Knutsok - harvest season and the feast of Saint Knud Rex

 

Today is July 10, which is the feast-day of Saint Knud Rex, a Danish king who was killed in 1086. His cult was formally established in 1095 when his bones were translated to a new burial place after being tested in the fire. The feast of Saint Knud Rex was celebrated throughout medieval Denmark, and also reached Norway within a few decades. Although the cult of Saint Knud in medieval Norway is still insufficiently mapped, we know that the feast was important enough to be mentioned as a day of rest in the law of the Gulathing province - one of the four juridical units of twelfth-century Norway. This lawcode was written down around 1160 in the Norwegian vernacular, in which the feast of Saint Knud was known as 'knutsok', meaning 'knutsvaka' or 'the vigil of Knud'.  

July 10 was marked on late-medieval runic calendars with a rake or a scythe to signal the beginning of harvest season. This was when the Julian calendar was still in use, and so this date came slightly earlier in the agrarian cycle than it does today. Even so, the feast of Saint Knud continued to be a marker in the annual round also after the Danish-Norwegian Reformation of 1536/37. Well into the twentieth century, it was customary in my home village of Hyen that July 10 was the date when the cattle and the milkmaids moved to the summer farms - either on the day itself or the weekend nearest that date. (In some cases the milkmaids did not stay at the summer farm but only spent the nights and then returned tot he farms to participate in the harvest in the daytime.) While I never heard my grandparents talk about knutsok when growing up - as opposed to jonsok (Saint John's Eve) or pederstol (cathedra petri) - it is evident that the medieval practice of connecting harvest season with the feast of the saint-king was still alive several centuries after the formal introduction of Protestantism in Norway. 

In our time, the summer farm in my part of the village is mostly used as a recreational space. None of the byres that still stand are used for keeping animals, and the cattle are now mostly moving about freely in certain parts of the valley. The summer farm is a beloved space, and much of my childhood was spent here, learning about the natural cycle in this part of the village. Today, I went to the shieling that belongs to my family. I did this as an homage to the old ways, even though we only stay at the shieling for a few days at a time, and then only for the sheer pleasure of it. A few sheep were grazing in one of the nearby fields, and the scent of pines, ling and bog filled an air rich with moisture. It felt right to maintain this connection - however flimsy, tenuous and construed - with a tradition that is now lost to all but a vague collective memory deciphered by scholars, and it was a pleasant reminder that some things are worth doing if only symbolically. 

A lesson in similarities - reflecting on a memoir by Scholastique Mukasonga

 

There is always more that unites the individuals of the human species than what separates us. This is one of the basic lessons I always try to teach my students, and it is one of the most important lessons that the humanities can provide, whether it is through history, religion, or literature. I am reminded of this very fundamental truth time and again, and last week I was reminded more forcefully than I have been in a long time. Last week, I was finishing Scholastique Mukasonga's memoir La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman) in Agnete Øye's Norwegian translation Den barbeinte kvinnen. Scholastique Mukasonga grew up in Rwanda and provides a wonderful and heartbreaking insight into life in a village of exiled Tutsis in the 1960s. This book is a testament to the blood-soaked legacy of colonialism, a witness to the long roots of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, and an overview of the myriad nuances and details that make up life for exiles who have to balance tradition with what is available in their new situation. 

Among the many vivid description of Mukasonga's childhood and upbringing, I was most immediately struck by the descriptions of the agrarian cycle. The plants grown in the Rwandan countryside are for the most part very different to what I am used to from my own upbringing on a Western Norwegian farm. The seasons, too, follow a different pattern than what we have to contend with in the fjords. Even so, despite the differences in climate and the foodstuffs, I recognised immediately the care that went into the preparation of a new harvest, the joy at the sequence of different produce ripening at different times, the worry about an unfortunate and unexpected alteration in the weather pattern, the celebration of the successful completion of the various stages of the agrarian cycle. The emphasis on community also struck a strong chord, as any agrarian life is dependent on the help of one's neighbours and is comprised of deals, quarrels, agreements and compromise throughout the year. The circumstances might differ, but the fundamental elements are the same. 

It was difficult to read The Barefoot Woman. It is an unvarnished account, but told with both poetry and simplicity, and it contains many details that showcase how brutal the conditions were in Rwanda in the 1960s. What is being described is a world strange and in practice completely unknown to me, as the fears and the uncertainties that presided over Mukasonga's childhood are aspects I can only intellectually understand, never physically or emotionally. But through those common touchstones that are so typically and universally human - the cares and joys of farming - I could easily feel the kinship that exists between humans across vast distances in both time and space. And this lesson, that farmers on whichever part of the planet have a shared sense of the yearly round, is yet another piece of evidence that there is more to unite us than to separate us. Reading this book, therefore, is an antidote to the kind of nationalism and racist worldview that insists on humans belonging to separate categories due to the colour of their skin or their geographical location. For me, a son of farmers, I easily feel a stronger affinity with the exiled Tutsis described by Mukasonga than with anyone who is so detached from the world as not to understand that such bonds exist. 

Scholastique Mukasonga, Den barbeinte kvinnen

The measure of a man's work - or, the insufficiency of numbers

He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only 

- William Blake, There is No Natural Religion

Tomorrow, my status as guest researcher at the University of Oslo is at an end. This was a status I was given after my contract was concluded, in order to allow me to carry out some duties to which I had committed myself even though I was no longer employed by the university. It was a kind extension of grace, and not the first one I have encountered in the winding pathways of academia. As this period has come to an end, however, I have recently been transferring files that have accumulated in the course of the four years since I was employed as a postdoctoral researcher. This is a liminal stage, and one where I am compelled - perhaps even forced - to take stock of what the preceding period of my life has entailed. This stock-taking reached its perhaps most poignant moment when I realised that the two memory sticks that I had used to transfer my files provided a very concise measure of my work in those four year, namely 52.7 gigabytes. That is what it all comes down to, and to have this period and all it has entailed summarised so neatly in cold numbers is a brush with mortality and pointlessness at the same time. Such a summary feels like cliometrics taken to its most extreme and perverse end. 

However, despite the coldness of those numbers, I am also compelled to reflect more closely what they envelop and how insufficient they are for providing an accurate measure of the work and worth of those four years. These gigabytes include the files for numerous articles, some of which have been published in the course of this four-year period, some of which are in various stages of completion or publication, while yet others might never be published at all. There are slides and scripts from numerous presentations at various conferences or public events. There are downloaded texts, some of which I have even managed to read. There are pictures, screenshots, drafts, applications, reimbursement forms, a whole range of items that represent possible and realised pathways that together make up my time as a postdoctoral researcher in Oslo, and the subsequent six months as a guest researcher. It is a multitude and a depth that numbers cannot accurately capture. There is some comfort in that insufficiency of numbers as I am settling into a different pace and as I am organising the paperwork of this period that is coming to a close. And it is a good reminder in an academia increasingly obsessed with numbers and measurements that numbers are only signifiers and summaries, they do not contain the complete picture. 

Reading-spots, part 7

 

For work-related reasons, I am currently thinking back to one of my favourite reading-spots from the past few years, namely the restaurant Taiga in the neighbourhood of Lista in Madrid, where I spent many evenings in April and May of 2023, reading, writing, thinking, and just enjoying existence. One of the reasons why this reading-spot has such a strong place in my memory is partly that the two weeks I spent in Madrid that spring were two of the best weeks I have had in the past decade, and from my sidewalk table I could enjoy the feeling of being in a familiar and beloved place - feeling at home, of sorts. Another reason why this particular reading-spot is so important to me, is that it was here that I took a huge step in a new professional direction. 

This spring, I had started focusing more on researching utopian literature, a field in which I had long been interested, and which I was now able to pursue with more concerted effort thanks to a friend and colleague with whom I began collaborating. On that sidewalk outside the restaurant, I spent long evenings reading Gabriel de Foigny's utopian novel La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land, Known) in David Fausett's English translation. I spent much time thinking and writing fervently on a draft that provided an important foundation for future writing. It felt already then like an intellectual turning-point, and this feeling has since been proven correct. 

But this sidewalk table was also the spot for other types of reading, and other types of thinking. It was a busy spring, and I was also preparing a conference presentation to be held in Rome in a month's time, as well as a speech to be held in a fortnight's time in my home village. Looking back, this table was the nexus of my effort to be a man of the world yet remain a village boy at one and the same time, two roles that I try to connect through my intellectual work. It was also a place where I enjoyed the verses of my friend Raquel Lanseros, one of my all-time favourite poets, whose words have given me so much to be thankful for in this life. 

In short, this was a reading-spot, a writing-spot, and a thinking-spot where much happened, at least in my brain and on paper. It is a place I will always treasure.   

A ritual for fishing

 

Earlier this month, I went with my parents to set out fishing nets in a lake. This is an old practice, and a way by which we have harvested food for generations. There is a lot of skill involved, and as I am quite rusty I need to practice so that the mechanics of the various steps become engrained into my muscle memory. Several things can go wrong. For instance, it is important to start near land where the water is shallow, so that the fish is less likely to swim behind the end of the net. For the same reason, when the rower is moving the boat away from the shore, it is important to let the net slip off the hook swiftly and without too much tugging, lest the stone that weighs down the net in the shoremost end is dragged further away from land. 

Setting out fish nets is a practice that goes far back down the earlier generations, and this kind of continuity is part of what grounds me deeper in my native village. There is a timelessness to it, even though the nets we use today, as well as the boat, are both of a type that is decidedly modern, made with modern technology and from modern materials. In other words, fishing with nets is one of those things that remind us that we are always closer to the ways of the past than we are to the ways of an imagined, high-technological, techno-utopian future. 

We had five nets to set, and my father set the first one in a spot of his choosing. He stood in the aft end of the boat while my mother rowed, and he let the net slip off the hook with practiced ease. As the hook itself was the last part remaining, my father spat on it before sending it into the water. This is an old superstition meant to bring good luck, and people also do this with the fishing hook before casting it into a river or a lake.   

The next four nets were set by me while my mother rowed the boat straight ahead. As I am out of practice, I focused intensely on making sure that I didn't drag the net or the net didn't get caught in itself, as it sometimes does when it is a net that is old and frayed. But as the first of my four nets was about to leave my hand, I also leant forward and spat drily and unpreparedly on the hook before releasing it. I did the same with the other nets, and each time I felt an odd satisfaction. This is a ritual, a marking of a transition from one stage to the next, the releasing of the hook a liminal state, a threshold. As so many things in the current historical epoch is entangled in emptiness and destructive fantasies, this kind of ritual felt deeply satisfying, indeed wholesome, as it was an odd but harmless way to mark an important shift in the labour of the evening. I do not believe in such superstitions, but I do believe in the importance of rituals for human beings, however constructed they are. Some rituals are good to have, to retain, to construct, to invent, because these rituals are brief moments that ground us in reality and make us come closer to the interconnectedness of it all. 

I do not believe in such superstition. But the net that my father set was the one that caught the greatest haul.  

Saint Martin and the birds in Salamanca

From the Middle Ages, we have numerous stories about saints and animals. Some of these stories are about animal companions, such as Saint Hugh of Lincoln and his swan. Others are stories of protection (Saint Giles and the wounded hind), stories about healing and recovery  (Saint Thorlak and the lost cow), or stories about control over the animals (Saint Francis and the singing locust, or Saint Edward the Confessor and the nightingales). Regardless of the shape of these stories, they all serve to demonstrate the holiness of the saint in question because of their care for animals or their owners, or because of their miraculous communication with them. These stories also convey the hierarchy of Creation, according to Christian theology, in which humans were set above the beasts and were commanded to be custodians of the earth.  

The various topoi of animals in saint-stories provide a useful background for appreciating a symbolic convergence in the Church of Saint Martin in Salamanca. I went past this church a couple of times when I last visited Salamanca earlier this year, and I happened to note that there is an extensive avian symbolism in both the decoration and the use of the church - all of which has nothing to do with the legend of Saint Martin, but serves to highlight how such coincidences can reinforce pre-existing associations. 

 

One of the entrances to the church was easily accessible as I walked between my hotel and the university area, and I was entranced by the beautiful carvings on the Romanesque portal, a nice - if partial - survival of the twelfth-century stone church, which has been expanded and renovated at various times. The figure of Saint Martin seen above the portal is most likely form the renovation campaign of 1586, but the figures in the arches of the portal show the typical design of the twelfth century, and also has the wear to be expected of carvings that old. In capitals between the pillars and the arches are several winged creatures, including what appear to be sphinxes, long-necked birds (possibly storks), and harpies. These figures are stock characters in Romanesque art, possibly signifying the wild and chaotic world beyond Christian civilisation which the church visitor leaves behind when entering the hallowed space beyond the doors. 

These figures have nothing to do with Saint Martin and his legend. While there is an avian episode from the story of Martin of Tours - in which he hid among geese to avoid being elected bishop - these particular carvings are part of the portal because they were typical figures of their time. Despite not pertaining to Saint Martin's legend, however, these winged creatures do bring a certain symmetry, not so much to the legend itself, but to the Salamancan church of today. Above the church bell, a pair of storks have built a nest and were flying back and forth across the neighbouring streets. As storks are common in Salamanca, there is nothing uncommon about this sight, nor does it have any particular significance for the legend of Saint Martin. Nonetheless, there is something pleasing about the coincidental convergence of iconography and reality when storks settle on the building dedicated to a saint who hid among birds, and which building is also decorated with several avian creatures, including what might possibly be storks. These are coincidences, serendipities, happenstances - but they do converge in a wonderful way to show how life and art sometimes line up, and when you know the art you can also appreciate this convergence more strongly. And we should expect that medieval venerators of Saint Martin would do just that in case they saw birds nesting on this church in the Middle Ages. 

The Loon - a poem by Robert Bly

 

This morning, a pair of loons were frolicking in the lake behind the house of my late grandparents. While I am used to hearing their ghostly cry in one of the lakes higher up in one of the valleys - where their plaintive sound is more naturally at home - this was not the first time I have seen them in this little bay of the lake. And as always happens when I see or hear loons, I was reminded of Robert Bly's wonderful short poem.

The Loon 

From far out in the center of the naked lake

the loon’s cry rose…

it was the cry of someone who owned very little 

- Robert Bly