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. 

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 

Secondary medievalism? - the case of Tex, The Demons of the North

 

so now the frickin' Mounties are involved 

- Dr. Bob Kelso, Scrubs S05E23

To study history requires the study of how history is being used in our own time. The basic principles of either the use of history or its reception - two similar yet distinct concepts - are largely the same independent of the period that is being used or received. However, distinct periods - as defined by later generations of scholars - require distinct parameters for researching and understanding how a given period has been represented, misrepresented, used, abused, received, or been conceptualised in later eras. For me, as a medievalist, I am naturally most interested in the reception of the Middle Ages, namely in medievalism. Within medieval studies, medievalism has emerged as a broad and rich subfield, and the last ten years have especially produced a number of important and interesting studies. 

As with all scholarly terms, its definitions are constantly under calibration, and it is necessary that we continue to discuss how to define or delinate the terms we use. The term 'medievalism' itself has been interpreted in different ways, and various sub-subfields have emerged along types of sources, along different postmedieval periods, and different applications. Some particularly valuable resources are the essay collections Medievalisms in a postcolonial world, edited by Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul (2010), and  Medievalism: Key Critical terms, edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz (2014), and the series 'Studies in Medievalism', currently in its 34th issue. 

My first published foray into medievalism was an article on the concept of 'urban medievalism'. Part of my argument is that we can talk about primary and secondary forms of medievalism, and perhaps also tertiary forms and so on. The difference is that primary medievalism is intentional, and those who use the past are aware that they use a medieval past instead of confusing it with, say, the seventeenth century. Secondary medievalism is incidental and unintentional. It is still the medieval past that is being used or received, but those who do so might not be aware of it. In these cases, the link to the medieval past usually comes through the use of the primary medievalism rather than the Middle Ages. Defining the border between primary and secondary medievalism might not always be straightforward, and discussions might have to be done on a case-by-case basis. In the present blogpost, I want to highlight how tricky it can be to spot secondary medievalisms because sometimes there is nothing medieval about it. 

Tex, Demonene fra nord, Norwegian Tex Willer vol. 548 (April 2011)

Text: Mauro Boselli; art: Giovanni Ticci; translation: Tone Dannevig

My case study is the 600th issue of the Italian Western comic Tex, which was published in October 2010. Tex was created by Gianluigi Bonelli and Aurelio Galeppini in 1948, and is currently one of Italy's most popular comics, or 'fumetti', with one monthly issue and various specials and spin-offs. The series features the eponymous Tex Willer, a Texas ranger and a Navaho chieftain, his son Kit, the ranger Kit Carson (inspired by but not identical with the historical figure), and Tiger Jack, a Navaho. Most of the stories run across two issues, and they are written in different genres, ranging from classic Westerns to the odd science fiction story. The comic is also big in Norway, and I have been collecting the monthly issues since 1998. The Norwegian publication schedule is a bit behind the Italian one, meaning that what was meant to be a special story marking the important milestone of 600 issues, was published as issue 548 in my home country. 

From here on, there will be spoilers. 

The story, 'I demoni del Nord', The Demons from the North, is written by Mauro Boselli and veteran artist Giovanni Ticci. The plot concerns a mysterious cannibalistic attack on a fort in the Northwest Territories in Canada, which turns out to be part of a series of raids targeting various First Nation villages. The perpetrators are the so-called demons of the mist, a tribe described as having retained cannibalistic practices from the Siberian tundra, who dwell in mist-covered mountains and have cannibalistic rites in a cave in a dormant volcano. Since it is a single-issue story, the plot is fast-paced and little time is spent on describing the tribe itself, but some attention has been made to mark the distinction between some of the First Nations that appear in the story, especially the Cree and the Dogrib peoples.  

What, then, does this have to do with the Middle Ages and its reception? The story operates outside the medieval timeframe, and arguably outside of the medieval geographical remit. It is an action story featuring rifles, dynamite, Mounties, and Canadian First Nations, and the desperate defence scenes are more reminiscent of Western films such as The Magnificent Seven. There is nothing medieval to be found. 

Except that the story is an adaptation of The Eaters of the Dead, the 1976 novel by Michael Crichton, which was adapted into the film The Thirteenth Warrior in 1999. Crichton's novel draws on both Ibn Fadlan's travelogue from his mission to the Volga Bulgars in 921, and on the poem Beowulf. The plot concerns thirteen warriors who fight to protect a Norwegian village against attackers that turn out to be relics Neanderthals living in caves in the mountains. The novel is a clear-cut case of medievalism, seeing as it uses several elements from the Middle Ages - a tenth-century Arabic travelogue and a poem  in Old English at least two centuries older - but also incorporating distinctly modern elements such as the idea of relict Neanderthals that reveal that this is medievalism and not medieval cultural product.  

I demoni del Nord is an adaptation of Crichton's novel, and although it is evident that the novel is set in a twentieth-century idea of the Middle Ages, the comic book writer, Mauro Boselli, has sought to adapt it to a Western setting in which the basic plot points are embedded within a different narrative universe. Such adaptations are common in both literature and cinema, and they showcase why genres are defined not just by periods or countries but by narratological features. I demoni del Nord is a Western based on a suspense story set in the Middle Ages, but a story that might also be said to contain features from twentieth-century cinema, where the Western has been one of the defining genres. Mauro Boselli's adaptation of the novel makes the comic book story into a case of secondary medievalism because it is incidental. The medieval setting of The Eaters of the Dead is of no consequence for the comic book, because the story could have been adapted in the same way had the novel been set on Mars or sometime in the deep future. And even though the medieval features of the original novel are completely removed, the story itself is recognisable, and it is possible to see that we are dealing with a work of art set in nineteenth-century Canada based on a work of art set in tenth-century Norway. Consequently, in order to use Crichton's novel to understand how the Middle Ages have been used and received in our own times, we also need to follow the trace onwards to both the film adaptation from 1999 and the comic book adaptation from 2010. Researching history means to understand how historical periods have been used and received in later centuries, and to fully understand this use and this reception, we also need to follow whatever echoes and reverberations that the primary medievalism creates further down the line. 

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

 

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

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

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

Scholastique Mukasonga, Den barbeinte kvinnen

Synchronicity in Madrid - encountering Equatorial Guinea

As all human beings, I experience coincidences that might loosely fit under the term 'synchronicity', that elements that are thematically connected, or resemble each other, happen at the same time or to the same person without there being any causal connection between them. Mostly when this happens, I relish the coincidence and I find it very pleasing, and one such pleasing case came about during my current sojourn in Madrid.  

By the time I am writing this, I am sitting in a small room in an apartment in Madrid, preparing for the next step of my journey and reflecting on the various experiences I have had in the past few days. In preparation for my holiday, I decided to bring something to read on the road, as it were, even though I already have ended up expanding my personal library with a few items - to say nothing of those that are likely to be added in the days ahead. The novel is the gut-wrenchingly beautiful By night the mountain burns by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, a writer from Equatorial Guinea, translated into English from Spanish by Jethro Soutar. The book is a novelised rendition of Ávila Laurel's experiences on the island of Annobón some distance from the Atlantic coast of Africa, and now belonging to Equatorial Guinea, which was a Spanish colony until 1963.  

I brought this novel with me for the simple reason that by the time of departure, I had not yet finished it, and I was stuck in a part of the novel that is particularly difficult to get through. However, I also thought that it was fitting to be reading a text written in Spanish, albeit in an English translation, when going to Spain. As it turned out, I would encounter several other aspects of life in Equatorial Guinea - albeit mainland Equatorial Guinea - and I did so when visiting the National Museum of Anthropology. This visit was not planned, because this museum is not widely known by tourists, and it was almost empty while I was there. It is a small museum, but full of very interesting materials collected from various parts of the world, including Equatorial Guinea. To me, it was particularly exciting, as well as quite touching, to be able to see something from the country of the book I was reading - even though I was also quite aware that the items in the museum are largely from the nineteenth century rather than the mid-twentieth century described by Ávila Laurel, and even though I was aware that the Fang culture of mainland Equatorial Guinea is very different from the culture of Annobón. The connection was nonetheless striking, and did help bring several aspects of Ávila Laurel's novel - above all the hardship and the various cultural codes that dictated parts of communal conduct - more vividly to life. 

Bikuele, a form of currency in the Fang culture of Equatorial Guinea

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid 

Two types of bikuele, and a wooden seat

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid

Fang headdress, collected in 1890-91

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid

Bottle from the Fang culture, first half of the twentieth century

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid

Wooden mortar, from the Fang culture

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Madrid

Utopia, technology, and the nebulous borderlands of truth

 

In the past few months, I have tried to keep up with the ongoing discourse concerning the phenomenon inaccurately labelled ‘Artificial Intelligence’, and its potential for warping our sense of reality and further obscuring the already-nebulous boundaries between reality and fantasy. Whenever I have come across an article or news report related to this issue, I have bookmarked it in a folder in my browser, hoping against historically attested practice that I will some day return to these texts and have some intelligent thoughts about them. The folder in which I put these bookmarks is labelled ‘Utopia’, and the folder was created as a way to collect materials related to my current teaching. I thought it fitting at the time, but did not take the time to articulate why I thought so, and so I continued to use this folder while the justification for using this particular folder continued to grow in the back of my mind. In this blogpost, I will try to formulate some of the ideas that have crystallized in the course of this week.            

The connection between Artificial Intelligence and utopian thinking seemed at first intuitive, obvious, and so I did not bother to formulate it properly. However, as I am now reading David Fausett’s 1993 monograph on utopian literature in the seventeenth century – Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages and Utopians of the Great Southern Land – a few aspects have become much clearer to me. Fausett makes a compelling point about how utopian literature of the 1600s came to employ textual elements belonging to news reports, pamphlets and broadsides, causing readers to often confuse texts of prose fiction with texts claiming to present factual content. Naturally, the motif of authenticating elements has a long history in fiction, perhaps best illustrated by the topos of the found manuscript (as in Don Quijote), or the now-lost written report translated from another language (as in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain). What was new about this obfuscation of the boundaries between true reports and novels in the seventeenth century, was the changing media landscape. As knowledge of the wider world expanded through journeys of exploration and the growing networks of trade that brought European powers into contact with cultures across the globe, increased literacy and a broadening market for literature gave rise to a greater circulation of information about the distant regions of the world. Since there was an expectation of new encounters and new discoveries, audiences were better disposed to accept fantastical tales as either true or at least based on true events. The knowledge that there was new information to be had, conditioned readers and listeners to blunt their scepticism and become more receptive to the claims of authenticity utilized by authors of utopian fiction.  

 

The confusion about truth and fiction in seventeenth-century Europe is not unique to that time or that place, and it is not an indication of people being stupid or less critical in their thinking. The more I research historical matters, the more convinced I am that humanity has neither become more intelligent nor more stupid as time as passed, only that intelligence and stupidity have played out in different ways and through different means. What is crucial about the confusion described by David Fausett is that the confusion came about through developments in mass media. The confusion, I believe, was a consequence of rapid technological development that did not fit with the slow maturation and the incremental adaptation to novelty that humanity as a species requires in order to understand things. It is this contrast between humanity’s need for slowness and the rapidity of technological innovation that highlights the utopian aspect of the contemporary discourse on Artificial Intelligence.  

 

Those who champion the virtues of Artificial Intelligence and the use of AI in writing, journalism, research and so on, are themselves proponents of a utopian vision, one in which humanity has released themselves of the drudgery of knowing and thinking to the machines. Not all these champions view the future in this framework, but even the more restrained and reasonable among the AI enthusiasts still tend to demonstrate attitudes towards art, critical thinking and factual knowledge that lean very strongly in this direction.  This utopian attitude towards technology is nothing new. One of the hallmarks of utopian thinking is exactly the high levels of technology that are available in utopian societies. Perhaps the most famous example of this idea is Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1626), which lists a long range of technological advances, including artificial meat and laboratories for all kinds of different research. The motif goes further back in the history of utopian thinking, however. In the Middle Ages – a period not widely accepted as one of utopian thinking, yet nonetheless rife with examples of it – the idea of technologically advanced societies in faraway places appear in several texts. In the Letter of Prester John, a hoax from the 1160s that purported to describe the realms of a Christian ruler in distant India, the technological marvels of this imaginary kingdom are expounded in great detail. Similarly, the Alexander tradition – a collection of texts claiming to narrate the life and deeds of Alexander the Great – contains several descriptions of technological marvels, such as Alexander’s submersible for exploring the depths of the ocean. Other medieval texts that were less fantastical and which had a stronger claim to truth, similarly spent much detail in recording the technological marvels of distant, exotic places. Liutprand of Cremona (d.972), in his chronicle Antapodosis, describes a mechanical throne in the court of the Byzantine emperor. William of Rubruck, who travelled to the court of the Mongol khan in Karakorum in the 1250s and wrote an account of his experiences, tells about a fountain of marvellous ingenuity, built by a French smith who had lived among the Mongols for some time. Similarly, Marco Polo’s famous account of Kubilai Khan’s empire contains a number of examples of advanced technology. There is, in other words, a long-standing expectation that utopian societies – whether they are ideal or just simply better than the point of comparison – are technologically advanced. The presumption is perhaps strengthened by changes in the media landscape, and the idea that technological improvement is the same as social improvement is easily accepted when one is condition to connect technology and utopian thinking, and also when one is living through a changing media landscape that one does not have the time to properly adjust to.    

 

That technological change requires adjustment on the part of the humans affected by that change is perhaps a fairly straightforward claim. Often, this adjustment has been a core aspect of the enthusiasm and the justification surrounding technological change. There is talk about transhumanism, of technology allowing humans to transcend their humanity, of technology ushering in a new era in the evolution of the human species. Technology is often seen as the key to unlock Utopia, and in our contemporary discourse that technology is Artificial Intelligence. Yet the utopian aspect of technological change is two-sided. On the one hand, it is absolutely indisputable that technological change has allowed a vast number of people opportunities for a better life than they would otherwise have. The best argument for our current level of technology is that it allows those who are handicapped in one way or the other to reduce that handicap, to open up new opportunities for living that would have been impossible without the technology in question. On the other hand, technology can be used to either oppress or numb the critical faculties of people, and when that technology is controlled by someone with authoritarian tendencies, the technology in question can easily be used to obscure the distinction between reality and fantasy, between truth and fiction, between veracity and lies. The potential for abusing technology is strengthened when technology means changing how we receive information. Changes in the media landscape means that we, humans, need to reflect on how we can use our faculties to convert the information given to us through this changing landscape into knowledge. We need to learn how to distinguish between claims and facts, between lies and truth. If we do not reflect on this challenge, if we forfeit this process of critical reflection, or if we outsource it to those who control the changing technology, we become less able to understand the basis of truth and the signs of duplicity.            

 

With the current proliferation of AI programmes that can create images and texts by stealing from existing works of art and existing texts, we are becoming less well-equipped to ascertain what is true and what is false. This blurring and warping of the already nebulous borderlands between truth and falsehood can be, and is already, weaponized by various individuals and groups with authoritarian motives. The utopian scenarios presented by these would-be dictators and hobby-authoritarians might seem appealing, but we do well to remember that several works of utopian fiction have already highlighted the inherent risk of abuse in utopian societies. One example is Gabriel de Foigny’s La Terre Austral Connue (The Southern Land, Known, translated by David Fausett), where the novel’s narrator lives thirty-five years among the Australians, a people of highly advanced technology. However, these technologically advanced people, who consider themselves and their society perfect, tolerate no other form of human life than that of their own. Since Foigny’s Australians are giant hermaphrodites, this intolerance means that they commit genocide on their non-giant, non-hermaphrodite neighbours, and use their advanced technology to obliterate the very ground on which their neighbours sought to establish a living. In the novel, the Australians have also employed their combination of technology and force in numbers to establish an ecosystem that is devoid of insects. Such a manoeuvre stems from an idea of gardens as locus of perfection, where insects are seen as noisy intruders, and fits perfectly well within a branch of utopian thinking that equates perfection with homogeneity. While the realistic consequences of this insect-less world are not touched upon by Foigny, our twenty-first century perspective – an era of mass-disappearance of bees and other insects, and where the consequences of extensive and often unbridled use of pesticide have made themselves clear – notifies us of the impending ramifications of technologically crafted homogeneity in Foigny’s Australia.  

 

Utopian thinking and utopian literature often rely on a blurring of the border between truth and fiction, between the possible and the impossible, in order to make rhetorical points, or in order to push an agenda or proffer suggestions for how to improve society. On other occasions, utopian thinking and utopian literature showcase how illusory the perfection of utopian society actually is. Thomas More’s Utopia is a slave society, relying on prisoners of war to do the most basic tasks of a functioning commonwealth. Tommaso Campanella’s city of the sun in distant Taprobane is a eugenicist society where the individuals are governed to such an extreme degree that the leaders decide which individuals should have children together. And Foigny’s narrator, the hermaphrodite Sadeur, returns from Australia completely disillusioned with a society that believes itself to be perfect, and allows that perfection to justify horrible acts.         

 

In our contemporary discourse, the utopian implications of Artificial Intelligence tends to dominate. Yet utopian societies can often be illusory, and more often than not they are deeply authoritarian. One way of perpetuating authoritarian government is to confuse people’s perception of reality, whether it is through mass delusion or through a blurring of fact and fiction. Nowadays, the media landscape is changing too rapidly for us to easily adjust to the new ways of ascertaining truth and discovering lies. In such a confusion, utopian solutions might appear more realistic than they actually are. Indeed, these utopian solutions are based on the perpetuation of a tool – Artificial Intelligence – that is programmed to create an alternate reality from stolen fragments from the real world. The question we need to ask at every juncture when AI is lauded as the key to the future is as follows: Whose utopia is being heralded by AI’s warping of reality? The answer is most likely going to be very unpleasant.