Saint Michael in Tønsberg, part 2 - the church on the mountain

 

Today, September 29, is the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. In the Middle Ages, Saint Michael was an important figure in Latin Christian cosmology, as he was the one who would fight Satan at the end of the world, and as he was the one who weighed the souls of the dead. He was often associated with summits and high places, and many - but not all - of Latin medieval churches dedicated to him are found in such places. One example is the Church of Saint Michael in Tønsberg, which is located atop the crag called "Slottsfjellet" (literally, Castle Mount). 

The ruins of the Church of Saint Michael 

In the background is the Castle Mount Tower, built in 1888

The earliest mention of the church is the narrative account titled Profectio Danorum in Hierosolymam (The Journey of the Danes to Jerusalem), which describes a joint Danish-Norwegian failed attempt to travel to the Holy Land to participate in the Crusades. The reference is dated to 1191, but it is likely that the church had already been active for several decades. It was part of a small castle complex, as Tønsberg was one of the residences of the Norwegian kings. This fortified complex is mentioned in Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum (c.1206), concerning an episode dated to 1165. Despite the date of the episode, the later date of the account itself provides us no certainty about whether the church had been erected as early as 1165. It is, however, very likely, given that the church would have been a natural part of such a royal fortress as what we find in Tønsberg. The church is believed to have been destroyed during a Swedish attack in 1503

The Church of Saint Michael in Tønsberg raises some important questions about the general cult of the archanagel in medieval Norway. Was the church dedicated to Michael because it was placed on a summit, or should it rather be seen as an indication of Michael's importance to the secular warrior elite of twelfth-century Norway? Was the cult an elite phenomenon in the early phase, or was it always widely popular? The inimitable Professor Judith Jesch has reminded me that there are seventeen runic inscriptions that mention Saint Michael, ranging from Greenland to Gotland, and this points to Michael's wider popularity. Similarly, the sermon for Saint Michael and All Saints in the Old Norwegian Homily Book, probably written in Bergen c.1200, demonstrates that the story was available in the vernacular. Although the text was only available to the clerics for whom it was composed, the sermon itself could be disseminated broadly, providing the populace with the key details of Saint Michael's importance. But this, in turn, leaves us wondering whether the elite cult of Saint Michael - possibly represented by the church in Tønsberg - had a different focus than the popular cult. It has been suggested by Siân Grønlie - in her article '‘Ok er hann sannheilagr’: The Role of Saints in Remembering and Representing Iceland’s Conversion' from 2022 - that one of the strands in the cult of Saint Michael, his martial aspect, might have appealed especially to warriors and crusaders. The general populace, on the other hand, might have favoured his role as the weigher of souls. 

Model of the medieval Church of Saint Michael

A saint is a mosaic of qualities and the venerators might focus on a few or just a single one. Therefore, it is important not to generalise too much when trying to map the cult onto the social fabric of a historical period. The Church of Saint Michael in Tønsberg is connected to the king and his retinue, and the veneration of the archangel might here have been fuelled by his role as the leader of the Heavenly armies. But since there are other churches dedicated to Michael and placed on summites in medival Norway - one example being the church in the monastic complex of Selja in Western Norway - it is possible that the placement of the church in Tønsberg guided the choice of dedicatee rather than the other way around. 

View of Slottsfjellet from Tønsberg city centre

Saint Michael in Tønsberg, part 1 - the dragonslayer in the cathedral

 
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.  

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Saint Michael and Saint Lawrence by Per Vigeland, 1939

Saint Olaf in Tønsberg, part 1 - the dragonslayer

A few days ago, I took a trip to Tønsberg, one of Norway's oldest cities. Located one hour south of Oslo by train, Tønsberg is nestled at the foot of a large crag called Slottsfjellet, Castle Mountain, so named because it was the site of a royal stronghold and, from the late thirteenth century, a castle. Medieval Tønsberg contained several churches, some of which I hope to return to in later blogposts, as their outlines and their placement in the cityscape - nestled at the foot of Slottsfjellet - can still be seen clearly today. 

For this short blogpost, however, I will focus on a feature of modern Tønsberg, but one which invokes the medieval past in a display of medievalism typical of twentieth-century Norway. The feature in question is a stained glass window in Tønsberg cathedral. This church was consecrated in 1858 and replaced the medieval Church of Saint Lawrence which by then was in disrepair. By 1858, the church was simply a parish church, as Tønsberg did not become a diocese until 1948, when it was carved from the diocese of Oslo, to which it had belonged since the late eleventh century. 

As Norwegian Lutheran churches are not dedicated to saints - since saints are not part of Lutheran theology - the common name for the new church was Tønsberg church, and now Tønsberg cathedral. However, the fact that this new church had a medieval predecessor and thus participates in a historical continuum is marked and even celebrated. Outside the cathedral is a model of the Church of Saint Lawrence, and a plaque containing information about this medieval church which colloquially is referred to as "Lavranskirken", Lavrans being the Norwegian name for Lawrence. 

The awareness of the medieval past of the current church is also marked by a series of stained glass windows made in 1939 by the glazier Per Vigeland, nephew of the more famous Gustav Vigeland whose statues are given their own park in Oslo. The nave of the cathedral contains a series of impressive medievalesque windows, each of which contains a religious figure. Most of these figures are apostles and prophets, in keeping with the constrictions of Lutheran iconography, and of course the Virgin Mary. However, some windows also include the saints to whom churches were dedicated in medieval Tønsberg. Aside from Saint Lawrence, the medieval city also included churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Michael the Archangel, the apostle Peter, and Olaf. While Mary and Peter could easily fit into the iconographic scheme of the Lutheran parish church, and while Michael at least would be accepted, the choice to also include Lawrence and Olaf in the array of stained glass windows point to a conscious desire to invoke and connect with the medieval past.   

SS Olaf and Thomas in Tønsberg Cathedral 
Made by Per Vigeland in 1939

While there are interesting analyses to be made of all the Tønsberg saints as depicted in glass in the cathedral, I here want to focus on the figure of Saint Olaf. Since he also was a historical king who is given the credit for finalising the conversion of the Norwegians to Christianity - a claim that is rightly challenged in modern scholarship - Olaf is one of those saints who can be found in Lutheran iconography despite the general unbelief in the cult of saints. When Olaf does appear in church art, he is often, as in the case of Tønsberg cathedral, called Saint Olaf, or otherwise Olaf the Holy, which creates a kind of cognitive dissonance that testifies to the importance of Olaf in the historical imagination of the Norwegian Lutheran establishment. To put it differently, the place of Olaf in Norwegian history has ensured him a degree of veneration that circumvents the scepticism towards saintly figures. 

Per Vigeland's depiction of Olaf is interesting not only because of its circumvention of Lutheran standards, but also because of how it connects with and builds on the medieval iconography of Saint Olaf. In the stained glass window, Olaf is seen holding the axe and the royal orb which are typical attributes in medieval renditions. Moreover, he is standing on a dragon, which is a common feature of several paintings and sculptures, although sometimes he stands on a human figure rather than a dragon. In these two aspects, Vigeland's Olaf is very medieval. However, Vigeland has also departed from the medieval models by making Olaf's attention being drawn to the dragon on which he stands. In medieval images, Olaf shows no concern regarding the dragon or the enemy that he has trampled underfoot, but instead the saint stares serenely ahead, his gaze attentive to other matters, such as those who come to venerate him.

In the Tønsberg window cycle, however, Olaf raises the axe as if to strike and pulls the royal orb towards himself as if to keep it out of reach of the enemy, a pose that suggests the dragon is not yet defeated, even though its visible eye is closed. In addition, we see that the dragon is engulfed in flames, which might serve as an allusion to the hellfire to which Saint Michael pushes the satanic dragon in another of Vigeland's window. Olaf is, in other words, depicted as a dragonslayer in a way that builds on, but also breaks with, medieval iconographic tradition. Whereas medieval images showed Olaf having conquered the enemy - be it man or beast, or beast with the head of a man - this modern rendition shows the moment before this victorious pose. 

What we see in Per Vigeland's depiction of Saint Olaf is, in other words, an excellent example of how medieval iconography still impacts modern iconography, and how the figure of Saint Olaf is imagined in a way that has roots stretching all the way back to the Middle Ages. Vigeland's image of the Norwegian saint-king is a clear case of medievalism, where the medieval tradition, the medieval iconography and medieval history is invoked and used as the basis for a modern artistic expression. We can only speculate as to why Vigeland chose to depart from the medieval standard depictions, and it is possible that the answer can be found in Vigeland's contemporary context. But I know too little about Vigeland's view of the world to hazard a speculative analysis here.