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 

Saint Edmund in the litany - the 1482 Breviarium Othoniense and the cult of Edmund Martyr in medieval Denmark

Today, November 20, is the feast of Edmund Martyr, who was killed by Danish raiders in 869, and whose cult became one of the most important native cults in medieval England. His cult also spread to the Nordic sphere, most likely as a consequence of both deliberate dissemination and frequent contact between the Nordic polities and medieval England. The history of Edmund's cult in the Nordic world is still incompletely mapped and insufficiently understood in its totality, and there are several tantalising clues to suggest that Edmund was perhaps more important than we have hitherto ascertained. 

In October, I was reminded of one such source when I was doing research in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, and I was leafing through the 1482 Odense breviary, or Breviarium Othoniense. This was the first commissioned printed book in the Nordic world, and the second to have been printed - since a pamphlet was finished before the breviary - and it was later superseded by two new editions in 1497 and 1510. The breviary reflected recent changes in the ecclesiastical scene of Odense, as King Christian I had dissolved the Benedictine abbey of Saint Knud, which had served as the cathedral chapter of the Odense bishop. Since the liturgy was no longer performed by monks, it had to be abbreviated to suit the more restrained length of secular offices (nine lessons versus twelve for the most important feasts). As a consequence, the Breviarium Othoniense is a challenging source to the liturgical history of Odense diocese, since it represents a recent rupture in the historical practice. The evidence provided by the liturgical material in the breviary must therefore be weighed carefully before being used to suggest historical trajectories. 

One of the notable aspects in the 1482 breviary is Edmund's placement in the litany, a list of saints placed according to rank within the diocesan church, to be invoked for their intercession. The litany begins on the previous page and opens with prayers to the Virgin Mary, the angels, the apostles, and then the martyrs. The order of the martyrs is an interesting testament to the popularity of the different saints, and one of the big questions concerning this order is whether it reflects an older ranking or more recent changes. It is, for instance, remarkable that Saint Mauritius comes before Saint Olaf, but that is a different blogpost. 

The page shown below, folio 91v, begins with Saint Alban, who was the patron saint of one of the churches in Odense, and whose cult had been brought to the city in the eleventh century - by Saint Knud Rex himself, if we are to believe the hagiographical tradition. His relatively high position among the martyrs is therefore ot surprising. After him comes Saint Olaf of Norway, one of the most important saints in Denmark, but one whose fame appears to have been less intense in the diocese of Odense than in Lund, Roskilde, Ribe, Aarhus, or Børglum. Then comes Thomas, which is Saint Thomas of Canterbury, whose cult in Odense appears to have developed independently of the diocesese of Lund and Roskilde. Then we come to Edmund Martyr. Interestingly, he is before Oswald of Northumbria, whose relics had been brought to Odense alongside those of Saint Alban, according to the hagiographies of Saint Knud Rex.  

The main clue about Edmund's standing in the diocese of Odense is his placement before Oswald. The veneration of Oswald is, as mentioned, well attested in sources from the late eleventh century onwards, but no such evidence can be found for Edmund. In the breviary, his feast is celebrated with six lessons, making it a feast of medium importance, and in the 1497 edition the feast has been largely overshadowed by the feast of Saint Elizabeth (see this blogpost). That Edmund was placed between Thomas of Canterbury - whose cult spread quickly and whose fame rose to phenomenal heights, also in Denmark - and a saint whose relics were an important part of the local religious history of Odense, suggests that there also was a veneration of Edmund going back to the twelfth century, since this is the period in which his cult is most likely to heave undergone a new vogue in Denmark. No churches dedicated to Edmund are known from medieval Denmark, and I do not know of any relics of Edmund in the Odense diocese. The large trove of relics in Sanderum Church, for instance, which is situated close to Odense, does not include such relics (although some of the labels are illegible).  

The evidence of the litany is not extensive and must be treated with caution. The six-lesson office of Saint Edmund points in the same direction, however, namely that before the overhaul of the cathedral liturgy in the 1470s, the veneration of Edmund in Odense was more significant than other available evidence would suggest. It is perhaps time to envision an even greater impact on religious life in Odense from English ecclesiastics. 

Breviarium Othoniense 1482, f.91v

The Danes are coming - or, Adventures in medievalism, part 7

 

Every now and again I find myself baffled at how the past is used as a vessel to promote something in the present. Even though I have been exposed to some very curious and strange applications and abuses of the past, the wide variety in a given period's reception history never ceases to amaze me. My most recent encounter with baffling use of the past occurred in Odense, Denmark, just as I was making my way from the tram to the main building of the campus of the University of Southern Denmark. The incident concerned a sticker promoting some sport team or other - confusingly, this is not specified on the sticker, so it must be aimed at an audience already familiar with the iconography used on the sticker. As seen below, the sticker does speak for itself in a certain way, but also merits some further unpacking. 

The use of viking iconography - however anachronistic - to imbue a sports team with the aura of plunderers and rapists from the increasingly distant past is a familiar phenomenon. The Norwegian football team Viking and the American football team Minnesota Vikings are only some that join this unspecified Danish team in their employment of modern ideas about the Norse raiders. The purpose is usually the same, namely to make the players appear tough and unconquerable, because that is how modern popular culture has taught us to think of the vikings. The combination of stylised longships, the colours of the Danish flag Dannebrog - first used in the early thirteenth century - and the horned helmets of nineteenth-century artistic imagination telescopes history into a unified whole, which suggests the idea that this sports team stands in a direct genealogical relationship to the violent marauders of the past. 

This iconography plays into familiar references, and the use of these symbols and figures might simply be to bolster the self-image and have a bit of fun with well-known tropes. But self-images tend to reveal deeply held convictions - and also delusions - and such self-representations as seen in this stickers therefore should be taken seriously as a good way of measuring how our contemporaries understand - or rather, misunderstands - the past. Only by understanding this misunderstanding can we also map its effect in our own here-and-now. 

Reading-spots, part 9

 

This month, I have been living in Odense for a work-related assignment, which has given me a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with one of my most beloved city, and to revisit places which were immensely important to me in the course of my five very formative years in Denmark. By my own admission, I am a ridiculously nostalgic individual, and I treasure those things that enable me to relive periods of great joy or comfort. When done right, this kind of nostalgia-seeking enterprise is phenomenally rewarding, and can serve as a balm for the soul. 

One goal for my current quest to reconnect with positive aspects of my Danish past was to visit the bakery where I used to buy my daily bread. When I lived here, this bakery - Folkebo's bageri - was only a couple of hundred meters from my doorstep. This time, however, it was slightly more cumbersome as I live close to the train station and my daily commute goes in a parallel direction, making it difficult to combine duty and pleasure as part of one and the same trip. Luckily, one Sunday morning I decided to have a typical Danish breakfast in my old haunt. 

The bakery was largely the same as when I used to live here, except that they had reduced the number of tables in favour of another glass case for baked goods. Luckily, I found a chair and spent an hour enjoying some of the favourite flavours of my Danish past. As I was sitting here, I was brought back to one particular period that has been seared into my memory like few other bakery-related episodes in my life. It was early in 2019, the beginning of what was to be my last term in Denmark. I was in a rather rough shape, being unemployed and having no immediate prospects. For some reason I no longer recall, I began to wake up unreasonably early in the dark of one January week, and I got into the habit of stopping by the bakery for a cup of tea, something to eat, and a bit of time for reading before cycling on to the university campus, where the kindness of my friends and colleagues allowed me to pass my time as part of my old scholarly community. It was a week of glorious mornings, where the wider troubles of this stage in my life were pushed away, and I found a pocket of calm while reading at a table in the bakery's café as the world was becoming lighter outside. Eventually, I began to wake up later in the day again and the routine stopped, but the memory of that week became a treasured gem.  

My current lot is fortunately happier than it was during this particular episode, and my life has accumulated a lot of different experiences since then. I am in many ways a different man than I was then, but this joyous hour on a Sunday morning in October also served as a reminder that I am not that far removed from the person I once was - at least in some respects.

New publication: Arnfastus Monachus

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

New publication: 'Saints and Urban Medievalism: The Case of Saint Knud Rex in Modern-Day Odense'

 

Earlier this week, I was notified about the publication of the collection of articles Doing Memory: Medieval Saints and Heroes and Their Afterlives in the Baltic Sea Region (19th–20th centuries), edited by Cordelia Heß and Gustavs Strenga. The book is open access, and can be read and downloaded here. I was elated by these news, as the collection also features an article written by me, namely 'Saints and Urban Medievalism: The Case of Saint Knud Rex in Modern-Day Odense'. 

Cover of Doing Memory (ed. Heß and Strenga)

Courtesy of De Gruyter 

The article is an examination of how the figure of Saint Knud Rex - who was king of Denmark from 1080 to his murder in 1086 - has been used in the cityscape of Odense, the city where he was killed and later venerated as a saint. The article puts together a range of materials from artworks, signage and place names in Odense, and examines these sources through the concept of urban medievalism, a term I coined for a conference presentation in 2020. 

I am very proud of this article, because it allowed me to explore a new timeframe and types of historical sources with which I am not accustomed to working, such as temporary art works. It also provided a great opportunity to become more familiar with the concept of medievalism - the reception of the medieval past in a post-medieval era - and to think more carefully about how we, as modern humans, make use of the Middle Ages. 

The article was also a joy to write, in part because the writing and subsequent publication mark the culmination of a process that began in the autumn of 2014, and I can see how ideas and observations from back then have flourished into the text that now has been published. It was in 2014 that I moved to Denmark to begin my PhD, and as I was exploring my new home I was frequently bemused by the numerous details of the cityscape that showed some sort of engagement with the Middle Ages, or with ideas, concepts and aesthetics from the medieval period. For instance, that autumn I wrote a blogpost on artworks depicting dragonslayers in Odense. 

In the course of the five years I lived in Denmark, I accumulated a collection of pictures and notes that I intended to put together into some sort of overview. Eventually, that goal did not come to fruition, at least not as I had intended it to do, but the process of collecting and reflecting on these aspects of the cityscape of Odense did provide me with the groundwork for writing this article. I am very happy that the article has given me an opportunity to engage with these materials that I gathered during my Danish sojourn. Moreover, I am quite proud to note how the article provides glimpses of a process in the history of Odense, as many of the pictures and details used in the article were taken and noted down during the now-completed building of the Odense tramway, as well as apartment complexes. The tramway and the apartments have significantly changed the Odense city centre, and the archaeological excavations and subsequent construction work allowed for an engagement with the city's medieval past - both through the items encountered in the excavations and the artworks that served to beautify the temporary walls around the construction site. During my time in Odense, the city was changing, and I was living through a temporary state that was designed to end in the near future. This feeling of living in a moment with a looming endpoint - a transformation nearing completion, as it were - made me all the more alert to the importance of recording some of these changes. The article has allowed me to share some images of a cityscape that is no longer there, because even though the constituent parts of the city are still in place, new buildings have been erected and the vistas are no longer the same. The article, in short, provides some snapshots of a lost past, recorded in the process of losing that past. 

Saint Edmund in late-medieval Denmark - a hint from the Odense Breviary

 

Today, November 20, is the feast of Saint Edmund Martyr, a ninth-century king of East Anglia who, according to legend, was killed by invading Danes. His death is commonly dated to 869/70, following the so-called Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The cult of Saint Edmund – on which I have written several times before – grew significantly in the eleventh century, in large part due to royal protection and munificence, and also due to the abbacy of Baldwin (r. 1065-97). Most likely, it was also during the eleventh century that the cult was actively exported abroad. Herman the Archdeacon’s collection of miracles pertaining to Edmund, written in the 1090s, records how relics were brought to Lucca by Baldwin himself. It is also possible that the veneration of Edmund at the Abbey of Saint-Denis outside Paris was initiated by Baldwin, although the earliest surviving traces of the cult there seems to be from the twelfth century.       

Edmund was also brought to Scandinavia. As of yet, we do not know when the cult arrived there, and where it arrived first. Perhaps the most likely candidate would be Denmark, seeing that Bury St Edmunds was reformed into a monastic house during the reign of Knud II of Denmark, Norway and England. Such a thought is tantalizing, and Knud’s attention to the cult of Edmund appears to be unquestionable, even if we apply the necessary filter of scepticism when reading Herman the Archdeacon’s account of this relationship between king and abbey. However, while Knud’s respect for English saints is demonstrable, this respect and attention, perhaps even veneration, occurs in the context of a foreign king seeking legitimacy in a new kingdom. Consequently, there is little reason to think that Knud II brought Edmund to Denmark, although we should not omit the possibility that someone – perhaps a cleric at Bury – sought to disseminate the cult overseas as well. The main counterargument to a dissemination that early is that there was little cult material with which to spread the knowledge of Edmund. Knud II’s English reign (1014-35) was the abbey’s infancy, and despite the king’s patronage we do not know of any large-scale text production taking place at Bury, or any other kind of production pertaining to the material dimension of a saint’s cult, until Baldwin’s abbacy.           
 
What we do know, however, is that in the course of the twelfth century, we find several references to the cult of Saint Edmund in Scandinavia. He appears in several calendars, there are two Norwegian churches dedicated to him, and liturgical fragments show that his feast was being celebrated, although it was not universally important in either of the three Scandinavian church provinces. In Denmark the death of Edmund is a historical reference point in the Chronicon Roschildense from c.1138, and in Iceland – to step outside of the strictly Scandinavian remit – the same is the case for Ari Frodi’s Íslendingabók from c.1130. Due to the general loss of sources – both textual and pictorial – from twelfth-century Scandinavia, we will never have a complete picture of the extent of Edmund’s cult there, but the sources that do remain suggest a wide dissemination which entered into Scandinavia at different times and by different routes.

One question, however, is how the cult of Edmund fared after the twelfth century. From 1200 onwards, we have more surviving source material – although only a small percentage of what was produced – but we have few clues as to the development or spread of the cult of Edmund. Yet there is one late clue – from 1497 – which might shed some light on the late medieval fate of Edmund’s cult in Scandinavia.

The clue in question is a rubric on folio 435r from the 1497 edition of the Breviarium Othoniense. This was the second edition of the printed breviary, the first being in 1482 and which I have not yet checked for the issue at hand. The rubric opens the office for the feast of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (d.1231, can. 1235), which is on November 19. In this rubric, it is stated that the Second Vesper of Elizabeth’s feast is not to be celebrated, as this is the feast of Saint Edmund. Instead, psalms are to be sung in Edmund’s honour, although it is worth mentioning that the breviary does not contain any texts for Edmund’s feast. What follows the office for Saint Elizabeth is the feast of the dedication of a church.    

Breviarium Othoniense, 1497, f.435r

The note in the rubric, and the absence of any further indications about Edmund’s feast, suggest that Edmund’s importance in the diocese of Odense had dwindled significantly by the later medieval period, and these two elements also suggest how it happened. Elizabeth of Hungary was one of the most universally famous new saints in from the thirteenth century onwards – universally within Latin Christendom that is. Her widespread popularity was due to three main factors. First of all, her canonized status in a period when the papal church was actively asserting its power through its claim to monopoly over canonization. Secondly, the Franciscan order’s network and influence. Thirdly, her inclusion in Jacobus de Voragine’s collection of saints’ legends, Legenda Aurea. Which factor had the greatest impact in Denmark is difficult to assess, although my preliminary guess would be the Franciscan influence.

Due to Elizabeth’s importance, she appears to have eclipsed that of Edmund. Granted, that the rubric does acknowledge Edmund’s feast suggests that he was not entirely superseded, but that the celebration of his feast is marked as being ferial psalms – i.e., an everyday office rather than an office of a Sunday – points to Edmund being kept more for tradition than devotion.     

We – or at least I – do not know when Saint Elizabeth came to replace Saint Edmund. The difficulty of using the Odense breviary is that the monastic community that comprised the cathedral chapter in Odense from c.1100 onwards was reformed into a secular house in the mid-fifteenth century. Indeed, it was most likely this reform which prompted the printing of the Odense breviary in 1482, since the liturgy needed to be adapted to the secular use. Consequently, we cannot know whether rubrics such as this one was copied from an older, monastic breviary, or whether Saint Elizabeth’s replacement of Edmund was part of the reform. The question is complicated by the Franciscans’ strong position in Odense, which has made it entirely plausible that the feast of Saint Elizabeth might have been introduced as early as the thirteenth century.

Ultimately, we cannot say for certain when this replacement took place, but we do see that it took place, and through the replacement we can see how a Danish bishopric responded to changes in ongoing trends within the cult of saints. From this little rubric, we might, therefore, get a better sense of what happened to Edmund’s cult in Denmark.

Saint Knud Rex and negative cultural memory in twelfth-century Denmark

 
Today, July 10, is the feast of Saint Knud Rex, who was killed in Odense by rebellious Danes in 1086. In 1095, his bones were moved from the floor of the Church of St Alban, where he was buried after his death, to the crypt in the new stone cathedral which was then under construction. A synod of the bishops of Denmark declared him a saint, and the cathedral was dedicated to him. This translation of Knud's relics was the starting point for the official cult of the royal martyr, although I am personally convinced that the clerks at St Alban's in Odense - which was the cathedral church prior to the building of the new cathedral in stone - venerated the murdered king from the day of his killing.  

The early cult of Saint Knud has left a plethora of sources: One commemorative inscription placed in his shrine, one poem, two saint-biographies, and one liturgical office, all composed in the period 1086-c.1120. From the 1130s onwards, the cult's momentum within Denmark was hampered by the outbreak of dynastic strife, which came to dominate the development of Danish history for the subsequent two decades. Since Saint Knud's cult was associated with one part of the struggle, his cult was largely reduced to a local cult centred in Odense, although it was celebrated, and probably with a high liturgical rank, in all Danish dioceses. The details concerning this shift in the cult's importance to the royal family are not needed for this particular blogpost, but some of the articles in this article collection will provide a good sense of the situation.

The main topic of the present blogpost is the matter of Saint Knud Rex's negative cultural memory. While he was venerated in Odense - and accepted as a saint throughout Denmark - there were nonetheless stories about the dead king which cast him in a much more negative light. The oldest surviving witness to this negative memory comes from the Chronicon Roschildense, the Roskilde Chronicle, written by a canon in the diocese of Roskilde around 1140. The chronicle covers the history from the late ninth century until the mid-twelfth century, and the canon's opinion of Saint Knud is quite clear: He had been a strict and miserly king, who burdened his subjects with heavy taxes, and his sanctity was solely due to his repentance in his hour of death. Interestingly, the chronicler refers to Knud's law of taxation as 'nova lege et inaudita', a new and unheard-of law. This expression is also found in Gesta Swenomagni, the second saint-biography about Knud, and one written by Aelnoth of Canterbury in the mid 1110s. In Gesta Swenomagni, however, this term, and the accusation that it contains, is attributed to the rebellious Danes. The Roskilde chronicler has, in other words, probably read this term in a saint-biography but decided to level it against the saint. Importantly, however, the Roskilde chronicler does not deny Knud's status as saint, only the basis for this status.  

That such a negative depiction of a saint is put into writing is interesting, especially because it does not deny the sanctity of the person in question. It is possible that this depiction is based on a tradition that was widespread outside of Odense, at least within the diocese of Roskilde (which covers the island of Sjælland). Considering that the chronicler recorded this opinion close to sixty years after the king's death, at a time when few of those who were adults by the time of Knud's reign can be expected to have still been alive, the negative opinion has been passed down at least one generation. As such, the opinion can be said to have become a cultural memory, kept alive by people who did not themselves experience it, but who learned it from their elders. This negative cultural memory suggests that the cult of Knud Rex began as a top-down enterprise, at least as it was disseminated outside Odense diocese (which covers the island of Fyn and some smaller islands as well). Since the rebellion against Knud spread across all of Denmark, starting in the north of Jutland, we should expect that it was not just in the diocese of Roskilde where this negative cultural memory was vibrant, but also, and perhaps even more strongly, in the Jutland dioceses.    

Saint Knud Rex 
Detail from the wall-painting programme of the Chapel of the Three Holy Kings in Roskilde Cathedral

The Roskilde Chronicle is not the only source to this negative cultural memory concerning Knud. A glimpse of it can be detected in the Historia Compendiosa by Sven Aggesen from around 1180, but the clearest evidence is Saxo Grammaticus' account of Knud Rex in his Gesta Danorum from the turn of the twelfth century. Both Sven and Saxo were patronized by Archbishop Absalon of Lund, who had previously been bishop of Roskilde.

In Gesta Danorum, Saxo lambasts those who still claim that Knud had only merited his sanctity because of his repentance at the hour of dying, and he is making sure that the reader is well acquainted with the holiness of the dead king. We might interpret Saxo's correction of affairs as a way to counteract the historiographical tradition, or it might be seen as a measure aimed at eradicating a more widely held view. To put it differently, we do not know whether Saxo saw this belief as an error still thriving among the laity, or whether he knew of the error from the diocesan church's own historiographical tradition. 

The case of Knud Rex's negative cultural memory provides an interesting counterweight to our understanding of the cult of saints in twelfth-century Denmark. I have argued elsewhere - in a soon-to-be-published article which I will announce on the blog once it comes out - that the cults of Danish saints were strongly local in their reach, and that what we see in official documents such as saint-biographies, liturgical calendars or letters does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the broader width of medieval society.  

With regards to Knud's popularity, however, we are in murky waters. There are sources suggesting he was popular among traders in mid-twelfth-century Denmark, not only from Odense but also elsewhere. There are sources claiming that pilgrims flocked to Odense from all over Denmark. What we do know, however, is that by the end of the fourteenth century, when the Kalmar Union was established under the aegis of Queen Margaret I, Knud gradually came to represent Denmark in the union, and his cult became more widespread throughout Denmark. By that time, the negative cultural memory seems to either have faded or to have been suppressed.