Moreover, books are also excellent for establishing a stronger bond to the country in question by reading them in various locations, something which always makes me feel more connected with the surroundings, be it a city, a part of the wilderness, or the country in general. </p><p><br />When I arrived in Vienna, I had not read any Austrian literature, so I sought out some bookshops to acquire a volume of poetry. In most cases, when embarking on the book-world of a new country, poetry is my first port of call, both because it is a genre of writing that I deeply love, but also because poetry sometimes catches nuances in a culture in a way that novels do not. This time, however, there was also a practical aspect to my focus on poetry, as I had packed a small suitcase and could only negotiate a few new purchases. The lack of space in my luggage further narrowed down my options, as large volumes of collected poetry were out of the question. <br /><br />The quest started well, or so I thought. At the bookshop Morawa - which I was recommended by a friend - I communicated my needs in a very poor German, which reminded me that I was out of practice, but also that when searching for specific words, my brain slides into Spanish, which makes the situation much worse. The situation was also hampered by my complete lack of knowledge about Austrian poetry. In any case, I was shown a thin book with poems by H. C. Artmann, and I left the bookshop thinking that I had now found something that could accompany me in my exploration of Viennese cafés. Unfortunately, however, I later realised that the book in question was a posthumous selection from various collections, and not an original unit. Personally, I do not like such anthologies, and I do not count them as standalone books. Consequently, my quest started again, and it led me through several bookshops without yielding any satisfactory results. Luckily, on my second-to-last full day, I happened to pass by another bookshop that I had not seen before, Franz Leo & Comp., and walked in. By this time, I had exercised my German by repeated use, and I had also understood that I needed to be as clear as I could about the parameters of my quest. Yet despite these improvements, I have only the diligence of the two shopkeepers to thank for the book that finally ended my quest, namely a volume of the collected poetry by Ingeborg Bachmann, which was sufficiently non-voluminous to fit in my luggage. I left that bookshop in a state of elation. <br /><br />My quest for Austrian poetry brought me in contact with several of Vienna's bookshops, and these visits afforded me glimpses of the number of exciting books available there, so now I know that when going back, I need to bring a larger suitcase, and set aside more time to trawling the available vendors. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivW3Fr-WkksLPquAOgE0FymFS_GyGIb4usfoCMqkBC_8eWktnlW-8FtNuKT-7bMYqlT52lm1QrV6QpEwpSFRqUm_54HPuOuJfZ-_OmJFFlps0Skcm9DJLYiz5rtkTh7NDJgbeP8SlXnuD2JJOU-_FzTgFAQo2CIPvtszGPDGxBeqe6L58kyaIg6pRnMkKn/s4160/IMG_20240124_000442.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivW3Fr-WkksLPquAOgE0FymFS_GyGIb4usfoCMqkBC_8eWktnlW-8FtNuKT-7bMYqlT52lm1QrV6QpEwpSFRqUm_54HPuOuJfZ-_OmJFFlps0Skcm9DJLYiz5rtkTh7NDJgbeP8SlXnuD2JJOU-_FzTgFAQo2CIPvtszGPDGxBeqe6L58kyaIg6pRnMkKn/s320/IMG_20240124_000442.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBK5kgt6KgEbk4Dxv-jOg2D_95aXsqSE3t1_AQMf1hTFfDnyc-j6aCTTSW49z0qz1OVpEJuIbxeq0piHiAoZK9qbpj-eoizLMECPzoETlbb71VmSzXBcbpie1_5rd9WSQaFlri_hTTHI4hbvN50z8qYllJ_q5xGJjWbNh0zkszmFRUutT0XLbk2Sw0_uPD/s4160/IMG_20240122_112418.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBK5kgt6KgEbk4Dxv-jOg2D_95aXsqSE3t1_AQMf1hTFfDnyc-j6aCTTSW49z0qz1OVpEJuIbxeq0piHiAoZK9qbpj-eoizLMECPzoETlbb71VmSzXBcbpie1_5rd9WSQaFlri_hTTHI4hbvN50z8qYllJ_q5xGJjWbNh0zkszmFRUutT0XLbk2Sw0_uPD/s320/IMG_20240122_112418.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-54442902948858300202024-01-20T07:38:00.000-08:002024-01-20T07:38:54.594-08:00Saint Sebastian in Vienna Cathedral<p><br /></p><p>Today is the feast of Saint Sebastian, a saint with whom I am inexplicably fascinated - inexplicably because I cannot define exactly what fascinates me about him and his cult. While his historicity is widely regarded as doubtful at best, at least by modern scholars, his iconography has left a massive imprint in the history of medieval and early modern art. Part of the success of his cult - success here understood as longevity and widespread fame - can be explained by his status as a plague saint, a patronage that continued to be relevant in Europe throughout the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Consequently, I am always happy to see a representation of Saint Sebastian on my travels, but very rarely surprised by such encounters. Today, I met him again. <br /><br />As I am writing this blogpost, I am in Vienna for a work trip, and this Saturday is the first day where I have been able to do some real sightseeing. One of the main sights that I wanted to see was the Vienna Cathedral, the Stephansdom, dedicated to Stephen Protomartyr, which was consecrated in 1147, ten years after the building work commenced. The cathedral is an overwhelming and beautiful building, with a lot of wonderful architectural and iconographical details, and one can easily get lost if one tries to see all of them. Since this is my first time in Vienna, and since most of my time has been taken up by work, I had not planned my visit very carefully, and ambled about the church space as someone coming into a different world, not really knowing what to expect. This kind of exploration by accident, as it were, has its benefits, because sometimes you see details that are not necessarily highlighted by the available literature. One such figure was that of Saint Sebastian, placed in a niche high above the floor of the nave, not difficult to notice yet also not difficult to miss. <br /><br />The beardless, contorted, perforated figure was a familiar sight. I have as yet found no information about when this figure was made, or by whom, but it looks perfectly in tune with the ideals of sixteenth-century Mannerism with its slightly exaggerated movements and bending bodies. In its iconography, the Sebastian figure in Vienna Cathedral follows the typical standard established in fifteenth-century Italy, and which continued to be followed well into the seventeenth century, and arguably into our own times. The figure was a lovely, if grotesque, reminder of the ubiquity of Sebastian's cult, and the iconographical continuity with which he is represented. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPZNc8C-LKDdzImdDOlZ_U2roLsg5DFMEC0ymo0_BQFHOF-MSGsmQRjuDnPYsF98oc5hXVBgKvhaOHq3EzS4Pb3lyJT3ALF2-jEtQN98U1DuAWFF5_msUU5QLvjjqKmTLr3_Hj8dRMim9lQlMeVpdpP7Z0AKQDu2rlhOTv-IINWN_6MQ-N7K7LKqlOgDGG/s4160/IMG_20240120_094918.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPZNc8C-LKDdzImdDOlZ_U2roLsg5DFMEC0ymo0_BQFHOF-MSGsmQRjuDnPYsF98oc5hXVBgKvhaOHq3EzS4Pb3lyJT3ALF2-jEtQN98U1DuAWFF5_msUU5QLvjjqKmTLr3_Hj8dRMim9lQlMeVpdpP7Z0AKQDu2rlhOTv-IINWN_6MQ-N7K7LKqlOgDGG/s320/IMG_20240120_094918.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6qdbq-85zN_rBKkNIR_C1ufyqZxHmd00XraH0LWi4jSZjpTwuQLNsJWCtrPqCO1v4zQ69W8e-t3946N00JWIJC57k697mGKtKisvKFBxaqX3MmPT1mHtuDkgyH1Bg8BNpJjYF9zzOcOV2bP9KejP9rJxS9BkibknwgjGJI7ADHFTVciDfvoSYtbRKsEB/s4160/IMG_20240120_094945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie6qdbq-85zN_rBKkNIR_C1ufyqZxHmd00XraH0LWi4jSZjpTwuQLNsJWCtrPqCO1v4zQ69W8e-t3946N00JWIJC57k697mGKtKisvKFBxaqX3MmPT1mHtuDkgyH1Bg8BNpJjYF9zzOcOV2bP9KejP9rJxS9BkibknwgjGJI7ADHFTVciDfvoSYtbRKsEB/s320/IMG_20240120_094945.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqx4hkbserV1cAdIDhbWXDnDZ5l8E0Z3VI1kyMPiCeculnFhSX8HtDdYGkUhB2emUCQj8nPxlYYYEKBXCyBCs3OHiX-P1kEbw73LIKojIDAgtDhNTUmNdRXPZtt62MTX0Cqyjmk5ZwFyMTGKubjpHr-d-xyUFZ-T8d80MozRuHr0L1R3tntnvIZxDIbQD/s4160/IMG_20240120_094940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqx4hkbserV1cAdIDhbWXDnDZ5l8E0Z3VI1kyMPiCeculnFhSX8HtDdYGkUhB2emUCQj8nPxlYYYEKBXCyBCs3OHiX-P1kEbw73LIKojIDAgtDhNTUmNdRXPZtt62MTX0Cqyjmk5ZwFyMTGKubjpHr-d-xyUFZ-T8d80MozRuHr0L1R3tntnvIZxDIbQD/s320/IMG_20240120_094940.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-75555539078312542782024-01-01T13:10:00.000-08:002024-01-01T13:18:08.154-08:00A year in reading - 2023<p> </p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I live a relatively dull life, thankfully. Most
of what makes my life exciting, or that gives my life meaning, is to a large extent
only exciting and meaningful for me, and there is something unintrusive about
such a life which I greatly appreciate. But the one loud aspect of my life is
my reading, as this is a topic that can easily be communicated to others, and
that others can recognize as both exciting and meaningful. 2023 was a year of
much reading, at least relative to my standard amount in the course of such a
timespan, and some of it took rather surprising turns – surprising turns that
grow out of my penchant for choosing such books as present themselves for the
occasion, rather than sticking to a too-well-thought-out plan. And so, as we begin
a new year, I bring you some of the highlights of the past year in reading.
Please note that, as always, this is not a complete list, as I often feel that
such complete lists will easily accrue a touch of bragging – at least when I
convey them – and I seek to avoid that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Travelling by page</b> <br />
<br />
One of my ongoing reading projects is to read a book, of any kind, from each
country of the world. So far, I am in my 120s, and I have still more than
seventy to go, and this year proved to be quite slow. To a large extent, my slowness
on this particular front has been due to various other duties, that have
directed my reading elsewhere. For instance, research for academic articles,
supervision and teaching has forced me to spend a lot of time in Norway, rather
than much further afield. However, I did find time to add three new countries,
namely Honduras, Tanzania, and Indonesia. </span></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkGOf9OlgXcygMgJxFMqDl4Fo-DgCxC8AKn6Ce0yQEqjrJk-76L_9-mjARzMP_Mill5s4HCtHX5MbgfzFu8DBDtG7w2JnzKB4ZW4ojBnOd-4QJqIBp3olCWSlMViHFsTV3l5y4nShD2jP-3TII71RryveUz4dcnTc-2s42AHcraD80dsb7od0X4DYqOPmC/s4160/01.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkGOf9OlgXcygMgJxFMqDl4Fo-DgCxC8AKn6Ce0yQEqjrJk-76L_9-mjARzMP_Mill5s4HCtHX5MbgfzFu8DBDtG7w2JnzKB4ZW4ojBnOd-4QJqIBp3olCWSlMViHFsTV3l5y4nShD2jP-3TII71RryveUz4dcnTc-2s42AHcraD80dsb7od0X4DYqOPmC/s320/01.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A volume of several poetry collections by Óscar Acosta</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">From Honduras, I read the poetry collection <i>Tiempo
detenido</i> by Óscar Acosta, included in a volume containing several of his
collections. This was a book I borrowed last autumn, when after a very long and
tiring day, I went to the university library and sought out something new (to
me) in Spanish. I came away with one sixth of the University of Oslo’s
collection of Honduran literature, which is to say two books. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVSkxCjF9K3WRPmskOyki-OSETpadP9wwf0NW2L6akMuxJaeFX-MEnr2Nv8ALNobvTh1gdvtAyatIyw5w2eplqEOQYa0rtOABxPtapRXMw37eV8nzKx6t7Q4tM2VNrPzFOXLHDD4NEtS-MXH9N2hI_AWirrKNdY1sjAhp4zZYdNQRmUxv_jP2b9cbeEdHH/s4160/02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVSkxCjF9K3WRPmskOyki-OSETpadP9wwf0NW2L6akMuxJaeFX-MEnr2Nv8ALNobvTh1gdvtAyatIyw5w2eplqEOQYa0rtOABxPtapRXMw37eV8nzKx6t7Q4tM2VNrPzFOXLHDD4NEtS-MXH9N2hI_AWirrKNdY1sjAhp4zZYdNQRmUxv_jP2b9cbeEdHH/s320/02.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Abdulrazak Gurnah, <i>Paradise</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">From Tanzania, I read Abdulrazak Gurnah’s
masterful novel <i>Paradise</i>, which tells the coming-of-age story of a merchant’s
apprentice in East Africa in the period leading up to World War I. I read this
novel during the first few days of my holiday in Spain. The contrast between
the various East African vistas – the crowded coast, the dense jungle, the open
and beautiful plains and rivers of the interior – and the dry and sometimes
overpowering heat of Madrid in late April, early May, made the experience even
more pleasant.</span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFR_xAtQGX1rA1_XxXB-JyQiHYNvtJaYMhZ-PAdxymDyN9XkBcshwDDtqEOnIvBZ0eMR71Irr705j0IN1IRTyU0ICPsRaSbwHa5nNtx_3ZQmP7vfgUX0bAC09wrmeTSJbrVmVmpx-AWKHhDK_HKhPPDXBebnTxZ2Z3swQgklBzpP0ldyyhe_-1kG6PhtDN/s4160/03.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFR_xAtQGX1rA1_XxXB-JyQiHYNvtJaYMhZ-PAdxymDyN9XkBcshwDDtqEOnIvBZ0eMR71Irr705j0IN1IRTyU0ICPsRaSbwHa5nNtx_3ZQmP7vfgUX0bAC09wrmeTSJbrVmVmpx-AWKHhDK_HKhPPDXBebnTxZ2Z3swQgklBzpP0ldyyhe_-1kG6PhtDN/s320/03.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Norman Erikson Pasaribu, <i>Sergius seeks Bacchus</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">The last country, at least this year, is
Indonesia, from which I read the beautiful and heart-wrenching poetry collection
<i>Sergius seeks Bacchus</i>, in which Norman Erikson Pasaribu shares some of
the darkness of his experiences as a young homosexual man from a Christian
family. </span></div><div><br /></div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />
<b>New places for reading </b> <br />
<br />
2023 was a year in which I did a lot of travelling, at least relative to an
ordinary year. Most of this travelling was for work, but I also made sure to take
the time to enjoy the places I visited, and to find some new places for
reading. Some of my most memorable moments were in Spain, where I set out to buy
a lot of books, and do a lot of reading. As it turned out, I bought fewer books
than I had expected, but I did do a lot of reading. Much of that reading took
place in a café close to the apartment I had rented, and almost every evening I
would wend my way there, have a glass of beer, and read and write, and these
were some of the best evenings of my entire year. </span><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfrWhmesQ3lC0F7ls4Af2WVxC_Ky55wWyzhD5fLoIrrS5XyR8TdTrxGe67kmrFCC7qENzw3JK4qLdNSduDEdhzLV8DWwZJlyE3Y6US6EbBfi6jvZZMQu5KoYFvpGNIYPkTx_h4GaVtw3Ebsv687S0HWbBH6AF3OJ2L9uehkEvPxziEx8fmHit7c7TPhD8Y/s4160/04.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfrWhmesQ3lC0F7ls4Af2WVxC_Ky55wWyzhD5fLoIrrS5XyR8TdTrxGe67kmrFCC7qENzw3JK4qLdNSduDEdhzLV8DWwZJlyE3Y6US6EbBfi6jvZZMQu5KoYFvpGNIYPkTx_h4GaVtw3Ebsv687S0HWbBH6AF3OJ2L9uehkEvPxziEx8fmHit7c7TPhD8Y/s320/04.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Emilio Pascual, <i>El gabinete mágico</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">One of the books I was reading during my
two-week stay in Spain was <i>El gabinete mágico</i> by Emilio Pascual, which
is a book about fictional libraries, and one which I still have not finished. Ranging
from the familiar to the completely unknown, this gem of a book kept me good
company, and taught me a lot about Spanish literary history. What made this
book particularly special was that I bought it on my second day in Madrid at Librería
Alberti, a bookshop where my friend Marina Casado was doing a poetry reading together
with some of her fellow poets. <i>El gabinete mágico</i> also accompanied me to
Salamanca, and I was reading one of its chapters as the last bus to Madrid was crossing
the fields of Castilla, and I could see the sun dying splendidly in gold behind
me, and the moon rising in its triumphant silver ahead of me. It was a joyous
moment that I could not have planned if I had tried to. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKc0ffbFQVZQO9pp8Pxs4_N6TFly9CQxfvsAgv3XUeqNhSadt6W5au2BzMKsmYKw-JtElQ3-wfozC9YXD0Xf4YBL-X9005WCSiRamdUI2BKuE1w0rAV1buDKnP_92tr_lMmZZ8MVxyuuERwwgg5NoAhb0Veiqo1PLwtXm1M9Rc3j6XT7Ask-nI1QdPMQ6Z/s4160/05.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKc0ffbFQVZQO9pp8Pxs4_N6TFly9CQxfvsAgv3XUeqNhSadt6W5au2BzMKsmYKw-JtElQ3-wfozC9YXD0Xf4YBL-X9005WCSiRamdUI2BKuE1w0rAV1buDKnP_92tr_lMmZZ8MVxyuuERwwgg5NoAhb0Veiqo1PLwtXm1M9Rc3j6XT7Ask-nI1QdPMQ6Z/s320/05.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The poem 'Invocación' by Raquel Lanseros, included in her collected poetry, <i>Sin ley de gravedad</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">As usual, I also sought out new places for
reading in my home village. While I did go exploring, I was less careful to
bring books along, and so I did less outdoors reading than I had hoped. But the
very last day of my summer vacation, I went on a kind of pilgrimage to a
mountain lake, where I had not been for the better part of fifteen years. To be
able to once more see the intense beauty of the place – a place of which I have
been dreaming again and again – was a joy beyond description. And to mark my
return to this place of so many memories, I had brought with me a collected
edition of the poems by Raquel Lanseros, one of my favourite poets, which I had
bought during my time in Madrid. Raquel Lanseros is a poet whose verses mean a
lot to me, so it was the perfect way to reconnect with this magical landscape. </span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4YcTVtNUl8wThTLhyphenhyphenfJ1YsoMUosXUq3Xd0Xeu9vVjmsLttMLFOED65Gu-Khey-YqsYkR1GZ37hz74uWlkMTzpyHNAqU54lTsMaR1KtgSGaPNWIZRmHtDiilN2aoQJJXQdh44RXzbR9fUTgPs3IAcAkDEYfkNJlbJw198gvTOgD7TNimSC05gZ9_J_w0x/s4160/06.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4YcTVtNUl8wThTLhyphenhyphenfJ1YsoMUosXUq3Xd0Xeu9vVjmsLttMLFOED65Gu-Khey-YqsYkR1GZ37hz74uWlkMTzpyHNAqU54lTsMaR1KtgSGaPNWIZRmHtDiilN2aoQJJXQdh44RXzbR9fUTgPs3IAcAkDEYfkNJlbJw198gvTOgD7TNimSC05gZ9_J_w0x/s320/06.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">William Butler Yeats, <i>The Tower</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUyUQOAh2XEOEs4s2JnrO1A43J3SD47EUA2e8KXadHe9VtDXlXp_21sf88LZPBCcln3THb6vKjQ5maONby6HHdgcVSyIIixXXVZzamXI8KmEtqSM2hd_uZJ2GUwrEsFJog65e4ulIMAcVZT3HMBa_0fqG4YQmOijJrx6XvDbyJsgEPozSG0Z3hXpPhaY2/s4160/07.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaUyUQOAh2XEOEs4s2JnrO1A43J3SD47EUA2e8KXadHe9VtDXlXp_21sf88LZPBCcln3THb6vKjQ5maONby6HHdgcVSyIIixXXVZzamXI8KmEtqSM2hd_uZJ2GUwrEsFJog65e4ulIMAcVZT3HMBa_0fqG4YQmOijJrx6XvDbyJsgEPozSG0Z3hXpPhaY2/s320/07.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">William Butler Yeats, <i>The Tower</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">My last conference for the year allowed me an
opportunity to visit a new country, Ireland, and a long-standing dream finally
came true. The day after my presentation, I was ambling about in Dublin, and
one of my priorities was to buy a book. A friend of my had recommended a
bookshop, and I was pleased to find some single-volume editions of poetry
collections by William Butler Yeats, another favourite of mine. I ended up
buying a facsimile first edition of <i>The Tower</i>, and read many of its
verses while drinking tea in a pub later that day, and also in the rose garden
of St. Stephen’s Green while waiting for the airport bus. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Reading by lists</b> <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">As with every year, I aim to read a minimum of
twelve books, divided among the same four categories, namely a) Nobel
laureates, b) Norwegian books, c) academic books, and d) books from a list I
put together during my first year at university. This year, I managed to meet
my own minimum requirement in all categories, but not by much – except with
regards to category b. Some of these books were long overdue, as I have been
meaning to read them for years. The Norwegian translation of Chrétien de Troyes’
<i>Story of the grail</i>, for instance, have been in my collection since my
first year at university, when I bought it in the campus bookshop, together
with a big stack of other books from the same series, Thorleif Dahls
kulturbibliotek. This series, or this ‘cultural library’, aims to make great
literary works available in Norwegian, and I am still making my way through the
haul from 2008. Similarly, Hippolyte Delehaye’s classic methodological
reflection, <i>The Legends of the saints</i>, is one that I should have
finished at an early point during my academic career, as so much of the last
decade has revolved around the study of saints. I read these books with great
anticipation, and was greatly rewarded. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5kPLzWt5o9SdS6zZkmgWbSC84TwTNzAdGYzAGdnw5WGwNTRzGtvQzdEjr3SsuhQq7irBZyV2KXc50fWw90oEn9QIwWMSZJ6v4DcKjFZq33XbU2bmEHJK9H4j6PclROXmVkZZ9tZxdTzK8_tg_gzKKqR_uWlMoV2HuWkzE7n4jHZXRIUba2Evc6pQSBOU/s4160/08.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN5kPLzWt5o9SdS6zZkmgWbSC84TwTNzAdGYzAGdnw5WGwNTRzGtvQzdEjr3SsuhQq7irBZyV2KXc50fWw90oEn9QIwWMSZJ6v4DcKjFZq33XbU2bmEHJK9H4j6PclROXmVkZZ9tZxdTzK8_tg_gzKKqR_uWlMoV2HuWkzE7n4jHZXRIUba2Evc6pQSBOU/s320/08.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Chrétien de Troyes, <i>Gralsfortellingen</i> (translated by Helge Nordahl)</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGKna5OmDrRecFoGlegiLswysxXQfs8l_nW_o_qyNQIeuTe2Btj_dodRMlvzHdFoA2SXhR-kUe65YrhhgA59x1xeKaE2AI6FKhOkqz0JyoSuqU-v3PcElvjhFr8IlnCOSyU5WG0fCrePyjQJPr2MKjM8sNwdV9AzduBMVjV7xaWyq1hhWNfMnSECk3XNy/s4160/09.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKGKna5OmDrRecFoGlegiLswysxXQfs8l_nW_o_qyNQIeuTe2Btj_dodRMlvzHdFoA2SXhR-kUe65YrhhgA59x1xeKaE2AI6FKhOkqz0JyoSuqU-v3PcElvjhFr8IlnCOSyU5WG0fCrePyjQJPr2MKjM8sNwdV9AzduBMVjV7xaWyq1hhWNfMnSECk3XNy/s320/09.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Hippolyte Delehaye, <i>The Legends of the Saints</i> (translated by Donald Attwater)</div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjdwKRx2vUc6A9TmZzb-dIZtaplp_DY8A9d6QYPvCCx9BEFdPCy1aEEZB7e-qqvTctf1beNevxoncXcWuBDrF-S6pvzR_7SRik095N2MdipQgS2KZbopc4hGVLIsMtfC_MlnWAT5BwZaYUGaBVOp-sqKz8kTErMMgbKzqocP7CO0isNblyreT04rJMOsF/s4160/10.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGjdwKRx2vUc6A9TmZzb-dIZtaplp_DY8A9d6QYPvCCx9BEFdPCy1aEEZB7e-qqvTctf1beNevxoncXcWuBDrF-S6pvzR_7SRik095N2MdipQgS2KZbopc4hGVLIsMtfC_MlnWAT5BwZaYUGaBVOp-sqKz8kTErMMgbKzqocP7CO0isNblyreT04rJMOsF/s320/10.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, <i>Geografi og kjærlighed</i></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsdxa92Rg1gvXAPNqNc0oNMSIj9JKksYiqv7DbbSHKOfCqGHbxGo5JdwZf3uK4zHf0KjQpYzs_t4Bc9_zlsGoWwn-dPtRE2MZTE_JtTviIFmnUC9Mo7FHEuRZb-MVbYlvTuEjbjpOBnZwqIRuVnhO8BtQUzmEPdSILcZl3w-VB20r4MShlsfdrxK32yKrs/s4160/11.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsdxa92Rg1gvXAPNqNc0oNMSIj9JKksYiqv7DbbSHKOfCqGHbxGo5JdwZf3uK4zHf0KjQpYzs_t4Bc9_zlsGoWwn-dPtRE2MZTE_JtTviIFmnUC9Mo7FHEuRZb-MVbYlvTuEjbjpOBnZwqIRuVnhO8BtQUzmEPdSILcZl3w-VB20r4MShlsfdrxK32yKrs/s320/11.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Sigurd Hoel, <i>Syndere i sommersol</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Other books in this category, I came to more
blindly. Kenzaburō Ōe’s <i>The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away</i>, was
a title I had noted down years ago, when I set out to make a list of which books
by which Nobel laureates I should prioritize. I have no recollection why I
chose this particular one, and I had no particular expectation of what to find
on those pages. Ōe was not one of those Nobel laureates I knew outside of the
Nobel canon, and his books were not among those I envisioned myself reading
early in this lifetime project. However, since Ōe passed away in March, and
since the university library honoured his passing with a selection of books to
borrow, I decided to take the opportunity to be more relevant and trendy than
usual, and so I read this very disturbing but masterfully crafted novel, which
provided a very interesting insight into Japanese history. Similarly, I did not
know what to expect from Annie Ernaux’s <i>The Years</i>, and I had heard great
things about her description of everyday life. However, while she is among the
more accomplished authors of auto-fiction, I was also reminded why this is a genre
that I struggle to enjoy. </span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgonYzRPuXUV3CMkCsSGVt785aAIgzZAPrdCKG5fWsY89Pdk8L15S3ef0kNJV083yBQqLWkh9TXh7vvzcWPWqDd26z97GDyqFU2AOOz-WoXW4AN5MUCb8Wz47Fis5XQm4KJFxGcO7iNJekAiltnHSFSQz6l09_Slakp85kX5RpEoaKg4m72gJlcg8wPRnH5/s4160/12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgonYzRPuXUV3CMkCsSGVt785aAIgzZAPrdCKG5fWsY89Pdk8L15S3ef0kNJV083yBQqLWkh9TXh7vvzcWPWqDd26z97GDyqFU2AOOz-WoXW4AN5MUCb8Wz47Fis5XQm4KJFxGcO7iNJekAiltnHSFSQz6l09_Slakp85kX5RpEoaKg4m72gJlcg8wPRnH5/s320/12.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Teach us to outgrown our madness</i>, a collection of four short novels by <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: left;">Kenzaburō Ōe</span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeLDeR_NH7xzhAv72U_PpKzGdR92x73MkqZyd0lyGAYjZiZUBZGjU495ds9e8OyUhPyLEtejnlVQ806dGEypFfRojqMOBS5uTtPbSvDzzOFZ4chGo-ziOlqbKqDrPIjqFUsIeKIVABg3geSu-okzFTKkleQOlPwBXrOZp3LaU60CIk62JW746TImm35-M/s4160/13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkeLDeR_NH7xzhAv72U_PpKzGdR92x73MkqZyd0lyGAYjZiZUBZGjU495ds9e8OyUhPyLEtejnlVQ806dGEypFfRojqMOBS5uTtPbSvDzzOFZ4chGo-ziOlqbKqDrPIjqFUsIeKIVABg3geSu-okzFTKkleQOlPwBXrOZp3LaU60CIk62JW746TImm35-M/s320/13.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Annie Ernaux, <i>Årene</i> (<i>Les Années</i>; translated by Henning and Margrethe Solberg)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Cultural confusion consisting of French literature, Norwegian cheese, and American non-alcoholic beer</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">The elder Edda</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <br />
<br />
Aside from my recurring lists, every year tends to bring about new
mini-projects or new strands of reading. Early in 2023, I embarked on one such
mini-project when I finally gave in and bought the first of four volumes of the
<i>Elder Edda</i>, with facing-page translations into Nynorsk by Knut Ødegård.
While I am quick to buy and slow to read books, I set myself the challenge that
I should finish each volume before buying the next one, and consequently I
spent the next month in the disturbing, fascinating and morbid world of the
gods and heroes of the pre-Christian Norse. I was delighted to finally delve
into this world, as the <i>Elder Edda</i> remains one of the great literary
treasures of the world. I was particularly fascinated by the poems about
heroes, which include branches of the storyworld of Sigurd the dragonslayer,
which are stories that go back – in some way, shape or form – to the great
upheavals of the fifth century. Reading these results of stories travelling
from Gaul, Pannonia and Italy, and then northwards into Scandinavia, in the
course of a few hundred years was a powerful testament to the
interconnectedness of early medieval Europe. <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPYi9pYXXXgF0wDrp2sWklr8fIdb1Vra4wBd8oyZK6QjvkclWgQj5CU5Du_RmuPFNIyQUQ9WBKg6cXUCPfzgnB4ogqFqP0qoEXvh3jpNxyhO64vvxr7L3aOVO-h60U6VBswlc_VNtCwPl1xLFZNh3Cpsof7eE9LGctaEGcOVZogq8_GRNxcdSVMPELQuaf/s4160/14.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPYi9pYXXXgF0wDrp2sWklr8fIdb1Vra4wBd8oyZK6QjvkclWgQj5CU5Du_RmuPFNIyQUQ9WBKg6cXUCPfzgnB4ogqFqP0qoEXvh3jpNxyhO64vvxr7L3aOVO-h60U6VBswlc_VNtCwPl1xLFZNh3Cpsof7eE9LGctaEGcOVZogq8_GRNxcdSVMPELQuaf/s320/14.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">First volume of Knut Ødegård's translation of the <i>Elder Edda</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtmOUkldJrspBCiL7Z7ZEAsiTZxlO6ezSUHNFoVNRX46QmBRxSNryIaIMUQ0GWKBysN_P7eBIDsLUYCYXIuChhVuNou4TnENux3jMX6JvFtmxaKKwp3P0gkfhOiZWJrhsHztaxxMRnMVQDfzlmCLc4d5nx9Qdyjn3N1SGXAbOb7-bFR6YhUxlFQSC9ipJ/s4160/15.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLtmOUkldJrspBCiL7Z7ZEAsiTZxlO6ezSUHNFoVNRX46QmBRxSNryIaIMUQ0GWKBysN_P7eBIDsLUYCYXIuChhVuNou4TnENux3jMX6JvFtmxaKKwp3P0gkfhOiZWJrhsHztaxxMRnMVQDfzlmCLc4d5nx9Qdyjn3N1SGXAbOb7-bFR6YhUxlFQSC9ipJ/s320/15.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">All four volumes united</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Utopia and
Robinsonades</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <br />
<br />
The main strand of reading that has woven together some of the books of the
year has been utopian literature, broadly considered. I have long had a strong
interest in utopian fantasies and their significance in the history of ideas,
and I have been reading utopian stories for many years already. In 2023,
however, I had particular impetus to delve deeper into such stories, as a
friend and colleague and I have been planning an MA course on utopian thinking
in the Middle Ages. Our discussions around this topic has spurred me on to thinking
about Utopianism as more than just a fascinating topic, but also as a topic on
which I can do some original research myself. Consequently, I have prioritized
certain utopian stories with the aim of teaching about them. Some have already
made their way on to the syllabus, such as Gabriel de Foigny’s <i>La Terre Australe,
connue</i> from 1676, translated by David Fausett, or the anonymous
seventeenth-century Spanish novel <i>Sinapia</i>. And it was this motivation
that roused me to finally begin labouring my way through Plato’s <i>Republic</i>,
which kept me company in several cafés in Warsaw this November. Other books in
this strand, however, have not been included in the syllabus, although I expect
that they will appear in teaching, if only by way of reference or in-class
anecdotes. One such case is the novel <i>Arqtiq</i>, an 1899 novel by Anna
Adolph, which includes elements of hollow earth fiction, space travel, Arctic
exploration and Christian colonialism in a very strange and strangely
entertaining blend. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjafgeQsfUufQ4XTZ2k9gErM7oul66KHSU7vHNC_4jd_5D6CyjksYKswqMe8lowPQ5HcQnvI1SO50NLuUl7LLk2eqPgY5jCnTyqwet3Kr6wVGHZWCdrCLM4FuHuv7X7L_TqcD73V2sgIPoISra2H64ItoRgbfD8W9LbYVZCnauJjEItwHyhsNz81N8vAUdS/s4160/16.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjafgeQsfUufQ4XTZ2k9gErM7oul66KHSU7vHNC_4jd_5D6CyjksYKswqMe8lowPQ5HcQnvI1SO50NLuUl7LLk2eqPgY5jCnTyqwet3Kr6wVGHZWCdrCLM4FuHuv7X7L_TqcD73V2sgIPoISra2H64ItoRgbfD8W9LbYVZCnauJjEItwHyhsNz81N8vAUdS/s320/16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A shelfie from my office, containing a selection of Utopia-related literature for next year's teaching</div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHsl79vZ9XuEvmirghEDyylei2_XIFBu0W2w-N7BrRsDL_B9dVYVNXgDg2U3Ylb_0_9OP2n8o3hlINoCv-aaOc6FW4cTLKauM-E123ANSGPlVhFpQxMvovVW30sitMhmBMPnU9DE9vfDem3tT6-fxAAK1E-NHHB1e3xqTczhqBLvHUQK5nI9XxpGnPvTQ/s4160/17.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHsl79vZ9XuEvmirghEDyylei2_XIFBu0W2w-N7BrRsDL_B9dVYVNXgDg2U3Ylb_0_9OP2n8o3hlINoCv-aaOc6FW4cTLKauM-E123ANSGPlVhFpQxMvovVW30sitMhmBMPnU9DE9vfDem3tT6-fxAAK1E-NHHB1e3xqTczhqBLvHUQK5nI9XxpGnPvTQ/s320/17.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Erasmus Roterodamus, <i>Dårskapens lovtale</i> (translated by Trygve Sparre) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">While not typically seen as utopian literature, this polemic belongs to a medieval utopian tradition</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Within this strand of utopian literature,
however, another strand materialized, namely the Robinsonade. Strictly
speaking, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> and the many stories either imitating or drawing
inspiration from it also belong to the utopian genre. After all, Robinson Crusoe
creates his own private kingdom on his own terms, and lays down rules of his
own making. This sub-strand in the past year’s reading was more of an accident,
but a very happy one. In all, however, I only read four Robinsonades, but
subsumed within the broader topic of utopianism, they stood out in such degree
that they created a theme which ran through much of my literary thinking in
2023. The books in question are, in order of reading, <i>The Life and
Adventures of Peter Wilkins</i> (1751) by Robert Paltock, <i>Håkon Håkonsen</i>
(1873), a Norwegian Robinsonade by O. V. Falck-Ytter, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>
(1719), and <i>The Female American</i> (1767), of uncertain authorship. The
latter was a great surprise, because I only bought it at a book sale, not
knowing anything about the content, but I was pleased to see how well it fitted
my reading that year.</span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpKlKPiVGc7HNoS1Sp5eli1GsMZ0bYX6zTt5vXWmY74haP9PRxrLbrVtig_uZ1X3N1xYb6xVV5c-71sV07cao1tTIfMuDG-6T1hjpcK8A5adYL-AxEqgKL2Yv23IjazZmd3cgatX_o2QxHae2oijhpvwpffb6PELC-Qq68xFH_IUgrv3mIfLjR5-q-XGn/s4160/18.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVpKlKPiVGc7HNoS1Sp5eli1GsMZ0bYX6zTt5vXWmY74haP9PRxrLbrVtig_uZ1X3N1xYb6xVV5c-71sV07cao1tTIfMuDG-6T1hjpcK8A5adYL-AxEqgKL2Yv23IjazZmd3cgatX_o2QxHae2oijhpvwpffb6PELC-Qq68xFH_IUgrv3mIfLjR5-q-XGn/s320/18.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Robert Paltock, <i>The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins</i></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXU2p9JPh4AJM3mg7Ux7EJGvPDLA0FLjODVf_drwD_muGx8PRcl3_jc2yk1ygk-zLKI_qC__Oo-pVRP3nJBnFCkhlFipjIZvqF132kvM01q52NLB9XQlBWMNKLpuG7dYCF5IkA_so-iW_0aL93C5E5IgWgP7MxVumyzSXIQoZHwX1TK6aXY0PAz4AE0Fbr/s4160/19.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXU2p9JPh4AJM3mg7Ux7EJGvPDLA0FLjODVf_drwD_muGx8PRcl3_jc2yk1ygk-zLKI_qC__Oo-pVRP3nJBnFCkhlFipjIZvqF132kvM01q52NLB9XQlBWMNKLpuG7dYCF5IkA_so-iW_0aL93C5E5IgWgP7MxVumyzSXIQoZHwX1TK6aXY0PAz4AE0Fbr/s320/19.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">O. V. Falck-Ytter, <i>Håkon Håkonsen</i></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbw016kdElcabG9mm6FdQ5goNBn5yUPkp2IlOZC-0zavsglKuYLrPms06wK3q9Jp-adkfvQzvbrKzqY737JxO5D5yR_DviTzJg0b63L6I6tlnHT5FcXIoCCmZDomi0o-9l6CDAh4FTiURJEapsDDZxm4sXTqZlEn07O_2hKg6cUY7yZiXbd5dOts-aJHGn/s4160/20.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbw016kdElcabG9mm6FdQ5goNBn5yUPkp2IlOZC-0zavsglKuYLrPms06wK3q9Jp-adkfvQzvbrKzqY737JxO5D5yR_DviTzJg0b63L6I6tlnHT5FcXIoCCmZDomi0o-9l6CDAh4FTiURJEapsDDZxm4sXTqZlEn07O_2hKg6cUY7yZiXbd5dOts-aJHGn/s320/20.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Map of the islands where Håkon Håkonsen was a castaway</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The novel was advertised as a Norwegian Robinson</div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2B_1szGzOv9_kKFRvUd8KRzrxkq45gerG0paHHen88007y2fBfPzrIj1G96TIC9-rx2eW1rETcHjPLjjBHdbkOhZ2WMQTaK5OoL0WgTMFpcvAtZUDz-3qwty_OUyi8C3QcApYVPuQuNLnijMBzPZLyKS6DY9lrdROBJyAup8a5PJbTzl0_AnJ_2_MbgSQ/s4160/21.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2B_1szGzOv9_kKFRvUd8KRzrxkq45gerG0paHHen88007y2fBfPzrIj1G96TIC9-rx2eW1rETcHjPLjjBHdbkOhZ2WMQTaK5OoL0WgTMFpcvAtZUDz-3qwty_OUyi8C3QcApYVPuQuNLnijMBzPZLyKS6DY9lrdROBJyAup8a5PJbTzl0_AnJ_2_MbgSQ/s320/21.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Daniel Defoe, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3ht6eXRvMuiWvaDW_e6vwp1uaLJJ3_BjwdJd-qbH9Rc3v0xVALGJZdbF2YyVjLieLG-F8XzJeMhYEPsG1pt_go0yaQclS9HhZYHCZ3JrbhCZR6eL3QOlY595eTUAvIs7qwfs0fo9u-5l8Y-YXng6Ad17c_Kc77zqF_q6VIVwJUyLkrfWYOXKnfknUckf/s4160/22.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_3ht6eXRvMuiWvaDW_e6vwp1uaLJJ3_BjwdJd-qbH9Rc3v0xVALGJZdbF2YyVjLieLG-F8XzJeMhYEPsG1pt_go0yaQclS9HhZYHCZ3JrbhCZR6eL3QOlY595eTUAvIs7qwfs0fo9u-5l8Y-YXng6Ad17c_Kc77zqF_q6VIVwJUyLkrfWYOXKnfknUckf/s320/22.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Unca Eliza Winkfield (pseudonym), <i>The Female American</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Sundry highlights</span></b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> <br />
<br />
Aside from these themes and categories, there were many other book-related highlights
of 2023.</span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv35_EuaufY6DoNSRADGNyf55RRlTzsW3elmKEcRcP7EMBaIexYI3-7zmcJv43k63Uq4HQi6dfNHdUHbMwFDvYEfdZfsn358vumxlwa7OMmovLpZ0XDL4jOaoCSylpaa1hshKQ7D_IyTj25dTKQ7ta4k2u01Omd3I0gOysrG1cRj_X2S73HnRetKjPcwp6/s4160/23.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv35_EuaufY6DoNSRADGNyf55RRlTzsW3elmKEcRcP7EMBaIexYI3-7zmcJv43k63Uq4HQi6dfNHdUHbMwFDvYEfdZfsn358vumxlwa7OMmovLpZ0XDL4jOaoCSylpaa1hshKQ7D_IyTj25dTKQ7ta4k2u01Omd3I0gOysrG1cRj_X2S73HnRetKjPcwp6/s320/23.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Priya Hein, <i>Riambel</i></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Reading the excellent and heart-rending <i>Riambel</i>
by Priya Hein the same afternoon I was gifted a signed copy by the author. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguARFJ9th3VH0LR5zRK3wG6PZQFd4XCanTuVHk4nTNsxn1PsYzt7EeCkThhqGTalsCUFhIQiYZgO4YyC1GsUkodvypyS8vu_oFBbahm-CV8cu7_Rk6sUjSFYv0JR3FD3uVO5GvPeUECbsySc1zvE4IXMPzplOduaeNBnCNA9xkYkWyuxk6eSuHGmFGt42W/s4160/24.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguARFJ9th3VH0LR5zRK3wG6PZQFd4XCanTuVHk4nTNsxn1PsYzt7EeCkThhqGTalsCUFhIQiYZgO4YyC1GsUkodvypyS8vu_oFBbahm-CV8cu7_Rk6sUjSFYv0JR3FD3uVO5GvPeUECbsySc1zvE4IXMPzplOduaeNBnCNA9xkYkWyuxk6eSuHGmFGt42W/s320/24.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Issue 568 of <i>Mosaik</i>, featuring the story 'Lelas Zorn' (Lela's wrath)</div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Learning about the existence of the historical
comic <i>Mosaik</i> in Erfurt. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuSMqgjrUbjikuxTvikETnjqLe8ghPgODhUNJYvtmP17Qh_iQBUtlDcbXxnxOl6OCGNZH3xyYXUEVurMYV8PXKhN0iA1KPK88B8yKhfqsHWIGU6PRYwG7wBjZOFRsuxyRfBUl88MLWaagtHvxXexmySi31BFjuLQWG-sp7limb7cLSWq6aDBsXZf9MJd69/s4160/25.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuSMqgjrUbjikuxTvikETnjqLe8ghPgODhUNJYvtmP17Qh_iQBUtlDcbXxnxOl6OCGNZH3xyYXUEVurMYV8PXKhN0iA1KPK88B8yKhfqsHWIGU6PRYwG7wBjZOFRsuxyRfBUl88MLWaagtHvxXexmySi31BFjuLQWG-sp7limb7cLSWq6aDBsXZf9MJd69/s320/25.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Exhibition hall at the La Biblioteca Nacionál de España </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">The walls are decorated with pages from the commentary by Beatus of Liébana</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Visiting an exhibition on Beatus of Liébana’s
commentary on the Apocalypse at the Spanish National Library in Madrid.</span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSP788RjRgKF-ZLCUecRk5_wGZMcBRczTzswuTQeVrf8V1AZvWQwC7JsAwKXRLBEufdT-FemNXq3dUn_qQ6HyDLL-0jg_Qkc3Iu6jaf5ALkioz3LH3LijP57rJAZmoi9y_scIlRNTrPufLjx-sXoGoGo_z8H4J1qycdZqHYzsVVkgHAOJ5L9XlTthzXYpo/s4160/26.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSP788RjRgKF-ZLCUecRk5_wGZMcBRczTzswuTQeVrf8V1AZvWQwC7JsAwKXRLBEufdT-FemNXq3dUn_qQ6HyDLL-0jg_Qkc3Iu6jaf5ALkioz3LH3LijP57rJAZmoi9y_scIlRNTrPufLjx-sXoGoGo_z8H4J1qycdZqHYzsVVkgHAOJ5L9XlTthzXYpo/s320/26.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">An issue of the regular <i>Tex Willer</i> series, and an issue of the <i>Young Tex Willer</i> series </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Both issues celebrate the 75th anniversary of the figure Tex Willer</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Picking up a few issues of one of my favourite
comics, <i>Tex Willer</i>, in the original Italian during a trip to Rome.</span></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyruOVivQEjSqM5Xv1HSbgra15KYJhyphenhyphenywxLOK6gi9NRUg_Io33N7YlTbTGzFxe4DjWwQkAaWApghWMcJbXBBKe3Wmax9UvGksS7500aIniP7HjUM08oWnNtsahQZrLHjitcTAWg33wloD7sEQ3YMShhLDgZ3-WbxsD_C361n4GmiITQS-t5xKty9QygJzb/s4160/27.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyruOVivQEjSqM5Xv1HSbgra15KYJhyphenhyphenywxLOK6gi9NRUg_Io33N7YlTbTGzFxe4DjWwQkAaWApghWMcJbXBBKe3Wmax9UvGksS7500aIniP7HjUM08oWnNtsahQZrLHjitcTAWg33wloD7sEQ3YMShhLDgZ3-WbxsD_C361n4GmiITQS-t5xKty9QygJzb/s320/27.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A selection of Jon Bing's library, which, after his passing, was given to a second-hand bookshop in Oslo</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Buying a book for a friend, which came from the
library of Jon Bing, one of Norway’s most important science fiction authors. </span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGPEH2a096dQBVEUSo3JWd5f9svCxWeL85iKjNW-Hr31TeGS-aKJHW3GHlt3QXtRnMzw5jvWp7AUEX9VUMTZRGGC_NvJPr5z_HFU_LOLQps65XpnjGKpo3nkOzKQsH4A7tFXkm5KQDbjJg3LlGMMiLMm5g4z2Hzig65_8wjNOGrcI204Tr-NSOUBSarF0/s4160/28.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGPEH2a096dQBVEUSo3JWd5f9svCxWeL85iKjNW-Hr31TeGS-aKJHW3GHlt3QXtRnMzw5jvWp7AUEX9VUMTZRGGC_NvJPr5z_HFU_LOLQps65XpnjGKpo3nkOzKQsH4A7tFXkm5KQDbjJg3LlGMMiLMm5g4z2Hzig65_8wjNOGrcI204Tr-NSOUBSarF0/s320/28.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A selection of Jon Fosse's books at the reception in the Oslo University Library</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Rejoicing in the fact that this year’s Nobel laureate,
Jon Fosse, writes in Nynorsk.</span></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Eg8LSO_vEplJ8B-AaYH3g64N-lclJJdnLlJZodKpslppO6Gf7TwhJ15wcy3_HCrxqFzcW0aN9xHXH175HMELxzl6iD73Nqt-e-QtIKi3QchrwgehY3VR3dpJq_wjvv-PhDUkuHdTA0u-qfVnGh_Of_do74jRmbDFLfYsbIRXX0IrXt2LIqy5ujGeLjRg/s4160/29.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Eg8LSO_vEplJ8B-AaYH3g64N-lclJJdnLlJZodKpslppO6Gf7TwhJ15wcy3_HCrxqFzcW0aN9xHXH175HMELxzl6iD73Nqt-e-QtIKi3QchrwgehY3VR3dpJq_wjvv-PhDUkuHdTA0u-qfVnGh_Of_do74jRmbDFLfYsbIRXX0IrXt2LIqy5ujGeLjRg/s320/29.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">A selection of several academic books and primary sources hunted down in the campus bookshop</div><p><br /></p><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Desperately trying to get rid of my surplus
research allowance at the very end of the term.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><i style="font-weight: bold;">Similar blogposts (from 2023)</i> <br /><br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/02/reading-spots-part-1-glimpses-from.html" target="_blank">Reading-spots, part 1</a> </p><p><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/02/reading-spots-part-2.html" target="_blank">Reading-spots, part 2</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-non-existent-manuscript-brief-note.html" target="_blank">The non-existent manuscript</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/08/reading-spots-part-3.html" target="_blank">Reading-spots, part 3</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/09/a-different-oslo-or-novels-as.html" target="_blank">A different Oslo</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/09/reading-spots-part-4.html" target="_blank">Reading-spots, part 4</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/10/celebrating-nynorsk-celebrating-jon.html" target="_blank">Celebrating Nynorsk</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/10/reading-in-room-glimpse-from-dublin.html" target="_blank">Reading in the room</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/12/plains-and-deep-dells-contrasts-of.html" target="_blank">Contrasts of reading</a> <br /><br /><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-5548240150044967852023-12-29T07:20:00.000-08:002023-12-29T07:20:23.695-08:00Saint Thomas of Canterbury in Roskilde<p> </p><p>Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury, the archbishop who was murdered by a group of knights in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Following his canonization in 1173, his cult spread quickly along various networks, and became a well-known reference point in Latin Christendom. The cult reached Denmark at a relatively early point. It is not known exactly when - and when it comes to religious impulses, their arrivals can rarely be reduced to a single point in time anyway - but we should expect it to have taken place already in the 1170s. The reason for this early date is that a Canterbury collection of miracles associated with Thomas, mentions a few Danish cases, one of which being associated with the Danish crusade against the Wends that began around 1180. <br /><br />The popularity of Thomas in medieval Denmark remains a contentious issue. Only a few, scattered sources have survived, and there has not yet been a research project seeking to map out the development of the cult. Consequently, we do not know whether the cult remained stable in its popularity, or whether it shifted and waned, or whether there were significant local differences. <br /><br />From time to time, I have myself delved into the sources pertaining to the cult of Thomas of Canterbury in Denmark, and I am still thinking about what to make of my scattered findings. One thing that has become clear, however, is that in several parts of Denmark, the feast of Thomas was celebrated using the liturgy composed in, and disseminated from, Canterbury, namely the office known as <i>Studens livor</i>. This is an unsurprising discovery, because Canterbury Cathedral was very active in its promotion of the cult of Saint Thomas, and this liturgical office became the standard in many medieval church provinces. However, unsurprising is not the same as uninteresting. That the standard liturgical office was in use in Roskilde diocese - as demonstrated by the 1517 <i>Breviarium Roschildense</i> - suggests that there were contacts between Canterbury and Roskilde in the twelfth century, when the office was composed, and that these contacts left an imprint that lasted throughout the medieval period - largely thanks to the conservative nature of liturgical practice. <br /><br />In <i>Breviarium Roschildense</i>, the feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury begins with an antiphon, which is exactly how <i>Studens livor</i> usually begins. It is a summary of the story of Thomas, describing his martyrdom and its importance, serving - in effect - to inform new listeners about what they are about to hear in greater detail. Below the picture, you will find both a transcription of the Latin and a translation into English by Kay Brainerd Slocum, taken from her excellent monograph <i>Liturgies in Honor of Thomas Becket</i>, to date one of the best monographs on the cult of Saint Thomas. <br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhorJcInFdCAVo3niFUzQdRCxlw-C2a99DNSzfjRI_GvCAkYS6FEevWvCbTiR1VqF80ZMfK56DLQpgd3RPsuZSFRPOxklJwTAVsTl94nfCl9coUr5jHDAJxvQE91kjtHk1eJKCGg4HHXm1P6_AvPHDYwnuBdWIcKaVX1t47uDEeWcAC_cyDdvWxy4J21jrH/s585/Breviarium%20Roschildense,%201519,%20f.98v.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="406" data-original-width="585" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhorJcInFdCAVo3niFUzQdRCxlw-C2a99DNSzfjRI_GvCAkYS6FEevWvCbTiR1VqF80ZMfK56DLQpgd3RPsuZSFRPOxklJwTAVsTl94nfCl9coUr5jHDAJxvQE91kjtHk1eJKCGg4HHXm1P6_AvPHDYwnuBdWIcKaVX1t47uDEeWcAC_cyDdvWxy4J21jrH/s320/Breviarium%20Roschildense,%201519,%20f.98v.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Breviarium Roschildense</i> (1517), f.98v</div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Pastor cesus in gregis medio <br />pacem emit cruoris precio. <br />O letus dolor in tristi gaudio <br />grex respirat pastore mortuo, <br />plangens plaudit mater in filio, <br />quia vincit victor sub gladio <br /><br /><br />The shepherd, slain, in the midst of his flock, <br />Purchases peace at the cost of blood; <br />Joyous grief in sorrowful praise, <br />The flock breathes, though its shepherd is dead; <br />Lamenting, the mother rejoices in the son, <br />Because he lives, as victor under the sword. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-49743082219932719952023-12-26T02:08:00.000-08:002023-12-26T02:08:15.385-08:00Christmas in the Ål stave church ceiling<p> </p><p>At the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, it is possible to behold one of the most exquisite surviving works of medieval art from Norway, namely the ceiling of the ciborium of Ål stave church. The ceiling, visible to the ministrant priest and presumably intended to amplify his voice during sermons, contains a number of Biblical episodes, from Creation to the life of Christ. One of the key episodes is the Nativity, where Mary is shown reclining in a bed and looked after by a servant or a nurse, while Joseph keeps an eye on the manger, with the ox and the ass looking curiously into it. It is possible - although I have not yet read any analysis of this artwork - that the bed in which Mary lies is aimed to convey a sense of royalty. The blanket being in two colours, rather than a single colour, might be seen as foreshadowing Mary's role as queen of Heaven, a role that is made clear in the next episode. Here, we see the Virgin Mary enthroned, an angel attending to her with a thurible, and two of the three kings bringing gifts. The Christ-child sits in her lap, and Mary herself is wearing a crown. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtiSI_Dqr5Cn8NYIx0QiVaBa7x4Xisa0sDdeqhfvbXrUHMrxWHqsM0IXU8VIv84wqktuRjEqnm63DOavL2yj0BK-fmbb1SJO5Jd0imP4ayOattgJff92jeUJ6xF3NeKDfqdfIpohivg_BotKlifbyKuVeoJ9LYn7y0K22XBw-_3c78Wy0VyfkDWrpYiPf/s4160/IMG_20211009_134000_HHT%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtiSI_Dqr5Cn8NYIx0QiVaBa7x4Xisa0sDdeqhfvbXrUHMrxWHqsM0IXU8VIv84wqktuRjEqnm63DOavL2yj0BK-fmbb1SJO5Jd0imP4ayOattgJff92jeUJ6xF3NeKDfqdfIpohivg_BotKlifbyKuVeoJ9LYn7y0K22XBw-_3c78Wy0VyfkDWrpYiPf/s320/IMG_20211009_134000_HHT%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-24890988983558888912023-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:002023-12-22T09:38:53.556-08:00Ale for Christmas<p><br /></p><p>In <i>Gulatingslova,</i> the law of the Gulathing law province in Norway, there are strict rules for the brewing of ale before Christmas. These rules are listed in chapters 6 and 7 of the so-called Christian law, namely that part of the provincial law that pertained to religious life. In these two chapters, we read that the ale should be brewed before the feast of All Saints (November 1), and it was to be consecrated to Christ and the Virgin Mary, in the hope of a good and peaceful year. Failure or refusal to brew the Christmas ale could incur penalties, at least if the means of your family were sufficient to enable you to brew the quantities prescribed by the law. <br /><br />Ale was an important part of the community-building of medieval Norway. Consequently, the rules of <i>Gulatingslova</i> draws up how much ale should be brewed per household, and how many people should brew together. Brewing was, in other words, something that at least three or more people did as a joint effort. However, Norway being as topographically interesting and challenging as it remains to this day, there were also exceptions for those that lived too far away, be it on remote islands or in the mountains. <br /><br />The brewing of ale for Christmas has continued to our own times, and in my family we brew our ale every year. Granted, we fail to follow the rules laid down in <i>Gulatingslova</i>, as we start a few days before Christmas Eve, usually the 18th or the 19th of December, and we would have incurred fines . Unlike the Norwegians in the Middle Ages, however, we aim to stop the brewing process before the alcohol sets in, so we bottle the liquid after one or two nights. This year, we let it brew in its keg for two nights. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrTNG6WsnPOvnX3KTNvgIl9p9sE4KnkfUAzhp4xpw83ZaFrG97nUCEDKhXjzAlFt01a2-MlEj5oEo2CBgfhAq_7LIV9BMQ3Tt99aYmI4YI449_szr445jVzCqTjebDZK__a3W5XrShMsrde7rOSoNR62fwqcA1nNmWzZhuZMFgxAicSg30vxLqwLTMK6Q7/s4160/IMG_20231219_142759%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrTNG6WsnPOvnX3KTNvgIl9p9sE4KnkfUAzhp4xpw83ZaFrG97nUCEDKhXjzAlFt01a2-MlEj5oEo2CBgfhAq_7LIV9BMQ3Tt99aYmI4YI449_szr445jVzCqTjebDZK__a3W5XrShMsrde7rOSoNR62fwqcA1nNmWzZhuZMFgxAicSg30vxLqwLTMK6Q7/s320/IMG_20231219_142759%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br />The common word for this kind of traditional Christmas ale nowadays is 'sukkerøl', which literally means sugar ale or sugar beer. It is brewed on a syrup of juniper and malt extract, and a lot of sugar. The process involves several steps, the first of which is to go into the woods or bogs to find some juniper twigs which are green and fresh, preferably with some berries on them. Sometimes, this step can be surprisingly challenging, such as when the juniper bushes are covered in snow, or - as happened about two decades ago - if there is an ongoing sickness which turns the juniper needles brown and dead. For this reason, I always tend to make a mental note of where to find good juniper bushes whenever I'm walking about in the village. <br /><br />The day after the the juniper twigs have been gathered, the brewing itself commences. The twigs are boiled until the needles turn blackish brown. The keg is filled with boiled water - to ensure that there are no bacteria -, sugar is boiled to a milky syrup, and, when the temperature is low enough not to kill the yeast, all the ingredients are put into the water. As our keg only takes 25 litres, we need to be careful in measuring out how much water is used for the syrups of sugar and juniper. Once mixed, the ale is left to brew at a stable temperature. After two nights, the glorious golden liquid is put on jars and bottles, and are ready to be enjoyed at every meal. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaBnVMhBsIHiZ_A2s0Wa0TfZ_4d9gKNItIjLZjpRm7Npxr20WPXLUJGeVpRSBJM0jcI3MYO_0NL4Glv9-XsmnY1cwqwWg9ehER7ybqDS7aFiAML4TO7eHSBonigX3By36cy0rM3tvLa_AHJQBlVU3lWJZmiZRJnx4U_u_j3_Av7SPN4xzNuwn9_ScltFx/s4160/IMG_20231219_142805.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaBnVMhBsIHiZ_A2s0Wa0TfZ_4d9gKNItIjLZjpRm7Npxr20WPXLUJGeVpRSBJM0jcI3MYO_0NL4Glv9-XsmnY1cwqwWg9ehER7ybqDS7aFiAML4TO7eHSBonigX3By36cy0rM3tvLa_AHJQBlVU3lWJZmiZRJnx4U_u_j3_Av7SPN4xzNuwn9_ScltFx/s320/IMG_20231219_142805.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZ3QJfvpcQC9y_BJ0rPBYmUUISr6FesvQqT_dkwOqHAL12GVb4yTdsW7-pW35pHKY_NwbEFnXChkDpz8g8JumVvy2QtdSo5Qx6fvGlRus3hdMVAyiwJ5T9LjDDHOJakNq3VxNhszOyXdsYvXQJNC7gIHXCn6NAGgf263W4xdFrY4maAgnLm12lGCIpXKk/s4160/IMG_20231221_161926_HHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtZ3QJfvpcQC9y_BJ0rPBYmUUISr6FesvQqT_dkwOqHAL12GVb4yTdsW7-pW35pHKY_NwbEFnXChkDpz8g8JumVvy2QtdSo5Qx6fvGlRus3hdMVAyiwJ5T9LjDDHOJakNq3VxNhszOyXdsYvXQJNC7gIHXCn6NAGgf263W4xdFrY4maAgnLm12lGCIpXKk/s320/IMG_20231221_161926_HHT.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExiiIVPJ96P-0WVDmHGW5sW5MSQhQurdYzCqKDoYWPHJ9bWOAB4znOeRf-Fobq_3v1PZrB8vm5W4uIiXeu7EJalyYn3xt9QTPaKPNs_EZP3vUj3T-ibZz9IvFVSAeDxYxK8g9nc_K1aD79odHKA-xb1pgShtxSLm7-_84tiFQ9makyEqZMeS7Hnl0RN6P/s4160/IMG_20231221_165449_HHT%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExiiIVPJ96P-0WVDmHGW5sW5MSQhQurdYzCqKDoYWPHJ9bWOAB4znOeRf-Fobq_3v1PZrB8vm5W4uIiXeu7EJalyYn3xt9QTPaKPNs_EZP3vUj3T-ibZz9IvFVSAeDxYxK8g9nc_K1aD79odHKA-xb1pgShtxSLm7-_84tiFQ9makyEqZMeS7Hnl0RN6P/s320/IMG_20231221_165449_HHT%20(1).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">21,5 of the 23 litres of this year's production</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The brewing of ale is perhaps my favourite Christmas preparation. There are probably numerous reasons for this. Partly, it speaks to my sense of connection with the past, the joy of ensuring continuity across generation, to participate in an annual event in which my ancestors once participated, too. There is something about the passing down of knowledge and expertise that I find very pleasing, and perhaps especially because the old-fashioned aspects of the brewing stand in contrast to the many ephemeral and unnecessary elements of the contemporary, consumer-culture Christmas celebration. And, perhaps just as important, it also tastes delicious. </div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLC4N-aoU_dP7P8YTYqIk2cdnzk2hZQTHrHmEhxYlnLFeDoKecj3WaE7Wg-ZsBsinFRE6UGlcH-3LKut1DREwzUbwh-2-9Dvmul34m6J1O6K_xuewFhosQglpE4XzJDRrbbjly5kL-UG13fGwXWbSICsrQIKvieC2Q8j1wsCh0D7nQ0KbqbUfSoOi7Egyh/s4160/IMG_20231222_142746.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLC4N-aoU_dP7P8YTYqIk2cdnzk2hZQTHrHmEhxYlnLFeDoKecj3WaE7Wg-ZsBsinFRE6UGlcH-3LKut1DREwzUbwh-2-9Dvmul34m6J1O6K_xuewFhosQglpE4XzJDRrbbjly5kL-UG13fGwXWbSICsrQIKvieC2Q8j1wsCh0D7nQ0KbqbUfSoOi7Egyh/s320/IMG_20231222_142746.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-65024626858956717852023-12-12T11:50:00.000-08:002023-12-12T11:50:13.940-08:00Plains and deep dells - contrasts of reading<p> <br /><br />As I have often emphasized when writing about reading, I do enjoy those occasions when the contrast between what is being read and the place in which the reading is being done, makes both the reading and the surroundings much more memorable. Sometimes, this contrast is serendipitous, as I <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/04/contrasts-in-reading-life.html" target="_blank">noted </a>when describing my reading of Orosius a few years ago, while other times it is deliberately orchestrated in the hope that the contrast will serve to etch the experience more deeply into my memory. I November, I orchestrated such a contrast, and it was a great pleasure. <br /><br />The occasion was a research trip to Poland, where I stayed for two weeks. Having been to Poland before, I was familiar with the landscape: largely flat, and sometimes very flat. I prepared myself accordingly, and brought with me a novel whose scenes would be a far cry from the Polish fields. The novel in question was <i>Hubroen roper</i>, 'The eagle-owl calls', which was written in 1971 by the Norwegian author Mikkjel Fønhus (1894-1973), famous for his descriptions of the Norwegian wilderness. The novel chronicles the events of a hamlet in the interior valleys of Southern Norway through the last years of a female eagle-owl. <i>Hubroen roper</i> is a lament of the decline of the eagle-owl population in Norway, a decline caused in part by an aggressive policy onn the part of the Norwegian government, which paid a bounty for any raptors and predators that were shot or trapped. Since the narrative follows an eagle-owl, much of the scenery consists of deep dells, ravines and crags - in other words, exactly the kind of landscape with which I am familiar from my childhood. <br /><br />The riven topography of the novel provided a pleasant contrast with my surroundings. I read a substantial part of the short novel while sitting on a train to the village of Teresin, about an hour northwest of Warsaw. It was a late November morning, and outside the fields stretched on to some fuzzy-looking treetops on the horizon, which in turn shone black against a muted sunlight. It was a peculiar day. Quite cold, and with clouds that filtered the sunlight in such a way that the sun itself seemed to have drowned, and it felt like sunrise and sunset at the same time, despite being neither. The November fields of Mazovia had little in common with the pine-covered, ice-carved mountains of Southern Norway, and for that very reason both the mountains on the page and the fields beyond the page took a much larger place in my consciousness than they otherwise might have done. The whole affair pleased me greatly as a reader. <br /><br />The affair also pleased me as a scholar and as a medievalist. I am currently hired as a postdoctoral researcher on a project aimed at comparing the medieval past of both Norway and Poland. This is a collaboration between the University of Oslo and the University of Warsaw. For the past two years, the project has engendered a lot of discussion concerning the art of comparing one and the same phenomena in two different areas. Poland and Norway have been chosen in part because they have many similarities as medieval polities, but they also have a lot of differences. One such difference is the very landscape. Although Poland does have mountains, a lot of its most important centres of religious and political affairs in the Middle Ages are cities located on the plains. Norway, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. Throughout this project, the importance of topography has been raised time and again, and the issue has provided a very useful yardstick when analysing how a phenomenon like the foundation of nunneries or the establishment of cult centres unfolded in both Norway and Poland. Sometimes, life and scholarship converge in pleasing ways, and this was one of those times. </p><p><br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwaThk_82Becc4z5EAS2OXfCE6KcQWKCZNn6iLJmG1Wddk8dRfbukP0uvWIJOa7K137QVRjn6rpuuTnyGvuygj7ws0Cy1-Igl6Xh2TqnC4qESTbUrw1e-giBZhD5d1uTdWDmsP_F3ZVprhRfGk9hgdNrcKVM4WAMrC4T07P4U-6nYohSaES8vh4ESxoNji/s4160/IMG_20231130_113818.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwaThk_82Becc4z5EAS2OXfCE6KcQWKCZNn6iLJmG1Wddk8dRfbukP0uvWIJOa7K137QVRjn6rpuuTnyGvuygj7ws0Cy1-Igl6Xh2TqnC4qESTbUrw1e-giBZhD5d1uTdWDmsP_F3ZVprhRfGk9hgdNrcKVM4WAMrC4T07P4U-6nYohSaES8vh4ESxoNji/s320/IMG_20231130_113818.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-84564307153692128712023-11-29T08:19:00.000-08:002023-11-29T08:19:38.922-08:00Monastic typology and institutional identity in Tyniec Abbey<p> </p><p>As part of a sojourn in Krakow, I joined an excursion to Tyniec Abbey, a Benedictine monastery a short distance southwest of the city. The abbey is beautifully located on a hill overlooking the Vistula River, and was established around the turn of the twelfth century. While the abbey contains many interesting and exciting historical treasures, there was one detail that struck a particular chord in me, and that I wish to highlight here, namely a set of fifteenth-century frescoes from one of the chapels of the abbey church. <br /><br />The frescoes in question are located, as can be seen below, in the narrow space between the arc of the chapel entrance and the vaults of the ceiling, and they depict episodes from the life of Saint Benedict. The first scene, starting from the bottom, features a monk holding a book, probably Saint Benedict and his rule. The middle shows a building complex, which is probably intended to be Montecassino, founded by Benedict and the antecessor of all later Benedictine abbeys. The top scene shows Saint Benedict throwing himself into a thorn bush to fight his sexual desires. </p><p><br />What we see in these frescoes in Tyniec is how the monks understood their institutional identity. As they were Benedictines, the abbey of Tyniec was a descendant of the motherhouse of Montecassino, and they themselves were the spiritual descendants of Saint Benedict. Through these frescoes, the monks were reminded of this bond of kinship which was part of the abbey's history, and they were also reminded about their typological bonds to Saint Benedict, since they were expected to be his imitators. These scenes were educational, both in the way that they situated the abbey within a greater historical narrative, and in the way that it reminded the monks of their duties and their identity as Benedictine monks. Exactly how the historical and the typological connections were activated - either during sermons, in individual contemplations, during teaching, or all of these and more - the frescoes were part of the identity formation that was a continuously unfolding element in the daily life of the abbey of Tyniec. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xQX3fZYvshPUSlFBVDeDce93VqHDbG5hwMQE9zaoibVgTivHzzTvwBxGz-OCLQRDo_s8RioxRy88JLqGoC7wBjhYupn2t_yf7ZUQQfoXnODKxuVeC0Fg13A6fKewZQWWyJmSEJgtxSPdAPf9zEhtfCL1TBC-ciQGLHeMily0A4RwR9d3_38naDpSySZO/s4160/IMG_20231127_165133_HHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2xQX3fZYvshPUSlFBVDeDce93VqHDbG5hwMQE9zaoibVgTivHzzTvwBxGz-OCLQRDo_s8RioxRy88JLqGoC7wBjhYupn2t_yf7ZUQQfoXnODKxuVeC0Fg13A6fKewZQWWyJmSEJgtxSPdAPf9zEhtfCL1TBC-ciQGLHeMily0A4RwR9d3_38naDpSySZO/s320/IMG_20231127_165133_HHT.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOnIgq2OXZoceye2toAU28KFGLKeBfM99OqSEeqp-vSum-Cr1fQCUVGizjJyYYTU_fMehxPdXDK0SF90qdEnmCowadySmNn3OO2BZCbbXukAIlE1I_KytgtRRQX_I1D5vYxSsWs3sB6IDMQ7nXTmHX1oKvWy0UXP4q5j3RGgbzgEXgNUokrcqvk0mqi9tM/s4160/IMG_20231127_165141_HHT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOnIgq2OXZoceye2toAU28KFGLKeBfM99OqSEeqp-vSum-Cr1fQCUVGizjJyYYTU_fMehxPdXDK0SF90qdEnmCowadySmNn3OO2BZCbbXukAIlE1I_KytgtRRQX_I1D5vYxSsWs3sB6IDMQ7nXTmHX1oKvWy0UXP4q5j3RGgbzgEXgNUokrcqvk0mqi9tM/s320/IMG_20231127_165141_HHT.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-30474488617322326692023-11-19T16:51:00.000-08:002023-11-19T16:51:34.227-08:00Saint Edmund in late-medieval Denmark - a hint from the Odense Breviary<p> <br /><br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund
Martyr, a ninth-century king of East Anglia who, according to legend, was
killed by invading Danes. His death is commonly dated to 869/70, following the so-called
<i>Anglo-Saxon Chronicle</i>. The cult of Saint Edmund – on which I have
written several times before – grew significantly in the eleventh century, in
large part due to royal protection and munificence, and also due to the abbacy
of Baldwin (r. 1065-97). Most likely, it was also during the eleventh century
that the cult was actively exported abroad. Herman the Archdeacon’s collection
of miracles pertaining to Edmund, written in the 1090s, records how relics were
brought to Lucca by Baldwin himself. It is also possible that the veneration of
Edmund at the Abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris was initiated by Baldwin,
although the earliest surviving traces of the cult there seems to be from the
twelfth century. <br />
<br />
Edmund was also brought to Scandinavia. As of yet, we do not know when the cult
arrived there, and where it arrived first. Perhaps the most likely candidate
would be Denmark, seeing that Bury St Edmunds was reformed into a monastic
house during the reign of Knud II of Denmark, Norway and England. Such a
thought is tantalizing, and Knud’s attention to the cult of Edmund appears to
be unquestionable, even if we apply the necessary filter of scepticism when
reading Herman the Archdeacon’s account of this relationship between king and
abbey. However, while Knud’s respect for English saints is demonstrable, this
respect and attention, perhaps even veneration, occurs in the context of a foreign
king seeking legitimacy in a new kingdom. Consequently, there is little reason
to think that Knud II brought Edmund to Denmark, although we should not omit
the possibility that someone – perhaps a cleric at Bury – sought to disseminate
the cult overseas as well. The main counterargument to a dissemination that
early is that there was little cult material with which to spread the knowledge
of Edmund. Knud II’s English reign (1014-35) was the abbey’s infancy, and
despite the king’s patronage we do not know of any large-scale text production
taking place at Bury, or any other kind of production pertaining to the
material dimension of a saint’s cult, until Baldwin’s abbacy. <br />
<br />
What we do know, however, is that in the course of the twelfth century, we find
several references to the cult of Saint Edmund in Scandinavia. He appears in
several calendars, there are two Norwegian churches dedicated to him, and
liturgical fragments show that his feast was being celebrated, although it was
not universally important in either of the three Scandinavian church provinces.
In Denmark the death of Edmund is a historical reference point in the <i>Chronicon
Roschildense</i> from c.1138, and in Iceland – to step outside of the strictly
Scandinavian remit – the same is the case for Ari Frodi’s <i>Íslendingabók</i>
from c.1130. Due to the general loss of sources – both textual and pictorial –
from twelfth-century Scandinavia, we will never have a complete picture of the
extent of Edmund’s cult there, but the sources that do remain suggest a wide
dissemination which entered into Scandinavia at different times and by different
routes. <br />
<br />
One question, however, is how the cult of Edmund fared after the twelfth
century. From 1200 onwards, we have more surviving source material – although only
a small percentage of what was produced – but we have few clues as to the
development or spread of the cult of Edmund. Yet there is one late clue – from 1497
– which might shed some light on the late medieval fate of Edmund’s cult in
Scandinavia. <br />
<br />
The clue in question is a rubric on folio 435r from the 1497 edition of the <i>Breviarium
Othoniense</i>. This was the second edition of the printed breviary, the first
being in 1482 and which I have not yet checked for the issue at hand. The rubric
opens the office for the feast of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (d.1231, can.
1235), which is on November 19. In this rubric, it is stated that the Second
Vesper of Elizabeth’s feast is not to be celebrated, as this is the feast of
Saint Edmund. Instead, psalms are to be sung in Edmund’s honour, although it is
worth mentioning that the breviary does not contain any texts for Edmund’s
feast. What follows the office for Saint Elizabeth is the feast of the
dedication of a church. <br />
<br /><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrIrnzvrDfgAdckheAWoXijGBLtfCX4vt2ILu2R2k9Rkuo0fJ-DHHHra6TExpfAq2D9cCsGx1lrZj-0J7p6Tj0qmqzM6rvG6DYACJPrIvHV9SBrsuexvJ3nKJ-R68a41LkT4oNEwxU0hbe7AZ51xn0-ymilxNDzzQMNF-YBo1UCBAQHdrX6gr5zKX04T-z/s499/Breviarium%20Othoniense%201497,%20f.435r.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="460" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrIrnzvrDfgAdckheAWoXijGBLtfCX4vt2ILu2R2k9Rkuo0fJ-DHHHra6TExpfAq2D9cCsGx1lrZj-0J7p6Tj0qmqzM6rvG6DYACJPrIvHV9SBrsuexvJ3nKJ-R68a41LkT4oNEwxU0hbe7AZ51xn0-ymilxNDzzQMNF-YBo1UCBAQHdrX6gr5zKX04T-z/s320/Breviarium%20Othoniense%201497,%20f.435r.png" width="295" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>Breviarium Othoniense</i>, 1497, f.435r</div><br /><br /><p><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;">The note in the rubric, and the absence of any further indications about Edmund’s feast, suggest that Edmund’s importance in the diocese of Odense had dwindled significantly by the later medieval period, and these two elements also suggest how it happened. Elizabeth of Hungary was one of the most universally famous new saints in from the thirteenth century onwards – universally within Latin Christendom that is. Her widespread popularity was due to three main factors. First of all, her canonized status in a period when the papal church was actively asserting its power through its claim to monopoly over canonization. Secondly, the Franciscan order’s network and influence. Thirdly, her inclusion in Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saints’ legends, <i>Legenda Aurea</i>. Which factor had the greatest impact in Denmark is difficult to assess, although my preliminary guess would be the Franciscan influence.<br /><br />Due to Elizabeth’s importance, she appears to have eclipsed that of Edmund. Granted, that the rubric does acknowledge Edmund’s feast suggests that he was not entirely superseded, but that the celebration of his feast is marked as being ferial psalms – i.e., an everyday office rather than an office of a Sunday – points to Edmund being kept more for tradition than devotion. <br /><br />We – or at least I – do not know when Saint Elizabeth came to replace Saint Edmund. The difficulty of using the Odense breviary is that the monastic community that comprised the cathedral chapter in Odense from c.1100 onwards was reformed into a secular house in the mid-fifteenth century. Indeed, it was most likely this reform which prompted the printing of the Odense breviary in 1482, since the liturgy needed to be adapted to the secular use. Consequently, we cannot know whether rubrics such as this one was copied from an older, monastic breviary, or whether Saint Elizabeth’s replacement of Edmund was part of the reform. The question is complicated by the Franciscans’ strong position in Odense, which has made it entirely plausible that the feast of Saint Elizabeth might have been introduced as early as the thirteenth century.<br /><br />Ultimately, we cannot say for certain when this replacement took place, but we do see that it took place, and through the replacement we can see how a Danish bishopric responded to changes in ongoing trends within the cult of saints. From this little rubric, we might, therefore, get a better sense of what happened to Edmund’s cult in Denmark.</span></p><div><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div><p></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-54534816203369086432023-11-07T11:07:00.001-08:002023-11-07T11:07:20.215-08:00On minor saints and priorities<p> <br /><br /><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Every now and again I return to the Swedish
medieval calendars that I used to work on in the spring of 2021, and I am
reminded of how utterly fascinating it is to put one’s research skills to the
test in order to sort out a question of identity, and to sift through available
materials in order to advance one step forward. The plethora of names contrasts
frustratingly well with the dearth of solid details, and each puzzle provided
by the often fragmentary survivals of the calendars is a reminder of a now-lost
historical context from which these puzzles emerged, either as veneration of
historical persons – however altered by generations of cult activity – or as a
scribal error or confusion. <br />
<br />
While I have already reflected on the tantalizing opportunities of knowledge
and speculation offered by these minor saints (<a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-fondness-for-small-things-minor.html" target="_blank">here</a>), today’s work has highlighted
to me that much of our current dearth of information is the result of modern-day
research priorities. Since research necessarily must be funded, those
organizations that provide that funding need to be convinced that a proposed
project is worth both the while and, above all, the money. Moreover, since the
funding bodies in questions are rarely familiar with the gaps in knowledge or where
we need to spend more effort in order to get one, albeit one important, step further,
the acquisition of research money requires convincing arguments. Such arguments
are typically made using well-known topics or figures, or even buzzwords that
are in vogue at any given moment. <br />
<br />
Arguing for the funding required to track minutiae in a vast body of surviving
medieval manuscript materials that pertain to the cult of saints, however, is
difficult to do, because by their very nature such minutiae are not well known,
and neither do they have a notable impact on later historical events. Yet these
minor saints can still teach us a great deal about the mechanics of cult-making,
distribution and dissemination, about the tenacity of stories or the
placeholders or echoes of those stories, i.e., the hard-to-identify names, about
specific historical moments when the hand of a scribe unwittingly created the
starting-point for a non-existent saint through conflation or confusion. In
short, knowing more about these minor saints might allow us to understand the
cult of saints as a phenomenon in much greater detail. <br />
<br />
These reflections are partly the result of the time and effort spent looking
for details about saints such as Victor Maurus, Primus and Felicianus, and the
elusive Januarius whom I have not yet managed to identify. Some of these are
well known in some places (such as Victor Maurus in the Milanese tradition,
thanks to Ambrose and his cult-making efforts). Some are widely, if not well,
known thanks to their inclusion in canon-making texts such as <i>Legenda Aurea</i>
(such as Primus and Felicianus). And others remain difficult to identify (such
as Januarius, whichever Januarius he might be). Since relatively little
scholarship has been expended on these saints, what available information there
is must often be treated with caution, especially because it can be difficult
to assess where a specific identification comes from, or what is the basis of a
specific claim. The effort with which details about these and other such saints
are found and assessed is a constant reminder of how the small things suffer in
the shadow of bigger, more shiny ones, and that academia is still very much steered
by the attraction to shiny things. <br /></span><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtrVV_PN85oQTyEqez7KSy-ylVIV3VmX0cnlLANwh9uoMIL6hJz84yR4jqqaaAdZirrk7SGlycy5oE0egtTWRCMhGRm0LJBhWWRxPMFnvvgqMiMpqAhCYoTVPll9ltZP3PyMx9tjDmMkgzrSuDEOPdKpiNIaISLdRckJKftiBM3SKxGhmRr3qIe0LvFjY/s584/Sveriges%20Riksarkiv%20Fr%2025548%20(detail).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="584" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWtrVV_PN85oQTyEqez7KSy-ylVIV3VmX0cnlLANwh9uoMIL6hJz84yR4jqqaaAdZirrk7SGlycy5oE0egtTWRCMhGRm0LJBhWWRxPMFnvvgqMiMpqAhCYoTVPll9ltZP3PyMx9tjDmMkgzrSuDEOPdKpiNIaISLdRckJKftiBM3SKxGhmRr3qIe0LvFjY/s320/Sveriges%20Riksarkiv%20Fr%2025548%20(detail).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://sok.riksarkivet.se/MPO?FragmentID=25621&postid=Mpo_25548">Detail from Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25548</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Entries for May 8, May 10, and May 12; these saints are, respectively:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Victor Martyr (Victor Maurus), Gordianus and Epimachus, and Nereus and Achilles</div><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6swPr3x6azWZJTIb7emSDL7Z6hGsKXOEdUETYCRpBo8F447DgtbV8eKx9JJvZ4VDoa9g99fiiZwgUE-M395-gx-DtSfHZZ1jkwxEcd33MNk8yps6Kc06l-LhuF4M15MpZH_ETGiPh5ggq4as8ic75dIvgqLp6xr9y1i9fCDGrajKrdv1fz3BV1i2xtXyE/s1204/Sveriges%20Riksarkiv%20Fr%2025603%20(detail).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1204" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6swPr3x6azWZJTIb7emSDL7Z6hGsKXOEdUETYCRpBo8F447DgtbV8eKx9JJvZ4VDoa9g99fiiZwgUE-M395-gx-DtSfHZZ1jkwxEcd33MNk8yps6Kc06l-LhuF4M15MpZH_ETGiPh5ggq4as8ic75dIvgqLp6xr9y1i9fCDGrajKrdv1fz3BV1i2xtXyE/s320/Sveriges%20Riksarkiv%20Fr%2025603%20(detail).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Detail from <a href="https://sok.riksarkivet.se/MPO?FragmentID=25603&postid=Mpo_25603" target="_blank">Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25603</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Entries for the first halves of May and June</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-90229245366167356162023-11-01T10:27:00.002-07:002023-11-01T10:27:55.392-07:00A list for All Saints<p><br />In the twelve years I have been writing this blog, I have spent a lot of my time researching saints. While most of my academic output has been restricted to a handful of saints, I have also been aware of the interconnectedness of saints and their stories, and that in order to understand one saint, it is important to know as many saints and their legends as possible. Consequently, I have used this blog both to develop my ideas about the saints of my main research focus, but also to get more acquainted with other saints, especially those that are too far removed from my immediate expertise for me to use them in my own articles. <br /><br />Since today is the feast of All Saints, a feast instituted to commemorate also those saints which remain unknown to us - and if there indeed are saints I believe they are unknown to most of us - I have put together a list of some, if not all, of the saints about whom I have written blogposts. Some of these posts are quite old and do not necessarily reflect my current opinion, but together they represent the breadth of my research into the cult of saints. It should be noted that in some cases I have written several posts, but I have chosen to only include one link per saint. Moreover, some posts deal with more than one saint or more than one group or pair of saints, so the same link might appear twice. <br /><br /><br />Abdon and Sennen: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/10/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-i-abdon.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/10/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-i-abdon.html</a> <br /><br />Agnes of Montepulciano: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/04/santa-agnese-da-montepulciano.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/04/santa-agnese-da-montepulciano.html</a> <br /><br />Alban of Britain: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2021/06/saint-alban-in-odense-part-1.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2021/06/saint-alban-in-odense-part-1.html</a> <br /><br />Anthony of Egypt: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-guthlac-and-st-anthony.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-guthlac-and-st-anthony.html</a> <br /><br />Bartholomew: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/saint-bartholomew-and-devil-legend-of.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/saint-bartholomew-and-devil-legend-of.html</a> <br /><br />Boniface: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/10/saint-boniface-and-miracle-of-fox.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/10/saint-boniface-and-miracle-of-fox.html</a> <br /><br />Catherine of Alexandria: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/04/saint-catherine-of-alexandria-in-erfurt.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2023/04/saint-catherine-of-alexandria-in-erfurt.html</a> <br /><br />Cecilia: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/11/two-chants-for-saint-cecilia.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/11/two-chants-for-saint-cecilia.html</a> <br /><br />Charles of Flanders: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-death-of-charles-i-of-flanders-and.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-death-of-charles-i-of-flanders-and.html</a> <br /><br />Christopher: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/02/saint-christopher-in-roskilde.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/02/saint-christopher-in-roskilde.html</a> <br /><br />Cosmas and Damian: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/05/cosmas-and-damian-in-anglo-saxon.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/05/cosmas-and-damian-in-anglo-saxon.html</a> <br /><br />Edmund Martyr: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-vigil-of-saint-edmund-martyr.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-vigil-of-saint-edmund-martyr.html</a> <br /><br />Edward the Confessor: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-cult-of-edward-confessor-brief.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-cult-of-edward-confessor-brief.html</a> <br /><br />Erasmus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-saint-in-pot-saint-erasmus-at-skive.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-saint-in-pot-saint-erasmus-at-skive.html</a> <br /><br />Felix and Adauctus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/08/felix-and-adauctus-added-saint.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/08/felix-and-adauctus-added-saint.html</a> <br /><br />Fina of San Gimignano: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/09/travels-in-tuscany-part-5-blessed-fina.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/09/travels-in-tuscany-part-5-blessed-fina.html</a> <br /><br />George: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/02/changing-images-of-saint-george-c1100.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/02/changing-images-of-saint-george-c1100.html</a> <br /><br />Gervasius and Protasius: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/sanctity-in-milan-part-1-gervasius-and.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/sanctity-in-milan-part-1-gervasius-and.html</a> <br /><br />Gordianus and Epimachus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-legend-of-gordianus-and-epimachus.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-legend-of-gordianus-and-epimachus.html</a> <br /><br />Guthlac of Croyland: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-guthlac-and-st-anthony.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/01/st-guthlac-and-st-anthony.html</a> <br /><br />Hallvard: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/05/saint-hallvard-of-norway.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/05/saint-hallvard-of-norway.html</a> <br /><br />Hulpe: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/01/saint-knud-dux-saint-hulpe-and-limits.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/01/saint-knud-dux-saint-hulpe-and-limits.html</a> <br /><br />James the Elder: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/07/santiago-matamoros-at-san-pedro-de.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/07/santiago-matamoros-at-san-pedro-de.html</a> <br /><br />John the Baptist: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-typology-of-decapitation-case-of.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-typology-of-decapitation-case-of.html</a> <br /><br />John the Evangelist: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-chalice-of-john-evangelist.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-chalice-of-john-evangelist.html</a> <br /><br />Kenelm of Mercia: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-tree-and-rod-common-elements-in.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-tree-and-rod-common-elements-in.html</a> <br /><br />Knud Lavard: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-early-cult-of-canute-lavard.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-early-cult-of-canute-lavard.html</a> <br /><br />Knud Rex: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/12/saint-stephen-and-saint-knud-rex.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2022/12/saint-stephen-and-saint-knud-rex.html</a> <br /><br />Ladislas of Hungary: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/05/slayer-without-dragon-karoly-lotz.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/05/slayer-without-dragon-karoly-lotz.html</a> <br /><br />Laurentius: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/04/distractions-along-thesis-road-antiphon.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/04/distractions-along-thesis-road-antiphon.html</a> <br /><br />Leo II: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2021/06/pope-leo-ii-saint-of-catholic-identity.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2021/06/pope-leo-ii-saint-of-catholic-identity.html</a> <br /><br />Louis IX: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/08/o-decus-ecclesie-comparative.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/08/o-decus-ecclesie-comparative.html</a> <br /><br />Margherita of Cortona: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/02/santa-margherita-da-cortona.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/02/santa-margherita-da-cortona.html</a> <br /><br />Martin of Tours: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/01/wine-for-epiphany-miracle-of-saint.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/05/achronicity-and-lives-of-saints-case-of.html</a> <br /><br />Mary: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-chant-for-birth-of-virgin-mary.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-chant-for-birth-of-virgin-mary.html</a> <br /><br />Matthew the Evangelist: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/04/saint-matthews-executioner-possible.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/04/saint-matthews-executioner-possible.html</a> <br /><br />Mauritius: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/09/saint-mauritius-in-roskilde.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/09/saint-mauritius-in-roskilde.html</a> <br /><br />Michael the Archangel: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/09/chants-for-saint-michael.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/09/chants-for-saint-michael.html</a> <br /><br />Nabor and Felix: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/sanctity-in-milan-part-5-nabor-and-felix.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/sanctity-in-milan-part-5-nabor-and-felix.html</a> <br /><br />Nazarius and Celsus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/sanctity-in-milan-part-2-nazarius-and.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/08/sanctity-in-milan-part-2-nazarius-and.html</a> <br /><br />Olaf: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/07/was-saint-olaf-canonised.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/07/was-saint-olaf-canonised.html</a> <br /><br />Peter: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/02/saint-peters-chair-feast-of-papal.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/02/saint-peters-chair-feast-of-papal.html</a> <br /><br />Protus and Hyacinth: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/02/ss-protus-and-hyacinth-in-cornwall.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2020/02/ss-protus-and-hyacinth-in-cornwall.html</a> <br /><br />Richard of England: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-apochryphal-saint-king-and-king-who.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-apochryphal-saint-king-and-king-who.html</a> <br /><br />Rosalia of Palermo: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/09/postcards-from-palermo-part-1-songs-for.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/09/postcards-from-palermo-part-1-songs-for.html</a> <br /><br />Sabinus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/12/saint-sabinus-warrior.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2014/12/saint-sabinus-warrior.html</a> <br /><br />Sebastian: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hagiographic-function-of-liturgy.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-hagiographic-function-of-liturgy.html</a> <br /><br />Stephen Protomartyr: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-lost-legend-about-finding-of-saint.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-lost-legend-about-finding-of-saint.html</a> <br /><br />Sylvester: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/12/pope-sylvester-and-dragon.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/12/pope-sylvester-and-dragon.html</a> <br /><br />Thomas of Canterbury: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/saint-thomas-of-canterbury-in-skive.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2019/12/saint-thomas-of-canterbury-in-skive.html</a> <br /><br />Tiburtius, Valerianus, and Maximus: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/04/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-iv.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/04/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-iv.html</a> <br /><br />Ursula and the 11 000 virgins: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/12/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-ii.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2015/12/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-ii.html</a> <br /><br />Valentine: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/02/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-iii.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/02/narrative-and-saints-lives-part-iii.html</a> <br /><br />Verdiana of Castelfiorentino: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/11/santa-verdiana-of-castelfiorentino.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2013/11/santa-verdiana-of-castelfiorentino.html</a> <br /><br />Wilfrid of York: <a href="https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/03/saint-wilfrid-and-easter-controversy.html">https://my-albion.blogspot.com/2016/03/saint-wilfrid-and-easter-controversy.html</a> <br /><br /><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-47909028242589865292023-10-31T09:03:00.005-07:002023-10-31T09:03:54.476-07:00Reading in the room - a glimpse from Dublin<p> <br /><br />A couple of weeks ago, I was in Dublin for the first time, and participated in a seminar (for more on which, see previous blogpost). I have been wanting to visit Ireland for a long time, and as - I believe - most Europeans I have grown up with a range of different cultural impulses that have shaped my idea of the country, its history, and its culture. Thanks to these impulses, Ireland is to me synonymous with books, and one of my priorities was to purchase a collection of Irish poetry. However, I also went about this mission with a certain apprehension about the necessity to keep a certain balance between my enthusiasm for Irish literature in general, and the rather appalling tendency to romanticize and exoticize Ireland, its inhabitants, and its cultural heritage. I wanted to avoid falling into generalizing raptures about how Ireland is a land of letters and how ubiquitous poetry is there. Largely I was successful in this, although Dublin itself did its best to sway me, such as when I walked past a farrier in an alley, over whose door was written a quotation from Seamus Heaney's poem 'The Forge'. <br /><br />In the end, I did go to Hogges Figges, and quite excitedly sought out their poetry selection. I was not entirely sure what to expect, so I was ecstatic to find an annotated facsimile of the first edition of William Butler Yeats' collection <i>The Tower</i>. Not only is it a beautiful book, but, more importantly, it was a complete volume of verse, something I have struggled to find in the case of Yeats, since his popularity has ensured that there have been printed many selections and incomplete anthologies, while his individual books have been more neglected. Overjoyed by this find, I went to a pub and sat down to have a cup of tea, whiling away the time in a very pleasant way before meeting a friend for lunch. It was a short while, about half an hour, but there was something at once so quintessential and yet unromanticized about the feeling of reading Yeats in a pub which etched the memory into my brain. <br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJzjJNH0PNpwdQ_5b_E61F6OEePLW3jKRs5EfmNZ4J0QJ8CMEzeq8duwyzwSrS4oqLfRwQkZycQnqaWmc3dUiIOVRF-TiqT1gVCqrW-o9641pNhr7rnaKiyd_U1g6IYynHVbIVJjPb_94V3SzJl15vzB7bG6qpyK20H8Gf_Wz2TWd_zoxaQTRn_O3mM5Gx/s4160/IMG_20231014_113750.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJzjJNH0PNpwdQ_5b_E61F6OEePLW3jKRs5EfmNZ4J0QJ8CMEzeq8duwyzwSrS4oqLfRwQkZycQnqaWmc3dUiIOVRF-TiqT1gVCqrW-o9641pNhr7rnaKiyd_U1g6IYynHVbIVJjPb_94V3SzJl15vzB7bG6qpyK20H8Gf_Wz2TWd_zoxaQTRn_O3mM5Gx/s320/IMG_20231014_113750.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-67305963457936053462023-10-19T04:31:00.008-07:002023-10-19T04:31:59.147-07:00Lectures from the Festival of History - St Olaf: An international Norwegian Saint (Dublin, 2023) <p> <br />This October, I had the tremendous honour of being invited to participate in this year's Viking Seminar, a part of the annual Festival of History in Dublin. The topic for the seminar was the figure of Saint Olaf and the international character of his cult, as it spread widely across Northern Europe shortly after he was proclaimed a saint in 1031. Participating in this seminar was an absolutely marvellous experience, and I was delighted to be part of the line-up, especially because the various presentations connected very well with one another in terms of the topics and the details explored in them, and also because the line-up was comprised of very lovely people. <br /><br />As the seminar was a public event, the lectures were also recorded, and they are available on YouTube, thanks to the Dublin City Libraries. Consequently, instead of repeating my words unduly and unnecessarily, I give you the link for the whole seminar: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD059xzw3CA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD059xzw3CA</a>. <br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gD059xzw3CA" width="320" youtube-src-id="gD059xzw3CA"></iframe></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-9147205764685194352023-10-05T14:51:00.001-07:002023-10-05T14:51:33.432-07:00Celebrating Nynorsk, celebrating Jon Fosse<p> <br /><br /><br />Today it was announced that the recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature 2023 is the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, and the most likely and anticipated Norwegian candidate to receive the prize. The choice of Jon Fosse was therefore not a surprise, but it was great and very welcome news, and it has made me very happy. My excitement about the prize does not have much to do with Jon Fosse himself. I have so far only read one of his plays - <i>Nokon kjem til å komme</i> (Somebody is going to come) - which is also arguably his best known work, at least in Norway. I appreciate this play more than I can claim to like it, and my satisfaction about having read it stems more from its cultural significance than my personal enjoyment. This is a convoluted way of saying that I do not have a strong personal attachment to Jon Fosse's oeuvre. Nor does my excitement stem from the fact that the recipient is from Norway, as there are numerous Norwegian writers I do not care about - and one that I actively dislike to the point that I would have become genuinely angry if he were to have been chosen by the Nobel committee. <br /><br />Rather, the excitement I feel today is because Jon Fosse is the first Nobel laureate in literature who writes in Nynorsk, the minority form of the two official forms of written Norwegian. (We have no official spoken form.) Nynorsk is my own primary written language, and one that constitutes a massive part of my own identity as a rural Norwegian, a Western Norwegian, and a speaker of a certain dialect which is most closely aligned with Nynorsk. Moreover, since Nynorsk is a minority form, it is also a form that is constantly struggling against neglect or even overt antagonism from various agents in Norwegian society, such as certain political parties or youth organizations of political parties who wish to remove Nynorsk as a compulsory part of the syllabus in Norwegian schools. Most of the national media in Norway is written in Bokmål rather than Nynorsk - Bokmål being the dominant form and more closely aligned with urban and Eastern Norwegian dialects - and the vast majority of books printed in Norway are in Bokmål. Foreigners coming to Norway have typically been most likely to receive study materials in Bokmål, even if they live in a municipality where Nynorsk is the official form of Norwegian. In short, Nynorsk is under constant pressure. <br /><br />Due to the pressure against Nynorsk as a written language and its use within Norwegian society, the choice of a Nynorsk-writing author for the Nobel Prize is to provide a globally accessible recognition of the merits of Nynorsk as a literary language. The choice of Jon Fosse signals to the world, and to us Nynorsk-writing and Nynorsk-promoting Norwegians that we are not alone in acknowledging the value and potential of our language. And while I do not, in my excitement, endorse the Nobel Prize as a cultural phenomenon, or any form of institutionally driven, non-organic type of canon-formation which we see at play in such awards, I very much appreciate how such a prize can provide a much-needed recognition of a language that struggles in the face of an often hostile majority, and how Nynorsk as a language can benefit from the kind of visibility and reference point provided by the Nobel Prize. <br /><br />To celebrate today's good news, I bought three bars of 'eventyrsjokolade' (fairy-tale chocolate), a small bar of milk chocolate where the inside of the wrapper contains a short version of a Norwegian fairy tale. One of these was the story of the fox widow, a story to which I feel a personal attachment since I performed in a puppet show version of the fairy tale when I was in kindergarten. While these condensed versions of fairy tales are written in Bokmål rather than Nynorsk, the choice still felt appropriate since it is the only literary sweet we have available. And, as always, they tasted delicious. <br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLGwsVuYtV-4wlYLDc5C7cqjzyrsyreZyDLk2uv4VqhgOS5ddN_RCC0agw4nfHFGy3WOIFq6jLn51MVSEfs8NhXRgAzAhEdB8XrQhn23HSwdKQ-S9mlR4WO-FPRP5sMxrO_WjX3PNgb074NvZFlvUkkJLHI5NOc8CKKFMfmgRW2_y1TVpEiFt-nGWNyZZ/s4160/IMG_20231005_173727.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLGwsVuYtV-4wlYLDc5C7cqjzyrsyreZyDLk2uv4VqhgOS5ddN_RCC0agw4nfHFGy3WOIFq6jLn51MVSEfs8NhXRgAzAhEdB8XrQhn23HSwdKQ-S9mlR4WO-FPRP5sMxrO_WjX3PNgb074NvZFlvUkkJLHI5NOc8CKKFMfmgRW2_y1TVpEiFt-nGWNyZZ/s320/IMG_20231005_173727.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-48724639160484007772023-10-01T03:29:00.001-07:002023-10-01T03:29:11.897-07:00On bluer skies <p><br /><br />Since 2012, I have been an active member on Twitter, and in those years I have gained a lot of different experiences, and for the most part these have been immensely positive. Both as a scholar and as a general human being, I have become indebted to a wide range of individuals who have showed me great kindness and helped me improve, both personally and professionally. I hope to be able to continue reaping benefits from Twitter, but the current owner - an emotionally deranged, all-too-powerful, idiotic, destructive man-child with the intellectual capacity of an egg cup - has made the possibility of gaining something good on Twitter increasingly difficult. As things seem to be heading down an even more ludicrous road in the coming weeks, I have created an account on Bluesky just to be able to keep in touch with the friends I have made in the past eleven years, friends without whom I would be infinitely poorer. <br /><br />My handle on Bluesky is @hopesteffen.bsky.social. You are all welcome to find me there. <br /><br />For the time being, my main activity will remain on Twitter, but I hope that if that particular network does implode in the hands of a faux-genius who has not heard the word 'no' often enough in his life, Bluesky will provide a viable alternative, which can foster the kind of exchanges that have broadened my horizon for eleven years. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-23734608714577822102023-09-29T12:50:00.003-07:002023-09-29T12:50:48.300-07:00Saint Michael in Tønsberg, part 1 - the dragonslayer in the cathedral<p> <br />Today, September 29, is the feast of Saint Michael and all angels. For this year's feast, I present you with a modern representation from the city of Tønsberg in Eastern Norway. In the nineteenth-century cathedral, we find a series of exquisite stained glass widows created by Per Vigeland in 1939. The windows contain depictions of a number of saints and biblical figures, including Saint Michael and Saint Lawrence, as seen below. The pairing of the two saints is curious, as is the fact that they feature in a Protestant cathedral. The cult of saints was abolished in Norway following the Reformation in 1536/37, but there survived numerous references to saints in folklore, stories, as well as historical narratives. In the first half of the twentieth century, the strongest anti-Catholic currents of the 1800s had receded, and Catholicism was becoming somewhat more accepted, despite several strands and pockets of more Puritan-like versions of Protestantism. <br /><br />What has made saints so ambiguous in the religious landscape of modern Norway is not only their place in surviving traditions from the Middle Ages, as in the case of using the feast of Saint Peter's Chair (February 22) as a marker of the shift from Winter to Spring. Part of the ambiguity also comes from the surges of interest for medieval aesthetic, not limited to the convoluted carvings of the Norwegian stave churches - the so-called Urnes style - but also the statues and the symbolism of surviving medieval art. There came, in other words, a greater acknowledgement of the Middle Ages as part of Norwegian heritage. The stained glass figures in Tønsberg cathedral might be understood in light of that acknowledgement. <br /><br />There is one further aspect that explains the representations of Michael and Lawrence, namely the historical connections of these cults to the city of Tønsberg. In the Middle Ages, a church dedicated to Saint Michael was located on the top of the crag that rises above the city. Today, only its foundation can be seen, but enough to give a good impression of its original size and its importance as a landmark. Its earliest reference in the surviving sources dates to the 1190s, but it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the church is several decades older than that. Its position on the top of the crag shows that medieval Norwegians were familiar with Michael's association with peaks and summits. <br /><br />Similarly, medieval Tønsberg also housed a Church of Saint Lawrence. This church was torn down in the 1800s, and the current cathedral was built in the same area. By pairing together the dedicatees of two of Tønsberg's lost medieval churches, Per Vigeland is invoking the city's past, reminding the congregation about what these figures once meant for Christians in Tønsberg. <br /><br />In the case of these stained glass windows, moreover, we are also witnessing a form of medievalism. When it comes to saints, it is always difficult to assess whether a modern expression of veneration of a saint - either a medieval saint or a form of veneration expressed through means available in the medieval period - can be considered medievalism, or whether we should understand this as a form of continuity. For Protestant countries, however, we are on somewhat safer grounds, as we can very rarely talk about continuity in the case of saints - although there are exceptions - and in the case of such an elaborate and finely crafted use of saints, the case seems even more certain. <br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNeGqXvCD7VXAx8VT5W31kb28x3AOXWd0qWVeK0K27VKbOlOR-hV2foyz8T-J7XJLS17RAeh_gcRJeFhpIO2_Juz-8xsD5FSraKyf7Y6jU-33ivpTj_3PmV_3ReDgTFAIdC4qytqeWWEf7J4PY7PvmaYU4ZdQDu4uJSUDhqZEqrPIvmIS6U1KD_Mwqywie/s4160/IMG_20220623_125444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNeGqXvCD7VXAx8VT5W31kb28x3AOXWd0qWVeK0K27VKbOlOR-hV2foyz8T-J7XJLS17RAeh_gcRJeFhpIO2_Juz-8xsD5FSraKyf7Y6jU-33ivpTj_3PmV_3ReDgTFAIdC4qytqeWWEf7J4PY7PvmaYU4ZdQDu4uJSUDhqZEqrPIvmIS6U1KD_Mwqywie/s320/IMG_20220623_125444.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Saint Michael and Saint Lawrence by Per Vigeland, 1939</div><br />Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-46988534102626513772023-09-28T14:22:00.000-07:002023-09-28T14:22:04.652-07:00Reading-spots, part 4<p> <br /><br />Whenever I am home in my native village, I make it my quest to find new spots in which to read. This quest also applies outside of my village, but since I have spent most of my life among the mountains of home, finding new locations in which I have not yet read requires a bit more effort than elsewhere. Today I was reminded of one of these new places which I discovered in 2021, a year when I spent eight consecutive months at home, and when I spent many lovely hours canoeing along the shore of the lake just behind the house after my paternal grandparents. <br /><br />The place in question is a short stretch of stony beach where the shore is sufficiently even and sufficiently low to allow for disembarkation, and where it is also possible to find a comfortable place to relax with a good book. As can be glimpsed from the pictures below, this particular location also has the added virtue of being difficult to see from a distance, as old hazel trees are bending in arches over the shoreline, effectively hiding it from view, and creating a kind of canopy under which it is possible to seek refuge from light drizzles. I brought with me a volume of poetry by one of my favourite poets, Maribel Andrés Llamero, to whose poems I had only been introduced earlier that year. This book, <i>La lentitud del liberto</i>, is full of beautiful, melancholic meditations, and was an excellent companion under the greenwood trees by the lake. <br /><br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-UD8fvPCoZHsw2ck-zoEvOEzQ4E9Syp-Z0jl5lEn5RNDZYb7WtGFaKdepdb4A3A-WSU7oWHLFPjIIjA_ZE9SPoS_OoH_FkrONn3XDAdddrvR0VRk_WDQpE52JE0sZddLc6VQGtRGrf7mzQEQouSDunQEQboLvsX5vvMkRQ6YgCUT2mW0bdKMQcCrEnQdN/s4160/IMG_20210814_184439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-UD8fvPCoZHsw2ck-zoEvOEzQ4E9Syp-Z0jl5lEn5RNDZYb7WtGFaKdepdb4A3A-WSU7oWHLFPjIIjA_ZE9SPoS_OoH_FkrONn3XDAdddrvR0VRk_WDQpE52JE0sZddLc6VQGtRGrf7mzQEQouSDunQEQboLvsX5vvMkRQ6YgCUT2mW0bdKMQcCrEnQdN/s320/IMG_20210814_184439.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgPTKfBAYcKxBj4Dlba6ZsL4tTcT5LOEIHmvbU9UmW6DOqXnzEGt9v_7OlDsITb_L9gNFNUcKSXUyFioPcAY-AoUdGP61ywyrKn01mfHAOGZZfpZzMzhYjD6vaI65swtS79VZjSYrJ7iLjowb6oJcHFWr8-C4Wv1LaBMgRfjZZ9YLmsHm3y5yuUwi_WIOJ/s4160/IMG_20210814_184430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgPTKfBAYcKxBj4Dlba6ZsL4tTcT5LOEIHmvbU9UmW6DOqXnzEGt9v_7OlDsITb_L9gNFNUcKSXUyFioPcAY-AoUdGP61ywyrKn01mfHAOGZZfpZzMzhYjD6vaI65swtS79VZjSYrJ7iLjowb6oJcHFWr8-C4Wv1LaBMgRfjZZ9YLmsHm3y5yuUwi_WIOJ/s320/IMG_20210814_184430.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixJqtYBm0NHHpjrUa10XmXJC94Wi_nHcfCKeUAp83De29h3uHtdg_M1uUhvIN_ZYPneo0YOzyusr0IpxQMB1UXsiC9XmB6bECmMpWTRkjGQIZQF9CWyyU2c5AQllzICHZD7O2aa2Q6srN0-vVFzyKYBnNS3aaPFxGL0h5UhWuWor8jpmzBdqNXIczU_De3/s4160/IMG_20210814_191806.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3120" data-original-width="4160" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixJqtYBm0NHHpjrUa10XmXJC94Wi_nHcfCKeUAp83De29h3uHtdg_M1uUhvIN_ZYPneo0YOzyusr0IpxQMB1UXsiC9XmB6bECmMpWTRkjGQIZQF9CWyyU2c5AQllzICHZD7O2aa2Q6srN0-vVFzyKYBnNS3aaPFxGL0h5UhWuWor8jpmzBdqNXIczU_De3/s320/IMG_20210814_191806.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4142008555966981507.post-43585138553466515252023-09-27T15:01:00.001-07:002023-09-27T15:01:27.031-07:00A different Oslo, or - Novels as historical remnants<p> </p><p>For several years, I have appreciated the value of novels as windows into the periods in which they were written. By referencing a world known to their contemporary readers but not their future readers, novels are what we might call historical vestiges or remnants, in that they can be used as reliable historical sources if we seek for the right kind of information. <br /><br />One example of this function of novels, which I recently came across, is Michael Grundt Spang's <i>Operasjon V for vanvidd</i> ('vanvidd' meaning madness in Norwegian.) Spang (1931-2003) was a crime journalist and wrote several novels. <i>Operasjon V for vanvidd</i> was published in 1968. Although it was turned into a film in 1970, the novel did not make a long-lasting impact in the Norwegian cultural sphere, and Spang is not considered a canonical crime author. Consequently, I am not entirely sure why the novel's title has stayed in my brain ever since I first became aware of it around twenty years ago. Likewise, I do not quite understand what prompted me to borrow this book, although I guess it might have had something to do with my urge to read more Norwegian books. I had only a vague notion of the plot, so I more or less came blind to the novel. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice. <br /><br />As I am currently living in Oslo, I want to read as many Oslo-based novels as I can squeeze in among the numerous other books I aim to read in the course of a given years. Luckily, <i>Operasjon V</i> is set in Oslo, and describes a city very far removed from the one with which I have become increasingly familiar in the past two years. The novel contains several familiar place names, but since I have no long-term memory of the city's past and its changes, a lot of the routes described in the book appeared very odd to me, as these are routes that do not appear very logical for someone recently moved to twenty-first-century Oslo. <br /><br />The best example of this time-shock, or whatever to call it, came within the first few pages of the book, when describing a Christmas party in a villa near Maridalsvann. This name refers to a lake to the northeast of Oslo, which is the main source of the city's drinking water, and which lies quite a long way away from the city centre. As the clock is nearing half past 8, the host reflects to himself that in about an hour he will have to call a taxi so that some of his guest will be able to catch a plane at 11 in the evening. My first reaction to this detail was disbelief, as I could not imagine how anyone could get from that part of town to the airport in so little time. I was then reminded that not only was the general traffic and the number of passengers on a considerably lower scale in 1968 than what they are today, but the airport was elsewhere, namely very close to the city centre. Nowadays, the Oslo airport is Gardermoen, located around 45 minutes by train from the city centre, and to get there by car will require more time, especially in winter. In 1968, however, the airport was Fornebu, located by the shore of the Oslo fjord, and not a very long way from the main part of the city. I was, in other words, reminded that despite my two years - and counting - in this city, I have not yet begun to understand it, because I have not lived through its changes. Thanks to novels, however, I am gradually getting a better sense of what is currently my home city. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCGPInJZ6h2YYbeNMhREDz0t8gKS3sTcWvquJ94SyR3xYQrO696zg5yu4fKtuqoxjmyxetm3x51Si0vm2_0nV-1EnmLiXJT-l6dq1f4ZepqrFIn-F7vC8NWLAN0K9DCgrauEkr15jSEsmfErI33VdN_Cg-FlzyBpfqGSfe_99_Kch7bZaRVEwq-Qgmn-Oq/s4160/IMG_20230904_124337.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCGPInJZ6h2YYbeNMhREDz0t8gKS3sTcWvquJ94SyR3xYQrO696zg5yu4fKtuqoxjmyxetm3x51Si0vm2_0nV-1EnmLiXJT-l6dq1f4ZepqrFIn-F7vC8NWLAN0K9DCgrauEkr15jSEsmfErI33VdN_Cg-FlzyBpfqGSfe_99_Kch7bZaRVEwq-Qgmn-Oq/s320/IMG_20230904_124337.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Steffenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01891266202142841626noreply@blogger.com0