A thousand years is not that long - an example from Aarhus

 

The past is not as unfamiliar as is often presumed. Those who work on history-related subjects know this well. In the present day, however, this knowledge is often overshadowed by a pervasive sense of progressivism, by which I mean the idea that human history is constantly progressing, and often towards some specific goal. The most forceful form of progressivism nowadays is that which touts the blessings of artificial intelligence, colonising Mars, and other technological wonders that will change our relationship with earth, with knowledge, with ourselves, and so on ad nauseam.  

For me, however, raised as a son of farmers in the Western Norwegian fjords, elements of the past often resembles things from my own background. These resemblances are not due to the fjords being particularly backwards - although I suspect a lot of urban Norwegians would protest that this is exactly what it means - but rather that certain technologies are perfected very early in their history, and a lot of such technologies pertain to farm life. As a consequence, the solutions offered by these early technologies are still in use. 

I was reminded of this longue durée history of technology when I was visiting the Viking Museum in Aarhus this weekend. (Not to be confused with the famous Moesgaard Museum a bit south of the city.) The museum is small, but contains a lot of interesting archaeological finds from the centre of old Aros, the tenth- and eleventh-century city which was located in what is currently the centre of Denmark's second largest city. The items displayed in the museum are typical of such trading hubs as Aarhus was in that period - typical, but no less interesting for that - and include cooking pots of soapstone, nails from boats, weights from a loom, and whetstones. One of the items that caught my eye was a sinker, a rounded stone used to weigh down a fishing net so that one of its ends is dragged down into the water and prevents the net from just floating on the surface. 

Fishing with nets remains the best method for catching large amounts of fish on a lower scale, and in my family we are always paying attention to when the ice will break on one of the lakes back home, so that we can begin the season. Moreover, when I am out walking with my parents and we are traversing rocky ground, my father will often keep an eye out for rocks that might be suitable as sinkers. They are not as rounded and polished as the one found in the archaeological layers in Aarhus, but in order to serve as sinkers a stone only needs to be heavy but not too much, a bit thin and elongated so that it is possible to tie a cord around it, and shaped in such a way that it is easy to carry.  

The sinker is a technology that need not be improved upon, and I am not sure that it can be improved upon either, only altered in various ways that might give the illusion of improvement. There are several such technologies, and I think it is healthy to be reminded that due to their longevity, they connect us to the past in useful ways - useful because it is good to realise that some solutions have been perfected early, and also useful because modern people do sometimes need the reminder that a thousand years is not that long ago in certain respects. 

A stranger to someone - a view of Norway from Salamanca

 

los raudos torbellinos de Noruega 

- Luís de Gongora, Soledades 

In the library of the University of Salamanca there are four globes, donated in the eighteenth century. They are known as the "round books", and the story goes that they were called that because the library would only accept donations in the form of books. They are displayed in the main room, available to visitors, and last year I was able to see them again when I was visiting Salamanca for a conference. 

Whenever I see early modern globes or maps of the world, I am naturally drawn towards Norway. Over the years, I have seen a lot of different premodern and early modern depictions of my native country, and I am always fascinated how these depictions deal with the rather complicated outline of the Norwegian coastline. The degree to which the map fits the terrain is an interesting starting-point for understanding what kind of cartographical information existed about Norway at the time, and very often it will become evident that to a lot of continental cartographers Norway was not very well known, at least compared to what one might expect given the relative proximity between the big map-making centres and Scandinavia. 

These maps are sources to Norwegian history, at least as long as we ask the right questions. On a non-academic level, the maps also serve as good reminders that one will always be a stranger to someone, that our known world will seem alien to someone else. In our own age, when information - if not necessarily knowledge - is easy to come by, it can also be easy to forget that our ideas about other parts of the world rarely fit with reality. And to see oneself from the outside, to see Norway from Salamanca through eighteenth-century eyes and map-making hands, is a useful reminder of the gap between perception and reality. And this is a good thing to keep in mind, both for academics and for non-academics alike. 

Saint George in Stokkemarke

In the later medieval period, i.e., from the late fourteenth century onwards, the cult of Saint George underwent a remarkable surge in Denmark. This surge can be explained by several impulses, but a key reason for the popularity of George was that he often figured as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a changeable set of saints which became popular in Germany in the same period. Due to extensive contact between Denmark and German-speaking areas in the period, especially through trade, a number of religious trends from Germany were absorbed into Danish society.  

The popularity of Saint George resulted in the commissioning of a number of artworks - typically from German-speaking areas or the Low Countries, but also several local ones as well (see here, and here) - and they all provide fascinating glimpses into medieval Denmark. These tend either to show George and the dragon as a standalone pair, or to depict the battle against the backdrop of the city which the dragon terrorised. The scenes including the city always serve as compressed narratives of the legends, and they tend to be crammed with details drawn from the narrative or that seem to be included for the sake of decoration or curiosity.  

One of the most delightful aspects of these depictions of Saint George is how they contemporise him, making him appear in garb from the period in which the artwork was made, so that the dragonslayer appears like a man from the same society of those who behold the scene, and those who see the depicted story unfold in that combination of static unchanging presence in wood or paint and moving mental imagination that brings all kind of art to a deeper form of life. 

One of these glorious examples of the past brought into the - now historical - present is this wooden relief once displayed in Stokkemarke Church in Lolland, and now housed in the National Museum in Copenhagen. The relief is from around 1500. It is most likely produced in Germany, the city which is about to be liberated - on the condition that they receive Christianity - looks like a typical Northern German town of the turn of the fifteenth century. It would no doubt have made the scene appear more relevant and accessible to those parishioners who saw this work of art when it was new and painted in vivid colours. 

Saint George from Stokkemarke Church, Lolland

National Museum, Copenhagen, D1267

 

The cult of Saint George in Denmark remains in need of its monograph study. Until such a time, however, these small snippets have to do. 

On the eve of Saint Peter's Chair - a pattern breaking?

 

Five years ago, I was living in my native village and I wrote a blogpost on how the feast of Cathedra Petri, or Saint Peter's Chair, on February 22 was regarded as a seasonal turning point in Norway. This year, I am once again living in my native village, and just as I did five years ago, I have been noting how climate change causes the old patterns to break. These were the patterns that allowed for such seasonal rules of thumb, where the deviations from year to year were not sufficiently significant that the pattern could be said to be incorrect. This year, however, winter has been unusual in the fjords. For a month - from early January to mid-February - we had no precipitation. The absence of snow caused waterways to freeze and huge ice formations took shape along the roads, where roadwork had cut through subterranean trickles and exposed them to the cold air. 

Yesterday, on the eve of Saint Peter's Chair, my youngest sister, her dog, and a mutual friend went for a walk on the ice during two hours of waning light. Recently the weather had changed and we got a few days of snow, followed by a downpour which turned the ice atop the lakes into slush. So far, this was according to the old pattern. It was said that Saint Peter would cause lakes and harbours to thaw, and this belief was illustrated by the saying that he tossed warm stones into the water to unfreeze it. For this reason, both the date and Saint Peter himself were referred to as Per Varmestein, Peter Warmstone.  

Walking on the ice after such shifts in the weather proved to be an odd experience. Before the rain had set in, strong winds had blown the dry snow into small drifts, meaning that some parts of the ice were covered in snow - which then turned to slush - while other parts were uncovered, leaving the rainwater to freeze into a top layer of the already thick lake ice. Consequently, when we walked on the ice, the top layer cracked - either rapidly or in a slow-yielding motion like a fleshy membrane, depending on how cold that part of the lake was - and it did sometimes feel like we were constantly on the verge of falling into the water. Then we would occasionally drill a hole into the ice to measure the thickness of the old layer, and this proved invariably to be somewhere between 40 and 50 centimetres. For reference, ten centimetres of ice is usually sufficient for walking safely.  

What made the experience even more atmospheric was that in the three-day period before the rain set in, the snow had caught the tracks of crossing animals - mostly foxes - and the rain had essentially fossilised these proofs of lives otherwise unseen. At one point, we could even smell the rancid, sickly stench of a fox - they are in heat at the moment, as one of them loudly made clear a few days ago - and the world around us was closer. This is also part of the old pattern. 

Today, as I write this, on the feast of Saint Peter's Chair, the weather has again changed. The thaw and rain we were promised has turned into snow, and I have recently been shovelling the driveway in anticipation of much more to come during the night. As I was shovelling, I met a friend and neighbour, who is also a fellow medievalists, and she remarked that she had not been on the ice because according to the old runic calendars, this was not a day when you could expect to be saved from the water if you went onto it. Normally, I would agree, but yesterday's experience combined with the ongoing snowfall made me hesitate. It does not look like we are losing access to the ice just yet. The question is whether this is the pattern breaking in a rather unexpected way, or whether we are just within that margin of deviation which means that the old pattern is still in place.

Small stages - on the importance of minor publications

I like small stages 

- Mark Knopfler 

In 2000, I watched an interview with Mark Knopfler on a Norwegian talkshow. I had recently become aware of his music, as the single 'What it is' from his second solo album Sailing to Philadelphia had been doing very well in the charts, leading to the music video to be broadcast from time to time. Following the interview, Mark Knopfler was set to perform one of the songs from the album - 'Baloney again', if memory serves - and the host said apologetically that the stage was rather small. "Good," the musician said, "I like small stages". The humility in that remark, coming from one of the most famous guitarists of the twentieth century, struck me with a very subtle force, and I took this message to heart. 

I was reminded of this quotation following a lecture at the local museum. The speaker was a fellow medievalist and gave a splendid presentation on medieval stone crosses in the fjords, and a lot of locals had showed up . In the course of the event, I came into contact with two of the locals who talked about my latest piece in the local parish magazine, one expressing how pleased she was to read it and the other mentioning to my mother that she was now going home to read it. The piece in question was a two-page article on one of the medieval churches in the municipality and what we knew about the medieval priests who served there. 

 

In rural Norway, parish magazines are common, and these are conduits for interviews, essays, puzzle pages for children, reports from recent church related events, and historical pieces. In the past few years, I have written four such pieces, all on local medieval church history, and people from my native village have often responded very kindly and positively to these short texts. This weekend, however, I received such kind remarks from people from a neighbouring village, and in rural Norwegian terms this is much more impressive and unexpected than to be supported of one's own people. In short, the kind words carried an extra weight. 

The kindness of these comments were good reminders how these short pieces are important, and that like Mark Knopfler I know how to value and treasure small stages. In academic terms, these pieces are essentially worthless: they are short, are not peer-reviewed, and do not appear in scientific publications. At best, they can represent outreach on a CV or in an application. Even so, these texts have a very receptive audience, and they are part of the duty of outreach and dissemination which I consider to be a crucial part of academic life - a debt we owe to wider society, regardless of whether they amount to any publication points in the grand scheme of academic things. 

I have always been adamant that such minor publications are important, and this weekend I was reminded yet again that they are well worth the time required to research, write, and above all edit, one's professionally accumulated knowledge into a distilled yet accurate account of the topic at hand. In other words, it was a reminder that academic work does, after all, have value independent of academia.  

Ephemeral records of history - an example from the fjords

'Lads,' he cried, 'there's spoor here;' 

- John Buchan, Prester John 

In the right perspective, all records of history are ephemeral. However, there are certain records that are hostage not only to the passing of time but to the passing of seasons, and this becomes particularly evident in winter when frost, snow and ice preserve certain records just long enough to create an illusion of permanence. In a landscape where most of history has gone unrecorded, the tracks of various animals that appear after a snowfall or right on the verge of thaw serve as good representatives of what passes as history in these parts. 

Earlier this week, I came across some striking examples of this kind of illusory permanence. In my native village of Hyen in the Western Norwegian fjords, there is a lake in the centre of the village which froze a few weeks ago, only to loose its grip on land during a sudden and intense thaw. The ice on the lake, however, remained solid despite being unmoored from the shore, and when a cold period came a week later, the lake once more became available for human exploration. In that middle period during the sudden thaw, the ice had been accessible to animals, and I happened upon the track of a fox who had crossed the lake while the surface of the ice was sufficiently permeable for the weight of a fox to leave imprints. When the ice is frozen solid, a fox leaves no track at all. Consequently, when the ice later became solid again, we can be certain that this fox, and probably some others, too, have moved back and forth from shore to shore, but without any witness to the event. This one journey by a fox, therefore, is our only solid proof that the foxes use the ice as a shortcut. Although this only proves what we already know, it is nonetheless a reminder of both how little we need to assess patterns, and also how much happens around us that leaves no trace in the visible record. As a historian, I find the reminder very welcome.    

Gateway reading - the case of The Silent Rifleman

There is an old truism that children should be encouraged to read comic books because doing so leads to reading other books. While this is typically true, the truism also carries with it an underlying assumption that comic books are inherently and categorically inferior to prose books such as novels. Having read a lot of comic books and a lot of novels and other prose works in the course of my life, I strongly object to such a dichotomy. Good literature is good because of the way it is made, not because of the medium itself. Even so, it is true that comic books tend to be gateway reading, especially because a lot of comic books - like a lot of novels - engage in intertextual play that points the reader to the works that are being referenced or even, as is often the case of comic books, parodied. Last autumn, at the tender age of 38, I happened to read a novel precisely because of such an intertextual reference in a comic book. 

The novel in question is The Silent Rifleman - a tale of the Texan plains by Henry W. Herbert (1807-58). In 1880, it was published as a dime novel - this edition has been digitised here - and was part of the extensive literature that cemented the mythology of the Wild West to its readers east of Mississippi and in later decades. The novel recounts the the adventures of Pierre Delacroix, an army officer turned frontiersman, and his attempt to bring a young officer and his bride to safety during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.  

Cover of the 1880 edition of The Silent Rifleman

Courtesy of dimenovels.org

As a piece of literature, The Silent Rifleman is not without its merits. There are several quotable passages which convey general truths that transcend chronological particulars. In chapter 11, for instance, we read that "it is circumstance, after all, that makes saints or savages, monsters or martyrs of us all!" And as someone who has researched the cult of saints extensively, this is absolutely true. Similarly, the following quotation from chapter 16 feels especially relevant in today's war-torn reality in which the absurdity of the nation-state has been made painfully clear: "To nations, there is no hereafter; for nations, there is no world to come". There are also various other nuggets, such as some very lovely descriptions of natural scenery, and the use of the word "interlarded" in chapter 10, which is a term I hope to use in future conversations. 

Despite its qualities, The Silent Rifleman is mainly interesting as a historical source. The prose swerves towards the loftier end of the spectrum and shows a decidedly romantic bent, especially in the presentation of the novel's eponymous hero. The descriptions can at times be tedious, and the racist portrayals of Mexicans - even those individuals who are on the side of the protagonist - provide unpleasant reminders of how the racialised Other has been a feature of US culture since its inception. 

I was happy to read this novel, because it provided me with a better sense of a historical period that hovered into my professional consciousness a few years ago, and which I keep meaning to delve into in order to tie together some connections that touch on my own expertise. Granted, it is not that Herbert's novel qualifies as a source to the events of the Mexican-American War, but it does show how that war, and how that part of the US-Mexican frontier, helped to fashion the mythology of the United States, a mythology that is still shaping the unfolding of events. 

I encountered this novel through a comic book gateway, namely Ben il bugiardo, an album in the Italian comic book series Tex, whose title can be translated into English as "Ben the liar". The story was written by Pasquale Ruju and drawn by Stefano Biglia. I read the Norwegian translation, done by Nina Svensrud, the title of which is Skrønemakeren Ben, which is better understood as "Ben, the teller of tall tales" rather than "liar". 

The Norwegian edition of Ben il bugiardo

Translated by Nina Svensrud

The story of Ben il bugiardo is centred on a shop clerk in a typical frontier town of the US west sometime in the late 1800s. Like many long-running comic books, the exact chronological setting of Tex is nebulous, but the stories are mainly set sometime in the 1880s. The title character is famous for his stories, one of which tells of how he helped the legendary Tex Willer, the main protagonist of the comic book franchise. When Tex himself shows up in town, however, Ben is revealed to be a liar. To overcome the subsequent shame and ostracision, he decides to take up the chase when his fiancée is abducted by a group of bandits, following on the trail of Tex. Inexperienced as an outdoorsman and as a tracker, Ben is discovered by one of the bandits and is about to get shot. However, Ben convinces the bandit that he is a famous author who has come to interview the bandit leader for his next novel. As proof, he brandishes his copy of The Silent Rifleman - the cover of which reveals it to be the 1880 Beadle edition - and recounts the novel to the bandit. The ruse works, and things continue from there.  

When I saw the cover image of the dime novel, I got curious. Having read this comic book for close to thirty years, I know that its authors are well versed in the history of nineteenth-century USA, and I suspected that the reference might be to an actual, authentic dime novel. I decided to do some Internet searching, and I eventually encountered the Nickel and Dime library of dimenovels.org. Since this digital repository boasts of more than 13 000 dime novels, Ben il bugiardo proved to be a gateway to more than just the one dime novel I have read so far. I am deligthed to have this resource at my fingertips, especially since popular culture is a crucial element when trying to understand and come close to a historical period. 

As a piece of literature, I would say that Ben il bugiardo is far more entertaining, well-composed and interesting than The Silent Rifleman. The two titles are both composed as popular entertainment and are as such comparable despite the very different historical contexts, and the comic book is, in my view, a much more solid literary work than the novel it references. As such, this case is a good reminder that comic books are gateways to reading for adults as well as children, and that sometimes it is nice to go through that gateway and then back again, simply because the gateway itself proved more valuable.