Saint Michael in Tønsberg, part 1 - the dragonslayer in the cathedral

 
Today, September 29, is the feast of Saint Michael and all angels. For this year's feast, I present you with a modern representation from the city of Tønsberg in Eastern Norway. In the nineteenth-century cathedral, we find a series of exquisite stained glass widows created by Per Vigeland in 1939. The windows contain depictions of a number of saints and biblical figures, including Saint Michael and Saint Lawrence, as seen below. The pairing of the two saints is curious, as is the fact that they feature in a Protestant cathedral. The cult of saints was abolished in Norway following the Reformation in 1536/37, but there survived numerous references to saints in folklore, stories, as well as historical narratives. In the first half of the twentieth century, the strongest anti-Catholic currents of the 1800s had receded, and Catholicism was becoming somewhat more accepted, despite several strands and pockets of more Puritan-like versions of Protestantism.  

What has made saints so ambiguous in the religious landscape of modern Norway is not only their place in surviving traditions from the Middle Ages, as in the case of using the feast of Saint Peter's Chair (February 22) as a marker of the shift from Winter to Spring. Part of the ambiguity also comes from the surges of interest for medieval aesthetic, not limited to the convoluted carvings of the Norwegian stave churches - the so-called Urnes style - but also the statues and the symbolism of surviving medieval art. There came, in other words, a greater acknowledgement of the Middle Ages as part of Norwegian heritage. The stained glass figures in Tønsberg cathedral might be understood in light of that acknowledgement. 

There is one further aspect that explains the representations of Michael and Lawrence, namely the historical connections of these cults to the city of Tønsberg. In the Middle Ages, a church dedicated to Saint Michael was located on the top of the crag that rises above the city. Today, only its foundation can be seen, but enough to give a good impression of its original size and its importance as a landmark. Its earliest reference in the surviving sources dates to the 1190s, but it is possible, perhaps even likely, that the church is several decades older than that. Its position on the top of the crag shows that medieval Norwegians were familiar with Michael's association with peaks and summits. 

Similarly, medieval Tønsberg also housed a Church of Saint Lawrence. This church was torn down in the 1800s, and the current cathedral was built in the same area. By pairing together the dedicatees of two of Tønsberg's lost medieval churches, Per Vigeland is invoking the city's past, reminding the congregation about what these figures once meant for Christians in Tønsberg. 

In the case of these stained glass windows, moreover, we are also witnessing a form of medievalism. When it comes to saints, it is always difficult to assess whether a modern expression of veneration of a saint - either a medieval saint or a form of veneration expressed through means available in the medieval period - can be considered medievalism, or whether we should understand this as a form of continuity. For Protestant countries, however, we are on somewhat safer grounds, as we can very rarely talk about continuity in the case of saints - although there are exceptions - and in the case of such an elaborate and finely crafted use of saints, the case seems even more certain. 

Saint Michael and Saint Lawrence by Per Vigeland, 1939

Reading-spots, part 4

 

Whenever I am home in my native village, I make it my quest to find new spots in which to read. This quest also applies outside of my village, but since I have spent most of my life among the mountains of home, finding new locations in which I have not yet read requires a bit more effort than elsewhere. Today I was reminded of one of these new places which I discovered in 2021, a year when I spent eight consecutive months at home, and when I spent many lovely hours canoeing along the shore of the lake just behind the house after my paternal grandparents.  

The place in question is a short stretch of stony beach where the shore is sufficiently even and sufficiently low to allow for disembarkation, and where it is also possible to find a comfortable place to relax with a good book. As can be glimpsed from the pictures below, this particular location also has the added virtue of being difficult to see from a distance, as old hazel trees are bending in arches over the shoreline, effectively hiding it from view, and creating a kind of canopy under which it is possible to seek refuge from light drizzles. I brought with me a volume of poetry by one of my favourite poets, Maribel Andrés Llamero, to whose poems I had only been introduced earlier that year. This book, La lentitud del liberto, is full of beautiful, melancholic meditations, and was an excellent companion under the greenwood trees by the lake. 

A different Oslo, or - Novels as historical remnants

 

For several years, I have appreciated the value of novels as windows into the periods in which they were written. By referencing a world known to their contemporary readers but not their future readers, novels are what we might call historical vestiges or remnants, in that they can be used as reliable historical sources if we seek for the right kind of information. 

One example of this function of novels, which I recently came across, is Michael Grundt Spang's Operasjon V for vanvidd ('vanvidd' meaning madness in Norwegian.) Spang (1931-2003) was a crime journalist and wrote several novels. Operasjon V for vanvidd was published in 1968. Although it was turned into a film in 1970, the novel did not make a long-lasting impact in the Norwegian cultural sphere, and Spang is not considered a canonical crime author. Consequently, I am not entirely sure why the novel's title has stayed in my brain ever since I first became aware of it around twenty years ago. Likewise, I do not quite understand what prompted me to borrow this book, although I guess it might have had something to do with my urge to read more Norwegian books. I had only a vague notion of the plot, so I more or less came blind to the novel. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice. 

As I am currently living in Oslo, I want to read as many Oslo-based novels as I can squeeze in among the numerous other books I aim to read in the course of a given years. Luckily, Operasjon V is set in Oslo, and describes a city very far removed from the one with which I have become increasingly familiar in the past two years. The novel contains several familiar place names, but since I have no long-term memory of the city's past and its changes, a lot of the routes described in the book appeared very odd to me, as these are routes that do not appear very logical for someone recently moved to twenty-first-century Oslo. 

The best example of this time-shock, or whatever to call it, came within the first few pages of the book, when describing a Christmas party in a villa near Maridalsvann. This name refers to a lake to the northeast of Oslo, which is the main source of the city's drinking water, and which lies quite a long way away from the city centre. As the clock is nearing half past 8, the host reflects to himself that in about an hour he will have to call a taxi so that some of his guest will be able to catch a plane at 11 in the evening. My first reaction to this detail was disbelief, as I could not imagine how anyone could get from that part of town to the airport in so little time. I was then reminded that not only was the general traffic and the number of passengers on a considerably lower scale in 1968 than what they are today, but the airport was elsewhere, namely very close to the city centre. Nowadays, the Oslo airport is Gardermoen, located around 45 minutes by train from the city centre, and to get there by car will require more time, especially in winter. In 1968, however, the airport was Fornebu, located by the shore of the Oslo fjord, and not a very long way from the main part of the city. I was, in other words, reminded that despite my two years - and counting - in this city, I have not yet begun to understand it, because I have not lived through its changes. Thanks to novels, however, I am gradually getting a better sense of what is currently my home city.    

New publication: 'Helgenerne i Skive. Deres udvalg i kontekst'

 
The end of August saw the publication of a book to which I have been fortunate enough to contribute, namely Dansk senmiddelalder, reformationstid og renæssance [Danish Late Middle Ages, Reformation era, and Renaissance]. The book, edited by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Per Seesko-Tønnesen, is a festschrift to my primary PhD supervisor, Lars Bisgaard, who is both a lovely man and one of the leading Danish medievalists of our times.

My contribution is a chapter called 'Helgenerne i Skive. Deres udvalg i kontekst [The saints of Skive. Their selection in context']. The article examines the wall-painting cycle of the Old Church in Skive, Northern Jutland, about which I have written several blogposts. The article provides an interpretation of the selection of saints, suggesting how we might understand the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others.  

The most rewarding aspect of this article was to be able to pay a small homage to a supervisor to whom I owe much more than I can ever repay. I was also very happy that the invitation allowed me to write up an article idea that I had had on my mind since the spring of 2019, following a visit to the medieval church of Skive. As such, this publication is yet another reminder of how such ideas that seem too small or too vague at the time of conception can mature into something interesting and worthwhile, given the opportunity.  

The book, most of whose contributions are in Danish, can be purchased here. 

Dansk senmiddelalder, reformationstid og renæssance 

Ed. by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Per Seesko-Tønnesen

(Photo courtesy of Syddansk Universitetsforlag)

The unicorn on the wall - a Bergen mystery

 
On a recent trip to Bergen, I visited Håkonshallen, King Håkon's Hall, which was built on the orders of King Håkon IV of Norway (r.1217-63) following a fire that devastated a large part of Bergen. The hall was finished by 1261, and although it has been heavily restored in the course of the twentieth century, the hall remains one of the greatest examples of secular medieval architecture in Norway. As I was walking by the tall windows and along the many corridors and up and down the many stairs of the hall, I noticed a drawing on one of the walls which immediately caught my attention. The drawing in question clearly shows a unicorn, and it was very pleasing to think that it was a piece of graffiti that had survived the many calamities that have befallen the hall and come down to us through the centuries. However, my critical sense was not lost in tantalizing possibilities of the situation, and I did notice one particular detail that suggests to me that the unicorn is modern rather than medieval. Aside from the lines of the drawing being a bit too white to have survived the disasters of the past, it also looks very similar to one of Bergen's minor yet well known attraction. The attraction in question is a wooden unicorn that hangs on the front of one of the wooden houses at Bryggen, the old quay in Bergen. The figure is iconic, as it is both easy to see as one walks along the quay, and because it has been rendered with great anatomical detail. The two-dimensional unicorn in Håkonshallen, while significantly less well-endowed than its wooden forebear, appears to be a replica of the one in Bryggen, which in turn suggests that the graffiti is of a much more recent date than its placement in the medieval stone building would at first indicate. Despite the disappointment in not finding a medieval unicorn, I am nonetheless quite pleased that the practice of inscribing signs into the stones is a practice that has continued into our own times, a practice that adds additional sediments, however small, to the complex layered history of Håkonshallen.   

The Viking Troll - or, Adventures in medievalism, part 6

 
Being a Norwegian medievalist has made visiting souvenir shops in Norway a very complicated affair. On the one hand, I am always filled with intense embarrassment when I see how my fellow Norwegians market our country to visitors. The mixture of tropes and stock figures for the purpose of earning money and playing on a small register of globally known reference is deeply unpleasant. On the other hand, part of my job is to explore how we in our contemporary world make use of, and think about, the past. Consequently, such souvenir shops are ideal research arenas, because they provide great examples of how we present ourselves to the world, and what ideas about Norway and its past we can expect people from other countries to receive. I therefore do sometimes walk among the grim displays of tat and junk, and I do look closely at the various historical misconceptions brought together in a hodge-podge of confusion and poorly-conceived national pride. Let no-one say I do not suffer for my work. 

Two weeks ago, I was in Bergen and had the opportunity to visit some extraordinary remnants from medieval Norway, things that I hope to blog about later. Several of these remnants served to showcase the complexity and variety of medieval culture, and they also serve to remind the viewer that the Middle Ages cannot be reduced to a handful of stock figures - at least not if the aim is to present a faithful idea of the medieval past. Souvenir shops, and souvenir designers, however, do not use the Middle Ages in ways meant to be accurate, but rather to pander to the preconceptions and expectations of visitors who have been fed a simplistic diet of cultural key words. In order to maximize the effect of these preconceptions - at least so I presume - the various tropes are sometimes blended in ways that have little to with how the ingredients of this blend have had their places and functions in Norwegian cultural history.  

One example of this blend was the Viking troll, which can be seen below. This figure is an incongruous mixture of stereotypical features that are all frequently used in marketing of Norway, its landscapes, and its history. This mixture is also highly anachronistic. We have the troll, which is an old legendary being in Norwegian folklore, but whose depiction here has more to do with nineteenth- and twentieth-century re-imaginings of the troll rather than the more fearsome and downright dangerous visions of earlier generations. There is the Norwegian flag, which was adopted through parliamentary vote in 1821. Then there is the Viking helmet, internationally recognized as such, even though it is fashioned according to the fantasies of nineteenth-century scholars rather than historical reality. In other words, the horns have nothing to do with historical Norse people, but they have everything to do with how we imagine Vikings in our modern times. The helmet also carries the word 'fjord' on it, the quintessential Norwegian word, and perhaps the only one that has gained some sort of international recognition. The sword is presumably part of the Viking attire, and serves to complete the transformation of this lovable troll-boy into a loveable Viking, ready to be an ambassador for Norway, and ready to convince visiting tourists from around the world that they finally get something authentically Norwegian to bring home. What we see, in other words, is a fanciful condensation of elements scattered across the timeline of Norway's history, assembled to bring out the perceived essence of our country and its culture.    

The Viking troll is an interesting case study in cultural stereotypes, and it summarizes how Norway is perceived abroad, as well as how we, or some of us at least, wish to be seen by those outside our country. There is also a calculating logic to this amalgamation. A typically capitalist logic of more being always better, where the customer's attention is drawn to a blend of identifiable ingredients, where each of the individual ingredients is a finished product in and of itself. This is the fried chicken sandwich - where deep fried chicken fillets are used instead of buns - of Norwegian tourism, and just looking at it makes me feel weird. And, as is typical of such blends, the act of blending makes each individual ingredient lose some of their original meanings, as they are decontextualized and then recontextualized to serve different purposes than they originally did. The blending is, however, not my main gripe, but that this blending is purely done in order to boost sales. Had we Norwegians engaged with this blend as part of our self-understanding, I would have been used to it - it would be a kind of cultural evolution or adaptation that aims to serve its own people rather than capering to the tastes of others. In this case, however, we are dealing with the view from outside and those who seek to satisfy and titillate that view. And we see, then, yet again, how medievalism serves to make people reach for a fantasy rather than reality, and how the Middle Ages sell.  

Reading-spots, part 3

 
Nearing the end of my first week in Oslo after two months in the Western Norwegian fjords, I am reflecting on this summer's results in my ever-ongoing quest for finding new places in which to read, to find new reading-spots. While this quest is not limited to my home village of Hyen, it is perhaps especially here that my quest becomes increasingly challenging. Having lived there for the greater part of my life, and returning as often as time and work permit, there are fewer new reading-spots to be found for each passing year. However, as the Norwegian fjords are landscapes of great variety and with numerous nooks and crannies, there are still plenty of places left to find. In this blogpost, I will share one of these places, namely the mountain lake of Langevatnet, which literally translates as 'long lake'. 

Langevatnet is situated on a sort of plateau, although a very hollow plateau, which was carved by the ice millions of years ago. While well above the tree limit, it is not located at the top of the mountain, as the grey and snow-patched rock still rises and curves onwards above this plateau. Even so, it is a strenuous hike, and one that I have not undertaken since I was in my early twenties. Since I had not been there for several years, and since it was a place I came to love in my teens, this summer's hike was a kind of a pilgrimage. As a pilgrim, I was dressed in a hat and carried a stick, and I had brought with me a book of verses that means a lot to me.

When I came to the easternmost end of the lake, I camped in the meagre shadow of a large rock, which can be seen to the left in the picture above. The place afforded me a good shelf on which to sit, and a wonderful view of the lake as it stretched westward. Here, I sat down to read a poem by one of my all-time favourite poets, Raquel Lanseros. I had brought an edition of her collected poems which I had bought in Madrid earlier this year, and I read her poem 'Invocación', Invocation, which is one of my favourite poems, and one from which I find myself reciting whenever I come face to face with something lovely in nature. I selected this poem especially because it has a lot of emotional value for me, and it was one of the first poems I tried to translate from Spanish into Norwegian. (This translation can be found here.) Reading this poem was one of the crowning moments of joy on a trip so full of delight and happiness, and it imbued this reading-spot with a particularly strong sense of belonging.  

Similar blogposts: 

Reading-spots, part 1 

Reading-spots, part 2