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 And as someone who has witnessed a lot of bad, outdated advice – however well-intentioned – doled out to either myself, colleagues or my generation of medievalists, I am painfully aware that such advice can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

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

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. 

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. 

A macabre coincidence - pen trials and the guts of Saint Erasmus

History is full of macabre coincidences, and I encountered one such case over a week ago, as I was doing some research in the special collections at the University of Southern Denmark. I returned to look at a copy of the 1492 edition of the Lübeck Passionael, a collection of texts on the various feasts in the Latin Christian liturgical calendar, which was ultimately modelled on the thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine. This book has been a recurring fascination for me ever since I first set eyes on it nine years ago, and this time I had come to take pictures of those woodcut vignettes that I had not yet photographed. Previously, I have focussed on a particular set of saints, while allowing my curiosity to direct me towards other saints that might be relevant for my research, or which might simply catch my eye. The book in question is comprised of 419 leaves, making 838 pages in total, and several of these pages contain one or more woodcuts. No wonder it has taken me years to photograph them all.

Since I was paying more attention to every woodcut missing from my collection, I suddenly noticed a very curious and macabre coincidence on the page containing the woodcut for Saint Erasmus. According to legend, Erasmus was martyred during the Diocletian persecutions in the early fourth century. Because he was killed by having his guts pulled out by a windlass, he is often depicted with the windlass in his hands, and sometimes with the guts rolled around it. The cutter who prepared the vignettes for the Lübeck Passionael made the most of this arresting and recognisable image, and prepared a woodcut for Saint Erasmus which depicted his passion. This choice is particularly notable because not all of the woodcuts in the 1492 edition are made specifically for the saint in question, and several woodcuts are used for several saints. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.33r

The copy now held in the special collections of the University of Southern Denmark was once in the possession of the library at Herlufsholm School, a boarding school in Næstved on Sjælland for young boys. The copy contains marginalia from several readers interacting with the book, but most often these seem to be products of boredom rather than engagement with the actual content. On this page - folio 33r - the interaction had been of a more practical kind. A young pupil had decided to test his quill to see if it was sufficiently well sharpened. This is a common type of marginalia in premodern books, and they are known as pen trials, probatio pennae. In this case, these trials consisted of s-like figures, a shape probably chosen because it would easily reveal whether the quill would need adjusment. As a consequence, the shapes of the pen trials are very similar to how the guts of Saint Erasmus often appear in late medieval art. Granted, in the book itself, the gut is pulled out in a straight line, so there is no reason to think that the pupil would be aware of this similarity, or that it is a conscious decision. As a consequence, the macabre connection needs a third factor aside from the image and the pen trials, and that factor are the eyes of a viewer sufficiently familiar with the iconography of Saint Erasmus to see the similarity. And in this case, I happened to be such a viewer. 

An annuncation from 1492

Today, March 25, is the feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the Archangel Gabriel's announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would be the mother of God. This is one of the most important feasts of the liturgical year in the Latin Church, and medieval calendars typically mark this date in red ink to demonstrate its high liturgical rank. 

Last week, I was looking through the 1492 edition of Passionael, printed by Steffen Arndes in Lübeck, which is a collection of texts on the various feasts of the Catholic liturgical year. The collection is modelled on the Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine (c.1260), but it is also adapted to the interests of the Lübeck audience. (For instance, a number of Scandinavian saints were added, and these can be read about in this article by Iliana Khandza.) In 1492, Arndes issued an updated second edition of the book - the first edition came in 1488 - which included new chapters and new woodcuts. 

The chapter on the Annuciation runs from folios 384r to 387r and is introduced by a lovely and curious woodcut vignette. The Annunciation is a common theme in medieval art, and in numerous renditions Mary is depicted as reading from a book or performing her devotions. the Archangel Gabriel is usually standing a few feet away, although sometimes touching Mary with its hand. This 1492 rendition, however, is the first instance I have seen of Gabriel touching Mary with a staff, as if to rouse her out of her pious meditations. The woodcut is expertly done and contains a lot of details for such a small space, and it captures Mary's surprise very well.  

I am very fond of these woodcuts, as they represent a form of art that is not often as appreciated as the large wooden panels or frescoes so commonly associated with the fifteenth century, but which captures contemporary iconography in an effective and interesting way. 

Steffen Arndes, Passionael

Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek RARA M 15, f.384r

 

Gateway reading - the case of The Silent Rifleman

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

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

Cover of the 1880 edition of The Silent Rifleman

Courtesy of dimenovels.org

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

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

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

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

The Norwegian edition of Ben il bugiardo

Translated by Nina Svensrud

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

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

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

A year in reading - 2025

2025 began as a limbo. In January I was unemployed and without immediate prospects, but with several obligations to which I had committed myself when I still received a regular salary. As a consequence, although I theoretically should have plenty of time to devote to reading, the many duties that demanded my attention, the many things I had to prepare, and unexpected demands that came along the way, all combined to leave less time for doing the kind of reading I had hoped to do. My pace throughout the year became choppy, and I was unable to follow the parameters that ordinarily guide my literary forays within the calendar year. However, 2025 also afforded me several opportunities for travel, and many of the books I read this year were consumed en route to somewhere.       

Travelling by page   

Every year, I try to explore more of the world through the pages of its myriad literatures. As a bare minimum, I aim to read one book from every country in the world – including Palestine – and I have been chipping away at this goal since I began the project in 2017, inspired by the excellent work of journalist and author Ann Morgan.

In previous years, I have made good use of my access to university libraries and their inter-library loan systems, and although a similar system exists for public libraries in Norway, this year’s limited access to the holdings of universities with departments dedicated to the languages and literatures of other parts of the globe meant that I had to rely on my own reserves. Over the past two decades, I have accumulated a decent personal library with items for future reading, some of which are intended to help in my ongoing quest of travelling by page. However, since I did not know for how long I would remain unemployed, I decided to buy a couple of new books to ensure that I would still be able to keep travelling for a while.

The first book I finished was A girl called Eel by Ali Zamir, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins. This novel is an exploration of society and gender roles in the Comoros, and provided an interesting and heartbreaking window into a country about which I know very little, and whose literature is not extensively available to non-francophone readers.

Ali Zamir, A girl called Eel (translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins)

In a bookshop in Bergen, I encountered a Norwegian translation of Scholastique Mukasonga’s 2008 memoir, La Femme aux pieds nus, translated by Agnete Øye as Den barbeinte kvinnen. I am always happy to see Norwegian translations of non-anglophone literature, and as I have been wanting to read something by Mukasonga for some time, I bought it and read its beautiful and harrowing chapters on and off for the subsequent months. As often is the case when I read books by African writers that describe the practicalities of the agricultural year, I was struck by the recognisable aspects of Mukasonga’s upbringing concerning the various duties pertaining to the keeping of crops and the ever-present concern about whether a harvest will fail or flourish. In other words, the book was yet another reminder that shared experiences connect people the world over, and we remain more similar than different in all our fundamental aspects. 

Scholastique Mukasonga, Den barbeinte kvinnen (translated by Agnete Øye)

New places for reading       

Aside from travelling by page, I also did a lot of physical travel, partly thanks to some plans that had been laid the year before, and partly thanks to a surprise short-term employment that brought me out of my village on several journeys. As a consequence, I was able to find several new places for reading this year, too. For instance, a three-week journey that included Hamburg, Bergen, Oslo, Madrid, and Salamanca in late March and early April meant that I could seek out several places in which to sit down and quietly peruse what I was carrying with me for that specific purpose. In a Latin American restaurant in Hamburg, for instance, I followed C. S. Lewis’ imagined Martian landscape in Out of the Silent Planet, while I was reading up on the cult of saints in medieval Italy and medieval England in the bars of Salamanca and of Madrid respectively. 

C. S. Lewis, Out of the silent planet 

Hamburg

Edward Schoolman, Rediscovering Sainthood in Italy 

Salamanca

Rachel Koopmans, Wonderful to relate 

Madrid 

At home, I also found opportunity to read in new locations. In April, my family and I launched the rowing boat on one of the lakes in my village, as we do each year once the ice has drifted off over the waterfall and returned to liquid again. My first trip of the year led me to one of the promontories where I often go searching for blueberries – or what I have recently learned are technically called bilberries. Since most of my journeys to this promontory involves getting my hands dirty with the fruits of the harvest, I rarely bring any reading material with me, knowing that bilberry stains are hard to remove. This time, however, since it was long before berry-picking season, I brought with me a collection of poems by one of my favourite poets, Raquel Lanseros, and ventured up a brook to a waterfall and found a lovely spot for reading.

Raquel Lanseros, 'Ese lejos tan cerca'

In the summer, I took another boat for a ride, this time on the fjord, and went ashore on a small promontory. This journey was eventful, as I hope to explain in a later blogpost, but for the present purpose the main point is that I also brought with me a book to read. Strictly speaking, the promontory itself was not a new place for reading, as I had been here before, but this time the oppressive sun drove me and my youngest sister’s dog into the refuge of some shady foliage, and after a refreshing swim I lay down to read Old Norse chivalric romances translated into modern Norwegian. 

Birgit Nyborg (ed. and trl.), Tre riddersagaer

Reading by lists       

Each year, I steer my reading in accordance with several lists. Aside from the ongoing attempt to read a book from every country, I also aim to read at least three books in four categories: a) academic books; b) books by Norwegian authors; c) books by Nobel laureates in literature; and d) books from a reading-list I put together during my first year at university.

Due to the pace of this year’s reading – dominated in large part by editorial tasks that tired my brain too much for reading as much as I would have liked – I was unable to complete this particular goal. However, some headway was gained in each of the categories. 

Raquel Lanseros, El sol y las otras estrellas 

Diktet om min Cid (translated by Eva M. Lorenzen)

The year started auspiciously with the completion of the Norwegian translation of Cantar de mio Cid, translated by Eva M. Lorenzen as Diktet om min Cid, which I bought during my BA studies and have been meaning to read for years. This was, however, the only book from my old to-read list which I was able to complete. 

When it came to academic books, I was much more fortunate, and I feel greatly enriched by the various titles I managed to read as I was doing research for various articles and mini-projects. For instance, Niamh Wycherley’s The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland was a particularly interesting foray into a part of medieval Latin Christendom that I keep feeling I should know more about, and this book was a joy to read. I was also happy to finally get an opportunity to read Audun Dybdahl’s monograph on the runic calendars of Norway and Sweden, Primstaven i lys av helgenkulten (runic calendars in light of the cult of saints). I was glad to be able to prioritise this book both because it is an interesting topic on a source type that bridges the medieval storyworld with the early modern one, but also because Dybdahl was one of my lecturers at university. As he passed five years ago, it felt like a fitting if belated tribute to his work. 

Niamh Wycherley, The Cult of Relics in Early Medieval Ireland

Dybdahl’s monograph also ticked the box for a third category, namely books by Norwegian authors. For much of my life, I have prioritised non-Norwegian authors, and as a consequence I feel I do not know the literature of my primary homeland as much as I ought to do. The upside of this neglect is that I now have an excuse to roam widely within the vast flora that is Norwegian literary history. To this category, I also added Olav Bø’s short monograph on Norwegian feast-days, Norske årshøgtider, which examines traditions and superstitions that have survived in some form or other since the Middle Ages. A third example from this category is Johannes Heggland’s Folket i dei kvite båtane (The people in the white boats) from 1962, which is a children’s book set in early Bronze Age Norway, and which aimed to bring a distant part of the Norwegian past to life to young children based on archaeological findings available at the time.

As for Nobel laureates, I only managed to read one this year: Albert Camus’ The Outsider, translated by Joseph Laredo. While a very interesting window into colonial Algeria from the vantage point of the colonising people, and a very easy read, it was also an annoying reminder of prejudices that should be of the past but which are still very much of the present.

Olav Bø, Norske årshøgtider

Johannes Heggland, Folket i dei kvite båtane

Binging sagas

Towards the end of October, I picked up pace in my reading thanks to an earlier discovery that a five-volume set of translations of Icelandic sagas into Norwegian has been made available online. Ordinarily, I do not like reading on a screen – and the fact that I have done so quite often this year is partly why my sense of my own reading is rather muddled. However, at the end of October, this particular medium suited me very well as I was travelling and had not brought enough books sufficiently small to make for suitable travel reading. Additionally, a lot of the sagas are rather short, so at a point when I was feeling hopelessly behind in my annual reading, these tales were perfect for catching up and I devoured fifteen in the course of two months, with a handful others having been finished in the course of spring and summer. This became a veritable binge, both because I read so many of them in such a short time, but also because I eventually could not keep track of all the plots and all the characters once I had finished a given saga, partly because of the speed but also because several of the plots of the sagas share many of the same features, and because there are numerous characters in them. Despite the overindulgence, it was also very satisfying because as a medievalist I have been in arrears with my saga reading for years, and it has been immensely rewarding to finally fill so many of these gaps. 

 

Science and fiction  

Another theme that emerged for this year’s reading was science fiction. This is another genre where I feel I have a lot of catching-up to do, but I have done so rather circuitously. Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C. S. Lewis are unsurprising contributions to this theme, seeing as they are classics, albeit not necessarily widely famous in the current age. A more unconventional choice was the 1945 Norwegian novel Atomene spiller (the atoms are playing) by Hans Christian Sandbeck, which describes the world of the year 2250, and which evolves into a meditation on the perennial nature of human violence. What fascinates me the most about this novel is that it was one of the first books to be published after the liberation of Norway on May 8, in a time of general shortage. Moreover, it provides a reflection on the horrors of nuclear warfare at a remarkably early date, seeing as it was published only a few months after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Hans Christian Sandbeck, Atomene spiller

Most of my reading within the theme of science fiction has taken place within a medievalist framework. I read E. R. Truitt’s excellent monograph Medieval Robots from 2015, which deals with automata in Latin Christian literary culture, and which provides several great examples of how the concept of immaterial objects with an agency seemingly of their own fascinated the imagination of medieval writers and readers. It was thanks to this book that I also picked up the collection of three chivalric sagas translated into modern Norwegian which I had purchased several years ago. I was particularly pleased with delving into these medieval manifestations of science in fiction, since the topic dovetails nicely with utopian thinking, which was one of the main themes of last year’s reading. 

E. R. Truitt, Medieval Robots

Towards the end of the year, I also added two further books to my repository of science fiction. First up was Marie Brennan’s A Natural History of Dragons, which is a wonderful adventure story following a natural historian in a fictional world modelled on Regency and Victorian England. Secondly, I read John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes from 1953, which is both fascinating for keeping its flavour of its age without being dated and also an eerie novel to read in an age of advancing climate change. This novel is also delightful for having one of the most functional married couples of fiction, at least based on my limited experience.

Marie Brennan, A Natural History of Dragons

John Wyndham, The Kraken Wakes

A meeting in Salamanca

In March, I spent a few days in Salamanca for a conference. This is one of my favourite cities, and an important literary location. Aside from being the setting of Lazarillo de Tormes, typically regarded as the first picaresque novel, it is also the workplace of one of my favourite poets, Maribel Andrés Llamero. I have been in touch with Maribel for several years, and this year we were finally able to meet up in person. She kindly signed my copy of her previous poetry collection – Los inútiles (the useless ones) – which had bought the year before in Santiago de Compostela. As an homage to Maribel, I subsequently crossed the river Tormes – which I had never got around to do during my previous trips to Salamanca – and stopped halfway to read some of her poems with the city’s skyline as a backdrop. As Maribel’s poems have enabled me to connect more deeply with my native landscapes for several years, it was a particular joy to also weave my own history of reading more tightly to the city of Salamanca through her work. 

Maribel Andrés Llamero, Los inútiles

The river Tormes

Lazarillo de Tormes and his blind master

Sundry highlights    

Due to my bibliophilia, I encounter book- and reading-related highlights in many forms, and some of these are collected here to give a more expansive overview of this year in reading.

Book-buying in Hamburg, which included this German translation of an Italian Donald Duck parody of Der Nibelungelied. I bought the copy even though I have copies of this story in both Italian and Norwegian already.

 

Visiting the university library of Salamanca during the conference, and being shown a fourteenth-century copy of Legenda Aurea, as well as a fourteenth-century copy of Liber de Sancti Jacobi. 

My haul from three weeks’ travel. 

Discovering Bergen public library’s tribute to the author Tor Åge Bringsværd, who passed away in 2025, and who was one of the most beloved literary voices of the past fifty years.

 

Working on an article draft that allowed me to delve deeper into the cult of Saint James of Compostela.

Myriam Moscona, León de Lidia

Trondheim

Nils Holger Petersen et. al. (eds.), Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints

Odense

Returning to old haunts in Trondheim and Odense. 

Researching a book bound in manuscript fragments at the Odense Cathedral School.

Working on descriptions of manuscript fragments at the University of Southern Denmark, the place where I got my PhD some eight years ago.

Breviarium Othoniense (1482) 

København Kongelige Bibliotek LN 29 4to

Breviarium Othoniense (1497) 

(København Kongelige Bibliotek LN 30

Abbo of Fleury, Passio Sancti Eadmundi

København Kongelige Bibliotek GKS 1588 4to

Researching at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. I was finally able to see the first to editions of the Odense Breviary – from 1482 and 1497 – in the paper, having pored over their pages digitally for years. I also revisited an eleventh-century manuscript containing a copy of Passio Sancti Eadmundi by Abbo of Fleury, as well as the earliest known copy of the liturgical office for the feast of Saint Edmund.

 

Returning to the University Library of Southern Denmark to work on a fifteenth-century collection of saints’ legends.

Mikael Manøe Bjerregaard et.al. (eds.), Royal Blood

Receiving the editor and contributor copy of the volume Royal Blood.

Related blogposts (2025) 

Reading-spots, part 6 

A three-week book haul 

Reading-spots, part 7 

A lesson in similarities 

Reading-spots, part 8 

Reading-spots, part 9 

Synchronicities of reading, part 1