I'm
a medievalist, and I'm often reminded of why the
study of history is important. To me it's about challenging grand
narratives and comprehending human diversity, to unlock the vast
complexity of human experience and to remind both myself and those
around me that the past is not easily grasped and that we see history
through a glass darkly. Historians are not here to bring comfort to
those content with a simplistic view of times past and the historical
progress. Historians are not here to sustain grand narratives, but to
challenge them, to complicate them and, to the needful extent, to
falsify them. That this is important is to me quite evident and I
don't question this importance - nor do I need to, because I'm very
often reminded why such constant revisionism is necessary.
To
illustrate this necessity of historical studies in the manner of
medieval didacticism, I want to present a very recent exemplum of
historical misunderstanding. This took place on a Facebook page
dedicated to my home place, a small village in the Western Norwegian
fjords. There was an on-going discussion about the history of one of
the place names, and during this discussion some very strange remarks
about Norwegian history came to light, uttered by one of my fellow
townspeople (henceforth called Mister G). His comprehension of the
Middle Ages in Norway was wildly erroneous, and serves as a good
example of the kind of historical misunderstanding that one can find
when history is marked by a certain grand narrative.
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Olav Haraldsson's death at Stiklestad by Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831-92)
This is one of the most important events in the old Norwegian grand narrative
From Wikimedia
The
purpose of this blogpost is to present the way in which Mister G
misunderstood Norwegian history, and to illustrate how much it is
possible to be wrong about a historical period. In order to do so, I
will first give a brief overview of twelfth-century Norway with a
focus on the key points of the discussion I had with Mister G. Then I
will present his version of Norway in the Middle Ages. The discussion
took place on a Norwegian public forum, but I don't wish to mention
names or to quote at great length, especially because the man in
question will probably not be aware of this blogpost and can
therefore not answer. The few quotes I translate, will only serve to
emphasise a point of importance.
Olav Tryggvasson is made king of Norway by Peter Nicolai Arbo
Olav Tryggvasson is another iconic figure in the old Norwegian grand narrative
From Wikimedia
Overview
of twelfth-century Norway
By
the beginning of the twelfth century, Norway was a unified kingdom
under its own kings. Ecclesiastically it was a part of the
archbishopric of Lund together with Sweden and Denmark, which had
been fairly recently separated from the archbishopric of
Hamburg-Bremen. This was the case until 1152/53 when the the churches
of Norway and Sweden were loosened from the archbishopric of Lund and
organised under their own archbishops, respectively situated in
Nidaros (modern-day Trondheim) and Uppsala.
Up until this
time we know very little of the literary production in Norway. Sagas
of Norwegian kings were being written in Iceland, although these are
now lost to us. These works were written in Old Norse, then commonly
referred to as the Danish tongue, with the Latin alphabet brought to
Scandinavia by missionaries at some uncertain time. Runes were also
used for shorter messages, and these were common all over the Norse
world, including parts of England where Norse influence was strong.
The
first Norwegian literature has been conjecturally dated to the early
1150s, and the first work is believed to be a Latin hagiographical
account of Olaf Haraldsson, the saint-king who died at Stiklestad and
who was the patron saint of Norway. Shortly after, probably in the
1160s, the first Norwegian Latin chronicle was written, Historia
Norwegie,
and towards the end of the century we also find books in Old Norse
written in Norway. One of these is a history of Norwegian kings
called Ágrip
or Extracts
by modern scholars, which is likely composed c.1190. Another one -
often referred to as our oldest book - is the Old Norwegian Homily
Book, written c.1200, containing a number of homilies, most of which
appear to be translations of Latin texts. Although these texts were
written in the vernacular, there were only small differences -
so-called Norwegianisms - that made them distinguishable from texts
produced in Iceland or Denmark, for instance.
Much of Norway's
history in the twelfth century was marked by civil strife as various
pretenders to the royal throne fought each other. Towards the end of
the century, Sverre Sigurdsson reigned the kingdom after the defeat
of King Magnus Erlingsson in Nidaros. King Magnus had been supported
by Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson (governed from 1161 to 1188), and
because of this there were periods of conflicts between Sverre and
the ecclesiastical powers. This resulted in Eystein's exile in
England (1180-83) and the exile of his successor Eirik in Lund
(1190-1202). For this policy, Sverre was excommunicated by the pope.
This
very brief survey covers the main points about which Mister G
harboured a severe misunderstanding. His own version of events
follows suit.
King Sverre crossing the Voss mountains
Peter Nicolai Arbo
From Wikimedia
Norwegian
history as it never happened
The
underlying concern that sustained Mister G's version of Norwegian
medieval history, was Norway's exceptional place in the history of
Scandinavia. His first historical claim in the debate was that Norway
had its own written language around 1120, "200 years before
Sweden and Denmark". He went on to say that all people of
knowledge - presumably about the written word - and all the writings
disappeared during the Black Death.
This is, as we can see
from the survey above, spectacularly wrong, and I challenged him on
these points, pointing out that Norway shared a written language with
the rest of Scandinavia, and that we had a Latin literature. I did
not, however, press him on the particularism evident in his remark
that Norway was two centuries ahead of our neighbouring countries.
His reply to my comment on the written language, was a slight
but very minute modification of his claim. He said that "it was
beyond doubt" that Norway had its own written language c.1150,
and he added that this "was many years before Sweden and
Denmark". The support for this claim was that under the reign of
Sverre Norway parted ways with the Catholic church and its Latin
mass. Instead, we "went over to" the English church which
unlike the Catholic one held mass in the vernacular. He went on to
say that this was a process that had been going on since 1066 when
King Olav Kyrre made an agreement with William the Conqueror not to
attack England. The impossibility of this agreement can be seen in
the fact that Olav Kyrre became king in 1069. However, this
impossible agreement resulted over hundred years later - if I
understand his timeline correctly - that Norway joined the English
church. He furthermore said that this was something Sweden and
Denmark did not like to hear about after having ruled over Norway in
various periods, and the underlying claim seems to be that Sweden and
Denmark are envious of Norway's ecclesiastical liberation from Rome
at a time when they themselves were still Catholic.
So, in
short: In the 1100s, Norway got its own written language, and this
took place two hundred years before Sweden and Denmark. By the end of
the century, Norway split with the Catholic church and went to the
English instead, as a result of a process that had been going on
since 1066, following an agreement between William the Conqueror and
a king who would not be king for three years. This particular
position was something of which both Sweden and Denmark are very
envious.
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The Battle of Stamford Bridge by Peter Nicolai Arbo
Three years before Olav Kyrre became king of Norway
From Wikimedia
There
is very much at play here. The most glaring issue is perhaps the
repeated insistence on Norwegian particularism, that our history is
so widely different - and even centuries ahead - to the histories of
Denmark and Sweden. This is an idea that burgeons from a deep-rooted
current of historical interpretation in Norway, and it comes from the
fact that for centuries - ever since 1397 - Norway has been ruled by
kings from Sweden or Denmark. This lack of historical independence
put its mark on Norwegian historiography in the 19th century. This
was a century during most of which we were governed by the Swedish
king after having been handed over from Denmark in 1814 following the
outcome of the Napoleonic wars. Norway's secondary role in the
politics of the kingdom led some historians to seek comfort in the
past, and the perhaps most spectacular result of this was the claim
by Ernst Sars that Sweden and Denmark had been populated from Norway
in prehistoric times. Mister G draws from this ideological current in
his insistence on Norway's exceptional role in the twelfth century,
and although the political milieu that gave force to this current in
the 1800s now is gone, Mister G is swayed by the very same
little-brother-complex that haunted some of Norway's historians in
the 19th century.
There is also another current feeding the
ideas of Mister G, namely the Protestant distaste of anything that
smacks of Papism. After Norway's reformation in 1536/37, Norwegian
Lutherans eventually adopted the historical interpretation moulded
and sustained by Protestant anti-papist propaganda. This
interpretation of history was very strong and ubiquitous in
Protestant countries, and perhaps most accessibly found in the great
English epics of Edmund Spenser and John Milton. This current
remained strong through centuries, and in the first draft of the
Norwegian constitution in 1814, Jesuits were, along with the Jews,
denied access to the kingdom. These restrictions were revoked later,
and from the 1860s and onwards Catholic missionary work no longer
needed to be clandestine, resulting in the first modern Catholic
churches to be built at the turn of the 19th century. Nonetheless,
despite the gradual acceptance of Catholics, the historical
understanding on which Mister G relies has marked Catholicism as
something negative. This is why Mister G is so adamant in his
insistence on Norway not being Catholic after the twelfth century,
and which is why he claims Sweden and Denmark appears to be ashamed
of their prolonged Catholic past.
Håkon the Good and the farmers at the yuletide offerings at Mære
Peter Nicolai Arbo
From Wikimedia
The
Cost of Historical Blindness
In
the grand scheme of things, Mister G's excessively erroneous
interpretation of Norwegian history is fairly innocuous. His belief
in Norwegian particularism is unlikely to cause harm to anyone, and
it has not found a violent incarnation in him. However, the belief
itself is thoroughly disturbing and potentially damaging if it is
adopted by younger people, or people who exert some kind of influence
in political or social matters. I don't for a second believe that it
will have nationwide ramifications on a grand scale, the Norwegian
public consciousness is too tolerant for that to happen. But it might
instil in some people a sense of entitlement, a sense of pride that
can lead them on to a path towards increased nationalism and make
them dismiss the needs of those from other countries. In a globalised
world where millions of people are in dire need of help, and where
Western countries have a moral duty to receive refugees, it is
necessary to counter ideas of particularism and to fight chauvinism
that might prevent people from obtaining a life in safety on the
grounds that they don't belong to a country's particular, exceptional
historical journey towards the fulfillment of its destiny. The kind
of historical misunderstanding embraced by Mister G, is the same kind
of historical interpretation that creates a gap between one country
and the rest of the world, and in a time of perverse consumerism and
increased selfishness throughout the west, we can't morally afford
that kind of particularism. No country is alone in the world, and a
historical understanding that leads people to think this is the case,
is a historical understanding that must be challenged, countered and
falsified.
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