Saint Julian in a fragment - chance survivals, canonicity, and the cult of saints in medieval Scandinavia

 

Much of my research deals with questions pertaining to the cult of saints in medieval Scandinavia. This is a topic that labours under the double-edged problem of having both very few surviving sources - making it difficult to make strong claims about certain questions - as well as such a wide variety of source types, making it difficult to have the required expertise to use all these sources together. Concerning the cult of saints, we know that there were many more sources used and produced in medieval Scandinavia than those we have access to today. The surviving sources have, therefore, provided a skewed sense of the saints venerated by the medieval Scandinavians, as well as the stories told about those saints. Due to the source situation - combined with the nationalistic tilt embedded into the foundations of medieval studies in each Scandinavian country - we have a tendency to focus on the cult of native saints, especially the royal saints. Aside from the biblical saints and the most famous of the early Christian saints - especially Laurentius, who was patron saint of the Church of Lund, which became a metropolitan see in 1104 - there has been relatively little work done on the veneration of the saints less known in our own time. Judging from surviving materials, we have a pretty good idea of how popular and important these famous saints were. But we cannot really know whether some of the saints that we consider minor today were, in actuality, major saints throughout the Scandinavian Middle Ages, or at least within one time period or within one milieu. 

I was reminded of this issue earlier this spring, when I was at the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen to research some manuscript fragments. In one of the boxes I had ordered was the upper part of a two-columned page from a twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century manuscript, the text of which is the saint-biography of Julian Martyr, also known as Julian of Le Mans. The fragment is well known in medieval studies and I have seen it mentioned and analysed several times. It is most likely produced in Scandinavia, probably in Norway, and it is a important witness to the earliest stages of native Norwegian manuscript production. The content of the fragment, however, has received much less attention than its codicological, palaeographical and iconographical aspects. This text provides a very good starting point for reflecting on the state of our knowledge about the cult of saints in twelfth-century Norway.

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Saint Julian was a third-century bishop of Le Mans. Since he was martyred during the heroic age of Christianity in what was later to become France, his cult and his figure appear to have been important elements not only of Le Mans' own identity but also the identity of France as a kingdom having received special divine attention. This kingdom-wide identity was also propped up by the cults of Saint Dionysius of Paris, of Saint Remigius and the Holy Ampulla, and eventually also the cult of Saint Louis IX. The early date of Julian's life and martyrdom also meant that he was included in several early martyrologies and calendars, and his cult was disseminated far and wide. 

In Scandinavia, there are few surviving traces of Julian in the sources. For example, the only sources from Sweden, as far as I am aware, are twelve calendars that contain his feast-day, which is celebrated either on January 26 or Janaury 27. Since most calendars used in medieval Sweden have survived only as fragments, however, the actual number of calendars containing his feast-day was significantly higher. In any case, no other sources are known - not sculptures, not altarpieces, not wall-paintings. I know of no sources from medieval Denmark, although I have not yet checked whether his feast is included in the late-medieval printed breviaries. In Breviarium Nidrosiense, the breviary printed in Paris in 1519 and aimed at the entire Norwegian church province, his feast is not included. In other words, Saint Julian of Le Mans appears to have been virtually unimportant in the cult of saints in medieval Scandinavia. 

However, Saint Julian was at least known, if only in the monastic or ecclesiastical community in which the manuscript containing his passion story was used. We do not know what community this was, but it is likely that the manuscript was a collection of saints' lives produced for - and perhaps at - one of the leading religious centres of twelfth- or early-thirteenth-century Norway. My own hunch is that the original manuscript was a typical hagiographical collection that was used during the Matins of the feast-day of the saints included in the collection. Matins was the divine service in the middle of the night, and it was during this service that the saint was venerated with a liturgical office which included both chants and readings from the saint's biography. The original manuscript, therefore, is likely to have contained the legends of several other saints aside from Julian. 

What, then, are we to make of the inclusion of Saint Julian of Le Mans in this hypothetical, now-lost hagiographical collection. Probably not much. Such collections were typically compiled from available materials, and those materials tended to contain those stories and legends that were widely accessible rather than those which were particularly important to a specific diocese or church province. Put differently, the legend of Saint Julian was sufficiently widespread that it was easy to get hold of. Its appearance in Norway reflects Julian's general canonicity as a saint in Latin Christendom by the late twelfth century rather than the importance of his cult among Norwegian Christians. 

On the other hand, the fact that Julian's legend was available in Norway and accessible at one - if not more - major religious centre should be taken seriously. What happens at such an institution when the available hagiographical material is limited? Do those stories that are available become more important than they otherwise would be? Can the cult of Saint Julian have been strengthened at this institution simply because the clerics or monastics who comprised the institution's community were familiar with his legend? Very likely, because cults tended to be shaped by the personal devotion of those who were part of the veneration of saints at religious centres. Surges in a saint's popularity could be shaped by events that were interpreted as intercession from that saint, it could be shaped by dreams of individuals, of the constant, long-term pressure from exposure to the saint's story. We see this happen in the cult of Edward the Confessor, for instance, whose main promoter before the 1160s was the figure of Osbert of Clare who believed himself to have been healed due to the saint-king's intercession. Might not a similar causality - however imagined - also not affect the cult of a well-known but otherwise not particularly important saint-bishop? 

We do not have any evidence to suggest that the knowledge of Julian's legend made an impact on his cult in medieval Norway. And personally, I do not think it did, simply because this possibility hinges on our knowledge of one sole surviving fragment. However, this reflection is not primarily about Julian or his cult, but about how our ideas about canonicity and the cult of sains is shaped by the chance survivals of sources. The fragment containing part of the prologue of Julian's saint-biography proves that he was known somewhere in medieval Norway, and for at least a period, even if that period might only be the generation of clerics or monastics that first made use of this manuscript. 

As scholars we need to be very careful in assuming that the canon of literature that we imagine today based on the survival of sources is necessarily the same as the canon of literature of the Middle Ages. Indeed, we know very well that the so-called bestsellers of medieval Latin Christendom - such as the Imago Mundi of Honorius of Autun, or the Sententiae of Peter the Lombard - receive much less attention from and are much less accessible to modern readers than works such as Beowulf, which only survives in one single manuscript. The modern medieval canon is, in other words, very different from the medieval medieval canon. Similarly, the cult of saints as we understand it today might have been configured somewhat differently in the Middle Ages, with saints now lost to us or ignored by us having much greater prominence than we will ever know. 

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

The Växjö rune stone

This evening, I have returned from a short trip to Växjö in Sweden, where I attended the launch of the Mapping Saints database, which contains descriptions and overviews of the various sources of the cult of saints in medieval Sweden. The project behind this database - Mapping Lived Religion - has been headed by Sara Ellis Nilsson, and I was fortunate enough to work as a part of the team for three months back in 2021. It was lovely to mark the conclusion to this enterprise. Yesterday morning, before the launch itself a friend and I headed into town, where I wanted to visit the cathedral. This was my first time in Växjö since I left the city in December 2020, and I was happy to see both the church and the rune stone again.  

The rune stone is located behind the east wall of the cathedral, and was found during renovations in the church building in 1813. According to the information plaque next to it, the stone has been dated to c.1000, but I will add that I myself do not know enough about rune stones to have an opinion on this issue. On the plaque, the text has been translated into Swedish and English, and the latter runs accordingly: 'Tyke - Tyke Viking - erected this stone in memory of Gunnar, Grim's son. May God help his soul'.   

The Växjö rune stone

 

The early date of the stone is intriguing, because it suggests that Växjö was a Christian centre several decades before the first Swedish bishop was consecrated - which was bishop Adalvard of Sigtuna around 1060, if we believe Adam of Bremen. If the date is correct, therefore, the stone is a testament to the slow and decentralised spread of Christianity in Sweden, especially since there was no Swedish church organisation at such an early point in time. In light of such a lack of an organisational infrastructure and framework, it is important, however, that we reflect on what it means to constitute a centre in this part of the Christianisation process. Centrality is relative, and the Christian community in Växjö around the year 1000 is likely to have been small. We should imagine that it consisted of a few locals, perhaps a significant percentage of whom were slaves, and that the religious life was headed by a missionary, either from England or from Germany, as these were the two main centres of active influence in the Nordic Christianisation. Moreover, we should expect that the community was protected by a local aristocrat, on whose farmstead important services were held, such as baptism, funerals, and the celebration of the main liturgical feasts.  

The durability of the Christian community was dependent on its relationship with locals. The protection of the local noble could be revoked, or indeed be insufficient in the face of a strong reaction from the pagan majority. For this reason, when we talk about Växjö as a Christian centre, this centrality does not necessarily mean that the community was deeply rooted or secure against changing attitudes. Centres can, and often are, short lived, and the testimony of the rune stone should not lead us to think that Christianity was stronger in Växjö than it actually was.  

The likely existence of a small but seemingly vibrant Christian centre around 1000, is especially interesting in light of a later legend that emerged in Växjö, namely that of Saint Sigfrid. I have recounted the legend in a previous blogpost, but a brief summary is necessary for the present purpose. Växjö became a diocese in the second half of the twelfth century, following the establishment of the Uppsala church province in 1164. At some point, the cathedral clergy at Växjö began venerating the figure of Sigfrid, who became the centre-point for the cathedral's institutional identity. The earliest surviving version of his legend - as far as I know - is contained in the liturgical office, composed towards the end of the thirteenth century. Here we learn about the English missionary and his three nephews who established a Christian centre in Växjö. Eventually, however, local opinion turned, and when Sigfrid was away visiting the king, his three nephews were killed. Their heads were found in a tub floating on Lake Växjö, and the local populace repented. 

Much is dubious about this story, in part because it makes a late appearance in the source material. We should also note that the name Sigfrid is essentially the same as Sigafrid, a missionary whom King Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway - later Saint Olaf - brought with him from England to Norway in 1016, at least according to Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesie Pontifici from the 1070s. Sigafrid is known in later Norwegian sources as Sigurd, and is often identified as the first Norwegian bishop. As the story of Saint Olaf was well known in the rest of the Nordic sphere, it could easily become a reference point or an inspiration for other cults. For instance, the early-twelfth-century legend of Saint Theodegarius in Northern Denmark identified Theodegarius as one of Saint Olaf's missionaries (although that name is not mentioned by Adam). It is entirely possible that the figure of Saint Sigfrid is partly connected to the legend of Saint Olaf, if only through the name of the Norwegian bishop.  

Despite the many dubious elements of the Sigfrid legend, the Växjö rune stone does invite a very important question, namely whether this legend could contain some kernel of truth, such as a very faint echo of actual events from the slow spread of Christianity in Sweden around the turn of the millennium. We will, of course, never know, and we are unable to venture beyond the labyrinth of accrued stories and later additions that comprise the Sigfrid legend. Nonetheless, what we can surmise is that there was Christian activity in Växjö around the year 1000, and this activity endured for some time. We do not know how long, but we can assume that a man who had been spending part of his life abroad as a pirate had gone to the deep Swedish woods - presumably returning to his ancestral region - and there erected a monument in memory of a fellow Christian. This interpretation is not the only possible one, of course. The fates and lives of eleventh-century people could twist and turn in unexpected ways - ways unimaginable to us today, so the historical stories of Tyke and Gunnar might have unfolded very differently from how I imagine them here. Even so, this rune stone is a Christian monument, and a monument is a costly, time-consuming matter, which in turn suggests that there was enough stability and a sufficiently sizeable Christian population in Växjö that the monument was allowed to be erected, and that the monument stood for some time. This rune stone, then, is a anchoring point in time, that allows us to think more carefully about later legends, and about the complexities of eleventh-century history.      

Edmund Martyr and the curious case of the black cross

 

Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund Martyr, king of East Anglia, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869. His cult was one of the most popular and widespread native cults of medieval England. The foundation of the cult’s success was established in the course of the eleventh century. The church at Bury St Edmunds was reformed into a Benedictine abbey in 1020, and due to the patronage of successive kings throughout the century, the abbey became a centre for text production which bolstered the its institutional identity with Edmund as the identity’s focal point.            

 

The rise of Edmund’s cult coincided with a period in which English ecclesiastics were closely involved with the establishment of church organisations in Scandinavia, especially in Norway and Denmark. Since these burgeoning organisations had not yet developed the infrastructure with which to produce their own books, English ecclesiastical centres provided the Scandinavian churches with liturgical material, including calendars. This English influence continued throughout the twelfth century, even after the establishment of native book production. Calendars and books were still given as gifts or purchased as the expansion of ecclesiastical infrastructure necessitated more liturgical material. Due to the influx of English liturgical material, the cult of Edmund also became a part of the religious life of medieval Scandinavia.        

 

One example of Edmund’s presence in medieval Scandinavia is a calendar fragment, that also opens up for a discussion about the degree to which Edmund was a mere import or someone who was more actively venerated outside of England. The fragment in question is from a thirteenth-century calendar that was produced in England and used in Sweden, most likely in Strängnäs diocese. (For more information about this fragment, please visit the Mapping Saints database.)        

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596 

Sveriges Riksarkiv, Fr 25596

The fragment, Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25596, contains the feasts for the month of November, and Edmund’s name and titles are written in black ink. The colour of the ink suggests that in the centre where the calendar was produced, Edmund was not regarded as particularly important. Those feasts that were important – such as Martin of Tours on November 11 or Catherine of Alexandria on November 25 – are marked in red. This high liturgical rank meant that during the liturgical celebration, more time was spent singing and reading aloud from their legends in the course of the office for Matins, which was performed in the middle of the night.           

 

However, in the fragment that has come down to us, a black cross has been added to the entry for Edmund’s feast. This black is something of a mystery, because it opens up for many possible interpretations. What we can say for certain, however, is that the cross was added to raise the liturgical rank of the feast, as we see similar crosses – albeit in red and part of the original design – behind the feast-days written in red ink. The questions of where and by whom, however, remain open.            

 

One possible interpretation is that the cross was added before the calendar left England for Sweden. The question then is by whom it was done. It is possible that we see the action of a single individual devoted to Edmund, who felt that the saint had not received the rank he deserved and therefore sought to fix this problem. However, changing the liturgical rank also had practical consequences in the performance of the liturgy, and it was important that the church in question had the sufficient material to perform the office according to the rank of the saint. If Edmund was not particularly popular at that centre, they might not have been equipped to perform the office according to its rank. Moreover, the community of monks or clerics had to accept this raising of the rank.           

 

Consequently, it is unlikely that a single individual has taken it upon themselves to alter the liturgical calendar, and so we should expect the cross to be added on the initiative of the authorities at the centre where the change was made. The question then is whether the cross was added in England or in Sweden. England is perhaps the most reasonable answer, as we know that Edmund was widely popular, and he has a high liturgical rank in several calendars. However, if the cross was added in England, the calendar has most likely been in use at a different religious centre than where it was produced. Such a scenario is possible, and we can easily envision how a scriptorium at a larger centre produced a calendar for a smaller centre.       

Yet this explanation has two main flaws. First of all, if Edmund was important at the smaller centre, why would they not specify this at the larger centre? Or why would they not order the calendar from a centre where Edmund was venerated with a high liturgical rank? It is not impossible that a smaller centre received it as a gift and therefore had to make whatever changes were necessary to fit their own liturgical year, so this might have been the case. However, this brings us to the second main flaw of this scenario. Since the calendar ended up in Sweden, it is unlikely that it came via a smaller English centre instead of a scriptorium that produced liturgical material on a larger scale. It feels more realistic to suggest that the cross was added in Sweden.           

 

If we accept the hypothesis that the black cross was added to the calendar at a Swedish institution – most likely in Strängnäs – the question is then what this can tell us about the status of Saint Edmund in thirteenth-century Sweden. It might be that the black cross is the result of an effort to align the new calendar with an older calendar that had been in use at the Swedish centre in previous years. If this was the case, the high rank of Edmund’s feast might mainly reflect the status of the saint in the older calendar, and might not point to a living cult in thirteenth-century Strängnäs. However, this explanation is not very satisfactory, since a high liturgical rank affected the way that the office was celebrated, and why would the Strängnäs clergy elevate the rank of a saint that was not particularly important to them? If the celebration of Edmund was a relic of a past calendar, why not take the opportunity to trim the dead wood and leave the saint on a lower rank? Such changes were common in medieval churches, and sometimes we see entire feast days removed from the calendar if they came to be considered antiquated.  

 

This leaves us with the following scenario: The cross was added by a scribe in Sweden on the order of the religious authority at the centre where the calendar was used, whether it was the cathedral, a parish church, or a monastic community. The addition of the cross suggests that there was a thriving cult of Saint Edmund at this institution, one that had probably been initiated during the establishment of the Swedish church organisation in the mid-twelfth century, and one that had been sustained into the thirteenth century. 

On minor saints and priorities

 

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.

While I have already reflected on the tantalizing opportunities of knowledge and speculation offered by these minor saints (here), 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.

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.

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 Legenda Aurea (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.  

Detail from Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25548

Entries for May 8, May 10, and May 12; these saints are, respectively:

Victor Martyr (Victor Maurus), Gordianus and Epimachus, and Nereus and Achilles

Detail from Sveriges Riksarkiv Fr 25603

Entries for the first halves of May and June

Creative googling and its consequences - or, Adventures in medievalism, part 4

 

Friday, March 10, I gave a seminar on Vikings in medievalism, explaining how our current ideas about Vikings were shaped by the renewed interest in medieval history in nineteenth-century Scandinavia. The ideas that came into place in this period were formed by a very particular context which blended romanticism, nationalism and scholarship. In Norway, for instance, one of the driving forces behind this interest in medieval history was the desire to provide nineteenth-century Norwegians with a golden age that could serve as a reference point in moulding the Norwegian nation-state of the 1800s, a period when Norway the weaker part of a union with Sweden. In Denmark, the interest in medieval history was in part moved by the loss of Norway to Sweden in 1814, and later pressure from expansionist Prussia which in turn resulted in the loss of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864.

While Swedish, Norwegian and Danish interests were moved by different impulses, these interests were nonetheless part of a wider phenomenon that appeared in many Western European countries. Consequently, despite the particulars of, say, Swedish medievalism, the Swedish ideas about the medieval past were part of a wider discourse and was therefore shaped by that discourse. This discourse also included input from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Scandinavian diaspora in Canada and the United States.

The details concerning this historical developments are both interesting and numerous, and will hopefully be dealt with in a future blogpost, or perhaps several. However, in this present blogpost, my main aim is to share some of the reflections I made in the preparation for the seminar, and what I learned from the preparation process. It all started with some creative googling.

Even though the seminar was primarily focussed on nineteenth-century medievalism and how that medievalism shaped the modern ideas about the Viking, I thought this seminar would be a good opportunity to follow these ideas into the twenty-first century. I therefore decided to spend a couple of hours on the Internet, using very general search-terms that might yield some broader understanding of how pervasive and ubiquitous the figure of the Viking actually is in our day and age. One important foundational principle for this more or less aimless foray into cyberspace is the idea that the Viking is one of those reference points in a common register of what we might call ludic figures. These figures that are employed in cultural outputs because they are known by a very wide audience, and are therefore often used for play or gaming purposes. Examples of such ludic figures are pirates, ninjas, and cowboys, and such figures are often used in the same cultural expression, for instance if a film, a novel or a comic-book features pirates and cowboys in the same story, something which frequently happens. Because the Viking is a ludic figure, the Viking is often brought into play in cultural outputs, even when Vikings do not normally appear in the chronological or geographical setting in which that cultural output takes place. For instance, Rudyard Kipling’s story ‘The Knights of the Joyous Venture’ from his short-story collection Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) tells of Vikings reaching West Africa, thereby using the commonly-known figure of the Viking in a setting untypical of the Viking to create an entertaining story.

Knowing that Vikings are often fused with other such ludic elements popular in the common frame of reference, I decided to see what I could find, and how far afield I could follow the Vikings in the popular imagination. Since Vikings are not only used in entertainment and culture, but also for commercial purposes and in politics, I went on to cast a very wide net. My first port of call was Vikings and pizza. Remembering a pizzeria in York, UK, called Viking Pizza, I decided to dig a bit further, and learned that not only is this pizzeria still going – serving among other things its Viking pizza which is six toppings of your choice – but also that there is a nationwide chain called Vikings Pizza, whose website was blocked for Norwegian IP addresses, for some peculiar reason. This foray into modern food culture also brought to mind an advertisement campaign from my native Norway about twenty years ago, when a new brand of ham and tomato pizza made a claim that Vikings were the first to put tomato on their bread, on account of their contact with – the tomato-less – Vinland. Both these examples remind us that Vikings sell.

Moving on from culinary commercialism, I decided to try out various geographical connections. This yielded a throve of material. For instance, I found a picture of a reconstruction of a Viking ship in Sydney Harbour, taken in 2013, and learned of a collaboration between the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Swedish History Museum. Another antipodean find was a dart made in New Zealand called a ‘Viking hammer dart’, with decorations reminiscent of generic Norse knotwork patterns, and with an advertisement text that made a great effort in connecting the modern ideas about the Vikings – rampage and destruction – with this particular product.

Further geographically oriented searches produced a number of results pertaining to Vikings in space, including the 1963 novel Space Vikings by H. Beam Piper, and some short videos that dealt with the idea of Vikings in space. While I included Piper’s novel as a way to demonstrate how far removed from their chronological and geographical contexts Vikings could be used, it also served as a useful way to point out that this common imagination also yields real-life consequences, and in the mid-1970s the space probe programme called Viking was launched.

I also tried a few searches that connected Vikings with other ludic reference points, such as dinosaurs and robots, and the results were both varied and numerous, and provided good examples of just how ubiquitous the Viking is in the common imagination. Things did, however, take a weird turn, and not very long into my creative googling – I mean, my research. When searching for results in connections with Vikings at the centre of the earth – which was about halfway in my efforts – I got my first hit that pertained to literary pornography. The Internet being what it is, I guess it was inevitable that some of my searches should bring me into contact with pornography – thankfully, its literary kind – but the particular form was nonetheless unexpected. It was about this point that I became a bit despondent about my endeavours, and although I appreciate some forms of unbridled creativity, I had hoped to avoid certain of its incarnations.

At about the one-hour mark, I suspect, the overload of impressions and impulses had worn me out quite a bit, partly through the many encounters of Vikings in space and the various iterations of this theme, but especially due to the brief contact with erotic literature – erotic literature of a very weird kind. While at first I laughed heartily in my office when grasping what this result actually was, it was also something that hinted of a subtext and a subculture that employ these ludic figures in ways that are very far from my own comfort zone. My despondency grew even worse once I made some attempts to find useful material concerning the right-wing use of the Vikings, although that was an expected outcome since it always depresses me to do research on contemporary right-wing culture. 

On the whole, the two hours spent more or less aimlessly looking into various nooks and crannies of the Internet served me very well in the seminar, and it generally gave me a much broader understanding of the Viking in popular culture, and as a contemporary point of reference. My endeavour also fortified my conviction that having a broad familiarity with popular culture is crucial to our scholarly efforts, because this familiarity enables us to explain why a figure such as the Viking has had such a forceful impact, and also to evaluate what kind of impact the use of this figure might have in future iterations. In short, we understand better the after-history of our subject when we pay attention to its use in our own time.

The kind of magpie approach that I used, however, has both its benefits and its drawbacks. On the positive side, I now have a much broader understanding of Vikings in popular culture. On the negative side, the quick deep-immersion into such a vast trove as the Internet very quickly became both very weird and very much, and I felt as if my brain were melting after a while. Instead of doing this brief but intense foray into the subject, it would be better to have a small team dedicated to a concerted effort of gathering material. One day, this might be done and result in some very interesting books. 


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Similar blogposts: 

Adventures in medievalism, part 1 

Adventures in medievalism, part 2 

Adventures in medievalism, part 3  

A blogpost about my work in spring 2021, part II

 





One month ago, I posted a link to a blogpost I wrote for Mapping Lived Religion, the project for which I worked as a research assistant in the spring. That blogpost was the first of a two-parter in which I wrote a bit about various challenges that might be encountered when working on fragments of medieval calendars. 

Last week, the last of my two blogposts was published, which can be read here.

In this second blogpost, I explain some of the difficulties with examples from one of the most challenging fragments that the project deals with, as you can see from the image below. It was a lot of fun, but at times also a lot of frustration trying to fill the blanks.

Fr 25608, Sveriges Riksarkiv, MPO

A blogpost about my work in spring 2021

In the period March to the middle of June this year I worked as a research assistant for the project Mapping Lived Religion at Linnaeus University. My work consisted mainly of transcribing calendar fragments and inserting them into the project database, and it provided me with a great opportunity to learn more about Swedish medieval manuscript fragments.  

I have not yet written much about this work, except some general remarks about methodology in this blogpost. Today, however, the first of two blogposts about my work for Mapping Lived Religion was published on the project blog. In this blogpost, I provide an overview of how my work routine has been and what challenging aspects in the sources that have dictated such a routine. For those who are interested, the first blogpost can be found here.

On statues, and how not to defend them

 
June last year, I wrote a blogpost in response to the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. Since then, I have followed the ongoing discussion concerning statues and whether they should be kept or removed, and from time to time there are new incidents where protests usher in new removals. Earlier this month, for instance, statues of Queen Victoria and Elizabeth II were brought to the ground in Winnipeg, in response to discoveries of mass graves of indigenous children at the sites of residential schools in Canada. As I’m writing this, reports from protests in Brazil show that in the city of São Paulo, protesters have set fire to a statue of the explorer Borba Gato (1649-1718). No doubt, there will be more statues to add to the roster in the coming weeks.

The debate about the role of statues is, as we see, still ongoing, and will remain ongoing for the foreseeable future. In some cases, the debate is ongoing precisely because the statues have not fallen. One such example can be found in Oxford, where Oriel College decided not to remove the contentious statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

There are many ways to approach the question about statues and whether or not to keep them standing. I have, I hope, made my own thoughts quite clear in my previous blogpost, and they have not changed since I wrote it. However, I do think that the public discourse benefits from disagreement and differing views, and I am therefore always interested to hear the arguments put forth in favour of keeping the statues in place. Last autumn, I had a seminar with two groups of first-year students on the use of history, and since the seminar was part of a module on early modern history, I decided to focus on the statue debate. My students were asked to find a statue, research any controversies – actual or potential – concerning the person in question, and then we discussed the individual cases. The students responded very well to the assignment and had found a number of interesting examples. Since this course was in Sweden and since I was the only foreigner in the virtual room, it was particularly educational for me, both to see the statues they had chosen to discuss, and also to see how they responded to the global discussion from a Swedish vantage point. To my surprise, and indeed dismay, I noted that most of them accepted some of the most frequently presented arguments in favour of keeping the statues in place. The argument that the people in question were products of their time, and the argument that removing a statue is to remove history were both invoked quite frequently. While I disagree with this, I limited myself to presenting a general rebuttal of the core of each argument, while also explaining why these arguments were not very good. Some of the students did indeed come around to a different point of view towards the end of each seminar, but as I felt that this was a discussion they needed to develop further on their own, I did not insist on the matter. This was one of those cases where I was very glad that the students were not graded according to their efforts, because if so, it would be easy for the students to adopt my view and ostensibly agree with it. Since all that was required was attendance, they were at full liberty to agree and disagree as they saw fit, and I came away from the seminars with a lot of impressions and food for thought about how this discussion is viewed through eyes different from my own.

I have not changed my views about statues, but I am always looking for good counterarguments in the event that I will be discussing this issue with future groups of students. For this reason, I was interested to find a link to an interview with a scholar at Oriel College who was not in favour of removing the statue of Cecil Rhodes, and I was curious about the arguments that would be put forth. Unfortunately, I found that the website that had conducted and published the interview regularly publishes pieces that seem to take a lot of left-wing issues in very bad faith, and I also found that the interview was couched in a similar vein of bad faith, dismissive and misrepresentative language, and I saw that neither the interviewer nor the interviewee had really grasped the core of the debate. For these reasons, I will not link to the interview, nor will I name the site or the scholar. Should you wish to read the interview, I imagine that some efficient googling should produce the required results.

I am not linking to the interview, because this blogpost is not really about the interview itself, but rather about the tendency that I saw represented there. This is a blogpost first and foremost about how not to argue in favour of keeping statues of problematic historical persons.

As I mentioned above, when talking about my experience with Swedish students, the arguments of being of one’s time and removing history are both unacceptable arguments. The first argument is based on the expectations that humans are homogenous in different epochs, and that human nature changes. There have always, in each epoch of recorded history and also before that, been a plurality of opinions about important issues. While many previous historical eras are now known for their violence and instability – often a reputation caused by the interpretation of future generations rather than an accurate representation of the time – we should also keep in mind that ideas that it is wrong to kill people, and that one should not treat others the way one would not wish to be treated, are thousands of years old. We also know that dissent has been one of the key themes of recorded history, and that revolts, revolutions, rebellions and riots have flared up in the face of injustice or abuse of power as long as power has been wielded. We therefore need to abandon the argument of someone being of their time.

Similarly, the idea that removing a statue is to remove history is wrong. History is recorded in many forms, especially in our current times, and while there have been cases where removal of statues had the deliberate purpose of removing people from history through the so-called damnatio memoriae, statues are not vehicles for learning about history. David Olusoga has written very well about this already. Another version of this argument is that the statues are products of a historical period and are therefore imbued with some degree of venerability. This is a better version of the argument, but it is nonetheless deeply problematic. There is a reason why we do not have statues of some historical transgressors, namely because there is a sufficiently wide consensus that the people in question have committed crimes too monstrous to allow for statues. Granted, there are some historical persons whose crimes are still not subject for sufficient consensus as to facilitate the removal of their statues, but this consensus might change, and then there is a very good reason for removing the statues in question. For instance, it was only two days ago, July 23, that a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of Ku Klux Klan, was removed from the Tennessee capitol building in Nashville. We then see that it might take time before a requisite number of people acknowledge the crimes of historical individuals, but once those crimes are acknowledged we also see why it is unacceptable to keep statues of those people in place.

The main reason why these two aforementioned arguments are insufficient is that statues are by their very nature celebratory. As history progresses, we change whom we choose to celebrate, and it therefore makes little sense to celebrate people who are acknowledged as transgressors. We should of course have a lively discussion about who gets to stay and who has to go, but for any such discussion to be in place it is crucial to be aware of the fact that the primary purpose for a statue is celebration.

Another argument that I have often seen levelled – and which had a central place in the interview I mentioned earlier – is that toppling these statues are acts of hysteria, that they are tantrums and overreactions. This is a disingenuous response, and it is not so much an argument in favour of keeping the statues in place as it is a thinly veiled ad hominem attack. We should of course acknowledge that such protests that have resulted in the felling of statues have a degree of group effect to them, that those who commit these acts are energised by being part of a large group of people. But this in itself is not the same as hysteria. There are often long-running tensions that come to the surface in such moments, and these reactions must be understood against backdrops of social inequality, racism, imperialism and the long-felt effects of past injustices. It is simplistic to dismiss such actions as the toppling of statues as mere tantrums, especially because in those groups that pull down the statues there are numerous people whose combinations of incentivising factors are different from person to person. If we are to treat the matter of statues with nuance, we cannot lazily label large groups of individuals with derogatory terms such as “hysteria” or “tantrum”.

There might be good arguments for keeping statues in place, and this is why we need to have a thorough discussion for each statue. However, I have not yet been convinced by any such arguments that I have encountered, and if we are to move this discussion in a fruitful direction, it is at least important that none of the three responses listed here are brought into play. Once these rhetorical cul-de-sacs are discarded, we might find good arguments in favour of keeping statues in place. I am not holding my breath.         

Pope Leo II, a saint of Catholic identity

 

This blogpost was originally planned for June 28, but was delayed. The date of June 28 is the feast of Pope Leo II, who reigned as pope from 681 to his death in 683. His feast was universal throughout the medieval Latin Church, and it presents an interesting showcase for how saints serve as elements of identity-construction. As I am particularly interested in questions of how identity is constructed, maintained and altered, the feast of Pope Leo II is a small but valuable example for why studying saints is very rewarding when dealing with such questions.  

The surviving information about Pope Leo II is primarily taken from the Liber Pontificalis, the Book of Pontiffs, an overview of the biographies of popes. Given the brevity of his reign, there are not that many details to be gleaned from the book. Leo was known for his skills in Latin and Greek, as well as his musical talents, and his eloquence. The defining event of his papacy was the condemnation of the belief of Monothelitism as heretical. This belief claimed that Christ had only one will, not two, which is seen in the name "monothelitism" which can be translated as "one will". Monothelitism was one of several beliefs circulating within the wider Christian world. 

At this point in time, the Roman Church was still subservient to the emperor in Constantinople, and it was the emperor who consecrated the pope. Consequently, the contact between the Greek and the Latin churches were much closer, and the events within each different language sphere had also impact in the other - although the influence from the Greek to the Latin sphere was much greater than the other direction, since the Greek sphere included the seat of the emperor. 

While the condemnation of Monothelitism was ratified by Pope Leo II, the condemnation itself was the result of the sixth council of Constantinople, which was held in 680. Pope Leo also confirmed the condemnation of Pope Honorius I (r.625-38), who had not condemned Monothelitism and whose lack of action was considered treasonous. It is in this event, this refusal of a particular doctrine, that more than any other aspect of Leo's papacy explains Leo's elevation to sainthood. By confirming the heretical nature of Monothelitism, Pope Leo II appears as a guarantor of the validity of the Catholic doctrine, and as such he becomes a reference point in the formulation of a Catholic identity. 
 
It must of course be emphasised that this rather clinical analysis of the appeal of Pope Leo II as a saint is only part of the story. As with most, if not all, saints, the belief in their sanctity must be understood as stemming from a genuine conviction. The veneration of Pope Leo II must therefore not only be seen in light of the construction of a Catholic identity. Moreover, it is likely that in time the importance of his condemnation of Monothelitism grew somewhat less, especially as he retained a relatively minor position among the universal saints of the later medieval Latin Church. When we find Leo's feast included in a thirteenth-century calendar produced in England, which was later brought to Sweden, we should perhaps not expect that the issue of Monothelitism and its importance in seventh-century Latin Christendom was that well-known among those who celebrated the feast on June 28. Pope Leo II does not appear to have ever held a high status among the saints in the catalogue of the Latin Church in the centuries following his death. Yet even so, the very inclusion of the feast of a relatively minor saint, and its universality, attest to the issue of Catholic identity as one that has played a crucial role in the proclamation of this pope's sanctity. While the avatars of such an identity might increase in number over time, and while some - as Leo - might be relegated to a lesser importance in the wider roster of such avatars, Pope Leo II nonetheless reminds us that saints are crucial elements in the construction of identity.  

Fragment of a thirteenth-century calendar produced in England
Medeltida Pergament Omslag Fr 25593
Photo: Riksarkivet Sverige

References


Encyclopedia Britannica 

Basil Watkins (ed.), The Book of Saints, Bloomsbury, 2016

A multiplicity of Maximuses - methodological aspects of saint scholarship

 
Saturday, I collected a package at the local post office which contained a very useful tool for my current research, namely the latest edition of The Book of Saints, an encyclopedia that has grown out of generations of Benedictine scholarship on the cult of saints. Considering that my current job consists in part of entering names of saints from medieval calendars into a database, this book is immensely valuable for determining some of the many cases where a saint's identity is uncertain. And while I had known for quite a while that there are numerous instances where several saints share the same name, I had rarely had to deal with this in my own research. Previously, I have mostly worked on saints whose cults were extensive and whose figures were easily identifiable - if sometimes confused - and there have been very few cases where I have spent a lot of time trying to ascertain the identity of a specific saint. This situation was to change very rapidly as I started in my current job. 

The main part of my current work is centred on fragments of medieval calendars used in Sweden, many of which were either imported from England, or produced by copying an older English calendar, and together these fragments span the period c.1100 to c.1500. For the most part, identifying the saints in these calendars is easy enough to do, as the majority of saints are sufficiently well established in Latin Christendom, and sufficiently well known by scholarship. In some cases, the name is all that is necessary for determining which saint we are dealing with, or the date of the feast. And some saints are so well established that even in the cases where the name is misspelled or the feast is misplaced, it does not require a lot of effort to piece the puzzle together. 

However, in some cases there are saints whose inclusion in the calendar is essentially a vestige of a practice established a long time ago which has essentially fallen into oblivion, maintained only because the name can be found, even though the ministrants might have no clear idea of who this saint is or when and where the saint operated, or perhaps not even what patronage the saint is supposed to have. These are saints so minor in their fame and popularity that not even the shortest chapters of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea from c.1260 - which arguably brought a lot of saints out of complete oblivion - have saved them from becoming skeleton cults, names serving as echoes of a lost past. It is when saints attain this level of near-forgottenness that they become problematic for the modern-day scholar. Saints such as these are often perfunctorily recorded in calendars because they are included in the older calendar used as a model - and sometimes they are misspelled, or misplaced, or simply confused with other saints of a similar name. 

In the course of my work on Swedish calendars - about which I will not go into great detail here - I have several times spent more time than I had anticipated, indeed hoped, in trying to establish which Victor, which Eusebius, or which Maximus is actually meant in a badly water-damaged calendar fragment. And in cases such as these, where the name is shared by a great number of individuals - many of which are of such an uncertain historicity that their legends have become confused with one another - it is extremely needful to have several tools such as The Book of Saints. Because even though they might not shed all the required light on the errors of a scribe centuries ago, they might help in the process of narrowing down the possible options. This is especially useful when encountering a Maximus - or a variant of that name - who is merely identified as a martyr, a confessor, and a priest, because there are, as the pages below demonstrate, a long, long list of possible candidates. There is, indeed, a multiplicity of Maximuses - and Eusebiuses, and Victors and others - that need to be carefully sifted through in order to arrive at some sort of conclusion. And even then it is entirely possible that that conclusion is wrong.     

Saint Thomas of Canterbury at Lund

Today is the feast of Thomas of Canterbury, better known as Thomas Becket, archbishop, who was killed at the altar of Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, when a group of knights broke into the church. The murder must be understood against the six-year-long conflict between Thomas and King Henry II of England about the juridical borders and the power balance between church and king, which in turn was part of a power struggle that marked the political discourse of all of Latin Christendom at the time. When the English strand of this conflict culminated with the death of Thomas, he became a figurehead for the reformists of the church who championed the idea of the supremacy of the church not only in spiritual but also in worldly matters, and also the independence of the church from worldly government. Consequently, Pope Alexander III canonised Thomas in 1173, and his cult was disseminated widely throughout Latin Christendom. 

The cult of Saint Thomas of Canterbury came to the Norse world very early, and while we do not know much about the concrete details of the dissemination, we know that there were several routes by which his cult could have travelled to each of the different Nordic countries, such as trade, diplomacy, ecclesiastical connections or monastic networks (in particular the Cistercians). Our earliest sources for Thomas' cult in Denmark can be seen in three stories recorded by William of Canterbury in a miracle collection, while printed breviaries from the Danish archbishopric of Lund can be seen to retain the liturgical repertoire that was imported into Denmark already in the latter quarter of the twelfth century.

While there are many things that deserve to be said about the cult of Thomas in the medieval Norse world, there are also many of those things that need to be more thoroughly researched and that are tied up with various works in progress. So for this blogpost - marking the 850th anniversary of his death and forming part of the hashtag Becket 2020 - I'll limit myself to commenting on a late source that perhaps points to a continuous, or at least long-lasting, popularity around the martyred archbishop in medieval Denmark.  

Breviarium Lundense (Kongelige Bibliotek København, R 665 8°), f.98v

The source in question is a detail I encountered in the breviary of Lund, which was printed in 1517 in Paris. By this time, Lund was part of the medieval kingdom of Denmark - it is now in Sweden - and had been its metropolitan see since 1104. Due to Archbishop Eskil's connection with the reformist movement and the Cistercian order, it is likely that Lund was one of the first religious centres in Denmark, even in the Norse world, that adopted the cult of Thomas of Canterbury. The liturgy used for the celebration of Thomas' feast-day was likely brought directly from Canterbury, and it was retained without any notable changes in the printed breviary from 1517, pointing to the durability and conservative nature of liturgical material.

Yet even though the liturgical content of the printed breviary can, in the case of Thomas of Canterbury, be traced back to the twelfth century, there is one aspect of the breviary that is distinctly contemporary with the book itself, namely the note scribbled along the top margin of the page seen in the picture above. The page, folio 98v, begins with the eighth lesson for the hour of Matins - the liturgical apex of the daily round of hours - in which Thomas' role as a good shepherd is highlighted. The good shepherd is one of the roles of Christ, and every clergyman serving as a shepherd is modelled on Christ in this aspect. When Thomas' role as a good sheperd is highlighted here, the author of the liturgical office - belived to be Benedict of Peterborough - strengthens the sainted archbishop's similarity with Christ, as Thomas not only was a martyr in imitation of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, but also was a shepherd in imitation of Christ as a protector. This lesson caught the attention of some canon or priest - perhaps the archbishop himself - in the early sixteenth century at Lund. And since the Reformation was brought to Denmark in 1536/37, the window for dating the writing of this note is pleasingly narrow. 

The content of the note itself I have not yet managed to decipher, despite some frustrating attempts. The handwriting is not from my period of expertise, and I will probably ultimately have to rely on colleagues for this part. Yet even so, until such time that this is solved, it does nonetheless show that Thomas retained relevance in medieval Denmark as late as the period 1517-36/37, and that his liturgical office continued to be performed and exert an influence on at least some of its listeners centuries after it first was introduced to Denmark.


For other blogposts touching on Thomas of Canterbury, see:


A comparison of the cults of Thomas and Edward the Confessor

The chant Thomas Gemma Cantuarie

A wall-painting in the Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle, Milan

A liturgical commemoration from the Norwegian medieval liturgical ordo

A fifteenth-century wall-painting in Skive, Denmark

Some reflections on the iconography of Saint Thomas in late medieval Europe

Material minutiae - the curious case of the discoloured incunable page

One of the books to which I often return in the course of my research is a 1492 edition of the collection of saints' lives Das Leuend der Hÿlghen, printed by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck. This book is now kept in the library of the University of Southern Denmark, which is where I encountered it in the course of a brief employment as a research assistant there. The book is magnificent for many reasons, and one of the many aspects that continue to delight me is the material evidence of use - various clues as to how its readers interacted with the book. Since this edition came to the university library from a Danish school established in the mid-sixteenth century, these clues are particularly interesting for what light they might shed on the reception of these saint stories in a post-Reformation Scandinavian context.

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.403v

The material clues come in various forms, often as marginal notations of different kinds - scribbled notes or simply marks to highlight a passage - and sometimes these clues are more accidental. One such accidental clue can be seen on page 403v, the last page in the collection's chapter on Saint Erik of Sweden. As can be seen in the photograph above, the left column of the page is curiously streaked by some kind of discolouration. At the time of writing, I do not know how to explain this or what it might tell us about how this book has been used, but I'm opening this up to readers with more experience in codicology, in the hope that some suggestions might appear.

Harmonious disharmony - Pär Lagerkvist and Carlo Gesualdo

This evening I finished reading the novel Dvärgen (The Dwarf) by the Swedish novelist Pär Lagerkvist. The novel is narrated by the dwarf of a late-medieval Italian prince, who is an extreme misanthrope and observes the world through a filter of hatred and incomprehension, interpreting the actions and natures of those around him from his vantage point of the outsider who is often mocked and ignored, yet who thereby manages to come closer to the realities of courtly life. It is a wonderful novel, but in an extremely discomforting way. Since the protagonist considers himself in opposition to the doings of humans - whom he considers a different species of beings altogether - he also breaks norms, performs impieties, and presents the twisted, childish view of the world of a supreme egotist who feels insufficiently powerful and who is dissatisfied with everything - everything but violence, that is. This contradictory nature of the protagonist runs like a jarringly discordant note through the entire novel, a note made all the more discordant because his hatred is of such a petulant nature. It has taken me significantly longer to finish this novel than I expected, and it is precisely because of this disharmony.

As I began reading the novel, I was struck by the idea that a fitting soundtrack to my reading would be something by Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), one of the most notorious composers of Renaissance music, known for his heavy use of dissonance which is in notable contrast to earlier Italian composers. It is not quite clear to me why his music came to mind, as I have not listened to it since the months following a conference in Italy back in 2013, which coincided with the anniversary of his death. Perhaps it was the late-medieval/Renaissance setting of Lagerkvist's novel that prompted the connection. Perhaps it was that like the novel's protagonist, Gesualdo also broke the norms of his day and also committed murder (I misremembered and thought he had murdered his father - I realised later that he had murdered his wife and her lover). Whatever the reason, I found that the homicidal composer's disharmonious music suited the murderous disharmony of the novel's narrator disconcertingly well, as if the two horrible human beings - one real, one fictional - echoed each other and brought something more living into the art. It was an uncomfortable exercise at times, but one that was rewarding in strange ways, as the disharmony of it all allowed me to immerse myself somewhat more deeply into the twisted reality of the novel's nameless misfit of a protagonist. And it served also as a reminder that - as shown by both the novel and the music - the idea of the Renaissance as a time of glory is a gross misconception that only survives because it fits certain grand narratives, and because we give too much credence to the art it left behind and not the circumstances in which that art was made, or by whom or to whose cost that art came into being. Although fictional, Lagerkvist's misanthropic narrator helps us remember that.    

A medieval view of Växjö

Yesterday I walked into town for the first time in several weeks, and I had selected a route which I had not travelled before. It turned out to be a very rewarding choice, as the road took me to the top of a hill sloping down into the centre, as it cut through an allotment. This angle gave me a lovely view of Växjö cathedral, and it struck me as a notably medieval view, because from this perspective there were no tall houses to rival the height of the cathedral or to obscure its spires, there was no industrial or mercantile complex to remind me of the present times.

I call this view medieval, not because there were no modern components in the vista. After all, the cathedral itself is to a large extent an early modern renovation of the medieval structure, remnants of which can still be found inside and around the church. Yet at the same time, this view - with the cathedral clearly outlined against the sky, dominating the horizon and foregrounded by patch of cultivated greensward - would have been essentially the same as the view of medieval churchgoers wending their way down the slope in the Middle Ages, when Växjö was the frontier zone between medieval Sweden and medieval Denmark, and when the bishops of the city claimed to preside over the oldest of all the Swedish dioceses (a claim still made).  

There was something lovely and peaceful in the stability and permanence offered by this view. And even though that stability and that permanence are belied by the very features that make up the view, it is enough to give a calming sense that while the individual pieces might have changed significantly in the past thousand years, a lot of it still remains the same, and this allows us to get a better sense of how this landscape was experienced by its inhabitants several centuries ago. There is something to be said for that kind of sensations. 

For the feast of Saint Sigfrid

Today is the feast of Saint Sigfrid of Växjö in Sweden, the patron saint of the city and of the region of Småland. His legend survives in thirteenth-century sources, and according to this legend he was the archbishop of York in the early eleventh century, who went to Sweden on the invitation of the pagan Swedish king who wanted to learn about Christianity. This king was Olof Skötkonung (d.c.1022), who is the first recorded individual to have claimed rulership over both the Geats and the Swedes, which were the two main political entities of medieval Sweden.Olof Skötkonung (interpreted as tax-king) is a historical figure, but Sigfrid's historicity is highly dubious. We do know that there has never been an archbishop of York by that name, and the English king Mildrith who also appears in the legend is likewise not authentic. 

Växjö Cathedral

The legend of Sigfrid continues with a description of his arrival in Denmark, where he was greeted by King Svend (presumably Svend Forkbeard who died in 1014). The Danish king was himself a Christian, and had Sigfrid escorted safely to the Swedish border. By this point in time, Denmark extended into the region of Skåne, or Scania, which today belongs to Sweden. Consequently, at Sigfrid's time, it was Småland that constituted the border zone between the politically fragmented Sweden and the more centralised Denmark.

In Småland, Sigfrid set up camp by Lake Växjö, a name that I have seen interpreted as veg-sjö, or road-lake, i.e. a lake by the crossroads. If correct, this name points to the existing trade routes through forests and by water that were in place at the time of Sigfrid's alleged arrival. This also makes sense, considering that Christian missionaries - historical or mythical - were not pioneers in unknown lands, but settled where there already existed networks of human contact and infrastructures by which the new faith could be disseminated. Close to Lake Växjö, he established his first church, said to be on the spot where the cathedral stands today. While Sigfrid's church is mythical, it is likely that a wooden church was erected in the early stages of the Christianisation of the area. It is also likely that this wooden church was placed where the cathedral stands today, because when Växjö became a bishopric in 1170, the building of a new stone church was started. This stone church were a replacement for the previous wooden structure, and likely raised on the same foundations - this is a very common pattern in the history of Nordic churches.

In the first stages of Sigfrid's missionary campaign, he was aided by his three nephews that he had brought with him from England. They were named Unaman, Sunaman and Vinaman, and they were in charge of the nascent church while Sigfrid went to visit King Olof to tell him about his progress. While Sigfrid was away, a group of twelve local aristocrats - i.e. rich farmers and chieftains - conspired against the three nephews. These twelve had been selected as honorary members of the church organisation, presumably in imitation of Christ's apostles, and possibly also with a nod to the twelve monks that were chosen by Benedict of Nursia in his establishment of the Benedictine Order. The twelve Swedes, eventually, stole into the sleeping quarters of the nephews and decapitated them. The bodies were buried and the heads thrown into Lake Växjö.

When Sigfrid learned about this, he returned to Växjö and as he was walking by the lake a celestial light shone down on the water, revealing the three heads placed in a small wooden tub. The heads spoke to him, and vowed revenge on later generations. The culpits were later punished by Olof Skötkonung, and Sigfrid continued his work as the first bishop of Sweden. He later died peacefully, and is therefore listed as a confessor in the calendars. 

Since today is the feast of Sigfrid, there was a concert in the cathedral featuring excerpts from the liturgical office, which survives in thirteenth-century sources. The arrangement was organised by Karin S. Lagergren, a friend and colleague at Linnaeus University whose research is the foundation for the musical arrangement, and the recording of a CD of Sigfrid's liturgy. It was a wonderful experience with beautiful music permeating the sacred space of the cathedral and bringing to life the mythical and inauthentic figures, whose story nonetheless is likely based on some collective memory from the time of conversion. This office was likely composed in the bishopric of Växjö - thus pointing to the existence of a scriptorium at the cathedral - and from there it was disseminated throughout the Swedish metropolitan see (which had been established in 1164). The performance, in this way, brought me closer to how the story of Sigfrid, and how the identity of the cathedral, was communicated to the medieval community of clerics from the thirteenth century onwards.

Following the concert, I had a stroll by Lake Växjö, following the shore where Sigfrid mourned his nephews and miraculously found their heads. There was no celestial light today, but it was nonetheless a very atmospheric afternoon, and with my head filled with the watery imagery of the Sigfrid legend, it became somewhat easier to imagine the scenes of the story. It was, in other words, easy to see how the legend and the landscape in combination served to solidify an identity centred on the figure of Sigfrid. We now know that he never existed, but to the Swedes in the twelfth century onwards he was, and he became the representative of their identity both in relation to the local geography and in relation to the Swedish history as a whole.