Return to Nidrosia

Nidaros Cathedral seen from the bridge over the river Nid, Trondheim

I once read a quotation attributed to Jorge Luis Borges that the greatest joy is not in the reading, but in the re-reading. To a certain extent this holds true of travelling as well, and a happy return to a beloved place that was once new and uncharted can in several ways be more pleasant than the first discovering journey. In part, such a pleasure owes its being to the invocation of memories, and to a nostalgic person such as myself memories have a particularly strong grip one's heart. In part, the pleasure comes from the familiar, and the knowledge that one can move about in the area with great ease and not get lost, yet at the same time still be able to discover new things and see beautiful details one has previously overlooked.

This month I'm immersed in this joy of revisiting. Two years after I left Trondheim to begin my PhD in Denmark, I am now back to spend some time as a guest at the department for historical studies at my old alma mater, the Norwegian University for Science and Technology. I have spent seven years of my life in this city, receiving both my BA and my MA here, and I have many friends and acquaintences who in various ways, big or small, have helped me becoming the person I am today.

I arrived in Trondheim on Monday afternoon and have already spent a few days catching up with people, getting settled in at my temporary office at the department, and sauntering about in the old city centre, trodding the familiar streets, viewing the familiar spots, and enjoying my first Norwegian September since 2013, September being a particularly crisp but often sunny month in my home country.

The reason for my return has mainly to do with a requirement in my PhD contract which stipulates that I have to spend a minimum of three months at another academic institution. My choice of Trondheim was an easy one. The primary reason is that I'm working on the cult of Saint Olaf of Norway, whose shrine was situated in the Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim, the seat of the Norwegian archbishop. For this reason, there are many colleagues here who have worked on material relating to the cult of Olaf, and new research is continuously being carried out. I'm here to immerse myself in this research, and to draw on the expertise of friends and colleagues, who have been very welcoming in sharing and wanting to share their knowledge with me, in the best fashion of academic kindness.

The academic network is my primary reason for returning to Trondheim, but a significant pull factor has of course also been the fact that I can now return to a beloved city and beloved friends, a combination that is a joy without measure. Part of this joy comes from the fact that ever since I began working on the material for Saint Olaf, I have had to do a lot of research into the history of the city and its medieval past, and I have a greater knowledge of this now than what I had when I studied here. Therefore, when coming back to the city, I return with a new understanding of the different medieval survivals and the different localities, and this helps me to see the familiar through new eyes and to appreciate even more the many remnants of the medieval past.

I have only been here a few days, but I know that when I leave for Denmark again in October I will leave with an even greater understanding of the material on which I'm working, and of the city I called my home for seven years.

The Statue, a poem by Derek Walcott

As is quite apparent to regular readers of this blog, I am a big enthusiast for the verse of Saint Lucian writer and 1992 Nobel laureate in literature Derek Walcott. This is the reason why I often turn to his poetry when I need blogposts that do not require much time to prepare, research or write, and that is, to me, a perfect excuse to highlight some of his lesser known poems, such as those from the early collections which did not make it into the collected poems edition published by Faber & Faber in 1986.

In this blogpost, I give you a short poem from his collection The Castaway, first published i 1965. I take the text from the 1969 Jonathan Cape paperback edition.


Statues

Stone will not bleed;
Nor shall this vixor'ed prince, apotheozised
On his stone steed,
A barrel-bellied charger treading the air,
Its tightening haunches set
To hurdle with its warrior the chasm
Between our age and theirs.
Its eyes erupt, bulge in a spasm
Of marble. We stare
At their slow power to corrupt;

Then turn to read
Around another statue, civic-sized,
Bare, halding head,
Of some archaic, muscular aphorist
Laurelled, toga unkempt,
His forked hand raised like a diviner's rod,
His face creased with the wise
Exhaustion of a god.
Their eyes
Withhold amusement, mine, contempt.

Boys will be boys.
Who can instruct them where true honour lies?
Instinct or choice,
Proclaims it lies within
War's furious, dandiacal discipline.
We, who have known

Its victims huddled in a reeking ditch
Of the staff's iron light hurtling Saul
into pedestrian sainthood at his fall,
Still praise that murderous energy of stone.

On them, your fatherly, exhausted air
Is lost,
As sightless as the god's prophetic stare.

Across that gulf each greets the other's ghost.





For similar blogposts
Ruins of a great house

Two poems

The Prince

Pocomania

A selection of poems

Pikes, Thomas de Cantimpré and Ted Hughes

 

As can sometimes be seen on this blog, I'm very fond of juxtaposing medieval and modern cultural expression, be it folklore, literature, art, music or a range of other things. In this blogpost I'm taking a quick glance at the pike, nicely illustrated in Thomas de Cantimpré's book De Natura Rerum. As we see from this folio, the pike is called "esox". In a twelfth-century bestiary, Cambridge University Library II.4.26, edited and translated by T. H. White, however, it has been named "lupis". As White himself suggests in a footnote, this is probably a misspelling of "lucius", as the pike is known as "esox lucius". The bestiary's description of the pike goes as follows.

His wolfish greed has given the name of LUPIS to the Pike, and it is difficult to catch him. When he is encircled by the net, they say that he ploughs up the sand with his tai and thus, lying hidden, manages to escape the meshes.
- Anonymous, The Book of Beasts, edited and translated by T. H. White, Dover Editions, 2015: 202-03

Pike chasing sturgeon

Valenciennes - BM - ms. 0320, f.126, De Natura Rerum, Thomas de Cantimpré, book 7, c.1290 (Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr)

As a modern counterpoint to this description, I give you Ted Hughes' famous poem from his collection Lupercal (1960). The following text is taken from poetryarchive.org.

Pike

Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.
Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,
Over a bed of emerald, silhouette
Of submarine delicacy and horror.
A hundred feet long in their world.
In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads -
Gloom of their stillness:
Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.
Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds
The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument;
The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

Three we kept behind glass,
Jungled in weed: three inches, four,
And four and a half: fed fry to them -
Suddenly there were two. Finally one.

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.
And indeed they spare nobody.
Two, six pounds each, over two feet long
High and dry and dead in the willow-herb -

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:
The outside eye stared: as a vice locks -
The same iron in this eye
Though its film shrank in death.

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them -

Stilled legendary depth:
It was as deep as England. It held
Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old
That past nightfall I dared not cast

But silently cast and fished
With the hair frozen on my head
For what might move, for what eye might move.
The still splashes on the dark pond,

Owls hushing the floating woods
Frail on my ear against the dream
Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,
That rose slowly towards me, watching.

Dubious quests for a king - fantasies about the burial place of Olaf Haraldsson of Norway

For many people, history revolves around its kings and princes. This fascination seems to be a constant in recorded history, and it has not released its grip on human imagination even in our modern times, as evidenced by the many biographies, movies and of course gossip magazines in which kings have their premier seats. As a historian who works on medieval kings who were later claimed to be saints, I am frequently exposed to the often obsessive interest some people – both lay and learned – cultivate for royalty of ages past.

In recent years, this fascination has now very often moved its focus to the bones of these royal dead. This in itself is not new, as royal tombs and graves have been the subject of great interest throughout recorded history. For medievalists, one of the most famous cases of such interest is King Arthur, whose bones were said to have been found at Glastonbury Abbey in 1198 together with those of Queen Guinevere, and whose remnants were re-interred in 1278 by Edward I. Here, the earthly remains of the legendary king served as evidence for the king actually being dead and therefore not a rallying-point for the Welsh. The question of Arthur’s burial place is a recurring issue for certain amateur historians and enthusiasts, and it was raised again as late as May 2016.

It is easy to understand why the bones of kings hold such a grip on popular imagination. They are tangible vestiges of the past, and reminders that the things you read about in books have a connection to the real, physical world. This is probably part of the reason why the case of the Greyfriars Skeleton, discovered under a car-park in Leicester in September 2012, gained such massive attention. When the skeleton was identified as King Richard III in February 2013, media erupted with enthusiasm and interest, and it the fascination which had long been in place among many members of the global audience became immensely visible. The Greyfriars Skeleton was something of a milestone in the popular history of royal bones, as it proved to the world that lost historical kings could in fact be found. In the years following, we have seen people urging for a search for both King Alfred and Harold Godwinsson.

Miniature of the statue (1973) of Olaf Haraldsson by Dyre Vaa, Stiklestad Centre

In my native Norway, the interest in dead kings is also significant. Only about eight months after the Greyfriars press conference, a Norwegian made the claim that King Magnus VI Lagabøte (Law-mender), who died in 1280, was buried in the wall of Bergen Cathedral. Following a georadar examination of the walls, objects were located inside it. But the case will not be pursued until the cathedral is due for restoration in 2018.

The Norwegian king who has gained the most attention throughout history, and who continues to do so today, is Olaf Haraldsson, the Viking-turned-Christian who died at Stiklestad north of Trondheim in 1030 in an attempt to regain the Norwegian throne. Olaf was proclaimed to be a saint in 1031 by Bishop Grimkell, and in the twelfth century Olaf’s body was moved to the new cathedral in Trondheim which was begun by Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson.

The death of Olaf Haraldsson

Here from the old exhibition at Stiklestad Centre

Olaf Haraldsson is an important part of the Norwegian imagination, and part of this imagination has been concerned with the bones of the saint-king. The fascination with Olaf’s bones re-emerged in July 2016, when Bodvar Schjelderup – a professor emeritus of architecture – made the national press with the claim that Olaf Haraldsson did not rest somewhere in Nidaros Cathedral, but in the castle Steinvikholm further north in the Trondheim fjord. The castle was built in 1532 by Archbishop Olaf Engelbrektsson, who was the last of the Catholic archbishops of Norway. The background for Schjelderup’s claim is that the shrine of Olaf Haraldsson was indeed removed to Steinvikholm when the archbishop fled Trondheim during the Reformation. However, as professor of medieval history Steinar Imsen and archaeologist Øystein Ekroll both have pointed out, there are contemporary sources from the mid-sixteenth century saying that the reliquary of the saint-king was brought back to Nidaros Cathedral in 1564, and all historical evidence points to the conclusion that Olaf is still buried somewhere in the cathedral.

Steinvikholm Castle

Photo by Frode Inge Helland

Courtesy of Wikimedia

Around mid-August 2016, just a few days ago, the matter of Olaf’s burial site was again raised, and again it made the national press. This time, the claim was put forth by Joralf Gjerstad, a healer from the town Verdal north of Trondheim. Gjerstad has gained national attention for his alleged ability to heal, and in an article in one of the leading Norwegian newspapers he claimed to have had a vision which showed that the royal saint was not buried in Trondheim but rather at Stiklestad, the place of his death in 1030. According to the vision, the king was taken away after the battle and buried in a small hill.

This ongoing discussion concerning the remains of Olaf Haraldsson is testament to the importance of studying medieval history, because the past will always remain relevant and for that reason we will always need experts who can sift the nonsense from the truth. Unfortunately, however, this discussion concerning Olaf Haraldsson’s bones also reveals the almost liminal place which the expert inhabits on the national stage, and this is a matter of great concern.

In the two cases reported here, the news outlets have given precedence to the claims of amateurs and put them on the same level as experts. This is a trend which is quite common in today’s media world, and it perpetuates the notion that experts and non-experts are to be listened to equally. Such a notion is false, and it can be very damaging in certain cases. As for the discussion about Olaf Haraldsson’s bones, there is not much immediate damage to be made. However, it helps solidifying a very dangerous trend, and as such it should not be taken lightly.

Nidaros Cathedral

There are no good reasons to pay attention to the claims put forth by either Schjelderup or Gjerstad – or for that matter Gunnar Rosenlund who made claims about Magnus VI. While experts like Steinar Imsen and Øystein Ekroll have dedicated much of their professional lives to gain a thorough understanding of the Norwegian Middle Ages, the counter-claims are made by men driven by ideas well beyond the empirical and well beyond historical science. For instance, Gunnar Rosenlund consulted a psychic in order to find the tomb of King Magnus. Bodvar Schjelderup is a pyramid enthusiast who imagines that the bones in the shrine taken back to Nidaros Cathedral had been swapped, and that Olaf’s actual bones still reside in the castle. Furthermore, his claim that Olaf Haraldsson resides at Steinvikholm is ultimately founded on a numerical game with the angles of the Kheops pyramide, as he himself stated in an interview in Trondheim's student magazine Under Dusken in 1997. Joralf Gjerstad has formulated a vision which is contrary to every single medieval source dealing with the death of Olaf (and there are many of them). That Gjerstad had a vision is probably a historical fact, many people experience visions in the same way that people dream. But just like a dream is a reality only within the mind of the dreamer, so there is no reason to think that the mental images in Gjerstad’s head should have any consequence for the physical world.

Stiklestad Church

Talking about Gjerstad’s claim, a relative of mine then said that it was only to dig up the area. And it is true, the easiest way to deal with these claims is to follow the logic of them to the bitter end and actually perform the searches. But such a solution is itself deeply problematic. First of all, if we are to dig up a place because a local healer has had a vision that goes contrary to professional consensus, we are letting amateurs dictate the priorities of historical research. I don’t think I speak too harshly when I say that that is intolerable. Secondly, to perform searches in order to debunk the fantasies and imaginings of amateurs will cost money, time and energy that could be much better spent following the priorities of experts who know which excavations are most needed.  Thirdly, if the whims of amateurs are to be heeded in this way, amateurs are not only dictating the priorities of historical research but also of the national attention. In a time when it has become increasingly challenging for non-experts to filter out the facts from the dubious, the voices of experts should not be obscured by such searches – because even though experts are allowed to speak against such claims, it is the amateur’s claims which will always be the loudest because it is that claim which dictates the search.

For a medievalist, there will always be struggles against poorly founded notions and wild claims. The on-going discussion about the bones of Olaf Haraldsson is a good reminder of to what lengths these claims can go.

Two Poems by Geoffrey Hill

August has been a terribly hectic month for me so far, and that has taken its toll on my blogging. For years, my aim has been to provide at least four blogpost each month, and sometimes this can only be achieved by some filler-pieces like the one you are reading now. Nonetheless, I want also these filler-pieces to be meaningful or to be worth reading, and so I have decided this time to unearth two lesser-known poems by one of my favourite poets, Geoffrey Hill. Frequent readers of this blog will have noticed my love for his verses several times, and indeed this is only one of several blogposts featuring his poetry. These poems are both taken from his first collection, For the Unfallen (1959).





The Bibliographers

Lucifer blazing in superb effigies
Among the world's ambitious tragedies,
Heaven-sent gift to the dark ages,

Now, in the finest-possible light,
We approach you; can estimate
Your not unnatural height.

Though the descrete progeny,
Out of their swim, go deflated and dry,
We know the feel of you, archaic beauty,

Between the tombs, where the tombs still extrude,
Overshadowing the sun-struck world:
(The shadow-god envisaged in no cloud)




Orpheus and Eurydice

Though there are wild dogs
   Infesting the roads
We hace recitals, catalogues
   Of protected birds;

And the rare pale sun
   To water our days.
Men turn to savagery now or turn
   To the laws'

Immutable black and red.
   To be judged for his song,
Traversing the still-moist dead,
   The newly-stung,

Love goes, carrying compassion
   To the rawly-difficult;
His countenance, his hands' motion,
   Serene even to a fault.




Similar blogposts


Epitaph for Geoffrey Hill

A selection of Geoffrey Hill's poems

Damon's Lament for his Clorinda, Yorkshire 1654

The Herefordshire Carol

Derek Walcott in the fjords

Being from a small town in a western Norwegian fjord has given me a deep-rooted affection for the sea. This affection has been nurtured since my childhood, and every summer I try to spend as much time as I can by the fjord to enjoy the wonderful fragrances of sea-salt, sea-weed and the intense greenery growing wild along the western side of my native fjord. I sometimes think that it is in large part because of this love of the sea that I have embraced the poetry of Derek Walcott, my favourite poet of all times and a native of the Caribbean republic Saint Lucia. To Walcott, the sea carries a great importance, both as a geographic feature, as a vehicle for poetic imagination, and as a receptacle of history. "The sea is history" is the title of one of Walcott's most powerful poems, and many of his works are dedicated to fleshing out this notion. But in the construction of the history contained by the sea, which erases all traces of history by its very nature, also takes on something of a mythopoeic dimension in the writings of Derek Walcott. This is perhaps most clearly seen in his book-length poem Omeros, where the history of Saint Lucia is built up around a homeric core.

The omnipresence of the sea in Walcott's poetry is perhaps particularly striking to someone who has grown up close to the sea, and whenever I read these verses I immediately think of the summer days spent exploring my native fjord. It doesn't matter that Walcott speaks of palm fronds, frigate birds and invokes the green night of Andrew Marvell's "Bermuda". Along my fjord, there are ferns and hazels as dominant as palms and just as green as any Marvellian vision of Bermudan forests, and the seagulls, cormorants, oystercatchers and herons are as deeply mythological as the Caribbean aviary of Walcott's poetry. Whenever I read Derek Walcott I envision my native fjord, and from time to time I bring a book of his verse to the fjord to get a more intense experience. I did this last week, and sat underneath a hazel ceiling while reading Midsummer while the scent of the sea mingled with the smell of the book's pages. It was marvellous.

In this blogpost, therefore, I want to juxtapose the poetry of Derek Walcott with some pictures taken on or by the fjord of my native village, Hyen. By doing so, I hope to convey some fraction of the sensation I experience when reading Walcott. Naturally, reading poetry is deeply emotional and therefore individual, so I do not have any expectations about this juxtaposition, beyond kindling the understanding that poetry about the sea is ultimately universal.

Hyefjorden, view from the bottom of the fjord

Missing the Sea

[From The Castaway and other poems, 1965]

Something removed roars in the ears of this house,
Hangs its drapes windless, stuns mirrors
Till reflections lack substance.

Some sound like the gnashing of windmills ground
To a dead halt;
A deafening absence, a blow.

It hoops this valley, weighs this mountain,
Estranges gesture, pushes this pencil
Through a thick nothing now,

Freights cupboards with silence, folds sour laundry
Like the clothes of the dead left exactly
As the dead behaved by the beloved,

Incredulous, expecting occupancy.

View from a boat going outwards, looking back towards the bottom of the fjord

The Harbour

[From In a Green Night, 1962]

The fishermen rowing homeward in the dusk
Do not consider the stillness through which they move,
So I, since feelings drown, should no more ask
For the safe twilight which your calm hands gave.
And the night, urger of old lies,
Winked at by stars that sentry the humped hills,
Should hear no secret faring-forth; time knows
That bitter and sly sea, and love raises walls.
Yet others who now watch my progress outward,
On a sea which is crueller than any word
Of love, may see in me the calm my passage makes,
Braving new water in an antique hoax;
And the secure from thinking may climb safe to liners
Hearing small rumours of paddlers drowned near stars.

Landfall, Grenada

[From The Gulf and other poems, 1969]

Where you are rigidly anchored,
the groundswell of blue foothills, the blown canes
surging to cumuli cannot be heard;
like the slow, seamless ocean,
one motion folds the grass where you were lowered,
and the tiered sea
whose grandeurs you detested
climbs out of sound.

Its moods held no mythology
for you, it was a working place
of tonnage and ruled stars;
you chose your landfall with a mariner's
casual certainty,
calm as that race
into whose heart your harboured;
your death was a log's entry,
your suffering held the strenuous
reticence of those
whose rites are never public,
hating to impose, to offend.
Deep friend, teach me to learn
such ease, such landfall going,
such mocking tolerance of those
neat gravestone elegies
that rhyme our end.

Brise Marine

[From In a Green Night, 1962]

K with quick laughter, honey skin and hair,
and always money. In what beach shade, what year
has she so scented with her gentleness
I cannot watch bright water but think of her
and that fine morning when she sang O rare
Ben's lyric of "the bag o' the bee"
and "the nard in the fire"
                           "nard in the fire"
against the salty music of the sea
the fresh breeze tangling each honey tress
                           and what year was the fire?
Girls' faces dim with time, Andreuille all gold...
Sunday. The grass peeps through the breaking pier.
Tables in the trees, like entering Renoir.
Maintenant je n'ai plus ni fortune, ni pouvoir...
 But when the light was setting through thin hair,
Holding whose hand by what trees, what old wall.

Two honest women, Christ, where are they gone?
Out of that wonder, what do I recall?
The darkness closing round a fisherman's oar.
The sound of water ganwing at bright stone.              

In a Green Night

[From In a Green Night, 1962]

The orange tree, in various light,
Proclaims perfected fables now
That her last season's summer height
Bends from each overburdened bough.

She has her winters and her spring,
Her moult of leaves, which in their fall
Reveal, as with each living thing,
Zones truer than the tropical.

For if by night each golden sun
Burns in a comfortable creed,
By noon harsh fires have begun
To quail those splendours which they feed.

Or mixtures of the dew and dust
That early shone her orbs of brass,
Mottle her splendours with the rust
She sought all summer to surpass.

By such strange, cyclic chemistry
That dooms and glories her at once
As green yet aging orange tree,
The mind enspheres all circumstance.

No Florida loud with citron leaves
With crystal falls to heal this age
Shall calm the darkening fear that grieves
The loss of visionary rage.

Or if Time's fires seem to blight
The nature ripening into art,
Not the fierce noon or lampless night
Can quail the comprehending heart.

The orange tree, in various light,
Proclaims that fable perfect now
That her last season's summer height
Bends from each overburdened bough.

Gulls screech with rusty tongues
- Derek Walcott

Codicil

[From The Castaway and other poems, 1965]

Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles,
one a hack's hired prose, I earn
my exile, I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles,

tan, burn
to slough off
this love of ocean that's self-love.

To change your language you must change your life.

I cannot right old wrongs.
Waves tire of horizon and return.
Gulls screech with rusty tongues

Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.

Once I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there's no room at the trough.

I watch the best minds root like dogs
for scraps of favour.
I am nearing middle

age, burnt skin
peels form my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt's riddle.

At heart there's nothing, not the dread
of death. I know too many dead.
They're all familiar, all in character,

even how they died. On fire,
the flesh no longer fears that furnace mouth
of earth,

that kiln or ashpit of the sun,
nor this clouding, unclouding sickle moon
whitening this beach again like a blank page.

All its indifference is a different rage.







All these poems have been transcribed from Collected Poems 1948-1984, Faber and Faber limited, 1992.


For similar blogposts:

Ruins of a Great House

Two poems by Derek Walcott

The Prince

Pocomania

Churches of Gloppen in Western Norway, part 1 - Vereide

In this blog I have written a lot about my adventures in England, Denmark, Spain and Italy, and I have now come to realize that it is high time I start writing more about the history of my own home region. This home region is Nordfjord in the western Norwegian county of Sogn og Fjordane, and I live in the municipality of Gloppen in the central part of Nordfjord. My home village is Hyen, one of the parishes of Gloppen. This blogpost is, as the title says, the first in a series on the churches of my home region, concentrating primarily on the churches of Gloppen municipality. The blogpost was made possible thanks to my friend Benny Aasen, the verger of this church and others, who gave me a guided tour. He is an avid outdoorsman and a great amateur photographer, and his blog can be found here.

It is fitting to begin with the oldest of these churches, that of Vereide (meaning the isthmus of the ram), which is situated on the northern side of Gloppefjorden. This is the only medieval church in Gloppen which was built in stone, and it is therefore the only one that has survived. Most of the medieval structure is still in use, but in the course of the 19th century the church has been extended in several stages. As can be seen when compared with the penultimate picture in this blogpost, the wooden tower has replaced the medieval porch built in stone, which suggests that in the Middle Ages the church had a belltower outside the church itself. Furthermore, there has been added a choir in stone and later a wooden sacristy.

We do not know the exact age of the Vereide church. A local fiction has given the year of its foundation as 1163, but this was heralded by the celebration of the octocentennial in 1963, and there seems to have been no prior argument about such an early date. The fiction, however, was continued in 2013 when the supposed 850th anniversary was celebrated. This is untenable based on written sources (starting late) and lack of any thorough examination. However, it is possible that the church was built in the late twelfth or in the thirteenth century, as the architecture of the nave is very similar to other Norwegian churches built in this period. The oldest written source, on the otther hand, with reference to a priest at Vereide, in 1303, is Bergens Kalvskinn, a rent-roll or urbarium of the bishopric of Bergen from the fourteenth century (Rinde 2014). In addition to this, there is a handful of references in various surviving medieval letters and wills. The content of these can be found in the form of summaries in the project Regesta Norvegica, a registry in Norwegian of the letters pertaining to Norwegian medieval affairs. In volume 3, entry 538, we read in a letter by Bishop Arne of Bergen that Sigvat, priest at Vereide was given five days to drive away his concubine and cease carnal commerce, or else Sigvat would be suspended from his office and benefice by the authority of that selfsame letter. This letter was dated 16th or 17th October, 1308, and it was written in Gimmestad, a parish at the southern side of Gloppefjorden. Sigvat, or Sigvard, was not alone in this, also four other local priests were mentioned as guilty of the same crime.

A later source, a note in the copybook of the Bishop of Bergen (vol. 4, entry 254), states that Vereide was one of the places where the bishop should reside during his visitation in 1322/1323. I don't know if the note specifically mentions the priest's lodgings as his place of residence, but it does suggest that Vereide parish was of some importance, or at least was well situated as a base from which the bishop could inspect the other local parishes.

In addition to these references, there are three letters of testimony where members of the local elites served as witnesses for financial transactions. These letters are from the turn of the fourteenth century. From these sources we learn that by August 13 1380 the priest at Vereide was one Torbjørn Andresson (vol. 7, entry 885) and that he was still in this office by March 12, 1386  (vol. 7, entry 1288) and July 27 1401 (vol. 8, entry 1019).

Torbjørn Andresson resurfaces in the sources in 1626, when a certain man called Skonvig documented the cemetery. The tombstone of Torbjørn was found by the cross pictured above, although the cross itself is considered to be far older and might have been moved from another location to serve as a grave marker for the priest. The design of the cross is also known from other medieval Norwegian crosses (Rinde 2014: 24).


When you enter the church, you do so through the modern porch in the modern tower, and when you open the door to the nave itself you see the altarpiece from 1604, situated in the choir which also is a nineteenth-century addition.

View from the pulpit

Hourglasses to help the priest keep track of the length of his sermon

Throughout Vereide church there are many small treasures from its long history. Many of them have been omitted here for the sake of brevity, but a handful of the can be seen in the picture below. The painting, of which a better picture can be found further below, shows the deposition of Christ. It was painted by the local artist Karl Kristian Uchermann (1855-1940), and is inspired by a painting on the same motif by Peter Paul Rubens, which Uchermann studied in Antwerp. He had been commissioned in 1880 to paint the new altarpiece for Verede Church, and this painting served this function until 1962 (Gundersen 2014C: 136).

Three other items in the above picture are noteworthy. The first is the little processional cross, which appears to be a minitature copy of the old stone cross shown above. This is carried in front of the procession in and out of the church. The second item is the stone on which the staff stands, as this is a piece of a type of conglomerate rock which is typical for Gloppen. The final item is the little statuette, which seems to be depicting Saint Sunniva, who holds in her hands a rock which also seems to serve as a church, presumably a nod to the monastic community which grew up at Selje, the place of her legendary martyrdom. This is a modern figurine, but it is suitable to a parish church within the Bergen diocese, as Sunniva serves as a patron saint for this region.

Vereide church also contains some underground rooms. My friend told me about these and it was indeed that conversation which prompted the tour in the first place. Two of these rooms are no longer possible to reach since they are covered by pews, but one of these rooms is still possible to go down into, and we did.

The room is accessible through a door hidden under the carpet, and it is one of two crypts in the nave. I do not know whether these two crypts go all the way back to the Middle Ages, although it is likely. When the church was renovated early in the 1930s, there were found several wooden caskets - probably early modern - and these were removed to the southern crypt (Eide 2014B: 62). The northern crypt is no longer accessible, as mentioned above. The rooms themselves are old, but the southern crypt has been modernized, the floor has been covered in concrete, the stair is new, and electricity has been put in place.

The southern crypt contains about a handful of adult caskets, and about the same amount of child caskets. Two of these caskets are open and contain mummified corpses. These will be shown below, so if you, dear reader, find that an unpleasant prospect, you are hereby warned. The quality of some of the pictures are not very good thanks to the poor light in the crypt.

As a final note of conclusion, I have added these following pictures. The first is a photograph of a painting from around 1879, which shows the medieval design more clearly. The second picture is an interior from before the addition of the choir.

Vereide church is a beautiful old artefact and a rare medieval survival in the Norwegian fjords. I'm very grateful to my friend for having shown me around, and I was elated to see so many treasures big and small both inside and outside this church.


Bibliography

For some of the details of this blogpost I have relied on chapters from the book Vereide Kyrkje - Kyrkjestad og kyrkjelyd gjennom 850 år, edited by Ove Eide and published in 2014 by John Grieg Forlag. The book is intended as a publication for the 850th anniversary and is a treasure-trove of anecdotes, pictures and useful information. In many respects it is a good book, but it has neither been written nor edited by trained historians and is very much a lay production. This can be seen in the careless perpetuation of some ideas which are not properly grounded in sources, or at least if they are these sources have not always been referred to. For all its shortcomings, however, it is a useful book, and I have relied on the following chapters.

Eide, Ove, "Kyrkje og kyrkjelyd frå 1600-talet til vår tid (56-110)

Rinde, Anders, "Vereidskyrkja i mellomalderen" (10-29)

Gundersen, Olaf Sigurd, ""Nedtakinga av Krossen"" (135-136)