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 And as someone who has witnessed a lot of bad, outdated advice – however well-intentioned – doled out to either myself, colleagues or my generation of medievalists, I am painfully aware that such advice can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. 

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 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. 

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.  

Collegium Medievale, vol. 38.1 (2025)

 

Normally, I only advertise my own publications on this blog, but the present post in an exception to the rule, because the publication in question is of particular importance to me personally. 

Earlier this year, I took over as editor-in-chief of the Norwegian journal Collegium Medievale, an interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles related to medieval studies across all available disciplines in both English and Scandinavian languages. The journal is in open access, and serves as an opportunity to bring together scholarship from both well-established scholars and younger talent. Ordinarily, one issue is published each year, although some years there is an additional special issue with its own guest editors. 

Four days ago, on December 12, the ordinary issue was published, namely Collegium Medievale, vol. 38.1. The issue marks the culmination of a year of editorial duties, and it is a labour for which I am indebted to my co-editors who are all seasoned and experienced members of the journal, and without whose effort I would have been unable to see this issue through the publishing process. 

The present issue, therefore, is a testament to the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, and I am very grateful to be able to present the first issue for which I have been responsible. Even though this is not strictly speaking my publication, I am nonetheless proud of what we editors have managed to put together. 

New publication: Sanctus Suithunus

 

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am currently working as a co-editor for the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, hosted by the University of Bergen. The encyclopedia was first published in 2012, but there are still several articles missing, and as part of my work I have also worked on some contributions of my own. Today, I have published the second of these contributions, namely an article titled 'Sanctus Suithunus', which contains an overview of two liturgical offices in honour of Saint Swithun of Winchester. 

Swithun became the patron saint of Stavanger diocese in the twelfth century, and his cult was important both in that diocese and in other parts of Norway. Relatively few surviving sources provide insight into the history of the cult, but these two liturgical offices are important and useful starting-points for addressing some of the basic questions concerning the standing of Saint Swithun in medieval Norway. 

New publication: Arnfastus Monachus

For the past six months, I have worked as a co-editor of the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, hosted by the University of Bergen. This is an encyclopedia containing articles about authors writing in Latin and anonymous texts in Latin composed before c.1530. It was founded in 2008 and last updated in 2012, and is currently being updated as part of the project CODICUM, a collaboration between several Nordic universities.  

The updating process does not only consist of editing existing articles, but also writing new ones that have so far been missing. I have been working on one of these missing articles over the past few months, and thanks to some archival research earlier today, I have now been able to complete it and have it published on the website. The article in question is on the monk Arnfast - or Arnfastus Monachus - who is only known as the author of a hagiographical poem on the miracles related to Saint Knud Rex, the patron saint of Odense. The article covers a range of details concerning the poem, providing an overview of what little we know, and a discussion of some of the conclusions we might draw from the work itself.    

A list of published articles

Recently, the website academia.edu updated its terms and conditions to include a clause that would allow the website to utilise all uploaded files and images - including profile pictures - to train AI generators and generate content. This is a serious escalation from an earlier update, in which the website used uploaded papers to generate podcasts. While the previous update could be blocked, the new and much more comprehensive update would allow predatory companies unrestrained access to material that has been carefully and painstakingly composed in order to contribute to the open scholarly discussion through which society moves towards a better understanding of itself and its past. It is completely unacceptable to me that scholarship - just like art and entertainment - should be utilised to generate texts and images that are simulacra of reality but that do not serve any purpose beyond the enrichment of a technological elite. Consequently, I have deleted my profile at academia.edu. Although the website has since walked back on its grotesque overreach of power, I do not wish to return to a place that was once useful for an emerging scholar, but has now become unreliable and less trustworthy than ever. 

There might be other alternatives, but in today's Internet there is always a chance that other platforms will morph into something equally predatory. Therefore, I have put together this list of articles that I have written over the years, with links to those that are available online and in open access. Should you be interested in any of the articles that are not online, please contact me and I will happily send a pdf of the text in question. These articles were written to be accessible, to be read, to be used, and to be part of a wider exchange. They were not written to assist the degradation of knowledge that is currently unfolding through the AI boom. 

List of articles

“Typologies of the medieval cultural border”, in Revista Roda da Fortuna – Electronic Journal about Antiquity and the Middle Ages, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017: 25-54. ISSN: 2014-7430  

“The North in the Latin History Writing ofTwelfth-Century Norway”, in Dolly Jørgensen and Virginia Langum (eds.), Visions of North in Premodern Europe, CURSOR 31, Turnhout, Brepols, 2018: 101-21      

“Reformulating the sanctity of Olaf Haraldsson – Archbishop Eystein Erlendson and the ecclesiastical image of Saint Olaf”, in Andreas Bihrer and Fiona Fritz (eds.), Heiligkeiten: Konstruktionen, Funktionen Und Transfer Von Heiligkeitskonzepten Im Europaischen Fruh- Und Hochmittelalter, published in the series Beiträge zur Hagiographie, edited by Dieter R. Bauer, Klaus Herbers, Volker Honemann and Hedwig Röckelein, Steiner Verlag, 2019: 45-71

“Strategies for Constructing an Institutional Identity – Three Case Studies from the Liturgical Office of Saint Edmund Martyr”, in Katharine Handel (ed.), Authors, narratives, and Audiences in Medieval Saints’ Lives, Open Library of the Humanities, Cambridge, 2019: 1-31

“The Odense literature and the liturgy of St Cnut Rex”, in Steffen Hope, Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Anne Hedeager Krag and Mads Runge (eds.), Life and Cult of Cnut the Holy - The first royal saint of Denmark, Odense Bys Museer, published in the series Kulturhistoriske studier i centralitet, vol. 4, 2019: 100-17         

“Spor etter folkeleg kult – aspekt ved helgendyrkinga av Sankt Knud Rex i dansk mellomalder”, in Magne Njåstad and Randi Bjørshol Wærdahl (eds.), Helgener i nord – nye studier i nordisk helgenkult, Novus Forlag, Oslo, 2020: 61-80         

“Thirteenth-century Ivory Crozier from Greenland from the Perspective of Economic History”, in Sullivan, Alice (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages, ARC Humanities Press, 2021

“Byzantine history in the legend of Saint Olaf of Norway”, in Anna Lampadaridi, Vincent Déroche and Christian Høgel (eds.) L’historiecomme elle se présentait dans l’hagiographie, published in the series Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, Uppsala, Uppsala University Press, 2022: 31-59        

“Symbolic crucifixion and royal sainthood – two examples from Benedictine saint-biography, c.987-c.1120”, in Barbara Crostini and Anthony Lappin (eds.), Crucified Saints from Late Antiquity to the Modern Age, published in the series Sanctorum, Scritture, pratiche, immagini, Viella, 2022: 197-22

“Interaksjon med forteljingar som levd religion? – Ei forsøksstudie med utgangspunkt i randmerknader frå Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15”, in Scandia: Tidskrift för historisk forskning, Vol 88, No. 2 (2022): 241-62                  

“Helgenerne i Skive. Deres udvalg i kontekst”, in Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Per Seesko-Tønnesen (eds), Dansk senmiddelalder, reformationstid og renæssance. Spiritualitet, materialitet og mennesker. Et festskrift til Lars Bisgaard, Odense, Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2023: 149-165           

“Urban medievalism in modern-day Odense – thecase of Saint Knud Rex”, in Gustavs Strenga and Cordelia Heß (eds.), Doing memory of medieval saints and heroes in the Baltic Sea Region, De Gruyter, 2024: 113-44            

 

“Saintsand elites on the periphery: an introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 4-42          

 

“Non-native Saints: Introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 51-55

“Native Saints: Introduction”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 211-15          

“The Cult of Saints and the Legitimization of Ecclesiastical and SecularElites on the Periphery: Conclusions”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 439-48

“Legitimizing episcopal power in twelfth-century Denmark through the cult of saints”, in Grzegorz Pac, Steffen Hope and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (eds.), The Cult of Saints and Legitimization of Elite Power in East Central and Northern Europe until 1300, Turnhout, Brepols, 2024: 311-30       

“Holy bishops, papal canonisation and legitimisation of power inthirteenth-century Poland and Norway: the cases of Eystein Erlendsson ofNidaros and Stanislaus of Kraków”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac, in Acta Poloniae Historica, special issue on ‘Languages of Power and Legitimacy on the Periphery: Poland and Norway, 1000-1300’, edited by Grzegorz Pac, Wojtek Jezierski and Hans Jacob Orning (vol. 129), 2024: 143-84 

“The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the MiddleAges and the Early Modern Period”, in Belgrade Philosophical Annual 37.02,2024: 123-38

“Sacral Strongholds in the Twelfth century: Aristocracy, Nunneries, and Parish Churches”, co-authored with Anna Dryblak, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 165-204    

“Patron Saints and the Legitimization of Bishoprics until c.1200”, co-authored with Grzegorz Pac, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 205-49        

“Coinage, the cult of saints, and the legitimization of elites in eleventh- andtwelfth-century Poland and Norway”, co-authored with Mateusz Bogucki and Svein Harald Gullbekk, in Legitimization of Elites in Poland and Norway in the High Middle Ages: Comparative Studies, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Grzegorz Pac and Hans Jacob Orning (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), pp. 289-319                              

“The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose”, in Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, Kingand Martyr, Translation and perspectives, ed. by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Kirstine Haase, and Steffen Hope (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2025), pp. 19-33  

“A comparative overview of Passio II and Gesta Swenomagni” in Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, King and Martyr, Translation and perspectives, ed. by Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard, Kirstine Haase, and Steffen Hope (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2025), pp. 76-94

 

New publications, part 3 - Coinage, the Cult of Saints, and the Legitimization of Elites in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway

 

In the present blogpost, I wish to present the third and final of my three co-authored articles that were published in a recent volume (for the previous two, see here for the first one, and here for the second one). All these articles were written during my previous position, where I was a postdoctoral researacher at a project investigating the legitimisation of elites in medieval Norway and Poland, a collaboration between the University of Oslo and the University of Warsaw. 

This last article is titled "Coinage, the Cult of Saints, and the Legitimization of Elites in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway", co-authored with Mateusz Bogucki and Svein Gullbekk. The article takes as its starting-point the disparity in the use of saints on Norwegian coins compared with Polish coins. From this quandary, we examine how both coinage and the cult of saints could converge in the legitimisation of elites, or - on the contrary - had to be kept separate in order to avoid the legitimisation of the wrong kind of elites.    

Since I am a novice in numismatics, I was greatly aided in this article by my co-authors. The writing process was slow and at times agonising because of the very careful balance needed when trying to say something about general historical tendencies based on little and very uncertain material. But it was also a challenge that greatly expanded my horizon. 

New publications, part 2 - Saints and Legitimization of Bishoprics in Poland and Norway until c. 1200

 

In my previous blogpost, I provided a brief presentation of one of my three co-authored articles published last month. All these articles belong to a volume published as part of a research project hosted by both the University of Warsaw and the University of Oslo, and it was at this project I had my most recent postdoctoral position. 

The second of my contributions is "Saints and Legitimization of Bishoprics in Poland and Norway until c. 1200", co-authored with Grzegorz Pac. This article compares how the cult of saints was used by Polish and Norwegian bishops to solidify their position in society, and how their power and authority were legitimised by the bishop's role as guardian of the cult. The article examines how both bishops and saints' cults related to other social elites throughout the eleventh and twelfth century. One of our main questions - to which I believe we have found a very reasonable answer - is why native cults flourished so strongly at an earlier point in Norway than in Poland. 

The article has been a challenge to write because of the many angles from which we approached our material, but precisely because of the comprehensive examination of Norwegian and Polish medieval society, this article is one of the most rewarding texts I have worked on to this date. 

New publications, part 1 - Sacral Strongholds. Nunneries as Sources of Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway

Last month saw the publication of one of the collections of articles pertaining to the project where I did my previous post-doc. The publication as a whole is in open access, and it is available here. Since I contributed to three of the articles in this volume, I will briefly present each of these here, with a link to the article in question. 

The first of my contributions is "Sacral Strongholds. Nunneries as Sources of Legitimacy in Twelfth-Century Poland and Norway", co-authored with Anna Agnieszka Dryblak. This article compares how nunneries were founded in order to strengthen the legitimisation of both secular and ecclesiastical elites in the two polities. The article contains four case studies, two concerning secular elites and two concerning ecclesiastical elites. It was a challenge to write this article, as I started out with much less expertise on the subject than my co-author, but it was therefore a great opportunity to delve deeper into this particular aspect of Norwegian history, and to consider these institutions both in terms of social networks and topographies. 

New publications, part 2 - The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose

 

As mentioned in my previous blogpost, I am deligted to announce the publication of a volume containing an edition and translation of an anonymous hagiography about Saint Knud Rex of Denmark (d.1086 in Odense), as well as a handful of academic articles. The volume, published by Museum Odense, is in open access and can be downloaded here. I was fortunate enough to be included among the editors of the book, and I am very happy to have worked on a volume that provides a important contributions to scholarship. 

In the previous blogpost, I wrote as a co-editor. In the present blogpost, however, I write as an author of two of the contributions in the volume, especially the article 'The Younger Passio Kanuti – a reassessment of its historical context, its author, and its purpose'. In this article I examine the anonymous hagiography in order to provide a reasonable assessment of its date and the reason why it was composed. The Younger Passio Kanuti is largely a copy of the earlier Gesta Swenomagni by Aelnoth of Canterbury, composed at Saint Knud's cult centre in Odense in the 1110s. The anonymous text nonethless contains original material and, perhaps just as importantly, rearranges the content of Aelnoth's vita in such a way that we cannot dismiss it as a mere copy. In my article, I therefore examine the internal evidence provided by the text to assess the likely chronological frame of the Younger Passio Kanuti, and also to suggest where it was intended to be used.  

The volume also contains a second contribution of mine, which is a comparative overview of the content of both Aelnoth's Gesta Swenomagni and the Younger Passio Kanuti. While containing some analytical commentary, this article is mainly inteded as an aid to understanding the analysis of the anonymous text and to demonstrate how the anonymous author used and engaged with his primary source. 

Both these contributions were gerat fun to write, because they represent the cumination of several years  of research on the cult of Saint Knud Rex, and they also help to provide a starting-point for future scholarship on both this cult in particular and on the cult of saints in medieval Denmark more generally.    

New publications, part 1 - Royal Blood - The Passion of St Cnut, King and Martyr

 

For the past two years, I have been collaborating with some colleagues in Odense, Denmark, on the publication of a new edition and translation of a medieval Danish hagiography. The text in question is an anonymous vita of Saint Knud Rex of Denmark, who was killed in Odense in 1086 following an insurrection. Knud Rex was one of the most important native saints of medieval Denmark, and his cult resulted in a lot of early texts that have been the subject of much scholarship in our own times. However, the anonymous Passio Sancti Kanuti regis et martiris - a title shared by an earlier and much better known vita - has been largely neglected since it was published in Martin Clarentius Gertz' landmark edition on Danish hagiographical material, Vitae Sanctorum Danorum. 

I was invited along on this project by my Danish colleagues, and the work resulted in a volume that contains both a translation and an edition of the text - both executed by Francis Young - and a selection of articles on both the anonymous vita and topics related to the cult of Saint Knud Rex. The volume is now published in open access, and can be downloaded from the website of Museum Odense. I am very thankful to my colleague that I am credited as co-editor, because I should emphasise that my actual contribution to the volume have not been as significant as the bibliographical information of the volume suggests. 

The publication is a valuable contribution to scholarship, both on the cult of Saint Knud Rex and the history of medieval Denmark more broadly, as it has already allowed us to rethink some of the aspects of the cult's history, and also some aspects of Danish medieval ecclesiastical history.  

As I am very proud to see this volume published, I will wrote more about my own contributions to this book in the next blogpost. 

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. 

A new, short chapter

Some chapters are so short that they can hardly be considered chapters, but appear rather as vignettes interspersed in-between chapters as intermezzos in the main narrative, or as a parallel story told in brief episodes. (I am here in particular thinking of the untitled vignettes that separate the individual short stories in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time.) I am currently living through one of those chapters. 

From May 01 until October 31, I am employed at the University of Bergen as a co-editor of the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, which was published in 2008 and last updated in 2012. Thanks to a six-year grant to the project CODICUM, centred in part at the University of Bergen, some resources were allocated to update the encyclopedia in accordance with the advances in research in the past seventeen years. The job has already proved both interesting and intense, as there is much information that has to be sorted and navigated in order to assess what to do, how to do it, and where to begin. In the course of this work, I have been reminded of how much research has been done on various topics within the broader umbrella of medieval Nordic literature in Latin, and also of how much remains to be done in the cases of some of the more neglected or at least more minor texts and sources. 

This employment is short, but a welcome respite from unemployment, and a very fortuitous opportunity to delve into some sources that I have not yet managed to devote as much attention to as they truly deserve.    

 

New publication: The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period

Today, I was notified of the publication of an article that is one of the texts that I have had the most fun writing. The article in question is titled 'The functions of religion and science in utopian thinking in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period', and is published in the journal Belgrade Philosophical Annual vol. 37, issue 2. The text can be accessed and downloaded here and here. The article is based on a talk I gave last February, which can be accessed through this blogpost. There are significant differences between the talk and the published article, however, both because of how my thinking has developed, and because of new things I have read since then. 

The article is quite simple, as the title suggests. I explore how texts that can be understood as utopian, broadly speaking, from both the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period utilised religion and science in fashioning the ideal condition. By spanning the medieval-early modern divide, I also seek to reject this divide and point to continuities in the worldviews within which the various utopists formulated their ideal societies. It was great fun to write, because it allowed me an excuse to delve into material that has hitherto been quite peripheral to my research, yet which has held my interest for the better part of a decade. Moreover, the longue durée perspective has made me even more convinced about the need to rethink the artificial divide between medieval and early modern thinking, and also how we understand utopianism.   

Closing a chapter

 

Last Friday, I closed the most recent chapter in my life, as my postdoctoral contract came to an end. For 40 months, I lived and worked in Oslo, exploring new things, delving into old, familiar things, and learning more about myself and the world in the process. This period can best be summarised by the first of the two pictures below, as I quickly assembled a large collection of books in my office - most of them borrowed from the university library - and kept them as a reference library for both my actual and my intended writings. This was a temporary library, a library of ambitions. Some of these ambitions came to past, but, as is usually the case, the majority fell by the wayside due to time constraints, distractions, and various unforeseen or ad-hoc additional tasks that sucked both time and energy out of less prioritised projects.  

Friday December 14 was an emotional day. It marked the end of a period that entailed a lot of personal highs, but also some very crushing reminders of how academia is not a meritocracy, and that sometimes your efforts will not be rewarded. It was also a period that reminded how much academic work is hindered by admin, by formalities, and by various conventions that can often only be learned the hard way. I write this blogpost in quiet frustration, partly over the stunted personal hopes, but just as much because of the overarching societal trends that currently affect how we approach academic output and the value of universities and general education - trends that only make it more difficult to do the kind of work that helps us understand the nuances of reality somewhat better than what previous generations have been able to do. 

For the time being, I'm left to apply for jobs, and to digest all the lessons of the past 40 months, and to treasure those of my memories that can bring me joy.   

November 13

December 14 

On an as-yet unpublished postscript

 

I do not normally write about political matters on this blog, but every once in a while circumstances compel me. Today, after the disastrous election results in the United States, is such an occasion.  

This blogpost is no analysis or in-depth commentary. There are far better voices and pens than mine for such texts. Rather, what I write here is a touchstone of the times, something that is meant to reflect a particular sentiment at a particular historical juncture.  

Yesterday, I was working on a draft for an article I'm co-authoring. I spent most of the day moving between two cafés on campus, drinking tea and writing by hand, knowing that my self-imposed deadline is too near for comfort. In-between two such writing sessions, I was checking mail and social media, and I happened to catch a clip of the coming US president at a rally in Georgia, where he spoke frankly and as clearly he is capable of doing, that the transition would be "nasty". The quotation was alarmingly unvarnished, uttered in a matter-of-fact way that left no room for doubt about whether he was just giving the audience what they wanted. Rather, the foreshadowed nastiness had hard ring of evil truth to it. 

What I found most arresting about this clip was not so much the words or the matter-of-fact frankness with which they were said. What hit me the hardest was to hear these words at a time when I was writing about violence and utopian thinking. This is a subject I have written about before on this blog, namely in this blogpost, and this. The ubiquity of violence in how people have imagined their ideal societies is something that continues to astound and fascinate me, and I have spent a lot of time these past two years trying to think of the topic in a more coherent way. And, unfortunately, yesterday's comment by the future US president was a reminder of how relevant this kind of research is. Because however abhorrent and evil the plans of US Republicans are, these plans - as exemplified by the roadmap of Project 2025 - do comprise a utopian vision for the future of the United States. Granted, this is a utopia for a select few, but that is precisely one aspect that fits squarely with the tradition of utopian thinking. The selection involves violence, which also fits with this tradition. The promise of violence that has marked the whole Republican campaign points to a period of pain and suffering, because this is how some people imagine their ideal conditions need to be achieved. 

Having heard these horrifying words, having heard them over and over again as I wrote them down for future reference, I sat down and began writing a postscript to the article I am co-authoring, a postscript intended to catch the tenor of the evening before the election, with the promise of violence hanging in the air like smoke after a devastating fire. I do not know whether the postscript will be published. I suppose it will not. But it felt like a necessary thing to write, a kind of memorandum, something to read calmly in a future where things might be better. And, above all, a reminder that for some people, violence is both desired and actively sought out in their quest for what they believe to be a better world, no matter how dark and dreadful that world is. 

A minor academic blast from the past

Every now and again, I am reminded of how small the world of medieval studies actually is. Recently, however, I was reminded of this by an encounter with my past self, a version from the spring of 2019. For the past few weeks, I have been putting together a draft of an article which seeks to put together a lot of sources spanning about seven centuries, as well as looking at the roots of these sources. Consequently, I have probably driven the university librarians slightly insane with my incessant interlibrary loan requests over the summer. Now that I am back in Oslo, I have to reap what I have sowed, and my office contains more books than ever before. One of these books is a collection of articles edited by Kai Brodersen, simply titled Solinus. New Studies, concerning the fourth-century Roman writer Gaius Julius Solinus, whose work known as Collectanea Rerum Mirabilium was one of the most influential sources by which Graeco-Roman ideas entered into the Latin Medieval learned world.    

The collection is one of relatively few such academic books that I have read in their entirety. Most often, I will read one or two articles while trying to build an argument for an article of my own, or assembling the syllabus for a class. However, as I always do prefer to read books in their entirety, I started adding post-it notes to the table of contents, in order to tick off which of the articles I had already read, so that I could make sure that I had finished the entire book. It was this practice that proved to me that not only had I read this book before, I had also read this specific copy of it before, loaned as it was by the University Library of Southern Denmark.  

This encounter with my past self is a good reminder that one's interests and academic pursuits do not follow a straight line. More often than not, we circle back to some previous point of departure, sometimes with renewed interest, sometimes out of curiosity, and sometimes because we forget that we have covered this material already. To my mind, this is a very positive aspect of scholarly pursuits, because it means that we never know what will serve us well at a future junction, so no matter what we read or write in any given year should be considered frivolous or wasted, just because it is not continued for some time, or because it does not appear in its originally intended form. For some people, these reappearances might be frustrating, since they might easily give the impression that one's work is not going anywhere. I for my part, however, think of it as a very good thing, because being able to return to something with knowledge and experience you did not have at the time when you were first dealing with something, can only make your current work on the material better and better founded. 

 

New publication: Holy Bishops, Papal Canonisation and the Legitimisation of Power in Thirteenth-Century Norway and Poland

 
As part of the project where I have been employed for the past three years, I have co-authored an article with my friend and colleague Gregorz Pac, titled 'Holy Bishops, Papal Canonisation and the Legitimisation of Power in Thirteenth-Century Norway and Poland: The Cases of Eystein Erlendsson of Nidaros and Stanislaus of Kraków'. This article explores how Norwegian and Polish ecclesiastics of the 1200s sought to increase the status of their patron saints, and emphasise the legitimacy of their cults, through papal acknowledgement in the form of canonisations. 

The article was published last week in volum 129 of Acta Poloniae Historica, and it can be accessed here, and here.