The Stiklestad sanctuary ring

This week, I have been in Stiklestad and Trondheim for work, since this is the Saint Olaf festival which culminates on July 29, and which is celebrated in both these places. The festival celebrations at Stiklestad included several very interesting talks, one of which concerned a door ring which was most likely produced locally in the twelfth century. Such rings are often referred to as sanctuary rings, since those who held on to the ring and asked for sanctuary had the right to receive it. 

The iconography of the ring is typical of the period, but the exact meaning of the various components remains uncertain. The serpents that have latched on to the crossbeam by which the ring is fastened to the plate with serrated edge are common representations of evil. However, they also represent the kind of cunning that Christ adviced his disciples to imitate in their preaching, so that they would know when to leave a place due to hostility. The human head with its cleft beard might be seen as representing those that seek sanctuary, captured as it is by the evil of the temporal world. Yet the head might also represent uncivilised, evil people, as long beards are often found among the so-called beard-pullers, which are humans representing heathendom in medieval art. 

The ring is, in short, at one and the same time legible and illegible to us. We understand its function, we are familiar with the individual iconographical elements, but we do not have the knowledge to put those elements into the kind of semiotic totality that would have been well-known among those who might one day have need of such a ring. This beautiful piece of metalwork and craft is, therefore, another reminder that some types of understanding lie just beyond our reach because those things we seek to understand are no longer part of our everyday world. 

The importance of Saint Olaf - the case of the Skjervøy altarpiece

Today, July 29, is the feast of Saint Olaf. He was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, in an attempt to regain his kingship of Norway after two years in exile. The following year, he was proclaimed a saint on episcopal authority, and Olaf become one of the most widespread and popular saints in the Norse North Atlantic and in the Baltic region. The cult underwent several surges of popularity and cult activity, as is the case of all saints. However, because the veneration of Olaf spread far and wide, and because this dissemination happened early and at a point in time when no single cult centre or ecclesiastical authority could control it, the surges of Olaf's cult developed differently at different parts of Latin Christendom. For those of us who research the cult of Saint Olaf, this complexity is both exciting and exhausting, as we have several parallel strands of development. 

Measuring the popularity and importance of a given saint is always difficult, because the surviving source material will rarely provide us with much information. And if there is information, it is usually limited to a specific time period, or it favours the perspective of a particular societal class, or it might do both. In the case of Olaf, the surviving sources allow us to attest to the wide geographic reach and broad societal appeal of his cult. But although he was venerated from Greenland to Estonia, this does not mean that he was always and everywhere equally important. Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, for instance, were cultural geographies with their own native saints. In some cases, Olaf remained more important on what we might call a geography-wide level, but within the different parts of those geographies - landscapes, counties, however you want to call it - a different saint might be more important.  

In the case of Olaf, there is a particularly interesting altarpiece which serves as a very good demonstration of Olaf's importance in the hierarchy of saints. This is an altarpiece from the now-lost Skjervøy Church, located in Troms in Northern Norway. The altarpiece was most likely produced in Northern Germany or the Low Countries and commissioned by the parish priest and probably also high-ranking laypeople of the community. In the centre of the altarpiece is a depiction of God lifting up or supporting the dead Christ, which at the same time communicates the dual nature of Christ - both God and man - and the primary, central position of God in the holy hierarchy of Christian cosmology. On God's right-hand side is the Virgin Mary carrying the Christchild, shown as the second-most important figure in this hierarchy. On God's left hand we find Saint Olaf, holding a ciborium and clutching a now-lost axe (which was his main attribute). The saint-king is standing atop a human-faced dragon, a common aspect of representations of Saint Olaf in medieval art, and its exact meaning is still a matter of debate. 

The Skjervøy altarpiece (after 1515)

Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, C3000

 

In this altarpiece, the importance of Saint Olaf is communicated very clearly: He ranks third in the hierarchy of Heaven, which puts him as the most significant and effective saint in all Creation next to the Virgin Mary, who in turn was regarded as the intercessor above all others. The importance is clear, but we are left with the following question: Importance for whom? Should we infer from this very clear depiction of the top tier of the holy hierarchy that Olaf had a similarly high rank throughout all of the Norse world? Throughout all of Norway? Throughout the diocese? Or just for the parish community in Skjervøy? 

We know from the Breviarium Nidrosiense, a liturgical manual printed in 1519 that set the standard liturgy for the entirety of the Norwegian church province, that Olaf had a high rank. But this standard was set at the metropolitan see of Trondheim, which was also the saint-king's cult centre. Throughout the church province itself, other saints could - and did - rank more highly. Similarly, within Norway, as well as within the diocese of Trondheim - which included the Skjervøy parish - there were communities who turned first of all to other saints. Perhaps the dedicatee of their parish church, or the diocesan patron - such as Sunniva in Bergen or Hallvard in Oslo - or any other saint to whom the a given community felt particularly attached. 

The top of Heaven's hierarchy as depicted in the Skjervøy altarpiece is probably only reflective of Skjervøy and its community. They had commissioned the altarpiece, which meant that they had most likely specified which figures to include. Even within the Skjervøy community, however, we should expect that there were individuals who might accept that Olaf was an important saint, but who turned more readily to other saints for reasons of personal attachment, for instance.  

In short, the Skjervøy altarpiece tells us a lot about Saint Olaf's importance, but only for a very specific community, and at least for the leaders of that community. In this way, the altarpiece is a good example of why the question of importance needs to be approached with great care, lest we exaggerate how popular a given saint actually was. 

The iron pilgrim - an aspect from the cult of Saint James the Elder

Ne wight with him for his assistance went, 

But that great yron groome, his gard and gouernment 

- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Book 5, Canto 4, Verse 3) 

What did you see? Mere ironwork ... He exists without existing, understand, recruit? 

- Italo Calvino, The Nonexistent Knight (translated by Archibald Colquhoun) 

As today is July 25 - at least in my time zone - I am reflecting on the cult of Saint James the Elder, whose feast is today. One of Christ's closest apostles, he became the focal point of a cult centred in Compostela which surged in the early twelfth century, and which resulted in a plethora of various depictions and interpretations throughout the centuries. There are several images of Saint James the Elder - both in texts and pictorial art - which emphasise different aspects of him. For some, he is the apostle, for others he is the battle-helper, the pilgrim, or the moor-slayer. And for some, he is all of these things and more. This multifacted interpretation of a figure is something that fascinates me, as the various images that co-exist and circulate concurrently are excellent ways of analysing and understanding historical memory of one or several communities. 

Throughout the Middle Ages, Saint James the pilgrim became widely known from the twelfth century onwards, due to a concerted effort from the custodians of the saint's cult at Compostela in Galicia. As they were the keepers of the saint's holy body, they were best situated to offer interpretations of his patronage to the wider world. Through sermons, prose narratives, liturgy and various forms of pictorial art commissioned for the church space, archbishop and his retinue presented the faithful with a composite image of the saint which allowed various audiences different reference points for connecting with the holy man. For some, James' protection of pilgrims was of particular interest, so this aspect was what they emphasised, and it was this patronage they sought when needed. Since the fame of Saint James spread through pilgrims, it is no wonder that so much of the surviving source material of texts and images depict the saint dressed in the characteristic broad hat, carrying the staff and the flask, all of which are emblematic of the pilgrim and - by extension - of the saint and therefore of the connection between pilgrim and saint. This emphasis was a historical interpretation, and a shaping of historical memory. Saint James the pilgrim remains a powerful figure in today's cult, too. 

As I was going through some photos from my first visit to Santiago de Compostela, I came across one picture that caused me to think more carefully about the iconography of saints in genereal. The figure is a machine that allows you to insert coins and imprint a commemorative stamp on them as a keepsake of the journey to one of the largest pilgrimage sites of Latin Christendom. The machine is shaped like a pilgrim, recognisable in its hat and carrying the iconic staff. In this way, a common tourist trap has been dressed up with a local specificity, and it becomes in effect a nexus between images of faith and images of commerce. The commercial interests of the shops borrow the iconography of the religious centre in order to make money. This is a very medieval practice, and not very far removed from the pilgrim badges sold at the various cult centre.   

This nexus beteween the religious iconography of the cult of Saint James on the one hand, and the derivative iconography of local tourism poses an interesting quandary for saint scholars. Because on the one hand, it seems fair to assume that this mechanical pilgrim is not meant to depict Saint James himself, but rather a stylised pilgrim. On the other hand, however, the stylised pilgrim is an iconographical shorthand for Saint James. Those who travel to the shrine at Compostela will immediately recognise the hat-wearing holy man in the various statues and images encountered throughout the city. Even though the stickers on the machine advertise new coin-stamps that depict apostolic, ecclesiastical iconography, most visitors will be aware that Saint James the Apostle and Saint James the Pilgrim are one and the same figure.  

Can we, then, at some level, claim that this metal pilgrim shaped to attract visitors depicts Saint James the Elder? It depends on how we understand iconographical representation. That the two figures - the saint and the pilgrim - are connected is beyond any controversy. But to what extent can a figure be seen as separate from its representative. I believe that this separation is a spectrum, and that it depends entirely on the viewer whether what is seen should be understood as a representational depiction or a direct depiction, whether it is depicting a symbol of the saint or the saint himself. Someone sufficiently well-versed in the iconography of Saint James the Elder but not particularly careful in their observation might take this machine to be a statue of the saint himself - a rather simplistically stylised statue but nonetheless an image of the holy man believed to be buried in the cathedral. A passer-by might offer a prayer to the metal figure, thinking it to be one of those pictorial renditions of the saint that serve to allow for a more tangible point of connection between the earthly and the heavenly. After all, a wooden statue of Saint James would partly have precisely the same function. 

This pilgrim-shaped machine is a reminder that religion is formed in large part by those who practice it, and that individual religious expressions must be understood as elements in the sum total of that religion's history. If someone interprets this pilgrim-shaped machine as a holy statue, the machine becomes such a statue to all intents and purposes, at least for the person who makes that interpretation. For me, a researcher whose analysis is mainly limited to the official, authoritative images of saints and other memorialised figures, these impossible questions about individual expressions of faith provide good reminders that what I study is only part of a greater whole. Reminders that there can at any point exist interpretations of saints to which I will have no access because those interpretations have not been committed to sources. Such reminders serve to keep me from being overly confident in my own analysis, and that is a very good thing. 

Serendipity as method, or - The case for reading broadly

 

Sometimes they stand too near the problem. Often, if a person looks at something very closely he can see a few things more clearly, but the shape of the whole thing escapes him

- Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue

 

After close to fifteen years as a professional medievalist, I remain hesitant about giving advice to students and younger colleagues. Academia has undergone so many changes, has seen so many trends come and go, and has sustained repeated damage from governments and funding institutions. Even though I am still relatively early in my career, the factors that helped me succeed when starting out as a freshly-defended MA are not necessarily relevant in the current climate. And as someone who has witnessed a lot of bad, outdated advice – however well-intentioned – doled out to either myself, colleagues or my generation of medievalists, I am painfully aware that such advice can sometimes lead dangerously astray or serve as a testament to the gulf between those who have secured permanent positions and those who might never be able to do so. Giving advice as an academic, therefore, can be something of a poisoned chalice.

 

There is, however, one advice that I will give unhesitatingly, unreservedly, and even unprompted. That advice is to read broadly, no matter your topic, your field, or your discipline. In academia, there is a widespread and often unspoken assumption that in order to become an expert on your topic, you have to dig deep and only dig deep. In an academic environment tainted both by the perverse logic of business and by the centre-of-the-box thinking of funding bodies, it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you should not waste time reading what is not immediately relevant to what you are working on at the moment – whether it is for a particular course, a dissertation, or a thesis. You dig deep, you become an expert, and you show that expertise by presenting information gleaned both from the sources and from the secondary literature. But the problem of digging deep without also minding the breadth is that you become very isolated.

 

The idea that you need to be laser-focused on your particular topic in order to be a good academic is a misguided approach to transforming information into knowledge, and converting data into understanding. When starting out as an academic, you do not know enough about your topic to evaluate which source texts or which studies are going to be useful for your analysis. Much like you cannot draw a map of a road until after you have travelled to its end, you do not have the expertise at the beginning that you are going to have at the end of your degree. After all, the whole point of doing an MA or a PhD is to expand your knowledge and increase your expertise so that you are better prepared for the work that lies ahead of you, no matter whether that work is related to academia or not. 

 

Because we do not know what aids our analysis until after the analysis is done, the laser-focus approach to reading means that it is very easy to miss connections that can only be made when looking beyond where the laser is pointing. It is not impossible to get good results by myopically staring at the most relevant material – it is, indeed, frequently done – but that approach is absolutely no guarantee that you will get the best result, or even the result for which you are hoping. Due to the uncertainty of how analytical breakthroughs are made – because they are unique events that depend on the material contained in the analyst’s brain – we are best prepared for making such breakthroughs by reading beyond the confines of one’s chosen topic. Reading broadly is a way of shifting focus away from your main object and thereby seeing that object in a different light. It might be helpful to learn, for instance, that there are cases similar to yours in the vast repository of available historical information. It is healthy to be reminded that no matter how unique your material is, the finiteness of human imagination and creativity means that it is far less unique than you at first might be tempted to believe. In short, reading broadly allows you to situate yourself in a much broader context, which in turn enables you to understand how your topic is unique and also how it is not. Good analysis depends on both these types of understanding.  

 

The fact that we do not know from the onset what reading we need to do in order to make fruitful connections can at times be daunting. It is easy to worry that you are going to miss a text that will give you the one connection you need for your breakthrough. It is easy to become obsessive and turn the virtue of reading broadly into the vice of reading everything. Consequently, it is also important to embrace serendipity as method when setting out to read broadly. Because there is no single solution for how you should read in order to do the analysis you want to do, to have those revelations that allow you to move the state of the art a few inches further, and to allow you to say something new and valuable on the topic at hand. This means that instead of reading everything, you read a bit here and a bit there, waiting for the revelations to come. And when they do not come, you make do with good old-fashioned gruntwork. 

Recently, I was reminded of how reading broadly and applying serendipity as method can be immensely rewarding. Earlier this year, I bought El Diccionario de lugares utópicos [Dictionary of utopian places], edited by Juan Pro and published by Silex in 2022. It can be downloaded as a PDF here. This dictionary is a wonderful resource for anyone working on utopian thinking, and I have spent many hours this summer poring over several of its entries. What prompted the purchase of this book was that I am working on an article on violence in utopian societies, co-authored with a friend of mine. Several of the dictionary’s entries have proved very useful, but since I also want to read the book in its entirety I have also spent time on entries further removed from our topic. 

 

Admittedly, reading entries from a dictionary of utopian places when co-authoring an article on utopian thinking does not qualify as reading broadly, even though some of the entries in question have pertained to times and places very far removed from the scope of the article. But the revelations I experienced when perusing entries on the fringes of relevance for this particular article had nothing to do with it. Instead, I suddenly encountered formulations and key points that allowed me to get a much better understanding of a very different topic.

 

For two forthcoming publications, I am again delving into the cult of saints in medieval Norway. I am particularly interested in the ways in which specific cults enabled elite groups to formulate a vision of a golden age in order to legitimise attempts to recreate that past golden age in the present. This way of manipulating history is a universal feature of human history, and although this manipulation unfolds in a unique way in medieval Norway, its unfolding is not wholly alien to other similar manipulation projects. Consequently, as I was reading about the role of the Inca Empire in modern-day Peruvian utopianism, I encountered a formulation by a Peruvian historian that fitted perfectly into an analytical point that I had tried to put into writing. The contexts of the two topics are of course very different, emerging as they have from unique historical trajectories. Nonetheless, because humans can only seek power in so many ways, the contexts were sufficiently similar that I was able to use one to illuminate the other. 

 

There is a particular joy in embracing serendipity as method. Rather than worrying about whether you are missing any of the important texts pertaining to your topic, you can read beyond your field with a clear conscience, knowing that there is no single revelation to find, and acknowledging that revelations can strike from many different directions. It is impossible to say whether it will come from a study on a very different topic, from a novel, from a poem, or from a comic book. By reading broadly and expanding your frame of reference, you are better suited to catching such connections that might help you strengthen and deepen your analysis. Consequently, there are no wrong turns to make, no wasted pages, no lost hours – everything you read prepares you for receiving the revelations that lurk somewhere in the sum total of human writing. Reading broadly, and aiming for serendipity, are the two best approaches for ensuring that those revelations can be recognised as such. 

Thrice-illumined

 

Western Norway has been a grey castle this June, with mist and grey clouds being constant features throughout almost every day, and also bringing with them torrential showers or milder but more continuous drizzle. As summer arrives, I seek the balcony at the back of my paternal grandparents' house, enjoying its shade until the sun floats into view in the early afternoo, thereby making the place too hot for either work or leisure. This year, however, the rain and cold have induced me to use the porch at the front of the house as a temporary work space. I have done so in previous years, too, but lacking access to the balcony has meant that I have sought porch much more frequently, especially because the dark evenings have provided a good excuse to light the three-pronged candlestick which I keep there. 

Last night, there suddenly broke through a piercing silvery light from the moon as it was climbing the mountain range on the western side of the fjord of my native village, Hyen. This sudden illumination was a drastic change to the heavier light that had preceded it, and it caught my attention immediately. Looking out through the window on the side of the porch, I saw the light of the moon filtered by the clouds, powerful enough to be reflected in the creased surface of the lake behind the house, and I also noted that the window glass in turn reflected the flames of the three candles, as well as the reflection of of one them in the window glass on the front of the porch. It was a lovely moment that made me feel thrice-illumined, and it was a very atmospheric reminder of why I tend to sit in this little nook even when I need to wear a jacket and a blanket - these shifting skies mean that no two evenings are alike in this place. 

A note on reading fragments - or, Why human agency remains important

This week, there has been a lot of publicity around the latest development in the efforts to extract texts from the fire-damaged scrolls from Herculaneum. News outlets tend to focus on the role of AI in the process, not distinguishing between various forms of technology that fall under the broad label of artificial intelligence. As has been pointed out by several commentators on social media, however, the role of artificial intelligence consists of distinguishing ink from papyrus, leaving the actual transcription and identification of the content of the scrolls to human agency. In other words, the main part of the work is done by human researchers with expertise and knowledge. In a post by Dr. Naomi Scott of the University of Bristol, she pointed out that the main work is done by human experts, and posted a quotation from Professor Llewellyn Morgan of the University of Oxford published in a news update from the university in 2025. 

In the quotation from Llewellyn Morgan, there was one particular passage that stood out to me. Morgan likened the pattern recognition by machines to how eighteenth-century copyists who copied what was written on scrolls, but who could not understand the content. This reminded me of an anecdote from my experience with manuscript fragments that really made me understand how experts often need inexpert eyes to help their work progress. 

About nine years ago, I was researching fragments of medieval manuscripts in the special collections at the University Library of Southern Denmark. Most of these fragments were used as bindings, and had been subject to a lot of wear, tear, and years of occasional water damage. Consequently, the texts on these fragments could be very difficult to decipher, as it was often challenging to distinguish a letter from a letter-shaped smudge. In some cases, I also came to realise that my expertise in palaeography and Latin hampered me when the text became too illegible, because I was too focused on the word in its entirety rather than the individual letter, which meant that I often kept searching for one of many possible words that seemed like reasonable option for one specific string of letters. 

In order to better identify the letters, I took close-up photographs of the fragments or parts of the fragments, printed these out, and traced or separated the various letters with a pencil. This method was sometimes successful, but it depended entirely on the state of the fragment, and I was again hampered by the expectations which were leading my gaze. 

I showed some of the pictures to a friend of mine. At that time, he had no experience with medieval manuscripts, palaeography, or Latin. But he is a very good photographer with a keen eye for details, and I thought that he might see things that I did not. This turned out to be the case. As my friend looked at the photographs, he told me very simply what he saw, and I then could focus on that one thing and determine whether this was a letter or simply a letter-shaped smudge. This was a kind of a refocusing, or a recalibration of the gaze, and it was an immense help. In some cases, what my friend saw was irrelevant, but I could only assess this irrelevance after a closer scrutiny, and when transcribing a worn and faded fragment, it is just as important to know which things to ignore. Through his help, I was able to transcribe some lines that had frustrated me for a long time, and I was then able to identify the text itself, which in turn was very important for the general identification of the fragment. 

The exercise was a revelation for me, because it showed very clearly how much help I could get from someone who was not in my academic field or even close to it. In this sense, my friend was doing much of the same job that machines are doing for the Herculaneum scrolls. He was finding patterns, noticing things that I overlooked because I was distracted by the bigger picture. And even though this kind of work would have been done much faster by a machine, the process was also very educational for me and helped me not only to do my work but also to improve my skills as a fragment researcher. As in most things, such research requires a lot of practice, and the kind of slow, incremental progress that my friend and I were doing was what I needed to improve at an early stage in my career as a researcher. 

In many cases, machines are needed to deal with certain aspects of source work, at least for speeding up the process. But sometimes speed is neither of the essence nor very helpful, because it is the slow, trudging pace that helps you improve, making you become an expert through constant practice. In short, human agency is not only still very much needed, it is also to be preferred. 

A woodcut for the Nativity of John the Baptist

I should be in bed, but since it is a summer's night I am staying up longer than is sensible. This night, moreover, is the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, one of few saints in Latin Christianity whose earthly birthday is celebrated, and moreover as his main feast. The eve of Saint John is an important time in European folklore, and there are numerous traditions associated with the night between June 23 and June 24.  

Throughout the Latin Middle Ages, John the Baptist was a famous and popular saint, mainly due to his appearance in the Bible and his important role in the life of Christ. Several churches were dedicated to him, and his iconography made him a recognisable figure in medieval art. He is typically depicted as a wild-haired man dressed in a camel hide, usually holding an image of the Lamb of God, being, as he was, a forerunner for Christ.  

Due to this iconographical tradition, I was rather surprised to come across a rather different representation in March, when I was researching a collection of saints' lives printed in Lübeck in 1492, namely the Passionael by Steffen Arndes. This was the second edition of Passionael, and the printer had commissioned a new set of woodcuts. For the feast of the Nativity of Saint John, the woodcut does not depict the desert hermit typical of medieval iconography. Rather, it highlights the birth of the saint, or rather his childhood. His sainted mother, Elizabeth, is lying in bed while the holy child is bathed by a maid, a situation that neither maid nor child seems very happy about. It is a sweet domestic scene, perhaps reflecting the secular audience of the collection, namely the merchants and artists of Lübeck. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael (1492)

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.44v

While I was surprised by this iconography, it was not completely novel the world of late-medieval Latin Christian art. The birth of John the Baptist was recounted in the Bible, and it was part of an expanded narrative commemorated through liturgical celebrations in the Middle Ages. From the late fourteenth century onwards, the Latin Church put greater emphasis on the feast of the Visitation of Mary (July 2), and it was established a compulsory feast at the Council of Basil (1431-49). The Visitation commemorated her visit to John's mother Elizabeth while they both were pregnant. According to tradition, John gave a joyful leap in his mother's stomach when he sensed the approach of the coming Messiah. Consequently, the scene depicted in Passionael fits well within the development of the cults of both Mary and John the Baptist in the later Middle Ages. 

One curious thing about the woodcuts in Passionael, however, is that this particular scene was also used for the chapter on the birth of the Virgin Mary, Nativitas Mariae, on September 8. The viewer is only asked to imagine that the mother who has recently given birth is Anne rather than Elizabeth, and that the baby boy in the bath tub is rather the baby girl who would grow up to become the mother of God. The reuse of this woodcut is perhaps primarily due to practical matters, an opportunity to pay for one less item, or perhaps to save time. But it is also a reminder that the reception of iconographical information is flexible. The readers and viewers of Passionael would eventually encounter both these woodcuts and recognise them as the same - after all, these two feasts are not that far apart in the liturgical calendar - but they would have no problem letting this image represent one occasion on one day and another occasion on a different day. The identity of mother and child changes as the occasion changes, but the scene remains the same because that scene encapsulates what is being celebrated on both occasions, namely the birth of a figure central to the life of Christ. This kind of flexibility requires a kind of pragmatism and iconographical literacy that is often overlooked by modern viewers, inculcated as we are that art needs to be individual and unique. As a consequence, we often underestimate the artistic understanding of the people of the Middle Ages. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael (1492)

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.142r

A new publication on local history

 

Two weeks ago, the households of my native village of Hyen received this booklet in their mailboxes. It is a publication that celebrates the 150th anniversary of the local church, which is one of the historical and cultural centrepoints of the village. Aside from its importance as a religious house and a landmark in the fjordscape, it also serves as a reminder of our identity as an oft-forgotten backwater that has to speak loudly for its rights. This new church was built in 1875 and consecrated the year after, which was the culmination of a political process that had gone on for decades. In the nineteenth century, Norwegian governments were very economically minded when it came to the care of rural parish churches. A demand that functioning churches had to accommodate a certain number of people led to the destruction of the vast majority of the country's medeival stave churches, most of which were small and dark. Similarly, a village like Hyen was considered too small to warrant its own church. While there was a church in the Middle Ages, it is likely to have been decommissioned after the Reformation, and in the period c.1600-1876, the villagers had to row to the next fjord in order to attend services. The story of the drawn-out effort to build a church in the village is emblematic of how small rural communities often have to spend much time and money to make themselves heard. 

I was asked to write a contribution to this booklet, and I was very happy to do so. Although the booklet is dedicated to the modern church, its long-gone medieval antecessor is none the less an important part of its story, so I wrote a three-page overview of what we know about the church and the village in the Middle Ages. 

Contributing to a volume like is one of the great joys of being a historian. While this is the kind of publication that yields zero points when it comes to those bibliographies that have to be submitted as part of applications for academic jobs, it is a text that is academically solid and that will be read by a much wider number of people than any of my professional articles. In terms of outreach, this little piece on local history might be something of the most important work I have ever done. 

A brief note against the notion of useless knowledge

I think any fact is a good fact, in fact 

- Karen O'Leary, Taskmaster New Zealand S04E04

There is a common attitude that one encounters as someone who has studied in the humanities, namely that those disciplines are full of useless knowledge. While I concede that there is such a thing as useless knowledge, most types of knowledge are far from useless, although the exact use of a particular kind of knowledge might vary significantly. 

 The idea of useless knowledge is often bolstered by the erroneous notion that what people in the humanities study tends to be niche, hugely specialised, obscure, and hermetic. And it is true that to some more competitively-oriented scholars, what exists outside of their particular field - however small and narrow - is not worth knowing anything about. However, by and large most people I have encountered in academia knows that it is necessary to accumulate knowledge about many different topics in order to properly understand one's own. Moreover, most of us also understands that by learning about things outside our respective specialties enable us to more easily broaden our horizons and comprehend our particular topic within a wider spectrum of facts and information. Knowledge is useful because it adds context, and the usefulness of knowledge is contextual. 

I was reminded of the usefulness of so-called useless knowledge when I was talking with a friend of mine at a café earlier today. We are both humanities scholars, and we talked broadly about things that came up. At one point, the conversation steered onto the topic of Latin American literature, and this prompted me to recount some of the main points in the novel Hombres de maíz, Men of Maize, by the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias, published in 1949. The novel is a kaleidoscope that blends reality and mythology in a way that enables the reader to grasp nuances in the socioeconomic mosaic of twentieth-century Guatemala. One example is that the large-scale planting of maize is a hallmark of the upper social echelons of rural Guatemala, and that this is a practice which breaks with the older rural practice of harvesting wild maize. The large-scale maize cultivation is hard on the soil and takes up space that earlier was used to plant a greater variey of crops - as far as I recall from reading the novel two years ago - and those who have the land and resources to plant maize at this scale represent an extractive upper class that responds to the increasing encroachment of capitalist logic and demands in a part of the world beginning to feel the pressures and influence from the US businesses and governments. 

As noted, my memory of the novel is imperfect, and I have not yet anything more about Guatemalan history in order to further corroborate and contextualise the picture presented by Asturias. Consequently, my knowledge of the socioeconomical nuances of twentieth-century Guatemala is very limited, and it is so far from my own field of expertise that there is nothing I can do about this little piece of knowledge in a professional setting. However, the usefulness of this knowledge is not about the knowledge itself, but the realisation that this kind of knowledge is significant in order to understand the broader picture. Knowing that maize has significance as a marker of class and politics provides a starting point for learning more. In the same way, knowing that various details signify something more than the detail itself is what makes knowledge contextually useful, both in the sense that a piece of knowledge might be useful in a particular context, but also that this piece provides a clue to its own broader context.  

Knowledge for its own sake is insufficient, if not necessarily useless, but knowledge that contributes to an ever-growing, ever-deepening understanding of reality is valuable beyond the price of rubies. Our own historical epoch testifies to the truth of this on a daily basis. 

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

 

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

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

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Rigsarkivet, Fr. 251

Timeslips in the fjords

 

A couple of years ago, I read an interview with the British novelist Alan Garner, known for his novels blending reality and folklore. He described how he had been walking in the mountains and suddenly did not recognise his surroundings even though he was in a part of the mountains that he knew well. Some friends of his working on quantum mechanics had attributed this to a timeslip, a sudden travel in time. I remain sceptical of the possibility to traverse the unfolding of time, especially as a historian who will happily concede that history rhymes but that it never repeats and that it is inaccessible save by whatever vestiges survive the vicissitudes of time and chronological progress.  

I was reminded of this interview earlier this year, when I experienced a phenomenon that is in many ways similar to a timeslip, yet which works very differently. This happened late in the evening at the verge of early spring, when there was no snow in the lowlands yet a sere, crisp frost that reminded me that winter had not yet relinquished its claim to the land. I was walking the dog, and we were on our way back from the other side of the innermost bay in the fjord, where there is a shipwright that can be seen in the pictures below as a stretch of light on the right-hand side of the photographs. All of a sudden, I felt that time had blended into itself, and that the world I was walking through contained all times at once as preserved in glass. It was a strange feeling, but a comfortable one, and something I have felt several times before when walking in the fjords.  

This was not a timeslip in the strict sense, and it was more similar to a déjà vu in that I recognised this time as something familiar. However, it was not that I felt that I had experienced this moment before, but more that I experienced times that I knew from stories and photographs, times from before my own entrance on the earthly stage.  

My sensation was, of course, entirely in my head, and the experience itself was very much rooted in a historical moment. I was walking a road that had not been completed until sometime in the 1920s, covered in tarmac that had not been applied until decades later, and the constellation of lights from streetlamps and houses could only stem from the pattern of inhabited and functioning buildings in the year 2026. My timeslip was internal, as it were, and brought on partly by tiredness, but also partly by that strange blend of chronological conglomeration that is typical of the Norwegian fjords. While several buildings are new, and while roadworks, machines and infrastructure point squarely to the 2020s, and even though the centre of my native village is radically altered from its appearance in - say - 1926, there are also numerous reminders of past times: Some errant stones brought by the ice thousands of years ago that have not yet succumbed to the dynamite of construction workers, a few houses that were built in the 1920s, the church from 1875-76, and the mountains that have looked the same in living memory. When I grew up here in the fjords, I noticed this conglomeration in the houses in which I grew up and the houses that I visited. There were keepsakes, furniture, pictures, textiles, and other items that had been passed down through generations, and that bore the stamps of their respective historical periods. 

It is against this conglomeration I see the sensation I felt that cold evening on the verge of spring. Because I have inhabited a world comprised of remnants from earlier times, it is easy to feel as if I know those times. I do not - the smells, the sounds, the tastes of those years have never reached me, however much and however vividly they have been replicated in handed-down clothes, in my grandmother's cooking, or in the dialect of my grandmother's generation that is so distinct from that of my own - like a chronolect lost to the passage of time. I suspect that this feeling of familiarity surged into my head that evening because of the feeling of timelessness that comes with the seasons, the recognition that it is almost spring because it always feels this particular way when it is almost spring. In this way, chronological boundaries slipped away, even though I remained where and when I was. And this, I believe, is the way timeslips work in the fjords. 

A Dublin haul

 

Late April and early May, I was in Dublin for a conference. As always when abroad, I wanted to bring home some books, but this time I had to show more restraint than usual because I was travelling with only a carry-on suitcase which was already quite full. Consequently, I had thought back to my first trip to Dublin, in 2023, when a friend had recommended that I visit Hodges Figgis bookshop. This is a largre and splendid shop, and I remembered a facsimile edition of one of the poetry collections by William Butler Yeats, one of my favourite poets. As I left Norway, this particular volume was the only item I planned on buying. 

When I got to Hodges Figgis, I quickly located the selection of Yeats' works and picked the copy of The Winding Stair and other poems. However, since I still had one hour left before meeting a colleague for lunch, I decided to spend that time browsing the various sections on three of the four floors of the bookshop. From a logistical point of view, this was a mistake since I soon became more lenient in my self-imposed restrictions and eventually abandoned them altogether. After the fourth book, however, I knew that I would probably not resist future temptations as bravely as I had thought, and I hurried downstairs to the till. As the cashier went through the stack of books, she also gave me a loyalty card with slots to be crossed out for each twelfth pound spent at the bookshop. My failed attempt at restraint left only four of the ten slots empty, and I regret nothing.  

The day after the conference, I met up with another colleague, an old gentleman who kindly gifted me a volume of historical articles to which he had contributed. I was utterly delighted at this generous present, especially since my colleague is an expert in the archaeology of medieval Dublin, a topic which I need to learn a lot more about in order to expand the horizon of my own research in the direction of Ireland. 

Four of the books I brought back from Dublin were unplanned. They therefore demonstrate how wise it is to yield to serendipity when it comes your way, especially when dealing with books. 

Reading-spots, part 10 - The wonders of Ireland

 

I am in Dublin for a conference, and the journey has been long albeit relatively smooth. For reading material, I brought my copy of an early-twentieth-century copy of Konungs Skuggjsá, the King's Mirror, a didactic treatise from mid-thirteenth-century Norway. The choice was mainly due to the fact that I have been meaning to read this from end to end, and I thought that the lulls of a lengthy travel might provide good opportunities to delve into it. But another important element in the process of choosing was that the book also contains a description of wonders of Ireland. These wonders - discussed together with the natural wonders of Iceland and Greenland - comprise both stories of saints, marvellous landscapes and wondrous animals. 

I began reading this translation on the flight from Oslo, but quickly fell asleep. When I arrived in Dublin, there was plenty of time to delve deeper into the book, and by the time I managed to get a rather belated lunch I had reached the discussion of natural wonders. I had found a lovely café which to my fortune served one of the true wonders of Ireland, the full Irish breakfast, and I sat down to refill my energy after having been awake since three in the morning. There was a lovely harmony in eating this rich meal while reading about how Norwegians in the thirteenth century envision the country that I am now visiting for the second time in my life. Such ideas about distant lands are always illuminating and highly interesting to me, especially when those ideas are juxtaposed with the more mundane materialities of travel. 

Questions of continuity - sacred landscapes, Stiklestad, and the Christianisation of Norway

One of the perennial questions when teaching or researching medieval Norway is whether the introduction of Christianity was a sudden rupture or a gradual process. These days, most scholars that I know favour a slow development in which Christianity was familiar to pagan Norwegians. Knowledge about stories, symbols and practices was available through contact with merchants and royal households abroad, and several of the slaves that were kept on Norwegian farms were taken from Christian societies. While the pagan Norse religion was dominant, there was some sort of co-existence between the two religions, and individuals no doubt embraced various hybrid forms where elements of both religions were combined in their rituals, prayers and the symbols that they either wore as jewellery or that they carved into their possessions. It was only with the rise of the Norwegian bishop and the gradual establishment of some sort of a church organisation in the early eleventh century - a process that would culminate with the establishment of bishoprics around 1070 - that Christianity attained religious monopoly in Norway. 

While the history of institutional religion in Norway is largely uncontested, the nature of belief and religion remains a matter of debate. There is a tendency to imagine that paganism remained a vibrant element of Norwegian religion throughout the Middle Ages, and one common version of this claim is the idea that the old Norse gods continued as part of the religious practices in the guise of saints. This claim is unsubstantiated and is based on a severe misunderstanding of what the cult of saints was, and how familiar it would have been to the Norwegians long before the official Christianisation of the country in the first decades of the eleventh century. 

I was reminded of these issues on Monday as I was then being shown around the museum complex of Stiklestad, which is where King Olaf II was killed in 1030, and which became one of the two main cult sites associated with him following the proclamation of his sainthood the year after. (The second main cult site was his shrine in Trondheim.) When the battle in 1030 happened, Stiklestad had been a centre of both religious and secular power for several generations, and several grave mounds are found within the radius of a kilometre from where a twelfth-century church is now standing - the spot where Olaf was believed to have been killed. Such grave mounds are found across all of Norway, and they were sites of some kind of ancestor worship or veneration.  

The museum complex at Stiklestad provide very striking evidence that the sacred landscapes of Christianity were being made in a landscape that was already sacred to the pre-Christian Norse religion. On what was once a high river bank, an old burial mound is still visible and this was once the centre of a sacred landscape where the pagan populace held ceremonies and turned to their ancestors for protection. In the eleventh century, a new sacred landscape was established, centred on the field where Olaf had died. There might have been ereceted a wooden church at this early stage, but the current stone church was first built in the twelfth century. As seen in the pictures below, from the mound we can see the church, and to medieval Christians the mound might have been less covered in birches and more of a visible reminder of the religious practices that had been in place in earlier generations, and which the saint-king had reportedly sought to eradicate.  

The question of continuity becomes more urgent in a place like this. The mound remained through the shift from a pagan to a Christian sacred landscape. What the mound represented was removed - sometimes forcibly, sometimes by long neglect - but the mound itself was allowed to remain. This continuity of existence is perhaps not as surprising, given that the local aristocrats - chieftains and wealthy, powerful farmers - were related to those who rested in the mounds. While paganism was no longer allowed, and proably soon fell into disuse, the kinship between the living and the mound-resting dead was still keenly felt for as long as that family stayed on the ancestral land. In this sense, there was a kind of continuity in place. But the new generations embraced Christianity and by the twelfth century we have little reason to believe that the ordinary Norwegians had much understanding of the pagan cosmos within which those who dwelled in the mounds or those who had erected the mounds had understood themselves. Rather, the mounds were now part of a Christian sacred landscape. Those who rested there awaited the same kind of last judgement as did the living, and it is easy to imagine that to many of the Christian Norwegians there was some concern about the salvations of the soulds of their ancestors. It is also to be expected that the Christians turned to their ancestors for protection or help, especially since a belief in revenants is attested in many later Old Norse texts. But the kind of continuity that we find in a landscape was this was one of relationships, of kinship, not one of religious practice. Saint Olaf became the intercessor of the god of the new faith, and whatever help the ancestors could provide was little compared to the saints' ability to ask God for miracles to be wrought for the benefits of the living. The nature of the dead was different in the new faith, and that difference did not allow for the kind of functional continuity that some have imagined. Put differently, it would be very difficult for a long-deceased pagan to take on the function of a saint who had gained access to God's heavenly court through their manner of dying or their manner of living. 

That there was some continuity in a landscape like Stiklestad is only to be expected. But this was not the resisting paganism of the modern imagination. It was a continuity of historical knowledge, of respect for ancestors, but a respect and knowledge that was also shaped by the awareness that the ancestors could neither replace nor enter into fellowship with the saints. Rather, the ancestors were no doubt respected and memorialised, but within a Christian sacred landscape and within a Christian understanding of history. As the country became Christianised, so, too, was the landscape, and this changed how those who inhabited the landscape - whether living or dead - understood themselves in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Saint George the kneeling knight - recycling images in the 1492 Lübeck Passionael

 

Today, April 23, is the feast of Saint George. He is a widespread figure in late-medieval iconography, and he is most famous for his battle with the dragon which he subdued and later killed once the city he had saved converted to Christianity. The dragonslaying motif became dominant from the thirteenth century onwards, and - as I have outlined in this blogpost - the most common depiction of Saint George in the twelfth and late eleventh century was of his elaborate passion narrative.  

A few years ago, I was leafing through a collection of texts for the feasts of the liturgical year printed in Lübeck in 1492 by Steffen Arndes. The collection, known as the Lübeck Passionael, was a typical work of its time, as it offered vernacular translations of stories most commonly found in Latin. A response to increased literacy and extra-ecclesiastical religious gatherings - such as the guilds - these books were highly popular. When I made my first forays into this work, I was a bit surprised to see that the woodcut vignette that introduced the chapter on Saint George did not contain the typical dragonslaying motif. However, by that time I had already noticed that other scenes did occur and I did not think much of it. Last year, however, as I had an opportunity to examine the woodcuts more carefully, I noticed that this same image was used for two other saints: Longinus, and Quirinus of Neuss. 

Saint George 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.6v

Saint Longinus

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.379v

Saint Quirinus

Steffen Arndes, Passionael 

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.383r

The Lübeck Passionael contains several images that are recycled for several legends. This was a common method in the making of such collections. Presumably, the main reason was to save on time, effort and money, especially as a work the length of Passionael could consist of close to three hundred chapters. Moreover, because several minor saints were tortured or killed in the same way, one decapitation or torture scene could accurately reflect the climax of several different stories. What surprised me, however, was the image used for George was shared by two saints who were relatively minor figures in Northern Germany at the end of the fifteenth century. Granted, they were not unknown. Longinus was the soldier who had pierced the side of Christ with his lance and was later healed from an eye condition when Christ's blood came into his eyes. Quirinus was a Roman tribune who appears in the story of Pope Alexander I and Saint Balbina, and whose relics were translated to Neuss in the eleventh century. While he appears to have undergone something of a surge in popularity in Northern Germany and Scandinavia from the fifteenth century onwards, he never attained the status and ubiquity of Saint George. 

That three such different saints - two soldiers and a tribune, each from a different century in the Early Christian past - should be represented by the same image appears strange to modern eyes. After all, why pass up on the opportunity to depict the eye-catching and famous dragonslaying scene? Similar scenes do after all appear in the Lübeck Passionael, such as in the chapter on Saint Martha (f.85r) who is shown defeating the dreadful Tarrascon by pointing her cross towards it. However, the recycling of this image, and the choice of saints who share it, might reveal something about what the artist or the commissioner sought to emphasise by this scene. In all three legends, we see a military figure who chooses to die for the faith. His military affiliation differs - George was known more as a knight than as a soldier on par with Longinus, and as a tribune Quirinus was not in active battle - but he is shown to be martial a man on account of his full-body armour. They represent the literal Christian soldier - not the original, spiritual one formulated in the epistles of Paul - and as such demonstrates a military ideal of the late Middle Ages.  

We are still left with the question why the artist or the commissioner decided not to depict the dragonslaying scene. And we cannot possibly say whether the kind of connecting logic I have outlined here reflects the decision making process that led to this recycling of images. Most likely, the motive cuts no deeper than that the image fits an aspect found in all of the stories and has been recycled for practical reasons. What is interesting, however, is that once we divest ourselves of expectation - or the desire to see a dragon in my case - we are left with the result of that editorial and artistic decision. Once we take this as our starting point, we approach the historical source on its own terms, and from there we might start to ask new questions. For instance, given that this image was shared by these saints, what - if anything - can this tell us about how these saints were understood and viewed in late-fifteenth-century Lübeck? Maybe there were other concerns rather than the slaying of a dragon that drew some of the Lübeckians towards George? Ultimately, we do not know, but reflecting on these questions might make us think more carefully about the late-medieval cult of saints. 

Saint Olaf in Aarhus, part 2 - the lost church

As I mentioned in the first blogpost of this series, I have a particular fascination with the development of the cult of Saint Olaf of Norway in medieval Denmark. He was a ubiquitous figure in the Danish cult of saints, often taking on a more kingdom-wide importance than most of Denmark's native saints. Why he came to overshadow these local figures is a question with which I am still grappling, and to get a better sense of this development I am constantly seeking to learn more about the cult and its dissemination throughout the medieval Danish kingdom. 

Last month, I was able to do some more exploring as I went to Aarhus. This was one of the main cities of medieval Denmark, and one its episcopal centres. The city expanded in the late eleventh and throughout the twelfth century, and in this period the cult of Saint Olaf appears to have become rooted in the religious life of Aarhus. The early history of the cult in Aarhus is unknown. The earliest trace is a stone church which is mentioned in a letter of donation from 1203, and this church was excavated in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the excavation yielded little of concrete information regarding the early stage of the building's history. It is tentatively dated to the early thirteenth century, but it is likely that a church dedicated to the Norwegian saint was in place in Aarhus before the 1200s. The remnants of a Romanesque baptismal font believed to have belonged to the church, and currently placed witihin the church walls, strengthens this suggestion since this style was superseded by the Gothic in the course of the thirteenth century. 

We do not know when the cult of Saint Olaf arrived in Aarhus. It might have arrived through veterans from the battle of Hlyrskov Heath in 1043 when an army of Norwegians and Danes under the leadership of King Magnus I fought against the Wends. According to a tradition recorded in the twelfth century, Magnus was aided by his sainted father, who had been declared a saint by episcopal authority in 1031, the year after his death. This tradition is likely to stem from eleventh-century stories, and the fact that Magnus commissioned coins with images of Saint Olaf minted on them after the battle suggests that a veneration of Olaf as a battle-helper was in place already in the 1040s. These stories might have travelled north to Aarhus shortly after the battle. However, it is also possible that the cult was spread by merchants. Aarhus was a thriving mercantile centre throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and excavations in the city centre have revealed several stoneware items produced in Norway. The cult might have been spread by Norwegian and Danish merchants alike. 

Whatever the history of Saint Olaf's cult in Aarhus, it is likely to have been in place well before the year 1200. One strong indication of this is the history of Aarhus' own native saint, Niels, who died in 1180. His early cult is likewise obscure, but in the early thirteenth century the Aarhus cathedral chapter applied for his canonisation. The application failed, but a local cult seems to have persisted, and a memorial to Saint Niels is located right next to the ruins of Saint Olaf's Church (but this is a topic for a later blogpost). This little episode is important because it teaches us two key points: First of all, Aarhus did not have a known native saint until 1180 at the earliest. Secondly, the canonisation attempt in the early thirteenth century suggests that the cult of Saint Niels might not have been widely popular but rather an ecclesiastical phenomenon. These two points lead us to the hypothesis that in the period leading up to the death of Saint Niels, and indeed up to the failed canonisation attempt, there was no local figure in Aarhus who could attract the kind of veneration that was shown towards Saint Olaf, and so it was easier for the foreign saint to become a favourite saint among the populace of Aarhus. Other factors are also likely to have played a significant part, such as Olaf being appealing to many social groups rather than just one, but the lack of saintly competition from saints with a stronger local connection must be considered an important factor.  

Today, the excavated outline of the church wall can be seen in a plot of land that serves as a minute city park. When I visited in late March, the crocuses were blooming, and there was a serenity which was immensely enjoyable. Situated at the waterfront, overlooking parts of Aarhus harbour, it is also easy to be reminded that this church might have been particularly well situated for merchants, which in turn reminds us that they are likely to have been instrumental in either introducing the cult, sustaining it, or both.