The Nordic Storyteller : Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen [1 ed.] 9781443803168, 9781443801454

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The Nordic Storyteller

The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen

Edited by

Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois

The Nordic Storyteller: Essays in Honour of Niels Ingwersen, Edited by Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Susan Brantly and Thomas A. DuBois and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-0145-3, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0145-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ................................................................................... viii Niels Ingwersen: An Appreciation .............................................................. 1 Susan C. Brantly

Songs and Tales in Oral Tradition “Riddar sancte orrian”: Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George................................................................................................ 6 Tracey R. Sands Traumatic Transformations: Villy Sørensen’s Interpretive Schema and Four English-Scottish Ballads............................................................. 20 Larry Syndergaard By Faith Alone? The Black Book, Key to Popular Piety in the Wake of the Reformation............................................................................................. 42 Kathleen Stokker The Strong Wife: ML 5090 ....................................................................... 61 John Lindow Carl Gundersen’s Trip to the Lumber Camp.................................................... 79 James P. Leary Eqqaamavara, I remember. Storytelling in Greenland Today ................ 104 Kirsten Thisted Telling Stories to a National Archive ...................................................... 130 Barbro Klein

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Table of Contents

From Oral Tradition to Literature Asbjørnsen at Rondane: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer................... 156 James Massengale Frithiof’s Motley Cousins: On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic ........................................................................................ 178 Thomas A. DuBois Picture as Story: Arthur Rackham and the Ballads.................................. 211 John D. Niles

Tales in Literary Form ”Hvad siger den lille Sommergjæk?” Flowers and Embedded Stories in H.C. Andersen’s Tales......................................................................... 246 Scott A. Mellor Prolegomena to a Non-Extant Translation of Det graa Hus.................... 264 George C. Schoolfield “The Woods Take Revenge.” No Place to Hide ...................................... 285 Mary Kay Norseng The Adventures of David Copperfield in Nova Scotia............................ 297 Kirsten Wolf Tonio Kröger’s Imagined Denmark: Poeticized Reality or Decadent Fantasy?................................................................................................... 316 Julie K. Allen Isak Dinesen and the Lessons of Scheherazade....................................... 336 Susan C. Brantly Pelle erobreren: Folklore, Ideology and Film......................................... 355 Timothy R. Tangherlini

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Perceptions of Education and Learning from Stolen Spring to Borderliners: The Development of the Danish Educational System in the 20th Century ................................................................................... 381 Nete Schmidt Reflections on the Political Climate in an Apolitical World: Kjartan Fløgstad’s Det 7. klima............................................................................ 405 Tanya Thresher List of Contributors ................................................................................. 417

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1-1 Fig. 6-1 Fig. 6-2 Fig. 6-3 Fig. 6-4 Fig. 6-5 Fig. 7-1 Fig. 7-2 Fig. 7-3 Fig. 11-1 Fig. 11-2 Fig. 11-3 Fig. 11-4 Fig. 11-5 Fig. 11-6 Fig. 11-7 Fig. 11-8 Fig. 11-9 Fig. 11-10 Fig. 11-11 Fig. 11-12 Fig. 11-13 Fig. 11-14 Fig. 11-15

Niels and Faith Ingwersen, 2004. Photo: Scott A. Mellor Carl Gundersen (seated) shows off his orderly kitchen on the Flambeau River, 1920. Photo courtesy of Carol Gundersen Kuhrt. Lumberjack tools-in-a-bottle by Steven Maki, Ivar Lehto, and Eugene Stenroos. Photo: James P. Leary, Kimball, Wisconsin, 1986. Top-loader brandishing a cant hood carved by John Henkelman. Photo: James P. Leary, Merrill, Wisconsin, 1986. Merrill Bartels with some of his miniature lumber camp carvings. Photo: James P. Leary, Mikana, Wisconsin, 1986. Bartels’ carving of a loaded log sleigh. Photo: James P. Leary, Mikana, Wisconsin, 1986. Karen Littauer and her assistant, Pauline Lumholt, with some of the storytellers from Qaanaaq/Thule. Photo: Peter Östlund. Inoqusiaq Piloq. Photo: Peter Östlund Qivingalaq Andersson. Photo: Peter Östlund. “Little Red Riding Hood,” Arthur Rackham, 1909. “Hans Christian Andersen,” Arthur Rackham, 1932. “A Transpontine Cockney,” Arthur Rackham, 1934. The Wind in the Willows, Arthur Rackham, 1940. Undine, Arthur Rackham, 1909. Some British Ballads, title page, 1919. Melodramatic image from Illustrated British Ballads, 1886. “May Colven,” Arthur Rackham, 1919. “May Colven” from Illustrated British Ballads, 1886. “Young Bekie,” Arthur Rackham, 1918. “Young Bekie,” George Cruikshank, 1939. “Lord Randall,” Arthur Rackham, 1919. “Hind Horn,” Arthur Rackham, 1919. “The Gypsie Laddie, Arthur Rackham, 1919. “The Twa Corbies,” Arthur Rackham, 1919.

NIELS INGWERSEN: AN APPRECIATION SUSAN C. BRANTLY

Fig. 1-1: Niels and Faith Ingwersen, 2004. Photo: Scott A. Mellor Niels Ingwersen retired as Torger Thompson Professor of Scandinavian Literature at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 2004 after nearly 40 years of service. Professor Ingwersen is known to virtually everyone in the field of Scandinavian Studies simply as Niels. Niels is appreciated by his colleagues as an inspiring teacher, a dedicated servant to his profession, and an inventive and critically astute scholar.

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Niels Ingwersen: An Appreciation

Niels was born in Horsens, Denmark in 1935, and for many years was able to use his childhood memories of the Nazi occupation to connect younger generations of students with a piece of history that threatens to become just a piece of the distant past. Niels began his university studies in the 1950s, spending some time in Stockholm and then moving on to the University of Oslo, where he met a young American student from Wyoming named Faith Boswell Sloniger in a course for advanced language students. This was the beginning of a fruitful scholarly partnership that has lasted a lifetime. Faith moved to Denmark and attended the University of Copenhagen while Niels finished his cand. mag. degree in Danish and English. Niels and Faith were married in 1961. Shortly afterward, both Niels and Faith enrolled in the Program of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where they took classes for a year and passed prelims before returning to Denmark. Faith received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1975. Niels finished his minor at the University of Copenhagen and then completed sixteen months in the military as a member of the Signal Corps. After the military, Niels got a job at Hellerup Seminarium, and was shortly thereafter offered another job at the University of Wisconsin by the chairman of the Scandinavian Department, Harald Naess. Niels and Faith moved to Madison in 1965 and have been there ever since. Niels’ natural gift for storytelling has made him a legendary teacher at the University of Wisconsin. According to Niels, an important moment in his teaching career occurred the day he forgot his notes. He had conscientiously and meticulously prepared every class in advance and asked Faith to go over his notes to be sure that the language was right. The day he forgot his notes and was forced to speak off the cuff turned into the best class he had ever taught. Niels possesses the rare talent of making complex issues seem simple, and the backbone of his teaching method is telling stories that engage students and get the message across. By the 1980s, Niels’ wildly popular introductory literature courses, “The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” and “Masterpieces of Scandinavian Literature,” were attracting hundreds of students. In the spring of 1988, the Scandinavian Department did not limit the enrollment of “The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” and close to 900 students signed up for it. There was not a classroom on campus large enough to accommodate such a crowd. Niels has received a number of teaching awards throughout his career, including the William Kiekhofer Teaching Award. Although Niels is the master of the conventional classroom, he saw early on the value of exploring options for non-traditional students. He turned “The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” into a correspondence

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course, the course guide for which won a Distinguished Course Award from the National University Continuing Education Association in 1991. He was the driving force behind the Scandinavian Department’s early attempts to teach Norwegian at other System campuses using videoconferencing technology. In the late 1990s, Niels received funding to turn “The Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” into a high-tech distance course. Lectures were filmed on location in Denmark and in a campus studio, and the end product was broadcast on Wisconsin Public Television. The video lectures were accompanied by an elaborate web site, and students were shepherded through the course by “Virtual T.A.s,” who guided online discussions. Niels became a local celebrity in Madison, because of his television lectures; however, the online lectures routinely receive more “hits” than any other site on the university streaming servers, indicating that his audience is vast and global. Niels is both a pioneer and an innovator in the field of distance education. It should come as no surprise that Niels’ dynamic speaking style has made him a popular presenter at professional meetings and a much-soughtafter speaker on the public lecture circuit. Niels applies the “forgotten notes” lesson even in these contexts. He is one of a scant handful of presenters who can speak a SASS paper extemporaneously from a written outline—and make it a success. His topics can range from the Bildungsroman, to Kierkegaard, to Romanticism, to Faulkner and Ibsen, to Andersen, to folktales. Niels and Faith have performed considerable service to their profession, most notably as the co-editors of Scandinavian Studies from 1985 to 1990. Scandinavian Studies is, of course, the most prestigious journal of Nordic studies in North America. Niels served as President of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study from 1969-1971. He has many times been Chair of the Scandinavian Studies Department and has reviewed every major Scandinavian program in the country and three in Denmark itself. In the 1980s, Niels was one of a small group of faculty members who established the Folklore Program at the University of Wisconsin. Thanks in large part to Niels who acted as Program Director in the early years, the Folklore Program has blossomed into a flourishing enterprise on campus. Both Niels and Faith have worked valiantly as editors and translators in order to make Danish literature available to the English reading public. Niels has served as series editor for the Wisconsin Introductions to Scandinavia (WITS) series, which provides translations of Scandinavian literature for use in the classroom. Many of the WITS books, in addition to several other scholarly volumes, have benefited from Faith’s careful

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Niels Ingwersen: An Appreciation

editorial eye. Niels’ volumes on Andersen and Blicher contain translations by Faith, an award-winning translator who has also translated works by Ulla Ryum, Simon Grabowski, Martin A. Hansen, Mette Newth and Bodil Bredsdorff. As a scholar, Niels is a particularly attentive and detailed reader of texts. This is clear in a number of the more than fifty articles he has penned over the years, such as his studies of J.P. Jacobsen’s “Pesten i Bergamo” and Knut Hamsun’s Pan. He has also kept his eye on critical theory as it is practiced on both sides of the Atlantic, writing about the impact of structuralism on Danish literary criticism, the problems with textual analysis, and the tension between literary history and various critical schools. He is one of only a few scholars in North America with a research interest in the Scandinavian Baroque. Niels and Faith Ingwersen have co-authored two definitive monographs on major Danish writers: Martin A. Hansen and Martin Andersen Nexø. These works—Martin A. Hansen (1976) and Quests for a Promised Land: The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø (1984)—have remained for many years the only complete overviews of Hansen’s and Nexø’s literary careers. During the 1990s, Niels turned his attention more and more frequently to a new area of interest: folklore. His latest book project, The Scandinavian Magic Tale and Narrative Folklore: A Study in Genres, Themes, and Sources (2009), attests to Niels’ unique way of applying his literary training to the reading of folklore. Niels’ lengthy and productive career promoting Danish culture in America has been recognized by the Queen of Denmark, who made him a Knight of the Dannebrog in 1997. The present volume, The Nordic Storyteller, pays homage to Niels’ diverse research interests. The contributors to this volume represent a handful of Niels’ many admirers who toil in the same academic fields. The initial essays focus on folklore, especially ballads (which Niels has written on himself), but also the tales that people tell about their lives and those of others in order to better understand themselves and the world. From there, the essays transition into literary and artistic appropriations of folklore, which then lead naturally to Hans Christian Andersen and other prominent literary figures in nineteenth and twentieth-century literature, a field to which Niels has made many valued contributions. This volume is offered in appreciation of Niels Ingwersen and all that he has done for his students, his colleagues, and his profession.

SONGS AND TALES IN ORAL TRADITION

“RIDDAR SANCTE ORRIAN”: BALLAD TRADITION AND THE MEDIEVAL SWEDISH CULT OF ST. GEORGE TRACEY R. SANDS

For researchers interested in the religious life of the Middle Ages, the Nordic countries offer both great advantages and special problems. In comparison to many other European countries, the Nordic countries have preserved a far greater proportion of their medieval churches, along with, in many cases, wall paintings and inventory. For scholars interested in medieval iconography, this region can be a treasure trove. Scholars who focus their attention on manuscripts, however, are likely to consider themselves less favored than their colleagues in England, for example. If the Protestant Reformation did relatively little damage to the churches themselves, it brought about wide-scale destruction of liturgical books and other important medieval manuscripts, many of which ended up as covers for collections of royal accounts – if they were not used for making fireworks (Brunius 1993). In spite of these losses, however, and in spite of the changes in religious practice brought about by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, there is a great deal to be learned about the religious life of the region during the Middle Ages, and not least about the cult of the saints. The materials that can contribute to this study include various kinds of charters and other texts, as well as iconography, naming practices, and other kinds of evidence of devotion. Of particular interest for this study, however is oral narrative tradition, especially that of the ballad. Although almost no ballads were recorded in writing until well after the Reformation, I would argue that these narratives can often provide important information concerning medieval interests and values. The purpose of this paper is to draw on a variety of sources, including written and oral ballad tradition of the post-Reformation period, in order to understand the nature of the cult of one particular saint in medieval Sweden, St. George. While this cult appears at first glance to have much in common with other cults popular in medieval Sweden, I will argue that it

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is in fact quite different in nature. Indeed, one of the most illuminating clues to the special nature of this cult comes from the unusual nature of the ballad tradition associated with the saint. Together with a handful of other important international saints, St. George is one of the earliest saints to appear in Swedish liturgical calendars. It must be noted, however, that early in Swedish terms is relatively late for the rest of medieval Christendom. Compared with the rest of Europe, Sweden was very late to accept Christianity. Although Saint Ansgar led two separate missionary expeditions to the trading center of Birka, in central Sweden, the first in 829-30, the first Swedish king known to have accepted baptism did not do so until around the year 1000. This king, Olof Skötkonung, was, according to roughly contemporary sources, eventually forced to retreat into the far western part of his kingdom by disgruntled non-Christians, and not until 1080 did a Swedish monarch have contact with the pope. Even King Inge the Elder, to whom the pope wrote in 1080, and who sent a bishop to Rome at the pope’s request, was apparently forced from his throne for a time by a heathen rival.1 By 1100, though, the status of Christianity as the dominant faith of Sweden seems clear, and a list of Scandinavian dioceses compiled at about this time includes seven sites in Sweden. Of these, at least four (Skara, Linköping, Strängnäs and “Aros” – either Östra Aros (modern-day Uppsala) or Västerås) can be recognized as the seats of Swedish bishops throughout the Middle Ages (see Redelius 1975: 10; Nilsson 1998). Saint George, then, is among the earliest saints to appear in medieval Nordic sources. In the Necrologium Lundense, begun in 1123, the feast of St. George does not appear in the original hand, but it appears to have been added before the middle of the 1130s (Svärdström 1963: 35). An altar of St. George was consecrated in Lund Cathedral in 1126, which also establishes an early date for the cult (Kilström and Odenius 1981: cols. 268-272). Although the medieval diocese of Lund was part of Denmark, not Sweden, in 1103 or 1104 it gained archepiscopal authority over the whole of Scandinavia, which had previously been under the authority of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. Thus the Danish calendar from Lund may convey a degree of information about early Swedish circumstances as well. The earliest known Swedish medieval calendar is from the year 1198, from the parish church of Vallentuna. The feast of St. George appears on the 23rd of April, which is its usual date in the western church. 1

Two communications from Pope Gregory VII to the Swedish king(s) have been preserved, and are published as numbers 24 and 25 in the Diplomatarium suecanum.

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Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George

Although the notation is made in black ink, rather than the red ink used for the most important feast days, it appears to be original, and is not among the additions later made by another scribe (see Helmfrid 1998, Schmid 1945). Another very early calendar, a rune stave from Lödöse, a trading center near present-day Göteborg, does not appear to include the feast of St. George. However, this object, which has been dated to the middle of the 12th century, appears to have originated some distance from where it was discovered, possibly in western Jutland (Svärdström 1963: 65). Thus the absence of St. George does not necessarily reflect local practices. Certain images of St. George also testify to his cult’s early introduction into Sweden. Källunge church, on the island of Gotland, includes what may be a depiction of St. George and the dragon among its suite of late 12th century murals. These paintings are in Russian Byzantine style, which, although rare for the rest of Sweden, was not unusual for Gotland during this period (Lagerlöf 1984: 123-132; Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 29). Jan Svanberg has also argued that carvings of a mounted soldier fighting a monster (which actually looks like a gigantic wolf) on a late 12th-century baptismal font from the parish church of Vattlösa, Västergötland, should be interpreted as a representation of St. George and the dragon (Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 29-30). The legend of St. George is found in several different medieval Swedish versions. The oldest version is found in the Fornsvenska legendariet (Old Swedish Legendary), a translation of the Legenda Aurea usually dated to around 1300 (Stephens 1847-58: 491-96). A legend of St. George is also included in the early 15th-century translation of the Low German Seelen Trost, though the translator has included motifs borrowed from the Old Swedish Legendary (Klemming 1871-73: 122-27; Jansson 1981: cols. 27-29). A rhymed old Swedish vita from the second quarter of the 15th century emphasizes the saint’s function as a helper in battle, and at least one scholar has suggested that this text may have originated among the circles closest to Karl Knutsson (Bonde), who was king of Sweden for several periods during the middle of the 15th century (Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 185; Klemming 1881-82: 185-89). Saint George is also one of a handful of saints whose legends have given rise to ballads which were collected both from written sources dating from the middle of the 16th century onwards, and from later oral tradition. Although the late medieval Swedish calendars were full of saints, and though visual images in (and from) medieval churches confirm this wide range, only a few saints’ lives seem to have made such an impression that their memory was kept alive in oral tradition long after the

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Reformation. In Swedish tradition, these saints, in addition to St. George,2 are St. James the Greater,3 St. Katherine of Alexandria,4 St. Stephen,5 St. Mary Magdalene,6 and St. Olaf.7 For most of these ballads, there is good reason to believe that the existence of a ballad based on the saint’s legend in 19th and 20th century oral tradition is a direct reflection of the saint’s popularity, especially among the laity, before the Protestant Reformation. For many of these saints, there appears to be a direct link between the saint’s general prominence in the Middle Ages, as seen in liturgical calendars (and also in post-Reformation secular ones), dedications of churches, altars, bells, and the like, naming practices and other evidence of devotion – and the existence of ballads several hundred years later. For Saints Olaf, James, Stephen, Mary Magdalene and Katherine, it is easy to see how ballads could have arisen out of popular devotion. The shrine of St. James at Compostela was a major goal for the medieval Swedish pilgrims, including such prominent figures as Birger Persson, who was the father of St. Birgitta. As an apostle – and indeed, one of the most prominent, even among that exalted company, St. James is widely portrayed in medieval Swedish churches, and his feast, the 25th of July, was written in red ink and celebrated with a high degree of veneration in all surviving medieval Swedish calendars. St. Olaf, the martyred king of Norway who is given at least partial credit for the Christianization of that country, was also widely venerated in medieval Sweden. His relics in the cathedral at Nidaros were frequently visited by Swedish pilgrims, and his image – often including detailed scenes from his legend – is one of those most frequently encountered in medieval Swedish iconography. Like St. James, St. Olaf is regularly celebrated with a high degree of veneration, and his feast, 29 July, appears in red ink in the Swedish calendars. St. Stephen’s day, 26 December, also appears in red ink, and is, like the other two, celebrated with high degree. St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church, is also regularly depicted in Swedish churches (see Grotefend 1891-8: 217-249; Schmid 1945: 119-130). The two female saints, St. Katherine of Alexandria and St. Mary Magdalene, were among medieval Sweden’s most popular, and the extreme popularity of the ballads based on their lives in the 19th and 20th 2

(The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad (TSB) B 10, Sveriges medeltida ballader (SMB) 40, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser (DgF) 103) 3 (TSB B 7, SMB 38, DgF 100) 4 (TSB B 14, SMB 42, DgF 101) 5 (TSB B 8, SMB 39, DgF 96) 6 (TSB B 16, SMB 43, DgF 98) 7 (TSB B 12, SMB 41, DgF 50)

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Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George

centuries reflects this. Both saints were favorites of the mendicant friars of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, who were enormously influential in medieval Swedish religious life. “Katarina” together with its variants (including “Karin”) is perhaps the most popular name for Swedish women throughout the Middle Ages (Otterbjörk 1981: cols. 214-216). “Magdalena” is also well-represented in medieval sources. Both are frequently depicted in Swedish churches – some 300 images of St. Katherine, for example, survive or are documented. Both saints are celebrated with a high degree of veneration in all medieval Swedish dioceses, and their feasts are generally written in the calendars in red ink, indicating that the laity, as well as the clergy, were expected to be present at their masses (Grotefend 1891-8: 217-249, Schmid 1945: 119-130). In spite of his early appearance in medieval Swedish calendars, the importance of St. George in Sweden for most of the Middle Ages is not as clear. While his feast, 23 April, appears in Swedish calendars throughout the period, it seldom appears in red ink, and is usually accorded a lower degree of veneration than the feasts of the other saints noted above. In the missal for the diocese of Åbo printed in 1488, for example, the feast of St. George was celebrated with the degree of Simplex, that of St. Mary Magdalene with Duplex, and the feast of St. Katherine with the degree of Totum duplex (Grotefend 1891-8: 27-219). Sometime during the end of the 15th century, however, St. George received a promotion, and his degree of veneration was raised to Duplex. His feast received a similar promotion during this period in the bishoprics of Västerås and Strängnäs, but in other sees, such as Skara and Linköping, it seems to have retained the degree of Simplex throughout the period (Kilström and Odenius 1981: col. 269). The distinctions between the position of St. George and other saints in the liturgical calendars can also be observed in the Swedish ballad tradition. The ballads deriving from the lives of Saints James, Olaf, Stephen, Mary Magdalene and Katherine have several traits in common. None of them is among the ballads known from 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts, but all of them were collected from oral tradition in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each of these ballad types also displays traits generally associated with what ballad scholars like to call the “traditional ballad” – narrative songs whose primary mode of transmission through time is presumed to have been oral, rather than written. These traits include 1) concentration of action – the narrative tends to focus on a single episode from the saint’s legend, rather than telling the whole story; 2) “leaping and lingering” – large chunks of the plot may be related in a few words, while other segments (often descriptions) are expanded, often in dialog form; 3) use of formulaic language, or commonplaces, which are often not

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exclusive to the ballad being performed, but may occur in a wide variety of ballad types. Although refrains are not universal among “traditional” ballads, they often include refrain-like structures. For example, though “Liten Karin,” the Swedish St. Katherine ballad, has no distinct refrain (i.e., no single line of text repeated within or following each stanza), in most variants of the ballad the second line of each stanza (in some variants, both lines) is sung twice. The ballad of St. George, however, appears to be distinct in several ways from other Swedish ballads about saints. While the other ballads exhibit typical oral traits, the style of the George ballad more closely resembles that of the so-called “broadside ballad.” Although this term, like the “traditional” ballad actually denotes style rather than origin, it refers to ballads that contain traits more closely associated with written than with oral transmission. Thus broadside ballads are characterized by more even pacing, rather than “leaping and lingering.” They tend to relate longer, more comprehensive narratives, and to provide greater, and more evenly distributed detail. Their scope sometimes seems chronicle-like, or even journalistic (see Wilgus and Long 1985: 437-8). Thus, while the ballad of St. James relates a single miracle, that of St. Katherine focuses on her conflict with her would-be seducer, and that of Mary Magdalene on her recognition of her sins, and on her penance, the Swedish ballad of St. George relates the entire dragon-slaying chapter of the legend of St. George. Where the other ballads tend to portray a single encounter between two characters, often in dialogue form, the George ballad has long passages of description and a large number of speaking characters. For example, in the Swedish C variant, a text printed and distributed as a broadside in the late 17th or early 18th century, various lines of text are placed in the mouths of God, the king of the city besieged by the dragon, the people of the city, the princess, and St. George himself. In addition, there are passages of third person narrative not attributable to any of the characters. While descriptions in the other ballads are often short and formulaic – St. Katherine is simply “Little Karin,” and her adversary is “the young king” – the St. George ballad offers long descriptive passages. We learn, for example, that “His banner was white/his cross was red/he carried it in his hands/his armor shone like the sun/for the maiden did not know him.”[“Hans baner was hwijt/hans Kors war rödt/Thet förde han i sina Händer/Hans Harnesk thet Skeen alt som en Sool/Ty Jungfrun honom eij kende.”] (SMB 40 C, v. 20). Interestingly, the distinctions between the ballad of St. George and the other ballads discussed here go beyond style. The other Swedish ballads depicting known, internationally recognized saints are known primarily

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Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George

from oral tradition, usually no earlier than the early 18th century. One of the reasons that a link can be inferred between the popularity of a saint’s cult during the Middle Ages and the popularity of a ballad about that saint in oral tradition several hundred years later, is that the Protestant Reformation, starting shortly after 1520, put a stop to the public and official veneration of saints in Sweden. While the simple attraction of a good plot cannot be overlooked as an explanation for the presence of these narratives in folk tradition, it also seems logical that the saints most likely to be remembered (though this does not mean that they continued to be venerated) would be those that were already familiar before the Reformation. At the same time that we make the connection between the popularity of a given saint in the Middle Ages and the popularity of a ballad about that saint in later oral tradition, it is necessary to acknowledge certain facts about the collection of ballads before the early 19th century. Bengt Jonsson has made the important point that early ballad collectors were very aware of what kinds of ballad texts they wanted to collect. The collectors of the 15th and 16th centuries strongly favored so-called “heroic ballads” (“kämpavisor”), which could be incorporated into the general antiquarian project of the period, to construct a glorious Swedish national past. At the same time, ballads that could be seen as expressing peasant superstition – or that smacked of “popery” would not have appealed to the collectors or audiences (largely aristocrats and students) of the period. By the 18th century, the broadsheet had become established as an important means of ballad transmission.8 Jonsson notes that the greater proportion of legendary ballads in this material than in the earlier ballad collections probably reflects the tastes of the principal consumers of this medium, who were to be found among the lower socio-economic classes (Jonsson 1967: 797-798). These factors, too, suggest that the Swedish ballad of St. George was perceived as being different in nature than other legendary ballads by the ballad collectors of the 16th and 17th centuries. Like the other legendary ballads, the Swedish St. George ballad has been collected from 19th century oral tradition. However, a large number of the texts appearing in the published edition of Swedish ballads were not recorded directly from performance, but are instead written copies of older written texts.9 Unlike other legendary ballads, the George ballad is found in early manuscript sources. Indeed, the oldest written text of the ballad is 8

It must be emphasized that BOTH ballads in the “traditional” (or as they are called in Sweden, “medieval”) style AND ballads in the “broadside” style are found in the form of broadsheets. 9 e.g. SMB 40 J, K, M, N.

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among the earliest documented ballad texts in the Swedish language, and is found in a manuscript of unknown provenance from the middle of the 16th century. The text is even accompanied by a short passage of musical notation, making it clear that this was a song, and not simply a poem.10 The ballad is also found in a ballad book from the late 1590s or around 1600, and was published repeatedly as a broadside during the later 17th century and throughout the 18th and 19th centuries (SMB 40 B and C). Although these early texts of the ballad are not precisely identical, the similarity of content, wording and description is so great that it is quite clear that the later texts derive from the earlier one (or a version thereof) as written texts. This is clearly a written tradition, not an oral one. Perhaps the most notable difference between the mid-16th century text and the later ones is that the first line of the early text praises the Virgin Mary (“Loffuat warde jomfrv maria/och henne welsignade son/jack uill eder en viso queda/hon är giordt om riddar sancte orrian.”), while from the 1590s onward our praise is directed instead toward God the Father: (“Loffuat wari gud fader vdi himmelrijk/Och hans welsignade son/Iag will eder en wijsa queda/Hon är giordt af Riddar Sancte Iören.”). Still, this relatively minor change is the ballad’s most apparent adaptation to Protestant religious sensibilities. Otherwise there is very little difference in content between the later variants of the ballad, the earliest manuscript version, and the medieval, explicitly Roman Catholic written texts of the legend of St. George from which the ballad clearly derives. Why do we find the ballad of St. George in the early manuscript sources that otherwise do not contain ballads about saints? Why do the style and the textual history of this ballad indicate transmission largely by means of written texts, when other Swedish legendary ballads are clearly primarily oral? There is good reason to believe that the anomalies of the ballad tradition of St. George reflect the unusual nature of his cult in late medieval Sweden. In spite of his early appearance in Sweden, St. George does not appear to be one of the country’s most fervently venerated saints for most of the medieval period. As in other parts of the medieval world, he was a relatively frequent patron of hospitals, especially those devoted to the care of lepers (Kilström and Odenius 1981). Other saints could also be invoked in this context, however. The “Helgeandshus” – “House of the Holy Spirit” was a well-known concept.11 St. Gertrude was not infrequently referred to as a patron saint of hospitals and lodgings, while 10

See SMB 40 A. It should be noted that chapels dedicated to St. George were found in a number of Swedish “Helgeandshus,” including several from the late 14th and early 15th centuries (Kilström and Odenius 1981: 270). 11

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Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George

St. Katherine of Alexandria was the patron of the hospital in the town of Skänninge. For most of the Middle Ages, veneration of St. George is not reflected in naming practices. Allan Etzler notes that an investigation of surviving medieval documents shows that Swedes were rarely named for the saint before the 1460s-1470s. Until that time, bearers of the name Jörgen, Göran, Örjan, Georg, etc., are usually Germans (Etzler 1931: LLI). Images of St. George occur relatively infrequently in Swedish churches before the later 15th century. For example, only four images of the saint are known from the 14th century: two now-fragmentary wall paintings, an engraving on a chalice, and an embroidery on a chasuble (Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 30). For the sake of comparison, we might note that some twenty known images of St. Katherine date from this period, including wall paintings, sculptures, engravings on chalices, and embroideries (Sands 1998: 98). By the second half of the fifteenth century, however, St. George was clearly experiencing a renaissance. From the later fifteenth century through the first quarter of the sixteenth, 125 images of St. George appear in Swedish churches, and another 37 from Finland (which was a province of Sweden). Of these, a large number are free-standing sculptures depicting the saint’s battle with the dragon, usually with the princess looking on (Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 199-210). As both Allan Etzler and Jan Svanberg have pointed out, there are specific reasons for the cult’s remarkable surge in popularity. Beginning in the late fourteenth century, Sweden, Norway and Denmark had come under the common rule of a single monarch, in what is known as the Kalmar Union. Several of the kings who ruled during this period (ca. 1389-1520) were of German origin, though the earliest and most effective regent of the period was Margrethe, daughter of King Valdemar of Denmark and mother to Olof, the heir of all three kingdoms, who died as a youth. Some of the German-born Union kings, notably Albrekt of Mecklenburg and Erik of Pomerania, made themselves unpopular with certain factions within the Swedish nobility by awarding important fiefdoms and giving general influence to newly-immigrating German nobles, rather than to the native Swedes. Whether the German overlords were much worse for the average farmer than the Swedish ones can be discussed, and there were certainly factions of the Swedish nobility who favored the Kalmar Union as well. Still, resistance to non-Swedish rule was a fact in Sweden from a very early point in the history of the Union, and later monarchs of more or less Danish origin hardly enjoyed more success or cooperation than their German-born predecessors.

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Although the reign of Queen Margrethe seems to have been relatively peaceful, after her death in 1412, there were several periods during which members of the Swedish high aristocracy seized power and ruled the country in defiance of the Kalmar Union. The first such figure to come to power was Karl Knutsson (Bonde), who ruled during three separate periods (1448-57, 1464-65, 1467-70)12. According to Etzler, the specific veneration of St. George as the pinnacle of knightly excellence, not just as the great martyr, was introduced into Sweden by Karl Knutsson, who came into contact with this aspect of the cult during the time between his first and second periods of regency, which he spent in Danzig (Etzler 1931: XLVIII ff.) Perhaps even more important for the cult’s increase in popularity, though, was Karl’s nephew, Sten Sture the Elder, who succeeded him as regent, though he was never elected king, and clearly also inherited his devotion to St. George. The battle of Brunkeberg in 1471 is often seen as a crucial point in Swedish history. The two sides in this battle, which was fought just outside of Stockholm (within the modern-day city limits), were the nationalist Swedish troops, led by Sten Sture the Elder, and Unionist forces (including a number of Swedish aristocrats) led by King Hans of Denmark. According to a rhymed chronicle apparently composed within twenty years after the event (Westin 1981: cols. 353-355), the Swedish troops “sang St. George’s song” before they entered the fray. Etzler has shown quite convincingly, in my opinion, that the “song” in question was not the same one later collected and published under the same title. Rather, he notes, the song whose first two lines are quoted in the chronicle is a translation of an old German pilgrims’ and crusaders’ song, which does not actually mention the saint, but may well be associated with him (Etzler 1931: LIV). Be that as it may, the battle turned out well for the Swedish side, and in gratitude, Sten Sture commissioned an enormous and remarkable sculpture by the North German artist Bernt Notke, which was consecrated in the Great Church (Storkyrkan) of Stockholm in 1489. This sculpture seems to have served as a model for later sculptures, paintings, and possibly even narratives, and there is no doubt that in addition to its religious content, the sculpture of St. George defeating the dragon could also be interpreted in political terms (see Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998 for an exhaustive description and numerous photographs of this sculpture group). 12

Although Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson led a series of successful peasant uprisings against the Kalmar Union beginning in 1434, and was elected Captain of the Realm (“Rikshövitsman”) in January of 1435, he did not rule as king of Sweden (see Pernler 1999: 132-5).

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Ballad Tradition and the Medieval Swedish Cult of St. George

Jan Svanberg has suggested that certain details in the sculpture make it likely that the sculptor derived his portrayal from the ballads, rather than from any other narrative source (Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 186). It seems more likely, though, that the sculpture is primary in relation to the ballad. The struggle over the rule of Sweden did not end with Sten Sture’s victory at Brunkeberg, but continued for another half century, until Gustav Eriksson Vasa seized power in the 1520s. Though this king was the motivating force behind the introduction of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden, which led to the suppression of the veneration of the saints, images of St. George continued to be produced in and for Swedish churches during and after his reign. Mereth Lindgren has suggested that the frequency of such post-Reformation images of St. George would seem to indicate that he was the saint whose cult had been most strongly anchored in popular piety (Lindgren 1983: 240; Svanberg makes the same statement a decade later, see Svanberg and Qwarnström 1993/1998: 157). As I have argued in this paper, however, medieval evidence does not support the claim that St. George was more commonly turned to as an intercessor or viewed as a model of ideal Christian behavior than, for example, St. Olaf or St. Katherine. At the same time, however, Lindgren notes that the image of St. George fighting the dragon lends itself especially well to an allegorical interpretation. St. George may be seen as an ideal Christian knight, defending the church and the faithful against every form of evil, as represented by the dragon. Indeed, he may be seen as a representation of any good Christian faced with evil in all its forms. Both of these interpretations seem to fit without trouble into the iconography of an evangelical church (Lindgren 1983: 241). Although Lindgren makes an important point here, it seems likely that the image of St. George also has more specific meanings not only for Karl Knutsson and Sten Sture, but for Gustav Vasa and his successors as well. Without doubt, the image of the saint came to be closely associated with the image of Sten Sture, or any other king or regent fighting on behalf of his kingdom and his people. In his resistance to Denmark and the Kalmar Union, Gustav Vasa was clearly interested in linking himself to this image of a righteous, even saintly defender. The political symbolism of St. George, who could be seen as Sten Sture or Gustav Vasa fighting the evil and fearsome dragon, perhaps itself interpreted as a personification of Denmark, was too powerful to be discarded. The ballad of St. George, I suspect, is likely to have been composed as a written text, not an oral one, sometime after the battle of Brunkeberg, and probably after the consecration of the sculpture group in Stockholm.

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Chances are that it originates in the circles around Sten Sture. Bengt Jonsson has noted that ballad collectors in different periods have had specific goals in selecting ballads, and that the collectors of the 17th century tended to focus on heroic ballads. The fact that the legendary ballads – those about saints – do not turn up in collections until the 18th century does not mean that they did not exist in oral tradition, but only that the collectors were not interested in their content. That the ballad of St. George does turn up in the early post-Reformation manuscripts suggests that its political/nationalistic message (along with its heroic appeal) was not only well understood by the ballad collectors of the period, but that it met with their approval. The narrative about the saint must thus have had a function and meaning equivalent to those of the images of St. George in post-Reformation Sweden. Unlike other legendary ballads, then, the ballad of St. George does not necessarily reflect the existence of a broad, popular devotion to the saint before the Reformation. On the other hand, it certainly reflects the political concerns and ambitions of a particular group among the leaders of late medieval Swedish society. The fact that the transmission of this ballad appears to have taken place primarily through the medium of writing, rather than through oral performance provides an important clue that the ballad of St. George, like his medieval cult, was mainly of interest to a relatively limited segment of Swedish society. This case should serve to remind us of the complexities of the various kinds of source materials that we draw upon as we attempt to understand an incompletely documented past.

Works Cited Brunius, Jan. 1993. “Från mässböcker till munkepärmar.” Helgerånet. Från mässböcker till munkepärmar. Ed. Kerstin Abukhanfusa, Jan Brunius, Solbritt Benneth. Stockholm: Riksarkivet/Stockholms medeltidsmuseum/Calrsson bokförlag. Danmarks gamle Folkeviser. (DgF). 1853-1976. Ed. Svend Grundtvig, Axel Olrik, H. Grüner Nielsen, Erik Dal, et al. Copenhagen: Samfundet til den danske Literaturs Fremme og Universitets-Jubilæets danske Samfund. Diplomatarium Suecanum. 1829. Vol. I. Ed. J. G. Liljegren. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt och söner. Etzler, Allan. 1931. “S. Örjens gille.” Med hammare och fackla. Stockholm: Sancte Örjens Gille.

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Grotefend, H. 1891-98. Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit. Hannover: Hahn Buchhandlung. Helmfrid, Staffan, ed. 1998. Vallentuna Anno Domini 1198: Vallentunakalendariet och dess tid. Vallentuna: Vallentuna kulturnämnd. Jansson, Valter. 1981. “Görans saga.” Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid. Second edition. Vol. 6. Rosenkilde og Bagger. Cols. 27-29. Jonsson, Bengt R. 1967. Svensk balladtradition I. Balladkällor och balladtyper. Svenskt visarkivs handlingar 1. Stockholm: Svenskt visarkiv. Kilström, Bengt Ingemar and Oloph Odenius. 1981. “Georg.” Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid. Second edition. Vol. 5. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger. Cols. 268-272. Klemming, G., ed. 1871-78. Själens tröst. Tio Guds bud förklarade genom legender, berättelser och exempel. Svenska fornskriftsällskapets skrifter XIX. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt och söner. —. 1881-82. Svenska medeltidsdikter och rim. Svenska fornskriftsällskapets skrifter XXV. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt och söner. Lagerlöf, Erland. 1984. “Bysantinskt måleri i en gotländsk stavkyrka.” Den ljusa medeltiden. Studier tillägnade Aron Andersson. Statens historiska museum studies 4. Stockholm: Statens historiska museum. Pp. 123-132. Lindgren, Mereth. 1983. Att lära och pryda. Om efterreformatoriska kyrkmålningar i Sverige cirka 1530-1630. Stockholm: KVHAA/Almqvist & Wiksell International. Nilsson, Bertil. 1998. Sveriges kyrkohistoria. Missionstid och tidig medeltid. Stockholm: Verbum. Otterbjörk, Roland. 1981. Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid. Second Edition. Vol. 13. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger. Cols. 214-216. Pernler, Sven-Erik. 1999. Sveriges kyrkohistoria. Hög- och senmedeltid. Stockholm: Verbum. Redelius, Gunnar. 1975. Sigtuna studier. Historia och byggnadskonst under alder medeltid. Stockholm: Förf. Sands, Tracey R. 1998. Heliga Katarina och Liten Karin. The Cult of St. Catherine of Alexandria and its Resonances in Medieval and PostReformation Sweden. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington. Ann Arbor: UMI Microfilm no. 9826361. Schmid, Toni, ed. 1945. Liber Ecclesiae Vallentunenis. Stockholm: KVHAA/Wahlström & Widstrand.

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Stephens, G., ed. 1847-58. Ett fornsvenskt legendarium. Svenska fornskriftsällskapets skrifter VII: 1-2. Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt och söner. Svanberg, Jan and Anders Qwarnström. 1993/1998. Sankt Göran och draken. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma. Svärdström, Elisabeth. 1963. Kalendarstickan från Lödöse. Antikvariskt arkiv 21. Uppsala: KVHAA. Sveriges medeltida ballader. (SMB). 1986. Ed. Bengt Jonsson. Vol. II. Stockholm: Svenskt visarkiv. The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad. (TSB). 1978. Ed. Bengt Jonsson, et al. Skrifter utgivna av Svenskt visarkiv 5. Stockholm: Svenskt visarkiv. Westin, Gunnar. 1981. “Sturekrönikan.” Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid. Second edition. Vol. 17. Cols. 353-355. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger. Wilgus, D. K. and Eleanor Long. 1985. “The Blues Ballad and the Genesis of Style in Traditional Narrative Song” in Narrative Folksong: New Directions. Essays in Appreciation of W. Edson Richmond. Eds. Carol. L. Edwards and Kathleen E. B. Manley. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

TRAUMATIC TRANSFORMATIONS: VILLY SØRENSEN’S INTERPRETIVE SCHEMA 1 AND FOUR ENGLISH-SCOTTISH BALLADS LARRY SYNDERGAARD

The recent death of the Danish man of letters Villy Sørensen should remind us that he is one of the few people in the last half-century bold enough to offer a comprehensive interpretive schema for a significant part of one of the great traditional balladries. His 1959 essay “Folkeviser og forlovelser” (“Ballads and Betrothals”) in fact combines a thesis on the meaning of many Danish ballads with a thesis on the evolution of art itself.2 Sørensen was critic, fiction writer, philosopher, and adapter of myth. In the present study I present what I consider to be Sørensen’s key thesis and then discuss four English-Scottish ballads in those terms – a kind of test application of his interpretive schema to another major balladry. I should begin with certain assumptions shared by Sørensen and myself. I simply acknowledge that some may be controversial and will not enter into those debates on this occasion. First, certain traditional ballads are culture artifacts of serious and intense meaning. Second, some ballads are to be interpreted in part figuratively, often symbolically. Third, some ballads have significance their own creators in tradition may not see, although other commentators may. 1

An earlier version of this study was presented at the Thirty-Third International Ballad Conference, Kommission für Volksdichtung, June 24-28, 2003, Austin, Texas. Thanks are due fellow participants James Moreira, Jon Bartlett, and Rika Ruebsaat for their helpful responses. 2 It is a pleasure to acknowledge my debt to Professor Niels Ingwersen, the honoree at the Nordic Storyteller Symposium, who originally introduced me to Sørensen’s work and to its importance.

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Fourth, the unconscious is a powerful reality both accessed and expressed through verbal art, including certain ballads. Fifth, more attention from academia is needed as to what ballads mean – yes, ballads as literature. This is merely a call for parity with several other necessary approaches to this culture artifact and is not meant to disvalue them. Before my analysis I offer a capsule account of Sørensen’s larger schema, much oversimplified. In his essay we can identify four phases in the evolution of certain ballad symbols – usually “demons” broadly defined, or magical elements – based on how consciously they seem to be employed. I borrow here from James Moreira’s useful summary: -

The earliest, essentially unconscious use, “near the mythic,” is of demons and magic to express inner fears. The demons next are seen as more tangible entities, suggesting erotic attractions. The demons then become consciously constructed metaphors or symbols for sin, tied to erotic themes. Finally, the demons are used in a deliberate, sometimes reflexive or parodic way with humorous or moralistic themes (2003: 1).

Sørensen’s discussion is complex and comprehensive, involving 36 of the Danish folkeviser. He defines various thematic groups, with most or all of the four evolutionary stages represented in each.3 I do not attempt here a comprehensive review of the scholarly response to Sørensen’s essay, but I find it significant that the keen and learned sensibility of Erik Dal, dean of Danish ballad scholars, invites an interpretation of certain ballads through Sørensen’s lens in his anthologies in Danish and English (Dal 1962: 15-16; Abrahamsen and Dal 1965: 9-14, 40), as does editor and critic Sven Rossel (1982: 65). The schema receives the ultimate establishment endorsement when it is referenced in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser (10: 550, 705, 713, 723, 842). In an earlier article I have extended it to a ballad outside Sørensen’s initial list. The most carefully developed adverse criticism is from Flemming Harrits, who objects, for example, that Sørensen is sloppy in his use of texts and that the chronology of his evolutionary stages will not stand up (1969: 37-45).

3

In addition to presenting a brief introduction to Sørensen’s larger interpretive system in his paper at the International Ballad conference, James Moreira is proceeding with an English translation of the entire essay.

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Villy Sørensen’s Interpretive Schema and Four English-Scottish Ballads

These criticisms are altogether justified, but they do not greatly reduce the worth of Sørensen’s contribution. The diachronic evolution of symbolic function is indeed not demonstrable, but I would insist that the four “stages” are in fact four differing uses of the ballad symbols which may appear in various eras, and that Sørensen has advanced the cause of ballad criticism by defining them. Call it differentiation, not evolution. And no commentary I have seen can detract from the importance of Villy Sørensen’s central thesis, the focus of my analysis here. This proposes that, on a figurative (and sometimes literal) level, many of the “classic” Danish ballads express various combinations of the factors in a basic and difficult life-transformation. This arises from the need to proceed from the child’s “understanding of life,” in which the family is the emotional center, to an adult understanding of life in which the emotional center of being becomes the beloved. Love drives this transition. Paradoxically, the transformation is frightening, because to lose the old self is a kind of death, and yet enormously attractive, even “driven” or involuntary. Out of the great tension between fear and attraction, between old self and future self, comes, in life, angst, and in art (such as the ballads), demons, or “demonic” or inexplicable actions (Sørensen 1959: 160-68). For “the demonic is precisely the perilous that frightens and yet entices the imagination” (Sørensen 1959: 160).4 Art is one way in which humankind has dealt with the difficulty of this transition. Sørensen almost sees the art of certain ballads as therapy: “We pacify the demons by singing of them” (1959: 167). He calls this transition crisis forlovelsessituationen, the betrothal situation. However, I emphasize that he is referring to involuntary commitment driven by love, not formal “engagements” as announced in the newspaper. Sexual initiation is not a given, although sexuality, in its simultaneous attractiveness and destructive potential is sometimes a key element. In these ballads the old ties are sometimes represented by the family or home, and that which is simultaneously attractive and threatening will often appear as the demonic. Thus either the beloved or the condition of love itself – because either draws one out of the childhood self and “slays” it – may appear, for example, as a mermaid or a troll. In other cases inexplicable actions or situations that make no literal or rational sense reflect the inner struggles. To illustrate Sørensen’s central thesis I include, as Appendix B, excerpts from his essay which together comprise (I would 4 Translations here and elsewhere are mine, sometimes developed (with thanks) in consultation with James Moreira.

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hold) an altogether persuasive interpretation of the important “naturemythic” ballad “Harpens Kraft” (“The Power of the Harp”), DgF 40. Of the several English-Scottish ballad types that seem to invite Sørensen’s approach I have chosen four, two of them close cognates of Danish types treated in his essay. In Child 7 “Earl Brand” and 42 “Clerk Colville” (a demon ballad) the protagonists cannot negotiate the “betrothal situation” and go under. But Child 95 “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” and 4 “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight” (another demon ballad) offer success scripts. I ignore all debates on provenance. Texts of the versions chosen are provided in Appendix A. The most straightforward illustration of the Sørensen pattern in English is in Child Type 7 “Earl Brand” or “The Douglas Tragedy,” a counterpart of the Danish “Ribold og Guldborg,” DgF 82. I use version C. Earl Douglas elopes with Lady Margaret; her family is roused, and her father and seven brothers give pursuit. A fight ensues in which the lover kills all the attacking brothers and finally the father. At this crisis the lady bursts out: “Hold your hand, Earl Douglas, she says, “Your strokes are wondrous sair; I may get sweethearts again enow, But a father I’ll ne’er get mair.” (st. 5)

and wipes her father’s wounds. Astonishingly, she somehow has not perceived that her lover is now sore wounded too. They ride on silently, and only when they stop to water the horses does she see Douglas’s blood “running down the water wan.” Upon her outcry he tries to deny he is mortally wounded, but when they reach his gates he asks his family to prepare his death-bed. The lady follows him in death. If one resists figurative readings of ballads one is left with a faintly ridiculous literal narrative here: an unbelievable battle and victory, an impossible ride, and two contrived, symmetrical deaths. Such an inexplicable surface is one of the Sørensen indicators, and these elements become coherent under his schema. Beyond doubt Lady Margaret is at the cusp of the betrothal situation: giving herself to a beloved, both literally and symbolically leaving her old life-situation, and entering an undefined wilderness region of transition to a new. The pursuing brothers and father symbolize her ties to the old self, and her outcry over her father’s death signals on this level that she has not been able completely to sever those ties; the childhood self is not dead. Literally, her family have given Earl Douglas his death-wound;

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Villy Sørensen’s Interpretive Schema and Four English-Scottish Ballads

symbolically, he begins to die “to her” the moment she cannot relinquish the tie to her father. The hopeless impossibility of Margaret’s situation is distilled into one evocative stanza: “Will ye go, fair Margaret?” he said, Will ye go now, or bide?” “Yes I’ll go, sweet William,” she said, For ye’ve left me never a guide.” (st. 7)

She had eloped with him through choice; she continues with him through lack of choice. Her body is with him, her heart and self no longer so. In this liminal region of transition the lady suddenly has lost both potential life-centers – in a sense lost all existential grounding – and her annihilation must soon follow. We proceed to Child Type 42 “Clerk Colville,” which illustrates one of Sørensen’s “demonic” patterns. I use version C because it allows a more straightforward presentation, but other versions could also serve with an additional stage in the analysis. Clerk Colin’s mother tries to forestall his courting “yon gay ladie” at Clyde’s Water. But he will not be thwarted, even knowing that the price is exclusion from the core of the family realm, his mother’s hall and bower. At Clyde’s Water the lady is seen to be a mermaid, and she is erotically aggressive in courting: Come down an [fish] wi me; I’ll row [wind] ye in my arms twa.” (st. 7)

From his encounter with the mermaid Clerk Colin returns home to have his family prepare his death-bed. The persistent mermaid appears – rather incredibly on the literal level – at bedside: “Will ye lie there an die, Clerk Colin, Will ye lie there an die? Or will ye gang [go] to Clyde’s Water To fish in flood wi me?” (st. 10)

And of the two fates, Clerk Colin now prefers to die where he is. Here is the Sørensen category in which erotic love is especially understood as being destructive of the old self and thus demonic. Presenting the beloved as a siren figure symbolizes this, and her most

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liminal of realms, water, symbolizes not only a here unrealized potential transition and rebirth but also the present danger of death. In classic adolescent revolt Clerk Colin rejects family ties and authority. But he has not the psychic wherewithal to negotiate the transition, that is, correctly to understand the erotic and thus perhaps to unspell the alluring but seemingly inimical beloved (as can happen in other ballads – Child 39 “Tam Lin,” for example). At this figurative level leaving home is a one-way process. One can indeed go back again, as Clerk Colin does, but not to exist in the former self, as his death symbolizes. Ballads are often powerful in their bleak inexorability, and Clerk Colin here has the bleakest of choices: annihilation as he was, in the bosom of his family, or annihilation in a destructive erotic, in the bosom of his mermaid. We turn to a success script with Child Type 95 “The Maid Freed from the Gallows,” the most international of our four ballads. It has particularly flourished in the English-speaking world, with offshoots into game-songs and cante-fable. “Flourished,” however, is hardly the word that many scholars choose. Some complain that too much circumstance is “missing” or that the ballad seems inexplicable or mechanistic (Child 1882-98, vol. 2: 346; Friedman 1956: 131; Leach 1955: 295). The voices of Harvard have been especially uncomplimentary, with Whiting calling the ballad “silly and insipid […] the triumph of incremental repetition over sense and taste” (1955: 18-19). Some propose that the “golden token” of a few versions (ball, cup, key) stands for the dishonorable loss of virginity, and thus that the ballad is “about” the protagonist’s being hanged for his crime (Bronson 1962: 448; Reeves 1958: 155n; Freidman 1956: 131). In all this we have almost been trying to read the ballad as a detective story for which we need to restore the circumstances and even the crime. If this is the right track, then the Sørensen schema hardly applies. But it is risky when we learned demand what tradition has agreed not to create. As reflected in the 78 versions in Child (1882-98, vol. 2: 346-55; vol. 4: 481; vol. 5: 233-34, 296) and Bronson (1962: 448-75), the tradition clearly wants intensely stylized, near-abstract works, like the Virginia version discussed here (Bronson 1962: 463-64) – ballads that very much resist literal, circumstantial readings. With two exceptions, this tradition gives us no basis for reconstructing any “crime.” Only four of the 78 versions mention the so-called virginity tokens that so interest the commentators. The dominating motif is rather the protagonist’s call simply for “gold,” “fee,” or “money.”

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Villy Sørensen’s Interpretive Schema and Four English-Scottish Ballads

In nineteen versions there is an imputation of guilt, in the presence of an authority figure like a judge or terms like “fine.” But with one minor exception there is never an admission of guilt. The dominant figure is in fact the hangman, indifferent agent of death, and the antithesis of judgmental authority. Villy Sørensen might suggest that this threatened hanging is better seen as a powerful and self-contained symbol of guiltless destruction. And the perceived “crime” is best seen as the protagonist’s rejection of the old ties, the family authority and order. Love has demonstrated its threatening power by bringing the victim to the symbolic noose, the death of the child, but in the person of the rescuing lover it also reveals its power to redeem, to deliver the protagonist into a new alignment in life. The ballad is distilled into two elemental relationships, in which the literal will stands for symbolic necessity. The family will not help the protagonist in this crisis because symbolically it can not – indeed it must not (if we have the protagonist’s interests at heart). The family’s indifference or enmity expresses symbolic necessity, not naturalistic reality. The sweetheart will and does help the protagonist because only the sweetheart can. The family come to see the protagonist die “to them,” which is to say that symbolically they must die “to the protagonist” to enable the transition. The ubiquitous gold certainly symbolizes redemption. It must above all stand for that which the family will not and in fact can no longer supply, and that which the sweetheart will and can: the new center of life, an encompassing love. In arguing for this inner-symbolic as opposed to an outercircumstantial meaning we find strong support in those features of the ballad which formalize, stylize, and universalize it, and which in general exclude the realistic and circumstantial. The form – parallel almost to the point of abstraction – is the most obvious of these. This heavy stylization also lends a strong inevitability to the narrative. The family is a stylized ur-family without names or reality as individuals. In fact the repetition of the stanzaic “module” for each member makes them almost interchangeable. The sweetheart, arriving last, fills the stanzaic mold the family has so rigidly established – a perfect structural expression of the betrothal situation transition in which the beloved replaces the family in the heart of the protagonist. The final universalizing agent is our ungendered protagonist. For despite Child’s title, and the assumption in the literature, my quick survey

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of the 67 fairly complete versions on my shelves reveals that if anything the title should be “The Man Freed from the Gallows,” or better yet, “The Lover Freed.” The tally reads: female protagonist 15, male 19, not gendered, 34. This sorts perfectly with Sørensen’s essentially ungendered main thesis. An example of successful negotiation of the crisis in a demon ballad is our fourth text, “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight,” Child Type 4 (close cognate of DgF 183 “Kvindemorderen”), version A. On the literal level this ballad presents an attractive, weapon-wielding figure of feminine defense or retribution. At this level the appeal of its strong, turn-the-tables ironies just about balances the oft-noted ridiculousness of the resolution: on the very threshold of the intended crime, the murderous elf-knight goes to sleep in Lady Isabel’s lap, and moreover, at her invitation! The seemingly inexplicable, of course, is one of Sørensen’s “indicators,” and his schema helps us see that the power of this ballad is in its figurative dimension. The elf-knight is not an ordinary predator but instead appears as a response to the heroine’s erotic yearning. The sound of the horn is a metaphor for erotic attraction, and her instant response suggests a kind of projection. The conflicts will occur in the figurative, inner landscape of the psyche, just as the knight’s elfin “otherness” suggests. The elf-knight “takes” the heroine to the greenwood of liminality, but symbolically she has committed herself to enter this forest of transition and threat the moment she answers the magical erotic call. The elf-knight is threatening only away from Isabel’s childhood condition of family and home and in the well-known greenwood symbolizing transition, confusion, and danger. This threat represents the heroine’s new understanding of his capability, just as his first appearance expressed her discovery of her own erotic capability. Once sexuality is admitted to our nature, we find to our dismay, in Sørensen’s terms, that the new condition also gives others fundamental power over our being. Thus the demonic knight stands for the power of male sexuality and its threat to displace the heroine’s former self. One’s sexuality is successfully affirmed finally in coping with the challenges it brings. Lady Isabel’s actions make perfect sense on our figurative level. She discovers that she can fight magic with magic – the “Sma charm” with which she renders helpless her would-be destroyer. She employs mother-wit and nerve, but her magic is also largely a symbol for her own erotic power – her sexuality, as the presence of the stroking and the motif of sleeping in the lap insist. Intimacy is the most indisputable term for the strategy she discovers, interestingly enough.

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Thus, figuratively, the heroine ultimately controls the threatening power of the genie she has raised, and this by discovering that sexuality can be an integral part of the self. Lady Isabel negotiates her crisis in a way that does not wholly exemplify any single pattern in Sørensen’s essay. Her center has not been shifted to a beloved; she has instead shifted her own center and, within the process of self-preservation, established a certain erotic independence. Most notably, the concept of our version presents neither a return to the family seat nor a transfer to the home of a beloved in its final setting symbolism. Rather, the once perilous greenwood has become the site of Isabel’s self-transformation and self-sufficient triumph, the setting itself transformed in a sense. Her survival is not defined in terms of allegiance to others.5 Any valid interpretive system should be capable of ongoing development, and I believe the present analysis of “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight” demonstrates both the viability and the adaptability of Sørensen’s concepts. Let me close by noting the things I find compelling about Villy Sørensen’s interpretive system. First, many ballads are indisputably coming-of-age narratives and ask for a searching interpretation of this lifetransition. Second, the system escapes the unnecessary limitations of the literal; it both asserts and explores the figurative dimension, so often ignored. Third, it answers the call from important voices ranging from Holger Nygaard to Alan Dundes (2002: 382-83) for more attention to the meaning in folk narrative, in addition to provenance, distribution, age, and performance. (It is indicative that the only interpretive work on the Scandinavian ballads of comparable scope is Schelde Jacobsen’s extended essay – in a book on Ibsen [1988: 27-170]!) Fourth, Sørensen’s approach helps us define the serious meaning we often sense in certain ballads behind the literal surface that is pointless, unreal, magical – inexplicable, to use his term. Finally, he helps us see the art of certain ballads as a powerful expressive art: it is not didactic; it creates no aesthetic beauties for their own sake; it provides no tragic illumination; it simply expresses certain arduous realities of a fundamental human transition.

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Only Child B and Bronson 23, 28A share this concept in their deployment of settings and final action. (Child D has the family share in the heroine’s triumph.) Most of the remaining more or less “complete” versions share a different narrative conception in which the heroine returns home and must let her transgression guilt trump her triumph, usually by bribing the would-be voice of reality, the parrot, to keep silent. Of course this sub-set of Child Type 4 invites its own, somewhat different interpretation within the Sørensen schema.

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Works Cited Abrahamson, Povl and Erik Dal, eds. 1965. The Heart Book: The Tradition of the Danish Ballad. Copenhagen: Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Bronson, Bertrand, ed. 1962. The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Child, Francis James, ed. 1882-98. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Dal, Erik, ed. 1962. Danske viser: Gamle folkeviser, skæmt, efterklang. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger. —. ed. 1967. Danish Ballads and Folk Songs. Trans. Henry Meyer. New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation. Danmarks gamle Folkeviser. 1853-1976. Ed. Svend Grundtvig, Axel Olrik, H. Grüner Nielsen, Erik Dal, et al. Copenhagen: Samfundet til den danske Literaturs Fremme og Universitets-Jubilæets danske Samfund. Dundes, Alan. 2002. “Projective Inversion in the Ancient Egyptian ‘Tale of Two Brothers’.” Journal of American Folklore 115: 378-94. Friedman, Albert B, ed. 1956. The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World. New York: Viking. Harrits, Flemming. 1969. “Folkeviseproblemer – med særlig henblik på Villy Sørensen.” Kritik 10: 27-51. Jacobsen, Per Schelde and Barbara Fass Leavy. 1988. Ibsen’s Forsaken Merman: Folklore in the Late Plays. New York: New York University Press. Leach, MacEdward, ed. 1955. The Ballad Book. New York: Barnes. Moreira, James. 2003. “Villy Sørensen’s Contributions to Ballad Studies.” Kommission für Volksdichtung: Thirty-third International Ballad Conference, June 24-28, 2003, Austin, Texas. Duplicated handout. Nygaard, Holger O. 1961. “The Critic and the Ballad” in Studies in Honor of John C. Hodges and Alwin Thaler. Ed. Richard Beale Davis and John Lievsay. Tennessee Studies in Literature, Special Number. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press. Pp. 11-18. Reeves, James, ed. 1958. The Idiom of the People. London: Heinemann. Rossel, Sven H., ed. 1982. Scandinavian Ballads. WITS II, No. 2. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Department of Scandinavian Studies. Syndergaard, Larry E. 1988. “Realizations of the Feminine Self in Three Traditional Ballads from Scotland and Denmark.” Michigan Academician 20: 85-100.

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Sørensen, Villy. 1959. “Folkeviser og forlovelser” in Digtere og dæmoner: fortolkninger or vurderinger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Whiting, Bartlett Jere, ed. 1955. Traditional British Ballads. New York: Appleton.

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Appendix A: Ballad Texts Child Type 7: Earl Brand (Version C) 1 ‘Rise up, rise up, my seven brave sons, And dress in your armour so bright; Earl Douglas wil hae Lady Margaret awa Before that it be light. 2 ‘Arise, arise, my seven brave sons, And dress is your armour so bright; It shall never be said that a daughter of mine Shall go with an earl or a knight.’ 3 ‘O will ye stand, fair Margaret’ he says, ‘And hold my milk-white steed, Till I fight your father and seven brethren, In yonder pleasant mead?’ 4 She stood and held his milk-white steed, She stood trembling with fear, Until she saw her seven brethren fall, And her father that loved her dear. 5 ‘Hold your hand, Earl Douglas,’ she says, ‘Your strokes are wonderous sair; I may get sweethearts again enew, But a father I’ll ne’er get mair.’ 6 She took out a handkerchief Was made o’ the cambrick fine, And aye she wiped her father’s bloody wounds, And the blood sprang up like wine. 7 ‘Will ye go, fair Margaret?’ he said, ‘Will ye now go, or bide?’ ‘Yes, I’ll go sweet William,’ she said, ‘For ye’ve left me never a guide. 8 ‘If I were to go to my mother’s house, A welcome guest I would be;

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But for the bloody deed that’s done this day I’ll rather go with thee.’ 9 He lifted her on a milk-white steed And himself on a dapple gray; They drew their hats out over their face, And they both went weeping away. 10 They rode, they rode, and they better rode, Till they came to yon water wan; They lighted down to gie their horse a drink Out of the running stream. 11 ‘I am afraid, Earl Douglas,’ she said, ‘I am afraid ye are slain; I think I see your bonny heart’s blood Running down the water wan.’ 12 ‘Oh no, oh no, fair Margaret,’ he said, ‘Oh no, I am not slain; It is but the scad of my scarlet cloak Runs down the water wan.’ 13 He mounted her on a milk-white steed And himself on a dapple gray, And they have reached Earl Douglas’ gates Before the break of day. 14 ‘O rise, dear mother, and make my bed, And make it braid and wide. And lay me down to take my rest, And at my back my bride.’ 15 She has risen and made his bed, She made it braid and wide; She laid him down to take his rest, And at his back his bride. 16 Lord William died ere it was day, Lady Margaret on the morrow; Lord William died through loss of blood and wounds,

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Fair Margaret died with sorrow. 17 The one was buried in Mary’s kirk, The other in Mary’s quire; The one sprang up a bonnie bush, And the other a bonny brier. 18 These twa grew, and these twa threw, Till they came to the top, And when they could na farther gae, The coost the lovers’ knot.

Child Type 42: Clerk Colville (Version C) 1 Clerk Colin and his mother dear Were in the garden green; The band that was about her neck Cost Colin pounds fifteen; The belt about her middle sae sma Cost twice as much again. 2 ‘Forbidden gin ye wad be, love Colin, Forbidden gin ye wad be, And gang nae mair to Clyde’s water To court yon gay ladie.’ 3 ‘Forbid me frae yon ha, mother, Forbid me frae yon bour, But forbid me not frae yon ladie; She’s fair as ony flour.’ 4 ‘Forbidden I winna be, mother, Forbidden I winna be, For I maun gang to Clyde’s water, To court yon gay ladie.’ 5 An he is on his saddle set, As fast as he could win, An he is on to Clyde’s water, By the lee licht o the moon.

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6 An when he cam to the Clyde’s water He lichted lowly down, An there he saw the mermaiden, Washin silk upon a stane. 7 ‘Come down, come down, now, Clerk Colin, Come down and [fish] wi me; ‘I’ll row ye in my arms twa, An a foot I sanna jee.’ 8 ‘O mother, mother mak my bed, And, sister, lay me doun, An brother, tak my bow an shoot For my shooting is done.’ 9 He wasna weel laid in his bed, Nor yet weel fa’en asleep, When up and started the mermaiden, Just at Clerk Colin’s feet. 10 ‘Will ye lie there and die, Clerk Colin, Will ye lie there and die? Or will ye gang to Clyde’s water To fish in flood wi me?’ 11 ‘I will lie here and die,’ he said, ‘I will lie here and die; In spite of all the deils in hell I will lie here and die.’

Child Type 95: The Maid Freed from the Gallows (Bronson 38) 1 Hangman, hangman, hold your rope, Hold it for a while. I think I see my mother coming, Many and many a mile. 2 Mother, oh, Mother, have you any gold Gold that will set me free? Or have you come to see me hung

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On this willow tree? 3 No, I haven’t any gold, Gold that will set you free, But I have come to see you hung, On this willow tree. 4 Hangman, hangman, hold your rope, Hold it for a while. I think I see my father coming, Many and many a mile. 5 Father, oh, Father, have you any gold Gold that will set me free? Or have you come to see me hung On this willow tree? 6 No, I haven’t any gold, Gold that will set you free, But I have come to see you hung, On this willow tree. 7 Hangman, hangman, hold your rope, Hold it for a while. I think I see my sister coming, Many and many a mile. 8 Sister, oh, Sister, have you any gold Gold that will set me free? Or have you come to see me hung On this willow tree? 9 No, I haven’t any gold, Gold that will set you free, But I have come to see you hung, On this willow tree. 10 Hangman, hangman, hold your rope, Hold it for a while. I think I see my brother coming, Many and many a mile.

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11 Brother, oh, Brother, have you any gold Gold that will set me free? Or have you come to see me hung On this willow tree? 12 No, I haven’t any gold, Gold that will set you free, But I have come to see you hung, On this willow tree. 13 Hangman, hangman, hold your rope, Hold it for a while. I think I see my true love coming, Many and many a mile. 14 True love, true love, have you any gold Gold that will set me free? Or have you come to see me hung On this willow tree? 15 Yes I have brought you gold, Gold that will set you free, And I have not come to see you hung, On this willow tree.

Child Type 4: Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight (Version A) 1 Fair Lady Isabel sits in her bower sewing, Aye as the gowans grow gay There she heard the elf-knight blawing his horn. The first morning in May. 2 ‘If I had yon horn that I hear blawing, And yon elf-knight to sleep in my bosom.’ 3 This maiden had scarcely these words spoken, Till in at her window the elf-knight has luppen. 4 ‘It’s a very strange matter, fair maiden,’ said he, ‘I canna blaw my horn but ye call on me.

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5 ‘But will ye go to yon greenwood side? If ye canna gang, I will cause you to ride.’ 6 He leapt on a horse, and she on another, And they rode on to the greenwood together. 7 ‘Light down, light down, lady Isabel,’ said he, ‘We are come o the place where ye are to die. 8 ‘Hae mercy, hae mercy, kind sir, on me, Till ance my dear father and mother I see.’ 9 ‘Seven king’s-daughters here hae I slain, And ye shall be the eight o them.’ 10 ‘O sit down a while, lay your head on my knee, That we may hae some rest before that I die.’ 11 She stroakd him sae fast, the nearer he did creep, Wi a small charm she lulld him fast asleep. 12 Wi his ain sword-belt sae fast as she ban him, Wi his ain dag-dark saw sair as she dang him. 13 ‘If seven king’s-daughters here ye hae slain, Lye ye here, a husband to them a’.’

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Appendix B: Villy Sørensen on DgF 40: Harpens Kraft [The Power of the Harp] Excerpts from Sørensen 1959: 157-203: In its original character, which is near the mythical, art guides the human to his or her limit [of understanding] and confronts him or her with the forces which lurk on the other side […] forces which in the times closer to the world’s creation were incarnate in demonic shapes, for the demonic is precisely the perilous that frightens and yet entices the imagination (160). The demons do not tempt the human day in, day out; they first loom forth when he or she is in a particular, critical situation, the betrothal situation. And should one at once wonder that such a promising situation can be regarded as “critical,” why, it is fully evident in “The Power of the Harp” that it can be regarded thus – and that is something one can wonder at. William and his fair bride-to-be are soon to be married and are passing time playing at tables. The bride sheds tears; the bridegroom wonders at this, and he asks dolefully whether she finds something to object to in him, whether he is not rich and well-born enough, and she answers that certainly he is rich enough. She even adds that which might be required in an age when the wish of the family was often the law to the child, “And it’s by my will I’ve become your maid.” She weeps nonetheless, without rational grounds – but then she explains them, seemingly irrational, herself: I cry much more for Blithe [Bridge] Over which I must ride; There sank down my sisters two That time they would their wedding hold. William is reassured by this explanation, not because he understands it, but because he doesn’t: he thinks he can avoid the danger by widening the bridge and by letting his bride be surrounded by 212 knights and squires in the wedding procession. But though all these gentlemen do their best, the maiden tumbles into the water anyway (which is a nicely ironic comment on all those well-equipped men who so readily soothe anxious women). It afterwards turns out that in the river the bridge crosses there is a troll from whom this demonic attraction emanates. But clearly the troll is especially interested in maidens about to be married and the mysterious

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bridge he lurks under can best be conceived of as the transition from one state to another, from single status to married. And the transition is not so gentle as the literal meaning of the bridge name – Blithe – might suggest (164-5). It is precisely the function of these fate-ballads to avert the danger by conjuring it up, to pacify the demons by singing of them. The close of “The Power of the Harp” exemplifies this positive function […]: William strikes the harp and lures the troll forth with the stolen bride. Only after she has fallen and been restored can he place her on his own horse, which never occurred to him before [my emphasis] […]. This closing […] witnesses a new understanding: that the confrontation with the demon is certainly escapable but does not need to mean the person’s final destruction, only his or her destruction as he or she was before. In the betrothal situation people wish to give themselves up fully, and yet grow anxious – over losing themselves. The original confrontation between person and demon is here interpreted as a (temporary) conflict within the individual, and thus the belief in fate is transformed into psychology, the myth into poetry (167-8). [Sørensen’s terms “original confrontation” and “myth” reflect his idea that art takes over some functions myth had in earlier ages.]

DgF Type 40: Harpens Kraft [The Power of the Harp] (Version A) Trans. E.M. Smith-Dampier, A Book of Danish Ballads, ed. Axel Olrik, 1939. 1 Sir William and his plighted maid (The string is all of gold) All in her bower at dice they played So meltingly he harped before his maiden 2 Whenas the dice dropped, one and all, So many a tear did the maid let fall. 3 ‘Now dost thou weep o’er the gold so red, Or weepest thou for that we shall wed?’ 4 ‘Dost weep that I lack both land and fee, And deem me no fitting mate for thee?’

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5 ‘I weep not o’er the gold so red, And ‘tis with my good-will we twain shall wed. 6 ‘I weep not for lack of land and fee, And deem thee a fitting mate for me. 7 ‘For Blithe Bridge I cry That I must pass thereby, 8 ‘For there they drowned my sisters twain, As they rode o’er with bridal train.’ 9 ‘Now weep not for that bridge of dread, By all my swains shalt thou be sped. 10 ‘All my swains shall by thee ride, A hundred gallants on either side. 11 ‘And this will I do to honour thee, Twelve knights shall lead thy courser free.’ 12 He shod her steed with gold so red, And forth they fared to the bridge of dread. 13 But when they rode o’er the bridge eftsoon Then stumbled her steed on the golden shoon. 14 From the golden shoe a nail was gone, And down fell the maid in the water wan. 15 The knights they grasped at her saddle bow, But they might not help the maiden so. 16 The maiden stretched forth her lilywhite hand ‘My noble lord, now help me to land!’ 17 ‘Call God and the Holy Ghost to aid, For I cannot help thee, mine own true maid!’ 18 Sir William cried to hid page so bold: ‘Now bring to me my harp of gold!’

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19 Sir William took his harp in hand, And went beside the stream to stand. 20 He played so soft and low, No bird moved on the bough. 21 He played so loud and clear ‘Twas heard both far and near. 22 From oaken-tree the bough was torn, And from the lowing cow the horn. 23 The bark sprang from the birk, And the vane from Our Lady’s kirk. 24 So strong the spell, so pure the charm, He played the bride from the Kelpie’s arm. 25 Down to the deeps did William play, Till the Kelpie rose to the light of day. 26 He rose up from beneath With the maiden in his teeth. 27 And not alone his bride, But both her sisters fair beside. 28 ‘Now William, take thy bride to thee, But let me rule o’er my stream so free!’ 29 ‘Right gladly I take my bride to me, But ne’er shalt thou rule thy stream so free.’ 30 In the scarlet fair he lapped his bride, And set her up on his steed of pride. 31 Now forth they fared o’er hill and dale, And gaily they drank the blithe bridale.

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BY FAITH ALONE? THE BLACK BOOK, KEY TO POPULAR PIETY IN THE WAKE OF THE REFORMATION1 KATHLEEN STOKKER

“This book is a dangerous object to have in the house; if you don’t get rid of it before you die, you will not be saved” —Warning in an 1890 Black Book2

The satanic reputation of the Black Book confuses and even disappoints those who encounter these books’ actual contents for the first time. Contrary to their diabolic image, the Black Books’ incantations far more often conjure up the Holy Trinity than the cursed Lucifer.3 Indeed many Black Book formulas originated as Catholic prayers intended to ease childbirth, staunch excessive bleeding, cure arthritis, or soothe pain and sprains. Not withstanding their seeming innocence, these very formulas unleashed frenzied accusations of witchcraft that sometimes ended with their users’ being burned at the stake. The radical inconsistency between the Black Books’ terrifying reputation and their tame reality, though often noted, has gone unexamined. Such an examination, this article argues, reveals the Black Book as an important resource in understanding Norwegian religious experience in the wake of the Reformation. Black Book formulas flourished during the post-Reformation period. 1

This article was a formative study for a chapter in my book Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land (2007). Given Niels Ingwersen’s formative role in my interest in folklore, it is appropriate that it appear in this volume. 2 Quoted in Sæbö 1966: 33-34. 3 Of the 1576 black book formulas collected by Anton Christian Bang in his classic study, Norske Hæxeformularer (1901-02), only 8 give instructions for releasing the devil and these 8 come from only 5 Black Books (Espeland 1974: 26).

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So did Witch Trials.4 Indeed Witch Trial transcripts constitute an important source of the Black Book formulas now known.5 Such a transcript records the formula confessed on May 30, 1670 by the accused witch Lisbet Nypan. She freely admitted her customary use of this incantation to treat people for grep (arthritis or rheumatism):6 Kristus gikk seg til kirke med bok i haand, kom da selve jomfru Maria gaaende og spurte hva sönnen gjorde. Jeg har faatt sterkt grep, min velsignede mor. Hun svarte da: Jeg leser deg ved sterkt grep, höstegrep, innvollsgrep, rygggrep, og brystgrep, av hold og ben i strand og sten, i Gud faders, sönns og hellig aands navn (Næss 1984: 41). [As Christ walked to church with book in hand, along came the Virgin Mary and asked about his health. I am afflicted with serious rheumatism, my blessed mother. To this she answered: I will read incantations for you, for serious rheumatism, autumnal rheumatism, intestinal rheumatism, back and chest rheumatism, from joints and bone to shore and stone, in the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.]

Typical of its genre, this formula presents a brief epic portraying Christ being cured of the very condition for which the sufferer has enlisted the healer’s help. The Virgin Mary often appears in these formulas as a miracle worker able to cure her son – and by extension the individual for whom the formula is read. The incantation includes the disease’s various permutations to increase the chance of covering the precise form that plagues the sufferer. Arising in a time when reading itself appeared magical to most, the formula’s image of Christ carrying a book conjured up its own power and fits well in a post-Reformation context. Problematic in that regard are the formula’s reference to the Virgin Mary and its concluding words that echo 4 Accusations of witchcraft increased in number in the mid-1500s and ended ca. 1700. The names of 860 women and men in Norway accused of trolldom (witchcraft) are known. All witch trials in Norway except for one (in 1325) took place after the Reformation. 350 of those whose names are known were executed for trolldom in Norway. Hans Eyvind Næss estimates on the basis of these numbers that in all ca. 1750 individuals were accused and ca. 20% of them executed. (Næss 1984: 16). 5 The other two sources are the Black Book manuscripts still existent and formulas recorded as oral tradition by 19th century folklorists. 6 Grep (gikt) referred to pain and inflammation of the joints and muscles, including arthritis and gout, common afflictions of the time.

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the Catholic mass. (Black Book formulas regularly contain this invocation of the trinity, sometimes in Latin, but more frequently abbreviated, “i tre navn”, in three names.) Black Book formulas often accompanied a ritual whose power they were intended to enhance. Nypan testified that she would read the formula over salt which she spread over the afflicted person (the warmth of her hands, along with the sufferer’s faith in the cure, no doubt providing a measure of relief). Between each reading of the formula she would say the Lord’s Prayer, then repeat both the formula and the prayer for a total of three times each. When the trial continued on August 10, Nypan was asked “Om hun med sit vidende har tjent Satan med de forargerlige og utiladelige Bönner” (if she had knowingly served Satan with these disgusting and illicit prayers). Denying that she was in any way serving Satan, she asked how saying these formulas could possibly be viewed as such “efterdi det bare var Guds ord” (since they were, after all, merely the word of God) (Baetzmann 1965: 14, 21). The authorities saw it differently. Spurred by the post-Reformation emphasis on Scripture that had prompted adoption of the Decalogue as law, they regarded Nypan’s words a grievous breach of the Second Commandment injunction against taking the name of the Lord in vain, and condemned Lisbet Nypan to be burned at the stake, a judgment they executed on September 5, 1670. Can we believe Nypan’s denial? Given the frightful consequences of being convicted, she certainly had good reason to lie. If she was not knowingly serving Satan, what did motivate her practice of what people of all classes commonly regarded as witchcraft?

Catholic Remnants To answer these questions we must explore the context in which she used the formula. In its supplication to the Virgin Mary, repetition of words from the Catholic Mass, and ritual use of the Lord’s Prayer, Nypan’s incantation certainly had no place in Norway after the Church Ordinance of 1539 had forbidden all such Catholic usages. In this way it resembles the pilgrimages to hellige kilder (sacred springs, often dedicated to Olav or other saints), which despite the Ordinance not only continued but experienced a renaissance after the Reformation. Archeological finds of 17th century coins along with votive offerings of silver or pewter buttons and clasps retrieved from these ubiquitous springs document their

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continued visitation, as do oral accounts telling of people well into the 19th century keeping bottles of this water which they “used like any other medicine, rubbed on for pain and sprains, swallowed for internal ailments” (Mörch 1932: 106). A few of these healing springs were located near lovekirker, churches which had the reputation that prayers said at them would be answered if a gift were promised (å love = to promise) to the church. Being outside State Church supervision, the lovekirker (also known as gavekirker) received all their inventory and support through such votive offerings, most often proffered in hope of or thanksgiving for the cure of a medical condition. About such a church, Grinaker kirke in Hadeland, the noted pastor and composer of hymns, M.B. Landstad, wrote in a September 6, 1825 diary entry: “Til denne Gavekirke har man en særdeles Tiltroe. Hvo, der er syg giver til den for at blive frisk igjen” (In this “gavekirke” they have a special faith. Those who are sick give a gift to it to regain their health). Relating what he terms “et morsomt Bevis paa Böndernes uhyre Overtroe her” (amusing evidence of the local peasants’ enormous superstition), Landstad further reports: En Kone kom her forleden med et overmaade sygt Barn og troede ved et magisk Experiment i Kirken at faae det helbredt. Tre Mænd gik Kl. 12 om Natten i Kirken med Barnet, som de, uden at forstyrre den hellige Taushed med et Ord, skulle svöbe tre Gange ind i Alterdugen, derpaa lægge det hen i Prædikestolen og forlade Kirken. Hvis Barnet nu graad havde deres Experiment lyktes og Barnet skulde blive friskt igjen, i modsat Fald skule det döe (Alm 1982: 409). [A woman came here recently with an extremely ill child whom she believed could be healed by a magical experiment conducted in the church. Three men brought the child into the church at midnight. Without disturbing the sacred silence with a single word, they wound the altar cloth around the child three times, then placed the child in the pulpit and left the church. If the child now cried their experiment would succeed and the child would get well, if not, the child would die.]

The “experiment” illustrates the prevailing belief in the healing power of sacred objects such as the altar, communion elements, and church bells. This was the same belief that underlay pilgrimages to hellige kilder and lovekirker, accounting for the wide distribution of both in the Norwegian landscape. The best known of the lovekirker was probably Röldal

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stavechurch to which St. Hans Eve pilgrimages continued until authorities put an end to them in 1835.7 The authorities’ negative view of these folk religious expressions have long obscured their true nature. While Landstad dismisses the healing attempt he observed as “amusing superstition,” many Lutheran clergy took great offence at the continuance of such Catholic usages, considering them a rejection of Lutheran doctrine. Others viewed them as “berre stivna former i ord og sed, som lite eller ingenting har med åndsliv å gjera” (petrified forms in word and ritual having little to do with genuine religious feeling), to quote the church historian and folklorist Andreas Seierstad (1938: 31-32). Lutheran authorities repeatedly passed laws to do away with these Catholic usages, but with little success. The pilgrimages persisted well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but not until the 1980s did these customs receive an analysis that saw them from their practitioners’ point of view. Studying the lovekirker, Anne Eriksen concurred in 1986 with Arne Bugge Amundsen’s 1981 study of sacred springs. Both found these phenomena to be sincere expressions of “folkelig fromhet” (popular piety) by which the masses wished to preserve the possibility of personal contact with the deity, especially the two-way nature of that communication, that the Lutheran doctrine of Justification by faith alone seemed to deny8 (Eriksen 1986, Amundsen 1981).

Black Book Formulas and Popular Piety Rather than empowering people as Luther intended, the doctrine that salvation rested entirely upon the purity of each individual’s faith proved threatening. While they had formerly been able to atone for their sins by doing penance – saying extra prayers, going on a pilgrimage, making a sacrifice – the Lutheran church demanded unquestioning faith. The postReformation perception of the individual’s inability to take concrete 7

Grinaker stavkirke was torn down in 1866; though many other stavechurches suffered a similar fate at that time, the authorities may have been especially willing to see this one go, as they were with St. Thomas kirke på Filefjell, because of its associations with the people’s “Overtroe”. 8 Erikson says that since it was the Catholic expression of this type of communication that was best known immediately after the Reformation, these manifestations were used without necessarily expressing desire to keep Catholic theology.

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actions toward achieving their own salvation I have elsewhere examined in legends of the Black Book minister. These legends express the underlying view that the Lutheran minister mediates salvation: only the Black Book, which the minister alone can use with impunity, these legends contend, contains the power required to exorcise the Devil from the sinners’ midst (Stokker 1995). The people themselves stand powerless to achieve salvation by means of their works. Notwithstanding the Lutheran church’s endeavors to shorten the distance between the clergy and the congregation by doing away with the priests’ ornate vestments, conducting the service in the vernacular, and widening the opening between the church’s nave and choir, these legends thus suggest that their tellers perceived their salvation as more out of their control than ever before and mediated by the minister. Wanting to maintain the direct contact with God which they felt Lutheranism denied, parishioners continued their pilgrimages to sacred springs and lovekirker, and for the same reason, I would argue, they continued to rely on Catholic prayers and healing rituals. In these practices they found an indispensable source of hope in a period without doctors, medicine, hospitals, apothecaries, or surgeons.9 The clergy’s acceptance of these healing rituals disappeared with the Reformation and so did the charitable monasteries that had formerly sheltered the sick. Having no alternatives, people continued to seek out sacred places and holy objects until the late 19th century, sincerely believing in their power to cure disease. Describing the process from the believers’ point of view, Andreas Yngstad, born 1879, reports: Far fortalde at farmor mi vart hardt sjuk ein gong og låg i feber. Dokter fanst ikkje på bygdom i dei tider. Da gjaldt det å få heilagråd frå kyrkja. 9

Seventeenth century Norwegians had to rely on their own devices. Even in Oslo medical help was unavailable. Although one can read of a “hospital” existing in l624, it was actually the city poorhouse serving as an infirmary that provided shelter but no medical treatment. Little medical knowledge had yet come to light. Though Harvey had demonstrated circulation of the blood and Leuwenhoeck had invented the microscope, it was not until the late 1800s through the work of Lister and Pasteur that people began acquiring the rudiments of modern medical knowledge, such as germ theory. Meanwhile Black Book formulas remained in use; the absence or expense of other remedies as well as tradition – previous generations had depended on them – kept them in demand. During this period such professional medical care as did exist was strictly limited to blood letting and enemas (Holck 1976: 133).

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The Black Book, Key to Popular Piety in the Wake of the Reformation En mann frå grannelaget gjekk da opp i tårnet på Salbergskyrkja midnattstider ei mörk haustnatt og skov noko eir og metallsponar av kyrkjeklokka og tok det med seg til Ystad og gav farmor det. Da kom ho seg, og frisk vart ho10 (Björlvik and Sandnes 1969: 128). [Dad told about a time when his mother was seriously ill with a high fever. There was no doctor in the community then. The thing to do was to obtain a sacred remedy from the church. So one of the neighborhood men went up into the tower of Salberg church at midnight on a dark fall night and scraped some rust and shavings from the church bell which he brought to Ystad and gave to my grandmother. She began to improve and eventually made a full recovery.]

Like Yngstad’s grandparents, people regularly turned to their family and neighbors for medical help; often this assistance included the curative formulas of the type used by Nypan and eventually collected into so-called Black Books. Seeming to permit direct access to the divinity, these formulas eliminated the middleman minister. They thereby seemed to restore the balance of power parishioners thought was lost when the Reformation took away their ability to work toward their own salvation by 10

Supplying additional context, a similar incident is reported in a Lillehammer history describing the period 1860s-1880s: [My Grandmother] had been baking in the night before Christmas, together with some of her tenants’ wives. She went alone to another house, to fetch something in the clear moonlight of the night. Then she espied a little child’s shirt, hanging ghost-like, displayed and glittering in the pale rays of the moon in the steeple of Garmo Stave Church. At the same time she heard a scraping sound from the church bells. But – grandma instantly knew the meaning of this process: Someone was seeking “remedy” for the formidable rachitis: Some tiny grains from the church bell were to “cure” her little child, whose tiny shirt hung displayed in the church steeple (Sveine). The belief that cures could come from association with religious personages and objects has much biblical support, e.g., Mark 5:24-29: And a great crowd followed him [Christ]. And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

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pilgrimages, prayers and other penance. The deep need to restore this balance of power is attested by the formulas’ longevity; reminiscent of Nypan’s the following formula was recorded in both Bergen and Ringerike in 1885: Mot gikt: Vor Herre Jesus og Jomfru Maria gik sig Veien fram, saa mödte de en jektbrödet Mand. “Hvorfor er du saa bleg, hvorfor er du saa blaa?” “Jeg maa vel være bleg, jeg maa vel være blaa, for Jegta har brödet mig 9 fuldte aar omkring.” “Sæt dig ned,” sagde vor Herre Jesus, “jeg skal dig selv böde Jegta otor Hold og i Mold og i Stok og Sten N.N. til den du aatgjör det er hverken til Mörk eller men.” I 3 N.11 [For rheumatism: As the Lord Jesus and the Virgin Mary walked down the road, they met a man broken by arthritis. “Why are you so pale, why are you so blue?” “It’s no wonder I’m pale, it’s no wonder I’m blue, for arthritis has plagued me for 9 full years.” “Sit down,” said the Lord Jesus, “I will myself cast your arthritis: out of flesh and into dust and into sticks and stones N.N. [the sufferer’s name] to the one you heal it lurks no more in darkness or to cause injury.” In three names.]

The belief that sickness can be conjured out of a person and into an animal or object (such as dust, sticks, and stones here and into shore and stone in Nypan’s formula) is a commonplace of international folk medicine and also occurs in the Bible. There Christ cures a man of insanity by casting out his demons into a herd of swine.12 In addition to the Virgin Mary and Christ, Norwegian Black Book 11

Quoted in Grambo 1979: 104-105. The story is told in all three synoptic gospels: Matthew 8: 28-34, Mark 5: 1-20, Luke 8: 26-39.

12

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formulas frequently invoke the name and image of St. Peter as the source of power to be tapped by the healer and applied to the case at hand, as in this formula for curing blindness recorded in a Black Book, owned by Pål Jostugun (born 1826), from Kvam in Gudbrandsdal: At Læse blemen af öyet Jesus og St. Peder gik veien frem der mötte de en blin mand den gjör mig mine öyen gode som din moder gjorde Du hendis öyne gode gjorde i 3 n. og Fader vor til ende.13 [To read a blister from the eye: Jesus and St. Peder were walking down the road when they met a blind man. [“]Make my eyes good like your mother helped you make her eyes well[”]. In three names and the entire Our Father.]

Are these formulas’ Catholic references merely “petrified remnants” without genuine religious content, as Seierstad asserts? Did they constitute a revolt against Lutheranism as other clergymen accused? Or do they represent sincere popular piety?

The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses To answer these questions we must turn to the folk’s own lore. While many referred to collections of formulas and incantations as the “Black Book,” others called them the “Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses” (following the five of the Pentateuch).14 Legends of these books tell that the clergy removed them from the Bible when it was translated into the vernacular, an absence characterized as a loss, even a deprivation: “In the 6th and 7th Book of Moses they had the old Egyptian magic. But the ministers didn’t want to let people learn this magic and so they took these books out of the Bible.”15 (The reference to “the old Egyptian magic” 13

Quoted in Espeland 1974: 55-56. It appears, says Adolf Steen, that the 6th and 7th books of Moses were put together from older magical writings in the 1600s or 1700s. Although Steen’s article argues that the Black Book was not identical to the 6th and 7th Books of Moses, in the popular perception they were one and the same, and are being so treated here (Steen 1965: 65-88). 15 Norsk Folkeinnsamling, Institutt for kultur studier, Universitetet i Oslo (NFS) Knut Strompdals opptegneser, quoted in Steen, 67. 14

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alludes to Acts 7:22: “And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.” Several Black Book formulas trace their origins to the so-called Egyptian magical papyri, a collection of ancient cures.) In the legend fragment quoted, ministers are portrayed as coming between the people and their religion; some legend variants articulate even more emphatically the Reformation’s role in the loss of the 6th and 7th books of Moses, identifying Martin Luther as the responsible agent: “Den sjette mosebok satt ikkje Luther om; for den boka handlet om trollskap” [Luther didn’t translate the sixth book of Moses for that book was about magic].16 What a contrast between the popular perception of Lutheranism and Luther’s intentions! Instead of seeing vernacular translation of the Bible as a way of making the Scriptures more readily accessible to them, postReformation Norwegians saw it as a deprivation. Many responded to this loss by withholding their tithes, an action Olaf Kolsrud ascribes to their having “sakna deira aandelege godar som den gamle kyrkja hadde trygda dem for deira gaavor og avgifter – sjelemesser og avlat, medan den nye berre kravde dei samme avgiftene uten aa gjöre slike vederlag” [missed the spiritual goods which the old church had secured to them in return for their gifts and fees – soul masses and indulgences, while the new religion demanded the same fees without giving such recompense] (Kolstad 1939: 25). Among the “aandelege godar” they had lost was certainly the peace of mind that had accompanied church-sanctioned healing rituals and formulas. But to what extent did the people’s continued use of the healing formulas and other Catholic practices constitute a revolt against Lutheranism?

Wittenberg Once again the folk’s own lore provides the best insights. A legend 16

NFS Edv. Langset IV 148 (quoting Jartrud T. Hauen in Rennebu, 24 June 1921). At Frei, Langset heard the following from P. J. Myraa on May 15, 1916: “Da finnene kom hadde de med seg den egyptiske trolldomskunsten til Naari. Det var för Luther renset biblen. Den hadde da sju moseböker og i dem var hele den egyptiske trolldomskunsten” [When the Finns arrived they brought the Egyptian magic to Norway. That was before Luther cleaned up the Bible. At that time it had seven books of Moses and they contained all the Egyptian magic] (quoted in Steen 1965: 67-68).

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collected from Salten (North Norway) states: I desse [gammaldags-] biblane var det 7 Moseböker. Men den 6te og 7de handla berre um egyptisk trolldomskunst. Men då folk tok til å leggja seg etter denne kunsta, vart dei 2 siste Mosebökene utskild. Av dei vart so Svarteboka hopensett. Dei som sökte til Wittenbergskulen for å bli lærd til prestar, fekk upptak i å bruka den (Mo 66). [In these old Bibles there were 7 books of Moses. But the 6th and 7th dealt only with Egyptian magic. But when people began learning these arts, the two last books of Moses were removed. From them was made the Black Book. Those who studied for the ministry at Wittenberg received instruction in using them.]

Like this fragment, accounts of the Black Book Minister consistently identify Wittenberg as the school where knowledge of the Black Book could be acquired.17 Lutheran authorities theorized that the formulas’ association with Wittenberg constituted slander that had originated with the last Catholic priests in an effort to defame the spiritual center of the Reformation, portraying it as a school under the devil’s leadership.18 The folk traditions themselves, however, give little reason to interpret the Wittenberg reference as slanderous. Though the legends certainly suggest that the Reformation resulted in the loss of popular access to the 6th and 7th books of Moses which subsequently became the exclusive preserve of the Black Book Minister, the accounts leave no doubt that the ministers themselves benefited greatly from studying at Wittenberg. There, the legends assure us, they learned “mer enn sitt fader vor” (more than the Lord’s prayer). Rather than losing their souls for acquiring this knowledge, as legend asserted was the lot of mere mortals who used the Black Book, the Black Book Minister consistently outsmarts the devil: At Wittenberg the Black Arts were studied with the rule that one of the students would then belong to the Evil One. Lots were drawn to decide 17

Oslo’s UB Håndskriftavdeling contains the Black Book of Anders Olsen Liverud, “opskrifter fra Eker i 1850-årene,” 64 pages. On the title page, as often to give the book venerable age, is written “Sorte eller svartebogen Syprianus Konstbog blev först funden på Wittenbergs Academie det år 1529 i en Marmorkiste skreven paa pergament” [This Black Book or Cyprianus book of black arts was first found at Wittenberg Academy in 1529 in a marble chest and written on parchment]. 18 Bang reports this theory in his “Gjenganere fra Hedenskabet og Katholicismen bladt vort Folk efter Reformationen” (1885).

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who that should be, and the lot fell on Sir Soren [Schive of Bjelland]. One day as he was walking out in the sunshine, the Evil One came to take him, but Sir Soren said, “Take the one standing behind me.” The devil was tricked and took the shadow (Storaker 1941: 15).

The ministers identified as Svarteboksprester tend to be among the most highly admired, such as Peter Dass (1647-1701) who famously used the Black Book to transform the devil into a horse which he rode like the wind to answer the King’s summons that he preach the Christmas sermon the very next day in Copenhagen.19 Far from having a pact with the devil, the Black Book Minister prevails over him. The idea that these ministers’ special powers derived from such a pact was just as foreign to these legends as was the thought to Lisbet Nypan that she was serving Satan by using her well-worn rheumatism formula. In denying knowledge of diabolism, moreover, Nypan joined every one of the other Norwegians who were accused of witchcraft based on attempts to heal their neighbors by means of traditional ritual formulas (Næss 1984: 39).

The Black Book and the Witch Trials Healing of this sort, known as signeri, was a factor in all of Norway’s 263 attested witch trials, says Hans Eyvind Næss in his 1982 study, Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500-1600-tallet. Such traditional healing, though as old as society itself, had become criminalized as a result of more restrictive laws passed in response to the combination of increased population and diminished resources that characterized the period beginning in the mid-1500s (Næss 39). As prospects worsened, conflicts among neighbors multiplied; growing families lived on farms too small to support them without the charitable services formerly provided by the Catholic church, such as feeding the poor and caring for the sick. It was in the context of these neighbor conflicts, says Næss, that the accusations of witchcraft arose. Few diseases had any objectively known cause. Sick people commonly 19

A variant of the Dass legend is in Blix 1965: 23. J. N. Wilse in his 1790 description of Eidsberg in Östfold says that people there told of “Presten Thams [som] hadde Svarteboka men han bruka’o med fornuft, for’n var så troende” (Pastor Thams who had the Black Book but used it wisely because he was such a pious Christian). Quoted in Christiansen 1978: 343.

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believed that someone with supernatural powers had forgjort (bewitched) them and that only an equally supernatural curative power could make them well. They therefore sought out individuals known to have special healing skills. If the cure failed, however, a combination of financial loss, fear, and frustration increasingly often led them to accuse the would-be healer of witchcraft.20 So it was that in 1617 Inger Röd, who received payment of one bushel of grain plus 20 shillings from her neighbor Osmund Gildal to be cured from illness, found herself accused of witchcraft when his health did not improve. Though Gildal’s accusation arose from his expectation that Inger Röd had special healing abilities consistent with witchcraft, it contained no hint that he believed she had a pact with the devil (Næss 1984: 53). Nor did Inger Röd acknowledge any such pact, but like Lisbet Nypan, she willingly acknowledged that she could lese (i.e., knew formulas) for a variety of illnesses.21 In trial after trial, says Næss, accused “witches” similarly came forth and freely testified about their activity as healers. They told of salves they made and bönner (literally “prayers”) they read over the patients to increase the healing power of their salves (Næss 1984: 40). Like Nypan, they apparently felt they had little to fear; hadn’t the church taught that prayer could contribute to healing?22 Unaware of the circumstances that made their situation unpredictably dangerous, they did not foresee the way that once made, the accusations would unleash a multitude of latent aggressions among community members competing for limited resources amid overcrowded conditions (Næss 1984: 53). Nor could they know the satanic view which the Reformation clergy, who played a prominent role in the witch trials, would bring to bear upon the healers’ activities. The accused healers’ ready admission of the nature of their remedies together with the community view that this healing constituted “witchcraft” mixed dangerously in post-Reformation Norway. The use of 20

The Vitneprov (testimony) in a witch trial often began by showing that an individual had been struck by unaturlig sykdom (unnatural illness). The great majority of witchcraft accusations were of this type, says Næss (1984: 39). 21 Equally fearlessly Barbro Bjelland willingly confessed that she could heal both people and livestock using, reports the judge, “eight frightful formulas” (dutifully written down by said judge in the court records). 22 The Bible and sacred texts were routinely used during the Catholic period to drive out evil spirits. The priest often blessed the fields, newly built houses and roads with so-called benedictions.

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Catholic remnants stamped the healers as heretics, and the biblical command that “Thou shalt not allow a witch to live” assumed fatal dimensions in the context of the post-Reformation adoption of literal reading of the Bible as legal code. The clergy’s view that the witch’s power derived from a pact with the devil increased the danger of the witchcraft accusation exponentially. Though the idea of forskrivelse til fanden (selling oneself to the devil) had actually come to Norway long before, its application to the accusation of witchcraft arose in the post-Reformation period. A study of the classic collection of Black Book formulas, published by church historian and bishop Anton Christian Bang in 1901-1902, reveals that those incantations which involve sacrificing oneself to the powers of darkness, or conjuring up the devil and evil spirits to use their power to cause harm are all translations from German or Latin originals. Formulas of this type were imported into Norway after the Reformation by individuals who had studied abroad, no doubt the very ministers who during the witch trials applied this foreign concept of magic to the domestic situation (Bang 1885: 211). In this way, says Næss, disputes among indigent neighbors became elevated to accusations of terrifyingly diabolical dimensions, while the accused, denying such a pact, regarded themselves as neither sinners nor criminals, but merely as neighbors helping neighbors who needed their special curative skills.

How Did the Formulas Work? The formulas such healers used typically combined religious expressions with apparently magical elements, such as the number three. But did Nypan repeat the formula and prayer three times because three is powerful in itself or is the number three considered magical because of its association with the Trinity? Are the formulas magical because the recited words are religious or does the inclusion of religion in this way constitute a break of the second commandment such that the resulting sin empowers the formula? Various observers at various times have advanced each of these interpretations. In actual practice, the interpretation of one and the same transaction may have differed between the receiver and giver of the care and among each individual who observed it.23 23 The users themselves probably did not concern themselves whether it was prayer or magical formula, as long as it was effective, the active ingredient being the participants’ belief that they would work.

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But in the view of Bang and other embetsmenn (members of the professional class) during and before his time, there was no doubt: healers used sacred words because they conferred magical kraft (power) upon their actions by virtue of the fact that these Catholic usages were forbidden. This view has also dominated scholarship on these formulas. Yet Bang’s interpretation ignores the possibility of the people’s piety. Without seriously considering it, he rejects the idea that users of Black Book formulas regarded their Christian faith as the source of the formulas’ power. Citing no evidence Bang and others simply declare that those who used the formulas had ceased to regard them as Christian prayers, and that they viewed them not as religion at all, but solely as magic (Bang 1885: 187).

Black Book Formulas and Evil Bang goes even further, declaring the Black Book formulas “the darkest regions of our folk’s spiritual life.” “It can be a consolation that although the entire population believed in the reality [of this magic],” Bang continues, “surely only a relatively small number actually practiced these arts in their worst form – although the Catholicized, epic-legendary formulas were certainly known and used by a larger majority” (Bang 1885: 218). Bang attributes the people’s use of these formulas, as do I, to their “stadige Fölelse af Hjælpeslöshed,” (constant feeling of helplessness), “evige Frygt for Troldskab” (eternal fright of magic), and “altid nærværende Rædsel for Djævelskab” (ever-present fear of deviltry) (Bang 1885: 218). But while these same dangers had lurked no less before the Reformation, the people’s perception of danger had dramatically increased in its wake, when they no longer had church-sanctioned means to fight back. Missing the old protection, they looked back to the means their fathers and fathers’ fathers had employed, and thus continued to rely on the sacred, protective power of miracle that had been part of Catholic doctrine. While Bang in hindsight agrees that the clergy “over-reacted” in executing innocent people during the witch trials, he regards the clergy’s reaction itself as justifiable because of the evil nature of the Black Book formulas which he terms “en af baade Folkelivets og Kirkelivets farligste Fiender” (one of the most dangerous enemies of folkelivet and kirkelivet) (Bang 1885: 218). The utterly unsympathetic view of the formulas’ nature here pronounced by Bang, one of the most prominent scholars of the

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Black Book, helps explain their having been so long misunderstood. In general the post-Reformation clergy shared Bang’s view, often regarding their parishioners as “exotic workers of magic rather than individuals expressing personal piety,” as the historian of religion Arne Bugge Amundsen has noted (1981: 36). Not only did the unremittingly negative view of the Black Book and its users prevail among the clergy and others of the professional class, it came to characterize the people’s own reaction to these formulas, as well, explaining the numerous 19th century popular accounts of the Black Book’s evil nature. Thus the foreword to svartebok published in the 1890s by Helge Shultz’ Forlag warns: “Denne Bog er en farlig Gjenstand at have i et Hus; thi man må se at blive af med den inden Döden, ellers er man fortabt” (this book is a dangerous object to have in the house; if you don’t get rid of it before death, you will not be saved).24

Magic or Popular Piety? Given the threatening nature people came to assign the Black Book, what evidence do we have that the people had originally viewed the formulas as religious rather than diabolical magic? One indication is their similarity to prayer. In an article about Catholic survivals after the Reformation, Bang cites the Norwegians’ continued use of Latin in reciting the Ave Maria and Credo and Pater Noster. Noting that many Black Book formulas also contained Latin, Bang asserts that to their users the Latin and Catholic references possessed magical power by virtue of being forbidden (Bang 209). Is it not more logical to view the use of these prayers and confessions as sincere expressions of popular piety? The Ave Maria, Credo, and Pater Noster constituted the barnelærdom (basic religious training) of Norway’s medieval Catholics; everyone had to know them by heart. Retaining these items in their Latin form more likely reflects a sincere desire to retain a tie to their ancestors’ religion, which 24

Quoted in Sæbö 1966: 33-34. But users also tried to rationalize use of the Black Book. Several of them have a foreword that asserts: “Svartebogen i sig selv er dog ikke saa farlig som mange sier og indbiller sig i almindelighed…. I nödsfald at hjelpe sin neste og sig selv er vel ikke grov synd” [The Black Book is in itself not so dangerous as many say and generally imagine…. In time of trouble to help one’s neighbor and oneself can not be such a terrible sin, can it?] But these statements resound with the doubt that lingered because of the collective attitude toward these books ( Espeland 1974: 27).

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had provided the direct contact with the deity they desired but found absent in Lutheranism. The healers’ use of the formulas with their Latin and Catholic remnants along with the practitioners’ word-choice – using the noun bönner to describe the healing formulas, and the verb lese (normally associated with prayers) instead of mane (conjure) about their application – only strengthens the argument for these formulas’ religious associations.25 The long-held clerical view of Black Book formulas as either evil witchcraft or amusing superstition, has robbed those who used these incantations of their humanity and prevented later generations from knowing them.26 Within the context of these individuals’ use of lovekirker and hellige kilder, and in view of the Bible’s own assertions that disease could be cured by the word of God,27 the post-Reformation Norwegians’ use of healing formulas in the form of Catholic prayers must be seen as a genuine expression of popular piety. Regarding their religion as closely related to their most vital needs, post-Reformation Norwegians found in these formulas a way to deal with the crisis situations that the official church-form failed to address. The Black Book and, specifically, the inconsistency between its diabolical image and tame reality can thus provide a valuable corrective to the embetsklassens version of history that has so long prevailed. While Bang’s view of the Black Book may accurately have described that of his own class, it completely misrepresents the folk culture that characterized 25

Those who used Black Book used the verb lese rather than mane – perhaps inspired by the reading of the Bible and other sacred texts that were used during the Catholic period to drive away evil spirits: “Prestene kunne drive bort daemoner fra besatte mennesker eller fra dåpsbarna, denne handling ble kalt eksorsimer. I katolsk tid hendte det ofte at prestene velsignet gröden, nyoppförte hus, brönner, inngått ekteskap, nybygde veier, osv. Da anvendte de såkaldte benediksjoner. De norske folkelige religiöste bönnene syner noen ganger å ha vært inspirert av slike benediksjoner og eksorsismer.” [The priests could drive out demons from the possessed or infants being baptized in an action known as exorcism. In Catholic times it often happened that the priest blessed the crop, newly built houses, wells, new marriages, new roads, etc. Then they used the so-called benedictions. The prayers of Norwegian popular religion seem sometimes to have been inspired by such benedictions and exorcisms] (Grambo 1979: 6). 26 Amundsen and Erikson in the works cited by each make similar arguments about the springs and lovekirker, respectively. 27 Biblical examples of casting out disease include Matt. 8:22 – “That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick.”

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the majority of the Norwegian population of his time. Rather than rejecting the church as the embetsklasse asserted, the users of the Black Book formulas took the power of the church and their own Christian beliefs extremely seriously. Maintaining an independent relationship to official church trappings like the church bell, altar cloth, and healing prayers, they continued to regard them as seats of real power. Rather than magic made more potent by trampling the sacred underfoot, the formulas represented a popular expression of this religiosity, a religiosity which complemented rather than conflicted with the Lutheran church and which provided the direct, two-way connection to the deity its practitioners missed in the post-Reformation church. Retaining their religious element, the formulas lived on, articulately declaring that for post-Reformation Norwegians, faith alone was not enough.

Works Cited Alm, Jens M., ed. 1982. Bygd og by i Norge – Vest-Oppland og Valdres. Oslo: Gyldendal. Amundsen, Arne Bugge. 1981. “Kilde og kirke. En fromhetshistorisk undersökelse av legekilden ved Trömborg kirke.” Ung Teologi 1: 2040. Baetzmann, Frederik. 1865. Hexevæsen og Troldskab i Norge. Meddelt til Læsning for Menigmand. Christiania: Bentzen. Bang, Anton Christian. 1885. “Gjenganere fra Hedenskabet og katholicismen blandt vort Folk efter Reformationen.” Theologisk Tidsskrift for den evangeliske lutherske Kirke i Norge, Ny række, 10: 161-218. —. Norske hexeformularer og magiske opskrifter. 1901-2. Kristiania: I Commission hos Jacob Dybwad, 1901-2. Björlvik, Halvard and Jörn Sandnes, eds. 1969. I manns minne: Daglegliv ved hundreårsskiftet. Tröndelag, Oslo: Det norske samlaget, 1969. Blix, Dagnar. 1965. Draugen Skreik. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 93. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Christiansen, Inger. 1978. “Sagn, tro og skikk” in Bygd og By i Norge – Östfold. Ed. Nils E. Öy. Oslo: Gyldendal. Eriksen, Anne. 1986. “Lovekirker i Norge etter reformasjonen.” Magistergradsavhandling i folkeminne, Universitetet i Oslo. Espeland, Velle. 1974. Svartbok frå Gudbrandsdalen. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 110. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Grambo, Ronald. 1979. Norske trollformler og magiske ritualer. Oslo:

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Universitetsforlaget. Holck, Per. 1976. “Leger og sykdommer i 1600-årene.” St. Halvard: 130136. Kolstad, Olaf. 1939. “Folket og reformasjonen i Noreg” in Heidersskrift til Gustav Indrebö. Ed. Gustav Indrebø, Hjørdis Johannessen, Rolv Skre, Per Thorson. Bergen: A.S. Lunde. Mo, Ragnvald. 1936. Dagar og år. Segner frå Salten. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 37. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Mörch, Andreas. Frå gamle dagar. Folkeminne frå Sigdal og Eggedal. 1932. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 27. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Næss, Hans Eivind. Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500-1600-tallet. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982. —. Med bål og brann. 1984. Stavanger: Universitetsforlaget. Seierstad, Andreas.“Den norske reformasjons resultat.” 1938. Tidsskrift for teologi og kirke: 31-32. Steen, Adolf.“Litt om sjette og sjuende Mosebok.” 1965. Norsk teologisk tidsskrift 66: 65-88. Stokker, Kathleen. 1995. “Between Sin and Salvation. The Human Condition in Legends of the Black Book Minister.” Scandinavian Studies 67: 91-108. Storaker, Johs. Th. 1941. Sagn og gaader. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 47. Oslo: Universitetsforlag. Sveine, Ragnvald. 1960. “‘Mor fortalte meg’ An outline of Garmo history as told by my mother Ingebjörg Henningsdtr Garmo Svein.” Typescript. Lillehammer. Sæbö, Asbjörn. 1966. “Svartboka.” Romsdal Sogelag årsskrift 1966: 3334.

THE STRONG WIFE: ML 5090 JOHN LINDOW

Marriage between a human man and a supernatural female has captured the European imagination for centuries, and fairy women like Melusine counted descendants even in royal houses. In Scandinavian legend tradition such tales were common, too, and one structure was so persistent and widespread that Reidar Th. Christiansen (1958) catalogued it as a migratory legend type. I refer to ML 5090, “Married to a Fairy Woman,” which is sometimes also known as “The Strong Wife.” In its minimal form it looks something like this recording from Västergötland: Det var en dräng i Hästeryd, som brukade ro över Färgen och hugga ved på andra sidan, för där hade de sin skogsmark. Det kom en så fin flicka till honom om dagarna där, och drängen lovade att hon skulle få bli hans tjugofjärde hustru, och det nöjde hon sig med och gick där och väntade på att det skulle bli hennes tur. Til slut hade han varit gift med de tjugotre, och så gifte han sig med henne, men han var alltid stygg mot henne. Men så var det en gång som hon krökte en hästsko som ingenting, och då frågade han henne, varför hon hade tagit emot stryk av honom, när hon var så stark. Men då sa hon, att hon kom allt ihåg att prästen hade sagt att hustrun skulle vara sin man underdånig (Printed in Klintberg 1972: 140). [There was a farmhand in Hästeryd, who used to row across Färgen and cut wood on the other side, for it was there that they had their forestland. There came so fine a girl to him during the days there, and the farmhand promised that she should be his twenty-fourth wife, and she contented herself with that and went about there and waited until it should be her turn. Finally he had been married with the first twenty-three, and so he married her, but he was always cruel to her. But one time it happened that she bent a horseshoe as if it were nothing, and then he asked her why she had taken beatings from him, since she was so strong. But then she said that she recalled that the parson had said that a wife should be subservient to her husband.]

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The type has been studied by Hans-Egil Hauge (1946), whose article on it is exemplary for its time. Hauge distinguished three subtypes, of which ML 5090 is the Norwegian ecotype. A Swedish ecotype, like the text printed above, generally has the boy obtain power over the supernatural female by binding her with words, as Hauge puts it, and sometimes a wait is imposed before the marriage is actually to take place. Typical of the Swedish type also is her explanation, after bending the horseshoe, for not having used her strength against her husband, as the result of her heeding the words read by the parson when they were married: a wife should defer to her husband. The Danish versions usually also have binding with words, sometimes followed as in the Swedish versions by an appeal to the words of the parson at the wedding ceremony, but they have a unique scene in which the girl and her father toss people over the church. In the Norwegian ecotype, the boy obtains the girl by throwing a knife or some other metal over her or by causing her to bleed, and she does not mention what the parson said. Common to all ecotypes is a demonstration of strength, usually with the horseshoe. Although he does not include it in his chart or map of the ecotypes, Hauge also points out that a number of the recordings are attached to individual families whose members still show considerable strength. Overall, Hauge reported 193 recordings of the three subtypes, 113 from Sweden, 59 from Norway, 18 from Denmark, and three from Swedish Finland. Christiansen’s type, ML 5090, was based exclusively on the Norwegian variants, of which he found many more than Hauge did: 58 from Eastern Norway, 15 from Telemark, 32 from Southern Norway, 60 from Western Norway, but only 2 from Trøndelag and 7 from Northern Norway. This southerly distribution agrees with the fact that the type is reasonably well represented in Sweden, especially along the west coast, and in Jutland. According to Hauge it is unknown in Iceland or the Faroes, which as far as I can tell remains true. In somewhat adapted form, Christiansen’s description of the structure looks like this: A.

B. C.

A boy meets the fairies and obtains the hand of one of them in marriage, either through the intervention of the girl’s mother or by throwing a piece of iron over her or by cutting her finger. They are married. The husband is moody or unkind to her or neglects his work or her calls to come in for a meal. She demonstrates her strength.

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D. Afterwards, he always treated her considerately. E. Their descendants have preserved some characteristics of their own. F. She left him, and G. He used to comfort himself with some words about her good looks.

This structure could easily be used for all of the ecotypes proposed by Hauge, and I will base my discussion on it for that reason, as well as for its inclusion of the marriage itself as an important motif complex within the overall structure. Let me begin, then, by talking about how the boy obtains the hand of the girl in marriage. The Swedish and Danish versions tend to have what, following Hauge, I will call a binding with words. In the Swedish versions, this is often the result of a dialogue with the girl herself, sometimes while the hero is searching for lost cattle, sometimes when he hears her crying. In the Danish versions the hero is more likely to ask a mound-dweller if he may have his daughter in marriage, or simply to demand it. All of these possibilities are far closer to the way marriages were arranged in the real world among humans than the methods used in many of the Norwegian versions. Indeed, in some stories the boy plights his troth with the girl (“binds her with words”) and then later meets her parents. Here is an example from Dalsland: Det var en dräng, som var ute och letade efter hästarna i skogen. Då träffade han en flicka, som gick valle. Så frågar han henne: “Har du sett mina hästar?” “Ja,” sa hon, “det har jag nog gjort.” “Kan du säga mig, hvar de är, så skall du få bli fästemön min.” “Står du vid det,” sa hon, “så skall du få veta, hvar hästarna är.” Ja, han försäkrade hänne, att det skulle vara bestämdt. Hon gjorde sällskap med honum en bete. Och då fann de hästarna. Då säger hon: “Ja, nu står du vid det du har sagt.” “Jaha,” säger han. “När får jag gå till dig og se, hur du har et?” Då bestämde de en dag. Och hon kom ganska riktigt. Och då blef han lite ängslig och grundade på det, han hade gått in på, för han kände inte riktigt igen a. Då frågade hon, när de skulle gifta sig.—Då bjudde han a in till sina föräldrar ock fick lof att fägna henne litet. Och sedan skulle han gå till hänne och se hur hännes föräldrar hade’t. Nå, de följdes åt. Och då var det i en bärgsklyfta, som han tyckte, att de gick in. Men när de kom in, så var där stora granna rum. “Hå!” sa gubben. “Är detta mågen?” sager han. “Ja,” svarade tösen. “Ja,” sa gubben, “det skall intet ondt vederfars dig, utan du skall få’t bra för din framtid.” Hvarpå de gifte sig (Bondeson 1886: 87, reprinted in Hauge 1946:5-6).

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The Strong Wife: ML 5090 [There was a boy who was out looking for his horses in the forest. He met a girl who was herding sheep. So he asks her: “Have you seen my horses?” “Yes,” she said, “I have indeed.” “If you can you tell me where they are, you’ll become my fiancée.” “If you stand by that,” she said, “you will find where your horses are.” Yes, he assured her, it was a done deal. She accompanied him into a pasture. And then he found the horses. Then she said: “Yes, now you’ll stand by what you said.” “Right,” says he. “When can I go visit you and see how you live?” Then they agreed on a day. And she came just as she said she would. And then he was a bit nervous and wondered what he had got himself into, for he didn’t really recognize her. Then she asked when they were to marry. Then he asked her in to meet his parents and was permitted to please her a bit. And then he was to visit her and see how her parents lived. So, they went off together. And it was a cleft in the mountain, so it seemed to him, that they entered. But when they came in, there were large attractive rooms. “Ah,” said the old man. “Is this my son-in-law?” “Yes, answered the girl.” “Yes,” said the old man,” no harm will befall you; instead you’ll do well with your future.” Whereupon they married].

The boy’s future in-laws may live in the mountain, but the rooms there are spacious and attractive, and his in-laws not only reassure the boy (whose interest in this union has been presented as ambivalent) that they mean him no harm, they also assure him that he will prosper. For someone who is a mere farmhand (dräng), this suggests an improvement in his economic condition. Furthermore, although I will follow Hauge in calling this form of betrothal “binding with words,” I must point out that in the version just quoted, and many of the others from Sweden, the “binding” could be said to apply as much (or more) to the boy as to the girl. It is important to note, too, that the betrothal comes about as a result of the willingness of the girl to help the boy. She restores his lost horses to him; their marriage confers additional wealth on him. The most commonly found motif in the Norwegian versions is the throwing of iron over the supernatural bride to be (in some variants, he throws the iron between her and a mountain wall, but this difference is inconsequential). The power of iron over supernatural beings is found all over the legend and belief traditions of northern Europe and is encapsulated in the proverbial Swedish expression “stål binder troll.” Steel, iron, and other metals had power to keep the supernatural beings away (Bächtold-Stäubli 1927-42, vol. 2: 717-31; vol. 6: 207-11), and so it was used, for example, in cradles to keep the supernatural beings from changing babies, and supernatural beings are less disposed to kidnap older children or adults who have some metal about their persons. In legend tradition, people threw metal over a girl at the shieling who was about to

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be married off to a supernatural being, and throwing metal over a person who had been kidnapped by the supernatural beings was one way to undo the kidnapping. Both these plot devices are directly relevant to our legend, for they suggest that there may have been something human and redeemable about the supernatural being who will now marry a human. But besides keeping supernatural beings away or undoing their attempts to kidnap humans, metal could also be used to obtain power over them and sometimes to obtain their wealth. The most common example of this second function is the notion that throwing metal over a supernatural cow will enable one to keep it. In a peasant society, especially a hardscrabble peasant society of the sort that was found in the more mountainous regions of Scandinavia, even a single cow could make a considerable difference in one’s wealth and status. But supernatural cows have the added advantage of being fatter and more fertile than other cows, and they can confer well-being on an entire farm. Migratory legend traditions recognize this fact when they have a nisse steal or kill a cow from a neighboring farm, thereby ruining it, or when they present cows as the object of witchcraft, attacked by “milk-hares” and the like. I do not think it is coincidental that people obtained supernatural wives and supernatural cows in precisely the same way. In fact, as Christiansen’s type structure shows, in at least some of the Norwegian variants the hero obtains not just a bride but also a cow or herd of cows. As a dowry … they had money and cattle, or the promise of a herd of cattle with instructions for its keep and use (“Breed and kill—never sell”) (Christiansen 1958: 114).

Here is the end of a version from Hallingdal. The supernatural wife has just straightened out a horseshoe. The husband promises to mend his ways: “Bi me me å gjerd kvene større,” sa’e ho; å han fylgde me å gjerde ai stor kven. Detta va imot kvelde, å um morgonen ette va kvenene full med væntblåt å helutt fe, so de glansa tå dai. Då kom mor henna å sa’e ve dai: “No sku de få lykke vilja de leva skikkele te sammen, å so sku de elja å drepa men inki selja levandes.” Se’a vart de mannskap i Ainsetli’enn, å denna leten på krytire helt se lengi ve. (Nielsen 1968: 59-60; reprint in Bø et al 1981: 107) [“Stay with me and make the pen larger,” she said, and he agreed to it and made a large pen. This was on toward evening, and the morning after the pens were full of dark pretty and contented cattle, gleaming at them.

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The Strong Wife: ML 5090 Then her mother came and said to them: “Now you will be successful if you will live properly together, and you should slaughter cattle but not sell it alive.” Afterwards there was quite a crew at Einsetlien, and this color cattle kept going for a long time.]

This is, in fact, why such a marriage can be contemplated in the first place: it can make the man rich. This plays on the motif of the wealth of the supernatural beings, which many people who visited them saw. They had gold and silver everywhere, and their flocks were large and sleek. Of course, their wealth might turn out to be a sham (gold coins might really be leaves of a tree), but once it is permanently brought away from the world of the supernatural beings to the world of humans that danger is eliminated. The supernatural bride to be may be described as beautiful when the human hero first sees her, but in the narrative logic the man marries her for her money, not for her beauty. The link of obtaining a cow by throwing metal over it shows that. It would also seem that the versions that have the boy obtain the girl in marriage by throwing his belt around her suggest a similarity with the acquisition of animals. A variant to throwing metal over the supernatural bride to be is to cut her, so that blood flows. Then, the texts say, they must be married. Hauge argues that the background here is the notion that supernatural females, including witches, lose their power when a bit of their blood is spilled, and that would make a natural parallel to throwing a piece of metal over the girl. Sometimes, however, the actual texts read as though spilling the blood imposes an obligation on the boy to marry the girl, rather than the other way around. Here is the opening part of a text from Sogn: Paa Grinde paa Syrstrond var det ein gut, som var framme i Fuglalidi og riste. Best som han stod der og hogg det, han ordade, kom der ei huldrgjenta til honom, og ho for der og bintest med honom heile dagen, so han inkje fekk fred fyr henne, ho var svært nærgangande. Paa slutten kom han til aa blodga henne i vetlefingen med snidten sin. “Eit er det, du inkje vil ha’ meg,” sa’ ho, “men eit annat er det, du lyt; for no hev du blodgat me, og no skal du aldri koma ifraa meg” (Sande 1992: 8). [At Grinde on Syrstrond there was a boy who was out at Fuglalid carving. While he was standing there cutting, a huldre girl came up to him and she went about and flirted with him all day long, so that he got no peace from her, she was so aggressive. Finally he happened to draw blood from her little finger with a carving stroke. “It’s one thing not to want me” she said, “but what you have to do is another; for now you’ve drawn my blood, and now you’ll never get free of me,” she said.]

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Thus as I see it there are two ways that the couple become engaged, either through the desire of the boy or the desire of the girl (or, sometimes, one of her parents). These two possibilities point out the danger of the situation: a marriage between a human and supernatural being would be an extraordinary event, binding members of the human and supernatural populations in a way that ordinarily is used only within each group, never across the groups. Thus even when it is at the boy’s initiative that the wedding is arranged, he often is uncertain of what he has done once the two are engaged. As Hauge (1946: 31) points out, when the boy falls for the supernatural girl when he sees her combing her hair, there is a parallel with the skogsrå. Here the connection is surely with the ability of the skogsrå to confer success in hunting and other wealth to the man whom she pleases. According to Hauge the supernatural bride is indeed a skogsrå in seven of the recordings. “Men dette er sikkert en misforståelse av fortellerne” he goes on to say, “da skogsråforestillingen ikke tilhörer denne sagntradisjon” (Hauge 1946: 5). I find this statement a bit puzzling. Certainly seven out of the 193 versions Hauge examined is not many, but these seven recordings are no less part of this legend tradition than any of the others. Rather than accusing the narrators of misunderstanding, I would suggest that the supernatural bride is only rarely a skogsrå because by definition this woman is solitary. Unlike the tussejenter, huldrer, jätteflickor, jättekvinnor, trollflickor, trollkvinnor, bergsflickor, and elvekoner in the other recordings, the skogsrå has no family. Marriages bind families, not just individuals, and indeed whole communities, as I will argue below in connection with the Danish ecotype. Indeed, one of the salient motifs in these legends is the intervention of a parent in arranging the marriage. Hauge distinguishes between a “setertradition,” in which it is the mother who acts on behalf of her daughter, and other tradition areas, where it can be father or mother. But, as he himself points out, decisions about a daughter’s marriage were the joint business of both parents. When only one parent acts for the girl, we see again that the other world is not quite the same as the world of humans. Indeed, this intervention of a single parent in arranging the marriage of a supernatural child to a human is something that goes beyond the particular type under discussion. It is even to be found in Icelandic tradition, where type 5090 is unknown; examples may be found in Jón Árnason’s collection under the rubric “Huldufólk leitar lags við mennskar manneskjur” (1961: vol. 1, 58-100). These liaisons do not, however, lead to marriages that last.

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The Strong Wife: ML 5090

Hauge understands the presence of the mother in tales collected in the seter tradition area as a consequence of the fact that shielings were female domains. He further imagines that a possible background for the story is the moment when the men arrive at the shielding at the end of the season to help the women transport the cattle back down to the farm. I think there may be something to this latter idea. Women at the shieling have just spent a considerable period of time in the mountains, near where the supernatural beings live. When the men come to escort them down the hill, it is as if they are being returned to safety, rather like the girl who nearly marries a supernatural being who has taken on the guise of her betrothed. But in my reading, the legend of the supernatural wife presents a male fantasy of obtaining a rich and beautiful bride. It should therefore have had a particular relevance for men when they arrived at the shieling after having been separated from the women. Perhaps they too might have seen the escorting of the women down the hill as an analogue to rescuing them from supernatural threat, but they might also have noticed something a little different about some of the women, especially younger unmarried women who will, one assumes, have had ample opportunity to mature and develop independence of behavior in the largely female environment of the shieling. If the story were just about acquiring wealth, it could end almost at the beginning. But this is marriage to a supernatural being, and therefore it is a tricky and dangerous situation. Many versions, as I have said, illustrate the danger by presenting the hero as ambivalent. Christiansen makes room for this in his plot summary through motif A6, “He [the boy] wanted to escape,” but this way of expressing it does not capture the frequent ambivalence of the hero. It is found in all the tradition areas but seems to be especially typical of the Danish (Jutlandic) versions. Indeed, in some Danish versions the notion of “binding with words,” as Hauge calls it, is explicitly reversed—that is, it is the supernatural father who binds the human to a marriage. Needless to say, such cases emphasize the fact that these marriages are misalliances. Here is the beginning of one story from Tang Kristensen’s collections, which also differs from the more northerly versions in presenting us with a hero who appears to be in no particular need of the money or cattle of his future father-in-law. På heden imellem Tåstrup og Skals ligger en stor höj, som kaldes Vat-hus. I forrige tider har der boet en bjærgmand, som de kaldte Vathusmanden. Så kom der en overmodig og rig karl fra Skals ridende og vilde til Tåstrup at bejle, men da han nu kommer forbi Vat-hus, råber han: “Vathusmand, giv mig din datter!” Straks kom han også ud med hende, og ihvor nødig karlen vilde, måtte han også tage hende med til Skals, og de blev snart efter viede

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i Skals kirke. Som man nok kan tænke sig, levede de dårligt sammen, for han vilde jo alligevel ikke have haft hende (Tang Kristensen 1892: 26869). [On the heath between Tåstrup and Skals is a big mound, which is called the Vat house. In former times a troll lived in it whom they called the Vathouse man. Once an arrogant and rich man from Skals came riding who wanted to go to Tåstrup to woo a girl, but when he came by Vat-house, he called out: “Vat-house man, give me your daughter!” And indeed the troll came out right away with her, and no matter how reluctantly, the man had to take her with him to Skals, and shortly afterwards they were married in Skals church. As one can easily imagine, they got along badly together, for in the end he hadn’t really wanted to marry her.]

Here one thinks immediately of those foolish people who made some idle demand of the supernatural beings which was actually fulfilled, and which often led to trouble. Food is a common demand, and persons who idly ask the supernatural beings for a bite to eat had better know in advance whether they are really prepared to eat it. And of course the man’s arrogance was paid off. The second major motif complex in Christiansen’s structure is the marriage itself. What happens here follows logically on the ambivalence the hero sometimes feels at the engagement (or marriage) and strikes me as absolutely crucial to understanding the legend. Sometimes the supernatural female is baptized before the marriage, and in those versions in which she has a tail, it falls off (or is occasionally cut off), usually when she is baptized, sometimes when she is married. Or she may be invisible to the parson and everyone else in the church until the marriage ceremony is completed (Sogn, Norway; printed in Sande 1992: 8-9). In other words, after baptism and marriage she is no longer a supernatural being. She has been baptized into the church that humans belong to and supernatural beings do not, and this is throughout Scandinavian tradition one of the principal differences between supernatural beings and humans. The physical marker of her supernatural status, her tail, marked her as somehow more closely connected to the animal kingdom than humans are. When it falls off, it cannot be stuck back on again. It is not identical to the sealskin or swan form that supernatural brides in ballads and epic traditions take off and have stolen by their husbands to make the marriage possible, for it does not later sit in the attic locked away, waiting for her to discover it and leave. Some of the legends of the supernatural bride of type 5090 end with her departure, but not because she has always somehow longed to get away and has only been waiting for her supernatural form to be made available to her once again.

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In a few of the Norwegian variants, “[T]he presence of her own people at the wedding was a problem” (Christiansen 1958: 114). This encapsulates another aspect of the legend. In the human world, both families would assemble in the church. In that same world, supernatural beings were not supposed to enter the church. And the church was not a place one entered only once. The supernatural wife will now be attending church on a regular basis, but she will not see her family there again—and if she were to see them again, when married, that would be a real threat to the community, as the Danish ecotype shows clearly. It is obvious, then, that this legend presents the situation of a girl who has married away from her family and is living alone in the village of her husband. The supernatural wife is portrayed positively and sympathetically and shows patience in the face of her husband’s swearing, ignoring or beating her, failing to complete work on time, and so forth. Nor does she use her great strength against him. Hauge wondered whether the story might have had particular appeal to women, but he found that men far outnumbered women as informants and that there was no indication that women took a special interest in it. My own understanding of this situation is that the story may have had different appeal to the two sexes. Women could have understood it as a story about the situation of a woman married away from her home, and the secret strength she might yet possess, and men might, as I suggested above, understand it as a fantasy about the bride who confers wealth and takes seriously her marriage vow and subservience to her husband. Both, as I will suggest below, may have understood it as a story about identities and about boundaries between the worlds. It is the husband who misbehaves. According to Christiansen’s structure, sometimes his dissatisfaction is caused by an inability to forget where his wife comes from. Like so many characters in fiction, he regrets a marriage undertaken for money, not or at least not principally for love. In the Danish versions like the one I quoted above, he is unhappy because he was forced into what seems to him to be a misalliance. Sometimes, too, the supernatural girl is not a beauty but something more like a beast, or at least she is lumpy and unattractive. In some Norwegian versions, she looks less pretty to her husband once her tail has fallen off (once he has become accustomed to her exotic otherness?). The problem in the marriage is portrayed either as internal to him (he is moody or unhappy) or externally: he beats her (as Christiansen euphemistically puts it, he is “unkind to her” (1958:114)). Now, moody husbands and wife beaters were probably all too common in the communities of rural Scandinavia, and there would be little about them to trigger storytelling. Nor, in fact, would a husband who

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habitually did not come in to eat when his wife called out that meals were ready, although we should be careful here to note that in such cases he is downgrading her contribution to the proper running of the household, disrespecting her sphere. More serious, it seems to me, and worthy of a tale, is his unwillingness or inability to complete work that needs to be done, for in that case his dissatisfaction affects his performance in his own sphere. Theirs is not a farm that is running smoothly, and that situation attracts legends. The wake-up call is the demonstration of the wife’s supernatural strength. Most commonly, she bends or straightens a horseshoe. Hauge has a chart showing the distribution of nine important motifs in the versions he studied. Only the horseshoe turns up in all three tradition areas and in every subtype he postulates and in the additional ones the chart suggests, eight in all. This is the center of the story, its very core, and the reason that “the strong housewife” is an apt name for the story, even if in some Norwegian versions she carries or lifts something extraordinarily heavy or breaks an iron staff or whirls it about her husband (Hauge 1946: 10). In some cases the husband is himself a smith; in other cases, a smith has come to visit the farm. In both, the wife takes a horseshoe and bends or forms it in some way with her bare hands. Why was this particular demonstration of strength so important? In the first place, surely, precisely because a horseshoe is a metal object. In many versions, the man first obtained her because he threw metal over her. Now she is baptized and a member of the church, married to a human, Christian man. She is no longer what she once was, and what once had power over her she now takes in her hands and manipulates. But more: she now can work metal, like a smith but without his fire and tools. That fact strikes me as very significant. Metal, like the supernatural bride, originally comes from out of the earth, in the form of ore. Through an interaction with human culture, and specifically with the craft of smithing, it is transformed, as is the supernatural bride, into something useful in human culture. Few supernatural beings make the journey that the “strong housewife” makes, and for all the rest of the supernatural beings, metal is a potent symbol of human culture that has power over them. For the supernatural bride who has left behind her supernatural lineage, it is her possession, a new birthright, as it were. The horseshoe turns up frequently enough, however, to require an explanation of why the metal that she bends is so often precisely a horseshoe and not some other piece of metal. A Freudian interpretation might read the horseshoe as symbolic of female genitalia and her bending

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of it as a sign of the supernatural female’s taking charge of her own destiny. A socially oriented interpretation would have to begin with the importance of the horseshoe throughout Europe—nearly universally, according to Bächtold-Stäubli (1927-42, vol 4: 437-46)—as a bringer of good luck. This notion is certainly known in Scandinavia in essentially the same forms as in Europe (Feilberg 1886-93: 603-04). Finding a horseshoe, especially with nails intact, is good luck, especially if the horseshoe is hung on the door of a building. The horseshoe repels all manner of evil creatures and the threats they pose: devils, witches, illness, theft, and so forth. That is to say, it repels everything to which the supernatural wife was previously associated. Now, however, instead of being repelled by a horseshoe, she can shape and form it. She thus demonstrates her new alliance, with humans and against the supernatural powers. But even if she has now realigned herself with the human community, there is still the fact of her origin. Like all humans she can touch metal, and like all supernatural beings she has vast strength. She is forever betwixt and between. For that reason, I think, the demonstration of her strength occurs in the realm of the blacksmith, the prototypical male environment. The gender roles are mapped over the categories of supernatural and human. The crisis in her marriage that provokes the demonstration of her strength only brings to light the question that the legend proposes in the first place: can a supernatural being move into the human community? Who is this woman really? The husband usually asks precisely that question, though in another guise: If you are so strong, why did you submit to mistreatment and not use your great strength against me? As we have seen, Hauge uses her answer as the basis for postulating ecotypes, a Swedish one in which she recalls the words of the parson when they were married, and a Norwegian one in which this motif is lacking. Sometimes in the Norwegian ecotypes she warns him to stop mistreating her or she just says that she likes him. Sometimes the husband simply realizes that he had better behave in future. And whether the wife alludes to the parson or not, in all but a few of the versions the marriage now improves forever. The clear meaning is this: I am a good wife, and a good wife to you, married to you in the church. I may have come from the supernatural world, but now I am ineluctably part of your world, and I behave by its rules. With the permanent improvement to the marriage there comes, in many cases, a positive affirmation of the wealth that accompanied the supernatural bride. I have already cited one such example above. Here is another, in the ending of a version collected by Tang Kristensen from Søren Knudsen of Kovsted:

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Saa blev de gode Venner, og han blev rigtig god ved hende. Nu hørte deres Fattigdom op, for Bjærgmanden kom og bar til dem af hans Penge saadan efterhaanden, og de blev snart til rige Folk (Tang Kristensen 1928: 283). [And so they became good friends, and he grew to be really kind to her. Now their poverty ended, for the troll came and delivered some of his money to them from time to time, so that they quickly became rich folk.]

And a version from Rogaland, collected by T. Mauland in 1928, ends this way: Enno finst det i Årdal ættingar etter desse tvo. Den ætti hev alltid vore namngjeti avdi at dei hev hatt betre lukka med krøteri enn andre folk (Bø et al 1981: 108). [In Årdal there are still descendants of these two. That family has always been noteworthy because they have had better success with cattle than other people.]

The Danish ecotype has an episode that I choose to regard as a second demonstration of strength, although Hauge presents it, wrongly in my view, as a parallel to throwing the knife over the supernatural girl to obtain her. Here is the version from the marriage between the human and the daughter of Vathus-man whose beginning I cited above. The marriage was rocky, but then the girl demonstrated her strength with a horseshoe: Siden den tid var manden god imod hende. Men de andre folk i byen kunde ikke lide hende. Så skete det en dag, da hun var gået til kirke, og der var også en del andre folk komne op til kirken, at hun siger, som de står der: “Der kommer min fader, han er pigi vred idag.” Alles öjne vendte sig hastig i den retning, hun pegte, og da så de et gloende hjul komme trillende hen at gaden og op til kirken, og så hen til bjærgdatteren. Så sagde hjulet til hende: “Vil du hviste eller ta’?” Hun svarte: “Jeg vil ta’.” Og så gik hun om til den anden side af kirken. Nu tog det gloende hjul én for én af de til stede værende og hvistede dem over kirken. Men hun stod jo ved den anden side og tog imod dem, så at de ikke stödte dem, hvor over de jo var inderlig glade, da de jo kunde takke hende for deres liv. Siden den tid levede hun i god forståelse med folkene, og hun levede længe og fik mange börn. Slægten efter hende er stærke folk og lever endnu i egnen (Tang Kristensen 1892: 269). [Since that time the man was kind to her. But the other people in the village couldn’t stand her. And so it happened one day, when she had gone to church and some other people had also come up to the church, that she said: “Here comes my father, and he is really angry today. “ Everybody’s

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The Strong Wife: ML 5090 eyes turned quickly in the direction she was pointing to, and they saw a burning wheel come rolling along the street and up to the church, and then up to the mound daughter. And then the wheel said to her: “Do you want to throw or catch?” She answered: “I’ll catch.” And then she went around to the other side of the church. Now the burning wheel took the people who were present there one by one and tossed them over the church. But she indeed stood there on the other side and received them, so that they were unhurt, and the people were extremely happy about that, since in fact they owed their lives to her. Since that time she lived in harmony with the people, and she lived for a long time and had many children. Her descendants are strong people and still live in the district.]

Marriage in rural Scandinavia was not a strictly individual matter or an arrangement between two families but always also a more general social matter (classic treatment in Sundt 1967; see also Hovdhaugen 1976), as this subtype shows. The supernatural being lives not just in the home of her human husband, but also in the human society of which he was a part. If the demonstration of strength with the horseshoe shows that she will not use her power to harm her husband, this demonstration of strength shows that she will not harm the other members of society. By catching each of her fellow parishioners, cast over the church by the supernatural power in which she shares, she demonstrates clearly that she is one of them. She makes a conscious choice not to harm them; had she chosen to throw, there is no telling how or even whether her father would have caught them. Her care for the well being of the humans, here described as women who will not talk with her, is described in another version from Tang Kristensen’s collecting in Jutland: Så tog han den ene kjælling efter den anden og smed over kirken. Hun var omme ved den anden side og tog og lagde dem lempelig ned i græsset (Tang Kristensen 1892:269-270). [And so he took one old woman after another and tossed them over the church. She was over on the other side and received them and put them gently down in the grass.]

These texts are explicit about how the girl of supernatural origin, the bride from outside the community, is first shunned in the village but protects the villagers from the supernatural power that is part of her heritage. It is significant that the demonstration of her loyalty takes place at the church, the spiritual and often literal center of the community. She can go inside the church, her father cannot. They stand one on each side of the church as the life of the others in the village is put at risk and her affiliation is made

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absolutely clear. Thus these Danish texts double the demonstration of the girl’s new allegiance to the human community. First she reveals that she can handle metal and does not use her supernatural strength against her husband, then she demonstrates that she can go to church and uses her supernatural powers on behalf of the other people in the parish, even when it is her own father who threatens them. This motif of throwing people over the church has an important and significant parallel, namely with the nisse, the household spirit (who also takes an interest in burning wheels). There are legends from Denmark and southern Sweden in which a nisse throws a man over the house and then runs and around catches him on the other side (example in Thiele 1843: vol. 2, 271). (These appear to be part of a more general pattern in which the nisse punishes a sleeping person by carrying him off and suspending him or her over some dangerous spot, such as the well.) Hauge thinks there must be a genetic connection between these legends and those of the strong wife and speculates that the motif entered the strong wife legend in Denmark. I would prefer to draw attention to what the occurrence of the motif in the nisse legends implies about the social position of the strong wife. Like the nisse, she is a supernatural being who lives among humans. Like the nisse, she has a strong interest in the well-being of the farm where she lives and can bring prosperity to it. Like the nisse, she is preternaturally strong. She therefore occupies a strange position between the human and supernatural worlds, and the horseshoe and what follows it help to define her position, just as numerous legend types do for the nisse. But unlike the nisse, the supernatural bride is of ordinary stature, is visible at all times, and does not wear strange old clothing. She has entered the human community far more successfully than he has, almost certainly, in my view, through the institution of holy matrimony. Peter Christian Asbjørnsen included a version of the strong wife in his 1845 collection of Norske huldre-eventyr og sagn. It is in the framed legend sequence called “En aftenstund i en proprietærkjøkken” and is told by the smith to a group of children: “Ja, ja, sea kællen itte har hau tel aa høre, saa faar je fortælja Dekk da,” sa smeden til smaaguttene, og den bedstefaderlige myndighet mistet nu some ellers magten over dem, naar smeden lovte at fortælle eventyr. [Asbjørnsen and Moe 1914: 40] [“Well, since the old man doesn’t want to listen, I’ll have to tell you all,” said the smith to the little boys, and his grandfatherly authority lost some of its power over them, when the smith promised to tell fairy tales (eventyr).]

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Asbjørnsen knew the difference between a fairly tale (eventyr) and a legend (sagn), and yet he prefaces this tale with eventyr. This agrees with the fact that of all the legend types I know, this one partakes most fully of the structure and to some extent even the spirit of the fairy tale (as set forth in Holbek 1987). It has two protagonists, one male and one female. They must work together in order to complete the move of both characters to securely married, mature adults of high social standing. The hero is often of low social status, and young. He marries a woman from a very different background, and with her come riches. After they are married, there is a crisis (two in the fuller Danish versions), but it is solved, and thereafter the marriage prospers. It is the crisis in the marriage, as much as the riches the boy obtains, that makes this legend type look like a fairy tale. This crisis and its resolution correspond to moves IV and V as Bengt Holbek describes the fairy tale structure. In IV, the wife is “cast out,” as Holbek puts it, primarily because of a continuing doubt about the social equality of husband and wife, king and queen. In fairy tales someone at the high social level casts out the bride, although in some cases it is her husband the king himself, who has been misinformed about her (e.g., he is told that she has killed her children). In the legend the marriage simply begins to fall apart, but it is the fault of the husband, the spouse of higher social status in the narrative logic, since he is human. In the fairy tale as in the legend, the spouse who is cast out acts to bring the marriage back together (move V), and sometimes in the process shows that she knows more about proper behavior than her husband does. Holbek distinguished between “masculine” and “feminine” fairy tales on the basis of the gender of the main protagonist, who is usually the person of lower social status. Our legend type would be a blend, for it is the male who gains riches from the marriage but the female whose social status is tested and who must prove that she belongs. But there is no corresponding legend counterpart of ML 5090 in which the gender roles are reversed, no migratory legends in Scandinavia about a supernatural male who marries into the human community. Nor are there legends in which a successful and permanent marriage exists involving a human woman who marries into the supernatural community. Instead, migratory legend tradition has types such as "Tricking the fairy suitor" (ML 6000) and "The interrupted fairy wedding" (ML 6005), which show that such a marriage is to be avoided and averted. If there are human women who live as wives in the supernatural community, it is because they have been abducted, taken into the mountain, not because a marriage agreement has been reached between two families.

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The situation is curiously parallel to what Margaret Clunies Ross (1994) calls the “negative reciprocity” of the imagined world of Scandinavian mythology, where gods can obtain wives from the world of the giants but giants cannot obtain wives (or lovers) from the world of the gods. I would not care to argue continuity in this case. Rather I believe that we see the results in each case of a conservative society whose sense of its own honor was tied up in the virtue of its females. For the human to lose a female to the supernatural world would be bad. But to gain a supernatural wife could be good, especially if she brings wealth with her and has successful progeny. ML 5090, the legend of the strong wife, shows us how such a situation can be good, by showing us how the supernatural wife can prove that she belongs in the human community.

Works Cited Asbjørnsen, P[eter] C[hristian], and Jørgen Moe. 1914 [1845]. Norske huldreeventyr og Norske folkeeventyr. Folke-utgave. Vol. 1: Norske huldreeventyr. Kristiana: H. Aschehoug. Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns. 1927-42. Handwörterbuch des deutschen aberglaubens, herausgegeben unter besonderer Mitwirkung von E. Hoffmann-Krayer und Mitarbeit zahlreicher Fachgenossen. 10 vols. Berlin & Leipzig: W. de Gruyter. Bø, Olav, Ronald Grambo, Bjarne Hodne and Ørnulf Hodne. 1981. Norske segner: Segner i utval med innleiing og kommentarar. Oslo: Det norske samlaget. Christiansen, Reidar Th. 1958. The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types with a Systematic List of the Norwegian Variants. FF Communications, 175. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Reprint New York: Arno Press, 1977. Feilberg, H. F. 1879 [1919]. Nissens historie. København: Foreningen Danmarks folkeminder. —. 1886-93. Bidrag til en ordbog over jyske almuesmål. Kjøbenhavn: Universitets-Jubilæets danske samfund. Hauge, Hans-Egil. 1946. “Den sterke hustruen”: En sammenliknende sagnstudie. Arv 2: 1-34. Hovdhaugen, Einar. 1976. Ekteskap og kjonnsmoral i norsk historie. Norsk kulturarv, 13. Oslo: Det norske samlaget. Holbek, Bengt. 1987. Interpretation of Fairy Tales: Danish Folklore from a European Perspective. FF Communications, 239. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

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Jon Árnason. 1961 [1862]. Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri. Ný útgáfa. Ed. Árni Björnsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmnsson. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfan Þjóðsaga. Klintberg, Bengt af. 1972. Svenska folksägner. Stockholm: Pan/Norstedt. Nielsen, J. E. 1968. Søgnir frå Hallingdal. Ny utg. Oslo: Norske Samlaget. Ross, Margaret Clunies. 1994. Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society. Vol. 1: The Myths. Viking Collection, 7. Odense: Odense Univ. Press. Sande, Olav. 1992 [1887-1892]. Segner frå Sogn. Ed. Andreas Bjørkum and Jarle Bondevik. Bergen: Norsk Bokreidingslag. Sundt, Eilert. 1967 [1866]. Om giftermål i Norge. 2. utg. Oslo: Universitatsforlaget. Tang Kristensen, Evald. 1892. Danske sagn: Som de har lydt i folkemunde. Vol. 1: Bjærgfolk. Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendal. —. 1928. Danske sagn: Som de har lydt i folkemunde, Ny række. Vol. 1: Bjærgfolk. København: Woel. Thiele, M. 1843. Danmarks folkesagn. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel.

CARL GUNDERSEN’S TRIP TO THE LUMBER CAMP JAMES P. LEARY

On August 9, 1973, roughly two months before his death at age 75, Carl H. Gundersen regaled Clarice Jensen of the Barron County Historical Society for several hours with reminiscences of his experiences in various northern Wisconsin lumber camps. Gundersen’s testimony regarding his region’s final years of old-time logging and river drives coincided happily with a burgeoning grassroots oral history movement that is unabated in the United States.1 This movement was spurred by the proliferation of inexpensive, easy-to-use, highly portable, and reliable tape recorders – most with noisy yet adequate built-in microphones – and the convenience of 60 and 90-minute audio cassettes. Unlike the previous technological standard for field recording – the bulky, pricey open-reel machines of the 1950s that took patience to load and were seldom acquired by local historical societies – the cassette recorders of the early 1970s were commonly owned and used not only by societies like that of Barron 1

I am using the word “grassroots” in two ways here: to refer to the documentation of the experiences of “ordinary” people, as opposed to “famous” people; and to refer to the documentation of those experiences by non-professional people, people whom folklorists have come to describe as “community scholars.” Anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and folklorists began to make audio field recordings of ordinary people’s experiences, as well as of their songs and stories, as early as the 1890s (Brady 1999). In the 1940s, shortly after his disciplinary colleagues at Columbia University had launched “oral history” as a technique for gathering first-hand accounts from notable politicians, generals, and plutocrats, Theodore Blegen of the Minnesota Historical Society, a specialist on Norwegian American immigrant settlement, stressed the importance of what he called, using an earlier spelling, Grass Roots History. Blegen’s maverick approach focused on those he called, “the true makers of history,” the common people: “We have need to dig into the folk story of America if we are to bring out the pattern of American development and American culture in all its color and richness of texture and design” (1947: viii).

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County, but also by nearly everyone else in that era. Storytellers everywhere and always, as Niels Ingwersen has so often stressed, cannot practice their art in isolation. And good storytellers, Carl Gundersen among them, were quick to grasp the ways in which the tape recorder might expand and extend their audiences. He had, of course, often told personal experience stories to such family members as his daughter, Carol Gundersen Kuhrt of Rice Lake (2006). But here was a way to tell stories to her children, her children’s children, and beyond. Here too was an opportunity to hold forth to listeners outside immediate family and friends who were not only individuals with a yen for first-hand anecdotes, but also the representatives of organizations, like county historical societies, officially charged with capturing and conserving the yarns of local raconteurs for posterity. The renowned State Historical Society of Wisconsin – which had pressed for and called attention to such recording sessions through its oral history and local affiliates programs – further expanded Gundersen’s narrative network (Flory 1989). Moreover, telling stories on tape, with an attentive recordist presiding, not only ensured that the verbal text and sonic texture of Gundersen’s performance would persist, but the long “attention span” of the cassette tape, coupled with the unprecedented occasion to hold forth nearly uninterrupted for hours – in marked contrast to relatively brief, one-story-at-a-time tellings amidst everyday social occurrences – inspired Carl Gundersen to heights of composition and eloquence. In June 1975 I had the good fortune of listening to, marveling at, and making a copy of Clarice Jensen’s recording of Carl Gundersen. A graduate student at Indiana University, I had wangled a summer job teaching Wisconsin Folklore at what was then the Barron County Campus of Stout State University, situated in my hometown, Rice Lake. Luckily, Katherine Leary Antenne, my “Aunt Kay,” took the course and – as the author of a local history (Antenne 1955) and one of the Barron County Historical Society’s several oral historians – she kindly informed me that I might be interested in some of the tapes then held by the campus library. For thirty years I’ve been part of Carl Gundersen’s audience, as have many students in my courses. In this essay I propose to sketch Gundersen’s life, offer a transcription of the remarkable folk narrative with which he began his 1973 interview session, elaborate on the sources and aesthetics of his traditional artistry, and link his verbal storytelling with the similarly motivated wood carvings by many other veterans of Wisconsin’s lumber camps.

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We Would Rather Go in the Woods Carl Gundersen was born in 1898 near Bayfield, Wisconsin, not far from Lake Superior. His parents, Tom Gundersen and Anne Danielsen Gundersen, were immigrants from Norway who had met and married in northern Wisconsin. Rather than squabble with siblings over an inheritance from their late father, a wealthy paper mill owner, Tom Gundersen had set out for the new world with, according to family tradition, only a picture of his parents, a watch, a candle holder, and a large serving spoon. His wife-to-be arrived with her mother and siblings, having been sent for by her father, a former sea captain who, like many Norwegian immigrants of his generation, sailed the Great Lakes (Gjerset 1928). Before Carl’s birth, his father had a thriving logging operation, harvesting timber on the Apostle Islands, then hauling the logs across frozen Lake Superior to the mainland. But “in 1896 he went broke in a winter where there was no frost,” and thus no way to get the timber off the island.2 After scraping by for a few years, the family moved to “a wild eighty east of Ladysmith.,” stump-strewn, logged-off land in Rusk County where the soil was thin and rocky and the growing season short. “There were seven of us children, and mother and father, and we moved on the place in November. There was not very much to live from. We struggled our own living from the earth.” In succeeding years, Tom and Anne Gundersen had six more children, eight girls and five boys altogether. By his own estimation, young Carl “had very little schooling . . . about a fifth grade education.” School was catch-as-catch-can, “when there was no work to do,” and there was always work to do. Ladysmith, Gundersen’s childhood home, straddled the Flambeau River, part of the Chippewa River watershed and in the heart of Wisconsin’s richest timber region (Fries 1951: 20-21). Like Ashland, Eau Claire, Rice Lake, and many more north woods communities, Ladysmith was a “sawdust city” of sawmills, lumber yards, and paper mills. As soon as I was out of school at the age of 15, [in the summer of 1913] I started working at the paper mill in Ladysmith, skinning rolls on the wet machine. If you don’t understand what that is, you’re skinning the pulp off the roll that is about 20 inches in diameter and 6 feet long. You cut that paper off with a cue, and you fold it in four ways and put it on a truck. These sheets of paper would weigh from 100 to 125 pounds. I was 15 years 2

All quotations, unless otherwise indicated, were transcribed by the author from Clarice Jensen’s 1973 interview with Carl Gundersen.

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Carl Gundersen’s Trip to the Lumber Camp old at that time. You worked 11 hours a day on the day shift, and 13 hours on the night shift, and 24 hours every other Sunday … We got 13 ½ cents an hour, we got paid once a month, and they held 15 days of our pay back. That wasn’t too easy a job, so we would rather go in the woods.

As Gundersen went on to say, “the only work in those times, for boys, was either in the lumber mills or the lumber camps.” By the winter of 1913-1914, Carl Gundersen was working in the cook shack of a large Flambeau River lumber camp employing more than 100 men. The “boss cook” was a tough yet kindly Belgian, highly competent and a good teacher who, despite being almost continuously “under the influence” of illicit homemade “raisin jack,” was never “really drunk.” Gundersen’s mentor instructed him in the essentials of cooking and running a kitchen. Just as importantly, he stressed that in order “to be the boss” in any aspect of lumber camp work, a person might have to fight: “You’ll never get anyplace if you don’t.” Carl was skeptical at first. As a low status, fledgling “cookee,” he went about his business quietly as a dishwasher – that is until he was tested by the second cook. I washed my dishes and had ‘em on the drying table, when he had burned a bunch of pie crusts. And he took the pie crusts, and he threw ‘em on my dishes. And I said, “A man who would do something like that would do anything.” He said, “You don’t like it.” I said, “No, I don’t.” So he was going to lick me. But he wasn’t going to lick me. I went around by the baking board where the cook was rolling out more pie crusts, and I grabbed the rolling pin. And when he came toward me, I was going to take a strike at his head, but I hit his arm. He said, “You broke my arm.” I said, “I’ll break your head if you come any further.” I started after him, and he went out the door. And I threw the rolling pin at him and hit him in the back. He never came back. And so then I got promoted to second cook. That’s the way you got promotions at times, see.

Carl became a “boss cook” soon after, working for camps along the Flambeau and cooking from a floating “wannigan” cook shack on river drives. (See Fig. 6-1). In 1923 he married Signe Fond, an immigrant from Norway whose family had settled in 1910 on a farm near Hawkins, a Rusk County hamlet east of Ladysmith. Thereafter Gundersen cooked in camps for a few more winters before taking a job as a meat cutter with the A&P grocery chain that required moves, in the late 1920s, to Iron Mountain, then Negaunee, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In the early 1930s, when Carl lost his job during the Depression, the family moved to Hawkins. There, according to

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Carol Gundersen Kuhrt, her father did “anything he could, he was a jack of all trades,” toiling in the Hawkins sawmill, dynamiting stumps to build roads for the county, and opening a shoe repair shop. In 1947, Gundersen moved the family and his business some 40 miles west, to Rice Lake, where he mended shoes until selling out in the 1960s. Gundersen spent the last decade of his life living on 160 acres in the Blue Hills, east of Rice Lake, on the border between Barron and Rusk Counties. The wooded property, crisscrossed with old logging roads, reminded him of his days in camps along the Flambeau. He owned a team of work horses and gave rides to the public nearly year-round on a wagon or a sleigh, invariably traveling along a creek flanked by steep rosestone walls that came to be known as Gundy’s Canyon and remains a destination for wilderness hikers. Gundersen was also active with local Boy Scout troops, presiding over cookouts along the Flambeau River that, simulating bygone river drives, included “beanhole” beans simmered slowly over coals in a buried Dutch oven. In his latter years, Gundersen also began jotting notes and philosophical ruminations about his logging experiences, and he continued to tell stories. His daughter, Carol Gundersen Kuhrt, recalled that, throughout his life, he “told stories to us kids, some of them over and over… He remembered characters like Skunk Frank – he knew everybody along the Flambeau River.” In her estimation, he was a great storyteller, “but stiffer on tape. It was like he was making a speech: you get the information, but not the flavor.” Still, there was plenty of flavor in the old woods cook’s delivery when he held forth on tape for the Barron County Historical Society. For most of the several hours recorded in 1973, Carl Gundersen served as a time-traveling tour guide, taking his listeners through an early 20th century Flambeau River lumber camp. We learn in considerable detail about the camp layout, the nature and purpose of each building, the men, their various jobs, and the tools of their trades. Gundersen frequently interspersed his factual account with personal observations and stories. Prior to his lengthy elaborations, however, he began the session with a brief, roughly five minute, presentation evidently written for the occasion. An artfully condensed foreshadowing of what was to come, Gundersen’s miniature representation of an extended, extraordinarily memorable experience drew skillfully on such widespread forms of lumberjack folklore as occupational speech, ballad-singing, games, and tale-telling. As the tape rolled, Gundersen shuffled papers, cleared his throat, and commenced.

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One of My Trips to the Lumber Camp I’m C.H. Gundersen, making a recording for the Historical Society of Barron [County], Wisconsin. I will give you a story of the way people went to the lumber camps and what you done. I will have to tell you of one of my trips to the lumber camp. We started out on one cold, crisp morning on the logger, until we got to the tote road. We then took the tote road by hoof for several miles. There was a gang going up to the sticks that day, including: [there] was a swamper, a pair of sawyers, a couple of undercutters, a chainer, a ground mole, a road monkey, a skidding skinner, and four up-skinners; several punks, a tank conductor, a straw, flunkies, and a wood butcher. The tote road led through some old slashings for several miles, and then we hit the ice road going to the Flambeau. There were several old decks with the gin poles still in front. They must have cross-hauled up the road. Next we came to the timber we were to spend the winter in cutting – towering pines several hundred feet high. Soon we got to the site of the camp, a good-looking outfit. A bunk shack, cook shack, barn and blacksmith shop, filer’s shack, meat house, back house set neatly over a trout stream – all built of logs. We then looked over the equipment. There were thirty eight-foot run sleds, two Raymond jammers, two side jammers, one McGiffert, and a water tank equipped with a loading barrel; one rutter, chuck boat, several go-devils, nine jackknife drays. And on a rack by the shed there were all the chains: skid chains, quarter binds, top chains, decking lines, anchor chains, swamp hooks, skid tongs, guy lines, spreader chains, crotch lines, jammer hooks, and several Big Berthas. After this, we went to the blacksmith shop. There was a good supply of chopping irons, crooked steel, peavies, wedges, both top hooks and ground hooks, with spuds, starting bars and starting hammers. The blacksmith was pounding out cant hook bills and rabbit ears. The wood butcher was hanging axes. We went to the barn next to look at the crow baits. Some weighed around a ton. They would make a good team as we saw several tow hills on the ice road. Later we went to the bunk house where we left our turkeys and picked out our bunks. The bull cook showed us where we could get a bale of hay for our bunk. So we made our bed before going to the cook shack. I took off my boots and put on my stags, as my dogs were tired from hoofing in all the way. The cook shack was nice and clean. Three log tables to hold 50 men

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each, 16 foot dish-up table, two stoves, long dry rack, sink, mixing board, and hot water barrel. The gut-robber was a tough-looking bird, but had some good-looking chuck mixed up. There were four punks who were flunkies. They showed us the place we could have for the table, so we took our cup and had a handout. The bull cook came in carrying two pails of water on a yoke. He was a big Swede and could not talk English. We then went back to the bunkhouse and another gang had just arrived. One Irish jack went back to the bunk shack and another gang had arrived. An Irish jack who had lifted a few too many was singing a song. It went like this: As I went down to Bunyan’s camp upon a snowy day, I saw the biggest ox, sir, that was ever fed on hay. This ox was fat behind, sir, this ox was fat all ‘round, And every foot on that old ox would cover an acre of ground Maybe you don’t believe me, maybe you think I lie, But go you down to Bunyan’s camp and see the same as I. The horns that grew on that ox, sir, reached up to the moon. A man went up there in January and never got back ‘til June. The man that killed that ox, sir, was drowned in the blood, And 40,000 other poor souls was carried away in the flood. The hair that grew on that ox, sir, reached up to the sky. The eagles built their nest up there, I could hear their young ones cry.

After supper we played a few hands of stud, a game of hot seat and shove-shove, and went to bed. The next morning we rolled out at 4 a.m. and had breakfast of flapjacks, sow belly, ole, logging berries, fried spuds, sinkers, and java. There was a camp inspector there for breakfast. Said he would have dinner at Camp Two and supper at Camp Three. He visited every camp on the Gut and Liver Line last winter. After breakfast, the bull got our crew together: a ground mole, a crosshaul man, a pair of snappy crow baits, a couple of taileroos, a single-line swamp hook, slash block, a cant hook, and myself as a sky piece. Everything went well until the day after Christmas. My ground mole went down and visited Slew-Foot Sally at the crossroads, got pie-eyed and did not come back. They sent a punk out to take his place, and I got hurt and

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taken to the hospital. First, they got rid of all my seam spurs, gave me a bath, wrapped my leg with plaster, bound me with tape, and strung me up with block and tackle. Soon a nice nurse came in and asked how I got hurt so bad. I told her the whole story: “Me ground mole got pie-eyed at SlewFoot Sally’s and fired. A punk misrepresented himself and said he was a ground mole. The first log on the skids was a blue-butted school ma’m. I told him to Sag it and he St. Croixed it. It swung, cannoned, and gunned. Broke two slats. That’s why I’m here.” I got well, went back just when they started hot logging, and stayed until the break-up. Then I came down, blew my stake, and went up on the Flambeau drive.

Gundersen’s Trip and Lumber Camp Folklore At the close of his opening salvo, Carl Gundersen paused, then instructed Clarice Jensen, “You can stop it.” And soon the tape stopped rolling. Gundersen resumed shortly thereafter and continued for several hours in an extemporaneous yet well-organized fashion. Indeed Ms. Jensen is seldom heard throughout the entire session. Apart from an occasional chuckle prompted by an entertaining anecdote, her only audible contribution was an encouraging “You’re in charge” amidst a brief pause in Gundersen’s monologue. Keenly aware that his “Trip” was packed with esoteric speech which, although it might be crystal clear to another woods worker, would likely baffle the uninitiated, Gundersen devoted the rest of his recorded session to a detailed factual explanation, illustrated with vivid anecdotes, of all that had been delivered so densely in a few short minutes. I will offer speculations later regarding Gundersen’s motives for organizing his recording as he did, but first let us consider the form, content, and sources of Carl Gundersen’s opening Trip to the Lumber Camp. During the balance of his 1973 recorded session, Gundersen repeatedly referred back to his prepared opening not as an impersonal factual account, not as a third person fictionalized story, but as a “letter” that was also a kind of speech offered in first person: “You maybe heard me speak of that in this letter” and “as you maybe heard me speak of in this here letter…” Perhaps he had written similar letters with overviews of a season in the woods to Signe Fond while they were courting and during those first winters following their marriage? Certainly more than a few immigrants and children of immigrants, many with, like Gundersen, a fifth grade education or less, wrote letters home. As might be expected, some of the lengthiest and most richly descriptive extant letters, to the extent that they

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touched on the lives and work of loggers, were written as outside observers by people with far more formal education but far less hardknocks schooling than Carl Gundersen. In the 1850s, for example, Olaus Duus, a Lutheran minister with five years of theological training beyond his master of arts degree from Oslo’s Royal Fredrik University, had this to say about the Wisconsin River Valley loggers he encountered during a stay in Stevens Point. They earn from $1.50 to $4.00 a day but they are unfortunately the scum of humanity, the dregs both of Europe and America. They live a life of constant drinking, gambling, swearing and cursing, and even of occasional murder. They flee from justice, and since the language is all the same here in America they cannot be detected by their dialect. They lead a detestable existence and consider perjury as nothing (Blegen 1955: 373, 378).

Nonetheless, representative collections of Scandinavian American letters do include both brief and expansive accounts by humble insiders that are far more understanding of and sympathetic to the lives of workers, including those toiling in the woods and on river drives (Barton 1975: 203301, especially 296-299; Zempel 1991: 67-68, 98; Attebery 2005a: 128; Attebery 2005b: 59). As Jennifer Eastman Attebery has pointed out, in her summary and extension of prior commentaries on “peasant letters” and “immigrant letters,” such texts are fundamentally forms of folk writing that parallel and intersect with narrative and conversational genres of verbal folklore.3 Commencing and concluding with conventional opening and closing formulas, then offering a middle that often includes accounts of work experiences, such folk letters strive to simulate longed-for yet impossible face-to-face visits through their reliance on vernacular speech, their inclusion of such folk forms of discourse as esoteric terms, proverbial expressions, and stories, and their assumption that brevity will suffice in many cases since their audience already knows a good deal of what they are talking about. Carl Gundersen’s Trip to the Lumber Camp, of course, was likely written many years after his original experience as a sort of memoir 3

In a pair of interrelated essays focused on Swedish Americans, Jennifer Eastman Attebery (2005a, 2005b) offers, along with her own considerable insights, a very useful assessment of the various ways in which such folklorists as Klymasz (1969), Dégh (1978), Djupedal (1989), and Mieder (2000) have developed concepts of folk letters, particularly building upon earlier characterizations of “peasant letters” by the sociologists Thomas and Znaniecki (1927).

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intended for the general public yet expressed in the more intimate form of a letter. In his pioneering work on “America Letters,” begun in the 1920s, Theodore Blegen discovered that letters from Norwegian immigrants were often addressed to and shared with entire communities and frequently published in newspapers. Indeed Ole Rynning’s highly influential True Account of America, written in Illinois during the winter of 1837-1838 and published in Norway in 1838, was in Blegen’s words “in effect a long ‘America letter’” (Blegen 1955: v-vi; see also Blegen 1928). By the early 1930s, about the time Carl Gundersen completed his working life in Wisconsin lumber camps, fellow woods workers like Otis Terpening – a “former lumberjack in the Chequamegon district” of Wisconsin who called himself The Lone Lumberjack – was writing a succession of reminiscent letters to Charles E. Brown, director of the Wisconsin Historical Museum, and publishing versions of them in the Ashland Daily Press (Terpening 1931). The ethnologist Knut Djupedal has observed astutely that the letters of older writers “begin to resemble journals, as the audience is as much the writer as the reader” (Djupedal 1989 as summarized in Attebery 2005a:131). A folk letter written at a distance from the experience it described, as well as a public letter with an audience that included the writer himself, Carl Gundersen’s Trip to the Lumber Camp is also a sort of fictionalized letter – a conscious work of art cast in the form of a letter, but written with a good deal more compositional care than the average peasant or immigrant or worker’s letter it emulates. In this regard, Gundersen reminds us of the celebrated Norwegian American writer O.E. Rølvaag whose first novel – The Third Life of Per Smevik (1912, English translation 1971) – was subtitled Letters from America (Amerika-Breve) and consisted of letters purportedly written by the imaginary Smevik to his father and brother back in Norway. As was the case with the era’s actual letters, Rølvaag’s (semi-autobiographical) Smevik offers numerous descriptions of his work as a South Dakota farm hand. In 1987 Ardis Folstad drew upon “a composite of family anecdotes, historical data, and empathetic imagination” that included the compositional techniques of description, dramatization, and dialogue to create an account of her Norwegian immigrant ancestors’ early years in northwestern Wisconsin (1987: 3). Several chapters take the form of letters, including one presented as her grandfather Even Amundson’s December 1875 account of winter activities in a Dunn County lumber camp along the Red Cedar River. Condensing an entire season into a typical day-in-the-camp, Amundson – who like Gundersen was a lumber camp cook – combines, via Ardis Folstad’s imaginative leap, a jargon-laced description of tasks

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and tools, anecdotes, and song lyrics that closely resembles both the folk letter form and folklore content of Carl Gundersen’s creation (Folstad 1987: 29-35). The content of Gundersen’s letter lingers over the first winter days in camp, then leaps at the close to spring’s onset, briskly interjecting a blizzard of occupational terms and spanning an entire season in the woods. Logging’s unique roles, tasks, and tools required a special vocabulary that newcomers like the teenage Carl Gundersen acquired quickly and savored ever after for their practical yet playful qualities.. Industry associations like the Society of American Foresters (1918), as well as dialect scholars (Clark 1931; Misfeldt 1941; Davis 1942) began publishing and commenting on glossaries of logging terms in the early 20th century. In the 1930s L.G. Sorden, an extension agent for the University of Wisconsin based in the north woods city of Rhinelander, began compiling a collection that would eventually swell to nearly 2,500 logging terms and definitions, with a particular focus on those in use throughout Wisconsin and the surrounding Great Lakes region (Sorden and Ebert 1956; Sorden 1969: acknowledgments). Not surprisingly, 78 of the 95 terms studding Carl Gundersen’s Trip appear in Sorden’s Lumberjack Lingo (1969). Some of the missing terms, like “hoofing” for walking or “ole” for oleomargarine, were in wider parlance, while others, like the “Gut and Liver Line,” doubtless parodied the G&L initials affixed to some local, narrow-gauge logging railroad. Just as it took Carl Gundersen several tape-recorded hours to explicate his terse yet – for those in the know – richly evocative “letter,” it would require more pages than this essay is allotted to translate every facet of the young logger’s Trip. Readers seeking full enlightenment may consult Robert F. Fries’ history of logging in Wisconsin (1951: 24-32; 229-238) or either edition of Sorden’s Lumberjack Lingo (1969; 1986). I will elaborate, however, on one term that might easily be misunderstood, the significance of a monolingual “big Swede” and a tipsy “Irish Jack,” the song concerning Bunyan’s camp, the games “shove shove” and “hot seat,” and the concluding accident story. Although lumber camps were occasionally evaluated by public officials during the era when Carl Gundersen worked in the woods, “camp inspector” also meant, “A short-time worker, or one who traveled from camp to camp looking for work but refused it when it was offered. Always got a free meal. A lazy lumberjack” (Sorden 1969:21). Camp custom declared that all comers be fed without question and, as a camp cook, Gundersen must have encountered his share of ravenous, shiftless “inspectors.”

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Gundersen’s “big Swede” who “could not talk English” was both a way to populate his camp with representative characters and cast ethnic aspersions. Immigrants from Nordic nations – Finland, Norway, and Sweden – abounded in Upper Midwestern lumber camps (Fries 1951: 204). Because of their linguistic and cultural similarities, Norwegians and Swedes particularly were often lumped together by outsiders as “Scowegians,” “Scandihoovians,” “squareheads,” “snoose chewers,” “herring chokers,” and “Oles.” Conceived of stereotypically as blond, big, and speaking “broken English” at best, such immigrants were also considered either “green” or dim-witted, yet capable of hard work (Leary 2001: 93,143-144,148). Hence Gundersen’s Swede, yoked like an ox to carry water, is a “bull cook,” a “chore boy around the camp who cut fuel, filled wood boxes, swept bunkhouses, washed blankets, fed pigs; he was often the butt of camp jokes” (Sorden 1969: 17). As a second-generation Norwegian American, Carl Gundersen must have been well aware of his ancestral nation’s domination by the Swedes, and so his “big Swede” subtly conveys distance and mild derision. Irish jacks were nearly as common as big Swedes in Upper Midwestern lumber camps (Fries 1951: 204). Most had come west with prior woods work experience in the Canadian maritime provinces, Ontario, and upstate New York. Although no more prone to drunkenness than their Scandinavian co-workers, Irish have long been associated with strong drink, sociable talk, and song. Irish were especially noted for fostering fiddle tunes, step dances, and ballad-singing in lumber camps on either side of the American/Canadian border. Having pursued lumber camp ballads and their singers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the 1910s, Franz Rickaby declared “the hegemony in song belongs to the Irish” (Rickaby 1926: xxv). Folklorist Edward D. Ives argued subsequently that the “woods style” of singing so prominent from the North Atlantic’s shores to the western Great Lakes region is fundamentally Irish (Ives 1978: 385). The song Carl Gundersen put in the mouth of his Irish jack, however, is not of Irish derivation but a version of “The Darby Ram,” dating to the late 18th century and arguably “the best known ‘song of marvels or lies’ in the Anglo-American tradition” (Cazden, et al 1982a: 566). Although hitherto unreported in Wisconsin’s north woods, the song has been encountered often in logging regions to the east (Cazden, et al 1982b: 109111). And while it is reasonable to assume that Carl Gundersen heard the song performed in the woods, no other versions have surfaced in which the erstwhile “ram” becomes “Bunyan’s ox.” There is undeniable evidence that a handful of tall tales concerning Paul Bunyan circulated in

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Wisconsin’s lumber camps in the early 20th century (Stewart and Watt 1916). Yet it is equally clear that such tales were not widely told in the region. John Emmett Nelligan, a veteran woods worker and skilled raconteur, for example, never heard a single Bunyan tale during his lengthy tenure in Michigan and Wisconsin lumber camps. When he published his reminiscences, however, Nelligan was persuaded by his collaborator, Charles “Chick” Sheridan, to include a spate of Bunyan tales the latter had paraphrased from books (Nelligan 1929; Leary 1998: 139). Books on Bunyan, full of invented characters and exploits that went well beyond scant stories in the camps, flooded the American market in the early 1920s (Hoffman 1952; Dorson 1959: 214-226; Walls 1997: chapters 5&6). Imbued to varying degrees with occupational pride, virile nationalism, and anti-modern nostalgia, the sudden fad for Bunyan associations and anecdotes swept northern Wisconsin just as the era of large lumber camps and river drives was fading. In Rice Lake, soon to be Gundersen’s home, former timber cruiser Paul Fournier established the Paul Bunyan Resort and told Bunyan tales at public events; a local bakery began peddling “Paul Bunyan Bread,” and the Rice Lake Chronotype facetiously reported on December 16, 1925, that “The burial place of Babe, the famous blue ox of Paul Bunyan, has been located a mile west of Turtle Lake by the county highway commissioner, who says the ground is sacred to every loyal lumberjack and can never be disturbed for road building” (Leary 1998:139). Perhaps Carl Gundersen or some other “loyal lumberjack” altered the “Darby Ram” in the 1920s or thereafter as a memorial to Bunyan’s immense blue beast? Just after Gundersen’s Irish jack concludes his song, we are told that, before bed, the camp’s denizens played “a few hands of stud” poker, followed by “a game of hot seat and shove-shove.” The few reports we have of lumber camp games indicate that nearly all of them involved whacking an unwitting or blindfolded fellow worker (Sorden 1969: 62; Leary 1998: 371-376).. “Shove shove,” also known as “shuffle the brogue” in reference to an Irish workman’s shoe, involved clouts with a rubber overshoe. Gundersen eventually provided a full explanation. They sat in a circle, hunched down on their feet and they would take a rubber and, as they was pushing this rubber behind them – they had one man in the center –they would call, “Shove, shove, shove, shove.” All of them would say that and they’d push the rubber behind them. The man in the center couldn’t see it. Then when he wasn’t looking, they would take this rubber and they’d hit him a crack. Then they’d keep this rubber agoing and the man had to guess who hit him in order to get out of the ring. If he guessed the right man, then this man that he caught, he’d have to go

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“Hot seat,” also known as “hot back” and “hot ass,” was a variation: “A man would put his head in a cap and 25, 30 men would stand behind him. And when he got blinded, they would hit him a crack on the seat.” As with “shove shove,” the victim could escape by guessing then exchanging places with whoever hit him. Carl Gundersen concluded his Trip with an accident story. While the rough games of loggers might result in bruises, their far rougher work could break bones or worse. Lumber camp songs and tales, whether seriously or humorously rendered, were often cautionary, warning their listeners of dangers in the woods and on river drives. Unlike his jargonstudded journey to and around the camp – in which Gundersen chose and ordered terms, sites, and experiences as he liked – his closing tale was a set piece: a venerable, widely-told, fictitious story that he undoubtedly heard in some version from a fellow woods worker. Although an exhaustive survey would likely turn up additional examples, I have been able to locate 11 different versions. The most recent, from the 1950s, was set in the Pacific Northwest and incorporates the steel cables, chokers, and winches required to retrieve timber from steep mountainsides. The others, dating from ca. 1905-1930, closely resemble one another in all aspects and appeared in newspapers, published reminiscences, and writers’ accounts of lumber camp life in, respectively, Wisconsin (8), Michigan (1), and Minnesota (1).4

4

There is not room within the scope of this essay to fully explore the provenance and nuances of what is clearly a significant lumberjack folk tale. Eventually I hope to do just that, but here I will only offer references to examples other than Gundersen’s. The Marinette County Historical Society published a version from an unspecified “early day newspaper . . . about 1905" in their newsletter (Anonymous 1980:3). E.H. Burnham of Holcomb, Wisconsin, sent a version to Charles E. Brown of the Wisconsin Historical Society around 1917 (Burnham 1917); the historian Robert Fries subsequently published a slightly edited text of Burnham’s tale without clear attribution (1951:235). Working loggers John Emmett Nelligan and John C. Frohlicher each included versions in their reminiscences (Nelligan 1929:64-65; Frohlicher 1984:73-74), while Minnesota logger J.C. Daly told the story to historian Agnes Larson in 1932 (Larson 1932:364-365). L.G. Sorden (1969:46), Robert Gard and L.G. Sorden (1976:59) and Robert Wells (1978:228) published four different Wisconsin versions, although without specifics regarding who told them, where, and when. Stewart Holbrook suggests that the story was widespread in the Pacific Northwest, mentioning Snohomish and Tillamook (1958:i). Folklorist Archie Green reprinted and commented on the Marinette and

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In Carl Gundersen’s particular version, the crucial terms and unfolding action can be understood by the uninitiated with recourse to reference works like Lumberjack Lingo (Sorden 1969). A “bull” or “bull of the woods,” is the camp foreman. A “ground mole,” “ground hog,” or “ground loader” is one who uses a “cant hook,” a staff affixed with an adjustable swinging hook, to lever logs up parallel “skids” (poles) onto a sleigh or flatbed railroad car. A “cross-haul man,” positioned on the side of the sleigh opposite the ground mole, would tend a chain used to pull the logs up the skids. “Crow baits” are the cross-haul man’s horse team. “Sky piece” sometimes refers to a hat or cap, but in Gundersen’s telling it means the same as a “sky hooker,” “sky bird,” or “top loader”: the person who stands atop a sleigh and positions a succession of logs. “Taileroos,” the “single-line swamp hook,” and a “slash block” are all kinds of equipment: log tongs, a chain with a log-gripping hook, and a block and tackle, respectively. In this tale, the experienced sky piece is injured when his veteran ground mole absconds to what is probably some local whorehouse to get “pie-eyed” (drunk and dazzled), whereupon an ignorant rookie or “punk” botches commands. Confronted with a crotched log (a “school ma’m”) that will roll up the skids unevenly because it is much larger at one end than the other (“blue-butted”), the punk fails to “Sag” or “Saginaw” (to slow the butt end) and instead uses the opposite technique (“St. Croix”). As Gundersen’s contemporary, John Frohlicher, informs us: ‘Sag’ and ‘Sincroy’ – two dangerous but effective maneuvers. They were named for two of the greatest driving streams in the timber – the Saginaw River in Michigan and the St. Croix, part of the Wisconsin-Minnesota boundary (1984: 106).

The out-of-control log ends up “gunned,” careening off the skids so that its butt end strikes the ground and its top end juts skyward like a cannon’s barrel. The log strikes the unfortunate sky piece and cracks two of his “slats” (ribs). Before having his injuries attended in the hospital, he is rid of “seam spurs” (lice). “Hot logging” involves moving timber immediately from stump to mill, which the fellow does until “break up” – typically in the early spring when the ground is too wet and soft to support heavy loads. After blowing his stake – spending a season’s earnings quickly and foolishly, presumably on drink, gambling, and women – our sky piece joins “the drive” (managing logs floating downstream to some mill). Pacific Northwest texts (1996:247-249). The explanation I offer for Gundersen’s tale is a revision of prior comments (Leary 2001:245).

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Memories, Miniatures, and Meanings By beginning his recorded session with a written document that compressed his memories into an artful miniature of lumber camp life, Carl Gundersen departed from the reminiscent efforts of such exemplary Upper Midwestern lumber camp veterans as John Nelligan (1929), Louie Blanchard (Wyman 1969), George Corrigan (1976), and John Frolicher (1984), all of whom published expansive, richly detailed books concerning their lives in the woods. Perhaps Gundersen had no interest in setting down a prolonged, written account of his experiences? Perhaps, given his fifth grade education, he had the interest but lacked the confidence and skills to write at greater length without some collaborator’s help? John Nelligan was aided by Charles Sheridan, a journalist who had published popular essays on birling and other lumberjack competitions (Sheridan 1926). Louie Blanchard was recorded at length by Walker Wyman, a professor of history, who ordered and “retold” the old lumberjack’s story. L.G. Sorden, the university extension agent and authority on lumber camp terminology, was prominently listed as “editor” on the cover and title page of George Corrigan’s Calked Boots and Cant Hooks. Only John Frohlicher, who after a teenage stint in the woods went on to college and eventually to the University of Minnesota’s faculty, wrote and published his Timber! without some established writer’s assistance. Yet Carl Gundersen’s decision to write something brief, powerful, and mysterious, something poetic rather than prosaic, may have been made chiefly for aesthetic reasons – and it may have been influenced by the memorializing miniatures of former Wisconsin woods workers who took up the knife instead of the pen. In 1906 eighteen-year-old Steven Maki emigrated from Lelimailla, Finland, to settle in Ironwood Township of Iron County where he toiled in the woods for many years. A bachelor with time on his hands, he devoted his retirement to making tiny bucksaw handles and blades from cedar that might – with patience, dexterity, and a pair of thin knitting needles – be assembled inside of glass bottles. Maki’s neighbor Eugene Stenroos (b. 1917), a farmer, miner, and, for 15 years, logger with the Forestland Lumber Company, also learned to make the bucksaws, as did Stenroos’s father-in-law Ivar Lehto (1892-1964), a native of Ilmajoki, Finland, who had emigrated in 1912. Like tall tale tellers trying to top one another, the trio competed to make smaller and smaller bucksaws in tinier and tinier bottles (Stenroos 1986). To the south near Merrill, John Henkelman (b. 1905) worked in the woods from his mid-teens until age 24, ending up as a skidding teamster. Years later, after retiring from farming, he

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commemorated his woods work with a series of carvings featuring miniature horse teams, harnesses, logging sleighs, logs, chains, hand tools, top loaders, and teamsters, including one that amounts to a self portrait (Henkelman 1986). Merrill Bartels’ dad may have crossed paths with Carl Gundersen while logging for the Hines Lumber Company near Draper, along the west branch of the Flambeau River, in the late 1920s. Young Merrill carved horses and bob sleds with a jackknife as a boy, then followed his dad into the woods from 1932 until the early 1940s to fell hard maple with a crosscut saw, skid with a horse team, and hack ties for the railroad. In 1983 he began carving small replicas of the lumber camps of his youth (Bartels 1986). (See Figs. 6-2, 6-3, 6-4, and 6-5). In contrast, other former lumberjacks, resembling those who chose to work on books, devoted their retirement to creating lumber camp museums with actual buildings fitted out with an abundance of tools once used in the woods. In contemporary Wisconsin, such camps persist in Eau Claire, Laona, on the Menominee reservation, and in Rhinelander. By favoring miniatures over full-sized representations, however, Gundersen and the aforementioned carvers mirrored the choices of folk artists elsewhere. In The Grand Generation: Memory, Mastery, Legacy, the catalog accompanying their eponymous exhibit on the ways in which traditional hand workers have used quilts and carvings to review and convey their life experiences, folklorists Mary Hufford, Marjorie Hunt, and Steven Zeitlin make the following observation alongside photographs of pieces from Maine and Michigan that might have been carved by Eugene Stenroos, John Henkelman, and Merrill Bartels. “The old-fashioned miniature boats, farms, blacksmith shops, and logging scenes emerge as emblems of the ways of life that gave rise to the artists themselves” (Hufford, et al 1987: 53). Elsewhere other folklorists have argued similarly that such diverse traditional forms as the folk letter, the orally told tale, and the festival are also emblematic: small visible signs of larger hidden wholes. In each instance, as is the case with Carl Gundersen’s opening performance and the carvings of fellow woods workers, “a great deal of the meaning is unexpressed, it is already well known by the audience [of cultural insiders], whose members treasure it as a part of their heritage.”5 5

In her discussion of unexpressed yet, for those in the know, apparent meaning in immigrant letters, Jennifer Eastman Attebery (2005a:134) quotes the oral narrative specialist John Miles Foley and remarks on his contention that the metonym, the part that stands for a whole, is a key concept for understanding the dense meanings of sparely-told stories. Eastman also calls attention to Barre Toelken’s fundamentally equivalent concept of “intensification” as a key to understanding

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Unlike the intentionally revelatory published memoir or public museum, a miniature (emblematic, metonymic, intensified) folk form like the one with which Carl Gundersen began his recorded session is not intended to be clear to all comers. Those who get it must already know it. Those who do not get it will never get it unless they seek explanations actively and patiently. Hence Carl Gundersen’s Trip is a kind of “conversation piece” reminding fellow workers of what they share, while teasing and prompting others in their audience either to ask for more or remain perplexed. Gundersen’s aesthetic decision to launch his recorded monologue with the emblematic Trip may also hint at an ideological stance. In her critical monograph On Longing, Susan Stewart argues that “We cannot separate the function of the miniature from a nostalgia for pre-industrial labor, a nostalgia for craft” (1984: 68). And that nostalgia is likewise a critique of industrial society, of the machine-made, the mass-produced, the prepackaged. Perhaps the meanings of Gundersen’s Trip go beyond poetically conjuring a bygone world to juxtapose what he regarded as the golden past of his youth with the tarnished present of his old age? Stewart’s analysis of miniatures as expressions of nostalgia, however, focused on people who had limited if any experience with the pasts they envied, on industrial piece-workers who used hand tools at home so that they might make not just part but all of tiny “ships, trains, airplanes, and automobiles, models of the products of mechanized labor” and specialized assembly lines (1984: 58). Yet the lumber camps and river drives of the Upper Midwest and further east relied on hand tools, horses, and humans. Carl Gundersen and his wood-carving cohorts had actually lived the fullsized lives, made the large-scale things they imaginatively conjured. In that regard, their miniatures were also modest boasts, proud signs of their having not only survived but prospered in a dangerous, demanding, thrilling era. While in his sixties, Rodney Richard, a woods worker from Rangely, Maine, carved a set of lumberjacks, each one holding an old fashioned hand tool – tools like peavies, cant hooks, caliper-scale rule, double-bit axes, cross-cut saws, and pickaroons – many of which are now being outmoded by chain saws and hydraulic equipment. “I’ve used all of them,” he says. “I cut my teeth on a spud” (Hufford et al 1987: 51; see also Yocom 1993: 125-128).

patterns of meaning in many forms of American Indian folklore and the powwow in particular.

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For a two-week stretch of endless days in June, 1965, I wielded a spud–a sort of long-handled chisel – in the hot, mosquito-infested woods east of Rice Lake to peel bark off aspen (popple) bucked in 100” lengths. Once peeled, I decked the popple bolts alongside a rough logging road so that an old woods hand, Frank Steffel, could load and truck them to the local Excelsior Mill. The experience was intense enough to give me a small sense of what prolonged woods work was like; and it was hard enough to make me happy, especially in retrospect, that I had the chance to go back to school and, eventually, find some other way to earn a living. As a university professor who once played at being a lumberjack, I have more than a little respect for Carl Gundersen, a thoroughgoing lumberjack and an equally adept folk artist – a man with a fifth grade education who entered the school of hard knocks and, late in his life, was justly proud of having graduated with honors. He, not I, should have the last word. Now these people who were in these lumber camps, they were self-made, self-educated men. And they knew their job well. If you was going to send a man of today through four years of college to learn to be a lumberjack, he would go out and kill himself the first day.

This essay could not have been written without the kind assistance of Clarice Jensen and Carol Gundersen Kuhrt, both of whom generously provided essential information, and Janet Gilmore, whose insightful comments helped clarify my sometimes murky thoughts.

Works Cited Anonymous. 1980. “Lumberjack Language.” Marinette County Historian 4(3): 3. Antenne, Katharine Leary. 1955. A Saga of Furs, Forests, and Farms. Rice Lake, Wisconsin: Chronotype Publishing. Attebery, Jennifer Eastman. 2005a. “‘Peasant Letters’ Revisited: The Immigrant Letter from a Folklorist’s Perspective.” The SwedishAmerican Historical Quarterly 56(1): 126-140. —. 2005b. “Swedish America in the Rocky Mountain West, 1880-1917: Folkloric Perspectives on the Immigrant Letter.” Scandinavian Studies 77(1): 53-84. Bartels, Merrill. 1986. Interview and field notes by James P. Leary. Mikana, Wisconsin, 18 April. Wisconsin Folk Arts Survey, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan). Barton, H. Arnold. 1975. Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in

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America, 1840-1914. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, for the Swedish Pioneer Historical Society. Blegen, Theodore C. 1928. The “America Letters”. Oslo: I kommisjon hos J. Dybwad. —. 1947. Grass Roots History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —. 1955. Land of Their Choice: The Immigrants Write Home. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brady, Erika. 1999. A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Burnham, E.H. 1917. “Story Told in Lumberjack Slang.” Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Archives. Charles E. Brown Papers, Box 5, Lumbering folder. Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer. 1982a. Folk Songs of the Catskills. Albany: State University of New York Press. —. 1982b. Notes and Sources for Folk Songs of the Catskills. Albany: State University of New York Press. Clark, J.W. 1931. “Lumberjack Lingo.” American Speech 7(47): 47-53. Corrigan, George A. 1976. Calked Boots and Cant Hooks. Park Falls, Wisconsin: MacGregor Litho. Davis, Elrick B. 1942. “Paul Bunyan Talk.” American Speech 17(4): 217-225. Dégh, Linda. 1978. “Two Letters Home.” Journal of American Folklore 91(361): 808-822. Djupedal, Knut. 1989. “Personal Letters as Research Sources.” Ethnologia Scandinavica 19: 51-63. Dorson, Richard M. 1959. American Folklore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Flory, Kelley. 1989. “Speaking of the Old Days … Historical Society Preserves Memories on Tape.” Rice Lake Chronotype 115: 23, February 8, Pp. 1,3,6. Folstad, Ardis. ca. 1987. Vi Hadde Det Godt Her (We Had It Good Here). Dunn County, Wisconsin: privately printed. Fries, Robert F. 1951. Empire in Pine: The Story of Lumbering in Wisconsin, 1830-1900. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Frohlicher, John C. 1984. Timber! The Bygone Life of the Northwoods Lumberjacks. Stockton, Illinois: Hill House. Gard, Robert, and L.G. Sorden. 1976. Wisconsin Lore. Sauk City, Wisconsin: Stanton and Lee. Gjerset, Knut. 1928. Norwegian Sailors on the Great Lakes. Northfield, Minnesota: The Norwegian American Historical Association.

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Green, Archie. 1996. Calf’s Head and Union Tale: Labor Yarns at Work and Play. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gundersen, Carl H. 1973. Tape recorded interview conducted by Clarice Jensen, Rice Lake, Wisconsin, August 9. Barron County Historical Society Collection. Rice Lake Public Library. Henkelman, John. 1986. Interview and field notes by James P. Leary. Merrill, Wisconsin, 1 April. Wisconsin Folk Arts Survey, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan). Hoffman, Daniel G. 1952. Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Holbrook, Stewart. 1958. “Introduction” to Walter McCulloch, Woods Words. Portland: Oregon Historical Society. Hufford, Mary, Marjorie Hunt, and Steven Zeitlin. 1987. The Grand Generation: Memory, Mastery, Legacy. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Office of Folklife Programs. Ives, Edward D. 1978. Joe Scott, the Woodsman-Songmaker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Jensen, Clarice. 2006. Telephone call by author to Jensen’s Barron, Wisconsin home, January 6. Klymasz, Robert. 1969. “The Letter in Canadian Ukrainian Folklore.” Journal of the Folklore Institute 6(1): 39-49. Kuhrt, Carol Gundersen. 2006. Telephone calls by author to Kuhrt’s Rice Lake, Wisconsin home, January 6 and January 14. Larson, Agnes M. 1932. “On the Trail of the Woodsmen.” Minnesota History 13(4): 364-365. Leary, James P. 1998. Wisconsin Folklore. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. —. 2001. So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest, second edition. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. McCulloch, Walter. 1958. Woods Words. Portland: Oregon Historical Society. Mieder, Wolfgang. 2003. “‘Now I Sit Like a Rabbit in the Pepper’: Proverbial Usage in the Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.” Journal of Folklore Research 40(1): 33-70. Misfeldt, Orlo H. 1941. “Timberland Terminology.” American Speech 16(3): 232-234. Nelligan, John Emmett. 1929. The Life of a Lumberman. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Rickaby, Franz. 1926. Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rølvaag, O.E. 1912 (1971 English translation). The Third Life of Per

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Smevik, translated by Ella Valborg Tweet and Solveig Zempel. Minneapolis: Dillon Press. Sheridan, Charles M. 1926. “Kings of the White Water.” Columbia: The Largest Catholic Magazine in the World. September: 12-13, 49. Society of American Foresters. 1918. Forest Terminology. Society of American Foresters. Sorden, L.G., and Isabel Ebert. 1956. Logger’s Words of Yesteryears. Madison, Wisconsin: L.G. Sorden. Sorden, L.G. 1969. Lumberjack Lingo. Spring Green: Wisconsin House. Sorden, L.G., and Jacque Vallier. 1986. Lumberjack Lingo: A Dictionary of the Logging Era. Madison, Wisconsin: NorthWord. Stenroos, Eugene. 1986. Interview and field notes by James P. Leary. Kimball, Wisconsin, 28 July. Wisconsin Folk Arts Survey, John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan). Stewart, K. Bernice, and Homer A. Watt. 1916. “Legends of Paul Bunyan, Lumberjack.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 18: 639-651. Stewart, Susan A. 1984. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Terpening, Otis W. 1931. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Archives. Correspondence and newspaper clippings in the Charles E. Brown Papers, Box 5, Lumbering folder. Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. 1927. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 2 vols. New York City: Alfred Knopf. Walls, Robert Eric. 1997. The Making of the American Logger: Traditional Culture and Public Imagery in the Realm of the Bunyanesque. Ph.D. dissertation in Folklore and American Studies, Indiana University. Wells, Robert. 1978. Daylight in the Swamp: Lumberjacking in the Late 19th Century. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. Wyman, Walker D. 1969. The Lumberjack Frontier: The Life of a Logger in the Early Days on the Chippeway (Retold from the Recollections of Louie Blanchard). River Falls, Wisconsin: UW-River Falls Press. Yocom, Margaret. 1993. “Awful Real: Dolls and Development in Rangely, Maine,” in Feminist Messages: Coding in Women’s Folk Culture, ed. Joan Newlon Radner. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Pp. 126-154. Zempel, Solveig. 1991. In Their Own Words: Letters from Norwegian Immigrants. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, in cooperation with The Norwegian-American Historical Association.

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IMAGES

Fig. 6-1: Carl Gundersen (seated) shows off his orderly kitchen on the Flambeau River, 1920. Photo courtesy of Carol Gundersen Kuhrt.

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Fig. 6-2: Lumberjack tools-in-a-bottle by Steven Maki, Ivar Lehto, and Eugene Stenroos. Photo: James P. Leary, Kimball, Wisconsin, 1986.

Fig. 6-3: Top-loader brandishing a cant hood carved by John Henkelman. Photo: James P. Leary, Merrill, Wisconsin, 1986.

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Fig. 6-4: Merrill Bartels with some of his miniature lumber camp carvings. Photo: James P. Leary, Mikana, Wisconsin, 1986.

Fig. 6-5: Bartels’ carving of a loaded log sleigh. Photo: James P. Leary, Mikana, Wisconsin, 1986.

EQQAAMAVARA, I REMEMBER. STORYTELLING IN GREENLAND TODAY KIRSTEN THISTED

This article is about the most recent collection of oral tradition in Greenland. It is also about the making of a film in which the present writer played the role of advisor. First and foremost the article is about different types of “cultural encounters”: 1) The encounter between the Greenlandic storytellers and the Danish filmmakers, which is probably not to be seen primarily as an ethnic encounter, but as an encounter between different generations and different styles of life (city versus periphery), and 2) the encounter between the filmmakers and the present writer, representing respectively an artistic and a scholarly approach to the material.

A Documentary – and a Book The most recent collection of Greenlandic oral tradition was carried out by Karen Littauer (born 1965). Littauer has no training in ethnology, folklore or anthropology. She is a film director, and her project was not to carry out a scholarly collection of oral tradition, but to collect material for a documentary. She filmed in Qaanaaq (Thule) in October 2000, in Tasiilaq (East Greenland) in April 2001, and in Upernavik and Ilulissat in May 2001. Thirty-two persons were recorded: 15 in Thule, 10 in East Greenland, 5 in Upernavik and 2 in Ilulissat. The storytellers were found on enquiry in the local communities. Advertising for storytellers was attempted, but calling attention to yourself is not considered correct behaviour among elderly people in the hunting districts, and no one came forward declaring: “Oh, I am an excellent storyteller!” So the storytellers were found through personal contacts, and once the film crew was on the spot, people were willing to report which persons were known as the best storytellers and singers of the old drum songs in the district. More than seventy hours of videotapes resulted from the shootings. In the finished documentary, Eqqaamavara/I remember, released in 2002, the material is reduced to seventy-two minutes. In the film, fourteen persons appear –

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divided by pictures from Greenland showing first and foremost the magnificent nature. Naturally, the documentary can only give a small glimpse of the tradition. Several hours may have been recorded with a storyteller, but in the film we only get to see a few minutes. One must admire the way the storytellers compose their performance, so that stories which apparently do not have any connection get to comment on each other, discuss with each other, or one story is used to broaden the perspective of the other. This perspective is totally lost when just a small excerpt of the performance is shown. I therefore decided to publish a much larger part of the material in the form of a book, as a supplement to the film – even though it did seem a bit out of place once again to reduce the oral performance to written text, since in this case we finally have a documentation of the real performance with the whole art of accent, stress, facial expressions, body language, gestures and rhythm, which makes the oral performance such an outstanding experience. The book was released together with the film: Grønlandske fortællere. Nulevende fortællekunst i Grønland (Greenlandic Storytellers. The Contemporary Art of Oral Tradition in Greenland), 2002.

Knud Rasmussen – Live! It is one of Greenland’s great paradoxes that even though the oral tradition is so highly appreciated and so well documented, we do not have any larger, well-organized, scholarly collection of oral tradition in moving pictures. Somehow the interest in the tradition seems to have been on the decline at the time when this technique was developed – or maybe it was felt that the tradition had already been so thoroughly documented that no further documentation was needed. The first explorers and missionaries repeat very abbreviated versions of Inuit myths and legends in their diaries and reports. The first “real” collection of Greenlandic oral tradition was made in the Aasiaat (Egedesminde) district from 1823-1828, when the Danish missionary Peder Kragh (1793-1883) asked his parishioners to write down old stories for him. Peder Kragh received more than 90 stories written in Greenlandic. The collection was not published at the time, but was later included in H.J. Rink’s collections. The first large-scale, systematic collection was carried out 1858-1868 by the Danish Head of the Administration (“inspector”) Hinrich Johannes Rink (1819-93). This time the Greenlanders were invited to write down and submit old legends and songs, along with illustrations, maps, sermons, or anything else that could be printed at the newly established printing

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office in Nuuk (Godthaab), to “entertain and instruct” the Greenlanders. Soon manuscripts came from Nanortalik in the South to Upernavik in the North, several hundred texts. A small selection of the forty-six stories was published in the four volumes of Kaladlit oqalluktualliait from 1859-63, illustrated primarily by Aron from Kangeq (1822-69) and Jens Kreutzmann (1828-1899).1 A complete edition was published in Danish in 1866: Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn, with a supplementary volume in 1871. A selection of stories was also published in English in Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, 1875. Usually Rink removed most of the oral characteristics and abbreviated the story to a mere summary of the plot, often pieced together from several variants of the story. By far, the most famous collection of Greenlandic oral tradition was carried out by Knud Rasmussen (1879-1933) in the first decades of the twentieth century. Knud Rasmussen was born in Greenland and spoke the language fluently. The oral tradition was a natural part of his childhood. Hence, in his translations, the oral quality is preserved and the stories become alive, although transformed into written texts. It was Knud Rasmussen’s intention that the stories should be represented in such a way that they sounded just as “natural” to the Danish reader as to the Greenlandic audience when told orally in Greenlandic (Rasmussen 1930, Vol. VII No.3, A: 7ff.). His preferred method was therefore not the troublesome, protracted word-for-word dictation carried out by other collectors like William Thalbitzer (1873-1958), who worked mainly with material collected in Ammassalik, East Greenland 1905-06, and some decades later Erik Holtved (1899-1981), who collected his material in Thule 1935-37. Rasmussen preferred a much “freer” representation, in which the story was learned by heart by the collector, who did not write it down before he knew it so well that he could tell it himself (Rasmussen 1929: 251ff.). To many people, both Greenlanders and Danes, Greenlandic storytelling is more or less synonymous with the name of Knud Rasmussen – even though lots of material has been collected since, mainly by West Greenlanders working in the outlying districts: Otto Rosing (1896-1965), Otto Sandgreen (1914-1999), Jens Rosing (1925-2008) and Amandrus Petrussen (1927-1992) in East Greenland; Amandus Petrussen in the Thule district; Hans Lynge (1906-1988) in the Upernavik district; and Mâliâraq Vebæk (born 1917) in the southernmost part of West Greenland. 1

The complete collection of stories and illustrations of Jens Kreutzmann is published in Thisted 1997b; the complete collection of stories and illustrations of Aron from Kangeq in Thisted 1999. See also Thisted 1998 and 2001.

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Both Thalbitzer and Holtved tried to base at least a part of their collections on sound recordings, and the same goes for some of the Greenlandic collectors (Otto Sandgreen, Jens Rosing and Mâliâraq Vebæk). However, when publishing the material it has usually been turned into text and text only. The exception to this rule was the Greenlandic poet Frederik Nielsen (1905-1981) who from 1956 to 1967 was director at Greenlandic Radio Broadcasting. In the late 1950s, he broadcast stories told by the best storytellers in the Nuuk district. It is not least from these broadcasts that the generation of West Greenlanders who are today middle aged know the oral tradition. Some people can still remember and even quote passages from these performances (Grove 1995 and 2000). Unfortunately only a small part of the tapes have been preserved. A short glimpse of oral storytelling is included in Knud Rasmussen’s combined feature/documentary film Palos Brudefærd (Palo’s wedding), 1934, and likewise we find small glimpses of oral performance in a few other documentaries. Since the late 1880s, Greenlandic television has broadcast many interviews with old people, but without focusing on actual storytelling as Karen Littauer has done. Very few people today remember the old myths and stories, but the present day’s storytelling (especially all kinds of ghost stories are popular) pass on features from the traditional storytelling. However, you certainly do not come across skilled storytellers every day like those engaged by Karen Littauer. The first time I inserted one of Karen Littauer’s tapes in my video player, the thought struck me: Wow, this is just like Knud Rasmussen live!

Oral Performance Unfortunately the collectors have not given us much information about the circumstances of the oral performance and the performative technique of the storyteller – except for the general descriptions of the vivid gesticulations of the storyteller. Some collectors or travellers with little or no knowledge of Greenlandic have even propagated the idea that the gesticulations themselves are the real purpose of storytelling – more important to the spectators than the content and plot of the related story.2 However, the more knowledge the author has of the language and culture, the more he is able to appreciate the content and the composition, and to realize how content and composition, voice and gesticulation are all integrated parts of the performance. 3 2 3

See for instance Holm 1972 [1888-89]: 146. See Thisted 2002c: 32ff. for examples.

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Normally the Greenlandic storyteller is sitting down when telling a story. To dramatize the story the storyteller uses his or her voice (to go in and out of different characters), eyes, facial expression and the movements of hands and arms. Only rarely does a storyteller stand up – for instance, he may spring to his feet to imitate or become one with the actions of the main character in the story. But he – or she – is not moving about on the floor, acting out the story. The storyteller does create a sort of stage, but it is an imaginary stage made by words and gestures.4 It is therefore not an awkward or “unnatural” situation when Karen Littauer seats the storytellers on a chair in front of a fixed camera – the storyteller would remain seated anyway. Even though calmly seated, the storyteller’s body is central to the performance. The body of the storyteller is constantly involved. The storyteller may show with his/her own body where and how the character/the hunted animal was marked/hit/touched etc. Certain descriptions are accompanied by certain movements, like the imitation of the kayaker’s strokes, the throw of the harpoon, the helmsman’s position in the umiaq etc. An elderly lady who happens to mention the train-oil lamp will almost inevitably accompany her words with the pitching movement of her hand, attending the imaginary wick with her imaginary lamp stick. Sometimes the movement of the hands almost becomes sign language – as when a raised index finger indicates the mast of a ship on the horizon. The extent of body language will vary from one storyteller to another. Each storyteller has his or her special style. Some storytellers keep their body in vivid motion through most of the story, while others prefer to reserve vivid motions for the most dramatic parts of the story. Some storytellers concentrate on the movements and expression of their eyes. A more understated style can be just as effective as the most grandiose performance, and one kind of performance is by no means better or more “authentic” than the other – it is just a question of different ways of performance, according to the personality and style of the storyteller. Visitors’ accounts of storytelling usually describe the vivid gesticulation of the best storytellers, but this might be due to the fact that storytelling accompanied by gesticulations is easier to follow and easier for an outsider, who does not understand the language, to appreciate, in comparison to a more underplayed, quiet performance. One must expect that body language also works to support the memory. To certain scenes belong certain patterns of behaviour and 4

See Thisted 1994 and 2002c for examples and analyses.

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movements, which help keep the storyline moving on. The story may not reside in memory alone. The body also remembers.

The Recordings Karen Littauer’s tapes provide us the possibility to study body language, style of performance, the establishment and distribution of the imaginary stage, the handling of time and space etc. (for some analyses see Thisted 2002c, Introduction). However, as mentioned earlier, Karen Littauer is not a trained ethnologist or folklorist, and her intention was not to make a scholarly collection, but rather a film. This means that the storytellers are often interrupted – for example, every time the director loses track of what is going on (which happens often, since she does not understand Greenlandic – the performance is stopped every now and then so that the interpreter can update the director), when a car or helicopter passes by (which also happens often in modern Greenland, even in the outlying districts) or when something is not quite right with the light. Looking through the tapes, one is amazed by how professionally the storytellers respond to these interruptions. They know exactly what is expected, and every time they are interrupted, they automatically go back a bit and repeat the scene – some even take the opportunity to improve a formulation or a gesture. At an earlier stage of the production some of the storytellers had a screen test, and from these tapes we learn how thoroughly rehearsed these stories are. The main stories in a storyteller’s repertoire come out identical almost word for word on the screen test and the final take, even though several months may have passed between the two. Only a few of the oldest persons keep losing the thread due to the constant interruptions, and just one old man fails to see the point. “Why do you want to hear this story?” he asks. “I already told it!” (namely, when Karen Littauer visited him for the first time and recorded the story with a cheep video camera, with no special attention given to the quality of light and sound). No matter how hard the director and her assistant try to persuade him, the man has no intention of telling the story they want to hear. Today he wants to talk about something else! Since each person is asked to begin by recounting his or her earliest memories of childhood, many of the interviews take the form of a life story, where the storyteller relates important events in his or her own life. However, the director does not want to hear any kind of story. She is seeking to hear memories of grandparents who still lived in the Eskimo way and who believed in spirits, or to hear about modern experiences with the supernatural. Therefore, the storyteller is immediately interrupted if he

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or she begins to tell a story with no relation to such themes. Only indirectly do we hear what the storyteller has done for a living – in spite of the impression given by the film, not all of the storytellers were great polar bear hunters. At least not “full time.” They may have had quite different careers too.

Old and New Stories One storyteller gives up on the idea of integrating his repertoire into a relation of his own life story. Obviously he has not made any story out of his own life. The storyteller’s name is Esaias Kuitse, born in Kulusuk, Tasiilaq, East Greenland in 1939.5 As he explains it, he is a very quiet person. Usually he does not talk much. But when somebody asks him to tell a story, he never says no. Esaias Kuitse was very sick when the tapes were recorded and died a short time later, in July 2002. At the part of the tape where he is asked questions about his personal life, it is obvious that he is not feeling well – you can tell both that he is ill and that he is uncomfortable with the situation. However, the moment he starts his performance, it is as if he turns on a light somewhere inside and forgets about himself. He becomes a totally different person. In an interview I had with him via “long distance” (one of the interpreters read my questions and taped his answers), he explains this process of becoming one with the story and “entering” the characters (pulasutut ittarpunga: “it is as if I have crept into him,” the main character). To Esaias Kuitse a good storyteller is a person who is able to make the storyline one with his own body, a person who can express the story through gestures and words, so that the audience can “see” the story. It is not a coincidence that several of the storytellers liken storytelling to film: they have the story before their eyes as a row of pictures, and it is their job to make this “film” visible to the audience. The stories Easias Kuitse tells are the old ones that William Thalbitzer and Knud Rasmussen heard and wrote down in the beginning of the twentieth century. He learned these stories as a child primarily by listening to his father, Wilhelm Kuitse, a famous storyteller known from many of 5

A private recording with Easias Kuitse was taped by Niels Grann in 1991. I had access to this tape when writing my Ph.D. (Thisted 1994). Even though I had no actual influence on the film at the stage of choosing storytellers and recording, I had a couple of meetings with Karen Littauer and provided her with a copy of Niels Grann’s recording. I asked Karen Littauer please to record at least one tape with Esaias Kuitse – and having watched some of the previous recordings from Thule, I told her I would grill her over a slow burning fire if she interrupted him as much as once. Therefore, this tape is without interruptions.

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the previous collections. Whenever the little Esaias heard someone tell stories, he would listen carefully. Afterwards, he would rehearse them by himself and at a later stage he would practice them, telling them to his playmates. In the beginning he kept to the short, easy stories, but later he felt ready for the long, more complicated ones. When he became a grown man, there was a long period when he never told stories. In fact it was as though he had forgotten them. However, when his father died, Esaias Kuitse suddenly felt the need to take up storytelling again. Esaias Kuitse was not able to explain how all the stories were kept in his memory – he just knew that when somebody asked him to tell a story, it was resting somewhere inside him, ready to come out. Traditionally the storytellers distinguish between oqaluttuaq (pl. oqaluttuat) and oqalualaaq (pl. oqalualaarutit). Oqaluttuaq is a very old story, handed down from the forefathers. The storyteller must handle this material with the greatest care. One has to re-tell an oqaluttuaq exactly as one has heard it. As this type of story has been told many, many times, it will usually have assumed a more definite form, and it is characterized by lots of wordplays, rhyme etc. Oqaluttuat must not be told in a normal voice, but in a special “singing,” rhythmical form. Oqalualaaq is a newer story. It might be something the storyteller has experienced himself or herself, or he or she might have heard it from someone who has experienced it herself. In this type of story the style is much freer, and the tone and rhythm can be different, even though the storyteller may use the same more recitative style in part of the performance or even through the whole performance. Present day storytellers still operate with this differentiation. In East Greenland the words are oqalittuaq and oqalivasaaq. Today the word unikkaaq (pl. unikkaat) is used in West Greenland and Thule to describe stories based on personal experience or stories based on real events. These stories are, today, considered more valuable than the old stories, which Christianity has characterized as fantasy and “fairytale.” None of Esaias Kuitse’s stories were included in Karen Littauer’s film. Somehow it was felt that these stories would be too inconsistent with the rest of the film. However, we are lucky to have secured these tapes, so very valuable to understanding how the old stories have traditionally been performed. An understanding of what happens during performance is important not only to understand the art of oral tradition, but also to understand what the stories are all about. Watching a story be performed may in some instances cause a 180 degree change in the interpretation, since it is only through the performed version of a story that we can fully

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experience the function of humour and laughter in the Inuit tradition.6 These modern recordings can therefore also throw light on the old written texts derived from the oral tradition.

Inuit Tradition and Christianity A main theme in the stories that the storytellers have chosen to tell to Karen Littauer is the conversion from Inuit beliefs to Christianity. This of course is due to the fact that the recordings were made in the outlying districts.7 Even though the main characters in the stories are all converted and baptized, the schism is still alive within them, since their parents and grandparents passed on so much of the old world view to the next generations. The storytellers are convinced Christians, and expressing their belief in Christianity is important to them. Most of the storytellers cannot and will not speak of the Inuit or Eskimo past without also speaking of Christianity. Ghost stories and tales of the “there are more things in heaven and earth” type can be related in a more isolated context, but spirits and shamanism and qivittoq stories (see below) are almost always embedded within a broader plot in which Christianity is given the last word. Otherwise, the storyteller simply comments on the story and underscores that Christianity has different views on these things and that he or she is, of course, a Christian. In many of the performances, Christianity is described as a lighter and more compassionate religion which, according to God’s plan, was intended to succeed the Inuit spiritual world, and the missionaries’ division between paganism associated with darkness and Christianity associated with light is repeated by many of the storytellers. To the female storytellers, it is also important that Christianity gave more value to the individual – not to mention more respect towards women – than the old worldview. It could be discussed whether this is actually true, but this is not a place for such a discussion. What is important is that the storytellers understand and explain it in this way. From a scholarly point of view (and

6

See Thisted 1994 for an analysis of how a text (the story of Kaassassuk), which by collectors in the printed versions usually is presented in the tragic mood, when taking the performative aspects into consideration can be proven to have comic elements, which are very important to the interpretation of the story – and to the understanding of this type of story as part of Inuit socialisation. 7 In East Greenland the mission was established in 1884, in Thule in 1909, while the central west coast was christianised by the middle of the 18th century. The first missionary, Hans Egede, arrived in 1721.

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from an ethical point of view) the storytellers’ own plots and interpretations must be respected. Within the storytellers’ own frame of reference, Christianity is never considered part of Danish imperialism. The missionaries in Thule and East Greenland were not Danes, but West Greenlanders. Even in West Greenland, Christianity was, already by the middle of the nineteenth century (and probably much earlier), integrated into the oral tradition, where the stories tell how God himself bestowed the faith upon the Greenlanders – reducing the missionaries to mere messengers and gobetweens.8 In this way Christianity long ago became part of Greenlandic national identity. As a matter of fact, Christianity has often been listed as one of the things that distinguishes Danes from Greenlanders. Greenlanders define faith as the most important guideline in life, whereas Danes (are believed to) define wealth and scientific knowledge as the most important.9

Cultural Encounters – and Conflicts However, generally Danes have no insight into this Greenlandic tradition. They know Greenland mainly through Danish representations such as Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow where the Greenlanders are described as strangers to Christianity, as well as to writing and to the modern world in general.10 What makes Greenland fascinating to outsiders is its aura of something remote and exotic: the Knud Rasmussen land of shamans and polar bear hunters. To the present generation of Danes (as well as to many young Greenlanders, living a modern life in the urban areas), Christianity vis à vis Greenland is seen as the legitimising ideology of imperialism and colonialism, something that was forced upon the Greenlanders with the tragic result that a once self-sufficient culture was destroyed, resulting in the present-day social problems. Therefore, the filmmakers were not the least interested in hearing about Christianity. Although the storytellers insisted on describing Christianity as a progressive religious force, the filmmakers wanted to stick to the story of how Christianity suppressed Inuit beliefs and traditions – which, however, still at least partly survive in the outskirts of “civilization.”

8

See Thisted 1997a, 1997b and 1999. For instance, see Pavia Petersen 1944, analyzed in Thisted 2002b. 10 For a discussion of Høeg’s novel see Thisted 2002a. 9

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Since the elements of Christianity and the elements of Inuit beliefs are so closely connected in the present oral tradition, the storytellers succeeded in getting their own versions taped. It simply was not possible to stop filming when a storyteller started to tell about Christianity, in the same way that filming stopped when a storyteller started to speak about local families and the local history or to relate something he or she had read in a book. But have the storytellers also succeeded in conveying their own understanding of the relationship between Inuit belief and Christianity? Let us examine two examples of what happened to the performance when fitted into the plot of the documentary.

Inoqusiaq Piloq Inoqusiaq Piloq was born in 1932 in Nallortut and raised in Siorapaluk, the northernmost area of the Thule district. Her father was a great hunter. One of Inoqusiaq Piloq’s earliest memories is of the time when her father had been on a long trip and came home with two polar bear cubs – very much alive and very angry. Since her father was such a skilled hunter, good at travelling long distances with his dog sledge, he was often sent on long trips down south through the dangerous Melville Bay with the post (the Danish administrator’s post, that is). It was when returning from such a trip that he brought the cubs, and the story begins with the family being home alone, waiting for the absent father, the house haunted by a firebreathing ghost! Then Qaarngaaq, the father of Inoqusiaq Piloq’s father, is introduced. The grandfather is old at the beginning of the story, but still a selfsustaining hunter who prefers to live out in the district and comes to the settlement only to trade foxes for ammunition and other necessities. The first story we hear about the grandfather is when he visited Siorapaluk and was invited to a party with some Danes.11 They sang so many drum songs and had so much alcohol that he fell asleep in the snow. Had he not been an angakkoq, a shaman, he would have frozen to death. Having been informed in this indirect way about the grandfather’s status as angakkoq, we are told how he tried to give his grandchildren amulets. They were not allowed to wear them by their mother, who tore them from their necks, explaining to the children that the grandfather was trying to “influence you to have another religion – a bad religion!” Right 11

Namely Jette Bang’s film crew. Bang was in Greenland to shoot her famous film Inuit. The party in Siorapaluk took place March 15th 1939, according to Jette Bang’s diary (Bang 1941).

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from the beginning we have sensed the tense relationship between the mother and the grandfather. Now we understand the reason why. The tensions get worse as the years pass. After Inoqusiaq Piloq has grown into a somewhat bigger girl, the family moves to Uummannaq, Dundas, at the foot of the Thule mountain. One day she and her cousin Pauline see some strange people with faces and torsos like humans, but tails like dogs. “It was eqillit (crossings of a human being and a dog, according to the Inuit myth) that you saw!” Inoqusiaq Piloq’s mother says when she hears about it. So, like other relatives in the story, she has not rejected the Inuit spiritual world even though she has turned her back on it and replaced it with Christian beliefs. During the next years Inoqusiaq Piloq’s grandfather still lives in his old place up north near Siorapaluk, but every now and then he travels down to Uummannaq to have a party and dance drum dances together with his brother, Pualorsuaq. Often he lets his granddaughter attend these parties and watch the singing and dancing. Even though the grandfather has supernatural powers that save him from situations where normal people would have been certain to die (e.g. when he once fell from a steep bird cliff) he finally gets sick from tuberculosis. By this time he has moved to Uummannaq and has been living there for two years. When he is dying, Inoqusiaq and her younger brother visit him at the hospital. He is a frightening sight, dressed all in white but blue in his face, with eyes unnaturally big and a stare as if he were frightened to death. Even though her children come home from the hospital screaming and crying, Inoqusiaq Piloq’s mother makes no effort to go and visit her father-in-law. Not until her husband comes back from a hunting trip the next day does she go to the hospital. Shortly after the grandfather dies, and the children are relieved that they will never have to see him again, so sick and scary has he become. But soon they start to miss him. “On the one hand I loved him dearly, on the other hand it was not always, I felt sympathy towards him, since his helping spirits kept persecuting me.” In this way Inoqusiaq Piloq ends this first section of her story.

Americans – and Grandfather’s Helping Spirit Inoqusiaq is a young girl who attends school and enjoys a quiet life in the settlement. One day suddenly everything is changed as a huge aeroplane arrives. Also, a big ship and a submarine are on their way towards the coast. At first the Inuit are terrified, but soon they get used to the Americans. However, Inoqusiaq Piloq’s mother remains suspicious.

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One day when the Americans are playing brass band military music and marching between the houses in their uniforms, she says: “I have heard that when the Americans want to conquer another country, they always behave just like that.” At first it seems that her prediction was wrong, but soon the Americans begin constructing the Thule Base, at the place the Inuit call Pituffik, because this is where they set their fox traps. Hunting declines. The strangers are noisy: they keep firing their artillery and the animals disappear. The Inuit have to travel farther and farther away from the settlement to hunt. Inoqusiaq Piloq’s father decides to move farther south to Innaanganeq, Kap York, and this is where Inoqusiaq meets her husband. Inoqusiaq Piloq is married, she is happy, and she is five months pregnant. She is on a hunting trip together with her husband. This is where we return to the grandfather and his helping spirits. During the trip they visit a place where the grandfather lived a long time ago. Approaching the place, Inoqusiaq suddenly becomes so sleepy that she cannot resist sleep (a certain sign that something unnatural is approaching her). Close to her grandfather’s deserted turf house they find an old dog harness. “This I shall keep with me for as long as I live,” Inoqusiaq Piloq says. She wants to keep it as a memory of her grandfather. Later the same day she is still sleepy, and her husband pitches up their tent so that she can sleep while he climbs the mountain to fetch little auks for their supper. Suddenly there is another man in the tent with her. “Finally I meet you!” the stranger says. It turns out to be one of her grandfather’s helping spirits. Her grandfather used to send him to see if his family was all right, and the spirit has known Inoqusiaq since she was a little girl, he explains. Since her grandfather’s death this helping spirit has been without a human being to give him the warmth that all helping spirits long for. He wants to have Inoqusiaq as “his human.” “Your faith is a wrong faith which cannot help you in your life,” the spirit says. “No matter how hungry you get, Christianity will never be of any help to you.... Helping spirits are very useful to people. If something happens to the person, the helping spirit is immediately there to help.” Inoqusiaq Piloq resists him. She will not forsake her baptism. A warm light shines into the tent and covers one half. On the other side there is darkness – a darkness that came into the tent with the stranger. Inoqusiaq identifies the light with Christianity, and she realizes that once the stranger succeeds in making her turn her body towards him, she has lost. So she stares into the beam of light and tries to fold her hands. They are so heavy, she is so sleepy, she cannot move – but suddenly the trance is broken and she finds herself far up in the mountain, searching for her husband.

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Later as they are approaching the tent on their way down, they both see that a person is still in there, but when they reach the tent, there is nobody. Inoqusiaq ties the dog harness to a stone and throws it into the water through a crevice in the ice. “Our old ways of life must be forgotten,” she says, “we have another way of life now.” A few days later her parents find the same dog harness in the same place where she and her husband first found it! When Inoqusiaq Piloq returns to the settlement she is still ill, and she still cannot bring her hands together in prayer. She waits until she knows that her father is out hunting. Then she goes to her mother, and together they sing hymns. Her mother takes her hands between her own and brings them together and they pray. After that Inoqusiaq feels a great wave of relief pass through her. The darkness is gone and she feels healthy and restored.

The Polar Bear Rumours reach the family at their remote settlement – the old hunting grounds at Uummannaq are to be deserted, the Inuit must leave!12 They feel so sorry for the people there. Inoqusiaq Piloq’s parents have to leave right away because they still have a house there with all their equipment. So the young people are once again alone in the wilderness. Inoqusiaq has recently given birth to a small daughter, so they have to wait for a while before following the rest of the group. They run out of blubber for the lamps, and her husband leaves to fetch fresh supplies for the journey. Inoqusiaq is all alone. Her husband has left her with a gun so that she can defend herself if a polar bear should come along. She has been alone for a 12

During the cold war the US constructed Thule Air Base in 1951-55. In 1953 it was decided to relocate the Inuit. The relocation took place less than two weeks before Greenland’s status was changed from a Danish colony to the northernmost “Amt” (county) in the Danish Realm. The new constitution came into operation from June 5, 1953. In 1979 Greenland got Home Rule. In the mid 1990s the population in Thule took legal action against the Danish State because of this forced relocation. In 1999 the High Court followed the claim of the Thule population, stating that it was an infringement of expropriation when the base was founded in 1951 and the removal happened in 1953. However, compensations were very limited. The case was taken to the Supreme Court which upheld the High Court´s ruling. This happened in November 2003. The Thule population does not feel that the Danish courts have come to a fair conclusion as regards the ownership of the expropriated land and the issue of hunting rights, and they tried to bring the case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The request was rejected.

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long time when she hears a sound like a sledge rushing down the mountain. She goes to the house entrance. There is nobody! Then she hears a polar bear. She knows that it will come rushing through the door or the window and she holds the gun ready, pointing alternately at the door and the window. Suddenly she realizes that she can hear the bear roar – but she cannot hear any creaking in the snow. This bear cannot be any ordinary bear – she remembers that her grandfather used to have a polar bear as a helping spirit. It must be this bear, which has come along to protect her. Her fear is gone, her husband returns, there are no signs of any polar bear, and the couple agree that it must have been her grandfather visiting. “There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of him,” her husband says. Somehow the grandfather has turned from something evil into something protective – more like a guardian angel. Turning your back on the old way of life, identifying the past with the evil, is not so easy when a beloved grandfather or grandmother has been such an integral part of this past. Just as Inoqusiaq Piloq tries to create a more positive role for her grandfather, several of the storytellers carry out this sort of “translation” to integrate the old within the new.

The Baptism Inoqusiaq Piloq continues her story by telling about the brutal expulsion from Ummaannaq (Thule). Unfortunately her story is constantly interrupted during this section. The director is getting impatient; she thinks she understands what Inoqusiaq Piloq is talking about, but in fact she doesn’t. Inoqusiaq Piloq is becoming confused, not knowing what is going on and what is expected of her. The intersecting story about how the people were moved is cut short. Instead the director’s assistant starts asking for some other stories that were recorded during the research. Inoqusiaq Piloq tells these stories – but she wants to return to her grandfather. She tells some warm memories about how he used to tell her and her brother stories to make them fall asleep. Recalling the stories he used to tell, Inoqusiaq Piloq suddenly realizes how she is to end her story. “I have forgotten to tell about my grandfather’s baptism!” she exclaims. Her grandfather used to tell her about this incident which happened before she was born. Like the rest of Inoqusiaq Piloq’s stories this one is marvellously composed. Inoqusiaq Piloq knows the technique of suspense as well as a lot of other techniques to heighten the excitement and influence her audience’s emotions. First we have to understand how engaged her grandfather was with the spirit world. Her grandfather used to be gone for

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days to meet with the spirits out in the wilderness. Sometimes his family gave up on him, believing him dead since he did not return. Sometimes he was so occupied with the spirits that he would even forget about hunting. But then Gustav Olsen, the West Greenlandic missionary, arrived. The grandfather decided to be baptized, but it was not an easy decision. His helping spirits kept begging him not to. He was in great pain – physical pain, although he could see no reason why he should be ill. The day of his baptism he had to fight his way to the church. It was as if he was constantly hit by somebody. While telling this part of the story, Inoqusiaq acts as if she is constantly being slapped in her face from one side and then the other, by several invisible attackers, and it is obvious that she shares the pain of her late grandfather. When trying to enter the church it gets even worse, as if nails were sticking into the poor grandfather’s skin.13 However, once inside the church he suddenly feels totally calm. “He felt as if he had taken off a dirty anorak and put on a whole new, fresh one instead.” When he bowed over the font, he saw a light in the bottom – and the shape of a face. This strongly helped him to forsake his old faith, and he felt truly happy to begin a new life as a Christian. But still the old helping spirits persecuted and pestered him for the rest of his life. “Living with two strong spiritual forces fighting one another inside you was not nice!” Inoqusiaq Piloq concludes. Thus, the end of the story throws a whole new light on the grandfather, who is not to be seen as an apostate, as her mother understands him, but as a constantly struggling individual, caught at a crossroads of history. Inoqusiaq Piloq’s grandfather may not always have lived up to the promises given at his baptism. Still, Inoqusiaq Piloq is proud also of this part of her heritage: “My father never told about him, maybe because he possessed, and used, the same supernatural powers as my grandfather. I do not know.... My grandfather is very famous as one of the great shamans among the Thule people.” Right here at the very end of the story, we realize why Inoqusiaq Piloq, after the traumatic meeting with the aggressive helping spirit, had to wait until her father had gone away hunting before visiting her mother. Maybe her father also belonged to the wrong side, the dark side.

13

Obvious the grandfather’s walk to the church is staged as a via dolorosa. To become a Christian he must, literally, follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

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Inoqusiaq Piloq in Karen Littauer’s Film Karen Littauer decided from an early stage that she wanted to make a film with a lot of faces and voices, to create a portrait of a culture rather than of one or a few single individuals. It was clear from the beginning that Inoqusiaq Piloq was to be included in the film. Karen Littauer liked both the story with the eqillit and the story with the dog harness. However, the latter was quite long and not easily cut down to the approximately five minutes that was considered the ideal length of each sequence. Since I kept mentioning Christianity – complaining that Christianity seemed to be left out of the film even though it played such an important role on the part of the storytellers – the baptism was chosen instead. The producer had shown great interest in this story from the beginning, and she agreed Christianity had to be in the film, somehow. According to the original plan, the film was to be divided into three parts: 1) memories of the informant’s childhood in the small settlements, 2) the spiritual world of the angakkut (shamans), and 3) the spiritual dimension of life today. This organization fits very well with the aforementioned idea that Christianity (as part of colonisation) had spoiled the genuine Inuit culture. In the film Inoqusiaq Piloq opens the third section. The section is introduced by some very gloomy, ominous pictures of nature, shot during the dark winter months, during which we hear church bells for the first time. In combination with the pictures, the church bells acquire an ominous tone. We see the parishioners on their way to church. The camera follows an old man on his way up the church steps, about to enter the church. In the original shooting he opens the door and the light from within the church is streaming out towards him and us, the spectators. In the film we are left in the dark, the sequence having been cut a split second before the door is opened. In this way the symbolism of the storyteller(s) is turned around 180 degrees. While the light coming from the church would have illustrated Inoqusiaq Piloq’s own interpretation and plot, the darkness is connected by the filmmakers to Christianity, and the light is associated with the pre-modern, “traditional” past.

Qivittut and the Story of How to End the Film During the whole process of cutting the film there was a silent conflict between me and the film editor. The film editor felt that she was loyally following the director’s original outline for the project, while I wanted something totally different. To a certain degree she was right in this assumption, since I saw it as my job to counteract any tendencies towards

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exoticizing and essentializing the people in the film. Finally, an open conflict was triggered by our disagreement about how the film should end. The third section of the film was intended to consist of the baptism plus some qivittoq stories and a very old woman telling the story of how a song was born out of the sorrow she felt when hearing that her son had committed suicide. So, in the first sequence of the film we hear about memories from childhood. In this section the Inuit world order somehow seems still to be intact – every act is full of meaning and even though the world can seem a scary place, everybody seems to have a central and important role to play. In the next section we hear more about the shamans, and especially in the two last sequences it becomes clear that the Inuit world order is no longer intact. People are becoming insecure because the shamanic worldview is no longer accepted as a “legal” belief. A man feels the shamanic powers in himself, he is able to see right through the walls of people’s houses, so that he knows everything that goes on in the settlement, and one day he feels a horrible pain in his arm. He watches as his hand and arm turn into the paw of a polar bear. After a while the pain disappears, and his hand becomes normal again. However, since he has no one to teach him (as there would have been an older shaman to guide him in the old days) the whole affair becomes frightening, and he knows that it is now forbidden. “In this way it was no fun being a shaman,” he concludes. The sequence is followed by a woman telling about how her father initiated her with great shamanic powers, but how these powers during her new, modern life only became a nuisance. Like so many others, she and her husband moved from the small settlement to one of the bigger cities. There the poor woman has lived a life invisible to others – even her husband. As she is explaining it, the concept of invisibility is meant concretely – people actually cannot see her, even though she is standing right in front of them. However, the story could easily be interpreted in metaphorical terms, referring to the sense of homelessness and displacement felt by some Greenlanders in the modern world. In the third section the theme is reintroduced or repeated by the suicide story – suicide being the symbol of the adjustment difficulties of young Greenlanders to modern life. So, according to the film director’s and the film editor’s plan, we were to hear these stories of the loss of the Inuit worldview, followed by the gloomy version of Inoqusiaq Piloq’s grandfather’s baptism, and concluding with the suicide stories and a couple of qivittoq stories to end the film. The word qivittoq is usually translated “mountain wanderer.” A qivittoq is a person who, due to sorrow, shame or anger, leaves his

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settlement and hides in the wilderness. After a while a person with no human contact will, according to tradition, cease to be a human being. Soon he will be contacted by the spirits, and he (or she) will become a spirit him(her)self. People used to fear these qivittut more than anything else. Since the person had left human society in anger, people could expect nothing but evil and revenge from these creatures, who mastered all kinds of supernatural powers. The idea of ending the film with one of these stories was to show how, during Christianity and modernization, the old Inuit spirit had had to “go qivittoq,” but to confirm that it was still hiding out there somewhere in the wilderness. In fact this interpretation adheres to the new symbolic use of the qivittoq in Greenlandic literature and rock music in the late 1970s and the 1980s. It does not, however, fall into the traditional understanding of the qivittoq, which is still being upheld in the outlying districts and by the storytellers performing on Karen Littauer’s videotapes. The desired result was only achieved by cutting together two different qivittoq stories told by the same storyteller: Qivingalaq Andersson, Kulusuk, East Greenland. Qivingalaq Andersson’s own interpretation of the qivittoq as a pitiful, doomed spirit, forever excluded from Christian salvation, was cut away, and a completely new meaning thereby given to her story. The film editor agreed that she was manipulating the material “a bit,” but as she had not been looking through the whole material, but only a rather small part of it, she was not aware to what a degree this would distort the meaning intended by the storyteller. In the middle of the conflict I suddenly got support from a somewhat unexpected quarter. As it happened, Karen Littauer had been back in East Greenland, where she witnessed Esaias Kuitse’s death and burial. During this, she experienced how Christianity is by no means some superficial and unimportant layer over an aboriginal spirituality, but a deeply felt spirituality in its own right: the religious belief of today’s Greenlanders – especially the storytellers’ generation of Greenlanders. Karen Littauer therefore agreed to change the ending of the film – even though the editor considered it finished and the producer was extremely distressed because the film was already very much delayed. As it is, the film ends without any clear “statement,” and it might not be easy to see any connection between the 14 small stories. I agree with the film editor that the original version of the film might have given an impression of more coherence and the existence of an actual plot for the film. The final version may not be as artistically satisfying as the intended version would have been, but it is more respectful to the storytellers’ own interpretation of history.

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Colonialism and Ambivalence The encounter between the filmmakers’ interpretation and the storytellers’ interpretations is, first and foremost, an encounter between the filmmakers’ wish for clarity and unanimity and the storytellers’ acceptance of ambiguity and ambivalence. To be sure, the storytellers are critical of colonialism. Considering their audience (the whole film crew being Scandinavians except for the director’s assistant, who acted as interpreter and mediator), they may not have been as outspoken in their criticism as they might otherwise have been. The purpose of telling stories has always been to bring people together, not to offend and scare them away. However, the storytellers are generally wonderfully ironic towards the self-appointed supremacy of the Europeans. We are dealing with a very discreet mockery, which is conveyed first and foremost in the body language and the facial expressions of the storytellers, as when Qissúnguaq Kristiansen tells about the helping spirits of the famous shaman Pualut (Thule). When describing the American helping spirit, Qissúnguaq Kristiansen immediately assumes an upright, tight position, and his voice gets fierce and demanding. A deep furrow is drawn between his eyes, giving him a strict and authoritarian look. The body language and voice imitate European behaviour – and mock their self-righteousness and the way they take themselves so seriously. A further element of mockery is introduced by turning an American into a helping spirit of the Inuit shaman; this turns the white man’s idea of the power relation upside down. Still, there are situations where a storyteller has to say: ”Thank God for the Danes!” For example, Qivingalaq Andersson tells how, when she was only 15 years old, she was forced into a marriage that she did not want and she had to flee to the priest who supported her and brought her under the protection of the Danes (none of these stories were included in the film, but they are represented in the book). Thus we see that even the making of a film with an apparently innocent theme of Greenlandic oral storytelling is deeply embedded within the problems of representation. As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, this is not necessarily a question about ethnic difference – a group of Greenlandic filmmakers might have had exactly the same views of Inuit tradition vis à vis Christianity and modernity as those of the Danish filmmakers. However, in spite of the criticism one can direct towards the (missing) method of the collection and plotting of the film, it must be acknowledged that this is marvellous material. It provides us with insights that we would otherwise not have into the art of Greenlandic storytelling

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and into the twentieth-century history of Greenland, as seen from the peripheries.

Works Cited Bang, Jette. 1941. 30.000 Kilometer med Sneglefart. Copenhagen: S. Hasselbalch. Grove, Arnaq. 1995. Grønlandske mundtlige overleveringer – på dansk. Fortællinger fra Godthåbsegnen. Speciale. Roskilde Universitetscenter 1995. Unpublished. —. 2000. Nedskrivning af nyere grønlandsk mundtlig fortælletradition. Ph.D. dissertation. Københavns Universitet. Unpublished. Holm, Gustav. 1972 [1888-89]. Konebådsekspeditionen. Etnologisk skitse af Angmagsalikerne. Reprinted from Meddelelser om Grønland Vol. IX og X, 1888-1889. København: Rhodos. Holtved, Erik. 1951. The Polar Eskimos. Language and Folklore. Meddelelser om Grønland Vol. 152 1-2. København: C.A. Reitzel. Høeg, Peter. 1994. Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Translated by Tiina Nunnally. New York: Dell Publishing. Littauer, Karen. 2002. Eqaamavara. I remember. Documentary. Produced by Magic Hour Films in co-production with Nuka Film. Denmark. Lynge, Hans. 1955. Inegpait eller fornemme mennesker, som Melville Bugtens eskimoer kalder sig selv. Meddelelser om Grønland Vol. 90, Nr. 2. København: C.A. Reitzel. Petersen, Pavia. 1985 [1944]. Niuvertorutsip pania. Nuuk: Nunatta Atuagaateqarfia. Petrussen, Amandus, ed. and Inûterssuaq Uvdloriaq. 1976. K’itdlarssuákúnik oqalualâq. Godthåb: Det Grønlandske Forlag. Petrussen, Amandus. 1979. Kagfakâtitat – erinarssûtit 21-t. Thule: Hainang. Rasmussen, Knud. 1921-25. Myter og Sagn fra Grønland. I-III. København: Gyldendal. —. 1929-1952. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24. Vol. VII-X. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. —. 1929. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24. Vol. VII. No. 1: Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. —. 1930. Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-24. Vol. VII. No. 2 and 3: Intellectual Culture of the Caribou Eskimos. Iglulik and Caribou Eskimo Texts. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Rink, H.J. 1859-63. Kaladlit oqalluktualliait/Grönlandske Folksagn. I-IV. Godthaab.

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—. 1866-71. Eskimoiske Eventyr og Sagn. I-II. København: C.A. Reitzel. —. 1875. Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo. London: C. Hurst. Rosing, Jens. 1963. Sagn og Saga fra Angmagssalik. København: Rhodos. —. 1993. Hvis vi vågner til havblik. En slægtssaga fra Østgrønland. København Valby: Borgen. Rosing, Otto. 1957-61. Angákortaligssuit. Godthåb. Sandgreen, Otto and Georg Qúpersimân, eds. 1982. Min eskimoiske Fortid. [Taimani gûtimik nalussûgama] Translated by Otto Sandgreen. 1972. Nuuk: Grønlandske forlag. Sandgreen, Otto. 1987. Øje for øje og tand for tand. [Isse issimik kigtdlo kigúmik] Translated by Birgitte Sonne. 1967. Bagsværd: Otto Sandgreens Forlag. Thalbitzer, William. 1914-1941. The Ammassalik Eskimo: Contributions to the Ethnology of the East Greenland Natives. Meddelelser om Grønland 39-40, 53. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzel. —. 1957. Johan Petersens (Ujuâts) danske Oversættelser. Østgrønlændernes Sagn og Fortællinger, samlet af Gustav Holm i 1884-85. På ny udgivne ved William Thalbitzer. Det grønlandske Selskabs Skrifter XIX. Thisted, Kirsten. 1994. Som perler på en snor. Fortællestrukturer i grønlandsk fortælletradition. Med særligt henblik på forskellen mellem de originale og de udgivne versioner. Ph.D. dissertation. Københavns Universitet 1993. Nuuk. Ilisimatusarfik. —. 1997a. “‘Dengang i de ikke rigtigt gamle dage’. Grønlandsk fortælletradition som kilde til 1700-tallets kulturmøde.” Digterens paryk. Studier i 1700-tallet. Festskrift til Thomas Bredsdorff. Edited by Marianne Alenius, et al. København: Museum Tusculanums Forlag. Københavns Universitet: 73-86. —. 1997b. Jens Kreutzmann. Fortællinger og akvareller. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik. —. 1998. “The Collection of Greenlandic Traditions – Oral and SemiLiterary” in The Epic. Oral and Written. ISFNR XIth Congress Papers. Edited by Lauri Honko, Jawaharlal Handoo, John Miles Foley. Mysore, India: Central Institute of Indian Languages: 207-219. —. 1999. Således skriver jeg, Aron. Samlede fortællinger og illustrationer af Aron fra Kangeq. I-II. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik. —. 2001. “On Narrative Expectations: Greenlandic Oral Traditions about the Cultural Encounter between Inuit and Norsemen.” Scandinavian Studies 73(3): 253-296. —. 2002a. “The Power to Represent. Intertextuality and Discourse in Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow” in Narrating the Arctic. A Cultural History of the

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Nordic Scientific Practices. Edited by Michael Bravo and Sverker Sörlin. Canton, MA: Science History Publications/USA: 311-342. —. 2002b. “‘Som spæk og vand’? Om forholdet Danmark/Grønland, set fra den grønlandske litteraturs synsvinkel” in Litteraturens gränsland. Indvandrar- och minoritetslitteratur i nordiskt perspektiv. Edited by Satu Gröndahl. Uppsala Multiethnic Papers 45. Uppsala: Centrum för multietnisk forskning: 201-223. —. 2002c. Grønlandske fortællere. Nulevende fortællekunst i Grønland. Materiale indsamlet af Karen Littauer. København: Aschehoug. Vebæk, Mâliâraq. 1983. Sydgrønlandske Sange. Niperujûtit. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik. —. 2001. Tusarn! kujataamiut unikkaartuaat unikkaaluilu. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik. —. 2001. Tusarn! Sydgrønlandske fortællinger. Nuuk: Atuakkiorfik.

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IMAGES

Fig. 7-1: Karen Littauer and her assistant, Pauline Lumholt, with some of the storytellers from Qaanaaq/Thule. Photo: Peter Östlund.

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Fig. 7-2: Inoqusiaq Piloq. Photo: Peter Östlund

Kirsten Thisted

Fig. 7-3: Qivingalaq Andersson. Photo: Peter Östlund.

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TELLING STORIES TO A NATIONAL ARCHIVE BARBRO KLEIN

A questionnaire and the responses to it are in focus on the following pages. The subject matter is “Personal Hygiene” and the questionnaire, Nm 223, was distributed by the Nordic Museum Archives in Stockholm in 1996 and 1997 (Appendix A). This list of prosaic questions might not appear particularly promising in the context of storytelling. However, I would like to show how these dry questions inspire respondents to communicate deep feelings and many layers of meaning and that brief personal experience stories constitute one of the means by which they do so. Like many other questionnaires distributed by folklife archives, this one has generated rich data for understanding Swedes and Swedish life in the twentieth century.1 Indeed, it is not difficult to agree with the Nordic Museum and other cultural historical museums, when they emphasize that they are the custodians of the collective memories of the nation and that their archives (and other folklife archives) are memory banks in which the voices of individual citizens resound. Since, for the most part, these archives are publicly accessible, it could also be said that the materials in them are located in a sensitive intersection between the public and the private. Among the many questions that present themselves when one reads these materials, one in particular will be addressed in this essay: Why do so many Swedes -- willingly, openly and with their names attached -- write letters to a national museum, describing how they blow their noses, take care of their hygiene during menstruation, or remove body hairs?

The Questionnaire Method and the Nordic Museum Nm 223 and the more than two hundred essay responses to it are part of a corpus which the Nordic Museum began accumulating in 1928, when

1

In addition to the archives at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, folklife archives can be found in Uppsala, Lund, Göteborg, and Umeå.

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the first “official” list of questions was sent out.2 That list was composed by three central figures in Swedish folklife studies, Sigurd Erixon, Sigfrid Svensson, and Gösta Berg, and the topic was “Hundred, Parish, and Village Organization.” Respondents were encouraged to approach old people (sagesmän) in their neighborhoods and ask for information about olden times; the task of the respondents was to record in writing cultural information that would reach down to the “bottom layers of the contemporary era” (nutidsskedets bottenskikt), to use a phrase introduced by Sigurd Erixon (cf. Nilsson 2004). Thanks to appeals on the radio and in newspapers, nearly five hundred individuals (mostly men) were inspired to answer this first list and to do so in essay form. A few wrote essays that were one hundred pages long and some contributors heeded the appeal to enclose photographs and drawings; some of the latter are artistically striking as well as informative. The writers could be paid smaller sums of money, if the archivists and scholars at the museum decided that their essays contained valuable and/or verifiable information. Since 1928, the Nordic Museum has distributed nearly six hundred questionnaires of various kinds: “regular” lists as well as “special” ones. Among the latter are the lists of questions concerning workers’ reminiscences (arbetarminnen) that were distributed in cooperation with different unions in the 1940s and 1950s (Nilsson 1996). The topics of the regular lists cover a broad spectrum: from “Christmas” (1929) and “Folk Belief about Thunder” (1930), during the early decades, to “Friends and Acquaintances (1982)” and “My Leisure Time” (1988), more recently. Sometimes specific stories have been asked for; there are lists entitled “Legends about Swedish Kings” (1937), “Stories about Bellman” (1941), and “Ghost Stories” (1948). To this day, it is common that folklorists and ethnologists compose questionnaires on topics they wish to investigate and that these questionnaires are distributed by the Nordic Museum archives or other folklife archives. For example, a list called “Contemporary Rumors” (1974) was written by Bengt af Klintberg; the responses constitute the base for his celebrated book, Råttan i pizzan. Folksägner i vår tid (“The 2

The long and complex international history of collecting data in writing from ordinary people via questionnaires cannot be discussed here. Suffice it to mention the role of Wilhelm Mannhardt’s efforts (a list of questions by him on farming and harvesting was translated into Swedish as early as 1868), and the role of such phenomena as the British Mass-Observation Project (Sheridan 2003). It should be noted that “the questionnaire method” differs between countries and that there are considerable differences between folklife and/or folklore archives in Northern Europe - and this despite the frequent exchanges of ideas and materials between them.

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Mouse in the Pizza: Legends in our Times,” 1986). A great number of other well-known Swedish folkloristic publications are based on questionnaire material, among them relatively recent books by Bengt af Klintberg (1972), Jochum Stattin (1984), and Catharina Raudvere (1993). During the first few decades, the purpose of what became known as the “questionnaire method” (frågelistmetoden) was diffusionistic, i.e. the aim was to create reliable evidence of the distribution throughout Sweden of various items of culture (such as flails, housing types or supernatural beings), a distribution which could be visualized on maps that were to be published in tradition atlases. Therefore, archivists asked for specified tradition complexes, such as known legend types. The idea was to produce additional examples of already known phenomena, examples that could be quantified and used as evidence of the spread and importance of a given tradition complex (Lilja 1996). Respondents were warned against seeking information from printed sources. Most of all they were warned against using their imagination. It was genuine, uncontaminated tradition that the archives desired. If responses were judged misguided or too imaginative, they could be met with verdicts such as the following: “Bad, quasiphilosophical, no money” (Klein 1986). But archivists could not really control those who defied their warnings and wrote down all kinds of reminiscences, ideas, and stories. And although archivists chided writers for sending the museum such impure material, they dutifully saved it for posterity. During the late 1960s and onwards, the early restrictions began to be eased. New scholarly paradigms were gradually taking hold, and the archivists and scholars at the museum became increasingly interested in the respondents’ own experiences, views and ideas. If the older lists focused on disappearing traditions, the more recent ones have concentrated on a writer’s own experiences. If the older lists emphasized collective and shared traditions, the more recent ones have been colored by an ideology of individualism. Also, during the last few decades writers have not been paid. At the same time, the early conventions are built into the questionnaire genre, and in spite of the fact that contemporary archivists have opened the doors for accounts of emotions and attitudes, they still often emphasize hands-on facts. Of course, this differs depending on the subject matter at hand. While an occasional list (such as “The Preparation of Fields” from 1930) has attracted more than five hundred contributors, most questionnaires have resulted in around two hundred responses. Some writers have been regulars who have answered lists of questions for decades. If one adds to the Nordic Museum holdings, the responses to

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questionnaires housed in the tradition archives of Uppsala, Lund, Göteborg, and Umeå, one realizes that we are speaking about massive amounts of materials. Swedes from different walks of life have contributed hundreds of tightly packed shelf meters of data to these memory banks – a stunning cultural historical record. Furthermore, in Sweden as well as in other North European countries, the questionnaire activities have been instrumental in shaping how both scholars and the general public have conceived of folk traditions (not least of traditional story genres) and how they have thought about folklore and folklife studies as a whole. In that way, the questionnaire method is a form of “authoritative” ethnography (Asad 1994). For a long time ethnologists tended to take “the questionnaire material” for granted and did not ponder over its epistemological implications. During the last few decades, however, the method and the material have periodically been criticized. For example, in 1979, Jonas Frykman, delivered a scathing critique; in his view, the written material elicited via questionnaires communicates a romanticized and harmonizing view of the past. He was ardently opposed by Bengt af Klintberg and others.3 During the last few years, there has been talk about abandoning the questionnaire effort as being out of touch with the times. But this has not happened and the method is still practiced. In fact, lately there has been a resurgence of interest in it, in particular among historians (Österberg 2007:73-76). Not least the folklife archives in Göteborg has been active in promoting this renewed interest (Skott 2008). In the following I shall forego most of the many complex ways in which stories are present in the questionnaire material. In one sense, of course, each essay answer might be called a story. Instead, and as noted, I will focus on some of the brief stories, primarily personal experience stories, which respondents often introduce into their essay answers just as they introduce metaphors and other verbal elaborations. Writers insert 3

The contributions to the debate (which took place in the late 1970s) are available in a special issue of Norveg (1979). Through the years, other conferences and workshops have been devoted to the questionnaire method, some of them with participants from several European countries. One conference took place at the Nordic Museum in 2003 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the use of the method at the museum. It resulted in the book Frågelist- och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre, edited by Bo. G. Nilsson, Dan Waldetoft, and Christina Westergren (2003). My own contribution to the conference and the book is entitled “Nm 223: Personlig hygien. Reflektioner kring frågelistor, meddelarsvar och vetenskap” (“Nm 223: Personal Hygiene: Reflections on Questionnaires, Responses, and Scholarship”). The present article is a further development of that essay and differs a great deal from it. I am grateful to Dan Waldetoft for suggesting that I study the responses to Nm 223.

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brief but “complete” stories into the flow of writing (“complete” in the sense that they contain a beginning, a complication, and an end) just as speakers might insert an experience story or an anecdote into the flow of a conversation or an interview (Arvidsson 1999, Borgström 1998, Ekrem 2003, Klein [1989] 2006). The brief stories are among the important rhetorical means through which the respondents dramatize experiences, emphasize points of view, exemplify general statements or communicate ideas and emotions that might otherwise be difficult to express. It is through the stories that they often enter into unexpected dialogues with their own histories. Sometimes a brief story surprisingly turns up in a response to a questionnaire and the reader gets a sense that the writer is suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful association or memory. At other times, one gets the sense that a writer has told a story orally many times before committing it to paper. In this way, the responses to the questionnaires have traits in common with autobiographies and personal letters. Indeed, one could say that the personal experience stories -- as part of a story-telling genre that belongs to intimate situations (Stahl 1989) -- to a great extent contribute to giving the questionnaire material such a sensitive position between the private and the public. It should be emphasized, once again, that brief stories do not turn up only in answers to questionnaires composed to elicit them. On the contrary, throughout the decades, all the lists (the first as well as the latest) have inspired respondents to write down stories along with their other reporting. No matter how “dry” or “factual” a topic, brief stories rise to the surface. When studying the questionnaire material I have often been stunned by how brutally self-revelatory writers can be – in particular in their brief stories. How can they write like this to a public institution that can promise no true integrity for them nor any real protection of their written contributions? 4

Nm 223 Personal Hygiene Questionnaire 223, “Personal Hygiene” was composed by archivist/ethnologist Dan Waldetoft and distributed during 1996 and 1997. As a list it conforms to the generic conventions established by Sigurd Erixon and his colleagues in 1928. Like the early lists, it begins with a 4

Only bona fide scholars now have access to this material and particularly sensitive parts of it are protected in so-called “personal files.” But this has been the situation during the last few years only. Before the 1990s, it was easy to access the questionnaire material and many ethical and political issues can be raised about the practices that prevailed (Klein 2007).

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broad introduction into the topic (in italics). This is followed by precise questions designed to elicit detailed and factual answers: “We wish to call to your attention that it is important that you tell us when, where, how, how often, how long, with what, etc.,” Waldetoft underlines. In a concluding section respondents are encouraged to offer further reflections. In his list Waldetoft skillfully communicates a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, he reveals that it is central for the Nordic Museum, as an institution that takes seriously its role as a cultural memory bank, to keep a record of the minute facts also of contemporary life.5 On the other hand, through questions, such as “how have notions of cleanliness and sanitation changed during your life time” … and “do members of your family have different ideas about personal hygiene,” he also invites respondents to analyze their own experiences and feelings more broadly. Paradoxically, however, it seems to be the very hands-on nature of many questions that inspire writers to express personal feelings and value judgments. As noted, more than two hundred individuals answered Waldetoft’s appeal – a number that approaches the average for lists of questions sent out by the museum. While some of the letters comprise as many as twenty type-written pages, most are considerably briefer. Approximately two thirds of the respondents are women. This is the normal state of affairs today; in earlier decades, more men than women responded to questionnaires, possibly indicating that the activity once had a higher status than it has now. The oldest woman answering Nm 223 was born in 1916, the youngest in 1979. A surprising number of the women are very young. It is also noteworthy that, with a few exceptions, most of the male writers, were sixty-five years or older at the time of writing. There is a great deal of variation in social and economic backgrounds; a few older respondents have no more than six years of schooling, while others are or have been career professionals. Only a couple of the writers were born outside of Sweden: in Finland. None is a recent immigrant. Some respondents write that they find the questions indiscreet. Some say this jokingly or ironically, but a few use a critical tone to indicate that they regard the questionnaire inappropriate. One woman, born in 1950, writes: 6

5

Together with other cultural historical museums in Sweden, a division of the Nordic museum has devoted itself to documenting contemporary life: Samdok. For more than thirty years, the museum has published the important periodical Samtid och museer (previously called Samdokbulletinen). 6 All translations are by me. When pertinent, I attempt to reproduce some of a writer’s layout on the page as well as such features as paragraph breaks, line

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Telling Stories to a National Archive I have answered questionnaires for several years and have responded to many enjoyable – difficult – and interesting lists, but this one I refuse to reply to. How I wash, blow my nose, take care of myself during my period – that is way too personal (15867).

Another woman concludes her brief letter, saying: I think this questionnaire was difficult to answer. I cannot understand why you asked some of the questions you asked. What people think about snot, for example (15658).

Yet, such negative comments are surprisingly few and far between. The majority of the respondents are not offended; they do not seem at all embarrassed to write about intimate matters. Rather, they seem to find the questionnaire interesting and challenging. This comes through in many letters. Some contributors have obviously spent a great deal of time answering this list of questions and some illustrate their answers with drawings of some of their activities in the bathroom or of the contents in their bathroom cabinets.

The Pervasive Dirt Way Back Then … But what do the respondents write about? Let me exemplify with a conspicuous theme: the contrast between the past and the present. Not surprisingly, this theme also constitutes an inroad to other topics that writers address more or less openly: family relationships, for example. Almost all the writers born in the 1940s and earlier take up this contrast. The difference between a then and a now is critically important to them and they bring it up spontaneously, not only to answer Waldetoft’s invitation toward the end of the list to reflect on how “notions of cleanliness and sanitation … [have] … changed during your life-time.” Readers learn a lot about filthy out-houses in urban apartment complexes, about bathtubs being dragged into the middle of the kitchen floor before Christmas, about bed-clothes and walls ridden with lice, and about visits to rural “plum groves” (plommonlundar). Several women write about crocheted sanitary napkins that had to be washed in privacy and then hidden away as they were drying (cf. Malmberg 1991). One woman born in 1924 sends along instructions how to crochet a sanitary napkin. The same woman also writes: breaks, underlining, and capitals. The archive’s accession numbers are added after a quotation.

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Underwear was changed once a week. I can still remember the brown spot on my slip. The slip was used instead of (expensive) toilet paper, when all you had to do was to pee (15813).

The many descriptions of “when we moved and got a room with a bath” are often poignant and moving. Repeatedly we learn from older writers how the new bathroom was an “unimaginable luxury.” To move to living quarters that had a bathtub and running water was like moving to heaven. The letters frequently state that the grand journey into the world of gleaming bathrooms took place in the 1950s, confirming other evidence showing that this is the period when Sweden more intensely than at any other time was being modernized and also transformed into a welfare state. Several writers moralize, emphasizing that those of us who are alive today must be happy about the hygienic improvements that have taken place during our lifetimes. Among older writers, even among those who prefer to write about life long ago, there is a deep sense of gratitude toward the present and its conveniences. The relatively recent journey into the world of modern bathrooms stands out as an important collective memory about “us” as Swedes. Some older writers ignore the fact that the questionnaire primarily concerns their own hygienic routines at the present and devote their entire letters to the past. A few are obsessed with their own histories and occasionally letters burn with indelible memories. At the beginning of a long letter a man, born in 1920, emphasizes that he has answered many questionnaires through the years. Then he goes on to say: But no list has so thoroughly touched my bad conscience as this one. (Perhaps the announced questionnaire concerning ethics and morality will become even more intrusive into my private life?)

Nevertheless, he continues his answer to Nm 223: First, the sad truth. I have always been afraid of water. Perhaps the reason is the way I was raised? Born out of wedlock I came to my maternal grandparents when I was five years old. They lived in a continuous fear of God. Without exaggeration a hysterical fear of death and of God. Most aspects of daily life were sin, and pride was the worst. Pride was to wash too often. To use soap and the like was the worst thing you could do. I never took a bath between the ages of five and twenty and that experience was a shock (15637).

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After this, he proceeds in a much lighter tone to describe how he was not allowed to join other children at a public baths in a town near-by. This letter is one of many showing how the most prosaic questions can lead to powerful memories and reflections of existential importance to a respondent. In all likelihood, this writer is also eager to catch the attention of the archivists at the museum; perhaps he wants to shock them a bit. Another respondent, a man born in 1911, is interested in the past exclusively and entitles his letter: “Hygiene in Former Times.” A “now” is merely a platform for an all-important “then.” No doubt, this man is influenced by older generic conventions in the questionnaire method whereby respondents were solely asked about the past and the objective was to report on times as far back as memory could reach. The main part of this skillfully composed and well-controlled text concerns the six winters when the writer cut logs, “far away from home” way up in northern Sweden. He describes how he tried to keep himself reasonably clean, unlike most loggers … who did not wet their bodies the entire winter, despite the fact that the work was difficult and generated sweat and there were few changes of clothes.

Then he shifts to a brief story describing a specific event: I particularly remember one of the men with whom I shared a bed all winter, he wore the same hand-knitted long-johns day and night. Then, in the spring, when the timber-cutting was done and before we were to return home, we were as usual auctioning off things that people did not want to bring back with them. Suddenly, a horrible smell entered the little house because of the draft in the chimney. It turned out that the smell came from my comrade’s long-johns which he had placed on a stump outside to burn (15656).

With his brief story this writer encapsulates a social world that is utterly foreign to Swedes today. But one also gets the feeling that he has told this story many times before, perhaps in the company of good friends. Like many other responses, this one gives rise to intriguing questions concerning the inter-relationship between orality and writing. Perhaps this writer also includes his drastic, olfactory memory in order to shock museum archivists and other prospective readers. In fact, it seems to me that, through the decades, respondents to questionnaires have challenged archivists and scholars precisely this way. The attempts of the archivists to control the answers to their questions and to weed out stories and other “fantasies“ when these answers were to be published (Lilja 1996), must

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have had a great deal to do with their embarrassment when confronted with the raw candor of uneducated respondents—respondents who in their turn did all they could to tease stuck-up museum employees.

… and Today’s Confusion and Disgust If some of the older writers cannot let go of the past and will not allow readers to forget the world as it was before the era of running water and convenient bathrooms, writers born in the 1950s and later seldom bring up that era. Most of them do not reflect on the past at all, and many ignore the invitation in the questionnaire to write about the changes in ideas about cleanliness during their life times. A few of the writers born in the 1950s experienced the great move into the world of modern bathrooms as children, but still do not reflect a great deal on the era preceding their childhood. One exception is that, like older contributors, they often write with nostalgic humor about the simple outhouses or general lack of amenities that are common in contemporary Swedish summer houses. Yet, despite such shared nostalgia, the responses to Nm 223 indicate that Swedes can be divided into two generational worlds. Those who were children before the 1950s and those who grew up later have led vastly different hygienic lives, both in terms of experiences and in terms of the stories they tell. Among many writers born in the 1950s and later, bathroom activities stand out as peak moments in their daily lives. While the oldest contributors write that they wash themselves quickly and dutifully, many respondents born in the 1950s and later write about their bathroom rituals enthusiastically and with many details. Younger women carefully describe how they protect themselves during their periods, what body hairs they remove, and when they do it. Some follow the questionnaire instructions exactly and enumerate, with brand names, the soaps, deodorants and other articles they keep in their bathroom cabinets. Some write this with humorous distance, others use a matter-of-fact or even solemn tone. Several respondents draw the contents of their cabinets and one woman includes a collage of the items she keeps there. Some young women report that they shower several times a day while some older writers are critical of such practices. The question: “Does it happen that you take baths together with others?” is understood in different ways in the responses. If older persons address the topic at all, they emphasize that they wash themselves alone and never together with someone else: “I wouldn’t dream of such an aberration,” writes an elderly lady, partially in jest (16033). This kind of

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response on the part of older contributors is interesting in light of the fact that many of them, like the man quoted above, must remember not only the public baths to which they were taken as school children but also the communal outhouses designed for many users that were customary in all social classes well into the twentieth century, both in the country and the city (Rosén and Wetter 1970). However, the washing together with others mentioned in Nm 223 gives other associations than the public baths and the outhouses of the past and, of course, alludes to close relationships between family members and, in particular, to sexuality. Many young women seem to enjoy answering the question of bathing with others and write fondly about families enjoying an evening together in the bathtub. Some describe, in romantic detail, how couples shower together. Not unexpectedly, older respondents are less candid on the topic of sexuality than those born in the 1950s and later, even though also letters from older writers reverberate with sexual themes, albeit usually obliquely or metaphorically. Actually, through the briefest of remarks some writers open up windows to painfully problematic sexual relationships. One man, born in 1930, who dutifully addresses most questions in the questionnaire and also outlines by the hour his daily schedule of hygienic practices, emphasizes that cleanliness is particularly important “in the context of sexual activities;” then he writes: I sometimes borrow my wife’s hair dryer but only to dry my armpits and the hairs around my genitals. That fills my wife with rage (15810).

However, also the outspoken young women tend to describe sexual relationships in an oblique way, sometimes using a lively and humorous style of writing. Consider the following example: I take very good care of my teeth, they are really fine. My dentist says that I brush too often. For example, I always brush my teeth, if I have had coffee or eaten something. And I use toothpicks and chewing gum. I often visit the dentist, for the sake of my teeth (not for the sake of my wallet). I have never had to see a dental hygienist. An episode out of my life: Since I do not suffer from a fear of dentists and since I have good teeth, I suppose I am a rather “nice” patient. This became clear once upon a time -in the mid-eighties --. My dentist, who was married to a colleague of mine, was a very attractive young man and I had joked with my husband at the time that “if my dentist divorces his wife, I’ll have a relationship with

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him.” He did divorce, and the first woman he looked up was me. But it didn’t last and he is an oral surgeon in X-town today. In any case, I use a Sensodyne toothbrush and the toothpaste varies (15623).

In this humorous (and self-ironic) text we meet with a turbulent late twentieth-century world of oral hygiene and a carousel of partner changes. All of this is succinctly summarized in a personal experience narrative. The writer even calls to the reader’s attention that she is about to retell an “episode out of my life.” The brief story that contains many over- and undertones sums up the complexity she attempts to express. Most likely, she has told the story with many hilarious details before, possibly to an audience of female friends. Not least the cited speech indicates that this is the case. The contrast between the over- and undertones of the story and the abrupt mention of a brand name heightens the comical effect; perhaps the writer recalls having used such abrupt changes with great success when telling the story to friends. Once again, we are led to think about the affinities between the questionnaire responses and everyday speech. However, this letter does not contain two words that are profusely used in contributions from younger women, namely “disgust” and “disgusting” (äckel, äcklig). For example, a university student, born in 1974, gives vent to many feelings: OK, spots and the like don’t disturb me, because I am so clumsy … but it’s damned disgusting with used underwear. I change panties every day … Filthy bed clothes are disgusting too, I change sheets twice a month … If there is a balcony where I am living, I like to put my bed clothes outside for a while. OK, I am no pedant, but I have a phobia of smells.

She concludes her rambling seven-page handwritten letter with an experience story. The most disgusting thing I have experienced took place when I was studying for an exam. The only times I left my apartment were to buy pizza and cigarettes and I studied constantly for 5 days. I wore a disgusting old T-shirt, pyjama pants, my hair in a pony tail. There were papers and books all over my room = dust and more dust. Empty pizza cartons and pop bottles. To top it all off, at 2 o’clock in the morning before the exam, I discovered silver fish inside my bathroom which is full of mildew. I panicked, everything was dusty, greasy, filthy and fucking awful (15619).

By underlining the word “silver fish” heavily and by repeating the word “disgusting” several times, this young woman summarizes many associations and memories. The chaos in her apartment speaks of far more

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mental turbulence than merely worries before an exam. But it is through the brief experience narrative with which her letter ends that she expresses her confusion most strongly. The unceremonious and youthful jargon in this essay constitutes a striking contrast to the words of the old man cited above who describes the fears of God and water with which he was raised. The two respondents indicate something about the broad range of experiences and writing styles represented in the answers to questions concerning “personal hygiene.”

Experience Stories, Intimacies, the Nation’s Memory, and the Nation’s Silence As a whole, and not unexpectedly, the responses to Nm 223 demonstrate how powerfully contemporary Swedish cleanliness habits are linked to ritualistic ordering, hygiene fixation, and narcissism. The Nacirema (the American), the fictitious people of anthropological fame, are put to shame (Miner 1956). At the same time, a few writers, both old and young, criticize the contemporary obsession with cleanliness and advocate a more relaxed attitude. In a sense, their critique stands out as a morality tale, just as much as the theme of gratitude constitutes a morality tale among older writers who experienced the transition into the world of modern conveniences in the 1950s. But this is not all. As I have tried to demonstrate, the letters about hygiene are full of overtones and undertones that go well beyond or below surface issues of body hygiene and cleanliness at home: rage, disgust, fear of God, anxiety, nostalgia, humor, irony, sexual tensions. The matter-offact and prosaic questions concerning personal hygiene inspire respondents to express feelings so powerful and complex that they can sometimes be expressed only in the form of brief stories. Deposited in a national archive, these stories and other expressions, become remarkable sources for understanding emotions, experiences and undercurrents in twentieth century Swedish life. In conclusion, I would like to offer some further reflections on the topic of hygiene in the context of the shaping of modern Sweden and in the context of folklife museums and the discipline of ethnology. Once again, an intriguing question is why twentieth-century Swedes would be willing to immortalize highly unflattering, intimate, stories about stained underwear and dirty, chaotic living by depositing them in a national memory bank? In some respects, it is not difficult to answer this question. Contemporary observers have emphasized how, in many parts of the late twentieth-century world, people are becoming more and more confessional

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and intimate in public media. This is an important observation with regards to the materials under consideration here. But the observation contains a multitude of dimensions and leads to many new questions. I will briefly touch upon a few of them. One central dimension is that concerns with personal hygiene and public health are at the very heart of the modernization processes of the twentieth century (Briggs and Briggs 2003:327). Teaching hygiene to children in the schools and encouraging grown-up citizens to wash their bodies every day and to install flush toilets and bathtubs, have been central to the shaping of modern nations all over the world. One aspect of this “sanitary revolution” is that intimate and private bodily habits have become part of public discourse – and this long before such recent phenomena as internet and confessional television shows. In Sweden dirt and bad health were particularly prevalent as political issues in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and writer Ludvig Nordström became famous for vivid descriptions of filthy interiors in radio programs and in his book, LortSverige (“Filth-Sweden,” 1938). Also other celebrated authors, such as Ivar Lo-Johansson and Moa Martinsson repeatedly described the dilapidated and dirty homes in which many Swedes lived just sixty or seventy years ago. And these aspects of the past are still alive in the memory of many, despite the massive changes in living standards that took place after World War II, in part thanks to governmental programs. As recently as the late 1990s, Elsie Johansson won tremendous response from readers and critics with Glasfåglarna (“The Glass Birds,” 1996) and other auto-biographical novels in which she depicts not only the difficulty to find privacy and to keep one’s body clean in the small, drafty house in northern Uppland where she grew up in the 1930s, but also her journey away from that world. The theme of personal hygiene is central to Swedish twentieth-century literature and in the responses to Nm 223 we hear echoes from the works of beloved novelists. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that dirt, cleanliness and hygiene have been central issues both within the folklife museums and among folklore and folklife scholars in Sweden - possibly more so than in other countries. Through the years, the Nordic Museum has issued more than thirty questionnaires on health and personal hygiene (Westergren et al, n.d.) and the situation is similar in other Swedish folklife archives. Furthermore, the Nordic Museum has arranged several exhibitions on such themes (Eriksson 1970). And through the years, hygiene and cleanliness have been central topics among ethnologists, among them Jonas Frykman

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(Frykman and Löfgren 1886).7 Of course, it is such precedence that inspired Dan Waldetoft to compose the questionnaire under consideration in these pages. It could be said that the folklife museums and the folklore and folklife scholars have gone hand in hand with novelists, politicians, and many other individuals and institutions, including the Lutheran Church and sex-education in the schools, in shaping a modern society in which personal hygiene and shining surroundings is an essential concern at the same time as it nurtures memories of an era of filth.8 Part of my answer, then, to the question why Swedes have been willing to write to a national institution about intimate bodily matters is that politicians, literary authors, museums, scholars, and other persons and institutions have contributed to making a certain straightforwardness connected to hygiene and bodily functions quite acceptable publicly. Swedes are proud of the journey they have made so quickly from a world of poverty and smelly outhouses to a spotless and well-ordered modernity. Openness about personal hygiene is not a form of cultural intimacy to hide from outsiders, it is not a “sore zone,” a “tender spot” or a cause for cultural embarrassment (Herzfeld 1997: x). It is a cause for pride. Educators have long told Swedes that it is “natural” to speak in public about “natural” functions. Straightforwardness on such matters has long been encouraged in official models of the national culture. At the same time, many people who have nothing against writing about these matters to a museum archives recognize, on some level, that the topic is fraught with

7

I am not in a position to make well researched comparisons between countries in these respects. Not only are there cultural differences in how people in different countries deal with issues of personal hygiene and in how they are intimate and confessional in the media, there are also great differences in the amount of attention that folklorists and ethnologists have given to these topics and in the approaches they have used in their inquiries. By and large, the Swedish folklife museums and archives have drawn a line between personal hygiene and sexuality. The Nordic Museum archive has never issued a questionnaire on sex and sexualities. And with one or two possible exceptions, the museum has never arranged exhibitions on such topics. One indication that changes might be afoot is a collection amassed a few years ago of objects that Swedish teenagers find “sexy.” The collection was made for the museum by Maria Bäckman, one of several young ethnologists who have recently studied how young people speak about sexuality (2003). 8 It is of course one of the paradoxes of folklife studies, ethnology and folkloristics that they have been eager to help liberating people from dirt and superstitions at the same time as they have celebrated and attempted to preserve those same superstitions and that same dirt.

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ambivalences and difficulties.9 As we have seen, some of these ambivalences and difficulties may be expressed in the form of experience stories or in other metaphoric, jocular or indirect ways. But there are also other dimensions to the question I have posed. Since the late 1920s and even earlier, Swedes have been given the message that the museum archives are a memory bank of great value to a modern democratic nation. They have been told that the archives are institutions in which the voice of each and every participating citizen is important and that there is an elevated goal in documenting the mundane routines of everyday life. In questionnaire Nm 223 we read that minute details concerning personal hygiene say “a great deal about the society in which we live and the culture we share.” In other words, contributors are assured that there is a higher good in revealing to outsiders intimate or embarrassing details about themselves. Furthermore, although archivists have seldom clearly brought up the issue of trust, respondents have all along taken it for granted that they can trust those who work in the archives to protect them and their integrity.10 Through the years, many good citizens have answered questionnaires not only because they like to write about themselves and their lives, but because they think they serve a higher good doing so and because they place trust in the custodians of a national institution. But despite this higher good, despite this trust and despite all its riches and potentialities, the questionnaire material is problematic. One problem is all that is missing from the archives. At the same time as the museum archives is said to hold Sweden’s collective memory, it also preserves Sweden’s collective silence. All voices are not heard, all stories are not told. For one thing, as critics have been quick to note, most Swedes have not deposited any materials in the archives. Archivists have often countered by pointing out that the contributors come from all regions of the country and represent a wide spectrum of social groups (Skott 2008). But even so, some groups have never been represented at all. The only historical minority whose members have been asked to respond to questions about their own culture are the Sámi (Österman 1991:40-41). 9

In his book, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State (1997), Michael Herzfeld agues that it is the tensions between “official models of national culture and the lived experience of ordinary citizens” that constitute a crucial form of “social poetics” in nation states. It seems to me that the study of a national memory bank, such as the questionnaire responses at the Nordic Museum archives, could benefit from the perspectives Herzfeld outlines. 10 For the most part, this protection is illusory. If someone is bent on getting hold of this material and the names of the writers, they can do so.

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Questionnaires concerning Travelers and Roma that were distributed in the 1940s were never directed to members of these groups themselves. No questionnaire has ever been devoted to living Jewish culture in Sweden, although recently the museum sponsored a publication of narratives by Holocaust victims (Johansson 2000). And with a few exceptions (for example, Runfors 1992), immigrants who have arrived during the last few decades are hardly represented in the archives at all – and this despite the fact that now more the 20% of the inhabitants of Sweden are immigrants or children of immigrants. This lack of representation would not have been astonishing twentyfive years ago, but it is disquieting that silence still surrounds minorities and immigrants in the archives and folklife museums. Yet, the silence is not a result of a lack of willingness on the part of current archivists and other museum employees to include them. On the contrary, most are eager to do so. Actually, like all public institutions, folklife museums are under governmental injunction to take into consideration in all their activities that Sweden is now “multicultural.” With regards to personal hygiene, museum employees realize that the collective memory of the citizenry is no longer formed solely in Swedish outhouses and drafty sheds but also in Somali earth holes or Turkish baths. However, archivists and other museum employees have not yet found a method to reach out to new citizens. To many immigrants the questionnaire method is strange and scary. One problem is, of course, language. But the cultural obstacles can be even more challenging. Many people born in Africa, Asia or Latin America are likely to regard Nm 223 as controversial or even repugnant. Women and men who grew up in West Africa, for example, would never dream of writing about their most intimate bodily habits and then sending their descriptions and stories to a public institution where they would be read by total strangers. In Sweden it is not problematic to write colloquial words for toilets or panties, to people from many other parts of the world, such words would be insulting at best. But the questionnaire method can be still more of a problem to people with roots far away from Sweden. To many of them it would be unthinkable, for political or religious reasons, to send to a museum archives the kinds of stories that native Swedes send in. To many recent immigrants it would be unimaginable to report their personal hygienic habits or write about a grandmother who knows witchcraft. Political opponents in the home countries could use such information to crush you. Many new arrivals have little reason to share the trust that, rightly or wrongly, Swedes place in archives and other state supported institutions.

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The enduring questionnaire method is the outcome of specific assumptions about life and scholarship. The positivistic, fact-collecting originators never imagined that the result would be not only factual information but also shelf-meter upon shelf-meter of insights into intimate details and ambiguous desires in twentieth century Sweden, often expressed in the form of brief experience stories. It is to be hoped that this material never becomes a tool for an undue exercise of political control.

Works Cited Arvidsson, Alf. 1998. Livet som berättelse. Studier i levnadshistoriska intervjuer. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Asad, Talal. 1994. Ethnographic Representations, Statistics, and Modern Power. Social Research 61(1): 55-81. Borgström, Bengt-Erik. 1997. Cherished Moments: Engaging with the Past in a Swedish Parish. Stockholm: Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology, 40. Briggs, Charles, with Clara Mantini-Briggs. 2003. Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling During a Medical Nightmare. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bäckman, Maria. 2003. Kön och känsla. Samlevnadsundervisning och ungdomars tankar om sexualitet. Stockholm: Makadam förlag. Ekrem, Carola. 2003. Frågelistsvaren som berättelser. In: Frågelist- och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre, ed. Bo G. Nilsson, Dan Waldetoft and Christina Westergren. Pp. 5768. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. Eriksson, Marianne. 1970. Personlig hygien. Fataburen. Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok: 9-22 (Special issue linked to the exhibition ”Lort-Sverige”). Frykman, Jonas. 1979. Ideologikritik av arkivsystemen. Norveg 22: 231241. Frykman, Jonas, and Orvar Löfgren. [1979] 1986. Culture Builders: An Anthropology of Middle Class Life. Baltimore: Rutgers University Press. Herzfeld, Michael. 1997. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation State. New York: Routledge. Johansson, Britta (ed). 2000. Judiska minnen. Berättelser från Förintelsen. Stockholm: Nordiska museet. Johansson, Elsie. 1996. Glasfåglarna. Stockholm: Albert Bonniers Förlag.

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Klein, Barbro. 1986. A Dialogue in Writing: A Study of the Holdings of a Swedish Folklife Archive. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society. —. 2003. Nm 223: Personlig hygien. Reflektioner kring frågelistor, meddelarsvar och vetenskap. In: Frågelist- och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre, ed. Bo G. Nilsson, Dan Waldetoft, and Christina Westergren. Pp. 68-85. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. —. [1989] 2006. An Afternoon’s Conversation at Elsa’s. In: Narrating, Doing, Experiencing: Nordic Folkloristic Perspectives, ed. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhoj, Barbro Klein, and Ulf Palmenfelt. Pp. 79-100. Helsinki: Studia Fennica Folkloristica. —. 2007. Folklore Archives, Heritage Politics and Ethical Dilemmas: Notes on Writing and Printing. In: Research Ethics in Studies of Culture and Social Life, ed. Bente Gullveig Alver, Tove Ingebørg Fjell, and Ørjar Øyen. Pp. 114-136. Helsinki: FFCommunications, no. 292. Klintberg, Bengt af. 1972. Svenska folksägner. Stockholm: Pan/Norstedts. —. 1986. Råttan i pizzan. Folksägner i vår tid. Stockholm: Norstedts. Lilja, Agneta. 1996. Föreställningar om den ideala uppteckningen. En studie a idé och praktik vid traditionssamlande arkiv – ett exempel från Uppsala 1914-1945. Uppsala: Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet. Ser B:22. Malmberg, Denise. 1991. Skammens röda blomma? Uppsala: Etnolore, 11. Mannhardt, Wilhelm. 1868. Frågelista angående folkliga bruk med avseende på åkerbruk och skörd. Malmö: B. Cronholm. Miner, Horace. 1956. Body Ritual among the Nacirema. American Anthropologist 58 (3): 503-507. Nilsson, Bo G. 1996. Folkhemmets arbetarminnen. En studie av de historiska och diskursiva villkoren för svenska arbetares levnadsskildringar. Stockholm: Nordiska museets handlingar 121. —. 2004. Framtidens salt. Om museernas och folklivsforskarnas bidrag till folkhemsbygget. In Samhällsideal och framtidsbilder. Perspektiv på Nordiska museets dokumentation och forskning, by Cecilia Hammarlund-Larsson, Bo G. Nilsson, and Eva Silvén. Pp. 67-135. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag. Nilsson, Bo G., Dan Waldetoft and Christina Westergren (eds). 2003. Frågelist- och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. Nordström, Ludvig. 1938. Lort-Sverige. Stockholm: Kooperativa förbundet.

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Raudvere, Catharina. 1993. Föreställningar om maran i nordisk folktro. Lund: Lund Studies in History of Religions, volume 1. Rosén, Sander and Bertil Wetter. 1970. Ett bidrag till hemlighusets historia. Fataburen. Nordiska museets och Skansens årsbok: 169-186. (Special issue linked to the exhibition ”Lort-Sverige”). Runfors, Ann (ed). 1992. “Utan städare stannar Sverige!” Städare skriver om sitt liv och arbete. Stockholm: Nordiska museet. Samtid och museer 1976 - . Published by the Nordic Museum (previously Samdokbulletinen). Sheridan, Dorothy. 2003. Ordinary lives and extraordinary writers: the British Mass-Observation Project. In: Frågelist- och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre, ed. Bo G. Nilsson, Dan Waldetoft and Christina Westergren. Pp. 44-55. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. Skott, Fredrik. 2008. Folkets minnen. Traditionsinsamling i idé och praktik 1919-1964. Göteborg: Institutet för språk och folkminnen. Dialekt-, ortnamns- och folkminnesarkivet. Stahl, Sandra K. Dolby. 1989. Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stattin, Jochum. 1984. Näcken. Spelman eller gränsvakt? Stockholm: Carlssons. Westergren, Christina (et al). n.d. Förteckning över frågelistor och skrivarupprop. Stockholm: Kulturhistoriska undersökningen vid Nordiska museet. Österberg, Eva. 2007. Vänskap – en lång historia. Stockholm: Atlantis. Österman, Annika. 1991. Människors egen historia. Om Nordiska museets frågelistor. Stockholm: Nordiska museet.

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APPENDIX A

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FROM ORAL TRADITION TO LITERATURE

ASBJØRNSEN AT RONDENE: HUNTING FOR LEGENDS AND REINDEER JAMES MASSENGALE

P. Chr. Asbjørnsen’s “Reindeer Hunt at Rondene” is probably the best known of the author’s “framed” legend groups, and it is also one of the collector’s most thoroughly discussed and reprinted pieces, not least because of its “Per Gynt” material. As a folklorist, however, Asbjørnsen appears to have fallen into a kind of academic limbo, for which the “frame” stories are partially to blame. No one disputes his venerable status, together with that of Andreas Faye, at the very start of organized Norwegian legend collection. The area of concern about Asbjørnsen seems to be that his methodology trailed far behind his enthusiasm, and even his enthusiasm is questioned, emanating in part from a national Romantic agenda and a literary ambition, as if this necessarily made him insensitive to the demands for rigorous folkloric procedure. While a previous generation occasionally nudged Asbjørnsen aside, clipping “pure” legend material from the “frame” and republishing it verbatim,1 the more recent attitude has hardened. As an example, Reimund Kvideland and Henning Sehmsdorf chose to exclude Asbjørnsen from their Scandinavian legend corpus, with the following explanation: In selecting our texts, we have emphasized faithfulness to belief tradition rather than to literary quality. Some of the better-known texts, for example, published by Peter Chr. Asbjørnsen during the nineteenth century, have not been included here because they were edited to conform to the literary standards of the time (Kvideland and Sehmsdorff 1988: xxi).

I would ask my reader to keep in mind the concept “faithfulness to belief tradition,” while I allow Kvideland and Sehmsdorf to explain more fully 1

Liestøl 1939: 122ff. In the endnotes, Liestøl replaced a snippet or so of the frame, quoting (!) Asbjørnsen’s fictitiously presented Per Fugleskjelle alongside real-life “folk” such as Per Aasmundstad and Ivar Kleiven, p. 219ff. In fairness to Liestøl, one could mention that extracted “Per Gynt” legends appear already under Asbjørnsen’s name and during his lifetime (Asbjørnsen 1879: 154-9).

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why they find Asbjørnsen to have failed to rise to the requisite standard for inclusion in an anthology of Nordic legend texts: Asbjørnsen placed the legends in the context of fictional frame stories describing Norwegian nature, folk life, and storytelling events. The frame stories were based on observations made by Asbjørnsen while collecting oral traditions, but he felt free to recombine his data as he saw fit (1988: 24).

In their view, then, Asbjørnsen fails the test of “faithfulness to belief tradition,” while his contemporaries, Konrad Maurer, Jón Árnason, V. U. Hammershaimb and even L. F. Rääf from the turn of the 19th century are given a thumbs-up—indeed, even Saxo Grammaticus is used by this editorial team as a comparative source of folkloric information (1988: 102). The categorical snubbing of Asbjørnsen is easy to read as a condemnation of the authenticity of his project. But is this really a valid decision? In order to address this question, there are two issues to which we must attend: the issue of why the legend material has been set in a fictional “frame” for publication, and the issue of the informant-collector relationship. These two issues have sometimes been conflated in Asbjørnsen’s case, and his reputation among 20th-century scholars as “the born storyteller” may sometimes be felt to be a left-handed compliment among the international cadre of folklorists.2 The same reputation is usually more heartfelt when Norwegians speak of it, since Asbjørnsen has a solid place in Norwegian hearts and minds, and in the construction of Norwegian “nationality.”3 His storytelling gift, on the other hand, while

2

The phrase occurs, for example in Boberg 1952, 272, as she describes differences between Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe as collectors of “eventyr.” Note how she continues: “Modern scholarship is hardly as pleased with this storytelling as [Asbjørnsen’s] contemporaries and unschooled readers have been” [Den moderne videnskab er knap så glad for denne fortællekunst som samtiden og de læge læsere.] Translations from Danish, Norwegian and German in this essay are my own. 3 See for example Liestøl 1984, 117: “The descriptions of folk-life and nature that Asbjørnsen thus employs as an introduction to and background for his legends have been cherished for the last century as the legends themselves. We note that reviewers from the very beginning asserted that the legends themselves could not have had a particularly good effect” [Dei folkelivs- og naturskildringane som A. såleis nytta som innleiing til og som bakgrunn for segnene, har no i hundre år vori minst like mykje omtykte som segnene sjølve. Vi finn at bokmeldarar frå fyrste

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supported already by his contemporary P. J. Collett, was thought to have overpowered his legend collection. Or as Collett put it, the legends themselves were “ingenlunde alle interessante” [by no means all of interest].4 This puts Asbjørnsen in a sort of “damned-if-you-do, damnedif-you-don’t” position. So the question may well be asked: Can we extricate this early Norwegian folklorist from this limbo, or is there any cogent reason to try to do this? That is the subject of this article. Why would Asbjørnsen go to the trouble of constructing fictional “frame” stories for his collected legend texts? We may start with a purely practical and economic answer to this. He had good reason and opportunity, as is well known, to reject the dry and academic listing of legends employed by Andreas Faye. He had himself been Faye’s “overordentlige Sagnambassadeur” [extraordinary legend-ambassador], but had to have been troubled by the cool reception of the minister’s legend book, and could easily have feared that the legend collection he was planning might have a similar fate. His study of other, more successful publications of legend material led him to Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, as has often been noted. (Hult 2002: 31). But his long perusal of the Grimm’s translation of Croker should not be taken as evidence that Asbjørnsen’s “frame stories” are imitations, transferred to a Norwegian landscape. Croker’s contextual material is mixed in with comparative notes and musings on the origin of individual legends. This in turn has the effect of presenting Croker as a narrator figure who is an educated outsider playing to an urban audience, a figure not particularly in tune with his rural informants.5 Note, for example, Croker’s pronouncement about superstition in general: When rational education shall be diffused among the misguided peasantry of Ireland, the belief in such supernatural beings must disappear in that country, as it has done in England, and these “shadowy tribes” will live only in books (Croker 1825/1971: 362).

This type of narrational attitude must have reminded Asbjørnsen of Pastor Faye’s introduction, in which the hope was expressed that his book stund held fram at segnene åleine ikkje ville ha gjort seg noko vidare.] For a thorough discussion of the “nationality” issue, see Hult 2002, passim. 4 The quotation is from Liestøl 1984, 117f. Liestøl notes, however, that Asbjørnsen’s penchant for “storytelling” was also criticized early on. 5 The extent to which Croker’s own narrator-figure might also be slightly fictionalized is an issue that lies beyond the scope of this essay.

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would give the legendary beliefs “Naadestødet; thi saadan Overtro trives kun, naar den indhylles i en vis Hemmelighed og uden Forklaring forplantes fra Mund til Mund” [their coup de grace: because superstition of this type only flourishes when it is shrouded in mystery, and is transmitted without explanation, by word of mouth](Faye 1948: iv). Asbjørnsen’s perusal of Croker led him to construct instead a semiautobiographical, fictional narrator who meets with local informants and has adventures of his own. But Asbjørnsen’s narrator is handled ironically, and he draws no academic conclusions. He is indeed an educated outsider, but one who is less proud of his academic credentials than of his potential ability to learn to hunt reindeer, and who tries as best he can to assimilate himself into the mind-set of the local populace. This fictional narrator rarely voices any opinions about the validity or lack of validity of the legends, or certainly eschews all musings about the derivation, etymology or comparative existence of the material received.6 Where Croker often uses a tiny “frame” that reads as a simple introduction to a single legend performance, Asbjørnsen develops complex life situations that lead by winding paths to multiple legend presentations. Clearly, Croker was used by the younger folklorist, not as a formula for the presentation of his own material, but as an object lesson, a rather primitive contextualization technique that Asbjørnsen intended to enrich and surpass. Next there was the issue of the informant-collector relationship and the accuracy of the recorded material itself. In his introduction to the first full volume of “Hulder Tales and Folk Legends” [Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn], Asbjørnsen gives what might be called a diffident version of the way he had represented his legends: Angaaende Fortællingsmaaden af disse Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn er der ikke meget at tilføie. De ere fortalte som de endnu leve i Almuens Mund; der er Intet sat til eller taget fra. Kun paa nogle Steder ere er Par Beretninger forenede, idet locale, i svagere Omrids fremstillede Sagn og Fortællinger completeredes ved fuldstændigere og almindeligt forekommende] (Asbjørnsen 1859: VI-VII). [With regard to the way these Hulder-tales and folk legends are presented, there is little to add. They are told just as they still occur in the common people’s oral tradition; there is nothing added, nothing subtracted. In a few 6

Some skepticism about certain legends or the motives of their tradors is certainly implicit in a number of Asbjørnsen’s “frame” stories. But an explicit case of subversion in the frame story of “Bertha Tuppenhaugs Fortællinger,” when the narrator undermines the old woman, is punished in the context of the story, when she refuses to divulge any more secrets to him.

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Asbjørnsen at Rondene: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer cases, one or two narratives have been combined, where legends and stories from a local source with weaker contours have been complemented with more complete and commonly found (variants)].

He did not appear at first to be overly concerned with the “authenticity” issue. We must recall that his only Norwegian competition was that of Faye, who had made a similar brief reference to his intent to publish legends “som han har erholdt dem, uden at lægge til eller tage fra og uden Udpyntning” [as he had received them, without adding or subtracting, and without elaboration] (Faye 1948: vi-vii). Since Faye’s result had been eclectic, both “literary and dry,”7 Asbjørnsen may have felt that his own technique needed no polemic support, that its superiority would speak for itself. But the folkloric field was advanced enough, even in the mid1840’s, that Asbjørnsen would find himself rebuked. His stated “methodology” was basically too nonchalant: “nothing is changed or added except where there are some changes or additions.” A private clarification is made in a letter to Benjamin Thorpe in 1853: De fleste af de fortalte Sagn har jeg hørt og optegnet af Folkets egen Mund; under ingen Omstændighet har [jeg] tilladt mig nogen Forandring, Forbedring eller Forskjønnelse af Stof eller Indhold. Naar jeg derimod har havt en slet eller middelmaadig Fortæller for mig, har jeg anseet mig for beretiget til at udføre Sprog og Fortællingens Maade eller Form paa en saadan Viis som en god Fortæller vilde have gjort (Liestøl 1939: 111). [Most of the recounted legends I heard myself, and wrote them down from people’s oral presentation. In no case did I allow myself any change, improvement or embellishment of material or content. When, on the other hand, I had a poor or mediocre informant, I considered it my right to present the language and mode or form of the story in a way that reflected that of a good storyteller.]

And then in the second edition of the two volume work, Asbjørnsen took his critics to task, and in an angry rejoinder to his critics, he revised his previous diffident position. His outburst is important enough to cite in extenso: Det som er sagt i Fortalen til første Udgave vil jeg her gjentagende have indskærpet…For den aandrige Kjender bær de [Sagnene] desuden i sig selv Ægthedens og Oprindelighedens Mærker….Denne Ægthed og Oprindelighed i Huldre-Eventyrene…have et Par Forfattere…søgt at gjøre 7

The expression is Liestøl’s (Liestøl 1939: 108).

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fordægtig, nemlig Richard Dübeck [sic] i Sverrig og Benjamin Thorpe i England. I Dübecks Runa 1845 s. 111 heder det…”men mere än ett ställe i boken röjer...at [A.] sedan han till några få grunddrag upptecknadt eller blot återkallat i minnet en för längesedan hörd folkberättelse deraf gjort de sirliga helheter, som öfveralt möta” o.s.v. Jeg havde allerede i Fortalen til første Udgave forklaret hvorledes Sagnene vare behandlede. Og det havde derfor baade været ønskeligt og passeligt om den svenske Anmelder nærmere havde søgt at begrunde sine Formeninger, og ikke...fremsat lose Paastande, som ere stik modsatte den Erklæring Fortalen giver] (Asbjørnsen 1859: X-XII). [What I said in my preface to the first edition I would repeat and underscore here...To the discerning expert, the legends in themselves exhibit the signs of authenticity and innateness...This authentic and innate quality in the hulder-tales...has been placed under suspicion by one or two writers—namely Richard Dybeck in Sweden and Benjamin Thorpe in England. In Dybeck’s Runa 1845 p. 111 it says...: ’but in more than one place in the book it appears...that Asbjørnsen, after having jotted down a few basic features, or simply having recalled a folktale he had heard long ago, then created from the material the elegant constructions that one finds everywhere (in the book)’, and so on. In my preface to the first edition, I had already explained how the legends had been handled. So it would have been preferable and proper if the Swedish critic had looked around for a basis for his opinions, rather than asserting loose claims...that are opposite to the explanation given in my preface.]

Asbjørnsen went on to explain how the particular story that Dybeck thought represented a common pattern for the Huldre-Eventyr was one in which a legend he remembered somewhat inadequately from his childhood had been fleshed out recently by hearing a variant from an old woman. He continues: Det faldt mig nemlig aldrig ind, at nogen kunde fatte mistro til disse Sagns Natursandhed, til Fortællingens Paalidelighed, thi dette havde overalt været mig Hovedsag, og i første Udgave fandtes der ikke et eneste Sagn, der var behandlet saaledes, at noget væsentligt var lagt til eller taget fra; men da jag oftest havde flere Udgaver eller Fortællinger af de samme Sagn, valgtes den bedste, eller det ene fuldstændiggjortes eller sammenstøbtes med det andet og ligeartede (Asbjørnsen 1859: XIII). [It never occurred to me that anyone would distrust the natural truth of these legends, nor the reliability of the recounting, since this had always been my principal goal; and in the first edition, not a single legend may be found that I treated in a way that anything essential was added or subtracted. But as I usually had several variants or recountings of the same

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Asbjørnsen at Rondene: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer legend, I chose the best one, or completed or fused one of them with another similar narrative.]

Asbjørnsen is hurt and insulted that anybody could doubt his intention and capacity to present his legend material exactly as he received it. He continues, in an extremely informative passage: Den Fremstillingsmaade, jeg havde valgt, gjør det vistnok klart, at det ved Udgivelsen af disse Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn ikke var Meningen at tilvejebringe en Materialsamling, der med diplomatarisk Nøjagtighed bandt sig til de ofte bagvendte Ord og famlende Udtryk i enhver Klodrians Mund, som havde noget at fortælle, kort til enhver enkeltstaaende Beretning om den samme Gjenstand eller Hændelse. For Folkevisen og enhver Digtart, der er uddøet, er en saadan Fremgangsmaade absolut nødvendig, for Sagnet, der endnu opstaar og blomstrer paa Folkets Læber, mindre, undtagen naar gamle nedarvede Udtryk og Eiendommeligheder gaa igjen i dem, men det mærker den øvede Samler...og er saa opmærksom derpaa, at noget af den Slags, der enten har mytisk eller sproglig Værd og Betydning vanskelig kan gaa tabt. (Asbjørnsen 1859: XIII-XIV). [The mode of representation I had chosen makes it clear, to be sure, that in the publication of these hulder-tales and folk legends it was not my idea to provide a collection of raw data, reflecting in its diplomatic exactness the often awkward word choices and fumbling expressions from the mouth of any clumsy informant who had a story to tell—in short, (a diplomatic edition of) each individual’s version of the same object or event. In the case of the folksong or of any extinct poetic form, such a mode of representation is absolutely necessary. But in the case of the legend that is still being created and flourishes on the lips of the people, (this mode is) less (relevant), except when old, inherited expressions and peculiarities recur in them. This, however, is generally recognized at once by the experienced collector...(who) is so attentive to this, that such things having either mythological or linguistic value would not be likely to be lost.]

I have quoted here at length, partially to emphasize Asbjørnsen’s insistence about the care taken in his collecting project. Regardless of that first, unassuming formulation, Asbjørnsen himself never wavered on the issue of the reliability of his legend material. And, regardless of any consequences—but also mindful of the huge popularity his books had achieved from the general Norwegian public—he never abandoned his “frame” technique as a means for presenting the material. But he never explained exactly what he was doing in a theoretical way. He was actually a rather poor theorist, if by “theorist” we mean someone who can see beyond the nuts and bolts of the stories and the personalities he met up

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with, to the construction of a larger “dynamic” of folkloric behavior.8 His promise of a work devoted to “the occurrence, spread, origins, clarification, etc.” [Sagnenes Forekomst, Udbredning, Oprindelse, Tydning, o.s.v.] was never fulfilled.9 And it is uncertain whether such a work would have been particularly original. His theoretical comments, for example, in the introduction to the Huldre-Eventyr, appear to be derivative from those of the Grimm brothers’ Deutsche Mythologie. But this by no means should be taken as an indication that the conceptual underpinnings of his collection technique are shabby. Perhaps, if folklore theory had been more fully developed in his time, Asbjørnsen might have learned to apply it more strictly to his particular way of noting and representing legends. But that has to be pure speculation. What can be noted today is that there is a rational folkloric argument that may be made to support Asbjørnsen’s “framing” technique. It requires a bit of subsequent theory—early 20th century theory will do for the most part—to demonstrate this point. In this essay, I will draw upon some of C. W. von Sydow’s definitions and folklore commentary to illustrate in part what I believe is a satisfactory content-context basis for Asbjørnsen’s reindeer hunt and its semifictionalized “frame” for publication.

“Reindeer Hunt at Rondene” The “Reindeer Hunt at Rondene” in its published form is readily available in Norwegian, but for English-language readers and those whose memory of the tale may have faded I will outline it here: 1. It is morning. A group of four hunters, two professionals from the district, named Tor and Anders, and two “hunting tourists,” the Narrator and an Englishman, Sir John, set out from a shieling with a hunting dog.10 A shieling girl has packed them a lunch, and another laughs and throws a rake and broom after them, telling them to “break a leg and find nothing but birds.” 2. They trek to high terrain. The dog and the professional hunters quickly spot signs of reindeer activity that would not have been perceived by the “tourists”; the head of the 8

The term is Barre Toelkens; see Toelken 1996, passim. See Liestøl 1939, 152-75, “Folkeminnegranskaren.” 10 Sir John [Tottenbom] is so identified in the companion “frame,” “A Sunday evening at the Shieling” [En søndagskveld til seters]. R. M. Laing, the model for this figure, was a Scotsman. 9

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Asbjørnsen at Rondene: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer party is “quiet and taciturn,” doing his job. Sir John displays impatience to get on with the hunt, but the professionals note that the reindeer are still far away, and the hunters make their lunch stop. 3. During the break, Tor is no longer “quiet and taciturn”; he tells of a struggle with a buck, during which he took a hard fall down the scree. Sir John joins in the conversation and counters with stories the Narrator refers to but does not include. Tor then tells the story of Gudbrand Glesne and his wild ride on a wounded buck. The Narrator comments that a story of that type was also told in Denmark. Tor clarifies his legend, giving the local, geographical aspect of the story: a dangerous ridge called Gjenden-eggen. Anders and Tor then add personal narratives to the stories about falls in the Rondene region. Sir John counters again, now with the “two shooters” story and the “were-deer” story. The Narrator records these, but makes no attempt to retell them well, and they sound strangely out of place in the present situation. The local hunters question the veracity of these British stories. 4. Now the hunters set off again. The second trek takes them to within sight of the reindeer. The frolicking of the animals is referred to as a sign of bad weather. A reindeer is almost shot, but at the last moment a bird frightens it and it turns and dashes away. Sir John wastes a bullet on the bird. A second rest period ensues. Sir John tells a memorate of his own about an unlucky hunting experience: as a “tourist” hunter in the mountains above Bergen, he and a couple of other Englishmen had followed a reindeer herd onto thin ice. When the ice broke, the professional hunters pulled them to safety. This tale is sketched out briefly by the Narrator, who then turns away and concentrates his attention on the scenery instead of the Englishman’s folklore. 5. During the next trek, the hunters suddenly come upon the reindeer herd. Sir John nearly spoils this chance, and the Narrator loses his opportunity to shoot, but Tor brings down a reindeer. The animal is flayed and the meat is saved with a stone cairn as marker. Sir John wants to keep hunting, but Tor is through for the day. They trek down to Ulvsødehytten, where they meet two more local hunters. They have dinner and coffee, and the Narrator prods the professional hunters into telling

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stories. The hunters begin somewhat hesitantly, but soon work themselves into a veritable legend-session: a. Anders tells the story of Ola Storbækkjen, who was taken into a mountain; b. Anders continues with that of Ola Helle at Hedal, a meeting with troll women; c. Per Fugleskjelle tells of Per Gynt and the Bøyg, Per Gynt and the Dovre Cat, Per Gynt and the trolls, Per Gynt and the Val Shieling girls, Per Gynt and the disturbances at Christmas. d. Finally, Tor tells of Jens Klomsrud and the green girls. 6. The hunting party falls asleep in the cramped quarters. The Narrator dreams about trolls, and eventually wakes to find that it is morning. He has coffee, and the party splits up: Hans and Per trek up to retrieve the reindeer meat, the others return to the valley.

This is a good example of a complex Asbjørnsen “frame”: a fictionalized hunting situation with insertions of a hodge-podge of legendary material that allows the reader to experience an “adventure” as well as to hear some Norwegian (and a few international) traditions. We are fortunate in the case of the “Reindeer Hunt” to have an extensive manuscript of Asbjørnsen’s activities in August, 1842, the “Notebook” [Notisbok] from the Gudbrandsdal journey, so we can to some degree follow the events of the hunt as it occurred in real life.11 The “Notisbok” has also been studied in depth by Frik Hougen;12 and Knut Liestøl and others have also drawn upon this source as well, to clarify the differences between Asbjørnsen’s real life hunt and his legend “frame.” Liestøl sums them up curtly: Men om A. såleis nyttar levande modellar og held seg til det opplevde, må ein ikkje tenkja seg at han har høyrt segene nettopp under dei tilhøve som rammeforteljingane skildrar. Han høyrde t.d. ikkje nokor segn…I Uløyhytta…på ”en Rennsdyrjagt ved Ronderne” (Liestøl 1984: 134).

11

Manuscript signum NFS P. Chr. Asbjørnsen 14, with the rubric “Gudbrandsdalen 1842.” I am sincerely indebted to Anna-Marie Wiersholm of the Norwegian Folklore Archives, for her invaluable help in copying and sending transcribed material from this notebook. 12 Hougen 1935; his essay contains an extensive review of the differences between the “real” reindeer hunt on August 10-11, 1842 and the fictionalized version, with a number of passages transliterated from the “Notisbok.”

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Asbjørnsen at Rondene: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer [Though Asbjørnsen thus makes use of living models and holds himself to the actual experience, one must not imagine that he heard the legends just under those circumstances that are depicted in the ”frame” stories. He heard no legends, for example,...in Ulvsødehytten...on his “Reindeer hunt at Rondene.”]

No, in broad strokes, the reality was the following: Asbjørnsen and R. M. Laing traveled up to the high country to meet the hunter, Tor Øygarden. The hunt took place on the 10th and 11th of August 1842, and they stayed overnight at the cramped quarters as described, but they had not shot a buck, Asbjørnsen was out of sorts, and they were too tired to engage in a lively story-telling night. When Asbjørnsen came down to Lårgard at Sel, he then met Engebret Hougen, a 15-year-old storyteller, and from him, not from Per Fugleskjelle, he heard the series of “Per Gynt” stories. All this has become common knowledge, at least to Asbjørnsen researchers. And the recurring question is: Why didn’t Asbjørnsen simply tell it like it was? What is the purpose of distorting or embroidering on the reality? The answer, in my opinion, lies in the interrelation between the recounted material and the fictionalized “frame” of the reindeer hunt. Using C. W. von Sydow as a guide, and the “Notisbok” as a boundary for our information regarding the fictionalization issue, let us follow the hunters once more, with my interpretation of the published material and its reason for being in the story in the form we find it. Part 1: The little rake-throwing incident is a tidbit of folklore of a type that would not have found any place in Faye’s or Thiele’s collections, because it is not a “legend.” It is rather a jocular ritual that relates to the job of hunting in the wild country, by symbolically taking out catastrophe in advance. The reader recognizes the familiar “break a leg” admonishment from our own culture, when someone is about to do something risky in a psychological sense (as: appear on stage). Asbjørnsen does not include it in the “Notisbok” but could well have recorded it mentally; there is no reason to believe that he made it up. Part 2: When the hunters arrive at the high mountain area, there is no story telling before the professionals have sized up the situation and noted that reindeer are “around,” but still relatively far away. The Narrator tries to learn from the huntsman Tor: ”’Her er slag etter et dyr,’ sa [Tor], og viste et for mitt uøvede øye neppe synlig inntrykk av klover. ’Og der står en avbitt reinblomstilk’”13 [“Here’s the pawing of a reindeer,” said Tor, 13 Asbjørnsen 1949: 46. The “Notisbok” has the same information: ”hist og her opdagede Thor [paa Jorden og Mosen] mellem Stenene et for mit Øie neppe

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and he showed me an impression of hooves that for my untrained eye was scarcely visible. “And over there there’s a crowfoot blossom that’s bitten off”] In the “Notisbok,” a caricature of Laing follows this, as a comic example of how not to engage in reindeer investigation. “Sir John” of the published version is spared this initial sarcasm. Part 3: During the lunch rest the taciturn professional hunter, Tor, immediately relaxes and becomes talkative. But the sequence of legend stories recounted at this point is by no means “relaxed” or arbitrary. They must be seen not only in context (hunters talk about hunting when they relax), but in their function. Tor begins with a memorate—not, I might add, with the most modern use of the term,14 but with von Sydow’s original definition. The latter referred to “was das Volk erlebte, was es als denkwürdig und beachtenswert ansah, und wie es das Erlebte auffasste” [what the people experienced personally, what they considered to be memorable and remarkable, and how they conceived that which they experienced] (von Sydow 1948: 73). Note that von Sydow does not restrict his definition of “memorat” to the supernatural, although he does not exclude it categorically. The first narrative in the “Reindeer Hunt” is a personal-recollection narrative of a non-supernatural type: falling off the side of a mountain, together with a reindeer. This is followed by another type: the “Erinnerungssage” or “minnessägen,” (von Sydow’s term), a situation recounted by a hunter not only of his own remarkable experience, but that of another, non-present hunter. It is important to note that neither Faye nor his Danish counterpart, J. M. Thiele15 had shown any interest in this type of material, and probably would not have considered it to be folklore. The concept of hunters recounting their own hunting experiences would fit into none of the categories listed in Faye’s Norske Folke-Sagn, and the concept is not mentioned in Asbjørnsen’s theoretical work either.16 Note that the title of synligt Spoer, som han paastod ikke var gammelt. Med et Unkasblik opdagede han friske, afbidte Rhenblomster, et ligesaa sikkert Tegn” [here and there Tor discovered [on the ground and the lichen] between the stones traces that for my eye were scarcely visible, but which he claimed were recent. With an Uncas-glance he noticed fresh, bitten-off crowfoot flowers, another certain sign] (31). “Uncas” is a fictional Native American, the title figure in Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. 14 See for example Kvideland and Sehmsdorf 1988, 19-20. 15 See Thiele 1843. 16 Fayes categories are as follows: Legends concerning supernatural beings, heroes and kings, St. Olof, the Black Death, followed by historical legends, persons and events that have become historical, and ”various” other legends [Om overnaturlige Væsener, Om Klæmper og Konger, Om Sanct Olaf, Om den sorte Død, Om

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his legend collection, Huldre-Eventyr og Sagn, follows Faye in principle: legends about supernatural creatures, and “historical” legends, broadly defined. The point, apparently not evident to Faye, and not mentioned in Asbjørnsen’s explanatory remarks, is that a personal memorate and a story more easily categorized as a legend may actually be closely related. Or to enlist von Sydow’s guidance again: Viele Memorate können…übergehen, Tradition zu werden, indem Personen sie interessant genug finden für eine Weitergabe. Dabei unterliegen sie in der Regel starken stilistischen Veränderungen infolge Auslassung des für den neuen Erzähler weniger Interessanten und vielleicht auch Abwandlung des Inhalts in Übereinstimmung mit geltenden Vorstellungen. Auf diese Weise geht das einstige Memorat über in eine Erinnerungssage (von Sydow 1948: 73-74). [Many memorates may…transform themselves into traditions (i.e. repeated oral material with a traditor), when other persons find them sufficiently interesting to repeat them. In this [transformation], they usually submit to marked stylistic changes, including the omission of material which is of little interest to the new traditor, and perhaps also to the alteration of content in conformity with norms of performance. In this way, the former memorate is subsumed into a recollection-legend]

This would clearly apply to the story told about Gudbrand Glesne and his wild reindeer ride. A stylistic change may indeed be observed: from the matter-of-fact, diffident personal style used by Tor about his own experience, the story of Gudbrand is obviously more fanciful. The comments by Sir John and the Narrator after the tale are interesting: they have heard variants of the “reindeer ride” legend that were told in other countries. Here they both appear to anticipate one of von Sydow’s points: Die Züge, die man oft als bezeichnend für die Sage gegenüber dem Märchen anzuführen pflegt, nämlich dass sie oft verknüpft ist mit einer bestimmten Person oder einer bestimmten Stätte, zeigen sich z. B. bei näherer Prüfung als ganz wertlose Kennzeichen (von Sydow 1948: 63). [The traits that are often noted as characteristic of legends in contrast to fairytales—namely, that they often are attached to a certain person or definite places—prove on closer inspection to be only worthless aspects.]

Historiske Sagn, Om Personer og Tildragelser, der ere blevne historiske, Forskellige Sagn].

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But here, in my view, the theoretical cart may be trying to pull the horse. It is clear from Tor’s presentation and the memorate material that follows it that the geography of the Ronden district is crucial, both as a reason for telling the legend at this time, and as an important component of the legend itself. What these tales from the rest stop have in common is a geographical and functional grounding. The function of both types of tales has to do with a warning about the physical dangers that have to be heeded at all times: the treacherous nature of the scree, the difficulty in dispatching a wounded reindeer, and the animal’s dangerously erratic behavior. Any fanciful or exaggerated aspect serves simply as a kind of “mnemonic strengthening” of the warning: be careful on the scree over there beyond Blekvang Shieling; watch out for Gjende-eggen, don’t try to cross over the ridge, let alone in a snowstorm. The information conveyed by Tor is of life-and-death import to any hunter. It is dangerous in the high mountains, and the reason “memorial sagns” or memory-legends are told and remembered is that they provide practical information necessary for hunters to survive. In his “Notisbok”, Asbjørnsen’s notes here are cryptic in the extreme: “Tor told us about his hunting trips” [Thor fortalte os om sine Rhenjagter] (Asbjørnsen, “Notisboken”: 33). There is good reason to suppose, however, that some, if not all, of the published material concerning the rest stop was recounted as well on the real-life occasion. Part 4: Now, during this conveyance of hunters’ information, the intractable Sir John, instead of listening and learning, regards the little session as a kind of “can-you-top-this” contest, and he counters with his own legend stories. These are regarded with suspicion by the professional hunters for reasons we may now easily surmise. Not only are Sir John’s stories simplistic and stupid, they have no practical bearing on the present situation. But (as my reader will note, seeing where I am heading with my interpretation) they too serve a valuable function in the story, to underline out the contextual difference to a group of hunters between memorates and legends that are vitally relevant, and, on the other hand, the sort of folkloric blather that only an incompetent and thick-headed bumbler will come up with: Sir John…gav til beste noen historier, han selv skulle ha opplevd. De endte imidlertid på en mere avgjørende måte, idet jegeren først sendte dyret en drepende kule, og siden til overflod efter alle sportskunstens regler støtte det fangstkniven eller hirschfengeren i nakken. “Kanskje hjorten ikke behøver så sterkt dødsskudd,” sa Tor (Asbjørnsen 1949: 49).

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Asbjørnsen at Rondene: Hunting for Legends and Reindeer [Sir John...obliged with some stories that he had supposedly experienced himself. They ended, though, in a more decisive way, when the hunter first fired a deadly bullet at the animal, and then, as a superfluous gesture following the rules of the sport, plunged the hunting knife or Hirschfänger into its neck. “Maybe the deer doesn’t need such a tough shot to kill it,” said Tor.]

Since the stupidity of Sir John is apparent enough, we will find that a more explicit irritation in the “Notisbok” has actually been toned down. What is remarkable to me at this point in the published story is that the Narrator, listening to a series of legends, makes only a few desultory mental notes on the Englishman’s flamboyant stories “om mange andre saadanne skotske og mærkelige Herligheder” (Asbjørnsen, “Notisboken”: 33) [about many other such Scottish and remarkable wonders] and discards most of them, outlining one or two in a disinterested tone. Is Asbjørnsen not giving his readership the best stories he has heard—“in such a way as a good storyteller would have done”? Clearly not! Is this because they were British legends? Hardly! The point is that Sir John’s stories have no functional meaning in the situation. In that sense, they have no bearing on the hunters’ reality, and it is “truthfulness” that is conveyed by Tor in his own memorates. The corresponding comment in the “Notisbok” is that “Thor gav til bedste Fortællinger om sine Hjortejagter, der alle bare Sandhedens Stempel” [Tor obliged with stories about his deer hunts, that all bore the stamp of truth] (Asbjørnsen, “Notisboken”: 33). But the particular type of “truth” that the Narrator conveys in the published hunt story can be best understood in the light of more modern definitions and the notion of functionality presented here. The first close encounter that the hunters experience with reindeer (as previous researchers have noted) was not part of Asbjørnsen’s own adventure, but is an adaptation of a story told by Tor, which in the “Notisbok” reads as follows: Her kom han Anders og jeg paa en Flok faar [sic] en aatte Dages Tid siden, ja det var Thorsdagen i den forige Ugen, vi havde gaaet efter den længe saa krøb vi frem til vi kom hid, men saa kunde vi ikke komme længer for Flodens Skyld. Men slig Moro har jeg aldrig havt. Du skulde aldrig seet sligt Peer. Det var 13 Dyr, to store Bukke og Kalve og Simler forresten og de holdt slig Leg Kalvene og de to Bukkene at du aldrig skulde seet sligt, de fløi efter hverandre, og stangede hverandre og ret som det var saa stode de paa to Been og slog med hverandre med Forfødder[ne] og Bukkene var saa reent forgalne at en aldrig skulde have seet sligt. Ret som det var, saa hoppede de og høiere end den største Kar med alle fire Been i Veiret paa en Gang, saa at man bade saa Sol og Maane under dem. Ret som det var

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saa faldt de ned igjen og slog op med Bagfødderne saa Lænden steg høit op i Luften og Sneen sprutede om dem. Han Anders og jeg vi sad der vist to Timer og saa paa Legen og vi kunde ikke andet end le iblandt saa vi næsten var ved vi skulde skræmt dem. Men medens de legede saaledes kom [en af Bukke] de indom Hold, og jeg lagede mig til at skyde men Hunden var saa reent gal, den gnistrede og bar sig og Anders kunde med Nød holde den og bedst som den var saa fik den vredet af sig en ny Vidiespænding og satte ind paa dem og søgte som han var gal.17 [Anders and I saw a flock by chance about a week ago, well, it was Thursday last week; we had hunted them for a long time, so we crawled forward until we got up here, but then we couldn’t go any farther because of the river. But I never had such fun. You’ve never seen the likes of it, Per. There was thirteen reindeer, two big bucks and calves and does too, and they were having such a ball, the calves and the two bucks, that you never saw the likes of it. They flew after each other, they butted each other, and all of a sudden they stood on their hind legs and boxed each other with their forelegs, and the bucks were so crazy that you never saw anything like it. Then all of a sudden they were jumping, and higher than the tallest man, with all fours in the air at once, so you could see the sun and the moon underneath them. Then just as sudden, they came down again and they bucked with their hindquarters, so their shanks were way up in the air, and the snow was spraying around. Anders and I we sat there for a good two hours and watched the game, and we couldn’t keep from laughing so hard sometimes that we were about to scare them off. But while they were playing around that way one of the buck came into range, and I took aim; but the dog was so crazy, he bristled up and carried on, and Anders couldn’t hardly hold him down, and all of a sudden he wriggled out of a brand new willow leash and took off after them and chased them like he was crazy.]

Asbjørnsen makes this story into his own little memorate, adding to it the fictional element of a falcon that frightens the flock of reindeer. The “functional” comment about the reindeer’s play by Tor in the published text: “Det blir ilt vær…Når reinen leiker, er det mot ilt vær” [The weather will turn bad…when the reindeer play like that, it’s going to be bad weather],18 is itself not integrated into the reality of the “frame” story, since the weather remains reasonable for the remainder of the hunting trip. But the concept of a memorate given a functional role in the training of a “tourist hunter” is consistent with the rest of the published version of the 17

“Notisboken,” 49-50, separated from the main text by lines before and after the memorate. 18 Asbjørnsen 1949: 54. The “meaning” of the reindeer game may have been conveyed to Asbjørnsen by Tor, but it is not recorded in the “Notisbok.”

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hunt. And Sir John’s memorate of breaking through the ice? A cautionary tidbit, of a sort: but not about self-reliance and the ways to stay alive in a dangerous profession. It is more a question of the upper-class tourist who can do what he wants, because the local professionals are there to get him out of trouble. There is no comment by Tor or Anders, but the Legendcollector turns his back and moves away. Part 5: When a reindeer has at last been shot and flayed, and the less important parts of the animal are buried under a cairn marker, the hunters begin their retreat. The hard trek down to Per Fugleskjelle’s is made, and the famous—and fictitiously presented—legend-telling session is begun. This is what Asbjørnsen had explicitly hoped to hear: ”Jeg havde lovet mig meget af Opholdet i denne Hytte, Sagn, Jagthistorier havde svævet for mig som Hyttens Genier hele Dagen, men Thor fortalte blot om en stor Buk han havde balet med”19 [I had promised myself a great deal from the stay in this hut: legends, hunting tales had hovered before me like the hut’s guardian spirits all day long. But Tor only told us about a big buck he had wrestled with]. It seems odd to think that if Asbjørnsen had published something to the effect of: “Next day I returned to the valley and heard the following series of legends about Per Gynt,” some newer folklorists might have had few qualms about the author’s “faithfulness to belief tradition.” What Asbjørnsen instead gives us is not an incorrect story-sequence, but an imagined contextualization that provides us with information regarding the normative aspects of such a legend-telling session. In other words, the particular happenstance, that a talented storyteller like Hougen would do his best to perform “Per Gynt” material properly—out of context, for a visiting academic—had to be something of an anomaly. The telleraudience interaction recorded at the “Søndagskveld til seters” has a “group dynamic” that Asbjørnsen transfers to the hunting party at Ulvsødehytten as a natural component of the stories themselves.20 A primary purpose in the latter situation is clearly male entertainment. In the security of the rock19

“Notisboken”: 49. The exact story is not recorded. Frik Hougen suggests that the reference is to the “reindeer at play” cited above. This appears to me to be incorrect, since it never mentions a single buck (nor a struggle!), but rather a flock of thirteen. Tor does, however, turn to “Peer” (Fugleskjelle) as he speaks, and he mentions a nearby river, so “hid” is probably a reference to Per’s retreat. Can this memorate have been added the following morning? Asbjørnsen says clearly that only one tale was told that night, and the memorate of “a buck [Tor] had struggled with” sounds like one of the stories later placed in the “frame” during the lunch break. 20 Cf. Toelken 1996, 65ff., describing the “loggerdom” dynamic in the Pacific Northwest.

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wall dwelling, the hunters may now relax and give vent to their fantasies. The type of stories collected here in the “frame” are what von Sydow would refer to as fabulates, die Glaubensfabulate, die an den Volksglauben anknüpfen und ihn in verschiedenen Stücken veranschaulichen, z. B. hinsichtlich übernatürlicher Wesen, geheimer Kräfte usw…Doch können etliche von ihnen von einem Wesen auf ein anderes übertragen werden, so dass ein und derselbe Fabulattyp in verschiedenen Gegenden von einer Waldminne (skogsfru), einem Wasserwesen oder einem Riesen erzählt wird (von Sydow 1948: 74f). [Belief-fabulates, that are related to folk-beliefs, and which illustrate them in various ways, for example, with regard to supernatural beings, hidden powers, etc…However, some of these may be transferred from one being to another, so that one and the same fabulate-type in different areas can be attributed to a forest spirit, a water-nymph or a giant.]

Naturally, the hunters tell “mountain legends,” with “bergfolk” [mountainpeople, trolls], who have some of the qualities of wild animals, and are anti-Christian beings (the Lord’s Prayer and the ringing of church bells work as protective devices). There are warnings and advisory instructions in these tales as well as there were in the memorates, but they are much more complex here: a bear sometimes “belongs” to a troll family; a blast of air that blows out the lights in the house is a deliberate troll act, and— not unimportantly—the hunters have a moral struggle to wage against the combined troll community, to keep chaos and wickedness at bay. (Note that no such moral struggle is given mention in the memorates in this story.) But the Christian-troll dichotomy is not the only issue. A “balance of power” is also represented in terms of acts of contrition by the hunter as an encroacher upon territory properly occupied by the “hidden people.” And the hunters, although (probably) good enough Christians, appear to accept on principle the notion that whatever works (as a protective device) is good enough for them. The issue of “semi-belief” is also important. We must be careful not to brand the hunters simply as “superstitious,” von Sydow would warn us, because “Das Volk glaubt an die Fabulate, doch ist dieser Glaube bezüglich vieler Fabulate nur ein Halbglaube: man sagt so, aber man kann ja nicht so genau wissen, ob das wirklich sich so verhält” [the folk believes in the fabulates, but this belief in many fabulates is only a half-belief—one says things, but one cannot be so perfectly sure if it really is true] (von Sydow 1948: 75). Or as Per Fugleskjelle puts it: “[J]eg kunne fortelle historier, som gamle folk trur er sanne, og som de sier har tildradd seg i gamle tider; men kanskje du trur det er løgn; derfor vil jeg

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bare fortelle deg en regle, som de trur er løgn her også” [I could tell you stories that people think are true, and that they say happened in the old times, but maybe you think that’s a lie; so I’m only going to tell you a bit of nonsense that they think is a lie, too] (Asbjørnsen 1949: 66). Of course, this can also be a defense strategy in front of the “tourist” hunters, to avoid ridicule. Such a statement would not likely be heard from within a “high context group,” where such matters as belief or half-belief would long since have been worked out.21 The legend-system itself may be presented as a large piece of entertaining poetry or as a semi-philosophical and symbolic approach to the organization of “valley” society, and its mocking alter-group in the mountains. The hunters speak of each other (or their representatives in legends) as, to some degree, liminal characters as well as their troll adversaries, since they wander between ordinary valley life and the wilderness. Explicit with shocking clarity in the published “frame,” at least by the standards of the 1840’s, is the notion of an outlet for pent-up sexual fantasies in a closed male-to-male teller-audience context.22 The whole teller-audience situation here balances on a knife-edge between a belief system including mortal conflict and an affirmation of erotic nonsense. Finally, von Sydow has a word of explanation about those “Per Gynt” stories, that spin away as a narrational climax to the “frame” for the reindeer hunt. Asbjørnsen has placed these fictionally in the repertoire of Per Fugleskjelle for no other apparent reason than that of his physiognomy (more detailed in the “Notisbok” than in the published “frame”)—he looks like a mountain storyteller! This is von Sydow’s comment: Hat man einmal mit der Erzählung von Fabulaten begonnen, so kommt man oft derart in Zug, dass ein Fabulat das andere ablöst…Der Scherzfabel nahe steht eine grosse Anzahl Personenfabulate. Im Grunde sind sie Scherzfabeln, obgleich sie bekannten und namentlich genannten Persönlichkeiten angedichtet oder angehängt sind. Solche Fabulate über Personen bilden oft ganze Fabulatzyklen (Till Eulenspiegel) (von Sydow 1948: 75-76). [If one has first begun telling fabulates, one often gets caught up in it to the degree that one fabulate follows closely upon the other…The joking tale 21

“High context group” is a term formulated by Edward T. Hall, see Toelken 1996, 51. 22 Cf. the courting stories by the mixed-gender group of the “Søndagskveld til seters”; and note also the complicating figure of the Schoolmaster, an insider compared to the “tourist” hunters, but an outsider to the “high context group” of young people.

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(‘Scherzfabel’) lies close to a large number of ‘personal-fabulates.’ Basically these are joking tales, although they are composed about or affixed to known or specifically named personalities…Such fabulates around a central figure often grow into whole fabulate-cycles (such as the ‘Till Eulenspiegel’ cycle)].

Or, one might note, the fabulates may accrue increasingly to or shift from one such personality to another, as tellers and audience may choose. The question of whether we have “all” the Per Gynt material here or whether there were actually eleven Per Gynt stories, some of which were unknown to Engelbret Hougen, seems to me, in the light of von Sydow’s functional theory, to be an issue of no academic interest. As long as the Per Gynt figure was considered to be a productive “figure,” somebody could come up with more Per Gynt tales. Or as Anders tells us: ”Den Per Gynt var en for seg sjøl…Han var riktig en eventyrmaker og en reglesmed, du skulle hatt moro av: han fortalte altid, han sjøl hadde vært med i alle de historier, folk sa var hændt i gamle dager” [That Per Gynt was one of a kind...He was a real storymaker and a rigamarole-teller you’d have liked to hear: he always said he had been there himself in all those stories people said had happened back in the old days] (Asbjørnsen 1949: 72). My own badgering of the point, however, has to stop somewhere; let it be here. Asbjørnsen’s “frame” stories, when they are at their best as in this instance, are not, in my view, simply a way for Asbjørnsen to show off a fictional literary talent. Their geographical accuracy and botanical interest bring us to a heightened anticipation of the recounting of legend material, but literary anticipation is not the central issue either. What Asbjørnsen appears to have understood on an intuitive level—although he never explained clearly how this understanding might be stated in theoretical terms—was that the lack of contextualization in Faye’s and Thiele’s legend collections, and the artificial “set-up” of legends in most of Croker’s material, both were inadequate for his purpose; indeed, for the purpose of presenting legends at all in a living context. Asbjørnsen needed to convey the entire folkloric situation from which a myriad of legends, memorates, fabulates and practical advice emerges. If his contextualization is concretized (a term I would prefer to the loaded term “fictionalized”), his concretization is not an untruth, but rather a fanciful clarification of group function. The point is not that a story about Per Gynt could not be told individually to a visiting collector, for indeed that was Asbjørnsen’s experience in real life. The question he appears to pose, and to answer in the “frame” of the reindeer hunt, is different: under what conditions would the locals be likely to recount such a story? Under what conditions and situations would we be likely to hear a memorate, a fabulate, a legend

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according to its function? To what interpersonal situations do these legends properly belong? And, indeed, what happens in such a situation if, as in the case of the bumbling Sir John, the “wrong” sort of story is told? Perfectly cogent answers to these questions, in my view, may be found in these pictures of life in the high country, when Asbjørnsen went hunting for legends and reindeer.

Works Cited Manuscripts Asbjørnsen, P. Chr. “Notisbok,” signum NFS, P. Chr. Asbjørnsen 1., Norwegian Folklore Archives. P.O. Box 1010 Blindern, N-0315 Oslo, Norway

Printed Works Asbjørnsen, P. Chr. 1859. Norske Huldre-Eventyr og Folkesagn, 2 vols. Christiania: Steensballe. This second edition of the complete legends contains both the “Fortale” from the first edition of 1845 and a new “Fortale” for the present edition. —. 1879. Norske Folke- og Huldre-Eventyr i Udvalg. Kjøbenhavn: Gyldendal. —. 1949. Norske Huldreeventyr og Folkesagn, 2 vols. Oslo: Tanum, 1949. The edition used in my essay is edited with commentaries by Knut Liestøl; the original edition appeared in 1848. Boberg, Inger M. 1952. Folkemindeforskningens Historie. København: Munksgaard. Croker, Thomas C. 1971. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, 3 vols. New York: Lemma, 1971. A facsimile reprint of the original edition of 1825. Faye, Andreas. 1948. Norske Folke-sagn. Oslo: Norsk Folkeminnelags Forlag. A reprint of the second edition from 1844, with new page numbering. Faye’s edition originally appeared in 1833 under the title Norske Sagn. Hougen, Fri. 1935. “Omkring Asbjørnsens reise til Gudbrandsdalen 1842.” Edda 1935: 433-462. Hult, Marte H. 2002. Framing a National Narrative: The Legend Collections of Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. Detroit: Wayne State Press. Kvideland, R. and Sehmsdorf, H., eds. 1988. Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend. Minneapolis: U. Minn. Press,.

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Liestøl, Knut. 1939. Norsk Folkediktning: Segner. Oslo: Det norske samlaget. Liestøl was editor and commentator. Part of a seven-volume edition of Norwegian folklore under the direction of Olav Bø and Svale Solheim. —. 1984. P. Chr. Asbjørnsen. Mannen og livsverket. Oslo: Tanum. The first edition is from 1947. Sydow, C. W. von. 1948. “Kategorien der Prosa-Volksdichtung.” Selected Papers on Folklore. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger, A reprint from Volkskundliche Gaben John Meier zum siebzigsten Geburtstage dargebracht. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1934: 253-268. Thiele, J. M. 1843. Danmarks Folkesagn, 3 vols. Kiøbenhavn: Reitzel, 1843-60. Toelken, Barre. 1996. The Dynamics of Folklore, rev. ed. Logan, UT: Utah State U. Press.

FRITHIOF’S MOTLEY COUSINS: ON THE PERILS OF USING FOLKLORE TO CREATE A NATIONAL EPIC THOMAS A. DUBOIS

They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks. – Isaiah 2:4 Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword. —Edward Bulwer-Lytton

“We are another nation, and our forefathers were as hairy-chested as the Goths ever were.” So stated the petulant Finnish academic Carl Axel Gottlund (1796-1875) in the aftermath of the sensation created by Esias Tegnér’s (1782-1846) Frithiofs saga (1825). Barely a decade later, Elias Lönnrot (1802-84) would seek to prove Gottlund’s point with his Finnish national epic Kalevala (1835; revised 1849). And half a generation after that, the Estonian doctor Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald (1803-1882) would follow suit with an Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg (1857-61). Yet Kalevala and Kalevipoeg, literary works built of peasant folksongs and (in the case of the latter) etiological legends, often prove far less “hairy-chested” than Gottlund might have liked. Indeed, in some ways they answer the martial heroism of Tegnér’s imaginary world with a singularly anti-heroic and certainly anti-war portrayal, one that depicts war as evil, peace as a blessing, and heroism as a product of wisdom rather than blind willfulness. In this paper, I hope to show some of the ways in which Lönnrot’s and Kreutzwald’s texts come to answer Tegnér’s Germanic fantasy. Their response is problematic, as they eschew to varying degrees the ideology of heroism and warfare that so undergird nineteenth-century understandings of epic and nation. In both texts, I argue, we see the literary agenda of nationalist writers diverted and subdued by the more salt-of-the-earth sentiments of the rustic folklore they used as sources.

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Of Sagas and their Details Scholars of the twenty-first century in general know better than to read the sagas, or even the skaldic and Eddaic poems, with absolute credulity when it comes to the issue of warfare. They are literary works, shaped as much by the ideals and imaginations of their creators as by the historical events that may lie behind them. When saga heroes travel east from Iceland in search of martial adventure, the modern critic is quick to note that the details of war and battle there are often simplistic or cursory, especially when compared with the aching detail and endless nuance of local feuds, inter-clan resentments, and rural controversies that occupy the greatest attention in family sagas. So, too, modern critics note, the greatest heroes know how to value home and hearth, and regardless of what fame they have achieved in foreign courts, return in due time to the real stage of happiness: the valleys and farmsteads of Iceland. Where sagas portray the occurrence of warfare on Iceland itself, they do so, modern critics contend, with a sense of sorrow, or at best, with a tired resignation concerning the lamentable but seemingly inevitable tendencies of humankind. And where dewy-eyed romance occurs between men and women, rather than sturdy appraisals of worthy family and personal alliances, the portrayals are seen as signs of a late, continental corruption of the sagas’ older and truer depiction of marital unions. Yet for a man such as Esias Tegnér, who came upon the sagas first in a boyhood steeped in nineteenth-century Scandinavianism, and who taught himself English by reading James Macpherson’s Songs of Ossian, the supposedly medieval idealization of romantic love and warfare was not to be cynically brushed aside. In idealization lay ideals, and upon ideals rested the foundations of a better world. Thus, in creating an epic for the Swedish people, based (loosely) upon the glories of the Viking Past and the Saga Age, Tegnér was drawn to an enthusiastic embrace of the stock images of European medievalism: courtly love, nobility of spirit and blood, shining swords, and ennobling battle. Each of these images, however, proves problematic in the epics of Lönnrot and Kreutzwald.

Of Romance Tegnér’s epic is romantic in more senses than one. At the heart of the narrative stands the courtly love of the warrior Frithiof and the princess Ingeborg, a love that has its roots in the characters’ innocent youth and never abates thereafter. Even when refusing to run away with Frithiof, Ingeborg acknowledges the fixity of their emotional relation: “Var icke du

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mitt hjertas morgondröm?” (For were not you my budding heart’s first dream?; Canto 8, Tegnér 1909: 66; transl. Mauch 1960: 64). Tegnér throws every obstacle possible in the lovers’ way, apart from out-and-out death. Class, duty, honor, respect for the gods, rules of hospitality and, of course, marriage all conspire in turn to keep the lovers apart. Love will spur Frithiof to carry out Helge’s dangerous quest, drive him to a life of Viking exploits upon the waves when Ingeborg is instead married off to King Ring, and pull him back from the comforts of Greece to steal one more glimpse of his true love in her married life thereafter. Lovers’ laments and sighs punctuate the epic, and make up the fabric of numerous of its cantos. Frithiof’s companion Björn voices the view that many a modern reader might cynically espouse: Klagen och suck för en qvinnas skull! Norden, tyvärr! är af qvinnor full, Miste du en, stå dig tusen åter. (Canto 16: 126) [For a mere woman such sighing you’d do, As if a thousand were not left for you; You’d think this world held one woman alone. (Mauch 1960: 111)]

Yet, in the end, true love triumphs, as a magnanimous King Ring commits suicide to allow the young couple to reunite, while back home in the forsaken kingdom Ingeborg’s class-snob brother Helge has been crushed to death by a falling statue, clearing the way for Frithiof’s renewed suit and its acceptance by Ingeborg’s more reasonable brother Halfdan. Characteristically, the epic ends with these events: as the quest for romantic love has functioned as the prime mover of the entire plot, there is little point in continuing the tale once Frithiof and Ingeborg are united. In keeping with the ideals of courtly romance (and departing from the norms of family sagas), the relation of Frithiof and Ingeborg revolves solely around physical attraction and personal feelings. Familial considerations figure only as cruel barriers which the characters must surmount during the course of the narrative. In contrast, Lönnrot’s Kalevala displays a more traditional view of marriage, one deeply imbedded in familial interests and devoting relatively little attention to personal emotions or physical appetites. Väinämöinen, Lemminkäinen and Ilmarinen are each sent on their courting expeditions by family, especially their mothers, for whom the acquisition of a suitable daughter-in-law represents a crucial consideration. Haggling over marriage deals occupies

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major attention in the text, as it did in traditional Karelian marriage, and Lönnrot places songs used in Karelian “song wedding” ceremonies at the very center of his epic (Cantos 20-25). Wedding lyrics inform bride and groom of their respective responsibilities, with a work ethic and group interests taking precedence over any personal considerations whatsoever. The bride, for instance, is advised: Elä läävässä lepeä, Lamo lammaskarsinassa; Kun olet läävän lääninynnä, Katsonunna karjan kaiken, Jo jou’u takaisin tuolta, Tule tuiskunaa tupahan! (Canto 23: 161-166) [Do not loaf around the cow barn Nor loiter, puttering in the sheep pen. When you’ve cleaned the cattle shed And have tended to the cattle, Then go like the driven snow Quickly back into the house. (Friberg 1988: 194)]

The groom is similarly advised to work hard, provide well, and to strike his new wife only on the shoulders or bottom, never where neighbors might notice (24: 249-264). Lönnrot does, however, provide some images of romantic love in his epic. The Maiden of Pohjola chooses Ilmarinen over Väinämöinen presumably due to his youth and looks, much to the displeasure of her mother. In the face of her mother’s evident anger, the maiden defiantly declares: En mene osan hyvyylle Enkä miehen mielevyylle, Menenp’ on otsan hyvyylle, Varren kaiken kauneuulle; Eikä neittä ennenkänä Ei ole myötynä eloihin (18: 639-44) [I don’t want to choose a husband For his wealth or for his wisdom But for the goodness of his features And the beauty of his body, Nor has any virgin ever Wanted to be sold for dross. (Friberg 1988: 159-60)]

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In order to make her choice a reality, The Maiden then advises and assists Ilmarinen in each of the suitor quests he must accomplish at his future mother-in-law’s insistence (Canto19). Even more romantic are the views of Aino. Based in part on traditional songs about the miseries of marrying an old man, and in part on Lönnrot’s own imagination, the Aino story (Canto 4) creates the single most romantic image in the epic. Väinämöinen is welcomed as a son-in-law by Aino’s mother, due to his stature and power. In contrast, however, Aino bemoans her fate as the teenaged bride of an aging man and eventually succumbs to a fate as close to suicide as Lönnrot felt comfortable in depicting. The Aino cantos represent some of the most authorially shaped elements of Lönnrot’s 1849 Kalevala, and the part which comes closest to imitating the romantic sensibilities of Tegnér’s Frithiofs saga. Significantly, however, Lönnrot casts his male lover figure not in the role of the youthful Frithiof, but as a parallel to the aging obstacle King Ring, thereby undermining in an ironic and unmistakable manner the very romantic imagery his literary ambitions had prompted him to insert. And in the decidedly corporate, non-romantic images of marriage in the wider text, we see an embrace of a different, older ideal of marriage: one no doubt closer to the norms of medieval marriage and the classic sagas than the wide-eyed and sighing romance of Tegnér’s imagination. Where courtship reaches high seriousness in one way or another in both Frithiofs saga and Kalevala, Kreutzwald’s Kalevipoeg shows only the most casual interest in wooing. Usually the objects of his attention are quite ordinary young women: the maiden of the island (Canto 5), sisters at a farm (Canto 8), the Devil’s captives in Hell (Cantos 14-15). In Canto 19, Kreutzwald places songs of courtship into the mouths of both Kalevipoeg and Sulevipoeg. Sulevipoeg, in a song of praise to the hops vine, recalls his jaunty courting of a group of maidens: “Miks te, noored, nurme pealla Kodunt kaugel kõndimassa?” Neiud mõistsid, kostsid vastu, Piigad nõnda pagatasid: “Lähme linna, linnukesed, Alevisse, armukesed, Turu peale, tuvikesed, Uulitsale, hullukesed! (19; Kreutzwald 1975: 244) [“Why are you young maidens Walking in a meadow far from home?” The maidens understood and answered, The girls spoke like this:

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“We little birds are off to town we dears are going to the village: we doves, to the marketplace – wild children in the street. (Kurman 1982: 248)]

He chases them good-naturedly until they fall asleep. Seeing them thus innocently at rest, Sulevipoeg loses his gumption and leaves them unassayed. Kalevipoeg follows suit with a song of courting as well, in which a strapping youth (Kaljupoiss “boulder lad”) helps retrieve the missing raiment belonging to a group of maidens from some troublesome pike. The lad proposes to one girl but receives a negative answer: “Tule, tui, mulle omaksi! Meil on iga päev pühapäev, Pidud piki aasta’ada.” “Ei või tulla, kaljupoissi, Ei või tulla, vennikene! Meil on kodu kosijaida. Las lääb suvi, küll sügise Külakoerad haukumaie, Raudakäpad kõndimaie, Viinamärssisid vedama. Aitüma abi eesta, Tänu hääteo eesta! Saa ei sulle suuremada.” (19; Kreutzwald 1982: 246) [“Come, my dove, and marry me – Every day for us will be a Sunday, We’ll feast the whole year round!” “I can’t come, o boulder lad; I cannot come, my brother – For we have wooers at home. Let summer pass and in the fall The village dogs will start to bark As suitors’ spokesmen come to visit, Bearing knapsacks full of spirits. Many thanks for your assistance; I’m in your debt for your good deed But can do nothing more. (Kurman 1982: 250)]

Such songs, again traditional in Estonia, depict courtship as a divided activity, with emotional encounters occurring spontaneously between eligible men and women, while formal visits in preparation for a betrothal occur separately, under the watchful eyes of farmer and farmwife. That the

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two are separate says much about Estonian views of the nature of marriage arrangements. Kreutzwald, for his part, uses Kalevipoeg’s song as a sign of his drunkenness and lack of judgment. For it is immediately after this song that the devious Varrak asks Kalevipoeg for the book shackled to the wall, a treasure which guarantees Estonia’s self governance. Intoxicated by both spirits and good song, Kalevipoeg simply grants Varrak’s request without a second thought, despite the entreaties of his more sober advisors (Canto 19).

Of Class As in later melodrama, the trials of Frithiof and Ingeborg ultimately revolve around issues of class. Frithiof, although doughty and brave, is nonetheless born of common blood, a defect more consequential, no doubt, to Tegnér and his generation than to the landowning farmers of the Viking Age. Frithiof’s father Torsten is wealthy and a trusted advisor to King Bele, and his son has come to know Ingeborg at the estate of his foster father Hilding. Despite his magnificent estate, however, and his universally recognized martial prowess, Frithiof is warned not to set his sights on one so nobly born as Ingeborg: Men Hilding sade: “Fosterson, Den älskog vänd din håg ifrån! Ej lika falla ödets lotter, Den tärnan är kun Beles dotter. Till Oden sjelf i stjernklar sal Uppstiger hennes ättartal: Du är blott Torstens son; gif vika! Ty lika trifves bäst med lika.” (Canto 2; Tegnér 1909: 12) [But Hilding said, “My foster son, This youthful dream dwell not upon. Uneven, lots that fate did fling, Yon maid’s the daughter of the king. But royal blood within her flows; Its lineage back to Odin goes. You are but Torsten’s son; give way, For like with like is what they say.” (Mauch 1960: 21-22)]

Frithiof’s response reveals the class issues of nineteenth-century Sweden in an era long before the arrival of universal male suffrage:

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Friboren man ej vika vill, Ty verlden hör den frie till. Hvad lyckan bröt, kan hon försona, Och hoppet bär en konungs krona. (Canto 1; Tegnér 1909: 12) [“A freeborn man will not make way; ‘Tis freeman’s world, is what I say; What Fate broke off she can repair, And Hope the crown of king can bear. (Mauch 1960: 22)]

The rest of his society does not share this ample vision, however, and Frithiof chafes endlessly against the injustices of class, while the thoroughly ignoble Helge – the very personification of unworthy privilege – stands rigidly by his code of noble marriage. Even when pressed by his court to accept Frithiof’s suit in exchange for his aid against an angry King Ring, Helge refuses, citing Frithiof’s secret visit to Ingeborg at the Temple of Balder as the ostensible grounds for his continued intransigence: “Åt bondesonen – sade han föraktligt – Jag kunnat Ingborg ge, men tempelskändarn Syns mig ej passa för Valhalladottern.” (Canto 8; Tegnér 1909: 57) [“To peasant son of braggart, I could give My sister,” he said, scornfully, “but not To one who would the peace of gods disturb.” (Mauch 1960: 56)]

Despite our identification with the lowborn Frithiof, however, Tegnér does not so much reject the class system of old as call for its selective permeability. A man of noble bearing and martial skill ought to be welcomed into the ranks of the nobles, despite his common origins. States Frithiof at the outset of the epic: “Högättad är all kraft” [Canto 1: Tegnér 1909:12; “Of noble birth all strength is” Mauch 1960: 122] and such becomes revealed to all in the course of the narrative. Nor should this occasional meritocracy undermine the God-granted privileges that accrue to some by birth. Such is the gist of the temple priest’s remonstrations in the epic’s final canto, when he chides Frithiof for resenting the royal family’s initial spurning of his suit: Du hatar Beles söner. Hvarför hatar du? Åt sonen af en odalbonde ville de Ej ge sin syster, ty hon är af Semings blod, Den store Odenssonens; deras ättartal

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Når upp till Valhalls troner, det ger stolthet in. (Canto 24; Tegnér 1909: 172) [You hate King Bele’s sons, and yet why should you hate Because to son of yeoman they cared not to give Their sister’s hand? For she of Seming’s blood was born, The mighty son of Oden; their ancestry stretched up To Valhall’s throne, a fact to make them rightly proud. (Mauch 1960: 151)]

Pride in family lines is right and just when one’s ancestry holds glories of such magnitude. And since Frithiof’s martial glory has been awarded him by the Norns, the priest asserts, these cannot be seen as any more meritorious than the inherited honors of nobility: De höga nornor sjöngo vid din vagga re’n Drottqvädet af din levnad; din förtjenst deraf Är större ej än kongasonens af sin börd. (Canto 24; Tegnér 1909: 172) [Already by your cradle all the Fates did sing A song of your successes, which you’ve earned no more Than have the sons of kings yet earned their noble birth. (Mauch 1960: 152)]

Both birth and deeds must be humbly acknowledged as the gifts of the gods – and respected as such by all living men. In the end, we are given not an indictment of the rigid class system that would outlive Tegnér’s generation, but an optimistic reassurance that the cream will rise, and that society will benefit from a continued reliance on the sometimes seemingly fickle hand of the Norns or Providence. Such assurances, of course, did not offer the same appeal in the BaltoFinnic societies to the east, where inherited title coincided with cultural and linguistic barriers that effectively excluded the vast majority of the populace from most aspects of civic life. Over the centuries of Swedish rule, the Finnish Duchy’s leadership had become progressively more separated from the majority, with a diglossia that relegated Finnishspeakers to an inevitable second-class status. Lönnrot himself was one of the few Finnish speakers of his generation to make the leap into the world of the intelligentsia, and that only by the good fortune of gaining access to Swedish language during his childhood. Kreutzwald, similarly, was a member of the first generation of Estonian-speakers allowed to attend school, and one of the very first of his ethnic group to receive medical

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training. The complete feudal dominance of the German aristocracy – the descendents of the Teutonic Knights and German merchants – had been eased only with the legal reforms instituted by Csar Alexander I. Class, therefore, was a particularly loaded topic in both contexts. The stratified class considerations of Frithiofs saga are replicated in miniature in Kalevala by the status differences of the farmstead. The farmer and his wife enjoy the status of monarchs, determining the fates of all under their sway. Francis Peabody Magoun sought to underscore this fact by translating the name of the enemy bastion Pohjola as “North Farm,” a homey title that deflates the more grandiose images that both Pohjola and Kalevala acquire in the course of Lönnrot’s epic. The rulers of these realms are in essence merely powerful farmers, who seek security and wealth for their farms in the future. Below these rulers, oldest sons and daughters occupy a privileged position as eventual heirs, followed by younger siblings, hirelings, and (at the lowest end of the pecking order) orphan children and the elderly. Kullervo (Cantos 31-36) speaks for the experiences of the orphan in his experiences and songs, drawn from a traditional repertoire of shepherd songs. Social differences translate concretely into differing duties, privileges, and quantities of food. And when we come to see the Maiden of Pohjola, now the farmwife of Ilmarinen’s homestead, from the perspective of her cowherd (Canto 3233), we see not the object of every man’s dreams but a cold and conniving woman: “Tuopa ilkoinen emänta/Sepän akka irvihammas” [32: 19-20; Then that mistress, vicious woman/Sneer-mouthed wife of Ilmarinen” Friberg 1988: 263)]. This farmwife is capable of cruel taunts and mean tricks, and deserves (in Kullervo’s eyes at least) the violent end she meets (Canto 33). Beyond these farm-based social divisions, however, few others obtain: Lönnrot does not include in his epic any songs that tell of kings, princes, or barons, despite their existence in ballad-influenced folk songs of the region. His epic unfolds over the more intimate ambitus of the farmstead rather than the rarefied and remote world of courts and castles. And when, in Canto 50, we read of an orphan boy destined to become the king of Karelia (an allegory of Christ), we see in the trope little of the depiction of royalty we would expect in an epic modeled after Frithiofs saga. In comparison with Finland, Estonia was a far more class-stratified society, its denizens enfeudalized into serfdom during the Middle Ages, and only emerging into enfranchisement during Kreutzwald’s own life. Thus, expectedly, class plays more of a role in Kalevipoeg than in Kalevala. Where the Kalevala closes with a mythic image of a newborn king, Kalevipoeg opens with the establishment of a real-world kingdom,

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the realm which the hero Kalevipoeg will eventually come to rule. Kreutzwald uses both traditional songs and his own verse renderings of etiological legends to create an account of the existence of social differences both on the level of the farmstead and in society as a whole. In verses reminiscent of Hyndluljóÿ, the god Taara’s sons each go forth to establish different walks of life: the first becomes a merchant of Russia, the second a warrior of Lapland, the third, the king of Estonia: See, kes veeres Venemaale, Kasvas kauniks kaubameheks, Poepoortide punujaks. See, kes tuiskas Turjamaale, Sirgus vapraks sõjameheks Tõusis tapir taotajaks. See, kes sõitis kotka seljas, Meie maale tulnud meesi Riiki kohe rajatanud, Laia valda asutanud, Kena koja ehitanud, Kust ta vägev-volil käsi Laia valda valitsemas. (Canto 1; Kreutzwald 1975: 16) [The son who rolled to Russia, Rose to be a marvelous merchant, A weaver of silver lace. The son who soared to Lapland Rose to be a valiant warrior, A wielder of the war-axe. The son who rode the eagle’s back… This man came thus to our country, Swiftly established a state, He founded broad dominions And built a comely hall Whence his strong and weighty hand Held sway across the country. (Kurman 1982: 12-13)]

This social hierarchy reflects, of course, class as viewed from the vantage point of the farm, where the wealthy merchant of Russia clearly occupies the loftiest state, the soldier and local king relegated to lower rungs in the ladder. From the peasant perspective – where serfdom removed basic rights like travel and free association – mobility and the opportunity to make one’s own choices in life held the highest allure. Thus the merchant, free to come and go as he pleased, stands superior in folksongs to the soldier who must take orders from above, and even to the

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king who must shoulder the weighty demands of state. This view of kingship is developed further in the epic, as we shall see. Within the farmstead of Kalev’s future wife, on the other hand, we see the establishment of familial hierarchies akin to those we find in Kalevala. The king’s eventual mother-in-law finds three abandoned eggs, which she dutifully incubates (Canto 1). The hen’s egg becomes the mother’s sweet and sturdy daughter Salme. The egg of a black grouse becomes the sleek and appealing Linda, Kalev’s future bride. And the lowly egg of a crow becomes an orphan bondmaid, unsuitable for anything but household chores. While the first two daughters eventually acquire celestial and royal husbands, the bondmaid receives only bullying and chores. The inherent rigidity of the farmstead hierarchy, its dependence on birth-order and parentage, become apparent in pieces of Kreutzwald’s epic drawn directly from women’s songs. While inheritance plays little real role in Kalevala, in Kalevipoeg it again rises as a major theme. The wise Kalev – Kalevipoeg’s father – takes steps in due course to ensure the orderly succession of property and duties from one generation to the next. In keeping with his folktale sources, however, Kreutzwald allows the youngest son to rise as his hero, rather than the eldest, as in the case of Frithiof. Kalev’s method of selecting his heir – by drawing lots between his sons (Canto 2) – accentuates the artificiality of social stratification and the consequences it brings. Later, in Canto 8, the brothers will cast stones to see who should be king, an act that substitutes strength for luck in birth, and thus replicates a contrast drawn in Frithiofs saga. Within his epic, the event helps usher in a Golden Age of the past, a reign of a king of heroic stature who walked the hills and valleys of Estonia and embodied in his being the historical wonder of Estonian self-rule.

Of Swords Tegnér follows the nearly universal synecdoche that designates the sword as a symbol for a whole range of military concepts, from the attainment of warrior status to martial prowess, and from short-lived acts of violence to protracted, contemplated war. In the process, the sword becomes a character in its own right, possessed of history, personality, and fate. Tegnér’s charmingly pre-Freudian embrace of this device provides the text with much of its picturesque medievalism. Frithiof’s sword has a name and a history all its own: Angurvadel, så kallades det, och broder till blixten.

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Fjärran i Österland var det smidt – som sagan förtäljer – , Härdadt i dvärgarnas eld: Björn Blåtand bar det från början. (Canto 3; Tegnér 1909: 25) [Angurvadel it was called, and brother to lightning. Far in the East had it hammered been, or so the story goes, and Hardened in the forges by a band of dwarfs. Bjorn Bluetooth owned it first. (Mauch 1960: 31)]

After Björn Bluetooth, it passed to his slayer Vifill, who in turn passed it to his son Viking, Frithiof’s grandfather. The young Viking’s battle against the giant Jernhos – a struggle to free both a princess and a kingdom – is detailed in the epic, the narrative derived from Thorsteins saga. Viking eventually passes the sword to his son Torsten, who in turn passes it to Frithiof. It is thus part of the highly consequential and illustrious inheritance that Frithiof offers and that Helge, in his scorn for the lowborn, disregards. Not only is the sword linked to mythic battles and dwarfish smiths, but Tegnér goes on to detail is elemental beauty, its oriental inscription and its supernatural ability to sense the presence of foes: När han drog det, sken det i salen, Liksom flöge en blixt derigenom eller ett norrsken. Hjaltet var hamradt af guld, men runor syntes på klingan, Underbara, ej kända i Nord, men de kändes vid solens Portar, der fäderna bott, förr’n asarna förde dem hitupp. Matta lyste de runor alltjämt, när fred var i landet, Men när Hildur begynte sin lek, då brunno de alla Röda som hanen kam, när han kämpar. (Canto 3; Tegnér 1909: 26) [When he drew it, a flash Streaked through the room like northern lights or the lightning. The hilt was hammered of gold, but the inscriptions on the edge Were unusual, in a language unknown in the Northland Yet known near the Gates of the Rising Sun, ere the fathers moved northward. Indistinct were the letters when peace was at hand, but when Hildur, The goddess of war, her game began, then red would they burn Like the cockerel’s comb in a fight. (Mauch 1960: 31)]

In short, Angurvadel is the kind of sword that legends are made of: the warrior’s-best-friend image of King St. Oláfr’s Bæsingr-Hneiti rather than

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the darker image of Gisli’s Grásida, source of enmity and implement of familial unrest. After this memorable introduction to the sword, Tegnér needs only to remind the reader of its presence at various pivotal moments in his narrative for effect. Frithiof speaks to it early on in the epic, after he has cleft the shield of Helge: Väl traffadt, min klinga! Ligg nu och dröm Om högre bedrifter; till dess förgöm. (Canto 4; Tegnér 1909: 36) [Well done, my sword, asleep now stay And dream of deeds you’ll do some day. (Mauch 1960: 40)]

Soon after, Frithiof uses the sword again to threaten Helge (Canto 8) and speaks of it as “en väldig öfvertalare, en skarp/har jag, han hanger vid min venstra sida” (Canto 8; Tegnér 1909: 59; “a good and sharp persuader now I have already hanging at my side” Mauch 1960: 58). We are told in Canto 11 that “Frithiof svärd kan döfva/och aldrig ber om fred” [(Canto 11; Tegnér 1909: 85); “Frithiof’s sword is fated to never beg for peace” (Mauch 1960: 79)]. And immediately thereafter we see it in action against the berserker Atle. When Atle loses his own sword, Frithiof throws his aside as well in order to keep the battle even. But at the struggle’s end, Atle offers to remain lying still while Frithiof retrieves his sword to finish his vanquished opponent off. Frithiof, however, impressed by his rival’s fearlessness, lets him live to another day. Using the sword to kill such a valiant man would, it appears, dishonor Angurvadel, whose reputation is as important as that of Frithiof’s own. Clearly, a sword of this caliber can only be used for the finest of battles, with the highest regard to honor, bravery, and fame. Frithiof and his impressive weapon are contrasted in the epic with Helge, who never appears to carry a sword, and with Halfdan, whose relation to swords is far less impressive. A sword appears incongruous at his side when Halfdan is first introduced: Till lek han tycktes bära ett svärd vid bälte Och liknade en jungfru, förklädd till hjelte. (Canto 2; Tegnér 1909: 15) [The sword borne at his side seemed but a playful jest; He looked so like a maid who had as warrior dressed. (Mauch 1960: 23)]

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Fortunately for the kingdom, however, and much to the relief of his retainer Hilding, Halfdan eventually proves effective in swordsmanship (89): Kung Halfdan skämtade jämt och log, Men likafullt som en man han slog. Jag höll min sköld öfver kungasonen, Jag var så glad åt den lärospånen. (Canto 12; Tegnér 1909: 97) [King Halfdan e’er had smiled and jest, Yet manly blows thrust like the rest O’er royal son I held the shield Rejoiced at how his sword he’d wield. (Mauch 1960: 89)]

Thus, he can appear an honorable enough recipient of Frithiof’s gesture when, at the end of the epic, the hero lays his sword aside to offer his hand in reconciliation. In the Kalevala, swords are present, but not as noble companions, nor are their actions or reputations unsullied. Often enough, they are mentioned merely in passing, as the expected implement of a battling character. Just as often, they are overlooked, with other implements taking their place. In Canto 3, the powerful Väinämöinen enchants all of the young Joukahainen’s war gear away, including his sword: “Laulo miehen kultakahvan/salamoiksi taivahalle” [3: 311-12; “Sang his golden-hilted sword/into lightnings in the sky” Friberg 1988: 57] – a line that nicely reverses the literary simile of sword-like-lightning into a physical reality that robs the warrior of his weapon. But in offering his victor treasures in exchange for his freedom, Joukahainen makes no mention of swords, offering instead bows, boats, horses, money, land, and (ultimately) a sister, items as easily imaginable as part of a rural farmstead as of a medieval horde. When he later attacks Väinämöinen, it is by bow (Canto 6), and although Väinämöinen comes to bleed excessively in the epic, the wound is due to an ax blade rather than a sword (Canto 8). In fact, Väinämöinen almost never uses a sword as a battle implement in the epic. He frees himself from the belly of Antero Vipunen by using forging equipment (Canto 17), and deals Louhi the decisive blow that loses her the Sampo by means of a boat oar (Canto 43). Although he does have Ilmarinen make him a sword in Canto 39, he uses it not in battle, but to kill a giant pike, which he and his companions then devour (Canto 40). More consequential in the epic are his magic songs, which allow him to defeat Joukahainen (Canto 3), build a boat (Canto 16), control other

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characters (e.g., Ilmarinen, Canto 10, Iku Turso, Canto 42), and steal the Sampo (Canto 42). More significant, too, is his creation of the kantele, the wondrous harp he uses to enchant and beguile (Cantos 40-41, 44, 50). It is, indeed, the kantele that Väinämöinen passes on to the people of his land after his departure rather than a treasured sword: Jätti kantelon jälille, Soiton Suomelle sorean, Kansalle ilon ikuisen, Laulut suuret lapsillensa. (50: 509-12) [But he left his harp behind, Graceful instrument to Finland, Joy eternal to the nation And the great songs to its children. (Friberg 1988: 363)]

Lönnrot’s second-most heroic character in the epic, Ilmarinen, bears a similarly distanced relation to swords. He wields one himself only once, and to completely ineffective result, trying to kill the giant pike that has beached the heroes’ boat (Canto 40): Miekan vyöltänsä vetävi Tupestansa tuiman rauan, Jolla kalhaisi kaloa, Alta laian läimähytti: Miekka murskaksi mureni, Eipä hauki tiennytkänä. (40: 145-150) [From his belt he drew his sword The grim iron from his scabbard, And he struck down at the monster, Slashing down beneath the vessel, But the sword crashed into fragments, Yet the pike paid no attention. (Friberg 1988: 304)]

More consequential is his forging of a sword for Väinämöinen in Canto 39, lines which echo the effulgence of Tegnér’s text. After frenzied forging and the labor of many assistants, Ilmarinen produces a sword worthy of his customer: Olipa miekka miestä myöten, Kalpa kantajan mukahan, Jonka kuu kärestä paistoi, Päivä paistoi lappeasta,

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Tähet västistä välötti, Hevonen terällä hirnui, Kasi naukui naulan päässä, Penu putkessa puhusi. Sylkytteli miekkoansa Vuoren rautaisen raossa, Itse tuon sanoiksi virkki: “Jo minä terällä tällä Vaikka vuoret poikki löisin, Kalliot kaha jakaisin! (39: 101-14) [Yes, the sword will match the man, And the blade befit the bearer. At the point a moon was gleaming, On the flat a sun was shining, And the hilt with stars was studded; On the blade a horse was neighing, On the knob a tomcat mewing, While a hound bayed on the scabbard. Väinämöinen swung the sword As if to split an iron mountain, And he said: “Now with this weapon I could even split a mountain Or could crack a crag in two. (Friberg 1988: 298)]

Where Angurvadel’s creators are characterized as exotic Eastern dwarfs, Ilmarinen is a local flesh-and-blood smith, with a normal man’s desires, moods, and hopes. His fame derives not so much from his skills in making swords, but in his other products: the vault of heaven, the Sampo (Canto 10), a maiden of silver and gold (Canto 37), a surrogate sun and moon (Canto 49), and a threatening neck ring that convinces Louhi to eventually restore the real celestial bodies to the sky (Canto 49). The suitor tasks assigned to him in his quest to win the Maiden of Pohjola involve forging as well, but here again, swords do not play any role (Canto 19). And on the one occasion that Ilmarinen does contemplate using a sword on a human being (see below), it is for a dastardly rather than heroic purpose. Lemminkäinen and Kullervo, for their parts, do figure in connection with swords, but not in the positive, idealistic manner illustrated by Frithiof. When the reckless and willful Lemminkäinen equips himself with his father’s sword in Canto 26, it is to avenge the slight of hospitality he has suffered rather than to accomplish any great or noble deed, and his beheading of the Farmer of Pohjola (Canto 27) shows a directness and rustic brutality that contrasts markedly with the refined image of heroic duel in the Frithiof-Atle encounter (Frithiofs saga Canto XI):

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Tuop’ on lieto Lemminkäinen Siinä lyöä silpahutti, Iski miestä miekallansa Kavahutti kalvallansa. Löip’ on kerran luimahutti, Laski pään on päältä olka, Kallon kaulalta sivalti, Vei kun naatin naurihista Tahikka tähkän olesta, Evän kaikesta kalasta; Päähyt pyörähti pihalle, Miehen kallo kartanolle, Kuni nuolen noutaessa Puusta koppelo putosi. (27: 374-388) [Lemminkäinen struck a blow, Struck the master with his sword, With one quick cut of his blade. With one slashing blow he struck him, Sliced the head off from his shoulders, Struck the skull off from his neck, As a turnip top is snipped, As an ear of grain is sickled, Or a fin from fish is severed, And the head dropped to the ground, Tumbled down onto the farmyard As, when struck down by an arrow, A large grouse falls from a tree. (Friberg 1988: 235)]

Kullervo, too, wields a sword, although the prized inheritance he has received from his father is rather a knife, which is damaged as Kullervo cuts into a loaf of bread (Canto 33). His subsequent use of a sword (Canto 36), as we shall see below, appears more a sign of his fated or deranged psyche at the end of his life than a mark of heroic mettle. Interestingly, Lönnrot’s source material, and his epic as well, do contain images of conscious and feeling swords which act as interlocutors with human characters. Yet where Frithiof’s Angurvadel is a faithful listener and noble friend, the swords of Kalevala are outspoken and grim, critical of the motives and morals of their bearers. When Ilmarinen announces his intention to murder his dead wife’s sister, the sword in his hand protests (Canto 38). Similarly, when Kullervo invites his sword to kill him, the sword grimly agrees: Miekka mietti miehen mielen,

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Arvasi uron pakinan, Vastasi sanalla tuolla: “Miks’ en söisi mielelläni, Söisi syyllistä lihoa, Viallista verta joisi? Syön lihoa syyttömänki, Juon verta viattomanki.” (36: 327-334) [And the sword understood him, Understood the man’s intention And responded in these words: “Why should it not please me well To devour the guilty flesh And to drink the criminal blood Since I eat the flesh of innocents And I drink the guiltless blood?” (Friberg 1988: 287)]

Cognizant of the realities of war and its victims, these swords offer a bitter contrast to the faithful friend which Frithiof carries at his side. In many ways, Kreutzwald’s epic includes images of the sword that mediate between the romanticization of Tegnér’s work and the markedly negative portrayal in the Kalevala. In Kalevipoeg, we are again placed in a world in which the hero’s sword is created by distant Eastern magic, but now that workshop is located in neighboring Finland, to which the young King Kalevipoeg travels in search of news of his abducted mother. On the way, in lines drawn from traditional water demon songs, we read of a maiden who is tempted into drowning by a “golden sword” she sees lying on the sea bottom. In retelling her death to her grieving parents, the girl’s spirit relates her conversation with an old man of copper who has claimed her life. He explains: Kuldamõõk on Kalevite Hõbeoda Olevite, Vaskne ambu Sulevite Varjul hoietud varada. Vaskimees on vara vahti, Kuldamõõga varjaja, Hõbeoda hoidija, Vaskse ammu kaitseja. (Canto 4; Kreutzwald 1975: 59-60) [The golden sword is Kalev’s, The silver spear is Olev’s And the copper crossbow Sulev’s –

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A hoard held in hiding, This copperman is the treasure-guard: Shielder of the golden sword, The silver spear’s protector, Keeper of the copper crossbow. (Kurman 1982: 56)]

This detail has little or nothing to do with Kalevipoeg as a character in the epic (whose relations with the maiden are, of course, quite different). Nor does the event have much to do with the eventual highlighted creation of Kalevipoeg’s sword of power. Yet nonetheless, the inclusion of the lines helps create an expectation of a great sword two cantos later, once Kalevipoeg has arrived on the shores of Finland. After demonstrating his prodigious and lethal talent with a peasant cudgel (Canto 5), Kalevipoeg at last decides to seek out the “famed smith” of Finland to commission a sword of his own: Soomes elas kuulus seppa, Sõjariista sünnitaja, Vaenuriista valmistaja, Mõnusama mõõga meister. Kalevipoeg pajatama: “Enne kojuminekuda Peaksin mõõga muretsema, Sõjasaha sobitama Vaenlaste vastaseksi!” (Canto 6; Kreutzwald 1975: 72) [A famed smith lived in Finland, A hatcher of weapons, A maker of the tools of strife, A master of merry swords. Kalevipoeg spoke to himself: “Before I turn home I should get me a sword, Bargain for a war-plow With which to meet my enemies!” (Kurman 1982: 69)]

This narrative detail, drawn again from Estonian legendry, creates of course a wonderful intertextual echo with Kalevala. For here again, we see a character nearly identical with Lönnrot’s Ilmarinen, playing, however, a more marginal role in this Estonian text. Ilmarinen will occur later in the epic in a divine manifestation as well, responding in part to the mythological reconstructions of an Estonian pre-Christian pantheon that were popular among Estonian intellectuals at the time. But in Canto 6 we see the smith figure much as Lönnrot (and the folksongs) present him:

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powerful but brooding, fair but easily angered. After some searching, Kalevipoeg locates the smith, and after some haggling and testing of lesser products, is offered a sword that had been forged for his father Kalev before the latter’s death. This sword is fully as wonderful in appearance as that Lönnrot’s Ilmarinen creates for Väinämöinen: Tera seitsmest teraksesta, Rootsi raua rahnudesta; Vars oli valgesta hõbedast, Käepide kallimast kullast, Kupp Kunglamaa kivista; Sidemed seitsetkarva karrast, Pannal paksusta penningist, Teine tugevem taalderist, Pandlapided pitserkivist, Sõrmuskivi sõmerasta. (Canto 6; Kreutzwald 1975: 77) [The blade was forged of seven steels, Of Swedish iron ores; The haft was of white silver, The grip of precious gold; And the pommel was wrought from Kungla-Stone. Seven shades of metal decked the scabbard; One buckle was wrought from a thick penny, A second, stronger buckle from a thaler With buckle clasps of agate, Ornaments of garnet grain. (Kurman 1982: 74)]

The wondrous weapon passes muster with Kalevipoeg in a test that few swords could endure: smiting in two the smith’s iron anvil in a feat exactly parallel to that attributed to Väinämöinen’s sword. In exchange, Kalevipoeg promises to pay the smith unstintingly the immense sum he has demanded, a debt which he duly pays later in the epic. Here, then, we see Frithiof’s legendary procurement of the sword in the East merged with the more concrete accounts of Ilmarinen’s forging of a wondrous object, as in the Kalevala. The account is rendered even more memorable in the text, however, because of the tremendous events which follow: a drunken Kalevipoeg, bragging of the liberties he has taken with the island maiden, provokes a fight with the smith’s son. As a result, the son defends the maiden’s honor, losing his life in the process. The irate smith then curses the sword in revenge: Saagu, saagu, ma sajatan, Saagu sind sõjariist surmama,

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Terav raud sind tappemaie, Saagu sulle salamahti Mõõgast sündima mõrtsukas, Valatud verest vaenlane! (Canto 6; Kreutzwald 1975: 80) [O let it be, I execrate and curse! Let the sword be your slayer, May the sharp steel slaughter you, O let it secretly Become your killer, Your foe for the blood you spilt! (Kurman 1982: 78)]

Given that Angurvadel gained its fame through its use in felling a maidenviolating giant, this inversion in Kalevipoeg is striking indeed. Kreutzwald’s great king of Estonia is, after all, a character built of giant legends, not a folk embodiment of the lusty and honorable Frithiof. And thus, in a sense, we are given the giant’s side of the story, with our sympathies turned, strangely, toward what usually figures as a stock villain in North European legends and sagas. Our hero perpetrates the loutish misdeeds, fights a battle as a result, and receives a curse on the sword which was supposed to be his companion for life. Kalevipoeg’s sword never fully recovers from the breach of honor it has been party to. In Canto 11, after being stolen by a wizard and dropped into Kääpä brook, it calls out to Kalevipoeg in lines that both explain its location and chide the king about his past offense. Kalevipoeg and his sword engage in a long and artful dialogue, as the sword declares its resting place and laments its underwater fate. In lines drawn from anti-war songs characteristic of Estonian tradition, the sword declares: Kallis Kalevite poega, Kuninglikku kange meesi! Sul, kui viha süttinekse, Meeletuska tõusenekse, Humalaviha volilla, Siis ei ole sidemeida, Tarka aru takistamas; Kerge käsi keeritelles Sunnib mõõka surmamaie, Vaga verda valamaie, See’p see sõjasellikesta, Kallista rauda kurvasteles. Mõõka leinab mehekesta, Peremehe pojukesta.” Canto 11; Kreutzwald 1975: 141)

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic [O dear son of Kalev, You brave and loyal man: Once your anger is ignited, Once your ire is made to rise By the power of poisonous hops Then there are no restraints, No wise sense to hinder your light hand Which, twirling, forces swords to kill – To shed innocent blood. And that is what is saddening This war-apprentice, your precious blade: This sword mourns for a young man, It sorrows for its maker’s son.” (Kurman 1982: 141)]

Kalevipoeg, moved and chastened by the blade’s words, allows the sword to remain in the brook, commanding it, however, to reveal itself in the future only to one as worthy as he, and, fatefully, to attack the one who bore him there in the first place, if ever he should cross the brook again: Kui aga juhtub kõndidessa Jalakanda pistma jõkke, Kes sind enne ise kannud: Siisap, mõõka, sõbrakene, Murra jalad talk mõlemad!” (Canto 11; Kreutzwald 1975: 141-2) [But if the one who bore you earlier Should happen to stride by And set his heels into the brook, Then, o sword, my comrade, Tear off both his legs! (Kurman 1982: 141)]

Kalevipoeg, of course, means the wizard-thief, but the sword takes him at his word. And thus, at the end of the epic (Canto 20), when Kalevipoeg himself is crossing Kääpä brook, his sword remembers and dutifully follows his command, slicing off the king’s legs and leading to his death. Kreutzwald’s intrusive narrator explicates the sword’s mistake, explaining away the sword’s attack as a misunderstanding fomented by the fateful curse of the smith. Yet in considering the traditional images found in Kalevala, we can surmise that the sword’s actions are not so much the product of fuzzy thinking but of the sword’s grim sense of justice, one akin to that of Kullervo’s sword. Kreutzwald, in wishing to create a proper medieval hero for his nation, retreats somewhat from the caustic

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statements of Finnish swords, allowing more of the hero-sword friendship which obtains in Frithiofs saga. Between this narrated loss of the sword and fatal reunion, Kreutzwald’s epic includes two further passages related to swords and their honor. In Canto 12, soon after abandoning his sword in Kääpä brook, Kalevipoeg dreams of the creation of another at a different smithy, explicitly named as belonging to Ilmarinen (“Ilmarine”). The wondrous forging is interrupted, however, by the arrival of the original smith’s murdered son, who tells Ilmarine of Kalevipoeg’s lack of honor. Kalevipoeg longs to respond to the accusations by accusing the ghost in turn “of bearing false witness” and eventually awakens in a fright protesting the lies he has heard. In the following Canto 13, when visiting the home of the Devil, Kalevipoeg spies a sword on the wall which he tries to obtain. Recognizing this sword as the one he had seen forged for him in his dream, Kalevipoeg nonetheless is convinced by a clever maiden to leave it behind in exchange for a magic hat. Kalevipoeg’s openness to this subterfuge signals his tragic flaw: a temperament too freely moved and emotions too freely released for the likes of one who should be king. Eventually, this failing will spell the downfall of both Kalevipoeg and his independent Estonia.

Of Battle Han sjöng om Valhalls salar och om einheriars lön, Om tappra faders bragder på fältet och på sjön. (Canto 17; Tegnér 1909: 133) [He sang of halls in Valhall Reward to heroes be, Deeds of valiant fathers, On battlefield and sea. (Mauch 1960: 118)]

While the sword comes to stand for broader military exploits in general, it is also possible in all three epics to recognize the theme of battle and war as a separate entity of its own. And here, expectably, we again find stark differences between the Tegnérian view and its Finnic reflexes. In Tegnér’s epic landscape, battle is both a moral necessity and a shining opportunity for the demonstration of heroic qualities. From the very first canto of the epic, Frithiof elides martial activities – undertaking military missions, prosecuting armed conflicts, and hand-to-hand combat – with the pursuit of fame and love. The road to marriage lies through the

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battlefield – both on the level of duels between rivals for the same woman’s love and on the level of generalized “ennobling” combat that proves a man’s worth to self and mate. A man without such tendencies is suspect at best, and at worst, is likely to play the role of a villain, as in the case of Helge. Tegnér asserts that the attraction of women to martial men is simply natural and hardly to be questioned: Ty mannens mod är qvinnan kärt, Det starka är det sköna värdt; De bägge passa för hvarannan, Som hjelmen passar sig för pannan. (Canto 1; Tegnér 1909: 8) [For maid will hold man’s courage dear; The fair one to the strong shall veer; For strength in man suits woman’s grace Like helmet fits a manly face. (Mauch 1960: 19)]

This familiar eroticization of warfare – its equation with reproductive worth and marital prospects – is again, like the image of the sword, part of the stock-in-trade of medievalism that Tegnér embraces in his text. Yet the epic extends this knight-errant imagery further to tie the activities of doughty he-men to the greater national good. The dying King Bele informs his posterity of the necessity of a vigorous national defense as a key to the kingdom’s overall health and welfare: Låt styrkan stå som dörrsven vid landets port, Och friden blomstra inom å hägnad ort! Till skygd blef svärdet gifvet, men ej till skada, Och sköld är smidd till hänglås för bonden lada. (Canto 2; Tegnér 1909: 16) [“Let might then like a sentry by the country stand, That peace may ever blossom in the guarded land; A sword was given for defense but not for harm. And shield is hammered but to lock secure the farm. (Mauch 1960: 24)]

Might is justified by the end of securing a safer existence for society, a peace that can blossom in only a “guarded land.” Women and children, as well as simple farmers, benefit from the fighting of wars. In the meantime, of course, men of valor can make their names in the service of defending the state, an activity defined within King Bele’s discourse as noble and necessary.

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These words, of course, stand in marked contrast to the capricious manner in which wars are started and fought throughout Tegnér’s epic: the aging King Ring will invade Bele’s kingdom because he is not granted the teenaged Ingeborg as his second wife and because the youthful Halfdan refers to him by means of a sniping epithet. Helge will dispatch Frithiof to the islands of Agantyr to extort a tribute payment that his kingdom neither deserves nor needs, merely as a means of ridding himself of his sister’s unsuitable suitor. A fleeing Helge will light Frithiof’s estate on fire as a means of covering his own escape from Ring. And Frithiof himself will take up Viking marauding as a means of working out the frustrations of having lost in the game of love. Tegnér’s Canto 15, with its Code of the Vikings, again insinuates a noble sense into such senseless warfare, creating a set of moral standards by which Vikings are said to conduct their exploits. And indeed, nowhere in Tegnér’s epic do we see any signs of innocent bloodshed, human loss of life or dignity, or the injustices that accompanied medieval as well as nineteenth-century warfare. Where Canto 15 presents a conscious justification of armed piracy, most of Tegnér’s text seems simply to expect the reader to accept violence as a necessary evil without further scrutiny. It may be a product of the imagined brutality of the “Dark” Ages depicted in the epic, but it may also represent a surreptitious acceptance of the need for warfare in the political world of the nineteenth century as well, a need that, in addition, provides a valuable arena for the demonstration of heroic mettle. If warfare stands as the unquestioned sentry of a kingdom’s peace in Frithiofs saga, it receives decidedly less positive treatments in both Kalevala and Kalevipoeg. Drawing on traditional songs created by the humble foot soldiers of North European warfare and their sometimes looted, decimated, or bereft families, Lönnrot and Kreutzwald introduce a markedly critical, antiheroic line into their epics’ depictions of war. Battle per se makes up little of the Kalevala. In his conflict with Iku Turso (Canto 42), Väinämöinen uses only a commanding voice, banishing the sea monster from attacking human ships ever again: Iku-Turso, Äijän poika! Ellös sie merestä nousko, Ellös aallosta yletkö Etehen imehnisille Täman päivyen perästä! (42: 450-54) [Eternal Turso, son of Ancient, Do not rise up from the sea, Lift your head above the billow,

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Never in the sight of humans, Never after this day’s doings. (Friberg 1982: 317)]

In contrast, in Frithiofs saga’s Canto 10, Frithiof instructs his ship Ellida to leap upon the whale of the enchanters who are besetting him, cutting the whale fatally so that it sinks to its death: Och en blodig stråle ryker Utur såret upp mot sky; Genomborradt vilddjur dyker Vrålande till djupets dy. (Canto 10; Tegnér 1909: 80) [From the wound the blood came streaming; Punctured by Ellida’s leap, Soon the monster wildly screaming Sank into the ocean’s deep. (Mauch 1960: 75)]

Even in the account of the theft of the Sampo (Canto 42) – the narrative climax of the Kalevala – we see the hero Väinämöinen putting his enemies to sleep rather than assaulting them in arms: battle is for him a last resort and a sign of the failure of his magic, not a means to create a heroic name. Thus, the stirring chase that follows is one of flight from battle rather than direct conflict, and in the short moment of struggle between the Kalevala heroes and the angry denizens of Pohjola, Väinämöinen’s chief weapon is (as mentioned above) an oar. Only the unheroic Lemminkäinen uses a sword in this scene, but he is scolded for doing so by the pursuing Farmwife of Pohjola. When armed violence does occur in the Kalevala, it is generally due to personal rather than state conflicts, and the narrative makes it clear that the aggressive acts are unnecessary and immature. Joukahainen shoots at Väinämöinen in retribution for his role in the death of Aino (Canto 6). A similarly brooding Märkahattu murders Lemminkäinen in retribution for a slight (Canto 14). The unruly Lemminkäinen kills the Farmer of Pohjola in revenge for his inhospitality (Canto 27). Kullervo wages war on the clan of Untamo in retribution for his own family’s hard lot (Canto 36). Throughout the narrative, womenfolk and family speak out passionately against the taking up of arms, and the male characters who disregard them are depicted as rash and foolish. Joukahainen’s mother pleads with her son not to attack Väinämöinen (Canto 6), just as Lemminkäinen’s mother pleads with her son not to go off to Pohjola (Canto 26). Kyllikki agrees to marry Lemminkäinen only when he promises to renounce war (Canto 11), and later, when Lemminkäinen tries to convince his former comrade-in-arms Iku Tiera to set out with him

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again on a campaign, his family members matter-of-factly inform Lemminkäinen that his friend now has more valuable things to do: Ei Tiera sotahan joua, Tieran tuura tappelohon; Tiera on tehnyt kuulun kaupan, Ikikaupan iskenynnä: Vast’ on nainut naisen nuoren, Ottanut oman emännän, Viel’ on nännit näppimättä, Rinnat riuahuttamatta. (30: 85-92) [Tiera has no time for war; His ice chipper’s not for battle. He has made an excellent bargain, Bound himself in lifelong union. He just wed a fine young woman, Took a mistress for his household – Nipples still untitillated, And her breasts as yet unfondled.” (Friberg 1988: 251)]

The Kalevala gives far more attention to the physical and emotional aftermath of war than does Frithiofs saga, framing at every turn a villageand family-centered take on the effects of military exploits. Lemminkäinen’s murder at the River of Tuonela spurs his mother to search for him desperately, until she is able to find and reanimate his body (Canto 15). Later, when the men of Pohjola have burned Lemminkäinen’s farm in retribution for his murder of their leader, the hero feels both the sorrow and fear of having endangered his family: Kun jo kuulin kuolleheksi Kaiketi kaonneheksi, Miekalla menetetyksi, Keihä’ällä keksityksi; Itkin pois ihanat silmät, Kasvon kaunihin kaotin. (29: 542-6) [When I thought that you had died, Altogether vanished from me, Fallen under sword or spear – I wept until my eyes were darkened And my handsome face was haggard. (Friberg 1988: 248)]

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In contrast, Frithiof greets the destruction of his estate with no mention of human loss: he expresses sorrow at the ruin of his hall and lands, particularly as it renders him poor: Förbittrad Frithiof från skeppet hastar, Kring brända tomter han ögat kastar, Sin faders tomter, sin barndoms ban. (Canto 12; Tegnér 1909: 96) [Stunned Frithiof from the ship now hastes, Casts bitter eyes on empty wastes, For naught was left of father’s place. (Mauch 1960: 88)]

In Kalevala’s Canto 36, the epic’s critical stance toward war is brought into focus by the debate between the bloodthirsty Kullervo and his more realistic mother. Kullervo declares his satisfaction with his battle lust. His mother in turn questions what will become of Kullervo’s various family members with his departure, e.g., father, brothers, sisters. Kullervo professes no interest in anyone else’s welfare, while each family member in turn announces that they will not mourn his death. Kullervo’s mother, however, speaks for all mothers with some of the most poignant words of the epic: Et älyä äitin mieltä, Arvoa emon syäntä; Itkenpä minä sinua, Kun sun kuulen kuolleheksi Väestä vähenneheksi, Sortuneheksi su’usta: Itken tulville tupamme, Siltalauat lainehille, Kujat kaikki kuuruhallani, Läävät länkämöisilläni; Lumet itken iljeniksi, Iljenet suliksi maiksi Sulat maat vihottaviksi, Vihottavat viereviksi. (36: 134-48) [You don’t know a mother’s mind, Understand a mother’s heart. Yes, of course I’ll mourn for you When I hear that you are dead, Taken from the nation’s number And departed from the clan.

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I will flood the house with weeping, Making waves upon the floorboards; I’ll weep there all bent over In the lanes and in the cowbarn. I will weep the snow to glare ice And the glare ice into thaw, All the thawed ground into greening And the greening into stubble. (Friberg 1988: 284)]

In the end (Canto 36), Kullervo’s destruction of Untamo’s farmstead leads to his own family being destroyed in revenge. Only at this point does Kullervo understand the foolishness of his actions and the uselessness of war. And in response to this realization, he commits suicide. While Kreutzwald willingly constructs a heroic sword image in his epic, he found it difficult in good conscience to write ebulliently of war. War was simply too great a part of the miseries which had afflicted the Estonian people over the centuries, from the time of the bloody Livonian Crusades to his own century. Thus, in Kreutzwald’s text, war is the scourge of Kalevipoeg’s reign, rather than its crowning. It is a worry that settles upon his shoulders from nearly the first hour of his reign and that comes crashing down upon Estonia at the closing hours of his tumultuous life. The first scenes of battle in the epic are unflinchingly brutal and grim. An angry Kalevipoeg has pursued his mother’s captor to Finland, where the wizard uses magic to create an armed force for his defense. Even before obtaining a sword, Kalevipoeg proves lethal with a cudgel: Tamme tansib tuhisedes, Vemmal virka vihisedes, Malka marutuule mängil, Tuulispasa tuiskamisel, Hutja hukkab hullul kombel, Puistab põrgu pöörandusel, Mehi langeb muru peale, Rahet raatma radadelle, Lunda põllupeenderaile. Kes see õnnel elu päästab, Liikmeid püäab lunastada, Annab aga jalgadelle, Kiiru tulist kandadelle. (Canto 5; Kreutzwald 1975: 68) [The whizzing oaktrunk dances, The hero’s busy cudgel whistles, His maul plays in a stormwind,

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On the Perils of Using Folklore to Create a National Epic Spins as in a whirlwind: The club is killing like crazy, Strewing corpses with hell’s wildness! Men are falling on the greenlawn Like dust settling to earth, Like hailstones on a clearing’s edges, Like snow falling on a fieldbank. He whose life is saved through good luck Strives to save his limbs as well By taking to his heels With fiery urgency. (Kurman 1982: 65)]

Kalevipoeg’s slaying of the smith’s son is similarly graphic, at least from the perspective of nineteenth-century literary epic, recalling more Lemminkäinen’s duel than any battle portrayed in Tegnér’s work: Kiskus Kalev kerge käega Mõõga tupesta möllama. Mõrtsuka mõõga mängilla Puistas pea pörandalle; Veri virtsas valusasti Vastu silmi vendadelle. (Canto 6: Kreutzwald 1975: 80) [With a light hand Kalevipoeg unsheathed his raging sword; and the murderous play of his blade hurled a head to the floor. And the blood gushed, painfully, Into the eyes of the slain man’s brothers. (Kurman 1982: 77)]

War arrives in Kalevipoeg’s kingdom, and in the epic, in Canto 9. The coming of battle is announced in a witness’s speech drawn from Estonian song tradition. And in response, Kalevipoeg delivers a stirring call to arms that idealizes bracing defense of one’s homeland. At the same time, Kreutzwald includes traditional lines that offer a peasant’s wise advice on how to survive a battle: stay in the middle of the crowd, run when possible. And Kalevipoeg himself remarks that he would never have accepted the throne had he understood the anxieties of the crown. At length, Kalevipoeg sends a messenger off to set look-outs and muster his troops. Yet, in a surprising narrative shift, the epic turns to the first-person narration of the messenger himself, as he recounts his subsequent deeds. Using a traditional antiwar song, Kreutzwald has the messenger destroy the king’s order and so short-circuit his plans for battle:

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Saagu, saagu, ma sajatan, Saagu sõnum sügavasse Mere marusse magama, Kalakudusse kaduma! Uinugu ummis-urgastessa, Enne kui heliseb edasi, Enne kui kõliseb külaje! Kiskusin käsud kukkurust, Vanaema käsud vammuksest, Paiskasin põhjatu meresse, Lainte langu laiemasse. (Canto 9; Kreutzwald 1975: 119) [O let it be, I execrate and curse: May my message be lost in the deeps, Let it slumber in storms at sea, Vanish in the fishes’ spawn! May it sleep in clammy caverns Rather than ringing forth, Rather than sound to the villages. And I tore the commands from my wallet, The elder’s orders from by doublet And cast them into the bottomless sea Beneath the broad falling waves. (Kurman 1982: 118)]

The messenger’s act, treason from the perspective of heroic epic, heroism from the perspective of Estonian peasant life, forcefully and evocatively ends the canto. This image sets the stage for the eventual depiction of war as a national tragedy in the epic’s final canto, as Kalevipoeg’s life comes to an end and the enemy presses in (Canto 20). Kalevipoeg’s companion Alevipoeg drops dead from exhaustion, while a despondent Kalevipoeg leaves the government of the kingdom to Olevipoeg and retires from public life. The one truly heroic battle scene in Kreutzwald’s epic occurs in Canto 18, as Kalevipoeg struggles against the forces of Hell. Yet Kreutzwald does not render his hero’s violence as blameless. Indeed, in heaven, the deity Vanataat looks on his new warrior with suspicion and eventually sends him back to earth to guard the gateway of Hell. A violent man has no place beside Vanataat’s hall fire. It is not battle, in fact, that guarantees Estonia’s sovereignty in the world but a book of laws, securely shackled to the castle’s wall until Kalevipoeg, in his foolishness, gives it away to the deceitful Sámi guide Varrak. War has no place in creating peace in Kreutzwald’s narrative, as the loss of the law book immediately ushers in a war that ends Estonia’s freedom.

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In a letter to C. G. Leopold, dated 1825, Tegnér writes: Poesien är likväl till sitt innersta väsende en popular konst, Ett poem som den bildade allmänheten ej fattar, är just derigenom ett misslyckadt; all poesi måste, i denna högre mening, vara folkpoesie. (Tegnér 1909: 200) [Poetry is, by its inmost nature a popular art. A poem which is not embraced by the educated populace must, by virtue of this fact, be deemed a failure. All poetry must be Volkspoesie in its higher sense.]

Yet the intended folk for Tegnér – the “bildade allmänheten” – is of markedly different class and outlook than the folk envisioned by Lönnrot and Kreutzwald. While the Swedish poet sought to appeal to an educated elite of romantic idealists, his Finnish and Estonian counterparts sought to appeal to a humbler and more populous class, the one that had, in fact, furnished the songs upon which their epics had been created. While gesturing toward the entire nation, the values and concerns of their folk sources remained operative nonetheless, creating hybrid works that at once embrace the elite goal of the unified nation and yet give voice at every turn to the more parochial concerns of rural life. The apparatus of romantic national epic, built upon nineteenth-century interpretations of medieval narrative and song proved a problematic device for the nationalist writers Elias Lönnrot and Friedrich R. Kreutzwald. For their narrative foundations lay in peasant lore, not in noble lay, and aristocratic ideals of romance, class, and battle were difficult to reconcile with the traditional songs of peasant life.

Works Cited Friberg, Eino, trans. 1988. The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People. Helsinki: Otava. Kreutzwald, Fr. R. 1975. Kalevipoeg. Tallinn: Eesti Raamat. Kurman, Jüri, trans. 1982. Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale. Moorestown: Symposia Press. Lönnrot, Elias. 1849. Kalevala. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Mauch, Ida, trans. 1960. Frithiof’s Saga by Esias Tegnér. New York: Exposition Press. Tegnér, Esias. 1909. Frithiof’s Saga. Edited by George T. Flom. Rock Island: Augustana Book Concern.

PICTURE AS STORY: ARTHUR RACKHAM AND THE BALLADS JOHN D. NILES

The English and Scottish popular ballads have long enjoyed a vivid life in the imagination of those who have heard or read them. Seldom, however, have they attracted the attention of talented artists. One exception is Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), widely regarded as one of the most gifted book illustrators to have worked in the English tradition.1 Rackham’s reputation was established through his illustrated edition of Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, first published in London in 1900 when he was still an aspiring artist.2 Images such as his portrait of Little Red Riding Hood being accosted by the wolf in the woods (Fig. 11-1) went far to establish a mode of visualizing the Grimms’ fairy tales, particularly in the English-speaking world, that has left an indelible

1

An informed survey of Rackham’s life and achievements is given by Hamilton 2004. By locating Rackham in “the English tradition,” broadly defined to include persons from English-speaking countries, what I mean to suggest, with no originality, is that he can justly be regarded as a successor to such artists as Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane, and Kate Greenaway, while his work also bears comparison with that of Beatrix Potter and N.C. Wyath. Although each of these artists differs from the others in style and temperament, the work of all of them is characterized by meticulous craftsmanship. All of them also cultivate naturalistic tendencies that may coexist with whimsy and/or a delight in fantasy, even when a serious topic is at hand. On English book illustration during the period from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, see Mahoney 1947, Ray 1976, and Meyer 1983. 2 Rackham published several different books of illustrated tales from the Brothers Grimm. The best-known edition, published in 1909, contained forty illustrations in color in addition to sixty-two in black and white. A detailed bibliography of Rackham’s illustrated books is provided by Hudson (1960: 166-73) as well as by Hamilton (1995: 187-90). The reader is referred to these two sources for information about titles that are mentioned here only in passing.

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impression on many persons up to the present day.3 Another of Rackham’s books of illustrated fairy tales, this one completed at the apex of his career, is likely to be of special interest to the distinguished folklorist and scholar of Danish literature who is honored by the present volume, for it consisted of a fully illustrated English-language edition of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (Fig. 11-2). In the view of one biographer, this was the undertaking that meant the most to Rackham in the early 1930s (Hudson 1960: 131-32). It gave him the opportunity to incorporate into his work some faithful representations of the vernacular architecture and material culture of Denmark, which he studied first-hand in preparation for this commission.4 It also gave him occasion to express in visual terms the kindly wit and the delicacies of sentiment that are among the admired features of Andersen’s narrative art. With fifty-two black-and-white illustrations and twelve full-page illustrations done in color, this book was published to considerable acclaim in 1932 and is now justly regarded as “a classic of its kind.”5 What is not well known is that in 1919, in between these two points in his career, Rackham brought out a volume of illustrated versions of classic English-language ballads. Although Some British Ballads never enjoyed the same vogue as many of his other books, and although it receives virtually no mention at all in the critical literature on Rackham,6 it is 3

Part of this influence is direct. Part is indirect and is due to the fact, for which he deserves neither praise nor blame, that Disney Studios was influenced by Rackham’s conception of character, background detail, and mood when preparing animated versions of several tales that he had illustrated. 4 Hamilton notes that Rackham traveled to Denmark for a week in November 1931 “to collect Danish atmosphere” for the book, including “studies of cottages, architectural details, courtyards, farm machinery, interiors and so on” (1995: 145). One of Rackham’s sketchbooks from that stay is preserved in Columbia University Library’s Berol collection, no. F29. 5 Hamilton (1995: 165). Hudson (1960: 133-34) reports that when Hugh Walpole was asked by The Observer to choose the best picture-book of 1932, he gave the prize “without hesitation” to Rackham’s Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen. 6 The only notice this book receives in Hamilton’s comprehensive study is in his bibliography of Rackham’s illustrated books, where it is listed as one of three items published in 1918 (not 1919). Hudson refers to the existence of Some British Ballads in a single line, with no further discussion (1960: 108). In his list of Rackham’s illustrated books (166-73), Hudson cites Some British Ballads under the year 1919 with mention of some details regarding the book’s publication: it was first issued by Constable & Co., London, in a deluxe edition limited to 575 copies signed by the artist, then released by Constable in a regular edition while also being published in a trade edition by Dodd, Mead, & Co., New York. I am not

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arguably the finest illustrated book of traditional British ballads that has yet been made. My purpose here is to call attention to that neglected volume while discussing Rackham’s artistry in some of the full-page color illustrations that it contains. Before turning to those images, however, a few words are in order concerning how this book fits into the trajectory of Rackham’s career and what kind of anthology it represents.

Rackham as Book Illustrator Rackham’s success with the Grimms’ Kinder und Hausmärchen launched his career as the premier English illustrator to be called upon for the depiction of fantastic themes, especially when what was wanted was a droll yet naturalistic approach.7 The year 1909 brought him another unqualified success, an illustrated version of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle (1905). This commission permitted Rackham to develop his gift for naturalistic old-fashioned settings that he depicted with an almost archaeological precision. In Derek Hudson’s view, this book “decisively established Rackham as the leading decorative illustrator of the Edwardian period” (1960: 57). Another of his early successes was Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906). Capitalizing on James Barrie’s play Peter Pan, which was produced the previous year in London,8 this has remained one of Rackham’s best loved volumes. Incidentally it gave the artist an opportunity to include some panoramas of the city of London, a metropolis of which he was proud to be a native – or, rather, a near-native, for he had grown up just south of the Thames (see Fig. 11-3). The next year, to mixed reviews, Rackham published a new illustrated version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907). This was a daunting challenge for any artist since John Tenniel’s original illustrations for that work, first published forty years before, were so well known and so widely admired. An illustrated version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that Rackham produced the following year (1908) met with unqualified aware of any articles that analyze Some British Ballads, nor have I come across reprints of its illustrations. 7 Hudson states this point well: “Whether an artist believed in his fairy or not, Rackham knew that ‘he must make it as real as if he did’, as real as the tree the fairy is sitting on” (1960: 154). The result of this amalgam of the fantastic, the naturalistic, and the droll might plausibly be considered a precursor of the “magical realism” that is associated with twentieth-century Latin-American fiction. 8 J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan was produced for the Christmas season 1904. What Rackham illustrated were chapters from Barrie’s 1902 book The Little White Bird, but his illustrations suited the stage play equally well.

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enthusiasm. Here, with his images of Titania and her winged troupe, Rackham was able to define “the fairy folk” for the English-speaking public as surely as his illustrated versions of the Grimms’ fairy tales had defined ogres, witches, and gnarled anthropomorphic trees. Rackham’s illustrated version of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published the same year (1909), played to the artist’s strength in presenting bizarre elements in an everyday “real-world” setting. Early in his career, in keeping with the medievalism that was characteristic of his era, Rackham had accepted a commission to illustrate Arthur Lincoln Haydon’s popular anthology Stories of King Arthur (1905). Five years later he carried this foray into medievalism into a bolder dimension with his book The Rhinegold and the Valkyrie (1910), based on Wagner’s retellings of medieval German legends. The next year saw the publication of a companion volume, Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods (1911). These two Wagnerian books allowed ample room for expression of what has been called his Nordic imagination. Neither was a great financial success, however, perhaps in part because they were published at a time when the English public had begun to turn away from themes suggestive of German nationalism. Rackham found greater commercial success illustrating books of timeless wisdom and sentiment that had no conceivable relation to the storm that was gathering and breaking in Europe. These volumes included Aesop’s Fables (1912), Mother Goose (1913), and – turning to a quintessentially English theme – Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1915). In the midst of the Great War, Rackham was persuaded to return to the topic of Arthurian legendry. As one contribution to the chivalric and patriotic spirit of the day, he illustrated Alfred Pollard’s abridged version of Malory’s Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (1917). By this time Rackham had turned fifty and was poised to embark upon his next major project, Some British Ballads. The extraordinary sequence of successful publications that has just been summarized had made his name a household word in the British Isles and North America. He and his family were financially secure enough to move from London to a comfortable house in rural Sussex, and the later years of his life were less driven by the need for professional advancement. During the last two decades of his life he took on new projects more selectively, and when he did so, he often completed them in a sumptuous manner. One of his most successful later commissions was for Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1926), a sequel to his illustrated version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His brilliant version of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen has been mentioned above. The book that may well be regarded as his crowning

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achievement, an illustrated edition of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, was published posthumously in 1940. In the present writer’s opinion, this book sets a standard of draftsmanship for children’s illustrated books that may never be equaled (see e.g. Fig. 11-4). When one considers Rackham’s career as a whole, it is hard to think of a classic work of imaginative literature that he did not illustrate. One wishes that he had lived long enough to illustrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (first published in 1954-56), for no one else could have done it better justice, with its collocation of earthy hobbits, lithe elves, stumpy dwarves, sinister figures of real evil, and a wizard with flowing white beard. A good model for the wizard Gandalf can be found in his 1909 book Undine (Fig. 11-5). Indeed, the influence of Rackham’s books on the imagination of the young J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) and, in addition, Tolkien’s contemporary the young C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) would make for the fascinating topic of a different paper. Late in life Lewis wrote as follows of the Joy he felt (it is his own capital letter) when he first encountered the phrase “the twilight of the gods” in tandem with a single image from Rackham’s book Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods (1911). A feeling of attraction, akin to religious conversion, came upon him so strongly that it seemed at once to dissipate the long metaphorical winter of his previous school years (1955: 72-73): It was as if the Arctic itself, all the deep layers of secular ice, should change not in a week nor in an hour, but instantly, into a landscape of grass and primroses and orchards in bloom, deafened with bird songs and astir with running water. I can lay my hand on the very moment; there is hardly any fact I know so well, though I cannot date it. Someone must have left in the schoolroom a literary periodical: The Bookman, perhaps, or The Times Literary Supplement. My eye fell upon a headline and a picture, carelessly, expecting nothing. A moment later, as the poet says, “The sky had turned round.” What I had read was the words Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods. What I had seen was one of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to that volume…. Pure “Northernness” engulfed me: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer, remoteness, severity….

It was not long, Lewis writes, before he became a devoted listener to Wagner, whose music was previously unknown to him. Soon, in the course of a visit to a family friend living on the outskirts of Dublin, he came upon the book itself and determined to have it, for Rackham’s pictures “seemed to me then to be the very music [of Wagner] made visible…. I have seldom coveted anything as I coveted that book” (Lewis

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1955: 75-76). The young C.S. Lewis may not have been the only person of this period to be stricken with a kind of rapture for either Wagner’s music or Rackham’s art. Still, Lewis is both more specific and more lyrical than other writers have been in recounting how his youthful “affair” with these artists began and how it plunged him into a “delight” that surpassed any others that he recalls from this period of his boyhood.9

Some British Ballads as a Book Production To return to the book that is my main topic, its unassuming title, Some British Ballads, gives little sign of its character. To some extent the book represented a shift of direction for Rackham, for in the changing economics of the period of the First World War, his London publisher, Constable & Sons, was pursuing North American markets for Rackham’s books. Some British Ballads was produced in the tradition of fine illustrated books aimed chiefly at a discriminating, upscale, non-scholarly market. The illustration on its title page (Fig. 11-6), with its image of two lovers exchanging a love-token against a background of intertwined trees suggestive of the “rose-and-briar” motif of many ballads, promises love and high romance of a fairly conventional kind, presented in a style in keeping with the work of William Morris and the artists of the preRaphaelite movement, in addition to contemporary directions in Art Nouveau. For his choice of ballad texts, Rackham drew chiefly from The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of Francis James Child, published in five volumes during the years 1882-98. As folklorists are aware, this was a monumental work conceived along the lines of Svend Grundtvig’s previous anthology of Danish ballads, a project that in turn represented an extension of the work of the Brothers Grimm into Scandinavian territory and the ballad genre. “Child,” as it is known among specialists, arguably represents the high-water mark of nineteenth-century North American literary scholarship. While relying to some extent on the prestige of this distinguished source, Some British Ballads remains essentially an anonymous production in the tradition of earlier ballad anthologies with few or no scholarly pretensions. Since no editor’s name is given on the title page, the publisher must have regarded Rackham’s illustrations, and not the textual content, to be the book’s chief selling point. The texts that Rackham 9

The words set between quotes are Lewis’s (1955: 76).

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illustrates are given neither headnotes nor commentary, nor are tunes provided for them. The scholarly apparatus consists of no more than a few glosses of Scots dialect words. The sole gesture towards professional ballad scholarship to be found in the volume is an initial acknowledgment that “several of the Ballads in this book are based on the great work of Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, permission to use which was generously accorded by the publishers.” Still, no notice is given as to whether a text is reprinted from Child’s anthology or is drawn from some other source; nor, in the former instance, is one told which Child variant is used. Without going to the trouble of collating each of Rackham’s forty-four texts with its source, moreover, it is impossible to tell if a text is quoted verbatim or has been subjected to editorial changes. A selective check leads to the conclusion that most texts are quoted verbatim. At times, however, a text departs from its source in a manner that is both unmarked and unexplained. As for the choice of which ballads to include, what we find is fairly typical of the illustrated ballad anthologies that were produced in prior years. While well-known traditional ballads make up a great majority of the selections, a few of the items have little to do with the genre of English-language balladry as Child defined it and as it is still understood by most people today. An example is “The Old Cloak” (7779), an original poem, composed in Scots literary dialect, that has no particular relation to popular tradition. While most of Rackham’s pictures for this volume are small blackand-white drawings that could not have taken him much time, the volume also features a set of sixteen full-page color illustrations. These are based on original watercolor paintings that the artist sold separately, in keeping with his usual practice. The color illustrations are tipped into the book: that is, they were first produced separately, then glued onto pages that were interleaved just before binding. The result is a book collector’s delight – and a thief’s, as well. The copy of Some British Ballads that is owned by the Library of the University of Wisconsin - Madison, for example, now contains only one of the sixteen illustrations. Someone excised the others at some point. Comparison with two other illustrated ballad books that were published during Rackham’s lifetime ought to convince anyone of the originality of Rackham’s style. The Book of British Ballads, edited by S.C. Hall (1879), for example, favors florid patterns and melodramatic postures. Much the same is true of Illustrated British Ballads: Old and New, edited by George Barnett Smith (1886). The ballad genre has long been associated with heroism and high tragedy, and the illustrations

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included in these volumes sometimes leave the impression of having been drawn right from the nineteenth-century stage, with its capacious sentimental gestures (e.g. Fig. 11-7). Rackham favored a different approach. As with his fairy tale collections, many of the illustrations for Some British Ballads have a sprightly wit about them. Rackham generally avoids scenes of mayhem, heroism, or high drama. Indeed, much of his work is decidedly unsentimental. What he often chooses to depict is a domestic scene that catches the main actor or actors at a pivotal moment of the story, though not necessarily at the climax itself.

Picture as Story: Some Examples of Rackham’s Artistry Since Rackham includes no more than one color illustration per ballad if a full-page illustration is given at all, a good deal of weight falls on that picture to represent the story as a whole. Six pictures are worth singling out as examples of his approach. One of Rackham’s successes is his illustration for “May Colven,” a popular subtype of the ballad known to scholars as Child 4, “Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight” (Fig. 11-8).10 The moment in the action that Rackham captures through his illustration corresponds to the following stanza of his text (st. 2 on p. 60): ‘O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot, Lay not the blame upon me; Your cage shall be made o’ the beaten gold With spakes of ivorie.’

[spokes, bars]

The narrative situation at this point is as follows. A mysterious stranger has persuaded May Colven, the female protagonist of this version, to elope from her father’s house with a pair of horses and a quantity of gold. When the two lovers dismount at a remote pool, the seducer reveals that he is a serial killer and announces that she is to be his next victim. The heroine has the presence of mind to persuade him to turn his back while she takes off her costly robes, then thrusts him into the pool to drown. After turning a deaf ear to his calls for help, her next task is to slip back into her father’s house without anyone having noticed her absence. When her parrot threatens to give her secret away – a bird that, in this particular ballad, is endowed not only with speech but also with articulate intelligence – she 10

The text included in Some British Ballads (with a few unacknowledged changes of wording) corresponds roughly to Child’s version C, as recorded in Herd’s Ancient & Modern Scottish Songs (1776) and other sources.

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placates it with the bribe of a golden cage, as is seen in the passage just quoted. If the ballad has a moral, it seems to be the half-serious one that deception of either men or parents is an acceptable modus vivendi as long as one is both quick-witted and wealthy enough to sustain it. Through his visual representation of the parrot’s well-wrought cage and the young woman’s attractive dress and ornaments, Rackham at once calls to mind the wealthy bourgeois ambience that the action of this ballad implies and, in its gentle way, satirizes. Characteristically, Rackham avoids notice of the horrific scene in which the seducer threatens his intended victim with murder, sometimes displaying the corpses of his former victims. This scene has numerous variations, many of them grisly, in other versions of this ballad type that are known from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Continent. In Flemish-speaking areas, for example, the seducer is depicted as a diabolical figure (“Heer Halewijn”) who, rather than being drowned, is decapitated by a Judith-like heroine who later taunts the seducer’s mother with the sight of her son’s severed head.11 Even though the May Colven of Rackham’s version has been out all night, much of the time on horseback, and has just killed a man, every hair on her fair head is unruffled. Bourgeois domesticity thus proves to be impervious to disruption, even if in a manner a shade too good to be true. Rackham calls attention to the urgency of May Colven’s attempt to buy the parrot’s silence by exaggerating her inclined posture and emphasizing her pursed lips, raised finger, and flashing eyes. At the same time, the coy expression on the parrot’s face precludes any very serious final response to this ballad. It is instructive to compare Rackham’s illustration of this scene with a corresponding illustration from the 1886 anthology Illustrated British Ballads (Fig. 11-9). Both Rackham and the earlier artist, J. McL. Ralston, depict the “same” scene featuring the same two protagonists, the young woman and the parrot. In Ralston’s etching, the lady’s pose is far less animated. Her posture is stiff and her features prim and relatively unexpressive, while the parrot is depicted in such an oblique fashion as to have no expression at all. In a manner analogous to what one sees in the oral tradition of balladry, where singers have some freedom to vary the text or tune according to their individual talents or desires, Rackham depicts the scene in a stylish manner that accents its comic side. 11 For discussion see Child’s long headnote to this ballad (1882-98: I, 22-55). The international ballad type to which Child 4 pertains has been surveyed by Nygard 1958. European examples (Flemish, French, Swiss German, and Norwegian) are included in Seeman et al. (1967: 36-57) under the general title “The Killer of Maidens.”

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Another of Rackham’s illustrations that stands out for its ludic treatment of its theme is the one made for “Young Bekie,” a version of Child 53, “Young Beichan.”12 After the young male protagonist of this very popular ballad has sailed off from England to a foreign land, he falls afoul of that land’s king or sultan and is imprisoned, though he soon is rescued by the king’s or sultan’s amorous daughter. The text that Rackham illustrates is set in France, not in Turkey or another exotic land. The moment on which he chooses to focus is the young woman’s sympathetic response to the hero’s plight (st. 2 on p. 11): O whan she saw him, Young Bekie, Her heart was wondrous sair! For the mice but an’ the bold rottons Had eaten his yallow hair.

[sore, troubled] [rats]

Here, in a scene that might have been depicted in a melodramatic way, what Rackham provides is not pathos but rather its gentle mockery (Fig. 11-10). Each element in this scene of deprivation and despair – the hero’s utter isolation in a dank cell, his desperately prostrate position, his chains, his contorted fingers, his threatened hair, and the Pied-Piper-like number of rats13 – is represented with just enough exaggeration that one cannot help smiling at the poor young man’s misfortune. Some irony is introduced through the artist’s choice of point of view, as well. The viewer of this scene will know far more than Bekie does concerning the plot that is unfolding. As anyone familiar with this ballad is aware, the princess is about to deliver the wretched hero from his cell. Some wine and cakes will be produced, an exchange of vows will ensue, and before long Bekie will be sailing safely back to England. His inevitable marriage to the princess will follow in due course. With its well-worn theme drawn from the pages of medieval romance, as filtered through the medium of broadside balladry, this ballad had once before been approached in a parodic manner. In 1939, the novelist Charles 12

The source of the text included in Some British Ballads is Child’s C text, a Scottish variant first printed in Jamieson’s Popular Ballads (1806). This is Jamieson’s edited version of a ballad text provided by the celebrated traditionbearer Mrs. Anna Brown of Aberdeenshire and Fife. Whoever was responsible for the text as reprinted in Some British Ballads has changed a few phrases so as to soften the Scottish dialect, e.g. ‘to hear the prisoner’s mane [moan]’ becomes ‘to hear the prisoner’s name (line 4 of st. 3 on p. 10). 13 Another of Rackham’s successful publications during his mature years was an illustrated version of The Pied Piper of Hamlin (1934); he took some pride in his rodents.

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Dickens, working anonymously in league with his favorite illustrator, George Cruikshank, published a version of “Young Bekie” that was said to have come from the lips of a London street-singer (Fig. 11-11). The text of this version is included in Child’s anthology as his version L (1882-98: I, 476-77). Child, however, seems to have missed the joke whereby Dickens, while attributing his version to a man named “the Tripe Skewer” (sic), presented it to his readers in an exaggerated version of Cockney dialect. By normalizing the language of this text into standard English, Child effaces its parodic intent. Cruikshank’s comical engravings are left out, as well. Although Rackham’s more naturalistic approach to his subject could not be confused with Cruikshank’s art of caricature, his willingness to introduce an element of humor into Young Bekie’s predicament has this precedent. One noteworthy feature of Rackham’s conception of this scene comes, once again, from his choice of point of view. Significantly, the sultan’s daughter is absent from this scene. Instead of our being invited to view the hero’s plight vicariously through her eyes (note the lines “Oh, but when she saw him … her heart was wondrous sair!”), we ourselves are situated as if we were observers located just outside Bekie’s cell. Readers of Some British Ballads are therefore invited to become voyeurs of the hero’s misery and hence to feel their own hearts, like that of the princess, grow “wondrous sair” while contemplating him in his sorriest state. Rackham’s parodic intent is thereby gently cranked up a notch. Another British ballad that Rackham approaches in a more playful manner than might be expected is “Lord Randal” (Child 12).14 Known by various names in various parts of Europe, this ballad tells the story of a young man’s death at the hands of his false lover. Famously, its narrative action unfolds entirely through dialogue.15 After the protagonist has dined at his sweetheart’s and has returned home, he is interrogated by his mother as to where he has been and what he has been doing. Step by step, his answers reveal the story of his betrayal by poisoning. The moment in the narrative that Rackham singles out for attention (Fig. 11-12) is the one when the protagonist is asked what he has been served for dinner (st. 3 on 14

The text of this ballad included in Some British Ballads is Child’s D version, from Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, first published in 1803. This version omits the hero’s last will and testament, which in many other versions follows the revelation that he has been poisoned. 15 With “Lord Randal” can be compared the Scandinavian ballad that often goes by the name “Den lillas Testamente.” Very similar in theme is “Sven i Rosengård,” which Child treats as an analogue to his ballad number 13, “Edward.” See Child’s headnotes to these ballads for discussion.

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p. 92): ‘What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son? What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?’ ‘I gat eels boil’d in broo’; mother, make my bed soon, For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain wald lie down.’

[broth]

Rackham’s illustration calls to mind more of the narrative than this one stanza, however, for in the subsequent stanza the mother asks what became of the bloodhounds to whom the young nobleman gave his leavings. “They swelled and they died,” she is told. The hounds are thus made a conspicuous presence in the scene as Rackham presents it. A different illustrator might have conceived of this imagined scene in a tragic manner, focussing perhaps on the image of dogs writhing in agony at the hero’s feet. Instead, what we are given is a scene in which nothing seems to be happening. Two young people are seated together and are obviously not getting along, but one can only guess why. The furtive glance that the severe young woman directs at the hero might lead the viewer to conclude that she has been plotting a dastardly deed – as, indeed, she has. The pot of soup on the table before her is indicative of what that deed comprises. The young man looks down at his two hounds, not at her. He seems not to know just what to make of their lugubrious expression. As with many of Rackham’s domestic interiors, a northern mood is struck. Instead of depicting an Italianate dining room, as might be thought appropriate to a song that is apparently of Italian origins,16 Rackham presents a spartan Nordic décor as the background for this somewhat droll human tragedy. The knife in the hero’s hand seems emblematic of discord, not just dining. Randal’s sweetheart cradles her glass cup (is she eating today at all?) in a pair of hands that have a nervously agitated look to them. She looks at Randal, he looks at the dogs, and the dogs look sick. A fourth ballad to which Rackham devotes a full-page illustration is Child 17, “Hind Horn.” The plot of this ballad, too, had been a staple of medieval romance, and indeed, any reader of Homer’s Odyssey will be familiar with the narrative type to which it pertains. A man and a woman pledge their mutual fidelity. The man then departs overseas and his return is delayed for a number of years. He eventually comes back in the disguise of a beggar on the very day when, having given up hope for his return, his 16

Child discusses the apparent Italian origins of this internationally known ballad in his headnote (1882-98: I, 151-57). Italian, Welsh, Irish, and North American versions are reprinted in Seeman et al. (1967: 80-89) under the general title “The Poisoned Lover.”

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wife is about to be married to another man. The long-lost lover is recognized through the device of a broken token, and he and the woman are joined in a happy reunion. The text of Child 17 that is featured in Some British Ballads is a Scottish variant similar to Child H, which is reprinted by Child from vol. 2 of Peter Buchan’s Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland (1828). It departs as freely from that authority, however, as Buchan, an editor who was known for his free hand, seems to have departed from his own source. The refrain is adapted from a different text, Child D, so the resulting text represents a marriage of convenience. The moment in the narrative action that Rackham singles out for illustration (Fig. 11-13) is that moment of wonder and incipient joy when the woman, finding the token in her cup, first surmises that the “beggar man” who has knocked at her gate is none other than her lover, come back from the grave, as it were. With the cup in one hand and the broken token held out in the other, she looks into his eyes in breathless astonishment (st. 25 on p. 133): ‘O got ye ’t by sea, or got ye ’t by land, With a hey lillelu and a ho lo lan; Or got ye ’t on a drownd man’s hand?’ With a hey down and a hey diddle downie.

Here is one of Rackham’s attempts to capture what the folklorist Tristram P. Coffin has called the “emotional core” of a ballad (1957: 210 et al.) – that is, the central scene that singers are likely to remember when peripheral elements are forgotten. A moment of revelation is at hand when faith and love will triumph over adversity. Much of the sprightliness of this scene as Rackham conceives of it depends on the transparency of the man’s disguise. As readers of the book can readily see, the returning lover’s patchwork rags make up no more than a thin disguise. Beneath them, as we can tell now that he has taken off the slouch hat that he holds in one hand, he is a handsome young fellow, clearly a fine match for the bride. Once again, anyone familiar with this popular ballad type can “read” this scene without ever needing to read the text. The woman may be caught up in a rapture of doubt as to the stranger’s identity, but we can have none. As for the decorative touches that add to the lifelike quality of this scene, they transport us to a “ballad world” of some undisclosed earlier time and place. While the scene springs from Rackham’s Nordic imagination, the young woman’s dress, cloak, bridal cap, and heavy jewelry have touches that are almost Slavic about them. If asked to name a real-world setting for the action as this artist presents it, we might think in

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terms of Viking Novgorod or some similar up-scale part of north-central Europe. Certainly we are far from rural Sussex or the streets of London. Of special interst is the Rackham’s illustration for “The Gypsie Laddie” (Child 200), a quintessential story of elopement and its consequences. Gypsies have a large role to play in British balladry, as they do in British folklore in general. Always, it seems, their character is an ambivalent one, as dangerous as it is alluring. Gypsies are free as the wind; gypsies are free-loaders and thieves. Gypsies sing and dance spontaneously; gypsies curse and deploy the evil eye.17 The singing tradition of “The Gypsy Laddie” is a classic example of this dual perspective. The plot of this ballad has two main variants. In the standard British form of the story, a band of gypsies arrives one day at the door of a wealthy lady. Under the influence of some kind of magical inducement, she runs away with them. The husband returns home, discovers what has happened, rides at once after his wife, and secures her return. As for the gypsies, they receive their just reward and are hung. The standard North American subtype, which is sometimes known as “Black Jack Davy,” is more receptive to the theme of romance. The strangers – who sometimes are reduced in number to a single man – are not always identified as gypsies, and the motif of magical inducements tends to disappear. Rather than returning home with her husband, the woman chooses to defy him, preferring a hard bed with a new lover to the luxuries of a settled life.18 This is the branch of tradition that is represented in Some British Ballads. The text used is one that was communicated to Child by an acquaintance, Margaret Reburn, “as sung in County Meath, Ireland, about 1860” (Child 1882-98: IV, 71-72, version I). The scene that Rackham chooses to illustrate (Fig. 11-14) is the pivotal one when the lady of the house has come downstairs and has greeted her unexpected guests (st. 2 on p. 140): O she came tripping down the stair, Wi’ a’ her maids afore her; As soon as they saw her weel-fared face They cast their glamoury o’er her.

[well-favored] [magic]

17 On the ambivalent character of gypsies in British folklore, see Simpson and Roud 2000, s.v. “Gypsies,” with some additional bibliography there. 18 Cartwright 1980 offers a fine analysis of these two contrasting subtypes of Child 200. For a comprehensive account of tradition and change in the North American tradition of the Child ballads, see Coffin 1977.

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Instead of the spare, rather statuesque scenes that he often favors elsewhere in this volume, Rackham here presents a crowded scene of festive disorder. The contrast between two existential extremes – settled privilege versus barefoot adventure – is embodied in the contrasting physical appearance of the proper-looking young lady, together with her attractive maidservant, as opposed to the unkempt band of gypsies. Somewhat surprisingly, the person who occupies the central place in Rackham’s scene is not the lady herself, nor is it the man on whom her attention is fixed, the handsome young fiddler whose eyes are locked with hers in a mutual gaze. Rather, it is the old fortune-teller who, we may assume, is the chief agent of the “glamoury” (magic spell) that will soon affect the woman’s judgment. Indeed, the crone’s magic already seems to be taking effect as she reads the lady’s palm – or is there really any magic at work here other than the lure of love and freedom to a young, attractive woman? We are left guessing, in a manner that reinforces the inherent ambiguity of Child 200. To judge from the eyes of the main characters, the fates of the lady and the fiddler are already conjoined. Even the maidservant, too, seems to be in danger of falling under some kind of spell cast by the exotic young woman wearing a red necklace who has caught her gaze. Whatever the source of the magic in this scene is, it seems to be contagious. The air, we are to imagine, is alive with the sound of the fiddle and the tambourine, while the gypsies’ allure is enhanced by their foreign dress, bare feet, and dark physical features. Several of them seem attractive enough to win one’s sympathy – and then one’s attention comes back to the hag-like fortune-teller in the center, as well as to the primitivelooking man who stands behind her, holding the horse. One detail of this scene is typical of Rackham’s approach to book illustration. This is the horse. In the midst of all the passion and danger with which this scene is simmering, the horse is just a horse, a plain nag that seems oblivious to all this drama. “The Twa Corbies,” the last of the examples to be discussed here, has long occupied an uncertain place in the canon of English-language balladry. The text derives from Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803. While Child did not accept this ballad as a traditional one, he thought it too significant to omit from his anthology. He therefore presented it in fine print as part of his headnote to “The Three Ravens” (Child 26), identifying it as a “cynical variation” of that seventeenthcentury part song, which in turn is grounded in the world of late medieval romance. Although “The Twa Corbies” has often been reprinted in the guise of an anonymous medieval ballad, it can plausibly be regarded as Scott’s

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literary parody of “The Three Ravens,” whose imagery it mirrors step by step.19 The poem consists of a monologue spoken by one of two carrion crows (“corbies”) that gaze down at the corpse of a dead knight. The knight has been systematically abandoned by all his former companions – his hawks, his hounds, and his “lady fair” – so that now all that remains is for the crows to divide out his flesh. After that, no one will know his fate (42): ‘Mony a one for him makes mane But nane sall ken whare he is gane; O’er his white banes, when they are bare The wind sall blaw for evermair.’

[moan, lament] [bones]

In large measure, Rackham’s originality in illustrating this savage lyric resides in his choice of point of view (Fig. 11-15). Rather than foregrounding the knight as a tragic victim of an act of violence, he foregrounds the gloating crows. How the man has died is anyone’s guess, and that question has ceased to matter. The two birds dwarf the human corpse. This, in all its finery, lies hidden in the grass, already on its way toward oblivion. Moreover, the artist has arranged the scene in such a manner that the viewer is induced to look down on the crows, who in turn look down on the knight. The cynical spirit of Scott’s ballad-poem is thus expressed with perfect clarity, and yet Rackham succeeds in complicating the picture thematically. The crows who may fancy themselves so powerful vis-à-vis the fallen knight may perhaps, from our superior vantage point, be no more exempt than he from the decrees of an indifferent fate. If that message is indeed to be inferred, it does not make Rackham’s picture any cheerier, but a layer of dramatic irony is added. As is noted above, Some British Ballads was first published in 1919. For the most part, the book has no relation whatsoever to the war that had so recently ravaged Europe, with its unprecedented casualties on all sides. This bleak representation of a fallen knight may be an exception to that generalization. Rackham presents an image, displaced into the quasimedieval ballad age, that may well have a relation to what, day by day during the previous years, he could not help knowing was happening on 19

Child 1882-96: I, 253. While Scott may or may not have composed this ballad text, which he presented to the public as if it were a product of tradition, the art of literary imposture was cultivated at a high standard during his day. This was the era of MacPherson’s spurious Ossian, of Lady Wardlaw’s “medieval” ballad Hardycnute, of Percy’s famously factitious text of “Edward.” The use of the ballad form by sophisticated poets during this period is analyzed by Friedman 1961.

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the battlefields of Europe as any number of young “unknown soldiers” were dying far from their homes. Rackham was a man of many moods, as artists tend to be. Perhaps it is not far-fetched to suppose that one theme that finds implicit expression here is the vanity of the high ideals that, on occasion, have made the sacrifices and brutalities of war seem palatable to those who are caught up in them.20

Conclusion To sum up these remarks, Rackham’s approach to his task in Some British Ballads is in keeping with the trajectory of his career and his practice in virtually all his mature artistic commissions. At the same time, each of his pictures is unique. Each represents a particular set of choices with regard to which text to illustrate as well as what scene to depict. In addition, each picture involves countless choices regarding how to frame that scene, from whose perspective, with what degree of seriousness, with what background and decorative detail, and so forth. For the most part Rackham can be counted on to humanize his actors in a manner that captures the emotional core of a story in a single scene. As for Rackham’s settings, they are meticulously researched so as to call up the idea of a “ballad world” pertaining to an unspecified period of the Northern European past. While not wholly unlike the “fairy-tale world” of his illustrated Grimm tales, this “ballad world” is more likely to feature men and women of the upper bourgeoisie and lower nobility, as opposed to princes and peasants. His texts are illustrated with greater naturalism than is usually to be found in his books of fairy tales, as befits the quasi-historical settings of these songs. Like the legends with which their tradition is intertwined, the Child ballads are sometimes localized to specific times and places.21 While the artist’s landscapes and décor have a 20

The manner in which the movement toward the Great War converged with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medievalism is remarked upon by Girouard in his fine study of Victorian chivalry (1981). Especially popular at this time were Malory’s Arthurian tales, some of which Rackham illustrated in 1905 and again in 1917, as has been noted. 21 Child 53 “Young Beichan” has sometimes been thought to derive from a legend concerning Gilbert Beket, the father of St. Thomas à Becket, though Child sees no direct source here (1882-98: I, 457-59). Child 12 “Lord Randall” has been linked to a legend about the poisoning of King John (1882-98: I, 157). Child 17 “Hind Horn” shares a common narrative pattern with legends localized in many parts of Europe (1882-98: I, 197-98). Child 200 “The Gypsie Laddie” is often set at the estate of the Earl of Cassilis in Ayrshire, Scotland (1882-98: IV, 64-65). These

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relation to the material folk culture of Europe that he took pleasure in researching, they also cultivate the aura of late medieval romance. On the basis of this book published in 1919, I suggest that Rackham can well be regarded as the most successful of the many artists who have tried their hand at illustrating the British ballads. He was surely the most gifted of them. His representations of the “ballad world” transport us into a realm of fancy where the human tragedies that are so often featured in these narratives are converted, through an artist’s skill and wit, into something uplifting. With occasional exceptions, such as we have seen with “The Twa Corbies,” he tends to highlight the foibles and follies of the human condition rather than bleaker themes. Unlike some artists who have a penchant for satire, he also remains receptive to the possibility of romance and enduring love. Whether or not, in the mind of an individual viewer, these images are suggestive of Joy (to call C.S. Lewis to mind again), they can be admired as brilliant visual representations of some enduringly popular stories, as “told” by a storyteller whose medium was watercolors rather than the spoken or sung word.

Works Cited Cartwright, Christine. 1980. “Johnny Faa and Black Jack Davy: Cultural Values and Change in Scots and American Balladry.” Journal of American Folklore 93: 397-416. Child, Francis James. 1882-98. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 5 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Rpt. New York: Dover, 1965. Coffin, Tristram P. 1977. The British Traditional Ballad in North America. Rev. ed. with a supplement by Roger deV. Renwick. Austin: University of Texas Press. Coffin, Tristram P. 1957. “Mary Hamilton and the Anglo-American Ballad.” Journal of American Folklore 70: 208-14. [Dickens, Charles.] 1839. The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. London: C. Tilt. Originally published anonymously, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. Friedman, Albert B. 1961. The Ballad Revival: Studies in the Influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

examples of ballads that have legendary sources or analogues, or that are themselves localized as legends, are singled out from among the ones discussed in the preceding paragraphs. Many additional examples could be cited.

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Girouard, Mark. 1981. The Road to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Grundtvig, Svend, et al. 1853-1976. Danmarks gamle folkeviser. Eleven volumes. Copenhagen: Samfundet til den danske literaturs fremme and Rosenkilde & Bagger. Hall, S.C. [Samuel Carter]. 1879. The Book of British Ballads. London: Routledge. Hamilton, James. 1995. Arthur Rackham: A Life with Illustration. London: Pavilion. —. 2004. “Arthur Rackham” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 45. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 718-21. Hudson, Derek. 1960. Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work. New York: Scribner. Lewis, C.S. 1955. Surprised by Joy. New York: Harcourt. Mahoney, Bertha E. 1947. Illustrators of Children’s Books 1744-1945. Boston: The Horn Book. Meyer, Susan E. 1983. A Treasury of the Great Children’s Book Illustrators. New York: Abrams. Nygard, Holger Olof. 1958. The Ballad of ‘Heer Halewijn’, Its Forms and Variations in Western Europe: A Study of the History and Nature of a Ballad Tradition. Folklore Fellows Communications 169. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Rackham, Arthur. 1900. Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. London: Freemantle & Co. —. 1909. The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. London: Constable & Co. Expanded edition, with many new illustrations. —. 1919. Some British Ballads. London: Constable & Co.; New York: Dodd, Mead, & Co. —. 1932. Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen. London: Harrap. —. 1940. The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame. New York: Heritage. Ray, Gordon N. 1976. The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914. New York: Pierpont Morgan Library. Seemann, Erich, with Dag Strömbäck and Bengt R. Jonsson. 1967. European Folk Ballads. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde & Bagger. Simpson, Jacqueline, and Steve Roud. 2000. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press. Smith, George Barnett, ed. 1886. Illustrated British Ballads: Old and New. London. 2 vols. in 1.

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IMAGES

Fig. 11-1: “Little Red Riding Hood,” Arthur Rackham, 1909.

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Fig. 11-2: “Hans Christian Andersen,” Arthur Rackham, 1932.

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Fig. 11-3: “A Transpontine Cockney,” Arthur Rackham, 1934.

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Fig. 11-4: The Wind in the Willows, Arthur Rackham, 1940.

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Fig. 11-5: Undine, Arthur Rackham, 1909.

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Fig. 11-6: Some British Ballads, title page, 1919.

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Fig. 11-7: Melodramatic image from Illustrated British Ballads, 1886.

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Fig. 11-8: “May Colven,” Arthur Rackham, 1919.

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Fig. 11-9: “May Colven” from Illustrated British Ballads, 1886.

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Fig. 11-10: “Young Bekie,” Arthur Rackham, 1918.

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Fig. 11-11: “Young Bekie,” George Cruikshank, 1939.

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Fig. 11-12: “Lord Randall,” Arthur Rackham, 1919.

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Fig. 11-13: “Hind Horn,” Arthur Rackham, 1919.

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Fig. 11-14: “The Gypsie Laddie, Arthur Rackham, 1919.

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Fig. 11-15: “The Twa Corbies,” Arthur Rackham, 1919.

TALES IN LITERARY FORM

”HVAD SIGER DEN LILLE SOMMERGJÆK?” FLOWERS AND EMBEDDED STORIES IN H.C. ANDERSEN’S TALES SCOTT A. MELLOR

Hans Christian Andersen was the consummate storyteller. In 1838, he wrote the tale called “Gaaseurten,” often translated as “The Daisy,” in which he describes a naive, innocent daisy on one side of a fence and cultivated flowers, tulips, roses, and peonies on the other. When a lark enters the story, the daisy fully expects that it shall go to the flowers on the other side of the fence: “Hvor de ere rige og deilige! ja, dem flyver vist den pr)gtige Fugl ned til og besUger! Gud skee Lov, at jeg staaer saa n)r herved, saa kan jeg dog faae den Stads at see” (Andersen 1963, 118) [How rich and lovely they are! I am sure the magnificent bird will fly down and visit them. Thank God, I am so near them so I can at least see it.]. 1 The daisy is innocent and so therefore does not understand the cultivated flowers’ envy when a lark chooses the daisy over the other flowers in the garden. Later, the lark and daisy are captured by a pair of boys, who, through neglect, bring about the eventual demise of both the daisy and the lark. With remorse, the boys give the lark a grand funeral, but the daisy is thrown out on the dusty road without consideration. If one reads this on an autobiographical level, it is not hard to see that Andersen would like us to believe that he is the daisy, naive and innocent among a cultivated haughty bourgeois society. Art, in the form of the singing lark, has come to the daisy, or Andersen, and been abused by the people who would wish to capture and control art. Though society may feel sorrow for the demise of art, Andersen may have us believe that for the artist – society feels nothing. Though valuable, this reading of this rather early tale by Hans Christian Andersen does not fully illuminate the innovative genius of the author. Scholars such as Klaus P. Mortensen and Lisa SUrensen have written convincingly on how Andersen arranges his 1

Translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

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own portrayal in the text, so that the reader sees him and feels towards him as he wishes to be perceived. Yet, Andersen is not an innocent, naive author. In many of his texts, he is manipulative, calculating, and complicated, taking full advantage of the literary devices of his time. In an interview for the Hans Christian Andersen project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Karen Sanders has called him a great recycler of ideas; he remembers events and uses them in tales years later. Furthermore, Andersen was a romantic author and made full use of romantic ideas. In the case of “The Daisy,” the informed reader can see that Andersen has used the romantic dichotomy nature vs. culture in this tale. Although there might be some debate as to the translation of Gaaseurten, (it could also be translated as chamomile or mayweed) I rather agree with translators such as Jean Hersholt and Erik Christian Haugard and shall in this work use daisy. Andersen chooses his flowers carefully; the daisy on one hand is a wildflower found in nature and it is juxtaposed to the others, peonies, tulips, and roses, which are cultivated flowers found in culture. From the beginning of the text, Andersen would like the reader to side with the underdog, the daisy. Andersen chooses the daisy to make use of another notion employed by romantic authors, namely the language of flowers, to underscore his meaning and manipulate the affections of the nineteenth-century reader. This article will look at how Andersen makes effective use of the romantic flower language and emblems popular during the Romantic period to underscore the nature of the characters in his texts. Using flower language to convey a specific meaning was popular during the Romantic period. Beverly Seaton traces the phenomenon of matching flowers to meaning to Napoleonic era France, though Hans Christian Andersen may have also been influenced by its use in the works of earlier authors. Elias Bredsdorff in his book, Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of his Life and Work, 1805-75, describes a young Andersen who is very much enthralled with the great authors of the past including such authors as William Shakespeare. When Andersen published his first works, he did so under a pseudonym that was a compilation of two of his favorite authors: Vilhelm Christian Walter. Christian was from his own name; but Walter was for the well-known Scottish author Walter Scott; and Vilhelm was for William Shakespeare, as Bredsdroff maintains. William Shakespeare was himself no stranger to the language of flowers and used them to underscore aspects of his texts. In Shakespeare’s wellknown play, Hamlet, at the end of the third act Ophelia enters, insane from her loss. She makes her point to each of the characters by designating a flower for them:

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OPHELIA: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies. That's for thoughts. ... There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end, -- (Act IV, Scene V. Shakespeare 1980, 1109).

In his article from 1952, “Three Notes on Shakespeare’s Plants,” J.W. Lever explains the meaning behind the exchange from a 1950s standpoint, but he is also puzzled by the interpretations of earlier scholars. His puzzlement may help to underscore a change in how the language of the flowers might have been understood from the Elizabethan period, to the nineteenth century, and finally to Lever in the 1950s. His perplexity over the interpretations that had previously been put forth may help us understand the use of the language of flowers from the nineteenth century, an understanding closer to what Hans Christian Andersen would have held. Lever describes how he thinks Laertes understood the meaning behind the flowers and how an Elizabethan audience might have understood them. The speech starts with rosemary, which, we are told right out, means remembrance, as we are also told that pansies are for thoughts. Lever suggests that it is the medical properties to which the Elizabethan audience would have been drawn. The plants both had a reputation for restoring speech and memory, and, therefore, this would have been what the contemporary Elizabethan audience would have understood. The nineteenth-century audience assigned the same meaning to rosemary and pansies, remembrance and thought respectively, and found this association corroborated within the plethora of books on the meaning of flower language that came out in that century. Lever detects no discord here, and so we move on. With regard to the next group of flowers, however, Lever observes that the nineteenth-century audience felt that Ophelia is trying to be more cryptic with her meaning. From his 1950s standpoint, however, Lever maintains that, again, the medicinal properties of the plant would have been foremost on the minds of the Elizabethan audience, in this case, that fennel was a mental stimulant. However, he does suggest that if there was a symbolic meaning, fennel suggests flattery, when combined with columbine, which is the herb of the lion, so there can be no misunderstanding that the two together signify “that loyalty to her sovereign which Ophelia manifested so constantly and so unfortunately

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throughout the play.” (Lever 1952: 126). Lever draws upon the meanings written down in John Gerard’s work from the early seventeenth century, Herball, in which he describes columbine as “... Dalecamius of Lovaine, Jovis flos; of some Herba leonis ...” Lever complains about a Mr. Weston who has put forth other symbolic interpretations of Ophelia’s plants, complaining that “I do not know where Weston got his notion, taken up into the Variorum and repeated in the New Cambridge Hamlet, that to the Elizabethans columbine signified cuckoldry because of the horns on their nectar” (Lever 1952, 126). In the books describing the language of flowers in the nineteenth century, fennel comes to represent strength or worthy of all praise, but columbine symbolizes folly, a meaning that seems very apt to the play, and, therefore, may have been read into it by a nineteenthcentury audience. In the next grouping, Ophelia offers rue to the Queen. Lever seems to doubt that the audience of Shakespeare’s time would have understood any symbolic association, as the nineteenth-century audience would have, when he writes: Here again primary must be distinguished from secondary associations. Hamlet was originally written to be acted, not pored over in the study. Just as an audience would not think of pejorative meanings in the giving of fennel unless they were indicated, so it would not see a pun in the offer of rue unless it was hinted at (Lever 1952, 126-7).

Lever believes that the audience of Shakespeare’s day would have thought of the medicinal properties of the plant, in this case, a mental stimulant like rosemary. Since she has already given mental stimulants, he suggests that the point Ophelia makes with the rue is not the disdain that the later Romantics would have understood, but rather a positive suggestion to the Queen, since she offers both the rue to the Queen and, somewhat later, to herself. Lever writes: The situation of the mad girl clasping her rue is sufficiently poignant without any search for alternative significances. What of the Queen - is she meant to participate in Ophelia’s ‘rue’? Hastily, Ophelia interposes: ‘We may call it Herbe-Grace a Sundaies. Oh you must weare your Rew with a difference.’ Rue, that has another name, herb-grace, with no unhappy associations; she had meant it in that sense (Lever 1952: 127).

In this article from 1952, Lever wants to reconsider the romantic interpretation of flowers in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the nineteenth century, the daisies symbolize innocence and violets faithfulness or

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modesty or can even mean early death. These would have been the associations made by the romantic audience, underscored in the play since they are withered and no one seems innocent. Lever does not agree with the nineteenth-century interpretation and is adamant that there is no symbolic meaning for the Elizabethan audience. He suggests that Ophelia has given it to make amends for any offence perceived by the rue. This is a somewhat contradictory statement if the contemporary Elizabethan audience is not to see any symbolic meaning in the flower, but I will not take that up here. Lever maintains that Ophelia’s behavior, according to Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, “accords with her brother’s comments. She turns all to favour and to prettiness” (Lever 1952: 128). In short, a nineteenth-century audience might have made more of the symbolic nature of the flowers than the original Elizabethan audience, something Lever finds inappropriate in 1952. At any rate, Hans Christian Andersen, growing up and writing in the nineteenth century, would have been well aware of the language of flowers, and his understanding of Shakespeare’s Hamlet may have been influenced by those romantic ideas that he then used in his own oeuvre. Sabine Haass in her article “Speaking Flowers and Floral Emblems: The Victorian Language of Flowers,” writes that “The early nineteenth century saw the rise of a new literary genre of light reading all over Europe, destined to become a popular fashion especially in Victorian England – the so-called ‘language’ and ‘poetry’ of flowers.” The use of flowers in literature as a European tradition has its roots further back than the late eighteenth century, or even the early seventeenth and Shakespeare, and goes back to the Middle Ages. Already in the late sixteenth century, John Gerard in his Herball (1597) states: ...flowers through their beautie, varietie of colour and exquisite formes do bring to a liberall and gentlemanly minde the remembrence of honestie, comeliness and all kindes of vertues. [sic] (qtd. in Haass 1988: 245).

However, as we have just seen, it may be argued that it is in the nineteenth century that flower language reaches its height in expression and personality. The nineteenth century saw the publishing of a number of narratives in which flowers take on human emotion and characteristics as metaphors for the human experience. Though some of the earliest books on the language of flowers, like Louise Leneveux’ Les Fleurs emblématiques from 1832, Louis-Aimé Martin’s Langage et embl3me des fleurs from 1835, and the aforementioned John Gerard’s Herball from as early as 1597, to name but three, were still reprinted throughout the

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nineteenth century, they were written in English and French, languages Andersen could not read. The Germans and Scandinavians were familiar with the concept as well. In 1802 Philipp Otto Runge writes to Tieck “Eine jede Blume [hat] doch immer einen menschlichen Charakter” (qtd. in Haass 1988: 248) [Each and every flower has always had a human character]. Flower language was well-known too in Scandinavia. The Swedish author, P.D.A. Atterbom, wrote a cycle of poems in 1812 called Blommorna [The Flowers] in which he discusses existential issues, like life, death, and love, giving them flower attributes in poems named “Rosen” [The Rose], “Liljan” [The Lilly], and “Näckliljan” [The Waterlilly], to name a few. Andersen uses flower imagery in several of his tales, but perhaps one of the tales where he arguably uses it most successfully is the tale “The Snow Queen.” Published with Grantr)et, “The Pine Tree,” Sneedronning or “The Snow Queen” came out in 1845 as one of Andersen’s regular volumes. “The Snow Queen” is a tale about a young girl’s quest for her young friend, Kay, who has been taken by the Snow Queen. In the third part of the tale, subtitled Blomster-Haven hos Konen, som kunde Trolddom [The Flower Garden of the Woman who Knew Magic], Andersen interrupts the narrative to tell us of the time Gerda spends in a garden with an old, kind witch. I disagree with the sentiment expressed by Wolfgang Lederer, in his work The Kiss of the Snow Queen when he writes, Indeed, these stories are not interesting. They are overly romantic and sticky… All this seems like dime-store fiction or true confessions stuff for pulp magazines; we would be tempted to say it is unworthy of Andersen. But we would be wrong. These are exactly the kinds of dreams and stories best suited to the needs and fears of adolescent girls who are often so bewildered by their own budding sexuality and afraid of the world. Unready to risk any real encounters, they seek refuge in risk-free dreams of romance. (Lederer 1986: 42-3).

These tales are at the heart of Gerda’s Bildung experience and it is what she does and does not understand that gives insight into Gerda and what she gives up in her quest for Kay. In her search for Kay, Gerda meets an old woman who wishes to have Gerda stay with her and, therefore, makes all the roses in the garden disappear. The roses have been associated with Gerda from the beginning and seem, at the beginning of the text, to be a foreshadowing of the maturation process that Gerda will undergo throughout the story. By

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removing all the roses, the old woman hopes that Gerda will forget about her quest for Kay and stay with her. In her garden, it is forever spring, and Gerda will forever stay a child. As one might expect, the old woman forgets one rose. Gerda sees it and remembers her quest for Kay. Gerda asks several of the flowers if they have seen Kay, and each answers with a story that Gerda fails to understand to varying degrees. The first to relate a story is the rose: “O, hvor jeg er bleven sinket!” sagde den lille Pige. “Jeg skulde jo finde Kay! - Veed I ikke hvor han er?” spurgte hun Roserne. “Troer I at han er dUd og borte?” “DUd er han ikke,” sagde Roserne. “Vi have jo v)ret i Jorden, der ere alle de DUde, men Kay var der ikke!” (Andersen 1964, 58). [Oh, how I have been delayed,” said the little girl. “I was supposed to be finding Kay! - Do you know where he is?” she asked the roses. “Do you think that he is dead and gone?” “Dead, he is not,” answered the roses. “We have been down under the earth, where the dead are, and Kay was not there.]

The rose has been established as Gerda’s flower, the flower that represents her throughout the tale. The nineteenth-century significance of the rose is one of the few that has come down to us today and means unity and love. However, as the reader continues through the text, it becomes clear that we are not talking about passionate love. Earlier in the text, Gerda has symbolically sacrificed her sexuality in the form of giving up her red shoes to the river in order to continue her quest for Kay. In Anden Historie. En lille Dreng og en lille Pige, [The Second Story: A Little Boy and A Little Girl], Kay has gotten a sliver of the devil’s mirror in his heart and eyes and goes off with the Snow Queen. He forgets everything of the heart and only remembers the things of the head. He abandons his lifelong friend Gerda, but can remember his multiplication tables. It might be said that Andersen is symbolically representing Romanticism’s criticism of the Enlightenment, a topic that will not be expanded upon here. Gerda decides to find him and, when she comes to an impasse at a stream, she throws in her new red shoes so that she can continue searching for him. Andersen makes full use in this text of the symbolic meaning of the color red for passion and the shoes are another nineteenth-century symbol for sexuality. Lederer also remarks upon the sacrifice of the red shoes and notes that it happens just before she enters the old woman’s garden, stating that “[t]here is a certain danger that she might stay there. Being dead to her own sexual-procreative capabilities these flowers never stop

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flowering and therefore never set seed, never bear fruit, she is also oblivious of time” (Lederer 1986, 43). At the end of the text, both Kay and Gerda have grown but not grown up. It can further be seen that the rose is not meant as a symbol of passionate love and that there is to be no maturation in this text. One need only recall the ending, in which Kay and Gerda do not get married as the reader might expect and is common at the end of the magic tales that this narrative resembles, but rather, they forget everything they have experienced during the quest and sing hymns. The narrator tells us that “Der sad de begge to Voxne og dog BUrn, B)rn i Hjertet, og det var sommer, den varme, velsignede Sommer” (Andersen 1964, 76). [There they both sat, grown but yet children; children in their hearts. And it was summer, the warm, blessed summer.] This may create a discord with some readers: the expectation of a sexual maturation through Bildung is disappointed by the Biedemeier ending. Despite the lack of passionate love and maturation in the end, there is love between the two children, and unity too. Gerda is determined to find Kay and bring back her little playmate. The answer the rose gives is the only direct answer that Gerda gets to her question “Where is Kay?” As the text says: Men hver Blomst stod i Solen og drUmte sit eget Eventyr eller Historie, af dem fik lille Gerda saa mange, mange, men Ingen vidste noget om Kay. (Andersen 1964, 58). [But every flower stood in the sun and dreamed its own fairy tale or story; and Little Gerda heard many, so many of them, but no one knew anything about Kay.]

The next tale told is related by the fire lily. Og hvad sagde da Ildlillien? “HUrer Du Trommen: bum! bum! det er kun to Toner, altid bum! bum! hUr Qvindernes SUrgesang! hUr Pr)sternes Raab! - I sin lange rUde Kjortel staaer Hindue-Konen paa Baalet, Flammerne slaae op om hende og hendes dUde Mand; men Hindue-Konen t)nker paa den Levende her i Kredsen, ham, hvis Tine br)nde hedere end Flammerne, ham, hvis Tines Ild naae mere hendes Hjerte, end de Flam mer, som snart br)nde hendes Legeme til Aske. Kan Hjertets Flamme dUe i Baalets Flammer?" “Det forstaaer jeg slet ikke!” sagde den lille Gerda. “Det er mit (ventyr!” sagde Ildlillien. (Andersen 1964, 58). [And what did the fire lily say?

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Flowers and Embedded Stories in H.C. Andersen’s Tales “Can you hear the drum: boom! boom! It has only two tones: always boom! boom! Listen to the women's song of lament! Listen to the priests’ call! In her long red gown, the Hindu wife is standing on the pyre. The flames are engulfing her and her dead husband. But the Hindu wife is thinking of someone living, standing nearby; he whose eyes burn even hotter than the flames; the flames in whose eyes reach her heart more than those flames which soon will burn her body to ash. Can a fire of the heart die in the fire of a pyre?” “I don't understand that story,” said little Gerda. “That is my tale!” answered the fire lily.]

The reader is not surprised that Gerda does not understand this tale, because Gerda is a child who has not experienced much in life. Andersen has made up a flower here, and this is not the first time we will see that. Erik Christian Haugaard translated the flower as tiger lily, as has Maria Tatar in her recent translation, which certainly makes sense due to its orange color. Tiina Nunnally in her recent translation has kept Andersen’s name, fire lily, which I have also done since I am interested in the flowers themselves. All the translators have to choose between either representing Andersen’s flower as an existing flower or translating it literally, a choice I am not going to debate here, though I will say that for this flower both work well. There is little doubt why Andersen coins the term fire lily since the girl finds herself on the pyre, and there is also the emotional fire that burns in her suitor. Would the romantic audience have had a particular association with this flower? The tiger lily is associated with wealth and pride. Both can have significance in this context. The day lily, which can be orange or yellow like fire, is associated with coquetry, which, given the context, seems rather apt since this girl is in love with another. The yellow lily—yellow is also a color of fire—is associated with falsehood. The girl seems to have been false to her husband in her heart if not in action. However, the latter interpretation seems too harsh for this story. The tale seems to be alerting Gerda to a potential problem of which she should be wary, namely, that Kay has gone off with another woman. This warning will be repeated later in the text when the crow tells Gerda that he has seen Kay and that he has married another. However, since this has ceased to be a maturation tale, Gerda does not get jealous when she hears this, just as she does not understand the fire lily The next tale is told by the morning glory: Hvad siger Convolvolus? “Ud over den snevre Fjeldvei h)nger en gammel Ridderborg; det t)tte EvigtgrUnt voxer op om de gamle rUde Mure, Blad ved Blad, hen om

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Altanen, og der staaer en deilig Pige; hun bUier sig ud over R)kv)rket og seer ned ad Veien. Ingen Rose h)nger friskere fra Grenene, end hun, ingen (bleblomst, naar Vinden b)rer den fra Tr)et, er mere sv)vende, end hun; hvor rasler den pr)gtige Silkekjortel. ‘Kommer han dog ikke!’” “Er det Kay, Du mener,” spurgte lille Gerda. (Andersen 1964, 58-9). [What does the morning glory say? “An old castle looms high up above the narrow mountain road. A dense green ivy grows up over the ancient, red walls, leaf by leaf, spread over the balcony, where a beautiful girl stands. She leans out over the railing and looks down towards the road. No rose hanging on the bush is fresher than she, no apple blossom, when the wind carries it from the tree, is more delicate than she. How her beautiful, silk dress rustles. Is he not coming soon?” “Is that Kay you mean?” asked little Gerda]

Tiina Nunnally and Maria Tatar translate this as a morning glory, whereas Erik Haugaard uses the word honeysuckle. Since honeysuckle is genus lonicera, it is doubtful that that is the plant Andersen meant. Convolvulus is a genus encompassing many varieties of plants including morning glories. Regardless as to which flower is indicated, again, Gerda’s lack of emotional experience does not prepare her to understand the tale that the honeysuckle tells. The honeysuckle means bonds of love or devoted, though the French honeysuckle is associated with rustic beauty. According to Kate Greenaway, the morning glory has the association with affectation, however, if the plant is the French belle-de-jour, Aimé Marin’s Des Fleurs from 1835 associates it with infidelity. All of these meanings have interesting implications for understanding the text. Gerda is being told a story of a girl waiting for a romantic love, something that Gerda cannot understand since she has sacrificed her passion, but that she ought to understand as she matures. However, is the awaited beau late due to infidelity? Andersen’s use of the language of the flowers to hint at this suggestion to his audience might shift our understanding of the tale. Again, however, our narrative expectations are that this is some type of Bildung tale in which Kay and Gerda will be married and be integrated into society. This, however, is not the fate of Gerda and Kay at the end of their adventure, and once again, Gerda does not understand the tale. Gerda is not, like the girl in the tale the morning glory tells, waiting for her romantic love, and, therefore, she cannot understand the story it tells. The next tale, however, is different:

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Flowers and Embedded Stories in H.C. Andersen’s Tales Hvad siger den lille Sommergj)k? "Mellem Tr)erne h)nger i Snore det lange Br)t, det er en Gynge; to nydelige Smaapiger, - Kjolerne ere hvide som Snee, lange grUnne Silkebaand flagre fra Hattene, - sidde og gynge; Broderen, der er stUrre end de, staaer op i Gyngen, han har Armen om Snoren for at holde sig, thi i den ene Haand har han en lille Skaal, i den anden en Kridtpibe, han bl)ser S)bebobler; Gyngen gaaer, og Boblerne flyve med deilige, vexlende Farver; den sidste h)nger endnu ved Pibestilken og bUier sig i Vinden; Gyngen gaaer. Den lille sorte Hund, let som Boblerne, reiser sig paa Bagbenene og vil med i Gyngen, den flyver; Hunden dumper, bj)ffer og er vred; den gj)kkes, Boblerne briste, - Et gyngende Br)t, et springende Skumbilled er min Sang!" “Det kan gjerne v)re, at det er smukt, hvad Du fort)ller, men Du siger det saa sUrgeligt og n)vner slet ikke Kay.” (Andersen 1964, 59). [What does the little daisy say? “Between the trees hangs a board on ropes, it is a swing. Two sweet little girls - their dresses as white as snow with green ribbons fluttering from their hats - are sitting on it and swinging. Their brother, who is bigger than they are, is standing up on the swing. He has an arm around the ropes to hold on because in one hand he has a little bowl; in the other, a clay pipe. He is blowing soap bubbles. The swing glides back and forth, and the bubbles float with lovely, changing colors. The last bubble still clings to the stem of the pipe; it quivers in the wind. The swing glides back and forth. A little black dog, as light as the bubbles, stands on its hind legs and wants to swing too. The swing flies. The dog falls, barks and is angry. They tease him, the bubble breaks. A gliding swing, a vision of foam, that is my song.” “It might be that what you say is beautiful, but you tell it so sadly, and you didn't mention Kay at all,” complained little Gerda.

Andersen has again made up a flower. The term sommergj)k is a reflex of the word vintergj)k, which is the snowdrop, one of the earliest flowers to come out in the spring. Tatar and Haugaard translate it as daisy, whereas Tiina Nunnally uses snowdrop. In this case I think that Tatar and Haugaard have understood Andersen’s meaning behind the flower. It is meant as a common flower associated with summer, but also associated with innocence, as the tale suggests. Haugaard also translated the Danish Gaaseurte as daisy. Neither Tatar nor Nunnally have translated that tale as of the writing of this essay, though I will be very interested in how Nunnally will translate it in her second volume. I am not convinced that Nunnally’s translation of sommergj)k as snowdrop works. Nunnally is

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making clear reference to vintergj)kk, but we are not in winter here, or even early spring. Indeed, in the context of the story, Gerda finds herself in a magical woman’s garden where it is perpetual late spring or perhaps summer. In the story as a whole, summer and winter are juxtaposed, and used to represent Gerda and the Snow Queen respectively. Further, Gerda seems to understand the tale the daisy tells, and, with regard to flower language, that is not surprising. The daisy symbolizes innocence, and that is something that Gerda can understand. To underscore his meaning in this tale, Andersen makes use of both the language of flowers and emblems. This is a tale of innocence and transience in human life, which are brought together in this tale in which sisters and brothers are swinging on a summer’s afternoon, and Andersen does not want us to find any presence of sexuality or maturation in it. This is simply a tale of children swinging and blowing bubbles. The idea of the bubble representing the transience of human life comes from as long ago as ancient times in the Greek proverb ȆȠȝijȠȜȣȟ Ƞ ĮȞșȡȠʌȦȢ, or “Man is a bubble.” As Andrea Prosperetti maintains in her article, “Bubbles,” on the artistic and physical attributes of bubbles “Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas: bubbles are emptiness, non-liquid, a tiny cloud shielding a mathematical singularity.”(Prosperetti 2004, 1852). Prosperetti, in a discussion of Cornelis Ketel’s 1574 painting of the portrait of a gentleman with a boy blowing bubbles in the background, states that “[t]his image is a moral exhortation: the bubbles are a metaphor for the frailty of human life and the boy also is, as he will soon age and die.” (Prosperetti 2004, 1852). In her article, “Pieter Bruegel’s Children’s Games, Folly, and Chance,” Sandra Hindman discusses the allegorical works of Pieter Bruegel from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Hindman discusses the significance of the games that children play and how they are allegorical for the life experiences of the human condition. Of bubbles, she writes, “[o]nly one recurring emblem, blowing bubbles, finds an analogue in Bruegel’s painting... The fragility of the bubble which bursts when captured and concomitant folly of the child who believes, nonetheless, that a bubble can be seized, refer in the emblem literature to the transitory nature of life, as well as the folly of man who presumes that he can temper its course.” (Hindman 1981, 464). About children swinging, Hindman says less, though she does seem to suggest that it is part of the folly demonstrated in Bruegel’s paintings. These emblematic allegories, the act of swinging and blowing bubbles, were most likely known to Andersen given his interest in the visual arts and their widespread reception throughout Northern Europe. Both images were emblematic of innocence. Gerda seems to have an understanding, at

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least in part, of the tale that this flower tells since she herself is still innocent. Gerda is, however, not satisfied with the tale since it has not answered her quintessential question: Where is Kay? So she moves on to the next flower: Hvad sige Hyazinterne? “Der var tre deilige SUstre, saa gjennemsigtige og fine; den Enes Kjortel var rUd, den Andens var blaa, den Tredies ganske hvid; Haand i Haand dandsede de ved den stille SU i det klare Maaneskin. De vare ikke Elverpiger, de vare MenneskebUrn. Der duftede saa sUdt, og Pigerne svandt i Skoven; Duften blev st)rkere; - tre Liigkister, i dem laae de deilige Piger, glede fra Skovens Tykning hen over SUen; Sant-Hansorme flUi skinnende rundt om, som smaa sv)vende Lys. Sove de dandsende Piger, eller ere de dUde? -Blomsterduften siger, de ere Liig; Aftenklokken ringer over de DUde!” “Du gjUr mig ganske bedrUvet,” sagde den lille Gerda. “Du dufter saa st)rkt; jeg maa t)nke paa de dUde Piger! ak, er da virkelig lille Kay dUd? Roserne have v)ret nede i Jorden, og de sige nei!” (Andersen 1964, 5960). [What does the hyacinth say? “There were three beautiful sisters; they were so delicate and fine, almost transparent. One had on a red dress; the second, a blue; and the third, a white one. They danced, hand in hand, down by the lake; but they were not elves, they were real human children. The air smelled so sweet that the girls wandered into the forest. The sweet fragrance grew stronger. Three coffins appeared; and in them lay the three beautiful sisters. They sailed across the lake, and glowworms flew through the air like little candles. Were the dancing girls asleep or were they dead? The smell of the flowers said they were corpses, the bells at vespers rang for the dead.” “Oh, you make me feel so sad,” said little Gerda. “Your fragrance is so strong, it makes me think of those dead girls! Is Kay really dead too? The roses have been down under the earth and they said he wasn't.”]

The meaning of hyacinths in the nineteenth-century language of flowers depended on the color: red was play, blue constancy, and white prayer, with another possible meaning, delicate weakness. The colors and the embedded tale seems to be symbolic for the life a woman would undergo – the young woman plays, the mature woman marries and is offered constancy, and the older woman, at the end of her life, would pray and seek spiritual enlightenment. Death is the final outcome for all. Gerda, who is at the beginning of her quest and stagnant in her development,

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understands nothing of this and interprets the tale in the only way she can, her quest for Kay, and the roses have already offered that he is not dead, so she moves on to the next flower. The next tale is another that Gerda seems to understand in her own way: Og Gerda gik hen til SmUrblomsten, der skinnede frem imellem de glindsende, grUnne Blade. “Du er en lille klar Sol!" sagde Gerda. "Siig mig, om Du veed, hvor jeg skal finde min Legebroder?” Og SmUrblomsten skinnede saa smukt og saae paa Gerda igjen. Hvilken Vise kunde vel SmUrblomsten synge? Den var heller ikke om Kay. “I en lille Gaard skinnede vor Herres Sol saa varmt den fUrste Foraars Dag; Straalerne glede ned ad Naboens hvide V)g, t)t ved groede de fUrste gule Blomster, skinnende Guld i de varme Solstraaler; gamle Bedstemoder var ude i sin Stol, Datterdatteren den fattige, kjUnne Tjenestepige, kom hjem et kort BesUg; hun kyssede Bedstemoderen. Det var Guld, Hjertets Guld i det velsignede Kys. Guld paa Munden, Guld i Grunden, Guld deroppe i Morgenstunden! See, det er min lille Historie!” sagde SmUrblomsten. “Min gamle stakkels Bedstemoder!” sukkede Gerda. “Ja hun l)nges vist efter mig, er bedrUvet for mig...” (Andersen 1964, 60). [And Gerda approached a little buttercup that shone so prettily between its green leaves. “You are a small, bright sun!” said Gerda. “Tell me if you know where I can find my dear playmate?” The buttercup shone so beautifully and looked back at Gerda. Which song could the buttercup sing? It was not about Kay either. “Into a little yard our Lord’s sun was shining so warmly on the first day of spring. The sunbeams shimmered against the neighbor's white walls. Nearby the first little yellow flower shone gold in the warm sunlight; the old grandmother was outside in her chair. Her grandchild, the poor little servant maid, had come home for a short visit. She kissed her grandmother. There was gold in that blessed kiss: the gold of the heart. Gold on her lips, gold on the ground, and gold in the sunrise. Now that was my little story,” said the buttercup. “Oh, the poor Grandmother,” sighed little Gerda. “She must be longing for me and grieving...]

Tiina Nunnally, Maria Tatar, and Erik Christian Haugaard all translate SmUrblomsten as buttercup. The buttercup, according to both Greenway and Martin (French renoncule), is emblematic for childishness or

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ingratitude. Childishness and ingratitude, if the story is about this at all, must be in Gerda’s understanding of the tale. Surely there is no childishness or ingratitude in the acts of the story, however, it is possible that Gerda reads these feelings into her own situation of having left her grandmother in her quest for Kay. I am not convinced that Gerda is childish or ungrateful, however, she is a child and she seems to understand the tale within her context. She remembers her own grandmother with whom she lives and whom Gerda believes must be worried about her even now and seems to wonder whether she has forgotten her grandmother in her quest for Kay. The very presence of a grandmother in the tale the buttercup tells puts the narration in a context that Gerda can identify with. By using the buttercup to tell the story, Andersen causes the nineteenthcentury reader to consider certain implications about Gerda’s feelings and actions, based on the meaning of the flower. Further, there seems to be a juxtaposition that the reader is invited to consider between Gerda, who has given up her sexuality for the quest and so has not reacted negatively to any of Kay’s misdeeds, and Kay, who has been acting in a childish and ungrateful manner since his encounter with the Snow Queen. The narcissus is one flower that hardly needs explanation to us today. The tale it tells Gerda is selfish and Gerda understands this tale, though again, as with the emblem of the buttercup, one can hardly argue that Gerda herself is selfish. To that point, Gerda dismisses the flower: "Jeg kan see mig selv! jeg kan see mig selv!" sagde Pindse lillien. "O, o, hvor jeg lugter! - Oppe paa det lille Qvist kammer, halv kl)dt paa, staaer en lille Dandserinde, hun staaer snart paa eet Been, snart paa to, hun sparker af den hele Verden, hun er bare Tienforblindelse. Hun h)lder Vand af Theepotten ud paa et Stykke TUi, hun holder, det er SnUr livet; Reenlighed er en god Ting! den hvide Kjole h)nger paa Knagen, den er ogsaa vadsket i Theepotten og tUrret paa Taget; den tager hun paa, det safransgule TUrkl)de om Halsen, saa skinner Kjolen mere hvid. Benet i Veiret! see hvor hun kneiser paa een Stilk! jeg kan see mig selv! jeg kan see mig selv!" "Det bryder jeg mig slet ikke om!" sagde Gerda. "Det er ikke noget at fort)lle mig!" og saa lUb hun til Udkanten af Haven. (Andersen 1964, 601). [“I can see myself, I can see myself,” said the narcissus. “Oh, oh, how wonderfully I smell! Up in the attic room, a little dancer is standing half dressed; one minute she stands on one leg, then on two, and she kicks at the whole world. But she is just a mirage. She pours water from the kettle on a piece of cloth she is holding. It is her corset – cleanliness is a good thing! Her white dress is hanging on a hook; it has also been washed in the

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teakettle and is drying on the roof. Now she puts it on, a saffron-colored kerchief around her neck; now the dress seems even whiter. Lift your leg in the air. See how she is holding herself on her stem. I can see myself! I can see myself!” “I don't care about it at all!” said Gerda. “That is no story to tell me!” and with that she ran to the end of the garden.]

As mentioned, Gerda has no time for being self-absorbed, since she is absorbed with her quest, and so she leaves. At this point in the narrative, the third story ends and Gerda continues her quest for her playmate Kay. The nineteenth-century language of flowers helps the reader to gain further insight into each inset tale and the whole of “The Snow Queen.” Rather than as irrelevant or “sticky” as has been said, Andersen wants the reader to see these tales as a microcosm of what the life cycle of a human, perhaps specifically a female human, is in the nineteenth century. The embedded tales are suggestive of the Bildung the reader expects from the tale, but is denied. Perhaps, they foreshadow that there will be no Bildung, since Gerda seems only to understand those stories that are innocent or childish despite having entered into a maturation quest. Back to our daisy in the tale “The Daisy.” Andersen may have been using a daisy not only because it is a wildflower juxtaposed to the cultivated flowers, but also in the vocabulary of the language of flowers to underscore the innocence of the character. It would be interesting to know exactly where Andersen had gotten his information on the language of flowers, if that is at all possible. There are many cultural things in life we grasp though we ourselves are not sure how we learned them. Considering Andersen’s use of visual and emblematic art in his tales certainly leads to a deeper understanding of his texts.

Works Cited Jean Hersholt. 1949. The Complete Andersen. 6 vols. New York. Andersen, Hans Christian. 1964. H.C. Andersens Eventyr II. Ed. Erik Dal. Hans Reitzels Forlag: Copenhagen. —. 1974. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Trans. Erik Christian Haugaard. Foreword by Virginia Haviland. Doubleday: N.Y. —. 1990. H.C. Andersens Eventyr VII: Kommentar. Eds. Erling Nielsen and Flemming Hovmann. Hans Reitzels Forlag: Copenhagen. —. 2004. Hans Christian Andersen: Fairy Tales. Trans. Tiina Nunnally. Introduction by Jackie Wullschlager:. Viking: N.Y. —. 2008. The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen. Trans. Maria Tatar

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and Julie Allen. Notes by Maria Tatar. W.W. Norton & Co: NW. B. R. 1852. Le langage emblématique des fleurs d'apr3s leurs propriétés naturelles, leur historique, la consécration ancienne et l'usage, avec la nomenclature des différents sentiments dont chaque fleur est le symbole, suivi de la signification des fleurs et de leur emploi pour l'expression des pensées. Paris : Ruel Ainé. Bedaux, Jan Baptist. 1987. “Fruit and Fertility: Fruit Symbolism in Netherlandish Portraiture of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 17, No. 2/3: 150-168. Bredsdorff, Elias. 1975. Hans Christian Andersen: The Story of his Life and Work, 1805-75. New York: Scribner. Carter, Annie B. 1937. "Shakespeare Gardens: Design, Plants, and Flower Lore" Philadelphia, PA. Elliott, Brent. 1984. "The Victorian Language of Flowers" In Vickery, Roy (ed.); Cannon, J. F. M. (foreword). Plant-Lore Studies. London: Folklore Soc. London: Mistletoe Ser. 18:. Griswold, R.W. 1854. Gift of flowers; or, Love's wreath. Leavitt & Allen. Gerard, John. 1633. Herball: The herball or Generall historie of plantes. Gathered by Iohn Gerarde of London Master in Chirurgerie very much enlarged and amended by Thomas Iohnson citizen and apothecarye of London. London: Printed by Adam Islip Ioice Norton and Richard Whitakers. Greenway, Kate. 1884. The Language of Flowers. London: Routledge. Haass, Sabine. 1988. “Speaking Flowers and Floral Emblems: The Victorian Language of Flowers.” Word and Visual Imagination: Studies in the Interaction of English Literature and the Visual Arts. Eds. Karl Josef Höltgen, Daly, Peter M. Daly, Wolfgang Lottes. Erlangen: Univ.-Bibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg: 241-267. Lederer, Wolfgang. 1986. The Kiss of The Snow Queen: Hans Christian Andersen and Man’s redemption by Woman. U of California P: Berkeley. Leneveux, Louise. 1832. Les Fleurs emblématiques: etiennes des anniversaires contenant le langage allégorique des fleurs, l'art de choisir celles qu'il convient d'offrir a chaque sexe et a chaque age, et la mani3re de les arranger en bouquets emblématique ; Seize planches gravées avec le plus grand soin, représentent soixante-quatre des plus jolies fleurs, dessinées d'apres nature. Paris : Mme Leneveux.

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Martin, Louis-Aimé. 1835. Langage et embl3me des fleurs: contenant le symbole et le langage des fleurs, leur histoire et origine mythologique, ainsi que les plus jolis vers composés a ce sujet. Paris: Ador et Compagnie. Mortensen, Klaus P. 1989. Svanen og skyggen: historien om unge Andersen. KUbenhavn : Gad. SUrensen, Lisa. 1976. “Bachelor Goes a-wooing.” Hans Christian Andersen – Danish Journal. Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sanders, Karin. 1992. "Nemesis of Mimesis: The Problem of Representation in H. C. Andersen's Psychen." Scandinavian Studies 64, 1: 1-25. Seaton, Beverly. 1995. The Language of Flowers: A History. UP of Virginia: Charlottesville. Shakespeare, William. 1980. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 3rd ed. Ed. David Bevington. Foresman and Co.: Glenview Il. Hindman Sandra. 1981. “Pieter Bruegel’s Children’s Games, Folly, and Chance.” The Art Bulletin 63, No. 3: 447-475. Otten Charlotte. 1978. Ophelia’s ‘Long Purples’ or ‘Dead Men’s Fingers’ Shakespeare Quarterly 29, No. 3. Percival, Southey, Bryant, Moore, Willis, et al. 1848. The box of jewels : comprising The uneducated wife, The language of flowers, Flora's dictionary, Soldier's wife, The language of love, &c. &c. &c. Hartford : S. Andrus and son. (London 1835 for 4th ed.) Prosperetti, Andrea. 2004. “Bubbles.” Physics of Fluids. 16, No. 6: 18521865.

PROLEGOMENA TO A NON-EXTANT TRANSLATION OF DET GRAA HUS GEORGE C. SCHOOLFIELD

The troubled composition of Herman Bang’s so-called memoir-novel, Det graa Hus, the sequel to Det hvide Hus of 1898, can be traced in his letters to the parasitic object of his affections, Fritz Boesen.1 The novel was well underway by May of 1900; Bang hoped that Boesen would “find it good some day…you surely demand the most of me.” The next month, Bang reported to Boesen, doing national service with the Danish fleet, that on his daily work-list were equal amounts of lessons (to aspiring actors, such as Boesen, and actresses), articles, and Det graa Hus. “And so to bed. Adieu, Skipper.” A couple of days later, June 19, he described a squabble he had had with his sister Nini about pencil markings in their late mother’s copy of Frederik Paludan-Müller’s Danserinden (1833); to Nini’s indignation, he had declared that they were made by the mother’s hand, “so that one could read in her open soul.” These were the seven stanzas of ottava rima, about rejected love, read by the Mother, Stella, as a climax to Part II of Det graa Hus. On August 9, Bang expatiated on the monumentality he strove to achieve: “May God grant that I succeed, so that it will turn out the way I want. So that pain would become marble, and contempt would become the pain of a great man’s life. I’d like so much, of course, that everything in the book would have the effect, as it were, of pride and serenity.” The great man was Bang’s grandfather, Oluf (Ole) Lundt Bang (1788-1877), the physician of whom the novel’s main figure,

1

Bang, Breve til Fritz. 1951. All translations are by the present writer.

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called variously “His Excellency,”2 “Uncle Hvide,” “Grandpapa Hvide,” and simply “Hvide,” was a “distorted” portrait.3 A year later, on July 9, 1901, Bang told Boesen – with whom his friendship had become so strained that he suffered one of his numerous nervous breakdowns – that he had interrupted work to write, in short order, another “novel,” the long novella “Ravnene,”4 about an ancient maiden lady and her relatives – see Luke 12:24: “[the ravens] neither sow nor reap” – who want to inherit her fortune. Bang assured Boesen that he had been well provided for in Bang’s will. On September 29, 1901, Bang dragged himself to his desk once again to continue Det graa Hus, and by New Year’s Day, 1902, the book had been published: “You and you alone are the one who has driven me to write it.” It bore the same dedication as Det hvide Hus, “Til en Ven,” and reprinted its predecessor’s second epigraph (the first, now dropped, was a son’s tribute to his mother from Georg Hirschfeld’s play Agnes Jordan). The retained epigraph was Thomas Haynes Bayly’s “Tell me the tales that to me were so dear, long, long ago, long, long ago.” The lines prepared well enough for the childhood paradise of Det hvide Hus; here they were meant to be a reminder, one supposes, of Bang’s and Boesen’s former happiness. Bayly’s words surely do not fit the text that follows.5 Grandfather Bang had been the generous protector of the unenthusiastic law-student and would-be actor, Herman, during the youth’s first Copenhagen years, after the insanity and death, in 1875, of Herman’s father, Pastor Frederik Ludvig Bang. Herman composed a poetic tribute on his grandfather’s passing (“Your name will shine, while the ages pass”), and, a year later, a prose memorial, “‘Gamle Bang’: Løse Erindringer om min Bedstefader,” this “little, powerful, rosy-cheeked man 2

“Old Bang" had been made “Etatsraad” in 1836, “Konferensraad” in 1848, and “Gehejmekonferensraad” in 1874, which title Herman Bang simplified into “Excellensen.” When His Excellency arrives without warning at the Brahe mansion, the servant forgetfully announces him as “Konferensraaden.” Baroness Brahe and her daughters call him “Onkel Hvide.” 3 Jacobsen 1954: 70: “In the book about Det graa Hus, [Bang] later stylized the picture of his grandfather and distorted [fortegnede] it.” 4 Ravnene: To Fortællinger (1902). The story, consisting largely of a dinner, with middle-class guests, at Frøken Sejer’s, is a counterpart to the mostly noble reception and dinner in Det graa Hus. In the novel, alluding to Luke 12:24, His Excellency implies that the daughter of the financier Glud is just such a raven: “Consider the ravens for they neither sow nor reap.” 5 There is also an envoy, from D’Annunzio’s La Gioconda, a lachrymose dialogue between Sirenetta and Silvia, in Danish translation, beginning with Sirenetta’s: “Have you wept?”

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with the bushy eyebrows and the twinkling eyes.” Then, in “Hvordan jeg blev Forfatter” (1891), Bang recalled the old man’s openhandedness toward him and others, but also mentioned the physician’s growing weakness and his depression, brought on in particular by the depletion of his fortune. Neither in the poem nor the memorial does the grandfather, as remembered, quite resemble the heroic figure, looking in the mirror as he washes himself at the opening of Det graa Hus: “his body was gnarled and strong like a piece of timber…against the white wall it was outlined like a giant’s shadow.”6 The structure of Det hvide Hus is loose and lyric; a German commentator called it “Schubertian music in words” (Grossmann 1917: 546); it proceeds through a year at a parsonage on the south Danish island of Als. Perhaps to increase the hoped-for monumental effect, Det graa Hus follows the physician through a single day. The forenoon includes, i.a., an office visit from a single patient, and the physician’s stops at the mansion of the noble Brahes, at a war-widow’s, and at the apartment of Glud, who handles the Hvide finances. Some of the afternoon’s events are His Excellency’s reading of a reproachful letter from a son, Hans Hvide, a large reception at the Gray House, and the Mother’s reading of Danserinden. The late afternoon and evening pass with a second visit to Glud, a gala dinner at the Gray House, Hvide’s summons to the death-bed of Emmely Brahe (he once again resembles a giant), and his return home. The novel-of-a-single day had become popular in the fin de siècle. The Francophile Bang may have known Henri Céard’s Une belle journée (1881) – supposed, by the way, to have suggested the conformation of Ulysses to Joyce – and may have borrowed its title (not its content!) for “En deilig Dag” (1890). The structure was adapted by Carl Spitteler for Conrad der Leutnant (1898); Arthur Schnitzler’s “Leutnant Gustl” famously extends from 9:45 at night to 4:45 the next morning, a story which may or may not, in its stream of consciousness, have imitated another time-compressed novel, Eduard Dujardin’s Les Lauriers sont coupés (1888). Compression lay in the air: Bang himself composed Sommerglæder in 1902; again, events are crowded into a single day at a suddenly popular and ill-prepared country inn. Some ninety characters are squeezed into as many pages; Det graa Hus has only fifty odd.

6

Poem, memorial and essay are reprinted in Fra de unge Aar: Artikler og Skitser 1878-1885 (1956). The essay first appeared in book form in Ti Aar: Erindringer og Hændelser (1891) and then in Blandede Skrifter: Værker i Mindeudgave (1912) VI: 74-83. Det graa Hus first appeared at Schubothe in 1891. All translations are based on the text in Smaa Romaner: Værker i Mindeudgave I.

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The year of the action emerges from conversations at the reception and the dinner. The Russo-Turkish War, lasting from April, 1877, to January, 1878, aroused great interest in Denmark (as in England), not only because of the much reported Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria preceding the war, but because of interwoven royal houses. Dagmar, the daughter of Christian IX, “Europe’s father-in-law,” was the wife, as Maria Feodorovna, of the Czarevitch, Alexander (III in spe), just as her sister, Alexandra, was married to Victoria’s son, Albert Edward (the future Edward VII). Among the earliest guests at the reception are two spinsters from Vallø, a Lutheran cloister (or retirement home) for the well-born; the elder member of this somewhat daffy pair, sometime lady-in-waiting to the late Mariane of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (the second wife of the raffish Frederik VII, divorced like the first), expresses her concern for “the poor imperial [i.e. Romanov] family.” The wife of His Excellency, “Hendes Naade,” Her Grace, distractedly chimes in with sympathy for the Danish queen, Louise von Hessen-Kassel, Alexandra’s and Dagmar’s mother. The newspapers, the ladies from Vallø rattle on, contain so many horror stories that they dream of blood filling their beds. His Excellency makes no bones about his pro-Turkish bias: in their indifference, the Turks are the most reasonable people on earth, caring only about their hookahs. The comical Turkish references continue at the dinner; Baron Rosenkrands, recently an observer at the Balkan front, entertains with a report that the Sultan would have abdicated, were it not for the hullabaloo raised by his devoted harem. The date in His Excellency’s appointment-book is February 28,7 the date also given, with Friday added, by Fritz, His Excellency’s other son, in response to a question from his wife, Stella. (The couple is visiting Copenhagen, and the Gray House, from the manse on Als.) Bang’s biographer, Harry Jacobsen, states that February 28 had an inexplicable sense of ill omen for the superstitious author.8 At the reception, feeling that “the air is full of misfortune,” Stella tells an anonymous “son of a famous man”9 that she hates “all eights” and adds that the number resembles foot-irons.

7

Bang fudges a little with dates. The Russian declaration of war did not come until April 28, 1877 but Russian volunteers had gone off to aid the Serbs in 1876, as Count Vronsky does in Anna Karenina. 8 Jacobsen 1966: 97. On p. 208, Jacobsen also brings up Bang’s panic at being assigned to Cabin 8 on the steamer to the United States. 9 The identity of the “famous man” and his aged son, “the candidate,” who is editing his late father’s writings, never becomes clear. The latter claims that “five 17s” have played an important role in his father’s life, an unhelpful clue. The

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The date also seems fateful in another quarter. One of His Excellency’s morning calls is to Fru Urne, whose husband, a general-staff officer, fell in the disastrous war of 1864 against Prussia and Austria. Above His Excellency, as he sits in her parlor, hang pictures and swords wrapped in crepe. Fru Urne thanks him for remembering her “today. On a day such as this, everything is torn open again.” Is it the anniversary of Urne’s death? She questions the purpose of his sacrifice; the “land” (she wants to say “fatherland” but cannot) “is betrayed daily and lives on scraps.” At the reception, having expressed his contempt for Denmark’s present politicians, His Excellency – given to sudden movements – lifts his hand toward a picture of General de Meza in a golden frame. “We had one general – he was my friend, and I know what he suffered.” Christian Julius de Meza (1782-1865) had been acclaimed as the victor in the Slesvig Wars of 1848-51, “the Danish Napoleon,” and became commander-in-chief in 1864, but was forced to resign that post on February 28. Earlier that month, de Meza had extracted his troops from the Dannevirke, the (indefensible) first line of defense; become the object of public opprobrium and a recluse, he was said to have died of a broken heart. Does His Excellency remember the black day of de Meza’s removal? Det graa Hus is a lamentation, with illustrative figures, for Denmark’s decline during His Excellency’s long life. (Oluf Lundt Bang had served as a surgeon in the Student Corps when Copenhagen was bombarded by the British fleet in 1807.) A question by His Excellency, about the slaughter of the outgunned Turks, is directed to a veteran of another war, a Baron with an “octogenarian cadet’s face.” He has lost a leg in 1814, fighting the Swedes in the futile attempt of “Christian Frederik of Norway” (the future Christian VIII of Denmark) to maintain a link to the old Twin Empire, Denmark-Norway; Norway was compelled to enter the “Personal Union” under the Swedish crown. The one-legged Baron speaks a “wornout Norwegian” – such details are among the little delights Bang frequently provides. Another guest is Chamberlain Urne, evidently without connection to the widow of the forenoon – Bang’s insouciance with names can drive his devotés to distraction. Before “The Loss” of 1864, he was “Overpresident” of the Supreme Court at Kiel, and is writing an account of his time in the lost Duchies. (He recalls that Stella and Fritz have stayed “over there,” i.e. on Als, incorporated into Prussian Schleswig-Holstein; Fritz replies that they regard it as their duty.) The Baron and the Chamberlain (and Fru Urne’s husband and General de Meza) are not the seventy-year-old lyricist with long hair and a “high shirt-breast,” who recalls H.C. Andersen and the Nysø circle, is another mystery. He buttonholes one of the politicians at the reception, hoping to get a state subvention.

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only reminders of the past; the one-legged doorman at the Gray House is a veteran, perhaps of the Slesvig Wars, perhaps of the bombardment at Dybbøl, which broke the Danish army. An Austrian diplomat, Count Clary, attends the reception, and perforce walks on eggs; the Austrians had been the allies of the Prussians in 1864. The Count tells how he has visited Flensburg and Dybbøl the previous summer, a respectful sightseer. Chamberlain Urne, recalling the brave Danish defense, states: “we live in the shadow of the old barricades,” and is corrected, with polite ambiguity, by Clary: “the fire of the muzzles of Dybbøl will shine through history.” Does he mean the old-fashioned muzzle-loaders of the Danes, or the Prussians’ efficient breech-loaders and massed artillery? Resembling “a pillar,” His Excellency loans Clary’s words another meaning: “That may be the fire of the volleys of honor over our grave.” The ambassador chides His Excellency for having so little faith in his own people, but His Excellency responds with his own ambiguity: he does not speak of the people (“Folket”), “a people lives long and as well as it can.” Only the great families (“Slægtene”) count, “which die and whose works can be judged.” This trio on Denmark’s fate between Urne, Clary and His Excellency has a tiny coda. Harriette, the “Marschalinde,”10 a girlhood friend of Stella who has married well in Austria and now returns unexpectedly to Denmark for the first time in twenty years, asks Stella about “Generalinden Rye.” Harriette means Elise Henriette Rye (1817-1882), the third wife and widow of Olaf Rye, the Norwegian-born Danish patriot who fell leading a sally out of the besieged town of Fredericia (June 2, 1849), before the Danish garrison was saved by de Meza. Rye lived on in patriotic memory. Danish speakers are allowed to cross (with Prussian permission) for an evening concert at a decaying Danish border town in Bang’s De uden Fædreland (1906); they sing “The Song of General Rye” – “For on the field of battle Olaf Rye lies.” As young Herman Bang noted in the memorial, Oluf Lundt Bang, easy and democratic in his ways, was nonetheless an aristocrat in his concept of

10

Harry Jacobsen (1974: 60-66) identifies Harriette as one Fru von Hertz, née David, who had returned to Copenhagen from Vienna after the death of her first husband, an engineer; Herman Bang boarded with her – not with his grandfather – and was her twelve-year-old son’s tutor. Going back to Vienna, she married a “Feldmarschallleutnant” named von Hofinger. The Marschalinde’s title inevitably causes an association in the reader’s mind with the Marschallin, Marie-Therèse von Werdenberg, in Der Rosenkavallier of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, which lay a decade in the future.

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himself and his lineage.11 Just so, the “Herman de Bang” of the author’s calling cards was a firm believer in the bluebloodedness of his paternal line, a belief not much more firmly founded than Wilde’s in his descent from the kings of Ireland and Rilke’s in his from the “Uradel” of Carinthia. The protagonist of Bang’s much revised first novel, Haabløse Slægter (1881), William Høg, consoles himself by dreaming of his descent from the historical Hvide family; in Det graa Hus, the Hvide coat of arms is on display throughout the apartment. Told to sit up straight by his grandfather, young Fritz Hvide (not the son of Fritz and Stella but of Hans Hvide) bumps his head on a chair-back’s scutcheon. The Hvides’ voluptuous housekeeper, Arkadia, beats the curtains, sending up clouds of dust around the embroidered Hvide scutcheons. (She opens the windows wide, airing out the rooms as if she were airing out a century.) The armstrap in His Excellency’s coach, embroidered with the Hvide scutcheon, trembles from his rage as he leaves the Brahe mansion. Trying to hide the door to His Excellency’s study, and to muffle a particularly painful interview between the physician and Hans Hvide, Fritz, the latter’s brother, lets the curtains fall, black velvet, adorned with the Hvide crest. On his second visit to the sinister Glud, to obtain the 30,000 crowns which Hans owes and for which he has forged his father’s name, His Excellency stamps the receipt with his signet ring, on which the Hvide scutcheon is engraved. All these episodes point, with not a little obviosity, toward the Hvides’ ruin. And at the dinner, the company drinks an ancient wine from goblets where the Hvide scutcheon shines. “It is like blood,” Lydia Rosenkrands says, and His Excellency amplifies: “like blood and fire, my child.” The wine is a Tokay, the last of the eighteen bottles the Hvides own, a gift from “a deceased Prince of Philipsthal.” (The Prince is a hapax legomenon and an enigma; he must have belonged to a sub-line of the House of Hessen-Kassel.) 11

See Harry Jacobsen, “Herman Bangs excellence,” op.cit.: 26-40. Jacobsen’s reference (with misleading volume and page numbers) to Henrik Steffens’ Was ich erlebte could have been much expanded. In the first, full edition of Steffens’ great autobiography (Breslau: Josef Marx, 1844), I: 207-214 and V: 32-33, Steffens (1773-1845) has much to tell about an earlier and prideful Bang generation. His mother was a sister of both the “Generalprokurator” (Attorney General), Oluf Lundt Bang the Elder (1731-1789) and the professor of medicine Frederik Ludvig Bang (1747-1820), the father of Oluf Lundt Bang II (1747-1820), Herman Bang’s grandfather, “der jetzige allgemein geachtete und vielbeschäftigte Arzt.” (The “Generalprokurator” had been ennobled as “de Bang” in 1777, a reward for his services in the prosecution of Queen Caroline Mathilde during the trial of her lover, Struensee.)

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Early on the morning of February 28, His Excellency attempts to instruct his grandson Fritz, whom he calls “en Sildeføding” (an epigone), about some titans of the Danish Golden Age. But he undercuts his examples. The sculptor Thorvaldsen “doubtless the greatest, as a mummer [Komediant] too, for that’s a part of it, … He went around as if he were clad in antique garb himself, and intending to burn incense before his own marble.” But Thorvaldsen was moved, in a moment of clarity, to say about his own work: “It’s all very pretty, of course.” Oehlenschläger12 died roaring about his Sokrates, which no one deigned to read; Heiberg gazed at the stars (“in the event anyone believes it”). His Excellency concludes, correctly, that Fritz is not listening and has come for a loan. Expressing his contempt for Denmark’s present-day politicians at the dinner, His Excellency continues to call up memories of Denmark’s past. He asks what thanks the conservative jurist Anders Sandøe (Ørsted, 17781860) and the statesman (Christian Albrecht) Bluhme (1794-1866) got – presumably for their efforts to preserve the old Danish-Germany monarchy; now, were they alive, “the Bishop of New Zealand” could flatter them and lead them to the Dannevirke. The object of His Excellency’s scornful phantasy is D.G. Monrad (1811-1887), the churchman, orator and politician, who, after 1864, had migrated briefly to New Zealand, before returning as bishop of Lolland-Falster, and who, for a time after his return, advocated disarmament in the face of Prussian power. The conversation meanders: Anders Sandøe’s name makes old Geheimeraadinde Augusta Rappe, laughing her male laugh, remember his brother, Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851), the physicist, whose “way of striding” she admired. His Excellency remembers something more important, Ørsted’s discovery of electricity, “Ariadne’s thread,” which leads the after-dinner conversation past Darwin to Empedocles on Etna; according to His Excellency, he was “first to understand” and committed suicide. Never having heard of Empedocles, Harriette tries to go in another direction by conjuring up, very vaguely, many (great) men who have passed through the rooms of the Gray House. For His Excellency, the railings around their graves are all that remains of them. Baron Eck, the guest of honor, thinking of H.C. Ørsted’s discovery, adds: “[and] the telegraph lines over the earth.” His Excellency, never missing a chance to preach his black gospel, finishes Eck’s phrase off with “in order to

12

Until the poet’s death (1850), the Oehlenschlägers lived, one flight up, in the same building as the Bangs. In Det hvide Hus, it is recalled that Stella, the Mother, had run away from her engagement dinner, fleeing up the stairs to sit, in tears, at the Oehlenschlägers’ door.

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increase human lies!” Countess Schulin wonders what has gotten into His Excellency; she has a sensation that “the floor is rocking.” Beneath His Excellency’s national and cultural pessimism lies a contempt for mankind, an awareness of the vanity of its existence, ruled by the sexual drive. (Count Clary, summing up, will find him not perversely clever or shocking but “like someone in despair.”) “Propagation must be served,” he tells his grandson on the latter’s visit. “Let them beget and die. That’s what they’ve done for eons. Let them keep on with it and not give themselves airs. They invent and devise and build cities and create fame for themselves… [But] it’s all the same to nature. The earth will grow cold someday, like mankind.” In the evening, he puts his reductive lesson more pointedly. True to his habit, he has drunk only water at the banquet, from a goblet engraved with the Wendish crown, a gift from Mariane of Mecklenburg-Strelitz; presently, however, he asks his grandson’s “Armenian servant” for a glass of champagne. (Shortly, he will break his rule a second time, with the Philipsthal Tokay.) He takes up a thought cast out by Baron Eck (about to leave on some unspecified mission to SachsenAnhalt): for Eck, life consists of shadows on a suspended sheet. His Excellency adds: “Aren’t all shadow-plays governed by an erect finger?”13 Bold Aunt Augusta laughs in her bass voice, the gentlemen grow red in the face, Professor Berger, Hvide’s former assistant, discreetly changes the subject. Schnitzler’s notorious dialogue-drama, Reigen (from 1901, like Det graa Hus) presents ten pairs in a round dance, chancily linked by the sexual act; Det graa Hus has a baker’s dozen of examples of couples or individuals beset (or occasionally enjoying) what His Excellency regards as the radix malorum. The Rosenkrandses are happy newlyweds; Aunt Augusta remarks, admiringly and mockingly, on Lydia’s bosom, richly exposed. Arkadia takes pleasure in her power over the frustrated clerks in the basement wine-shop and looks down with satisfaction at her white calves, but when last spotted by the Mother, she implores “Frederiksen” to let her go. Baron Preben, the fiancé of tubercular Emmely Brahe, hastens her death by his insistence that they go out riding; he is impatient, like Jørgen, fleetingly mentioned, engaged to the daughter of Countess Schulin. The Countess herself seems resigned; she looks at her husband sitting, “broad and powerful,” at the card table, “like someone who has retained his good and many-sided appetites through the years.” She also tells Lydia Rosenkrands that Harriette has always loved Fritz, and “now 13 “Styres ikke all Skyggespil… af en oprakt Finger?” Did His Excellency know of the notoriously priapic mechanisms of Javanese shadow plays?

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she returns and sees how things have turned out.” Naïve Lydia Rosenkrands does not understand, and Countess Schulin calls her a child, predicting that life will teach her a few things. Other cases are touching, grotesque, or both. The widow Fru Urne confesses her shame to “Uncle Hvide” that she still feels desire for her late husband, and asks: “Why do we grow old so late?”, to which he replies: “Late or not at all.” Frøken Erichsen, Glud’s housekeeper for twenty years, small of waist, and high of bosom, still arouses the lust by which she controls him, paralyzed and deformed by a stroke (and fifteen years younger than the energetic Hvide). Glud places gold coins in her hand, simultaneously seizing it. She pulls her hand away: “The Konferensraad must rest now.” The sole patient to come to the office hour of His Excellency is the hunchback, Jomfru Villadsen; decades ago, by Caesarian section, he had delivered her child, the result of an encounter in the Dyrehavn with a member of the male sex (“Mandkøn”), who took pity on her. Grown now, her son has become a pimp or gigolo (“That’s a talent too,” Hvide says). He is a sexual animal like the mayor’s son in Det hvide Hus: Stella views the corpse after he is shot by accident; its face, she tells her husband, was empty – people ought to grow old before they die, so that suffering will have given them “some sort of soul.” The incision causes Villadsen discomfort; His Excellency offers no consolation: “After-pains follow pleasures.” In an epilogue to Villadsen’s visit, His Excellency tells his son Fritz that “in the world there ought to be more of the beasts that eat their own young!” Fritz (who loves his father) teases him, mock formally: “His Excellency’s maxims [Sentenser] are criminal,” to which the nonagenarian, never at a loss for words, replies: “The truth is always criminal, because it is the truth…” The story of little Jomfru Villadsen, in her perky Tyrolean hat, seated on the edge of her chair so that her feet will touch the floor, her face stretched forward and her mouth twisted by tears so that she resembles a toad, could stand by itself as one of Bang’s short masterpieces, on a level with “Irene Holm” or “Franz Pander” (which Hofmannsthal so admired), in its mixture of cruelty and sympathy toward its subject. Terrified, Jomfru Villadsen tries to excuse her night of love by the defense that: “One’s human, after all.” His Excellency hurls out a contemptuous “Yes!” as if a stone were thrown through the room. Yet he inquires after her present life, and, as she leaves, presses her clammy fingers, although he seldom shakes hands. His Excellency knows that Villadsen ekes out an existence by tending the infants of some very suspect “sisters” (members of the pimp’s stable?). Both the very low and the very high visit the Gray House. While His

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Excellency has his turbulent interview with Hans Hvide, “His Royal Highness” arrives for a pleasant duty call. (His Excellency has been physician to the court, and knows, for example, that “Her Majesty, the Queen Dowager,” i.e. Caroline Amalie [1796-1881], the widow of Christian VIII, is suffering from stomach ache, an intimate tidbit of news he will throw out to the dinner guests.)14 HRH does not intend to stay long – he carries his hat with him. He jokes with His Excellency about the Grand Cross his host has just received from HRH’s brother, George I of Greece, he inquires after his health and that of the Baron-Cadet, he compliments Chamberlain Urne on his book about the Duchies, he makes the rounds of the ladies. All of a sudden, His Excellency reminds him, as he converses politely about the museums of Vienna and Prague with the Marschalinde, that the Hofjægermesterinde, Fru von Eichwald, has just come from those parts. Pressing his hat still more tightly against his embonpoint, without introduction, HRH asks her if her husband, the Hofjægermester, is in town. The chambers fall silent. As she bows low, she replies that he is at their estate, Egehøj. HRH’s next words are a nonsequitur, “Yes, Vienna is a handsome city,” and these words, “torn loose,” are heard throughout three rooms. The implication of the byplay is that HRH knows the Hofjægermesterinde all too well, and has been having an affair with her; the gesture with the hat is involuntarily defensive. If His Excellency’s intent is to embarrass Fru von Eichwald, Glud’s daughter, he does not succeed. The painful scene is interrupted by an accident. Etatsraadinde Mouritzen, crowding in behind Fru von Eichwald, knocks the cover off the cage of the parrot Poppe with “the lowest and plumpest part of her back.”15 Readers are presented with a double challenge; they must guess at the undercurrents in the dialogue and stage-gestures, and exercise their knowledge of the House of Glücksborg. HRH is Frederik, first son of Christian IX, elder brother of George of Greece (né Vilhelm) and Karl (destined, twenty-eight years hence, to become King Haakon VII of an independent Norway). Like his brother-in-law in Britain, Frederik had to wait a long time for the throne (not becoming Denmark’s king until 14

Oluf Lundt Bang was a great favorite of Caroline Amalie; she paid him a birthday visit during the last summer of his life, arriving at his Klampenborg vacation home in her royal coach. 15 Something like Wilde in his repeated descriptions of screechy female voices in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Bang mocked outsized features of the female anatomy. The Mother in Det hvide Hus remembers, amidst laughter, the bosom of Louise Rasmussen, Frederik VII’s mistress and then, as Countess Danner, his morganatic wife: “One does not display such mountains of flesh, even in the mirror.”

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1906), and, like “Edward the Caresser,” he avoided his wife as much as possible. An earlier case of royal and adulterous highjinks turns up during His Excellency’s unexpected visit to Lehnsbaronesse Brahe. Caught in her housecoat, the noble lady is disconcerted because he will learn that the Brahes have engaged another physician in his stead, and frightened because Emmely and Preben have gone out riding, against his instructions: she twitters about the Court and the health of the “Arveprindsesse” (hereditary princess), who is holding up bravely. His Excellency’s comment is oblique: “One needn’t be descended from thirteen kings to wed a skirt-chaser and keep the household accounts for one’s doorman.” The Baroness gives the skirt-chaser a name, “Ferdinand,” adding: “All the same, that love remains the substance of life for her.” The players in this drama were Princess Caroline (1793-1881), the strikingly homely daughter of Frederik VI, and her adored spouse (from 1829), her cousin Ferdinand (1792-1863), Frederik VII’s uncle, a compulsive gambler and Don Juan, much caricatured in the Copenhagen press.16 A spasm cross His Excellency’s mobile face: “Yes, that’s the substance of life, to drag a millstone on one’s back.” The Baroness turns purplish red as she remembers His Excellency’s own marriage. The case of Stella, the Mother, enduring her unanswered passion for her husband Fritz, has been taken over from Det hvide Hus. There he was an often invisible presence, pacing in his room (shades of John Gabriel Borkman), or admonishing his wife for her liveliness. Now, he is transformed into a handsome man in the best years, something softly feminine in his eyes, the owner of a dimpled chin, walking among the young women at the reception like a gardener among his flowers. One predicts that he will make good use of the freedom Stella grants him after her (seemingly interminable) reading from Danserinden. Poor deprived Stella is sexually aware; she knew but would not sing the naughty words of the sausage-making songs at home on Als, and her interest in the possibly scandalous behavior of the manse’s servant-girls was a part of her 16

Theodor Fontane’s Unwiederbringlich (1893), which takes place on an estate near Glücksborg and in Copenhagen (and Hillerød) from 1859 to 1861, contains a feigned newspaper advertisement (Chapter 16) where “Prinz Ferdinand, Königliche Hoheit,”puts his IOUs, endorsed by his “Kammerassessor,” on sale as curiosities for collectors. In its great wealth of allusions to Danish personages and events on the eve of the War of 1864, Unwiederbringlich bears a notable resemblance to Det graa Hus; beyond its theme of marriage incompatibility, it was Fontane’s unsettling effort to paint a picture of Danish frivolity and immorality for a triumphalist German public.

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hebephrenic behavior. (She listened with apparent agreement to the query of her friend, Lady Lipton: “Is love anything other than feeling desire and being ashamed as one does?”) At the Gray House, she is plainly envious of the attention Arkadia gets from the gang in the wine-shop, straining like dogs at their chains. Observing their behavior, she tells Fritz that she will never understand the human appetite. Stella has also been slow to understand her father-in-law’s relation to his wife, Her Grace. The badinage at the dinner table enlightens her, at least in part. A cousin of Lydia Rosenkrands has run away from her husband, a week ago, and frank Augusta Rappe tells Lydia that she can imagine nothing more horrible than being loved by a man one does not love in return. (Two spots of red appear on the cheeks of Her Grace.) A question put by Harriette to Stella, as to whether she has ever been jealous, gets an evasive (but perhaps sharp-edged) reply: to be jealous, she would have to compare herself to others. The exchange catches His Excellency’s ear; with a voice Stella has never heard from him before, and a glance in his eyes she has never seen, he states, flat out, that, if never jealous, she has been happy after all. She can only say “Grandpapa,” yet, “looking into his face, it was as if she beheld a thousand things illuminated in a single bolt of lightning.” In the afternoon, to Etaatsraadinde Mouritzen – new to these circles, the blunderer who enters the Hvide apartment by the wrong door – the Hvides have seemed the ideal couple: “How seldom it is that one sees such a marriage.” The secret of His Excellency’s marriage puzzled even Peter Nansen, Bang’s good friend and publisher, who wanted some elucidations added to the text. Possibly, Bang was intentionally obscure, fearing the conclusions the public might draw about Professor Bang’s second wife. Oluf Lundt Bang had first married a barber-surgeon’s daughter, a “happy love match,” from which the author’s father sprang. Upon her early death, the physician, grown prominent, had wed the socially advantageous Sophie Marie Dahlerup, whom he loved, according to the necrology of 1878, “with all the strong sincerity of his prime.” Even when her mental powers failed, the husband saw “his maturity’s intelligent, beautiful companion” in her. She died in March, 1879, five months after Old Bang himself; it is just as well that Herman Bang’s step-grandmother did not live to see her semi-portrait in Det graa Hus. The clues about the marriage, in the novel, have to be assembled from several widely distributed passages. When the old doctor looks in on his sleeping wife at the start of his day (“it was a weakness of his, to eavesdrop on Her Grace’s talk as she slumbered”), she murmurs “Weimar, Weimar” and “Yes, Your Highness”; Hvide stands “like a pillar.” After

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she has awakened, he stands again before her bed “with a bowed head, in a quite remarkable posture – tender and fearful,” and is allowed to kiss the hand that emerges beneath the many covers. As she turns toward him, he sees her gray eyes through the darkness. She tries, as it were, to deprive him of a reason for living, telling him not to go out on calls: “there’s no one who waits for you.” Leaving the bedchamber, he bends down with an almost shy movement, letting his lips touch her forehead. At the petit déjeuner after his return, the scene is repeated; he looks at her with the same fearful glance and bows to touch her hair with his lips as she pulls away. Her Grace has kept a little of her former beauty. She pouts with lips whose lovely bow Lamartine himself had once admired. (The Hvides were invited everywhere, thanks to the physician’s international celebrity.) Now she complains about the cold in her bedchamber, which she thinks creeps up from what was formerly her wine cellar, turned by her husband, who needs money, into the wine-shop whose employees lust after Arkadia. She wants to move, and has her dame de compagnie read the classifieds to her. At the “second breakfast” (i.e. lunch), having learned that Hans has written, she becomes more friendly toward her husband, and extends her hands, “whose contour at the wrist was still beautiful”: he seizes them and kisses her forehead “with the same greedy movement as that with which he ate.” She still knows how to be flirtatious; at the second breakfast, she opens her mantilla, hoping to find out if her husband will reply to Hans’ letter. And she enjoys flattery. The Ambassador reminds her that she often stopped at Bad Gastein; Clary’s father, recalling his youth, mentioned her, and was wont to say: “Surely there were beautiful women in Denmark.” She has developed an aversion to water, quite unlike her husband, first seen at his morning ablutions, and washes in eau de cologne instead. She is blindly devoted to her son Hans, an alcoholic whose efforts to get money have driven His Excellency more and more into the clutches of Glud. The splendid brooch of her Grace, and her diamond necklace, gifts from Czar Nicholas of Russia, have vanished into Glud’s safe as securities against loans; the imitations she wears are the object of admiration, or suspicion, fingered by the nouvelle riche Etaatsraadinde Mouritzen, and Hofjægermesterinde Eichwald, Glud’s daughter.17 17 The two inquisitive ladies are developments of characters in Ludvigsbakke (1896). Fru von Eichwald is related, in name, to the hypocritical snob Fru von Eichbaum in that novel, and Fru Mouritzen resembles Fru Mourier, the wife of the “butter king” who has bought Ludvigsbakke Estate. The Gastein passage is played out against a background of social snubs; Her Grace speaks with the Ambassador

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As the reception runs down, His Excellency hears the name “Goethe” from a group gathered around a silhouette which “der Geheimrat” had once presented to His Excellency’s father, a great medical notability in his time. His Excellency praises Goethe, while hinting at his own greatness: Goethe attained what is possible for a human being, letting himself be honored as a god and having the right to do so, as he measured himself against others. The parrot Poppe, acquired by His Excellency and hated by Her Grace, cries its incessant “Fortuna fortis,” fortune is strong.18 The Ambassador, a catalyst in the chatter at this forerunner of the cocktail party, speaks of the distinguished Grand Ducal House of Weimar. Her Grace smiles, her face transformed, her dark blue (!) eyes shining; she has never seen, she says, such handsome men as the princes of the House. A flush, like “two bloody bolts of lightning,” spreads over the face of His Excellency, who seems to hear everything whenever Her Grace speaks. To make matters worse, she continues: “Those were unforgettable days in Weimar,” and His Excellency hurls more lightning bolts at his wife, making a movement with his arm as if he tugged at an invisible chain.19 Bang’s penchant for melodrama often gets the better of him. The letter written by Jægermester Hans Hvide from Thorsholm estate on February 26,20 and received by His Excellency two days later, is a long complaint: about the insufficiency of the funds His Excellency sends; about the way Hans, who wanted to be a physician but could not stand the sight of blood (assisting, it seems, at an unsuccessful operation by his father), has been forced into agriculture, for which he has no talent; about the estates, one after the other, his father has bought for him and which he is incapable of managing; about his father’s custom, which he cannot across Fru von Eichwald, seated between them, but does not introduce her; the lady, Glud’s daughter, turns pale, her eyelids hiding a sudden flash of her gray eyes. She will have her revenge in Section III, as she learns that His Excellency has fallen utterly into Glud’s power: “We need the Hvides no more.” 18 Somewhere, Poppe has picked up a garbled version of the familiar tag, “Fortuna fortes adjuvat,” “Fortune favors the brave.” 19 Lydia Rosenkrands dislikes Rome because “it’s really too much,” like Michelangelo, to whose “distortions” she also objects. His Excellency seems to agree; “That’s what the man wanted. He knew the fetters and knew how they were tied.” 20 Hans Hvide’s title, “Jægermester,” “Master of the Hunt,” is an honorific, a sop presumably obtained for him from the court by his father. Thorsholm is also the estate owned by the declining Maag family in Bang’s second novel, Faedra: Brudstykker af et Livs Historie (1882); Ellen Maag, who marries Lehnsgreve Urne (!) and falls in love with his son Carl, is Faedra’s unhappy heroine, and Ellen Urne (1885) is Bang’s dramatization.

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understand, of letting the purchases go through Glud’s hands – his father’s arrangements with Glud have always been to Hans’ disadvantage.21 The letter implies both that Fritz has been his father’s favorite, and that his father wanted Hans out of the way, out of sight in the countryside. Already tipsy, Hans appears at the Gray House during the reception. His Excellency is summoned from the Goethe conversation to deal with him, and learns that he must give him 30,000 crowns at once, to pay off the promissory notes on which Hans has forged his name. Treated with customary contempt by his father – who knows or very strongly suspects that Hans is the biological son of a Prince of Weimar – Hans gives way to anger, “like an animal that has been beaten.” He charges the physician with not having helped him enough when he could (alluding to the medical career Hans wanted to follow, despite his haemophobia, or to his vicissitudes in farming), and then asks an accusatory question, answering it himself with a puzzle: “Why? Why? … Because you got yourself paid there, where you wanted” (“Fordi Du har taget Dig betalt… der, hvor Du vilde”). Bang later partly explained the outcry in a letter, quoted by Harry Jacobsen in his biography: “his Excellency, throughout a long marriage, purchased his own wife (conversation with son).”22 Her Grace prostituted herself to her husband (who was “paid” in sexual intercourse) and put aside what she got for her services, to pass it along to the ever needy Hans. (Even now, she makes the maid, Sofie, ask His Excellency for household money, which will go the same route; His Excellency shouts at the 21 An unraveling of the tenebrous affairs between His Excellency, the Jægermester, and Glud would be almost impossible. The clean-shaven man who forces his way into His Excellency’s carriage (claiming that he has had “that transaction” with Hans Hvide) in Part I, reappears outside Glud’s residence at the opening of Part III: he is one of Glud’s agents. His Excellency turns his stocks over to Glud, to get the money required by Hans to pay the due-bills with the forged signatures; the clean-shaven man will presumably receive the money from Hans Hvide and give the sum to Glud, a circular scam. In the meantime, Hans has appeared at Glud’s house on the morning of February 28 (so one learns from Hansen, Glud’s assistant) to borrow still more money. Konferensraad Glud may well be a much unhealthier version of the all-powerful Konferensraad in Stuk (1887). Bang imitates Balzac as he ventures into the muddy waters of financial skullduggery. In the essay “Balzac II” in Kritiske Studier og Udkast (Schubothe, 1880), Bang noted that Balzac’s own “unhappy life [was] an endless series of constantly shorter intervals between two due-dates.” 22 Quoted in Jacobsen 1966: 94. Astrid Jensen and Jytte Jonker 1978: 130-131, give a summary of the sordid arrangement: “Excellencen has to buy his wife’s love (if we may call it that) by paying for her love child Hans. But because he pays such a little at a time, Hendes Naade has to prostitute herself again and again.”

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terrified woman, “Who is the thief in this house?”) The word “betale” has already been used by Her Grace in a monologue after Sofie has been sent on her errand. The face of Her Grace is contorted by pain or disgust: “I am the one who must be tormented and pay.” (“Det er mig, der skal pines og betale”), she cries as she strikes the strong-box in which she has hoarded her earnings. She has had to pay in self-loathing. As Her Grace goes, caneless, to open the strong-box, she pulls her mantilla tight around her; after she counts her money, she lets the mantilla fall to the floor, “as heavy as though it were made of iron.” After His Excellency has obtained a check for the necessary amount from Glud (who remarks that His Excellency’s handwriting is easily copied), he returns to the Gray House and hands the check to Hans, “as if it were a prescription for cough syrup.” Told to wash his face by his mother (in a basin of eau de cologne), Hans accompanies Her Grace to the banquet table. His Excellency cannot resist a last chance to humiliate Hans; his son Fritz, at one of His Excellency’s witticisms, says that it is hard to believe his father drinks only water. (Confident of his father’s love, Fritz can take liberties.) Running his glance along the table, His Excellency replies: “The Jægermester drinks for me.” In the banquet’s wake, dispatched by his grandmother to fetch the Jægermester, Fritz II cannot get him on his feet, but, once his son has gone, the Jægermester staggers to His Excellency’s bedroom, and falls on the bed, snoring. At lunch, reception, and banquet one of the two servers (the other is the decrepit family retainer, Georg) has been that “Armenian servant,” slender and exotically handsome in his tight-fitting livery. His good looks directly attract Harriette’s attention; he takes care of himself, she thinks. Once again, Bang approaches an indiscretion with his hints about the servant (a surprising luxury for an impecunious young man) and his master. His Excellency concludes his tirade against the sexual drive by sending his sharp archer’s glance23 at his grandson (not really his grandson at all); he realizes that Fritz has not been listening: “It’s another wisdom that rings in your ears.” In his letter, Hans Hvide proposes that “dear papa’s” reply be dictated to young Fritz, who surely has time to burn after – an odd twist in the whining sentence – “his valet has finished his important work.” Twice at dinner, the slender servant lifts his shining eyes toward his master’s face; after the guests have left the table, he drinks 23 His Excellency’s kinetic language is readily interpreted. Enraged at his replacement by the Brahes, he lifts up his chair as though he were throwing something away. Condemning mankind’s ludicrous urge to procreate, he makes a movement with his foot as though he were cleaning the sole of his shoe; talking of Denmark’s contemporary politicians, he repeats the movement.

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what wine remains in his master’s glass. (Sending him off for coffee, Georg, pell-mell, swallows the leftovers in the other glasses.) A marked physical resemblance exists between the servant and his master, who likewise holds his “very slender body very erect,” and whose lips, in the midst of his face’s paleness, “were red as blood.” (Bang gave a flattering double portrait of his youthful self in both characters; Boesen, to judge from photographs, was on the pudgy side.) Also, for whatever reason, Bang equipped the semi-twins with thanatotic attributes. When the Armenian servant opens the folding doors for the reception, a sunbeam falls on the winged staff of a silver Mercury, the messenger-god who is also the psychopompos, the conductor of souls to the netherworld. Noticing a good deal as usual Harriette calls Count Clary's attention to the grandson, “quite slender,” leaning his “antique head” against a background of ebony.24 To the Ambassador’s “He is beautiful as a grave-statue,” Harriette confesses that the same though has crossed her mind, and that the grandson should have a torch, turned downward, in his hand. Does this accumulation of signs mean that the reception is a kind of funerary rite? Or does Bang, more or less subtly, celebrate death-consecrated homosexual love, in an effort to stir Fritz Boesen? At the end of Der Tod in Venedig, Tadzio appears to the dying Aschenbach as “der bleiche und liebliche Psychagog.” In 1906, the Netherlander Louis Couperus published Van oude mensen, de dingen die voorbijgaan (Concerning Old People, The Things That Pass). The short novel bears some resemblance to Det graa Hus, which, however, did not appear in German, a language accessible to Couperus, until 1909. Couperus’s tour de force has three major characters of great age: Ottilie Dercksz, 93, Emile Takma, 89, and Dr. Roelofsz, 86. Sixty years ago, in the Dutch East Indies, Takma, Ottilie’s lover, stabbed Dercksz to death as she held her husband’s arms; in return for her sexual favors, Roelofsz covered up the crime. The widow gave birth to a daughter, likewise called Ottilie, Takma’s child but accepted by the world as the last of her five offspring by Dercksz, her second husband. (Her first marriage, to an elderly gentleman, quickly deceased, resulted in Stefanie de Laders, now a puritanical spinster.) Much of the novel is concerned with her children, especially the Dercksz brood, from Anton, 75, a Latinist 24

Fritz II has another look-alike at the reception, Countess Schulin’s son Francis, “who lounges in constant indifference, his handsome patrician head propped in his slender hand.” He has been at the University in Geneva so long, his mother complains, that he speaks bad Danish. One more representative of Denmark’s decay, he will probably leave the country for good and all, as will the sons of Fru Urne, the one an engineer, the other afflicted by nervosity.

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and a pedophile, to the second Ottilie, 60, her girlish beauty faded. This younger Ottilie’s children, from two of her three marriages, are five; still more than Det graa Hus, Van oude mensen needs a genealogical chart. Lot Pauws, Ottilie II’s son from her first marriage, becomes the central figure of the finale; the accomplices in the ancient crime have finally passed away, almost simultaneously. Lot’s bride (Takma’s legitimate granddaughter) has left him to serve as a Red Cross aide in the RussoJapanese War of 1904-1905; he lives alone in Naples, an aesthete with a feminine soul, still vaguely planning an essay, “shining with verve and fire, as if of azure, gold, and jewels,” (Couperus 1953: 236) about Gozzoli’s Medici frescoes. A novel, he thinks, about old people and a murder in Java would be too much for his feeble powers. Van oude mensen and Det graa Hus, it goes almost without saying, are geriatric reports, but Bang’s assortment of the variously debilitated and infirm is larger than Couperus’s. His Excellency, Her Grace, and the Baron-Cadet are beset by narcolepsy, as is the prying servant Georg (whose two surviving teeth make him look like a rodent). The tremor of age is an almost universal affliction. The Brahes’ servant, making a brief appearance at the Gray House on the morning of February 28 (to deliver a pre-emptive dinner invitation, meant to mollify His Excellency’s coming anger) has a head which, “as it were, did not sit fast”; he complains (“his single or only thought”) that it has become very hard for him to serve at table. The Baron-Cadet hobbles through the reception crowd, “his eyes fastened on the glass in his hand, his whole ambition was not to let [his hand] tremble.” (This medical condition of old age, tremor senilis, is to be distinguished from the omnipresent trembling caused, in old and young alike, by excess of emotion.) Wrinkles cover Frøken Erichsen’s face like the grille of a fencer’s mask, Glud’s blind eye seems to hang down his cheek. Yet no one in Det graa Hus or Van oude mensen suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. His Excellency’s memory is too excellent; he envies those old folks who have lost their powers of recall. On the last page, returned from the Brahes and Emmely’s deathbed, His Excellency – abruptly, as is his habit – asks Stella about “Elsebeth,” and the reader has to search his memory: she has not occurred in Det graa Hus. Elsebeth is the woman of a hundred years in Det hvide Hus, who sits waiting for death. Learning Danish in the spring and summer of 1904, Rainer Maria Rilke chose Det graa Hus as one of his texts; he had already reviewed translations of Das weisse Haus (1902) and Tine (1903). He wrote out translations of J.P. Jacobsen’s verse and Kierkegaard’s Mit Forhold til hende, and recommended Det graa Hus to his then publisher, Axel

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Juncker, for translation, but it did not appear until 1909 at S. Fischer, translated by one Hermann Kly. More importantly, he plundered Det graa Hus for names and titles – Brahe, Schulin, Urne (in Urnekloster), Bredgade, Jægermester – which he then inserted into Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge. Rilke’s choice of Det graa Hus as a training text is readily explained: he knew its predecessor, Das weisse Haus, and, scanning, was no doubt attracted by its plethora of royalty, nobility, and family scutcheons. Nevertheless the choice was not a happy one for the language-student. The manifold conversations are often cryptic, as P.M. Mitchell complained (1971: 187), and the countless bitter apothegms of His Excellency grow tedious, as do the meaningful glances, flushes, blushes, pallors of all the leading players. Although Rilke himself had a nose for out-of-the-way historical detail – he spent June and July 1902, at Prince Emil von Schönlach-Carolath’s Castle Haseldorf in Holstein, burrowing into the Dano-German seventeenth century – he cannot have found Bang’s petite histoire easy going. Bang’s monument to his grandfather is at once tantalizingly murky and flagrantly stagy. As with Tchaikovsky, another reveler in extravagances, one feels ashamed (like Lady Lipton) for succumbing to Bang, but one succumbs all the same, over and over again.

Works Cited Bang, Herman. 1880. Kritiske Studier og Udkast. Copenhagen:Schubothe. —. 1891. Ti Aar: Erindringer og Hændelser. Copenhagen: Schubothe. —. 1902. Ravnene: To Fortællinger. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. —. 1912. Blandede Skrifter: Værker i Mindeudgave. Copenhagen and Kristiania: Gyldendalske Boghandel Nordisk Forlag. —. 1951. Breve til Fritz. Eds. Ulla Albeck and Erik Timmermann. Copenhagen: Westermann. —. 1956. Fra de unge Aar: Artikler og Skitser 1878-1885. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Couperus, Louis. Verzameld Werk. Vol. VI. Amsterdam and Antwerp: “De samenwerkende uitgevers.” Grossmann, Stefan. 1917. “Dansk Digtning i Tyskland.” Tilskueren 34: 542-548. Jacobsen, Harry. 1954. Den unge Herman Bang: Mennesket, Digteren, og Hans By. Copenhagen: L H. Hagerup. —. 1966. Den tragiske Herman Bang. Copenhagen: H. Hagerup. —. 1974. “En omdiskuteret dame i Herman Bangs forfatterskab,” Herman Bang: Nye studier. Copenhagen and Oslo: Nordisk bogforlag: 60-66.

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Jensen, Astrid and Jytte Jonker. 1978. “The Expectant Text: Herman Bang’s Det hvide Hus and Det graa Hus.” Scandinavica 17: 103-135. Mitchell, P.M. 1971. A History of Danish Literature, second augmented edition. New York: Kraus-Thomson. Steffens, Henrik. 1844. Was ich erlebte. Breslau: Josef Marx.

“THE WOODS TAKE REVENGE” NO PLACE TO HIDE MARY KAY NORSENG

We are accustomed to say in new England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste – sold to seed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to the mill – and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on….Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar…. —From “Walking” by Henry David Thoreau, 1862

The specter of felled forests of the land, the mind, and the human spirit loom large in Henrik Ibsen’s family drama, Vildlanden or The Wild Duck, published in 1884, twenty-two years after Thoreau’s essay “Walking.”1 As if to make audible the forests’ despair, Ibsen gives them a spokesman, Old Ekdal, a wreck of a man with a past rooted in the violated grove. His thrice-muttered refrain, like low rumbling in the wind, sounds a warning as the play begins and ends. “Det er hævn i skogen…Skogen hævner…Skogen hævner.” [“There is revenge in the woods…The woods takes revenge…The woods takes revenge.”] The enigmatic threat goes unheeded. The equation between ecological, moral, and psychic decline – or vigor – is at least as half as old as time. Though The Wild Duck is not commonly read in an ecocritical framework, it certainly can and ought to be. For it is one of the most haunting literary warnings of extinction of the modern era, dramatizing the vanishment of two family lines – the Werle’s and the Ekdal’s – that converge in a lone girl child, found dead on the morning of her fourteenth birthday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the heart. Intimately bound up with the wounded wild duck she nurtures in the attic 1

“Walking” was originally written as a longer entry in Thoreau’s Journal. It was published posthumously in The Atlantic Monthly in 1862. The essay contained in condensed form the major ideas of Walden. “Walking” is included in The Portable Thoreau, from which the above quote (627) is taken.

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of her family’s apartment, Hedvig Ekdal incarnates the fragile state of wildness in Ibsen’s late 19th century. She had no place to hide. There are two “primary” forests in the play, the forest of the iron mines of the north, where the drama of the past played out, and the forest of the present, the Ekdal attic full of old dead Christmas trees, where the wounded wild duck lives. Both forests are killing fields. Haakon Werle and Old Ekdal, the patriarchal miners of the past, participated in the rape of the land. Both share the blame for the beginning of the ecological devastation of the woods. But Werle also destroyed his partner, pinning on him some murky crime, for which Ekdal went to prison and from which he has not recovered. Men cut down not only trees, but each other in the woods of past, the original site in this play of wounded male-hood. Old Ekdal and his son Hjalmar, Hedvig’s father, have recreated the old hunting grounds in the Ekdal attic and stocked it with pigeons and rabbits, to be shot like fish in a barrel. The attic, with its crippled hunters, would be a cartoon if it were not so lethal a landscape for the child. The play opens with the past’s intrusion into the present. Gregers Werle, Haakon Werle’s son and Hjalmar Ekdal’s old school friend, returns home after a decade and a half in the northern woods. His very first conversation with Old Ekdal is about the forests. He strikes a particularly sensitive nerve. “Og nu jager De aldrig mere” (Ibsen 1932: 80). “And now you hunt no more”, he says to Ekdal. Ekdal sputters in protest. “Å, skal ikke sige det, far. Jaget nok en gang iblandt. Ja, ikke på den måden, da. For skogen, ser De – skogen, skogen – ! (drikker) Står skogen bra deroppe?” [“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, boy. Get some hunting in now and then. Yes, but not that kind there. The woods, you see – the woods, the woods – (Drinks.) How do the woods look up there?”] Gregers answers: “Ikke så gild som i Deres tid. Den er hugget svært ud.” [“Not so fine as in your time. They’ve been cut into heavily.”] Ekdal is spooked, as if he’s seen a ghost. “Hugget ud? (sagtere og liksom ræd). Det er farlig gerning det. Det dra’r efter sig. Det er hævn i skogen.” [“Cut into? (More quietly, as if in fear.) It’s a dangerous business, that. It catches up with you. There is revenge in the woods.”2] John Northam has referred to the old man’s memory as “a kind of frightened, private nightmare” (1973: 121). But is it

2

Unless otherwise indicated, the English quotes are taken from Rolf Fjelde’s translation in Ibsen: The Prose Plays, 1978. In this particular case, however, Fjelde chose to translate Old Ekdal’s phrase, “Det er hævn i skogen,” simply as “The woods take revenge,” using the same wording as Ekdal’s two warnings at the end of the play. My translation is closer to the original, which is a variant of the last two utterances.

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private? Would it haunt as it does if it were not a nightmare common to us all? Lynn White Jr., in his pivotal ecocritical essay from 1967, “Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” wrote: “Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim” (White 1996 [1967]: 12). White infamously laid the blame for our arrogance at the feet of Christian theology that has for centuries taught that God created man in His image and the world for man’s purpose, leading to the crisis of exploitation of our natural resources in which we already found ourselves mid-twentieth century. To a Christian a tree can be no more than a physical fact. The whole concept of the sacred grove is alien to Christianity and to the ethos of the West. For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirits in nature (12).

Gregers Werle returns as a caricature of the Christian missionary, compelled to impose his “ideale fording” (110) or “Summons to the Ideal” on his old, city friends as he did on the people up north. Some might see in him the equivalent of the current Christian right. The devastation of the local habitat, then or now, does not trouble him. Only the so-called “moral values” of others does. Gregers fails to register Old Ekdal’s unease. Old Ekdal, whose name translates as “Old Oak Dale,” taps into an ancient notion of the violated sacred grove, framing the play in his mutterings of revenge. When he first wanders across the stage in the shadows of Haakon Werle’s study in the opening moments of Act I, “han er klædt i en luvslidt kavaj med høj krave; uldne vanter; i hånden en stok og en skindhue; under armen en pakke i kardusomslag. Rødbrun, smudsig paryk og en liden grå knebelsbart” (46). [“He is dressed in a shabby overcoat with a high collar, woolen gloves, and in his hand, a cane and a fur cap; under his arm is a bundle wrapped in brown paper.3] He has a dirty, reddish-brown wig and a little gray moustache.” In the naturalistic world of the play he is a broken down alcoholic delivering copying work 3

Fjelde translates kardusomslag as “brown paper.” Einar Haugen’s Norwegian English Dictionary, however, translates the compound noun as 1) “cartridge paper” or 2) “grey packing paper” (208). “Cartridge paper” would certainly send a strong message to Ibsen’s contemporary audience that Ekdal is carrying something dangerous.

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to his old partner, Haakon Werle, anticipating change and a bottle; in the world of metaphor he is a fallen, demonic god. What message, we must wonder, does he carry wrapped in packing paper? In the last moments of Act V, just after his granddaughter is found shot through the heart in the attic of dead trees, Ekdal opens the door of his room: “han er i fuld uniform og har travlt med at spænde sabelen om sig” (157);[“he is in full uniform and is absorbed in buckling his sword.”] Disguised as a demented old man, the god of the ancient grove buckles up for war, mumbling truths to a world that cannot or will not hear him. “Skogen hævner,” / “The woods take revenge,” he says in hushed tones; and then seconds later, as he shuts himself into the attic, “Skogen hævner. Men jeg er ikke ræd alligevel” (158). [ “The woods take revenge. But I’m not scared, even so.”] The forest gods have opened up to take their sacrifice, and they retreat back into themselves. In the surreal attic of the present uprooted men compensate for their wounds by acting out imagined lost warrior roles, wild game hunter (Old Ekdal), family patriarch (Young Ekdal), crusader (Gregers Werle). The attic becomes a cruel mockery of the sacred grove. The sacred grove is a potent image for understanding the girl-child of the play, for it is into these violated woods that Hedvig Ekdal journeys and dies. Her death is as morally and culturally wrong as if Sleeping Beauty never woke or Red Riding Hood never escaped the wolf. In his book, Shadows: The Forests of Civilization (1992), Robert P. Harrison traces the history of the forests in the cultural imagination of the ancients to the postmoderns: It is not only in the modern imagination that forests cast their shadow of primeval antiquity; from the beginning they appeared to our ancestors as archaic, as antecedent to the human world. We gather from mythology that their vast and somber wilderness was there before, like a precondition or matrix of civilization, or that…the forests were first. Such myths, which everywhere look back to a forested earth, no doubt recall the prehistoric landscape of the West, yet this by itself does not explain why human societies, once they emerged from the gloom of origins, preserved such fabulous recollections of the forests’ antecedence (1).

Harrison’s discussion of German Romanticism’s hankering for the sacred grove in his chapter entitled “Forests of Nostalgia,” is provocatively relevant to Hedvig’s role in the lost woods of the Ekdal/Werle world. Harrison’s focus is on the Grimm brothers and their collections of tales. The Grimms, who published a journal entitled Altduetsche Wälder or Old German Forests, “explicitly linked German forests to the genius and

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continuity of authentic German culture” (168). The fairy tales specifically, with their many magical forests, reflect a desire to reestablish a “lost unity:” These forests typically lie beyond the bounds of the familiar world. They are places where protagonists get lost, meet unusual creatures, undergo spells and transformations, and confront destinies. Children typically “grow up” during their ventures in the forests. The forests are sometimes places of the illicit – Little Red Riding Hood learns her lesson in the forest, telling herself at the end of the tale: “Never again will you stray from the path by yourself and go into the forest when your mother has forbidden it” (Grimm, 104) – yet more often than not they are places of weird enchantment (169).

The typical role of the young girl of the fairy tale illuminates in reverse image the fate of the fourteen-year-old Hedvig, a victim of “disunity,” who will not ever “grow up.” “[I]n what way do the tales associate forests with the phenomenon of unity” (169)? The forest spirits, Harrison suggests, punish the young girl who ventures into the forest and refuses to share her goods with those in need. Contrarily, “they reward the girl who upholds the bonds of the community, founded on sharing” (170). Harrison sites “The Three Little Gnomes in the Forest,” in which the wicked step-mother sends her beautiful step-daughter into the woods in winter time, dressed in a thin paper dress. A piece of bread is her only ration. She comes to a cottage where three little gnomes live. They ask her to share her bread, which she willingly does, and they reward her with three wishes that will come true. “She will grow more beautiful each day; every time she speaks gold coins will fall out of her mouth; and a king will take her for a wife” (169). The enraged step-mother sends her own daughter into the winter woods, “dressed in fur with bread and butter to eat.” She too encounters the gnomes, refuses to share her meal, and she is punished accordingly. “She will become uglier, toads will fall from her mouth; and she will die a miserable death” (170). In The Wild Duck the wrong girl is punished and diabolically so, for she is the archetypal girl in the tale, trying in nearly everything she does to uphold the bonds of her family. She foregoes her own food so that her father may have his cherished bread, butter, and beer. She does his photographic work when he would rather play in the attic with his father. She allows her mother to be more friend than mother. She keeps her grandfather’s secrets. She listens thoughtfully to Gregers. She is forever alert to the adults’ shifting moods, so that she can accommodate them.

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Hedvig is both protector and peacemaker, and yet she is abandoned to die in her family’s faux forest while they argue outside the attic door. Historically there was reckless cutting of the Norwegian forests throughout the 1800s, and the causes were many: the lifting of restrictions early in the century; the division of the forests among so many small farmers – apparently the largest number in Europe – all with felling rights; advances in cutting techniques and the lumber industry in general; and a voracious English market. Two decades into the 20th century “there [were] practically speaking, no virgin forests left in Norway…” (Oxholm 1922: 20). Ibsen was writing The Wild Duck when the pulp and paper industries, in particular, feeding ravenously on trees, were beginning to flourish. It need not be pointed out that this was the very industry on which he and others writers depended. In The Wild Duck there is an implied background story reflecting the transition from a wood to paper culture. Old Ekdal, as noted earlier, enters the play with a mysterious package wrapped in paper. We later learn that the original man of the wild, the hunter and miner, has been reduced to doing copying work for the man in whose debt he will always remain. Essential to the play is the question of authenticity, whether of nature, human character, social bonds, work, the imagination, or love. Paper seems to stand for the inauthentic, most obviously, perhaps, the photographic paper used by Hjalmar and Gina Ekdal, the parents of the victim-child, to reproduce stock images of new brides and grooms, the parents of the future. Straining her weakened eyesight, Hedvig does the tedious detail work of retouching the photographs so that her father, tired out from pretending to think about an imagined invention in the future, can recreate in the attic. The play, in fact, hinges on critical moments, dependent on paper, when the child is betrayed. The truth about Hedvig’s paternity is revealed in a letter to her from Haakon Werle, her probable biological father. Hjalmar Ekdal, up to that time her father for all intents and purposes, in a fit of hysterical narcissism rips up the letter that would ensure his daughter’s financial future. The reality of fourteen years of love shared by Hedvig and her father is denied because of implied information on a piece of paper. There is also a seemingly more minor paper scene earlier in the play, quieter, yet more appalling by virtue of its thoughtless cruelty. Again its focus is Hjalmar and Hedvig, father and daughter. In the later evening Hjalmar returns home from dinner at Haakon Werle’s, where he has been royally fed. He has promised Hedvig treats from the feast, and she is beside herself with anticipation. But her father has forgotten his promise, rattled by his own humiliation at the hands of the dinner guests. Knowing

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that he must come up with something, he starts digging in his jacket pockets: Hjalmar (med et papir). Se her har vi den. Hedvig. Det der? Det er jo bare et papir. Hjalmar. Det er spiseseddelen, du; hele spiseseddelen. Her står “Menu”; det betyr spiseseddel. Hedvig. Har du ikke noget andet? Hjalmar. Jeg har jo glemt det andet, hører du. Men du kan tro mig på mit ord: det er en dårlig fornøjelse med det slikkeri. Sæt dig nu bort til bordet og læs på den seddelen, så skal jeg siden beskrive dig, hvorledes retterne smager. Se der, Hedvig. Hedvig (svælger gråden). Tak. (74) Hjalmar (returning with a piece of paper). See, here we have it. Hedvig. That? But that’s just a piece of paper. Hjalmar. It’s the bill of fare, the complete bill of fare. Here it says “menu”; that means “bill of fare.” Hedvig. Don’t you have anything else? Hjalmar. I forgot to bring anything else, I tell you. But take my word for it: it’s bad business, this doting on sugar candy. Now, if you’ll sit down at the table and read the menu aloud, I’ll describe for you just how each dish tasted.4 How’s that, Hedvig? Hedvig (swallowing her tears). Thanks.

Hjalmar then sinks into a blue funk. Hedvig rallies herself and tries to cheer him up with a beer. The metaphorical and literal meanings of the scene are identical. The father starves the daughter with a paper representation of sweets from the feast. Hedvig is a true sister of the girl in “Three Gnomes in the Forest,” who was sent out in the woods by her wicked step-mother with only a paper dress to clothe her and a piece of bread to nourish her. In The Wild Duck Hedvig gives all her bread to her father, but unlike the girl in “Three Gnomes,” she is punished for it. Toads do no fall from her mouth, but she dies a miserable death all the same. At the heart of this deeply disturbing play is Hedvig’s love affair with the wounded wild duck. In the fairy tale, the girl who brings unity not only to the human world but to the human and animal worlds combined is the most favored of all. The girl who shows kindness to the animals is twice charmed. Harrison writes, 4

The original Norwegian actually reads, “I’ll later describe how each dish tasted,” thus delaying even further any pleasure Hedvig will receive from the “virtual” treat.

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He cites a tale called “The House in the Forest,” in which three daughters lose their way in the woods in search of food for their poor father. The oldest daughter sets out first and finds herself at the cottage of an old man living with three animals, a chicken, a rooster, and a spotted cow. He has plenty of food and tells the girl to prepare a meal. She does so, but neglects to feed the animals. When she goes to sleep that night, she falls through a trap door. The second daughter also goes looking for food for her father, finds the cottage, fails to feed the animals, and she too falls through the trap door. Finally the youngest daughter ventures forth, finds the cottage, and prepares the meal. But she does not sit down to eat until she has fed the animals. When she wakes up she is in a royal palace, the old man is a prince and the animals his servants. “This tale,” notes Harrison, “adds another dimension to the theme of community, for it invokes not only social bonds between people but also natural bonds between humans and animals” (170). In Asbjørnsen and Moe’s Norwegian fairy tales we find the same magical human-animal bonds. The young girl in “Kari Trestakk” or “Kari Woodenskirt” is being starved to death by her evil step-mother. Kari develops a relationship with a blue ox, and the ox feeds her wonderful meals out of his left ear. When the step-mother commands that the ox shall be slaughtered, Kari warns him, and they escape together through forests of copper, silver, and gold, where he defends her against trolls and teaches her how to win the prince. The tale called “Tro og Utro” (“Faithful” and “Unfaithful”) is about two brothers, but the same principle applies. “Unfaithful” tries to starve his brother, “Faithful.” Each has his own “niste” or bag lunch to eat on the journey. “Unfaithful” suggests they eat “Faithful”’s first, but when that is gone, he refuses to share his own and then puts out “Faithful”’s eyes. “Tro, stakkar, han gikk nå der og trevlet seg fram midt i tykke skogen; blind og alene var han, og ikke visste han hva han skulle ta seg til” (Asbjørnsen and Moe 1989: 252). [“’Faithful,’ poor guy, he groped his way forward in the thick forest; blind and alone he was, and he didn’t know what to do.”]5 So he decides to climb up into a tree, to protect himself from wild animals during the night. Under 5

These translations are my own.

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“Faithful”’s tree gather a bear, a fox, a wolf, and a hare, and they pass on information that enables “Faithful” to win the king’s favor, and, of course, his daughter. Life goes on, “Faithful” living off the fat of the land, so to speak, and then along comes “Unfaithful.” Things have not gone well for him, and he asks for a bite to eat. “Faithful,” being the good man he is, tells his brother to go sit in the tree and listen to the gossip of the animals. They will help him. But that night they are silent. “’Det har noen sladret om det vi fortalte i fjor, og derfor vil vi nå tie med det vi vet.’ Og så ba dyrene god natt og gikk fra hverandre, og Utro var like klok” (258). [ “’Someone has gossiped about what we talked about last year, and therefore we need to keep quiet about what we know.’ And then the animals said goodnight and parted from each other, and ‘Unfaithful’ was none the wiser.”] Hedvig is “Tro” or “Faithful.” Not only is she going blind, groping around in her own dark wood; she is exquisitely faithful, particularly toward her father, Hjalmar, and toward the wild duck. Indeed, she is the good mother from which nourishment flows like sweet milk, or in her father’s case, the endless snacks, in spite of the poverty of the house, of bread, butter, and beer. She loves her father perhaps more than herself. She loves the duck as herself. When her father disowns her and Gregers suggests she sacrifice the duck to prove her love for him, her inability to separate herself from the duck ultimately leaves her defenseless. Whether she aimed the gun at herself or the duck, it is all one. The sacrifice was made. The crippled sons of the play, Hjalmar and Gregers, both wounded in the forest of family life, both “Unfaithful,” both narcissistically driven, both catalysts for disunity and death, stand in stark contrast to their daughter and sister Hedvig, who is one of the most all-embracing of lovers in any Ibsen play. John Northam has written that “through [love] she demonstrates a beauty of character, not a mere mental strength of rigidity, an intuitive fineness that leads her to make essential rather than superficial discriminations” (1973: 145). I would argue further that her love is a habit of being, a way of seeing and feeling that embraces the unity of living things. She sees no hierarchies, no biological determinations, no separation between species, human and animal. Her father’s rejection of her because she may not be his biological daughter is incomprehensible to her. In her heartbreaking conversation with Gregers, she says, “Ja, jeg synes, han kunde holde lige meget af mig for det. Ja næsten mere. Vildanden har vi jo også fåt sendendes til foræring, og alligevel holder jeg så svært af den” (137). [ “Yes, I think he could love me even so. Or maybe even more. The wild duck was sent us as a present too, and I’m terribly

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fond of it, all the same.”] Hedvig prays equally for her father and her wild duck. She cultivates no arbitrary boundaries: no true and false father, no human and non-human life. Her prayer embraces all. In her sisterly bond with the wild duck Hedvig evokes Lynn White’s alternative to the God-who-created-man-in-his-image, i.e., St. Francis, “the greatest radical in Christian history since Christ.” “The Key to an understanding of Francis is his belief in the virtue of humility – not merely for the individual but for man as a species. Francis tried to depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures” (1996 [1967]: 13). Is “a democracy of all God’s creatures” not precisely what Hedvig imagines the attic to be? But she is starved, physically and emotionally by her step-father, just as the heroines of the fairy tales are at the hands of their wicked step-mothers. Like her sisters and brothers of the tales, she bonds with the animals. But hers is no enchanted forest, and she is thus easy prey for the adult Gregers’s morally delinquent notion of sacrifice. The only unifying presence in a world of crippled men playing with guns, Hedvig Ekdal’s habitat is too degraded to protect her vulnerable presence. Ibsen’s forests of wounding and wounded men, past and present, stands in stark contrast to Jack Zipes’s interpretation of the Grimm brothers’ German forests. Harrison bases his chapter on the Grimms on Zipes’s work, specifically his book From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World: What fascinated or compelled the Grimms to concentrate on old German literature was a belief that the most natural and pure forms of culture – those which held the community together – were linguistic and were to be located in the past… (Quoted in Harrison 1992: 168).

Zipes, Harrison concludes, argues persuasively that the brothers’ nostalgia for origins and “fatherland” was psychologically linked to the early death of their father, the Grimms’ conceiving of forests as symbolic preserves of the popular and oral traditions they set out to recover through their sustained philological work. (1992: 168) The attic forest, full of old things – a cabinet with many drawers and compartments, a clock that has stopped, a set of water colors, and many old books, in particular a history of the modern city, London, with a frontispiece of death, an hour glass, and a virgin who is not meant to live – certainly can be read as a repository of the culture of the past, but it is dead. Hedvig, most at peace among these old things and her wounded wild duck, is a lost soul, just like her friend:

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…for det er jo en rigtig, vild fuld. Og så er det så synd i hende; hun har ingen at holde sig til, hun stakkar…. hun er kommen så rent bort fra alle sine, hun. Og så er det jo alt det svært forunderlige ved vildanden. Der er ingen, som kender hende; og ingen, som ved hvor hun er fra heller (98). […because she’s a real wild bird. And then it’s so sad for her; the poor thing has no one to turn to…. She’s so completely apart from any of her own. So you see, everything is so really mysterious about the wild duck. There’s no one who knows her, and no one who knows where she’s come from either.]

“Gloomy books about our environmental problems are pouring off the presses,” wrote a recent reviewer in the Los Angeles Times Book Review (Crosby 2005: 3). “They have immediate pertinence to our lives, but few people seem to be reading them except the already anxious.” Ibsen was one of the “already anxious” in 1884. He projected the blasted forests of the future into the Ekdal attic, inverting the fairy tale, allowing the only one with the eyes to see what was being lost to die in the attic’s shadows. The “already anxious” have known it for a long time. The woods really do take revenge. “Skogen hævner.”

Works Cited Asbjørnsen, P. Chr. & Jørgen Moe, eds. 1989. Samlede eventyrene: 2. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Crosby, Alfred W. 2005. “Societies’ five fear factors.” Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 2, 2005. Haugen, Einar. 1965. Norwegian English Dictionary. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Harrison, Robert Pogue. 1992. Forests: The Shadows of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ibsen, Henrik. 1978. Ibsen: The Complete Major Prose Plays. Trans. Rolf Fjelde. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. —. 1932. Hundreårsutgave: Samlede Verker. Eds. Francis Bull, Halvdan Koht, and Didrik Sep. Vol. 10. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Northam, John. 1973. Ibsen: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oxholm, Axel H. 1922. Forest Resources, Lumber Industry and Lumber Export Trade of Norway. U.S. Department of Commerce. Special Agents Series No. 211.Washington Government Printing Office. Thoreau, Henry David. 1975. The Portable Thoreau. Ed. Carl Bode. New York: Penguin.

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White, Jr., Lynn. 1996 [1967]. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155.3767 (10 March 1967): 1203-7. Rpt. The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Eds. Cheryll Glofelty and Harold Fromm. Athens: University of Georgia Press.

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID COPPERFIELD IN NOVA SCOTIA KIRSTEN WOLF

I The emigration of Icelanders to North America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century gave rise to an enormous literary production unparalleled in modern Icelandic history. As the descendants of the Icelandic immigrants have gradually become integrated into North American culture and for the most part lost their command of Icelandic, many of the early writers – whether of poetry or prose – have faded into obscurity and are only occasionally brought back into the limelight by students and scholars of literary history seeking information about the early settlement of Icelanders in North America and Canadian immigration history. Only a handful of these so-called Icelandic-Canadian authors continue to have an appeal to readers. Among them is Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason, whose novels and short stories are still cherished by Canadians of Icelandic descent.1 Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason was born in 1866 at Meðalnes in NorðurMúlasýsla in the eastern part of Iceland. As a result of the disasters caused by the eruption of Dyngjufjöll in 1875, which covered farmlands with volcanic ashes, his family was one of many who emigrated to America. Along with other Icelanders, they settled first in Halifax County, Nova Scotia, but the settlement was short-lived, and seven years later, in 1882, they moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, which was already then a center of Icelandic immigrants. Here Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason divided his time between study and work in a sawmill and eventually received a degree in education. In 1887, he married an Icelandic girl, Guðrún Hjörleifsdóttir, and from 1889 on he made a living as a school teacher in the Icelandic settlements of Manitoba, including Arnes and Geysir, with the exception 1 See the works cited section of this article for a listing of Bjarnason’s works available in English translation.

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of a year which he spent as a teacher in North Dakota (1904-5) and three years during which he worked in a business office in Vancouver, British Columbia (1912-15). In 1922, he retired to Elfros, Saskatchewan, where he died in 1945 after a long period of ill health. Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason was one of the most prolific IcelandicCanadian writers. As a young man, he wrote five long plays, which, however, were never published. In 1887, his first book, Kvæði (“Poems”) was published. It was followed in 1892 by Sögur og kvæði (“Stories and Poems”) and in 1898 by Ljóðmæli (“Lyric Poems”). At this point in his career, Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason largely ceased to compose poetry (although he continued to write short stories) and turned instead to romance.2 His first published novel, Eiríkur Hansson: Skáldsaga frá Nýja Skotlandi (“Eiríkur Hansson: A Novel from Nova Scotia”), about an Icelandic boy emigrating to Canada and his life in the New World, appeared in three parts in 1899-1903. It was followed by Brasilíufararnir (1905 and 1908, “The Brazil Immigrants”), a story of four Icelanders emigrating to Brazil and their adventures in South America; Í Rauðárdalnum (1942; “In the Red River Valley”), a story of the quest of a lost hoard near Winnipeg, which first appeared in serial form in the journal Syrpa (1913-22); and Karl litli: Saga frá Draumamörk (1935; “Little Karl: A Story about Dream Forest”), a children’s story. Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s other works of fiction comprise collections of short stories: Vornætur á Elgsheiðum: Sögur frá Nýja Skotlandi (1910; “Spring Nights on Elk Moors: Stories from Nova Scotia”), Haustkvöld við hafið (1928; “Autumn Evenings by the Ocean”), Æfintýri (1946; “Fables”), and Gimsteinaborgin: Saga og ævintýri (1977; “The City of Gemstones: Story and Fables).3

2 Stefán Einarsson argues that this was a conscious decision on the author’s behalf. He points out that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s poems and short stories were sometimes satirical and that “when he found out that people were hurt by his satire, he dropped it altogether, turning instead to romance, often in realistic disguise” (1948: 240). Cf. also Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s letter of 5 August 1898 to the poet Stephan G. Stephansson (Guðmundsson 1971-75, vol. 1: 140) in which he asks Stephan G. Stephansson if he should stop composing prose and turn to poetry or stop composing both altogether and draws attention to the fact that his first short stories had received negative reviews. He also mentions that he has started writing a novel: “Ég hefi lengi haft langa skáldsögu á prjónunum, sem ég læt fara fram í gömlu íslenzku nýlendunni í Nýja Skotlandi, þar sem ég undi mér í æsku” (140) [I have long been working on a novel, which takes place in the old Icelandic colony in Nova Scotia, where I lived in my youth]. 3 The last two collections were published posthumously in Ritsafn (1942-73).

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II Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason appears to have learned English soon after his arrival in Canada and been introduced to English literature at an early age. In his biographical sketch of the author, Stefán Einarsson writes that “his Scotch schoolteacher gave him The Pilgrim’s Progress, some of Shakespeare’s plays, and Dickens’s novels to read” and notes that “[i]n Winnipeg he became thoroughly acquainted with the chief works of English literature from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to the novels of Thackeray, George Eliot, and Dickens, whose David Copperfield [184950] made a lasting impression upon him (1948: 239).”4 The last statement – about the enduring impact of Dickens’s great quasi-autobiography on Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason – is explicated in Stefán Einarsson’s comments on Eiríkur Hansson. He argues that “[b]eing partly autobiographical, it has considerable cultural and historical value” but maintains that it “recalls David Copperfield in plot and character delineation; mannerisms are similarly exploited. Even some of the people: the two loving women and a shyster attorney might be lifted bodily from David Copperfield (Einarsson 1948: 2410.” Stefán Einarsson’s postulate that the novel is partly autobiographical may a priori seem quite convincing, considering the fact that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason spent a portion of his youth in Nova Scotia; nonetheless, it needs modification. In his letter of 28 November 1904 to Stephan G. Stephansson, Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason comments on a rather 4

Stefán Einarsson continues: “Yet, it was Robert Louis Stevenson who fascinated him most, especially in mature years. Out of his love of fable and fairy tales he read the Arabian Nights, the fairy tales of H. C. Andersen and the Grimm brothers. His romantic taste endeared to him the French writers Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, senior. Unlike most of his countrymen east of the Atlantic, he read no Scandinavian language and so knew Scandinavian authors only from Icelandic and English translations. But he picked up enough German to read Grimm and Heine in the original” (1948: 239-40). In his preface to Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s Æfintýri Richard Beck also draws attention to Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s interest in Dickens and quotes Jóhannes P. Pálsson, who wrote: “Um þetta leyti (þ. e. á kennaraárum hans í Geysisbyggð) var Magnús mjög hrifinn af skáldsögum Dickens. … Það, sem heillaði hann, mun hafa verið mannkærleikurinn og hin réttláta reiði Dickens gagnvart rangsleitni og miskunnarleysi þjóðskipulagsins, með öðrum orðum, raunsæi þess höfundar” (1946: xxi-xxii) [Around this time (i.e. during his years of instruction in the settlement of Geysir [1894-1903]) Magnús was very fond of Dickens’s novels. … What attracted him was probably the humanitarianism and Dickens’s justified anger at the injustice and mercilessness of the social organization, in other words the author’s realism].

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negative review of the book in Eimreiðin, in which a similar statement is made (about the second part), and writes: Nei, ekki álít ég ritdóm Á[rna] P[álssonar] í alla staði réttan. ... Hann færir mér ýmislegt til sakar, sem ekki getur saknæmt kallazt, eins og t. d. orðatiltæki persónanna í sögunni, og nákvæm frásögn; en fyrir frásögnina álítur hann mig mann sekjan, skógarmann óalanda o. s. frv. (í bókmenntalegum skilningi). Hann dróttar því einnig að mér, að sagan (Eiríkur) sé blátt áfram dagbók mín sjálfs, að ég hafi hlotið að hafa lifað það sjálfur, sem ég læt Eirík gegnum ganga. En sannleikurinn er, að ég hefi sjálfur ekki lifað eitt einasta atriði, eins og það kemur fyrir í II. þætti þessarar sögu. Ég hefi aðeins farið um þær stöðvar, sem sagan gerist á í þeim þætti, og lýst þeim rétt, en ekki lifað eitt einasta atriði í þeim þætti. Það er allt saman verk ímyndunarinnar, eins og þeir geta borið um, sem voru mér samtíða í Nýja Skotlandi (Guðmundsson 1971-75: 166). [No, I don’t consider Árni Pálsson’s review accurate in every way. ... He blames me for various things, which cannot be called an offence, such as, e.g., the phraseology of the characters in the novel, and accurate narration; and for the narrative he considers me an outlaw who is not allowed to receive assistance etc. (in a literary sense). He also imputes to me that the novel (Eiríkur) is simply my own diary, that I must have experienced myself what I let Eiríkur go through. But the truth is that I myself have not experienced a single episode as it appears in the second part of the novel. I have merely traveled to the locations in which the novel takes place in this part and described them correctly, but not experienced a single episode in that part. It is all fiction, as those who were in Nova Scotia at the same time as me can testify to.]

Interestingly, Stephan G. Stephansson also refers to the novel as an autobiography in his letter of 22 December 1902 to Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason. “‘Eiríkur Hansson’ er æfisaga þín sjálfs” (Eiríkur Hansson is your own biography), he writes, but adds: “ekki svo að skilja, að hver sögu-viðburður hafi komið endilega svona fram við þig, en þú hefðir alls staðar breytt og hugsað nærri eins og hann” (not in the sense that every event in the novel necessarily happened to you in the same way, but you would everywhere have acted and thought much like him). Stefán Einarsson’s claim that Eiríkur Hansson draws heavily on David Copperfield has not been challenged, though it too seems convincing in light of the fact that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s dependence on works outside of the Icelandic tradition has been acknowledged by other critics. Attention has been drawn to the fact that many details in Karl litli and in his fables and fairy tales published in Æfintýri are traceable in part to, for example, The Arabian Nights, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the

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tales of Hans Christian Andersen, and those of the Grimm brothers; and in a recent analysis of “Íslenzkt heljarmenni,” one of his most popular short stories, it is demonstrated that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason was probably inspired by George Douglas Brown’s The House with the Green Shutters.5 .

III Eiríkur Hansson is the Icelandic boy Eiríkur’s account of his personal history, adventures, experiences, and observations from his childhood in Iceland until his adulthood in Canada. The following is a resumé of the novel. Vol. 1: Childhood Eiríkur was born in Fljótsdalshérað in Iceland. His mother died when he was about two years old, and he has no contact with his father. He is raised by his maternal grandparents. When Eiríkur is about six years old, his grandparents decide to emigrate to North America. After extensive preparations, the three travel on horseback to Seydisfjörður, from where they journey via Hull to New York. From New York they travel, first by ship and then by train to Portland and continue, again by ship and train, to Halifax, where they are stranded for ten days until an Icelandic immigration agent eventually contacts them and brings them to the newly-established Mooseland colony fifty miles east of Halifax. Here his grandparents break land and make a good start, for the Nova Scotia government gives each family one hundred acres of land in addition to one acre of cleared land, a timber-house, a stove and other basic necessities, and provisions for one year. The government also builds a school house and hires a teacher, who is assigned to teach the Icelandic children English. The privilege of going to school lasts for only three years, however, because the teacher resigns, and no one takes his place. When Eiríkur is eleven years old, his grandfather dies. His grandmother realizes that she cannot manage the homestead alone and so leases the land and the house to a newly-arrived Icelandic couple, but continues to live in her home. Because of the lack of educational possibilities in the colony, she decides that it would be to Eiríkur’s advantage to live in the home of a Canadian family. She is informed that a 5 Cf. Richard Beck’s introduction to Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s Æfintýri, 1946: xxvi; Árni Bjarnarson’s introduction to the 2nd enlarged edition of Vornætur á Elgsheiðum 1970: xi; and Julian Meldon D’Arcy and Kirsten Wolf, 1992, “The Sources of Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s ‘Íslenzkt heljarmenni’,” Scandinavica 31: 21-32.

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The Adventures of David Copperfield in Nova Scotia certain Mrs. Patrik, a wealthy widow in a town outside of the colony, wishes to adopt a boy, and Eiríkur is sent away. Eiríkur intensely dislikes Mrs. Patrik and is very homesick. She refuses to send him to school and has him home-schooled by the sixteen-year-old Lalla Sandford, the daughter of the chief police officer in the town. Eiríkur becomes very fond of her and her family and lets her into his secret plan of escaping from Mrs. Patrik and returning to his grandmother, with whom he is forbidden to have contact. When a little later Lalla is fired for calling him Eiríkur (Mrs. Patrik insists that he be called Pat), Eiríkur decides to realize his plan and runs away. When he has run sixty-eight miles and is only two miles from the Icelandic settlement, Mrs. Patrik’s coachman finds him and mercilessly brings him back to Mrs. Patrik, who flogs him until he is virtually unconscious. One day, Mr. Sandford requests a meeting with Mrs. Patrik at his house. During her absence, Lalla visits Eiríkur and tells him that her family has made arrangements to help him escape. He is to hide behind a bush in the yard shortly after sunset, where he will be picked up by a young Icelander, Eiríkur Gísli, who will take a route to the Icelandic settlement that is unknown to Mrs. Patrik and her coachman. Things go as planned, and Eiríkur reaches the settlement only to find out that his grandmother has passed away. Eiríkur stays with the family of an old classmate and informs Eiríkur Gísli and Lalla about his situation. Eiríkur Gísli offers assistance, and Eiríkur takes off on foot to Cooks-Brook, where Eiríkur Gísli secures him work as a farmhand. Here Eiríkur befriends a middle-aged Icelander, Geir, who has just arrived and who – with Eiríkur’s help as a translator – ends up marrying the farmer’s daughter Rakel. Volume 2: The Struggle Eiríkur is now thirteen years old. He expresses to Eiríkur Gísli his desire to move to Halifax, where Lalla is living, but Eiríkur Gísli persuades him to go to Tangier and get employment in the gold mines. Eiríkur likes his new job, but his contract is only for six months. He returns to CooksBrook, and on his way he visits the Icelandic settlement, which is now abandoned (the Icelandic settlers have all moved to the Red River Vally in Manitoba). Eiríkur Gísli, too, has decided to uproot himself, but he manages nonetheless to find employment for Eiríkur as an assistant to Doctor Braddon in Gays River. The doctor is pleased with Eiríkur’s work, but his mentally ill wife takes a dislike to him, and after only a few months Eiríkur is fired. Eiríkur makes up his mind to look up Lalla in Halifax and takes off. He visits his friend Geir near Cooks-Brook and proceeds on foot to Dartmouth, from where he takes the steamboat to Halifax. He arrives at Lalla’s home with much anticipation but finds no one at home. The manager of the apartment complex tells him that Mr. Sandford has moved and advises him to inquire about his new address at the police station. Here

Kirsten Wolf Eiríkur is informed that the Sandford family is on vacation and will be away for three or four weeks. One of the policemen takes Eiríkur to a guesthouse, where he stays and awaits Lalla’s return. One day, he accidentally meets Mrs. Patrik’s coachman, who recognizes him and tries by force to drag him along. A policeman intervenes, and the coachman lets Eiríkur go, but Eiríkur dares not remain in Halifax and decides to seek refuge with Geir. His remaining twenty cents get him only halfway to Cooks-Brook, however; he is thrown off the train by the conductor a few miles north of the Windsor-Junction and is forced to continue on foot and to sleep in the open. Thirst compels him to knock on the door of a house on his way, where he meets exceptional hospitality. The master of the house, Doctor Dallas, takes a keen interest in him and his Icelandic heritage and offers to take him to Gays River the following day, where he finds a letter awaiting him from Lalla, who informs him of her family’s new address, their holiday in Cape Breton, and their arrival in Halifax. Eiríkur tells Doctor Dallas about his troubles, and the kind doctor employs Eiríkur for four days, so that he can earn money to cover the price of the train ticket back to Halifax. Mr. Sandford and his family give Eiríkur a warm welcome. They invite him to stay with them, and Mr. Sandford arranges for private lessons for him in preparation for high school. Eiríkur feels at home and at peace, though he is troubled by the rather frequent visits of Alfonso Picquart, the son of Lalla’s parents’ friends in Cape Breton, and is saddened to learn that Lalla is engaged to him.

Volume 3: The Desire Eiríkur is now sixteen years old. He is a student at Dalhousie but spends weekends with the Sandford family. A few months after his arrival at the school, he receives one evening a visit from a stranger, who asks if Eiríkur will do him the favor of writing a letter on behalf of an Icelandic girl, who is ill and incapable of writing herself. Eiríkur is requested to come along, and after a long ride in a horse carriage, he arrives at the home of a certain Mrs. Hamilton, who asks him first to read in English a letter from the girl’s mother in Iceland and then dictates a response from the girl. Mrs. Hamilton does not reveal the girl’s name, and Eiríkur does not get to see her. Eiríkur is taken back to the school, but he cannot get the girl out of his mind. When the school year has ended, Eiríkur returns to the Sandford family. Lalla and Alfonso are married and move to Cape Breton. Eiríkur finds Halifax boring without Lalla and spends the days at the amusement park, where one day in the late summer he suddenly meets Mrs. Hamilton with two young women. Eiríkur is immediately attracted to the one whom he believes is Icelandic. Mrs. Hamilton ignores him, however, both on this occasion and subsequent ones, and Eiríkur is at a loss as to how to make

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The Adventures of David Copperfield in Nova Scotia contact with the young Icelandic woman. School begins, and the amusement park closes for the winter. Towards the end of the winter, Geir looks up Eiríkur. The reason for his unexpected visit becomes clear when Eiríkur meets Geir and his wife: Jenny, Geir’s sister-in-law, has married an army officer, Mr. Smart, who is to be stationed in India for three years, and Geir and his wife now want Eiríkur to help him escape to Boston, where he will be able to find a job that can support a family. The plan is for Geir and Eiríkur to take Mr. Smart by boat beyond the mouth of the fjord on the day the ship leaves for Boston, get him aboard the ship, and pay his ticket. Things go as planned and Mr. Smart successfully escapes, but on their return trip Geir and Eiríkur spend a night storm-tossed on the fjord and almost lose their lives. When school is out, Eiríkur returns to the amusement park and again sees Mrs. Hamilton and the two young women. When once the Icelandic girl leaves behind her sunshade, Eiríkur sees his chance to make contact with her; he gives her the sunshade and addresses her in Icelandic. On subsequent visits she takes notice of him, and when a few days later he meets her without Mrs. Hamilton the two have an opportunity to talk. He learns that her name is Aðalheiður and that she has been raised my Mrs. Hamilton since her father died. Aðalheiður and Eiríkur manage to meet a few more times during the summer, and when both return to school in the fall they communicate by mail. They gradually fall in love and secretly become engaged. Mrs. Hamilton, who is suspicious of the relationship, decides to take Aðalheiður to England for three years, and to prevent Aðalheiður’s departure they marry in secret. Mrs. Hamilton has her way, however, and to Eiríkur’s detriment Aðalheiður leaves. Eiríkur is about to return to Dalhousie, but just before school Mr. Sandford falls ill and dies. Lalla, who has arrived, persuades her mother to move to Cape Breton with her, but shortly before their departure, Eiríkur becomes very sick. He is concerned about his inability to respond to Aðalheiður’s letters and so reveals to Lalla, who is nursing him, that he is married in order that she may contact Aðalheiður. Aðalheiður returns from England to be with Eiríkur, and when he has recovered Mrs. Sandford and the young couple move to Cape Breton with Mrs. Hamilton’s approval. Eiríkur’s plan to find employment in the Picquart family’s business fails, because the business goes bankrupt due to Alfonso’s gambling addiction and alcoholism, and so Aðalheiður and Eiríkur decide to move to Manitoba. On the train, Eiríkur meets Mrs. Patrik, who seems to have forgiven him. Eiríkur and Aðalheiður take up farming and do well. Nine years later, Lalla, who is now a widow, and her two children come to live with them and fare well in the Icelandic colony.

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IV Like David Copperfield, Eiríkur Hansson is a Bildungsroman. Unified by one central narrative voice, it is a retrospective narrative structured partly by the successive stages through which Eiríkur passes on the road of life, partly by recollections of happy and unhappy moments, and built around the themes of uncertainty, impermanence, and transience. Even a superficial acquaintance with Eiríkur Hansson will recall to the mind of the reader of English literature Dickens’s best-loved and bittersweet novel, despite the fact that David Copperfield and Eiríkur Hansson are separated in time by more than half a century and in place by thousands of miles. In the case of both boys the father is absent: David is a posthumous child (his father died six months before he was born), and Eiríkur’s patronymic, Hansson (literally “his son”), indicates that he is born out of wedlock. He has no recollection of his father, but has been told that he emigrated to North America, where he settled first in Wisconsin and later in California, and emigrated from there to Australia. Both boys also lose their mothers at a young age: David is about nine when his mother passes away, and Eiríkur about two. After his mother’s death, David’s comforter is Peggotty, his nanny, who now functions as a surrogate parent, but all too soon her dismissal terminates the relationship. Eiríkur’s caretaker is his grandmother, who raises him as her son, but their relationship ends when he is sent off to Mrs. Patrik. Having lost also their substitute parents, both boys come under the unhappy guardianship of unsympathetic adults with no understanding of or liking for children. Mr. Edward Murdstone, David’s disciplinary and stony-hearted stepfather, abuses him both physically and psychologically. When David repeatedly fails at his lessons in the presence of Mr. Murdstone and his elder sister, Miss Jane Murdstone, Mr. Murdstone grabs hold of David; David resists and bites his hand, whereupon Mr. Murdstone flogs him severely and keeps him imprisoned in his room for five days. Mr. Patrik torments Eiríkur by forcing him to abandon both his Icelandic name and Icelandic heritage, and after his attempt to escape from her house he is penalized in a manner similar to Mr. Murdstone’s punishment of David. Both boys are left to fend for themselves at a young age, and their struggles to make a living on their own take them on parallel paths. At the age of ten, David is sent off to London to become “a little laboring hind” (149) in Murdstone and Grinby’s Warehouse, Blackfriars, where he is to earn enough to provide for food and drink and pocket-money; his lodging

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with the eccentric Micawber family is paid for by Mr. Murdstone.6 Eiríkur is twelve, when he takes employment near Cooks-Brook with the farmer Rúben Red, where he receives no other payment than food and clothing. Both boys last only a year in their jobs, though their reasons for leaving differ. In David’s case, the Micawbers’ decision to move prompts him to run away to his only relative, his aunt Miss Betsey Trotwood, in Dover, and he sets off on foot on a six-day journey that bears a close resemblance to Eiríkur’s flights from Mrs. Patrik, first from her home with the Mooseland colony as his destination and next from Halifax with CooksBrook as his destination. In Eiríkur’s case, the motivating force is boredom with being a farmhand and his desire to be with Lalla Sandford and her parents, though Eiríkur does not go to Halifax right away but spends a year working first in Tangier and later in Gays River. In Dover and Halifax, respectively, David and Eiríkur receive a warm welcome: both Aunt Betsey (and her confused, gray-haired child Mr. Dick) and the Sandford family are compassionate and tender as they receive the little vagabonds into their homes. However, both boys are confronted once more with their former guardians (or a representative) before they feel that they have found a secure refuge. Aunt Betsey contacts Mr. Murdsone, which causes David to become “very downcast and heavy of heart” (p. 196), and Eiríkur accidentally runs into Mrs. Patrik’s coachman in Halifax while waiting for the Sandford family to return from their vacation and decides to flee from the city for fear that he may be brought back to her. Once David and Eiríkur are finally settled in their new homes, an unpleasant chapter in the lives of the two orphans has ended, and a new and happier one has begun. In both novels, the transition from one to the other is clearly marked with a short paragraph in which the boys reflect on their good fortune. David writes: Thus I began my new life, in a new name [i.e., Trotwood Copperfield], and with everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days, like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of guardians in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life – which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby’s. (209-10) 6

Here and in the following the references are to Nina Burgis’s edition of the novel in the Oxford World’s Classic series published in 1981 by Oxford University Press.

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Similar sentiments are expressed in Eiríkur Hansson, though Eiríkur is considerably more exuberant: Ég var undir eins búinn að ná mér aftur eftir allt stríðið og andstreymið. Lífið var mér allt í einu bjart og lund mín létt og kát, æskufjörið streymdi á ný um mig allan, og gleðin og ánægjan var efst í huga mínum. Allt var svo bjart og fjörugt og unaðsfullt í kringum mig, að mér fannst, og ég fann svo vel til þess, af því ég hafði reynt hið gagnstæða svo margsinnis á undan. Allt var nú að breytast til batnaðar fyrir mér, og ég fann það svo glöggt, að alveg nýtt tímabil var að byrja í æfisögu minni. (354)7 [I immediately recovered from all the difficulty and adversity. Life all of a sudden seemed bright, and I was in a good and cheerful mood; the joy of youth again came over me, and happiness and contentment were uppermost in my mind. I found everything so bright and lively and pleasant around me, because I had experienced the opposite so many times before. Everything was now changing in my favor, and I felt so clearly that a completely new period was beginning in the story of my life.]

Under the care of Aunt Betsey and the Sandford family, David and Eiríkur are schooled in preparation for a useful future. David is right away sent to school at Canterbury, where he boards with Aunt Betsey’s lawyerfriend Mr. Wickfield and his angelic daughter, Agnes; and Eiríkur receives private lessons over the summer and begins studies at Dalhousie in the fall. Both boys settle in and do well at school; but annoyance with young males, whom they perceive as rivals in their “sisterly” relationships with Agnes and Lalla, respectively, sours their lives. In David’s case, the villain is Uriah Heep, a law student who boards with Mr. Wickfield; in Eiríkur’s it is Alfonso Picquart, Lalla’s fiancé. In addition to being jealous, both David and Eiríkur have their doubts about the integrity of the two young men and a premonition that they will bring bad luck to the people around them. And indeed, their predictions come true: Uriah’s false humility, crafty self-promotion, and fawning self-effacement makes him find favor with Mr. Wickfield, and he uses his influence to stealthily usurp Mr. Wickfield’s business, steal Aunt Betsey’s deed, and torment David’s school master Dr. Strong by divulging a domestic secret; Alfonso, whose genetic predisposition towards addiction is revealed by his uncle to Eiríkur during a wedding party, ends up ruining the family business due to his 7

Here and in the following the references are to Árni Bjarnarson’s edition of the novel in the 4th volume of the Ritsafn series published in Reykjavík in 1950 by Bókaútgáfan Sóley.

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drinking and gambling habits. Both individuals, however, eventually pay for their wrongs: Uriah, who is unmasked and whose crimes are revealed, with imprisonment; and Alfonso, who sinks into alcoholism, with death. As David and Eiríkur enter adolescence, they both succumb to the raptures of romantic love. David becomes infatuated with Dora Spenlow, to whose widowed father he is articled (having decided that being a proctor at Doctors’ Commons in London would be a genteel source of employment). David is invited to spend the weekend at the Mr. Spenlow’s luxurious home at Norwood and there meets Dora, who immediately becomes the all-consuming object of his desire: She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was – anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her. (379)

Eiríkur becomes obsessed with Aðalheiður Einarsdóttir, the mysterious and deadly ill young woman in the home of Mrs. Hamilton, by whom he is summoned to write a letter on the young woman’s behalf. Although he never saw her face, he cannot get her out of his mind: Og marga daga á eftir gat ég um lítið annað hugsað en þessa sjúku stúlku, og margar nætur dreymdi mig hana. Mér þótti hún þá vera fríð og blómleg, með glóbjart hár og blá augu, og svo há og grönn og yndisleg. Og ég fann það í svefninum, að ég gat elskað hana af öllu mínu hjarta. Mér þótti hún vera í húsi frú Hamilton þvert á móti vilja sínum, og mér þótti hún biðja mig að hjálpa sér til að komast þaðan burtu. Og ég var fús til að hjálpa henni. Ó, ég hefði viljað ganga út í dauðann fyrir hana! (410) [And many days later I could think of little else than this girl, and many nights I dreamed about her. She seemed to me beautiful and vigorous, with golden hair and blue eyes, and tall and slender and delightful. And I found in my sleep that I could love her with all my heart. It seemed to me that she was in Mrs. Hamilton’s house against her will, and it seemed to me that she was asking me to help her get away. And I was keen to help her. Oh, I would have died for her!]

Both David and Eiríkur receive little sympathy from their substitute parents, when they mention to them their new-found passion. Aunt Betsey calls David “blind, blind, blind” (489), and Mr. Sandford curtly reminds Eiríkur that he was requested to write a letter for and not meet a girl. And for both David and Eiríkur the courtship is fraught with frustration and

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difficulty. Both boys are socially and financially unfit for the match, and both girls are carefully protected by their female guardians – in Dora’s case Miss Murdstone, who is now employed as Dora’s “confidential friend” (380), and in Aðalheiður’s case Mrs. Hamilton. Having gained the girls’ interest, the boys persevere, however; they communicate with them through letters (in David’s case via Dora’s friend Miss Mills and in Eiríkur’s case via Aðalheiður’s school) and soon become secretly engaged with the understanding that marriage plans are to be delayed until they are financially able to provide for their fiancées. David’s and Eiríkur’s romance is eventually discovered by Miss Murdstone and Mrs. Hamilton, respectively, and both boys are summoned by the girls’ guardians. Mr. Spenlow strongly objects to the relationship, calling it “youthful folly” and “mere nonsense” (537), and gives David a week to think things over. Before the week has passed, Mr. Spenlow suddenly dies, however, and Dora is sent to live with her two aunts, maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, at Putney. Mrs. Hamilton expresses views similar to those of Mr. Spenlow, arguing that the relationship is “blátt áfram barnaskapur” (511) [pure childishness], and insists on taking Aðalheiður with her to England. Even though Eiríkur and Aðalheiður hurriedly get married in order to thwart her plan, she has her way. Both David and Eiríkur are thus separated from their true loves, but not for long. David is permitted by the two aunts to visit Dora on weekends, and eventually they agree to his marrying Dora. Eiríkur becomes very ill, and Aðalheiður receives permission from Mrs. Hamilton to return to Canada to be with him and remain with him after his recovery. In the course of the two relationships, Dora and Aðalheiður befriend Agnes and Lalla, respectively, to David’s and Eiríkur’s ecstatic joy. Even before his marriage to Dora, David envisions the three of them as necessary to create a happy home: “I remember ... cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than elsewhere” (477). And when Dora and Agnes meet and become friends, he claims that he was never so happy: “I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when I saw the tender, beautiful regard which Agnes cast upon her” (594). Eiríkur expresses virtually identical feelings when Aðalheiður returns to Canada and meets Lalla, who has been nursing him during his illness: Aldrei hefir neinn verið sælli en ég var nú, því að allt, sem ég átti og allt, sem mér var kærast og allt, sem ég elskaði af hjartans innstu rótum, var nú

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Gradually, Agnes and Lalla are drawn into the two marriages, though only in Eiríkur’s case does the sisterly friend eventually enter the family: Lalla, who ends up orphaned and widowed with two young children, moves to Manitoba to live with Eiríkur and Aðalheiður in the Icelandic settlement there. Dickens’s Victorian novel does not permit this kind of ménage à trois: Dora has to die before David can live with Agnes; but that Dora remains a presence is David’s life after her death is evident from the fact that even after marrying Agnes David writes about her with the passion of one still in love with her. Having found their vocations and climbed to success – David as a writer and Eiríkur as a farmer – by the qualities of energy and steely determination, which have been convincingly explained, and obtained emotional and marital fulfillment through the wife-sister nexus, David and Eiríkur are at peace. In a few lines, David neatly ties together all the loose ends of work, love, and family: “I had advances in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years” (844). A similar summing up is found in Eiríkur Hansson, when Lalla joins Eiríkur and Aðalheiður in Manitoba: “Aldrei höfðum við verið glaðari á æfi okkar, – aldrei sælli. Lalla og börnin hennar færðu með sér ljós og yl, frið og ánægju inn í hús okkar Aðalheiðar. Aldrei hafði húsið okkar verið eins fallegt í okkar augum og einmitt nú” (564-65) [We had never been more pleased in our lives, – never happier. Lalla and her children brought light and shelter, peace and joy into Aðalheiður’s and my house. Our house had never been as beautiful in our eyes as right now]. And so, as the heroes of their own stories, they bid farewell to the readers, not only in a narrative sense, but also in the sense that their formative and turbulent years are now behind them. As the last in a series of images of women helping to compose David’s story, his representation of Agnes, his muse, symbolizes his maturation and, by extension, the completion of his task:

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And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But, one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company. O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward! (855)

Although considerably less eloquent – after all, Eiríkur is a farmer and not a writer – Eiríkur’s last paragraph is similarly valedictory. He, too, professes a certain difficulty in letting go, and he, too, acknowledges the women to whom he owes his debt: Um nokkur undanfarin kvöld hefi ég verið að lesa þeim Aðalheiði og Löllu þessa sögu mína, og þær segja, að ég hafi sagt rétt frá öllu, sem ég hafi á annað borð getið um, þeim viðvíkjandi, en þær segja líka, að ég hafi sleppt úr sögunni einu mjög áríðandi atriði. Ég viðurkenni það og segist ætla að rita um það sérstaklega. Þá brosa þær. (565) [In the evenings, I have recently been reading to Aðalheiður and Lalla my story, and they say that I have been accurate in everything I have related that concerns them, but they also say that I have omitted from the story one very important episode. I admit it and say that I want to write about it separately. Then they smile.]

While the general outline of Eiríkur Hansson parallels that of David Copperfield to no small degree, the greatest similarity between the two novels is, however, found in the portrayal of Agnes and Lalla, “the two loving women” (cf. Stefán Einarsson’s comment above), and it is quite obvious that Dickens’s representation of Mr. Wickfield’s seraphic daughter served as a model for Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s description of Lalla. Agnes and Lalla are the cornerstones of David’s and Eiríkur’s lives; they provide stability and show them endless loyalty, which even extends to Dora and Aðalheiður. David and Eiríkur both refer to them as sisters and use the word “love” to describe their feelings for the two women. Prompted by Uriah’s lust for Agnes, however, David eventually releases himself from his loving-brother attitude, so that he can declare a very different love for her. And that Eiríkur’s feelings for Lalla also go beyond brotherly affection is evident from the fact that he does not consider

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marriage to Lalla out of the question. When Eiríkur senses that Alfonso is more than a family friend, he indirectly proposes to Lalla: “Mig langar til að spyrja þig að nokkru,” sagði ég við Löllu. “Og hvað er nú það, elsku Eiríkur?” sagði Lalla. “Heldurðu, að þú gætir átt Íslending fyrir mann?” sagði ég hálf-feiminn ... “Ég mundi sjálfsagt geta átt Íslending, alveg eins og enskan eða skozkan mann, því að ég veit, að Íslendingar eru alveg eins góðir og myndarlegir menn sem hinir,” sagði Lalla. “En af hverju spyrðu svona, elsku barn?” Mér fannst ég verða allt í einu svo ósköp lítill, þegar hún sagði síðustu orðin ... Og ef ég væri ennþá barn, sem vafalaust var, fyrst hún sagði það, var það þá ekki hlægilegt, að ég skyldi fara að minnast á hjúskaparmál við hana? Reyndar ekki svo að skilja, að ég væri að biðja hana að verða konan mín. Samt hafði ég sjálfan mig í huganum, þegar ég lagði fyrir hana spurninguna. (359-60) [“I would like to ask you something,” I said to Lalla. “And what is that, dear Eiríkur?” said Lalla. “Do you think that you could marry an Icelander because of his nationality?” I said somewhat shy ... “Of course, I could marry an Icelander just as well as an Englishman or a Scotsman, because I know that Icelanders are as good and proper as the others,” said Lalla. “But why do you ask this, dear child?” I all of a sudden felt incredibly little, when she said the last words ... And if I were still a child, which was no doubt the case, since she said so, wasn’t it then ridiculous that I should raise the matter of marriage with her? Not that I was asking her to be my wife. Nonetheless, I had myself in mind when I asked her the question.]

It may be in order to emphasize the non-sexual feelings that David and Eiríkur have for Agnes and Lalla that very little is said about Agnes’s and Lalla’s physical appearances. The only physical description of Agnes is similar to the following: “Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquility about it, and about her – a quiet, good, calm spirit – that I never have forgotten; that I never shall forget” (217). And Eiríkur’s only observations about Lalla’s looks is that she was tall and slender with thick, black hair, that she had gentle and intelligent eyes, a tall forehead, a straight nose, and an exceptionally beautiful mouth. Both Agnes and Lalla are shadowy characters. Either they are ascribed saintly characteristics or they are described in terms of how they serve the men in their lives. Instead of giving concrete details about them, Dickens and Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason use “serene,” “gentle,” “lovely,” “sweet,” “self-denying,”

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“good,” and similar adjectives, which do not physically describe them, and emphasize their kindness and sagaciousness and not least their domestic and practical abilities. In contrast, the criteria for defining Dora and Aðalheiður seem to be physical and sensual. Dora has curls as well as dimples, a pink complexion, and small hands and feet. And she has a tiny mouth that forms into a rosebud. Aðalheiður has thick, blonde hair and blue eyes, a pretty and intelligent face, and a good figure. Her eyes have a roguish twinkle, and Eiríkur notes that there is something about her body that greatly appeals to him. The texts clearly mean for Dora and Aðalheiður to be perceived as objects of desire in apparent contrast to Agnes and Lalla. However, unlike Dora, David’s child-wife, who cannot even provide an adequate dinner for his undemanding friend, cannot manage her accountbook, nor share his troubles, Aðalheiður is smart and interested in literature. One suspects that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s national pride made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to present an Icelander as unintelligent. Moreover, since Aðalheiður is destined to become a pioneer woman and a farmer’s wife on the Canadian prairie, she could hardly be portrayed as impractical and incapable of managing a household. Finally, Stefán Einarsson comments that “a shyster attorney” in Eiríkur Hansson “might be bodily lifted from David Copperfield” (cf. above). The attorney in question is Mr. Sprat, and it seems likely that the precedent for his character is the unscrupulous Uriah Heep, the evil genius of Dickens’s novel, who makes a career of pouncing upon unsuspecting victims, although Mr. Sprat occupies a considerably less prominent role in Eiríkur Hansson than Uriah does in David Copperfield. In fact, there is only one episode involving Mr. Sprat, whose assistance Eiríkur and Mr. Sandford seek regarding Eiríkur’s inheritance of his grandparents’ land in the Mooseland colony. Mr. Sprat is very evasive about the legal fees involved in transferring the ownership of the property to Eiríkur, and when eventually Mr. Sandford insists on being informed about the exact amount, Mr. Sprat cites an unreasonable sum, adding slyly that his fees are comparable to those of other lawyers and determined by their strong union. Interestingly, both Uriah and Mr. Sprat are said to have red-brown eyes, and both are described as being very unappealing in appearance. Uriah is cursed with lashless eyes in a cadaverous face and with “a long, lank, skeleton hand” (213), which is “clammy” and “as ghostly to the touch as to the sight” (219). Mr. Sprat has a peculiar face that is “breiðast rétt fyrir neðan og um augun, en svo mikið mjórra bæði fyrir ofan og neðan” (493) [broadest at the bottom and around the eyes, and then much

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narrower both above and below], and he smiles with only one corner of his mouth.

V Eiríkur Hansson is, like David Copperfield, a novel of memory. Eiríkur reaches back into his past, and in a sense relives it. He ponders the trials and tragedies, as well as the pleasures and joys, of the decades that have passed from a vantage point of greater security. It is quite clear, as Stefán Einarsson has maintained, that Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason was inspired by David Copperfield in his composition of Eiríkur Hansson and, recognizing its relevance and timelessness, used it as a model. Consciously or unconsciously, he drew on several episodes in Dickens’s novel, and some of his main characters, including Lalla, the book’s true heroine, and Eiríkur himself, obviously have precedents in Dickens’s powerful and influential classic. Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason may be (and indeed has been) faulted for his lack of original thought.8 At the same time his ability to transform a Victorian novel into a story about Icelandic immigration to Canada with such conviction that critics have mistakenly regarded it as an autobiography is quite remarkable.

Works Cited Beck, Richard. 1946. “Introduction.” Æfintýri. By Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason. Reykjavík: Fjallkonuútgáfan. Bjarnarson, Árni. 1970. Vornætur á Elgsheiðum. Akureyri: Edda. Bjarnason, Jóhann Magnús. (1942-73). Ritsafn, 6 vols. Ed. Árni Bjarnarson. Akureyri: Edda. —. 1944. “The Yule-hall” (“Jólahöllin”), “The Peace Conference” (“Friðargerðin”), and “The Mirage of Time” (“Öfgar aldanna”). Trans. Kristjan J. Austmann. The Icelandic Canadian 3, no. 2. —. 1988. “In the Red River Valley” (Í Rauðárdalnum). Trans. Thelma Gudrun Whale. The Icelandic Canadian 46, no. 3. —. 1991. “Little Karl” (“Karl litli”). Trans. Kirsten Wolf. The Icelandic Canadian 50, no. 1.

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Stefán Einarsson comments: “It may be true that he lacks originality of thought and vigor of expression. But he compensates for this with his fertile and ingenious invention, his never flagging interest and good will and with his childlike, but by no means childish simplicity” (1948: 242).

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—. 1990. “Tribute to Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason”. Trans. Borga Jakobson 49, no. 1. —. 1992. “An Icelandic Giant” (“Íslenzkt heljarmenni”). Western Icelandic Short Stories. Trans. Kirsten Wolf and Árný Hjaltadóttir. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. D’Arcy, Julian Meldon and Kirsten Wolf. 1992. “The Sources of Jóhann Magnús Bjarnason’s ‘Íslenzkt heljarmenni’.” Scandinavica 31: 21-32. Dickens, Charles. 1891. David Copperfield. Ed. Nina Burgis. Oxfort: Oxford University Press. Einarsson, Stefán. 1948. History of Icelandic Prose Writers 1800-1940. Islandica 22-23. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Guðmundsson, Finnbogi, ed. 1971-75. Bréf til Stephans G. Stephanssonar, 3 vols. Ed.. Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs og Þjóðvinafélagsins.

TONIO KRÖGER’S IMAGINED DENMARK: POETICIZED REALITY OR DECADENT FANTASY? JULIE K. ALLEN

In September 1899, the aspiring German author Thomas Mann traveled to the Danish coast on holiday, as hordes of Germans still do each summer. He spent three days in Copenhagen before continuing up to Helsingør and the Aalsgaard Bathing Hotel on the north coast of Zealand. The trip made a lasting impression on the young author and Mann immortalized his host country in the semi-autobiographical novella Tonio Kröger, published in 1903. In the second half of the story, the novella’s eponymous protagonist Tonio Kröger spends a week at a beach hotel in northern Zealand, occupying himself primarily by wandering through the forest and sitting on the beach. The narrator’s detailed descriptions of Tonio’s surroundings paint a vivid picture of his idyllic surroundings, such as the following description of Tonio’s view from the beach: Die See ruhte träge und glatt, in blauen, flaschengrünen und rötlichen Streifen, von silbrig glitzernden Lichtreflexen überspielt, der Tang dörrte zu Heu in der Sonne, und die Quallen lagen da und verdunsteten. Es roch ein wenig faulig und ein wenig auch nach dem Teer des Fischerbootes, an welches Tonio Kröger, im Sande sitzend, den Rücken lehnte,—so gewandt, dass er den offenen Horizont und nicht die schwedische Küste vor Augen hatte; aber des Meeres leiser Atem strich rein und frisch über alles hin. (Mann 1958: 324-325) [The sea lay idle and smooth, streaked with blue and bottle green and pale red, and the light played over it in glittering silvery reflections. The seaweed withered like hay in the sun, and the stranded jellyfish shriveled. There was a slight smell of decay, and a whiff of tar from the fishing boat against which Tonio Kröger leaned as he sat on the sand, facing away from the Swedish coast and toward the open horizon; but over it all swept the pure, fresh, gentle breath of the sea. (Mann 2003: 44)]

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The tranquil beach scene is dominated by the ocean, shimmering in vibrant colors in the glittering sunlight, while the “des Meeres leiser Atem … rein und frisch” [pure, fresh, gentle breath of the sea] sweeps over the viewer. Although the novella’s idealized depiction of Denmark has generally been regarded as a straightforward literary articulation of Mann’s personal affection for Scandinavia, a poeticized but otherwise realistic representation of Denmark, such a simplistic reading ignores the significance of Mann’s particular construction of Danishness in the novella and its relevance to contemporary discourses about national and cultural identity, as well as literature and aesthetics. While all nations are, as Benedict Anderson asserts, imagined communities that exist in the minds of the members of the community, Mann’s construction of an imagined Denmark in the mind of a fictional character lends Andersen’s concept literality and foregrounds the process of imagining a national identity. The novella plays off a range of ethnic ideotypes against each other: Nordic, Germanic, Slavic, and Latin. Tonio’s journey to Denmark is a quest for his origins, an impression underscored by his brief visit to Lübeck on the way north. Intent on discovering his own identity, as defined by the markers of geography, race, class, culture, and language, Tonio’s conflicted relationship to his imagined Denmark reflects on both his and Mann’s individual identities, as well as the collective German identity they represent. Through the “prism of the collective personality and its distinctive culture” (Smith 1991: 17), Tonio hopes to be able to determine his identity as an individual and an artist. As Anthony Smith explains, [i]t is through a shared, unique culture that we are enabled to know ‘who we are’ in the contemporary world. By rediscovering that culture we “rediscover” ourselves, the “authentic self,” or so it has appeared to many divided and disoriented individuals who have had to contend with the vast changes and uncertainties of the modern world. (Smith 1991: 17)

Mann uses Denmark as the prism through which Tonio is able to discover his “authentic self,” to come to terms with his cross-cultural background and the world in which he lives, while offering it as a model for positive cultural values for Germany. Throughout the novella, Mann emphasizes the purity and serenity of the Danish landscape, identifying these qualities as intrinsically Danish in order to position Denmark as a physical and spiritual refuge from the moral and aesthetic storms that rocked fin-de-siècle Germany. Even on days when the sea raged, Tonio “stand in Wind und Brausen eingehüllt, versunken in dies ewige, schwere, betäubende Getöse, das er so sehr liebte. Wandte er sich und ging fort, so schien es plötzlich ganz ruhig und

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warm um ihn her. Aber im Rücken wusste er sich das Meer; es rief, lockte, und grüßte. Und er lächelte (325)” [Tonio would stand there enveloped in the noise of the wind and the surf, immersed in this perpetual, ponderous, deafening roar he loved so much. When he turned and moved away, everything all round him suddenly seemed calm and warm. But he knew the sea was behind him. It called, tempted, and greeted him. And he laughed” (45)]. Although Tonio loves the turmoil of decadence and is not immune to its allures, the image of Denmark that Mann becomes a symbol for the natural, life-affirming qualities that he embraces, the antithesis to the aestheticism and artifice of European decadence that is sapping his life-force. Decadence was the dominant aesthetic credo of Mann’s generation. Thomas Klugkist explains the essence of decadence as being that “the modern man knows that everything is broken. He does not believe that either the world or himself works properly” [der moderne Mensch weiß, dass das Ganze kaputt ist. Er glaubt weder, dass die Welt, noch, dass er selbst in Ordnung sei] (2003: 203). In his 1918 memoir Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen [Reflections of an Unpolitical Man], Mann described himself as belonging spiritually to this class of reluctant decadents: Ich gehöre geistig jenem über ganz Europa verbreiteten Geschlecht von Schriftstellern an, die, aus der décadence kommend, zu Chronisten und Analytikern der décadence bestellt, gleichzeitig den emanzipatorischen Willen zur Absage an sie, - sagen wir pessimistisch: die Velleität dieser Absage im Herzen tragen und mit der Überwindung von Dekadenz und Nihilismus wenigstens experimentieren. Einsichtige werden Spuren dieser Richtung, dieses Wollens und Versuchens in meinen Arbeiten überall finden. (Mann 1983: 201) [I belong spiritually to that generation of writers spread across Europe who, coming out of decadence and predestined to become chroniclers and interpreters of decadence, possess at the same time the emancipatory will to reject it, or, to be pessimistic, let us say: carry the potential of this rejection in their hearts and at least experiment with the overcoming of decadence and nihilism. Insightful readers will find traces of this tendency, this desire and these attempts throughout my work.]1

Tonio Kröger, which Mann wrote during the same period as the trio of his highly decadent texts Buddenbrooks, Tristan, and Der Tod in Venedig, can be viewed as precisely such an experiment with the conquest of decadence 1

Although I am using Lübich’s translation of Tonio Kröger, all other translations in this article are mine.

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and nihilism, an attempt to realize the emancipatory wish to turn away from decadence. Frustrated by the artificiality of art proscribed by Continental aesthetics, Tonio goes to Denmark to find validation for his “Bürgerliebe zum Menschlichen, Lebendigen und Gewöhnlichen” (338) [bourgeois love for the human and the living and the ordinary (55)]. Rather than chronicling and celebrating the sophistication and morbidity of European decadence, Tonio Kröger seems to reject it in favor of the ordinariness and healthy purity represented by Denmark. In Tonio Kröger, Mann constructs a symbolic geography of Europe that positions Denmark as the locus of genuine emotion and morality, in contrast to the sickly sinful indulgence of the South. In so doing, Mann invokes a long tradition of fascination with Scandinavian cultural identity. Early 19th century German Romantics held an idealized view of the North as pure, unspoiled: “‘Norden’ bedeutet Jugend, Reinheit, Freiheit, ‘Süden’ bedeutet Alter, Vermischtheit, Norm und Gezähmtheit” (von See 1994: 211) [the ‘North’ connoted youth, purity, freedom; the ‘South’ connoted age, impurity, tradition, spiritlessness]. This veneration of the Nordic countries as the source of Germanic cultural and racial vitality gained renewed currency toward the end of the nineteenth century, inspiring new generations of devotees to the notion of Scandinavia as the “vagina nationum, der ‘Mutterschoß der Nationen’” (von See 1994: 284) [vagina nationum, the ‘womb of the nations’]. At the end of the nineteenth century, groups as diverse as Naturalist writers, Lebensreformer, and proto-fascist ideologues all found in Scandinavia a convenient vehicle for their dreams of a purer, healthier society. One of the reasons for the popularity of the term ‘Nordic’ was its abstractness and adaptability: Als weltanschaulich gut verwertbar bietet sich hier der Begriff des ‘Nordischen’ an: zunächst deshalb, weil er sich wegen seiner Unschärfe . . . willkürlich füllen läßt, dann auch deshalb, weil er von vornherein zur Polarisierung strebt, weil man ihn nicht denken kann, ohne sogleich seinen geographischen Gegenbegriff mitzudenken. (von See 1994: 191) [The concept of the “Nordic” lends itself well to supporting a particular world-view: first because its vagueness—in contrast to “Germanic” or even “Indogermanic”—allows it to be defined at will, and also because it is an inherently polarizing term, since it cannot be conceived of without the simultaneous conception of its geographic opposite.]

Mann’s characterization of Denmark in Tonio Kröger, summarized in his 1929 Nobel Prize acceptance speech as “der Inbegriff aller Herzlichkeit und bürgerlichen Heimat, alles tief ruhenden Gefühls, aller innigen

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Menschlichkeit” [the embodiment of all sincerity and bourgeois homeland, all deeply-seated feeling, all soulful humanity] (Mann 1960: 410), resonated with popular contemporary valorizations of Scandinavia. At the same time, however, his famous formulation of Germany as “das Land der Mitte” [the land of the middle] invites exploration of Denmark’s role as representative of the northern pole in Germany’s symbolic view of European geography, defined by its geographic and cultural difference from Italy and Southern Europe. Yet although Tonio Kröger’s imagined Denmark purports to surmount decadence, Mann leaves open the question of whether Tonio succeeds in his endeavor or whether his view of Denmark is itself merely a decadent fantasy. On one hand, the novella’s idealized literary construction of Denmark and Tonio’s final impassioned acceptance of it and all that it represents defies the decadent preoccupation with degeneration, dissipation, and death by affirming life, vitality, and ordinariness. On the other hand, Tonio’s vacillation between the extremes of decadent selfindulgence and bourgeois constraints, the irony underpinning his longing for “die Wonnen der Gewöhnlichkeit” (338) [the bliss of the commonplace (55)], even his attempts to overcome decadence are themselves characteristic of decadence. He chooses Denmark, fully aware that he can never realize the ideal he so admires, thus dooming himself to sterility and isolation. This paradox, so characteristic of decadence itself, undermines Tonio’s rejection of decadence, suggesting that both extremes are unsustainable. In the end, the novella ultimately affirms the complex interdependency of life and death, sin and morality, art and bourgeois norms upon which literary decadence is predicated and exposes Tonio’s vision of Denmark as an unattainable dream. Mann sets up the contrast between Tonio’s decadent character and Denmark’s vitality at the beginning of the novella. Tonio is depicted as a typical decadent—the last representative of a respectable German family, a weak boy with fiery foreign blood, who rejects his family’s business tradition in order to become an artist. Initially, the narrator defines Tonio in decadent terms, emphasizing the historical and economic decay of his hometown, the extinction of his family line, his exotic roots and his sensitive spirit, as well as his belief that art means freedom from stifling convention. The narrator notes that “die alte Familie der Kröger war nach und nach in einen Zustand des Abbröckelns und der Zersetzung greaten, und die Leute hatten Grund, Tonio Krögers eigenes Sein und Wesen ebenfalls zu den Merkmalen dieses Zustandes zu rechnen“ (289) [the old Kröger family had gradually fallen into a state of decay and disintegration, and Tonio Kröger’s own existence and nature were with good reason

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generally regarded as symptomatic of this decline (16)]. As a child, Tonio is too different from his blond, blue-eyed, athletic peers to fit in—he writes poetry and weeps over literature, cares little for horses and cannot be bothered to master required social skills, such as dancing lessons. After the death of his father and Tonio’s acceptance of his own difference from the coveted Nordic ideal represented by Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm, the objects of his adolescent devotion, he rejects the cold conventions of Northern Germany in favor of the artistic stimulation promised by Southern Europe. The poles of the novella’s symbolic geography rely on a familiar dichotomy: art cannot flourish in the North because of its frigidity of climate and culture, whereas the sensuality of the South creates fertile ground for creativity and artistic inspiration. The narrator invests Tonio’s hometown with these symbolic associations in the opening paragraph of the novella: “Die Wintersonne stand nur als armer Schein, milchig und matt hinter Wolkenschichten über der engen Stadt. Nass und zügig war’s in den giebeligen Gassen, und manchmal fiel eine Art von weichem Hagel, nicht Eis, nicht Schnee“ (271) [The winter sun was no more than a feeble gleam, milky and wan behind layers of cloud above the narrow streets of the town. Down among the gabled houses it was damp and drafty, with occasional showers of a kind of soft hail that was neither ice nor snow (1)]. Tonio’s exotic name and swarthy complexion are out of place in this narrow, inhospitable environment, as is his love of art and poetry: ”Dieses, dass er ein Heft mit selbstgeschriebenen Versen besaß, war durch sein eigenes Verschulden bekannt geworden und schadete ihm sehr, bei seinen Mitschülern sowohl wie bei den Lehrern” (274) [The fact that he possessed a notebook full of poems written by himself had by his own fault become public knowledge, and it very adversely affected his reputation both with his schoolmates and with the masters (4)]. When Tonio shakes the dust of Lübeck from his feet in order to pursue art and sensual experience in Italy, he confirms this symbolic geographical order privileging Southern sophistication over Northern provinciality: “Er verließ [alles] ... und empfand keinen Schmerz dabei. Denn er war groß und klug geworden, hatte begriffen, was für eine Bewandtnis es mit ihm hatte, und war voller Spott für das plumpe und niedrige Dasein, das ihn so lange in seiner Mitte gehalten hatte“ (289) [He left it all without a pang. For he was grown up and enlightened now, he understood his situation and was full of contempt for the crude and primitive way of life that had enveloped him for so long (16)]. The adjectives “plump” and “niedrig” [crude, primitive] in particular evoke centuries of Southern European

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contempt for Northern Europe, as far back as Tacitus’s second-hand descriptions of the Germanic barbarians. The South is depicted in equally symbolic fashion, with emphasis on its warm climate and the passionate nature of its inhabitants. Mann is deliberately vague about where Tonio travels, noting only that “er lebte in großen Städten und im Süden, von dessen Sonne er sich ein üppigeres Reifen seiner Kunst versprach” (290) [he lived in large cities in the south, for he felt that his art would ripen more lushly in the southern sun (17)], an explicit contrast to the milky paleness of the sun in the north. The narrator suggests that Tonio’s attraction to the south is a genetic predisposition, due to “das Blut seiner Mutter” (290) [heredity on his mother’s side (17)]. Tonio’s “schöne, feurige Mutter” [beautiful fiery mother] is described simply as coming “von drüben (279)” [from abroad (7)], as if all warmer climates produce similarly passionate, artistic souls. In leaving Germany for the South, Tonio seeks to develop the exquisite aesthetic sense of the decadent, to sacrifice his human frailty in the service of Art. Tonio’s art does indeed profit by this time in the South: “Seine Künstlerschaft [verschärfte sich], ward wählerisch, erlesen, kostbar, fein, reizbar gegen das Banale und aufs höchste empfindlich in Fragen des Taktes und Geschmacks” (291) [His artistry grew more refined; it became fastidious, exquisite, rich, subtle, intolerant of banality and hypersensitive in matters of tact and taste (17)]. But his artistic development comes at the cost of his humanity: Er ergab sich ganz der Macht, die ihm als die erhabenste auf Erden erschien, zu deren Dienst er sich berufen fühlte, und die ihm Hoheit und Ehren versprach, der Macht des Geistes und des Wortes, die lächelnd über dem unbewußten und stummen Leben thront. . . . Sie schärfte seinen Blick und ließ ihn die großen Wörter durchschauen, die der Menschen Busen blähen, sie erschloß ihm der Menschen Seelen und seine eigene, machte ihn hellsehend und zeigte ihm das Innere der Welt und alles Letzte, was hinter den Worten und Taten ist (289-290). [He surrendered himself utterly to that power which he felt to be the sublimest power on earth, to the service of which he felt called and which promised him honor and renown; the power of intellect and words, a power that sits smilingly enthroned above mere inarticulate, unconscious life. He surrendered to it with youthful passion and it rewarded him with all that it has to give, while inexorably exacting its full price in return. It sharpened his perceptions and enabled him to see through the high-sounding phrases that swell the human breast, it unlocked for him the mysteries of the human mind and of his own, it made him clear-sighted, it showed him life from

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the inside and revealed to him the fundamental motives behind what men say and do (16-17)].

Although Tonio found the artistic enlightenment that he sought in “the power of intellect and words,” his reward is the disillusionment of the decadent. After describing the development of Tonio’s artistic perception, the narrator negates its value: “Was er aber sah, war dies: Komik und Elend—Komik und Elend” (290) [But what did he see? Absurdity and wretchedness— absurdity and wretchedness (17)]. In his quest for insight into human nature and art, Tonio ultimately finds only absurdity, wretchedness, torment, pride, and loneliness. As his understanding of human nature grows, Tonio’s heart is frozen by this knowledge: “Da kam, mit der Qual und dem Hochmut der Erkenntnis, die Einsamkeit, weil es ihn im Kreise der Harmlosen mit dem fröhlich dunklen Sinn nicht litt und das Mal an seiner Stirn sie verstörte” (290) [And with the torment and the pride of such insight came loneliness; for he could not feel at ease among the innocent, among the light of heart and dark of understanding, and they shrank from the sign on his brow (17)]. This cynical worldview marks him as a decadent, disillusioned with humanity and condemned to the fringes of polite society by his awareness of its failings. For solace, Tonio follows the path of the aesthete, obsessed with art for art’s sake: “Aber mehr und mehr versüßte sich ihm auch die Lust am Worte und der Form, denn er pflegte zu sagen (und hatte es auch bereits aufgeschrieben), dass die Kenntnis der Seele allein unfehlbar trübsinnig machen würde, wenn nicht die Vergnügungen des Ausdrucks uns wach und munter erhielten …” (290) [But at the same time he savored ever more sweetly the delight of words and of form, for he would often remark (and had already written the observation down) that mere knowledge of human psychology would in itself infallibly make us despondent if we were not cheered and kept alert by the satisfaction of expressing it… (17)]. Ultimately, however, Tonio finds the price exacted by decadence to be too high. He is disgusted by the blatant, heartless sensuality of his life in the South and the toll it takes on his spirit: Aber da sein Herz tot und ohne Liebe war, so geriet er in Abenteuer des Fleisches, stieg tief hinab in Wollust und heiße Schuld und litt unsäglich dabei…. Ein Ekel und Hass gegen die Sinner erfasste ihn und ein Lechzen nach Reinheit und wohlanständigem Frieden…. [Er führte] ein erschöpfendes Leben, ein ausbündiges, ausschweifendes und außerordentliches Leben, dass er … im Grunde verabscheute (291). [But because his heart was dead and had no love in it, he fell into carnal adventures, far into the hot guilty depths of sensuality, although such

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Tonio Kröger’s Imagined Denmark: Poeticized Reality or Decadent Fantasy? experiences cost him intense suffering…. He was seized by revulsion, by a hatred of the senses, by a craving for purity and decency and peace of mind…. The life he lived was exhausting, tormented by remorse, extravagant, dissipated and monstrous (17)].

Tonio associates the qualities that he longs for— purity, decency, peace of mind—, with the memory of his father, that exemplar of Germanic virtues, and his childhood home on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Despite the Zolaesque fertility of his surroundings, “die Luft der Kunst …, die laue und süße, duftgeschwängerte Luft eines beständigen Frühlings, in der es treibt und braut und keimt in heimlicher Zeugungswonne” (290) [the atmosphere of art, the mild, sweet, heavily fragrant air of a continual spring in which everything sprouts and burgeons and germinates in mysterious procreative delight (17)] and his resulting artistic successes, Tonio suffers from the loss of his humanity. The description of his lush surroundings conceals the organic decay upon which it is predicated, but the narrator spells out the consequences for Tonio of the decadent emphasis on death as the price of art: “Er arbeitete nicht wie jemand, der arbeitet, um zu leben, sondern wie einer, der nichts will als arbeiten, weil er sich als lebendigen Menschen für nichts achtet, nur als Schaffender in Betracht zu kommen wünscht und im übrigen grau und unauffällig umherget, wie ein abgeschminkter Schauspieler, der nichts ist, solange er nichts darzustellen hat” (291) [He worked, not like a man who works in order to live, but like one who has no desire but to work, because he sets no store by himself as a living human being, seeks recognition only as a creative artist, and spends the rest of the time in a gray incognito, like an actor with his makeup off, who has no identity when he is not performing (18)]. Tonio’s art becomes his only identity, and though he professes to despise “jene Kleinen, … die in erster Linie glücklich, liebenswürdig und künstlerisch zu leben bedacht waren, unwissend darüber, dass … wer lebt, nicht arbeitet, und dass man gestorben sein muss, um ganz ein Schaffender zu sein” (292) [those minor hacks who…aimed above all else at living happily, charmingly, and artistically, little suspecting that … living and working are incompatible and that one must have died if one is to be wholly a creator (18)], he envies them all the same. Tonio makes his choice between North and South, between decadence and life, in his monologue about art in Chapter 4. This passage has is generally interpreted as an analysis of the role of the artist in society, but it is also fundamentally concerned with questions of symbolic geography and artistic style. Like the other locales described in the novella, the setting for Tonio’s monologue is invested with symbolic significance. Not

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only is the chapter in question at the center of the novella, but the events take place in Munich, halfway between Italy and Lübeck, in the rearcourtyard attic apartment of Tonio’s Russian artist friend, Lisaveta Ivanova, on Schellingstrasse in the heart of the Schwabing district of Munich, which was known at the time for its unconventional artistic community, the Schwabinger Bohème. Located thus on geographical and narrative middle ground, Tonio questions his membership in the tribe of decadents. Mann frames Tonio’s soul-searching by a beautiful spring morning, which puts Tonio to shame “vor seiner reinen Natürlichkeit und seiner siegenden Jugend (295)” [by its pure naturalness, its triumphant youthfulness (21)]. Tonio’s discontent arises from the disconnect between art and emotion; artists work badly in the springtime, Tonio speculates, “weil man empfindet. Und weil der ein Stümper ist, der glaubt, der Schaffende dürfe empfinden“ (295) [because one’s feelings are being stimulated. Only amateurs think that a creative artist can afford to have feelings (21)]. Tonio’s lament echoes the decadent view of art, which demands that the artist set himself apart from humanity and human emotion, arguing that ordinary emotions defile the aesthetic superiority of art: Denn so ist es ja, Lisaweta: Das Gefühl, das warme, herzliche Gefühl ist immer banal und unbrauchbar, und künstlerisch sind bloß die Gereiztheiten und kalten Ekstasen unseres verdorbenen, unseres artistischen Nervensystems. Es ist nötig, dass man irgend etwas Außermenschlisches und Unmenschliches sei, dass man zum Menschlichen in einem seltsam fernen und überhaupt unbeteiligten Verhältnis stehe, um imstande und überhaupt versucht zu sein, es zu spielen, damit zu spielen, es wirksam und geschmackvoll darzustellen. Die Begabung für Stil, Form und Ausdruck setzt bereits dies kühle und wählerische Verhältnis zum Menschlichen, ja, eine gewisse menschliche Verarmung und Verödung voraus. Denn das gesunde und starke Gefühl, dabei bleibt es, hat keinen Geschmack. Es ist aus mit dem Künstler, sobald er Mensch wird und zu empfinden beginnt (295-296). [For that is how it is, Lisaveta: emotion, warm, heartfelt emotion, is invariably commonplace and unserviceable — only the stimulation of our corrupted nervous system, its cold ecstasies and acrobatics, can bring forth art. One simply has to be something inhuman, something standing outside humanity, strangely remote and detached from its concerns, if one is to have the ability or indeed even the desire to play this game with it, to play with men’s lives, to portray them effectively and tastefully. Our stylistic and formal talent, our gift of expression, itself presupposes this coldblooded, fastidious attitude to mankind, indeed it presupposes a certain human impoverishment and stagnation. For the fact is: all healthy emotion,

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Tonio Kröger’s Imagined Denmark: Poeticized Reality or Decadent Fantasy? all strong emotion lacks taste. As soon as an artist becomes human and begins to feel, he is finished as an artist (21)].

Tonio begins his monologue by affirming the decadent view of art, but gradually reveals his dissatisfaction with it: “Ich sage Ihnen, dass ich es oft sterbensmüde bin, das Menschliche darzustellen, ohne am Menschlichen teilzuhaben” (296) [I tell you I am often sick to death of being a portrayer of humanity and having no share in human experience,” he complains (22)]. Despite his predisposition towards decadence, Tonio rejects it, comparing his situation to “der Fall Hamlet, des Dänen, dieses typischen Literaten. Er wußte, was das ist: zum Wissen berufen warden” (300) [the case of Hamlet the Dane, that typical literary artist, (who) knew what it was like to be called upon to bear a burden of knowledge for which one was not born (25)]. Disgusted by the mute hopelessness of intellectuals worn out by this view of literature and life, Tonio confesses to Lisaveta that he loves life “in seiner verführerischen Banalität” (302) [in its seductive banality (27)]. Ultimately, Tonio decides to turn his back on decadence, proclaiming: Der ist noch lange kein Künstler, … dessen letzte und tiefste Schwärmerei das Raffinierte, Exzentrische und Satanische ist, der die Sehnsucht nicht kennt nach dem Harmlosen, Einfachen und Lebendigen, nach ein wenig Freundschaft, Hingebung, Vertraulichkeit und menschlichem Glück—die verstohlene und zehrende Sehnsucht, Lisaweta, nach den Wonnen der Gewöhnlichkeit! (302-303) [No one… has the right to call himself an artist is his profoundest craving is for the refined, the eccentric and the satanic — if his heart knows no longing for innocence, simplicity and living warmth, for a little friendship and self-surrender and familiarity and human happiness — if he is not secretly devoured, Lisaveta, by this longing for the bliss of the commonplace! (27)].

Although Tonio has found acceptance and acclaim among artists, “die Herde und Gemeinde, die mir wohlbekannt ist” (303) [my own flock, my familiar congregation (27)], he does not want to belong to this group of people, “denen die Poesie eine sanfte Rache am Leben ist (302) [to whom literature is a quiet way of taking their revenge on life (27)], whose goal is to corrupt art itself: “mit allen Künsten bestrebt zu sein, es auf seine Seite zu ziehen, es für die Finessen und Melancholien, den ganzen kranken Adel der Literatur zu gewinnen” (303) [trying with all the skill at [their] command to entice [life] from its proper course, to interest it in our melancholy subtleties, in this whole sick aristocracy of literature (27)].

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Instead, Tonio decides to renounce Italy, with its “sammetblauer Himmel, heißer Wein und süße Sinnlichkeit” (306) [velvet blue skies, heady wine and sweet sensuality (29)], and travel to Denmark. He has never been there before, but he feels connected to it in an almost uncanny way. Just as he attributed his earlier longing for Italy to his mother, he credits his father for instilling in him “diese nördliche Neigung” (306) [this northern predilection (29)]. This decision marks the turning point in the novel, from which point on the characterization of Denmark and the Germanic North as anti-decadent becomes prevalent, along with the reminder that this characterization is a fantasy. It is Tonio’s view of Denmark as a safe haven from the decadence of the South which prompts his trip north. He praises Danish literature as “diese tiefen, reinen und humoristischen Bücher” [books of such depth and purity and humor], Scandinavian food as “diese unvergleichlichen Mahlzeiten, die man nur in einer starken Salzluft verträgt” [incomparable meals, only digestible in a strong salty air], and Denmark itself, a place he has never visited, as “das Land von jeher gekannt und geliebt” (306) [a country I’ve always known about and loved (29)]. Tonio carries his imagined Denmark around with him in his heart and mind long before he goes there, and it is this imagined Denmark that he sees once he arrives. Accordingly, Mann’s description of Tonio’s journey to Denmark is far more concerned with symbolic geography than literal topography or ethnography. As Mann himself had done, Tonio spends a few days in Copenhagen as a proper tourist, “in dem er sein Reisebüchlein aufgeschlagen vor sich hertrug, und benahm sich ganz wie ein besserer Fremder, der seine Kenntnisse zu bereichern wünscht” (322) [holding his guidebook open in front of him and in general behaving like a well-bred foreigner intent on improving his mind (43)]. Mann summarizes Tonio’s sightseeing in Copenhagen in a single paragraph, mentioning that he visits Kongens Nytorv, Vor Fruekirke, Rundetårn, Thorwaldsens museum, and Tivoli, but the narrator cautions, “aber es war nicht so recht eigentlich all dies, was er sah” (322) [yet all this was not really what he saw (43)]. Instead, he saw shadows of his childhood, of the Nordic aspects of his hometown, in architecture, names, and appearances, “die ihm etwas Zartes und Köstliches zu bezeichnen schienen und bei alledem etwas wie Vorwurf, Klage und Sehnsucht nach Verlorenem in sich schlossen” (323) [symbolizing for him something tender and precious, and containing at the same time a kind of reproach, the sorrowful nostalgic reminder of something lost (43)]. In his youth, Tonio’s fascination with Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm derived in large part from their embodiment of the Nordic racial type with blond hair, blue eyes, and robust vigor. Hans is

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repeatedly described by his keen, steely blue eyes and blond hair pushing out from beneath “eine dänische Matrosenmütze (272) [a Danish sailor’s cap (1)], while the image of Ingeborg’s “dicken, blonden Zopf [und] lachenden, blauen Augen” (282) [thick blond tresses and laughing blue eyes (10)] imprinted itself on Tonio’s mind. In Copenhagen, Tonio saw “Augen, die so blau, Haare, die so blond” (323) [eyes just as blue, hair just as blond], and as he walked the streets, he experienced repeatedly that “ein Blick, ein klingendes Wort, ein Auflachen ihn ins Innerste traf” (323) [a look, a vocal inflection, a peal of laughter … pierced him to the heart (43)]. Tonio envisions Shakespeare’s Hamlet as looking just like these Danes, echoing Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, whose description of Hamlet incorporates this racial ideal: “Als Däne, als Nordländer ist er blond von Hause aus und hat blaue Augen” [As a Dane, as a Nordic he is naturally blond and has blue eyes] (von See 213). After a few days in the Danish capital, Tonio moves on up the coast, driven by “eine Unruhe, … Erinnerung halb und halb Erwartung” (323) [a certain restlessness, by mingled memory and expectancy (43)], looking for the essence of Denmark in the countryside, in the quintessentially bourgeois setting of the Aalsgaard beach hotel. Whereas the South had had the effect of deadening Tonio’s heart, Denmark succeeds in healing it. At first, Tonio spends uncounted days on the seashore and in the forest, forgetting his past. “Er genoß ein tiefes Vergessen, ein erlöstes Schweben über Raum und Zeit, und nur zuweilen war es, als würde sein Herz von einem Weh durchzuckt, einem kurzen, stechenden Gefühl von Sehnsucht oder Reue, das nach Namen und Herkunft zu fragen er zu träge und versunken war” (325) [He experienced a profound forgetfulness, floating as if disembodied above space and time, and only at certain moments did he feel his heart stricken by a pang of sorrow, a brief, piercing, nostalgic or remorseful emotion which in his lethargic trance he made no attempt to define or analyze (45)]. One sundrenched morning, Tonio’s spirit revives as he looks out the window at the ocean at what could be a painting by the Danish artist P.S. Krøyer, the mainstay of the Skagen movement in the 1880s and 90s: Jetzt aber spannte sich der Himmel wie aus straffer, blassblauer Seide schimmernd klar über See und Land, und durchquert und umgeben von rot und golden durchleuchteten Wolken erhob sich feierlich die Sonnenscheibe über das flimmernd gekrauste Meer, das unter ihr zu erschauern und zu erglühen schien … So hub der Tag an, und verwirrt und glücklich warf Tonio Kröger sich in die Kleider (326).

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[Over land and sea, the sky was like tight-stretched pale blue silk, bright and glistening; and the sun’s disk, traversed and surrounded by resplendent red and gold clouds, was mounting in triumph above the shimmering, wrinkled water, which seemed to quiver and catch fire beneath it… Thus the day opened, and in joy and confusion Tonio Kröger threw on his clothes (46)].

Tonio is invigorated by the magnificent view from his window, presaging his reaction later that day when a party of Danes arrives at the hotel and Tonio thinks he sees Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm, looking exactly as they had looked thirteen years before in Lübeck. Like ghosts from the past, they saunter through the room, Hans swinging his Danish sailor’s cap by its ribbons, “mit dem still blauenden Meere als Hintergrund” (328) [against the background of the calm blue sea (47)]. This apparition infects Tonio with “einer so ängstlichen und süßen Freude, wie er sie lange, tote Jahre hindurch nicht mehr erprobt hatte” (328-329) [a sweet apprehensive excitement such as he had not felt throughout all these long, dead years (48)]. The description of the party of Danes at the hotel focuses on their happy simplicity. These are the kind of unselfconscious people, “die in erster Linie glücklich, liebenswürdig und künstlerisch zu leben bedacht waren” (292) [(who) aimed above all else at living happily, charmingly, and artistically (18)], that Tonio had despised just weeks earlier. Tonio watches their party from the veranda, the young men “in kleinstädtisch geschnittenen Anzügen, denen man sah, dass sie die ganze Woche geschont wurden, und die jungen Mädchen in lichten und leichten Kleidern mit Feldblumensträußchen an den Miedern. Auch ein paar Kinder waren im Saale und tanzten untereinander auf ihre Art, sogar, wenn die Musik pausierte“ (330) [in suits of provincial cut which they obviously used only at weekends, and the girls in light pale frocks with bunches of wild flowers on their bosoms. There were even some children present, dancing with each other after their fashion, even when the band was not playing (49)]. Among them he sees the couple that he takes for Hans Hansen and Ingeborg Holm: Sie waren es nicht so sehr vermöge einzelner Merkmale und der Ähnlichkeit der Kleidung, als kraft der Gleichheit der Rasse und des Typus, dieser lichten, stahlblauäugigen und blondhaarigen Art, die eine Vorstellung von Reinheit, Ungetrübtheit, Heiterkeit und einer zugleich stolzen und schlichten, unberührbaren Sprödigkeit hervorrief (331). [For that was who they were — not so much by virtue of particular details of their appearance or similarities of dress, but by affinity of race and type:

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Tonio Kröger’s Imagined Denmark: Poeticized Reality or Decadent Fantasy? they too had that radiant blondness, those steely blue eyes, that air of untroubled purity and lightness of heart, of proud simplicity and unapproachable reserve (50)].

Whether or not the couple are the same Hans and Ingeborg is irrelevant; what Tonio is drawn to in them is the Scandinavian ideal that they represent: light, pure, innocent, and simple. The transposition of Tonio’s childhood idols into the Danish setting confirms the correspondence between Denmark and all of the positive aspects of Tonio’s childhood. Even though Tonio had always known that his love for Inge was hopeless, “so war er dennoch glücklich. Denn damals lebte sein Herz. Warm und traurig schlug es für dich, Ingeborg Holm, und seine Seele umfasste deine blonde, lichte und übermutig gewöhnliche kleine Persönlichkeit in seliger Selbstverleugnung“ (287) [he was nevertheless happy. For his heart was alive in those days. Warmly and sorrowfully it throbbed for you, Ingeborg Holm, and in blissful self-forgetfulness his whole soul embraced your blond, radiant, exuberantly normal little personality in blissful selfbetrayal (14)]. Tonio knows that he cannot be like Hans and Ingeborg, that “seine Sprache war nicht ihre Sprache (288) [they did not speak the same language (15)], but he savors their ability “einfach und völlig dem Gefühle leben zu dürfen, das ohne die Verpflichtung, zur Tat und zum Tanz zu warden, süß und träge in sich selber ruht“ (334) [to live simply for one’s feelings alone, to rest idly in sweet self-sufficient emotion, uncompelled to translate it into activity (52)]. His mental image of Hans and Ingeborg stylizes them as representatives of Denmark and Danishness, as “ihr Blonden, Lebendigen, Glücklichen” (335) [the fair-haired, the happy, the truly alive (53)], embodiments of all the qualities he coveted but lacked. Tonio’s confrontation with Hans and Ingeborg and the Nordic ideal that they represent to him causes him to reevaluate his own life. He appreciates his fame and success, but regrets the price he paid for it: “Erstarrung; Öde; Eis; und Geist! Und Kunst!” (336) [Paralysis; barrenness; ice; and intellect! and art! (53)]. In bed that night, Tonio agonizes over the choices he has made in life: Er flüsterte zwei Namen in das Kissen hinein, diese paar keuschen, nordischen Silben, die ihm seine eigentliche und ursprüngliche Liebes-, Leides- und Glückesart, das Leben, das simple und innige Gefühl, die Heimat bezeichneten. Er blickte zurück auf die Jahre seit damals bis auf diesen Tag. Er gedachte der wüsten Abenteuer der Sinne, der Nerven und des Gedankens, die er durchlebt, sah sich zerfressen von Ironie und Geist, verödet und gelähmt von Erkenntnis, halb aufgerieben von den Fiebern und Frösten des Schaffens, haltlos und unter Gewissensnöten zwischen krassen

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Extremen, zwischen Helligkeit und Brunst hin und her geworfen, raffiniert, verarmt, erschöpft von kalten und künstlich erlesenen Exaltationen, verirrt, verwüstet, zermartert, krank—und schluchzte vor Reue und Heimweh (336). [He whispered two names into his pillow, whispered those few chaste northern syllables which symbolized his true and native way of loving and suffering and being happy —which to him meant life and simple heartfelt emotion and home. He looked back over the years that had passed between then and now. He remembered the dissolute adventures in which his senses, his nervous system and his mind had indulged; he saw himself corroded by irony and intellect, laid waste and paralyzed by insight, almost exhausted by the fevers and chills of creation, helplessly and contritely tossed to and fro between gross extremes, between saintly austerity and lust—sophisticated and impoverished, worn out by cold, rare, artificial ecstasies, lost, ravaged, racked and sick—and he sobbed with remorse and nostalgia (53-54)].

Tonio’s rejection of decadence is completed in this moment, reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray, when Tonio understands the human cost of decadent art: in pursuit of the decadent ideal, Tonio has become “zerfressen von Ironie und Geist, verödet und gelähmt von Erkenntnis…, erschöpft von kalten und künstlich erlesenen Exaltationen, verirrt, verwüstet, zermartert, krank” (336) [corroded by irony and intellect, laid waste and paralyzed by insight…, worn out by cold, rare, artificial ecstasies, lost, ravaged, racked and sick (54)]. Mann drives home the disparity between Tonio’s dissolute but artistically productive life in the South and the pure simplicity of his aimless existence in Denmark, and Tonio’s sobs of “Reue und Heimweh” (336) [remorse and nostalgia (54)] make it clear which lifestyle he will choose. In the final chapter of the novella, Tonio confesses his conversion to the Nordic ideal in a letter to Lisaveta. His decision to embrace the lifeaffirming qualities of the North, as represented by Denmark, is simultaneously a decision to privilege his bourgeois paternal heritage over the Bohemian exoticism inherited from his fiery mother. Tonio explains his dilemma in terms of heredity, attributing his father with contemplative, moral melancholy and his mother with a reckless, impulsive, passionate nature, the combination of which produced Tonio with his “außerordentliche Möglichkeiten (337)” [extraordinary possibilities (54)]. Connected to both worlds, Tonio is “in keiner daheim” (337) [at home in neither (55)]. Faced with the choice between two lifestyles, both of which require him to remain an outsider, Tonio chooses the “Menschlichen, Lebendigen und Gewöhnlichen” [the human and the living and the ordinary] above the

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“Pfaden der großen, der dämonischen Schönheit” (337) [paths of grandiose, demonic beauty (55)]. He professes his admiration for “die Stolzen und Kalten” [those proud, cold spirits] who follow the latter path, but for himself, he believes “dass es ein Künstlertum gibt, so tief, so von Anbeginn und Schicksals wegen, dass keine Sehnsucht ihm süßer und empfindenswerter erscheint als die nach den Wonnen der Gewöhnlichkeit” (337) [in the kind of artists so profoundly, so primordially fated to be an artist that no longing seems sweeter and more precious to him than his longing for the bliss of the commonplace (55)]. This “Wonnen der Gewöhnlichkeit” (337) [bliss of the commonplace (55)] is the hallmark of the collective identity Mann attributes to Denmark. It may lack the sensuality and sophistication of the South, but it more than compensates for these defects with an abundance of goodness, purity, health, and Christian morality. Tonio describes this bourgeois Danishness in Biblical terms, explaining that “alle Wärme, alle Güte kommt aus ihr, und fast will mir scheinen, als sei sie jene Liebe selbst, von der geschrieben steht, dass einer mit Menschen-und Engelszungen reden könne und ohne sie doch nur ein tönendes Erz und eine klingende Schelle sei” (337) [the source of all warmth, of all kindheartedness and of all humor, and I am almost persuaded it is that very love without which, as we are told, one may speak with the tongues of men and of angels and yet be a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal (55)]. Although he can never belong to this group, Tonio vows to preserve his “verstohlenste Liebe gehört den Blonden und Blauäugigen, den hellen Lebendigen, den Glücklichen, Liebenswürdigen und Gewöhnlichen” (337) [secret love… [for] the fair-haired and the blueeyed, the bright children of this life, the happy, the charming and the ordinary (55)], for the Nordic ideal that Denmark represents]. Yet in avowing his devotion to this unattainable Nordic ideal, Tonio confirms its essential unreality and his own identity as a decadent artist. Decadence involves the subordination of life to art, the aestheticization of human experience. Tonio professes to loves the North and its ordinariness, but as an aesthetic experience more than a lifestyle. His love for Denmark influences his art by means of heightening the contrast between his desires and the reality of his life, but the exquisite agony caused by this contrast is itself characteristic of decadence. Hans Vaget concludes that Tonio Kröger “stellt sich so als der Versuch dar, die Mentalität und Attitüde der décadence hinter sich zu lassen, ohne dabei deren spezifisch moderne ästhetische Errungenschaften preiszugeben: Bourget wird verabschiedet, Nietzsche und Flaubert bleiben seine heimlichen Hausgötter” [represents an attempt to leave the mentality and attitude of décadence behind, without abandoning its specifically modern aesthetic achievements; Tonio says

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farewell to Bourget, but Nietzsche and Flaubert remain his secret domestic deities] (Vaget 1990: 566-7). His fantasy of Denmark embodies all of the virtues that decadence lacks, but it derives its significance from the decadence it denounces. Without this underlying tension, Tonio’s love for Denmark is unremarkable and insignificant. Yet when viewed in context of the debate over decadence and its influence on German identity, Tonio’s imagined Denmark becomes much more than just a landscape, however symbolically laden. Mann’s depiction of Denmark in Tonio Kröger functions as a commentary on fin de siècle literature and aesthetics in Germany. The Denmark that Tonio perceives as an idyllic Nordic paradise is not intended to be a faithful representation of an actual landscape or people, nor an unproblematic glorification of a particular racial type, but rather an idealized construct designed to contrast with the seductive but negative decadence of France and Italy, and provide a positive aesthetic model for German literature at the beginning of the 20th century. Mann struggled with his own predilection for decadence, as a letter he wrote to Paul Ehrenberg on February 13, 1901 illustrates, in which he thanks Ehrenberg for helping him realize “dass es in mir doch noch etwas Ehrliches, Warmes und Gutes giebt und nicht bloß ‘Ironie’, dass in mir doch noch nicht alles von der verfluchten Litteratur verödet, verkünstelt und zerfressen ist. Ach, die Litteratur ist der Tod!” [that there is still something honest, warm, and good in me and not just irony, that not everything in me is ruined, distorted, and corroded by cursed literature. Ah, literature is death!] (qtd. in Wysling 1967: 51). He gave the novella the working title “Literature,” noting that Tonio suffers from literary isolation and admires Hans for his ignorance of literature and his love of life (Wysling 1967: 53). In allowing Tonio to reject decadence, at least in principle, Mann was affirming his own desire to determine his own literary course. An admirer of such prominent 19th-century Danish writers as Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Georg Brandes, and Herman Bang, Mann respected the intellectual and artistic traditions of Denmark and found in them an inspiring counterweight to the prevailing decadent aesthetics of Continental literature. Mann poeticizes the physical landscape of Denmark in painterly style, but exaggerates its attendant virtues into the realm of fantasy as a protest against decadence, which was itself, as Klugkist asserts, a reaction to the “die Fortschrittsideologie der Gründerzeit” [ideology of progress of the Wilhelmine era] (Klugkist 2003: 168). Mann understood that decadence could not be overcome merely by denouncing it. As Nietzsche argued, in Twilight of the Idols, “It is a self-

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deception on the part of philosophers and moralists if they believe that they are extricating themselves from décadence when they merely wage war against it. Extrication lies beyond their strength: what they choose as a means, as salvation, is itself but another expression of décadence; they change its expression, but they do not get rid of decadence itself” (Bernheimer 2002: 15). Instead of attacking decadence outright in Tonio Kröger, Mann celebrates Danish naturalness and vitality as an attractive alternative to the oppressive artificiality of decadence in the hope that his readers, like Tonio, will come to appreciate “die Wonnen der Gewöhnlichkeit” (337) [the bliss of the commonplace (55)].

Works Cited Bernheimer, Charles. 2002. Decadent Subjects. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. Bohnen, Klaus. 1985. “Ein literarisches ‘Muster’ für Thomas Mann: J.P. Jacobsens ‘Niels Lyhne’ und ‘Der kleine Herr Friedemann.’ Littérature et culture allemands: hommages à Henri Plard. Ed. by Roger Golfin, et. al. Bruxelles, Belgique: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles: 197215. Elsaghe, Yahya. 2002. Die imaginäre Nation. Thomas Mann und das ‘Deutsche.’ Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Klugkist, Thomas. 2003. 49 Fragen und Antworten zu Thomas Mann. Frankfurt: S. Fischer. Mann, Thomas. 1983. Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen. Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden. Frankfurter Ausgabe. Ed. by Peter de Mendelssohn. Vol. 10. Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag. —. 2003. Death in Venice, Tonio Kröger, and Other Writings. Ed. by Frederick A. Lubich. New York: Continuum. —. 1960. "'Rede in Stockholm zur Verleihung des Nobel-Preises.' Gesprochen bei dem Bankett am 10. Dezember 1929 in dem Festsaal des Grand Hotels." Reden und Aufsätze. Berliner Tageblatt, December 15, 1929. Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden. Vol. 11. Berlin: Fischer: 407-10. —. 1958. Erzählungen. Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe der Werke von Thomas Mann. Frankfurt/M: S. Fischer. Rasch, Wolfdietrich. 1977. “Thomas Mann und die Décadence.” Thomas Mann 1875-1975. Vorträge in München – Zürich – Lübeck. Frankfurt/M: S. Fischer: 271-284. See, Klaus von. 1994. Barbar, Germane, Arier. Die Suche nach der Identität der Deutschen. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter.

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Smith, Anthony. 1991. National Identity. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Steffensen, Steffen.1975. “Thomas Mann und Dänemark.” Gedenkschrift für Thomas Mann, 1875-1975. Text & Kontext Sonderreihe, Bd. 2. Kopenhagen: Verlag Text & Kontext: 223-277. Vaget, Hans R. 1990. “Die Erzählungen.” Thomas-Mann-Handbuch. Ed. by Helmut Koopmann. Stuttgart: Kröner Verlag: 534-618. Wysling, Hans. 1967. “Dokumente zur Entstehung des ‘Tonio Kröger.’ Thomas-Mann-Studien, vol. 1. Quellenkritische Studien zum Werk Thomas Manns. Bern: Francke: 48-63.

ISAK DINESEN AND THE LESSONS OF SCHEHERAZADE SUSAN BRANTLY

Although Dinesen was a voracious reader who openly admired many of her fellow writers, the only storyteller she acknowledged as a role model was Scheherazade. (Thurman 1982: 265) In particular, she appreciated the tale “Albondocani,” which features her favorite, the Caliph Harun al Rachid, whom she praised for his imagination and admired for his escapades in disguise. She meant for her final novel, intended to consist of 100 interlocking tales, to bear the title “Albondocani.” Even though the tale had a strong and undisputed impact on Dinesen’s writing, it is almost impossible to find in English, and nearly as difficult to locate in Danish. In a previous article, I suggested that the version of the tale Dinesen knew most likely came from a Danish 1895 edition by J. Østrup (Brantly 1992: 180). This version, like so many other renderings of The Arabian Nights, is without the interruptions of the narrative frame, so that the tale flows as a coherent whole. The story consists of a string of apparently unrelated episodes that suddenly become united by a final, surprising revelation. The same might be said of both “The Dreamers” and “The Deluge at Norderney” in Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales (1934). Dinesen aficionados will recognize the wry sense of humor and the way in which the tale pauses to linger over relatively minor characters, embellishing their presentation with a joke, to the delight of the audience. One example of this is Emir Junis who becomes depressed if he does not kill someone each day. A counterpart from “The Dreamers” might be the ineffectual tutor who accompanies Lincoln Forsner on his Grand Tour and gives himself up to contemplating the ancient Priapean cult of Lampsacus (a cult that worshipped the phallus). Moreover, the hand of fate takes the shape of remarkable coincidences, as it does so often in Dinesen’s tales. In “Roads Round Pisa,” what are the odds against Augustus von Schimmelman arriving at he same inn as most of the major figures in the drama involving Rosine?

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The following translation is made from Østrup’s 1895 edition. The only liberty taken has been to change the title from “Albondukani” to “Albondocani” in deference to the way in which Dinesen always spelled it.

Albondocani The Caliph Harun al Rachid had been busy all day receiving the homage of his emirs and other great men. He felt tired and bored by the many empty ceremonies and pompous formalities which enslaved him and longed for some diversion. For this reason, he decided to go out in disguise with his Grand Vizier Djafar in order to distribute alms and to assure himself at the same time that his officials were conscientiously fulfilling their duties. Swiftly he converted his decision into action, and both left the palace in disguises that rendered them completely unrecognizable. They wandered through the streets of Baghdad and gave generous gifts. They had already performed a number of good deeds, when they met a woman in the middle of the street, who was also asking for alms. The hand, which she stretched forth, was strikingly fine and dazzlingly white. This did not escape the notice of the Caliph. He took a gold piece and gave it to Djafar so that he might give it to the woman. The woman noticed at once that she had received a coin of unusual size and weight. She looked at it more closely and when she saw it was a gold piece, she called after Djafar who was already several steps away. “Sir, you have given me a gold piece. Was that your intention?” The Grand Vizier answered that she did not have him to thank for the gift, but rather his young companion, and pointed towards the Caliph. The beggar woman asked him if he really had meant to give her such a large gift, and when she received an affirmative answer, she called down heaven’s blessing upon the generous young man. The Caliph then commanded his Grand Vizier to propose marriage to the woman on his behalf. Djafar obeyed the command and addressed himself to the beggar woman with the words: “My companion would like to ask for your hand, if you are still free.” “I would not deny him my hand,” answered the woman, “if he can present me with the morning gift I require.” “I wonder if the Caliph can afford to satisfy a beggar woman,” thought Djafar to himself and asked how large a morning gift she required. It must be equal to the yearly incomes of Khorasan and Ispahan,” was the woman’s reply.

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Djafar told the Caliph of her demand and, to the Vizier’s amazement, the Caliph agreed to her conditions. As soon as the beggar woman heard that, she wanted to know her future husband’s name, and Djafar informed her that it was none other than the Caliph Harun al Rachid himself. The woman did not seem astonished by this enormous heaven-sent stroke of luck. She simply thanked God that she had been given the Defender of the Faith as her husband. Afterwards, she put her veil in order and set off with him to the palace. As soon as the Caliph returned home, he immediately ordered that an older woman and several slaves should be given to his new wife as servants. She was drawn a bath, bathed in perfumed water and dressed in splendid clothing and jewels. Then they led her to a wonderful palace and that same evening the Caliph joined her there with his magistrates and filled out the marriage contract. As soon as the Caliph finally found himself alone with his new bride, he asked her who she was and how she had dared to demand such a large morning gift. “Sire,” she answered, “I have not asked more of you than what my birth entitles me to. You see before you a descendent of the famous Khosru Nuschirvan. A string of unfortunate events are responsible for the pitiful state you found me in.” “If the historians are correct,” said the Caliph, “then your great ancestor was sometimes unjust and tyrannical towards his subjects.” “It is probably precisely as a penance for the faults of that prince,” answered Khosru’s relative, “that God has reduced us to living from alms.” “In the meantime,” continued the Caliph, “they say that he improved, and later showed himself to be extraordinarily noble and merciful.” “That is perhaps why,” answered his wife, “God’s mercy has lifted me from my humiliation and given me a part of the Caliph’s throne.” The Caliph had every reason to be pleased with his new wife. – Just a year after this event he went out in disguise together with his faithful Djafar and Mesrur, the Captain of the Harem Guards. While he was wandering through the streets of Baghdad, he noticed a shop, which distinguished itself by its cleanliness and tidiness, and in which a young man was busy baking small cakes. The Caliph found the man pleasing, and in order to give him some lucrative business, as soon as he got home, he ordered one hundred small cakes from the baker. The cakes were brought to the Caliph. Under each one he placed a gold piece and sent them over to the Princess of Persia, whom he had married a year ago. He let her also know that she could expect a visit from him that evening and

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inquired if there was anything she wished. The Princess asked for one thousand gold pieces and an experienced female companion with whom she could go out and give alms. The Caliph gladly fulfilled her wish. As soon as he had sent over the money, she went out with a trusted companion and wandered through Baghdad’s streets dealing out rich alms. Since she had been walking around in the blazing heat of the day, she became terribly thirsty, but she found it repellent to drink from the cup of a water bearer, and so she asked her old companion to knock on the door of a respectable-looking house and ask for a glass of water. In response to the old woman’s knocking, a handsome and richly dressed young man appeared at the door and asked what they wanted. “My son,” replied the old woman, “we have come to ask you a favor. My daughter suffers from a burning thirst and cannot bring herself to drink from a water bearer’s cup. Therefore we thought to ask for a glass of water from you.” The young man hurried to fulfill the old woman’s request, went into the house, and soon returned with a full cup. The Princess drank eagerly, after turning away, so that the young man could not see her face. When she had thanked him for his courtesy and called down heaven’s blessings upon him, the two women returned to the palace. The cakes that the Caliph had sent the Princess still stood untouched on their tray. The Caliph’s wife, who was puzzling over how she was going to show her gratitude to the young man, resorted to the cakes, the Caliph’s gift, and asked her old companion to bring them to him. The old woman set off. On the way she felt a great urge to taste the cakes, but soon overcame it, since eating even one would have left an all-too-noticeable hole in the arrangement of the cakes. So, when she located the young man, who was sitting just outside his door, the tray was completely untouched. He thanked the old woman for the favor shown him and asked her to set the cakes next to him on the bench. Scarcely had the old woman left, when one of the local watchmen came to the young man and said, “Sir, today is a holiday. Would you please give me something so that I can buy some sweets for my children?” “You can take the tray there,” replied the young man, “And treat them in my name.” The watchman did not need to be asked twice, so he took the tray and carried it home. “Wretch! Where have you stolen these cakes!” cried his wife, as he entered. “I have not stolen them,” was the man’s reply, “One of the Caliph’s chamberlains gave them to me. Come here, all my many children, and celebrate with me and enjoy!”

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But his wife screeched, “And you intend to eat cakes while your children don’t even have enough clothes to cover their nakedness! Shame on you! Go instead and sell the cakes. They have to be worth a pretty penny.” The watchman had to obey his wife and surrendered the cakes into the hands of a public auctioneer for sale. Buyers soon appeared and a bargain was just about to be struck, when someone discovered an inscription on the edge of the tray which indicated that the cakes were baked at the Caliph’s orders. “Wretch!” cried the man to the auctioneer, “Are you tired of living, since you have taken upon yourself to sell such cakes? Don’t you see that they belong to the Defender of the Faith?” The terrified auctioneer had to admit the truth and considered it best under such suspicious circumstances simply to take the cakes back to the Caliph’s palace. Harun al Rachid was furious when he got back the cakes, which he had arranged himself with such care, from a public auctioneer. He asked him who had given him these cakes to sell, and when he named the local watchman, a guard was sent immediately after that poor man. They bound his hands behind his back and led him before the Caliph. “Oh my!” sighed the watchman to himself, “My infernal wife is the cause of this misfortune. If she had only let us eat the cakes, I would not be in this terrible fix.” When the watchman stood before the Caliph, he asked from whom he had received the cakes. The man confessed at once that he had one of the palace’s chamberlains to thank for them and said right away where he lived. Harun’s wrath grew even greater at this. So, someone in the palace had committed the crime he sought to solve! He commanded that he should immediately be brought before him, that they should tear his turban from his head, drag him on his face through the streets, and open his house to plundering. The Caliph’s men came to the chamberlain’s house, knocked violently, seized the master of the house and said, “Poor Aladdin, it pains us to do our lord’s bidding, but we must open your house, tear your turban from your head, and lead you bound before him. You must know that we can do nothing else.” When Aladdin stood before the throne, the Caliph asked in fury if he knew the local watchman, and when the chamberlain affirmed this, he commanded him to confess where he had gotten the cakes. With open candor, Aladdin explained what had transpired between him and a young woman who was accompanied by an old woman: how they had asked him

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for a glass of water and in return for his kindness, they had sent him the tray of cakes, which he had, in turn, given to the local watchman. This simple explanation lessened Harun’s rage. Unfortunately he happened to ask his chamberlain if he had seen the young lady’s face when she lifted her veil to drink. Aladdin answered jauntily that he had, and this confession caused the Caliph’s anger to flare up once more. He had the Princess of Persia brought to him immediately and commanded that she and the chamberlain would lose their heads. With pain and fear the unfortunate Princess heard her husband’s accusations and his harsh order. She asked Aladdin what had possessed him to say something that must bring death to them both. The poor, young man replied: “Without a doubt, it must be the will of fate. I wanted to say just the opposite of what my mouth spoke. My disobedient tongue is guilty of a slip that will cost us both our lives.” During this conversation, they spread out the hide that soon would be stained with their blood. The executioner tore their clothes, placed blindfolds across their eyes, and asked the Caliph if he should strike. The Caliph answered yes. Three times he repeated his question, according to ancient custom, and three times he received the same answer. Then he asked Aladdin if he had a last request before he let the sword fall. Aladdin asked for the blessing of seeing his friends for a moment. The executioner fulfilled his request, and Aladdin saw all of his friends in the greatest distress. The he turned to the Caliph and said: “Sire, have mercy and delay my execution for only three days. I assure you that you will experience the most remarkable things.” “Very well,” answered the Caliph, “let it be so! But when this reprieve has passed you will certainly die, and nothing in the world shall stand between me and my vengeance.” The three days had almost passed and, still, the Caliph had seen nothing. Impatiently he decided to disguise himself and wander through the city. He put on rough clothing, pressed a simple turban upon his head, equipped himself with powder, powder horn, and a pouch of lead shot, and walked through Baghdad’s streets in broad daylight without fear of being recognized in this disguise. When he stepped into a bazaar, he noticed a young man, who was expressing his amazement in the strongest terms. Harun asked him the cause and learned that there was an old woman there reciting the Koran by heart so magnificently that one would think one was listening to the Archangel Gabriel himself, as he revealed it to the Prophet. “But,” he

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added, “the poor woman has already sat there a long time without anyone giving her the least thing.” Curious to see and hear this woman, the Caliph entered further into the bazaar and heard the woman recite entire long passages of the holy book. He approached in order to give her proof of his generosity, when he heard her whisper to a young merchant, who stood nearby, that she wanted to show him an incomparable beauty. The merchant accepted the offer and left the bazaar with the woman. The Caliph wanted to find out more about this odd old woman’s character and followed them with his head already filled with the strangest possibilities. When they entered into a little house, Harun succeeded in sneaking in behind them, and he saw the old lady bring her daughter from an adjoining room. With great astonishment, he beheld one of the most beautiful women in Baghdad, a creature filled with dignity and grace, lovely black eyes with a smoldering glance, in short, the most enchanting image of a houri. But scarcely had the young girl set eyes upon the stranger before she quickly stepped back and reproached her mother for having exposed her to a man’s gaze. The old lady answered that the stranger was her future husband, who must see her once before the wedding. Talk turned to the morning gift, and the mother demanded four thousand gold pieces. The merchant answered that this sum was beyond his means and offered half, of which he, however, wanted to use a part for household goods and bridal finery. But the old lady swore that she would not reduce her demands, and the merchant was forced, to his great annoyance, to leave without striking a bargain. Now the Caliph decided to offer himself in his place, slipped carefully out of the house, stepped noisily back in again, walked up to the old lady and said: “I recently met a young man coming from this place. He told me that you had a daughter that he wished to marry, but whom he must give up because of the large morning gift required. I offer you the sum you demand. Let me have your daughter!” “Wretched thief,” replied the mother, looking at him carefully, “Where will you be getting the money from that you promise to supply? Your dress reveals clearly enough what you are.” “You are mistaken, my friend,” replied the Caliph, “I will pay out the money in cold cash.” “Well, let’s see then!” said the woman, “Come with your four thousand gold pieces, and you shall have my daughter.” “Yes indeed!,” said Harun, as he sat down, “Before evening the money will be here. The bargain is made. Now go straight to the magistrate and tell him that Albondocani summons him.”

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“Fool,” cried the old woman, “do you imagine that the magistrate will put himself out for someone like you!” Harun answered calmly: “Don’t worry, dear mother! Remember only to tell the magistrate not to forget pen and paper.” The old woman set off and thought to herself: “If the magistrate really accepts this invitation, then my son-in-law must be a criminal of importance, at least the leader of a whole band.” But when she entered the magistrate’s house and saw him surrounded by judges and elegant servants, she lost her courage and started to turn around again. However, she was ashamed of her weakness, stepped forward again, lost her courage once more, stepped back again, and continued this pantomime of stepping forward and back so long, that the magistrate noticed her and asked the guard to escort her forward. Then the woman did not hesitate, but made a virtue of necessity and stepped into the presence of the great man. The magistrate asked her what her errand was. “There is a person at my house who wants to speak with you,” replied the old woman. “A person – what sort of a person, my good woman!” Shyly the old woman stammered the name Albondocani. “Albondocani!” cried the magistrate, leaping to his feet, “Come, let us hurry!” And without answering the questions of those who asked where he was going, he set off immediately. “My goodness,” said the old woman to herself, “the magistrate doesn’t seem to be much of a hero! The poor man has surely looked down the barrel of my son-in-law’s gun and wishes not to have any unfinished business with him. Such haste! My old legs have a hard time keeping up with him!” When the magistrate entered the old woman’s house, he saw immediately that the Caliph did not want to be recognized. He therefore greeted him in the customary fashion and asked how he could be of service. “It is about a marriage contract between me and this young girl I am about to marry,” said the Caliph. The magistrate then asked the women how much the morning gift was and when he learned that it was fixed in the amount of four thousand gold pieces, he set about writing the contract. Yet in his haste, he had forgotten to take paper along. Since he was afraid to displease his strict master by proving himself unable to obey his command instantly, he took his robe and started immediately to write the Caliph’s and his forefathers’ names at the head of the contract. When he

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was finished with that, he turned to the bride’s mother and asked about hers and her husband’s and her father-in-law’s names. At this question, the old woman could no longer hold back her tears. “Oh!,” she cried, “so far have we sunk that a thief can enter my house unpunished and carry away my daughter! Oh, if only my husband had lived, this would never have happened!” “Be at peace!” said the magistrate, “Do you not know that God is the protector of the unfortunate, especially widows and small children?” However, this consolation had no apparent effect upon the old woman. She continued to complain and lament. The Caliph started to smile greatly at these lamentations, and the magistrate needed all his self-control to maintain his official dignity. As soon as he was finished, he cut off the bottom of his robe and gave the Caliph the contract that was written upon it. He wanted to leave, but the old woman called out, appealing to her sonin-law: “Will you give such an honorable official nothing, even though he has sacrificed his fine robe for your sake?” “Let him go!” answered the Caliph. “I have nothing to give him.” “Oh, Good Lord,” cried the old woman, “what a stingy thief! Not only does he give the man nothing for his services, but he even takes the robe from his back!” The Caliph had to smile broadly once more and got up to go. Shortly thereafter, he took his leave, saying that he had to go and fetch the four thousand gold pieces, as well as presents for the bride. “You crook!” the mother cried, “You probably mean that you are going to rob some merchants! God have mercy on the poor souls who will supply the presents! It is easy to pay from other peoples’ pockets, – shame on you!” When Harun had returned to the palace, he threw off his disguise and instantly summoned painters, carpenters, and marble craftsmen. First and foremost, he gave each and every one a hundred lashes in order to motivate them to carry out his commands. Afterwards, he described his wishes regarding his mother-in-law’s house and told them that if they had not completed the required work by evening, he would have their hands chopped off. “If the lady of the house,” he explained, “asks you who sent you, say only: your son-in-law. If she asks to know what he does for a living, simply say that you do not know. If she asks you for his name, remember to answer: Albondocani. Remember it well, because if you say even one word more, I will have you nailed to a cross.” The marble craftsman set off to the house described by the Caliph with all the people he could muster and all the materials he needed. The old

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woman asked them what they wanted and received the answer: “We want to lay a marble floor.” “And who has sent you here?” asked the woman. “Your son-in-law.” “What does my son-in-law do?” “We don’t know.” “Tell me at least what his name is!” “His name is Albondocani.” This answer and the arrangements made only confirmed her notion that her son-in-law must be one of the robber chieftains from the area around Baghdad. The same exchange was repeated when later the carpenters and the painters arrived to obey the Caliph’s command. The old woman got just as little out of them. “This Albondocani,” she said to herself, “must be a terrifying bandit, because it is clear enough that all of these people don’t want to know him, because they are afraid of him.” In a very short time, the workmen transformed the house’s surface appearance and, when this was done, they returned to the Caliph and told him that they had followed his orders. Harun sent a great number of porters with household items of all kinds, with baskets full of cloth, embroideries, and jewels, intended for his wife. When the old woman saw all these precious things, she wanted to send them back, at first, because she thought that the people had come to the wrong place. But the porters were certain of their task and surrendered everything into her hands with the instructions to arrange and distribute the goods as best she could, since her son-in-law wanted to visit her that same night. The suspicious time the Caliph had chosen for his visit only confirmed her prejudices about him. She quickly asked some of the women from the neighborhood to help her with arranging all of the things she had received. Weren’t they surprised when they saw what changes had been made! “Is this a dream? Is this possible?” they asked. “Your hovel has been transformed into a magnificent palace! Where did you get all these marble ornaments, these splendid paintings? Is it magic?” “By no means,” replied the old lady. “Everything comes from my sonin-law.” “Your daughter has gotten married?” “Yes, just today,” the mother answered. “And who is then your son-in-law?” continued her neighbors. “I am ashamed to say that I don’t know,” the old woman admitted, “but to be frank I must admit I have my suspicions that he is not in the most honest of trades, but you should not take him to be a common thief. He is, at the very least, leader of all the other thieves.” “For God’s sake!” cried her neighbors. “You have chosen a robber chieftain for a son-in-law! – Well, since it is so, please ask your son-in-law to spare your neighbors. Such a courtesy is the least we can expect.” The old woman reassured them, praised her son-in-law’s munificence and promised on his behalf that their property would be spared. Once this

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was out of the way, the women began calmly and pleasantly to decorate and arrange the household and to dress the bride, whom they clothed in the most magnificent fabrics and decked with jewels. Soon there was another knock on the door, and a group of the Caliph’s servants arrived with a meal consisting of the most sumptuous dishes and the most delicious confections. They delivered the food to the old woman with the message that her son-in-law sent it to her so that she and her neighbors might enjoy it. “My dear friends,” the old woman said to them, “please tell me who my son-in-law is!” “We do not know, noble lady,” they replied, “but if you want to know his name, it is Albondocani.” “Let him be what he likes!” said the old woman. “Anyone who is so noble and generous has not his match in all of Baghdad. – Come my friends and let us honor my son-in-law by doing the meal justice!” Her neighbors did not need to be asked twice and applied themselves with gusto to the dishes and desserts, but they left the best morsels untouched, so that they could serve as the wedding dinner for the newlyweds. In the meantime it had already spread around the neighborhood that the old lady had married off her daughter to a robber chieftain and that her house was full of presents from her son-in-law. As soon as the young merchant who had been forced to give up his marriage plans heard that a thief had been preferred over him, he decided to get revenge. He still nourished a hope that he might yet be the lucky one and immediately hurried to the police prefect, whom he promised rich rewards if he could capture a robber chieftain, whose whereabouts he described in detail. He even assured him that in doing so, he could take considerable spoils, which he would leave to him entirely. Delighted by the young man’s tip, the prefect waited until the dark of night, in order to be more certain of finding the thief in his mother-inlaw’s house. He decided in advance to punish both the thief and the old woman in the most terrible manner and to give the bride to the young man to do with as he pleased. At the proper hour, the police prefect set off to the designated house with the young man and four hundred of his men, divided into four troops under as many leaders, bearing a host of torches and lamps. Mother and daughter waited for Albondocani’s arrival, suspecting nothing. Suddenly they heard heavy pounding on the door. The old lady went to the door and peaked out through the cracks and saw

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the police filling the entire street and already devising ways to force their way into the house. Among the leaders was a certain Schamana, a savage devil, a man of the worst reputation, from whom one could expect anything. When he saw that the door was not opened, he said to the prefect: “What are we waiting for? We should break the door down since they refuse to open it. If we take them unawares, we can grab everything in the house and be even more certain of capturing the one we are after.” Fortunately, there was also, among the leaders, a young man who talked the prefect out of following Schamana’s advice. “We must be careful,” he said, “about resorting to such violent methods. We cannot know whether or not the merchant’s information might be false. Jealousy might have led him astray. If that is the case, we could be making a big mistake; however, you can do as you think best.” The old lady who heard this exchange from the other side of the door was half dead with fright. “Oh, my poor daughter,” she cried, “we are lost! The police are outside the door. They are after the thief!” “Bolt the door, dear mother!” said the daughter, “God may yet send us some help.” The old woman followed this advice. When the pounding on the door redoubled, she got up her nerve to ask: “Who is it?” “Wretches!” answered Schamana, “You, the miserable procuress for a thief, the police prefect commands you to open up!” She answered that she was an old woman, who harbored no thief and did not want to resist the police prefect’s orders. Then she hurried to her daughter and said: “Did I not tell you so? You have to admit that damned robber is responsible for this whole spectacle, but heaven preserve him from coming here tonight! Alas, why did your poor father have to die! If he were still alive, neither the prefect of police nor any other mortal would have dared to make such noise outside our house.” The young girl urged her mother to be patient and to put herself in the hands of fate, since they had no means of resisting – and thus, they waited for what would happen next. When the streets began to empty, the Caliph donned his old disguise and set off under cover of night to his new wife’s dwelling. As soon as he turned into the street, he saw by the light of the torches the guards and policemen and heard voices shouting that they should break the door down and torture the old witch to make her confess where her son-in-law was hiding. A single voice tried to dampen the fury of the besieging crowd and admonished them to respect the laws and not to break into the house

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of two lonely and defenseless women on the strength of an uncertain accusation. “Hassan, go and sit down where you belong with your clever observations, on a judge’s bench, but don’t get mixed up in things that require quick decisions and action!” jeered Schamana loudly. “You don’t understand such things. This situation calls for abilities you simply don’t possess.” The Caliph swore to himself that Schamana would soon pay for his crudity and savagery. He immediately decided to try to get into the besieged house. When he noticed at the back of an open entryway a large door covered by a tapestry and guarded by a eunuch, he entered without hesitation. Here lived an officer of the Caliph’s bodyguards, Emir Junis, whose wildness was such that it was said he could not enjoy, out of sheer disappointment with himself, a day in which he had not killed at least someone or other. As soon as the eunuch saw the Caliph approach in the dim light of the lamp, he sprang toward him and demanded where he thought he was going. “What business is it of yours?” answered the Caliph with a dreadful voice and the eunuch fled in fear, as though he had seen a lion, in to his master, who asked him what the matter was. Stammering, the eunuch replied: “Alas, master, I stood at my post by the door, when a man in great haste stepped into the hallway. I wanted to prevent him for going any further and threatened to strike, but the stranger shouted with a voice of thunder; “Get back, you wretched slave!” and his voice terrified me so, that I thought it my duty to retreat and report to you what was happening without delay.” “Ha! You don’t say!” cried the emir and leapt up in fury. “Where is this fool who dares insult my servants in my own house? I will punish him immediately for his presumption.” With these words he grabbed an enormous club and raced toward the stranger. “Where is he? Where is he?” he cried. “Here, Junis!” replied the Caliph. The wild emir recognized the Caliph’s voice immediately, threw himself to the ground and begged for forgiveness. “Now, now,” said Harun, “Here you sit quietly at home and tolerate that my police prefect, in your neighborhood, has come to abuse two pitiful women who have no man to defend them! Don’t you think it would be amusing and just to put a stop to this man’s boorish behavior?” “Master,” answered Junis, “were it not for my respect for his office and concern that I might be preventing him from carrying out Your Highness’ commands, I would have punished him as he deserves long ago. You need

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only say a single word and I will go and send these wretched ruffians to the devil!” The Caliph thanked him for his eagerness and said that he wanted to climb up on the house’s flat roof. The emir led the Caliph up there. With the help of a rope ladder he lowered Harun without difficulty from his roof to the roof of the neighboring house, the dwelling of the two women. He ordered Junis to wait for him there and be prepared to follow his directions. Then he crept over the roof and slipped unnoticed into the house, and stopped, somewhat blinded by the luxury surrounding him, the rich gilding, the artistic decorations, the glimmering lights. The bride, in her most magnificent finery and sitting on a splendid throne, resembled the sun in all its glory and eclipsed the light of the innumerable candles. While the Caliph, still unnoticed, feasted his eyes upon her beauty, he heard her mother say to her: “Oh, my daughter, what will become of us. Who will save us from the fury of these people? We are to be pitied! Why did that thief have to come and propose to you? If only your father were still alive! – But we must put ourselves in God’s hands.” “Dear mother,” replied the daughter, “it is God who sent the man you gave me as my husband and it is not right for you to insult me by calling him a thief.” “May heaven keep the poor man away from here tonight” said the old woman, “Things would go very badly for him.” The Caliph now picked up a small pebble and threw it with such skill at a candle that it went out. “How strange!” muttered the mother, when she saw it. “One candle has gone out while the others are still burning.” While she was lighting that one candle, the Caliph snuffed out two others. The old woman was about to express her amazement in even stronger terms, when a pebble struck her on the hand. She looked up and saw the Caliph. “Look,” she said to her daughter, “your husband has gotten into the house by the roof! Yes, that is a route his sort of people would know, but it was a good thing he chose it, or else he would have fallen into the hands of our persecutors! Run! Don’t waste any time!” she continued, turning to the Caliph, “or you will be taken captive by the hooligans besieging our house! We two poor women will not be able to defend you.” “Leave that to me!” replied the Caliph. “I feel like staying, just so I can see how I might help chastise these ruffians.” “Don’t think you can frighten them. It is the police prefect with his entire force.” “Be brave, dear mother!” said the Caliph as he stepped into the room. “I am famished. Quickly, get me something to eat!” “You can’t possibly want to eat something at a time like this!”

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“Absolutely,” replied Harun and the old lady had to set the table for him. The Caliph started to eat, but when the noise outside continued to grow louder, he got up impatiently from the table, drew his signet ring from his finger, and handed it to his mother-in-law with the words: “Do me the favor of giving the police prefect this ring and tell him that the man he is looking for is inside the house and demands that he should present himself along with the four leaders of the mob. He should bring a pole, rope, and rods with him. “What!” objected the old woman, “I’ll never survive it! He will throw himself upon me and murder me on the spot!” “Don’t worry, dear mother! I solemnly promise you that the police prefect will obey my request.” “Oh, if you know the secret of making such a man obey,” answered Harun’s mother-in-law, then teach me that art. It would go a long way towards curing my poverty if I could rob women unpunished, as you seem to rob men. – Well, I guess I had better go and give it a try!” She approached the door and decided to carefully open the door a crack and she called: “What do you want, my good men?” “Old witch,” answered Schamana, “how can you ask such a stupid question? We want to get our hands on the thief you have with you and cut off his hands and feet. You’ll soon see what we have in store for you.” “Is there anyone among you who can read?” asked the old woman. “I have a signet ring to hand over. Read the name upon it and say who owns it!” “To the gallows with the owner!” said Schamana and advised the police prefect that as soon as the old woman opened the door, he should throw her to the ground, burst into the house, grab its occupants, and allow the house to be plundered. The old woman was too smart for them, though, and was careful not to open the door any wider than was necessary to poke the ring out. Schamana took the ring and gave it to the police prefect. As soon as he saw the Caliph’s ring, his knees began to give out from under him. “So, what sort of a ring is it?” asked Schamana. “What’s wrong with you?” Instead of answering, the police prefect gave him the ring and Schamana recognized immediately the holy seal belonging to the Defender of the Faith and sank to the ground as if he had been struck. The police prefect helped him to his feet again and made him ask the old woman what she wanted. Thoroughly chastened and with an expression of deep intimidation, he did as he was asked.

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“The master of the signet ring,” replied the woman, “demands to see the police prefect and the four leaders of the mob, along with all the equipment for a bastinade. Schamana assured her that they were all ready to obey and the old woman returned to her son-in-law to tell him of the surprisingly positive response to his message. “You are a strange robber chieftain,” she said. “The magistrate, the police prefect and his henchmen, the entire world fears you. – Know what? I think I’m going to become a thief myself! Take me into your service and whisper that devil of a secret into my ear, then I will rob the women while you rob the men. I’ll give you all the credit, like master like servant, you know! But you have to admit that we would have been in terrible trouble if they had burst through the door in your absence. Thank God, there comes the pole and the rods! While the old woman babbled and the Caliph conversed with his bride, who was now freed from all anxiety, the police prefect entered together with the four leaders, including Schamana and Hassan. The Caliph summoned Emir Junis and ordered him to give the police prefect and Schamana a thorough bastinade. Junis did his job so well, that the toenails fell off the feet of his patients. The Caliph immediately appointed Hassan to the post of police prefect. Then he asked the old woman: “So, do you think that robber chieftains know how to handle such people?” “Fantastic! I have only one more prayer to God: that the Caliph himself should be punished for the injustice he has committed against us. It is his fault that a person like you, and I say this with all due respect for your skills, has dared to set foot in this house.” Harun felt greatly surprised by this reproach. It came quite unexpectedly. He thought to himself that perhaps, without knowing it, he might have committed an injustice and asked the woman to explain the accusation she had made against the Caliph. “It is he,” she answered, “who has opened up our house to be plundered from top to bottom and not left us a scrap of bread, so that without your help we would have starved. My son was one of his chamberlains. One day two women knocked on our door and asked for a glass of water. One hour later, the older of them came back and brought him a tray of cakes to thank him for the refreshments. My son gave the cakes to the local watchman, who asked for a gift, and not long afterwards a band of the Caliph’s people attacked our house, plundered it, and dragged away my son. Fortunately, his execution has been delayed. Were it not for these unfortunate events you would never have married my daughter.”

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“Take comfort, my dear mother,” said the Caliph. “I will put in a good word for you with the Caliph and convince him not only to give your son his freedom, but also to honor him with an important post and to provide you with ample compensation for your lost property.” To begin with, the old woman was cheered by these promises, but it was not long before she changed her mind and said: “You shouldn’t joke like that, my dear son-in-law. We’re not talking about a magistrate or a police prefect, but the exalted Defender of the Faith himself, the famous Harun al Rachid, the master of all masters, whose lowest slave has a thousand times more power than all the officials of the kingdom. I beg you, don’t try to take on the Caliph! You would certainly fail and we would lose you as our last support. I would rather trust my son’s cause to the grace of our merciful God, whose name be praised for all eternity!” These words made a deep impression upon Harun. He took his leave, even though his wife and his mother-in-law tried to hold him back, and returned to the palace. He ascended his throne, surrounded by all his courtiers. After the traditional expressions of veneration were given and received, he expressed his surprise over the fact that no one had cared to plead the cause of the chamberlain who was sentenced to death. “Oh, Defender of the Faith,” said one of the emirs, “we were afraid to fall short in the respect that is due to Your Highness, but since you are so gracious to allow it, I believe I speak on behalf of the entire court when I ask you to let mercy temper justice.” The Caliph pardoned the chamberlain who had been sentenced to death, had him clothed honorably and brought before him, and appointed him Chief of the Emirs, and asked him to go home to his mother. Most of the important people at court accompanied him to the cheering of a large crowd. In the meantime, his mother and sister had already been informed of this happy turn of events by some palace servants who had hurried ahead in order to get a tidy reward. At last, he appeared himself. After the initial delight at seeing them again had subsided, he told his loved ones what had happened. For their part, they told him what had happened to them since he had been dragged off to prison. They lingered especially over the plundering of the house and the terrible poverty to which they had been reduced, abandoned by all the world, for three days. “Where did all this come from then?” asked the chamberlain and looked around, “Is all this luxury the result of magic or perhaps only a dream?” “No, my son, it is all a present from my son-in-law.”

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“How has my sister gotten married without my consent, may I ask? When and with whom?” “The wedding was yesterday and the bridegroom is, I’m ashamed to say, only a robber chieftain.” “A robber!” exclaimed the chamberlain and could barely contain his anger. “How could you throw my sister into the arms of a bandit? Just tell me who he is so that I can punish him on the spot for his daring!” “Don’t speak so loudly, my boy!” said his mother. “My bandit has already dealt with men as dangerous as you, without being particularly intimidated.” Then she told him everything that extraordinary man had done. “He promised us,” she continued, “to arrange your pardon with the Caliph, to make him reward you with honors, and give us compensation for everything we have lost. Scarcely had he left us, before we see you free, honored, and happy. It is all his doing.” “Well, what is his name then?” asked the son. “Well, I can’t really tell you. I have gone to all possible lengths to find out. I know nothing other than that he goes by the alias of Albondocani. Scarcely had his mother spoken this mysterious name, when the young man, as if beside himself, jumped in the air, threw himself down, and kissed the ground seven times. Astonished, his mother asked him if even he was a slave of her son-inlaw’s secret power, or if he had lost his mind. “My dear mother,” cried the chamberlain, “The one you spoke of is none other than the Defender of the Faith himself, the great and mighty Harun al Rachid!” “Is it possible?” screamed the old woman. “Oh, wretched me! I have treated him like a bandit! He will never forgive me the insults I have heaped upon him!” While she was exclaiming in this way, she saw the Caliph approaching and fled from the room. As soon as Harun learned that she did not dare appear before him, he asked her to come in and said to her warmly: “Now, my dear mother, why is it that you hide from me, when you have decided to become my apprentice and servant, you know, in the ways of thievery?” The old woman asked for forgiveness. The Caliph called for the magistrate, divorced Kosruf’s relative, and gave her to his chamberlain as his wife. As for the Caliph, he celebrated his wedding with his new bride. It was a party the likes of which had never been seen in terms of grandeur and amusement. All the people of Baghdad participated and the poor received the richest of alms.

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Works Cited Brantly, Susan. 1992. “Karen Blixen and the Mystery of Albondocani.” Nordica 9: 179-88. Dinesen, Isak. 1991. Seven Gothic Tales. New York: Vintage. Thurman, Judith. 1982. Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Østrup, J.E. 1895-96. “Albondukani” in 1001 Nat. Paa ny udgivet efter Valdemar Thisteds danske Gjengivelse. København: Det Schubotheske forlag. Pp. 320-348.

PELLE EROBEREN: FOLKLORE, IDEOLOGY AND FILM TIMOTHY R. TANGHERLINI

In their well-known consideration of the work of Martin Andersen Nexø, Niels and Faith Ingwersen note that, “even though [socialist ideas] played a dominant role in Nexø’s perception of society, he was deeply influenced by the age-old culture of the common peasantry, the almue, which he had known from childhood... Nexø’s writing is most compelling when he utilizes the heritage – folklore and the Bible – of his proletarian origin and fuses social realism with myth” (Ingwersen and Ingwersen 1984: vii-viii). Nexø’s critical use of almue culture and the folkloric situates him in the vanguard of the folkelige realister [folk realists] whose work had a profound influence on the contours of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Danish literary landscape (Busk-Jensen 1985). Interestingly, Nexø’s reliance on folklore departs radically from earlier nineteenth century uses of folklore as part of a Romantic nationalist project of bourgeois nostalgia such as that found in Rasmus Sørensen, B. S. Ingemann and later, Holger Drachmann (Auring 1984). Rather, much like members of the almue themselves, Nexø relied on oral narrative, folk belief and other forms of folklore as part of a sustained critique of class division, exploitation of the rural poor by land owners and de facto and de jure structural impediments both to community progress and individual development. Nexø’s almost revolutionary message of social responsibility and the need for an egalitarian society filtered through to the Danish polity in diluted form and likely contributed early on to social debates that ultimately led to the modern social welfare state. Despite this far reaching impact, over the earlier decades of the twentieth century, his predominantly socialist œuvre, Pelle erobreren, along with many of his other works, disappeared from the Danish cultural landscape. When Nexø’s work was revived for contemporary audiences, it was ironically in the genre of commercial film and his message – and in particular his

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accession of almue culture as part of that message – was distorted. In Bille August’s 1987 film, the almue culture that had played such an important part in Nexø’s depiction of rural class struggle was relegated to a secondary role, a change that presaged an underlying ideological realignment in the story. Knud Bjarne Gjesing considering the film notes that, “I Bille Augusts Oscar-belønnede og Hollywood-forgyldte Pelle Erobreren-film går Pelle ganske vist igen, men som en slags individualistisk stræber – i slutscenen vandrende ud mod fjerne horisonter, mens han antagelig nynner: ‘I did it my way!’” [In Bille August’s Oscar-winning and Hollywood-gilded Pelle the Conqueror-film, Pelle walks again, but as a type of individualistic careerist – in the closing scene wandering out toward distant horizons while he presumably hums ‘I did it my way!’] (Gjesing 1994: 9). With this evaluation, Gjesing lays his finger on August’s problematic shift in emphasis toward individual resourcefulness as the story’s guiding ideological principle. The use of almue culture as a backdrop in August’s film signals a shift back toward the Romantic nationalist projection of danskhed that corresponds with a conservative political position, one that diverges from Nexø’s original viewpoint. During the 1980s, this conservative political stance had begun gaining considerable traction in Denmark under Poul Schlüter’s bourgeois “firkløver” government. Schlüter’s government in its various domestic and foreign policies simultaneously lauded individual resourcefulness (as opposed to Nexø’s endorsement of collective resistance), championed the emerging European Union and its implications for global capital development (as opposed to Nexø’s concern for the well-being of the industrial worker) and endorsed assimilationism for new immigrants (as opposed to Nexø’s embrace of the internationale). None of these contemporary projections of danskhed can be reconciled with the role that folk belief and storytelling played in the lives of day laborers and other almue in late nineteenth century Denmark nor can they be reconciled with Nexø’s works. Rather, they are more symptomatic of the ethnocentric and business-centric policies that characterize the Danish right wing of today. Nexø was a master at accessing the ideological aspects of almue culture, a culture that has perhaps been best reflected in the collections of the Danish schoolteacher turned folklorist, Evald Tang Kristensen, who spent time collecting stories from many thousands of rural dwellers, primarily in Jutland (Tang Kristensen 1923). Although Kristensen arguably began his collecting endeavors riding on the wave of nationalist spirit that swept the country in the wake of the Slesvig-Holsten debacle of 1864, the ideology informing his later and more prolific periods of

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collecting mirrored Nexø’s understanding of the struggles of the almue in a rapidly changing economy (Holbek 1980). Tang Kristensen’s informants themselves were deeply enmeshed in the ongoing changes in the Danish economic, political and social landscapes, and they used their storytelling – as the characters in Nexø’s novel – to comment on, and to negotiate their personal positions in relation to these developments. This phenomenon is not unique to Denmark, but rather is a characteristic of many cultures in which individuals appeal to tradition to understand change (Taussig 1980). A brief foray into Tang Kristensen’s collections and the world of one of his informants can help illustrate both how tradition acts as a personal resource for political action and how collectors were also engaged in an ideologically progressive undertaking attuned to the challenges facing the individual in a harsh social and economic climate. On a rainy day in June 1898, Jens Peter Pedersen, a former lathe-turner and now a pensioner, stomps his feet and takes off his wet jacket as he enters the teacher’s house in the little village of Lørslev in northern Jutland. He has walked through the pouring rain to catch up with Tang Kristensen with whom he has talked on three earlier occasions. In fact, it is Tang Kristensen who has sent for him, after missing Jens Peter at his little cottage when he had stopped by earlier in the day. But given the weather, Tang Kristensen has not expected him to show up. Late in the afternoon, however, Jens Peter knocks at the door, comes in and sits down, soaking wet. Describing this meeting, Tang Kristensen writes in his memoirs, “Nu begyndte han at fortælle, og jeg skrev, og saadan blev vi ved til langt ud paa Aftenen. Ja, han var utrættelig. Det var ligefrem forunderligt, som den Mand kunde fortælle. Jeg blev hos Andersen om Natten og tænkte meget paa Jens Peter. Jeg frygtede ligefrem for, at han skulde faa en Sygen paa Halsen, men han klagede sig ikke” [Now he began to tell, and I wrote, and we kept up like this until late into the night. Yes, he was tireless. It was incredible how that man could tell. I stayed with Andersen that night and I thought a lot about Jens Peter. I was afraid that he’d get a throat infection, but he didn’t complain] (Tang Kristensen 1923, vol. 4: 163). Tang Kristensen’s anxiety for Jens Peter, the person, is of paramount importance. Similarly, it is worthwhile to note Jens Peter’s remarkable perseverance in seeking out Tang Kristensen. Neither Tang Kristensen’s concern for Jens Peter nor Jens Peter’s interest in seeking out Tang Kristensen can be reconciled with Romantic nationalists’ notions of the “folk”, their superorganic conceptions of folklore, and later characterizations of nineteenth century folklore collectors and their concerns. Rather, both events point at a more complex relationship between informant, collector and tradition, and also hint at a significantly

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different role for storytelling – and folklore in general – in a society poised on the cusp of modernity and already undergoing profound social, economic and demographic change. On the afternoon in question, Jens Peter tells forty-seven or so stories all addressing, in some way or other, the challenges facing a person trying to eke out a living in the Danish countryside. The stories also elaborate the complicated social networks that an individual has to negotiate as part of their day-to-day lives. As such, Jens Peter’s stories taken as a whole – as much as his presence in the teacher’s house on that rainy June day – contribute to Tang Kristensen’s nuanced, complex and realistic depiction of late nineteenth century rural life that resonates with Nexø’s own depiction of rural life. On this afternoon, Jens Peter tells stories of ministers and ghosts, of wise women and strange illnesses, of buried treasure and of theft. He tells of beggars, and of strong men, of encounters with elves and hidden folk, of girls kidnapped into the mountain and of lending a helping hand with the mound dwellers’ baking, of village idiots and of Satan and his attempts to lead people to their deaths. With each story, Jens Peter’s world becomes more and more clearly defined as do his own particular beliefs. Through these stories, Jens Peter’s day to day struggles as a lathe-turner, daylaborer and, finally, a poor pensioner begin to take shape – his values, his norms, and his beliefs all come out in these stories. By shaping the stories to fit into his own repertoire, resolving stories in his own way, adding idiosyncratic but personally meaningful features, and situating events in the local environment, Jens Peter turns his storytelling into a form of ideological action. Michel de Certeau proposes that “Tales and legends…are deployed, like games, in a space outside of and isolated from daily competition, that of the past, the marvelous, the original. In that space can thus be revealed, dressed as gods or heroes, the models of good or bad ruses that can be used every day. Moves, not truths, are recounted” (de Certeau 1984: 23). Jens Peter in part negotiates all of the contingencies of daily life through his storytelling, as the narrative performances allow him an opportunity to explore entire “repertoires of schemas of action” (de Certeau 1984: 23). While it is clear that Jens Peter had very little say over what he could or could not do in his community, with his “moves” seriously constrained by extant power structures, and while it is also clear that he was denied most opportunities for a better life, storytelling did convey the tactical power de Certeau ascribes it, even if that power was only rhetorical. In one fell narrative swoop, Jens Peter is able to condemn a count’s wife to a grisly death, outsmart a local minister and reveal the immorality of the district bailiff.

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In a story that Jens Peter tells, a local countess falls victim to her own arrogance and an encounter with a predictably violent Satan: Der var en Grev Feer der boede paa Baggersvogn han og hans Kone er begravet paa Sindal Kirkegaard. De havde stude paa Baggersvogn og saa en Vinter døde der en 50 Stude for dem og de troede det var lede Folk der var skyld i det. Saa laaner hun nogle kloge Bøger af Bragholt Kjællingen og fik 2 andre Fruentimmer til sig og de skulde hjælpe hende med dether. De kommer ind i en Stue paa Gaarden, der kaldes den blaa Sal og der var de og fik noget stilt an. De læste i Bøgerne og læste Fanden til dem. han skulde sige dem hvem der var skyld i det, met det fik de aldrig at vide. En af Kvindfolkene der var med havde en Søn paa Gaarden som var Studerøgter og ham vilde de have haft med, men han vilde ikke. Saa blev de 3 alene. Hen paa Natten hørtes der noget Skrig og da de saa lukkede op for dem laa alle 3 Fruer og var revet i Stykker og Stumper og saa lige i det Øjeblik de var døde da var der kommen 3 Rift paa Dynen i den Seng som Studerøgteren laa i. Han blev saa forskrækket og kom op og da var hans Moder død. Den 1ste der kom derind var min [Moders] Faders Moster hun tjente der. De kunde ikke kalke de Pletter af Væggene. Men da Nyholm kom der, rev han hele Væggen ned og da der kom ny Sten hørte det op (Dagbøger 7812A).1 [A count Feer lived at Baggesvogn and he and his wife are buried in Sindal cemetery. They had oxen on the farm and then one winter fifty of them died and they believed that it was evil people who were guilty of it. Then she borrows some wise books from the Bragholdt hag and then she got two other women with her who were to help her with this. They go into a room in the farmhouse which is called the blue room and that’s where they were and they set something up. They read in the books and read the Devil to them, he was to tell them who the guilty one was, but they never found out. One of the women who was along had a son at the farm who was the ox hand and they wanted him along but he didn’t want to. So the three

1

The text here is transcribed from the original unpublished field diary recordings of Evald Tang Kristensen, referred to as “Dagbøger” in the indices of the Danish Folklore Archives. Abbreviations have been expanded in italics, and occasional periods have been removed. The published version of this story, which diverges somewhat from this original recording, appears in Danske Sagn vol. 6, no. 167 (Tang Kristensen 1980). Tang Kristensen collected a version of the same story when he visited Jens Peter Pedersen in October, 1893, a visit described in Minder og Oplevelser (Tang Kristensen 1923, vol. 3: 500). That version can be found on pages 6294A-6294B of the field diaries, and is reprinted in Danske Sagn, Ny række, vol. 6, no. 65 (Tang Kristensen 1928).

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Here, the ill-advised actions of the countess, and her willingness to engage Satan in what turns out to be a one-sided dialogue ends in her brutal death and that of her accomplices. Not only do the countess’s actions lead to her own death and that of the other women, but they almost lead to the death of the innocent stall hand as well. The deaths are so gruesome that the physical traces of their broken bodies stain the manor farm to the degree that the walls themselves need to be torn down to erase the vestiges of the event. Jens Peter not only manages to impugn the count and his family by linking them to Satan (a form of guilt by association that appears in the early pages of Nexø’s Pelle erobreren as well), but he is able to force them to tear down the very physical representations of the aristocratic hegemony that oppresses the almue. In this sense, Jens Peter uses his stories as a form of narrative revenge, attacking the very foundations of a system that effectively enslaved his forebears and that resonated for nearly a century after its dissolution, encumbering small holders and daylaborers like Jens Peter himself with capricious demands on their labor and resources.2 Of course, Jens Peter and the many rural laborers and small holders like him are not alone in their deployment of traditional narrative as a powerful rhetorical weapon in the class struggle that animates political and social life in late nineteenth century Denmark. Martin Andersen Nexø who describes in the first volume of Pelle erobreren a deeply nuanced view of the elaborate social networks that pervaded Danish rural life at the end of the nineteenth century was keenly aware of this political power of folk narrative. In particular, Nexø was attuned to the use of legend telling among farm workers to undermine the

2

While the stævnsbånd was officially lifted in 1788, the feudal system with hoveriarbejde and other types of lease arrangements was still being dismantled through the nineteenth century. It was not until the early 1900s, with concomittant changes to the tax laws, that the last remnants of the manorial system were ultimately eliminated.

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legitimacy and authority of their bosses – the land owners, the manor lords, the aristocracy. Early on in Pelle Erobreren, Nexø mentions: Men den onde luft som ligger over herregårde – over al stor ophobning af hvad der burde tilhøre de mange – lå også tungt om Stengården. Det var almuens dom, dens eneste hævn for sig og sine (Andersen Nexø 1906: 30). [But the bad atmosphere that hangs over large estates – over all great accumulations of what ought to belong to the many – also hung heavy over Stone Farm. It was the judgment passed by the people, their only revenge for themselves and theirs (Andersen Nexø 1989: 27)].

Nexø’s deployment of storytelling within his own story of Pelle closely mirrors the rhetorical uses of storytelling engaged by thousands of Danish rural workers at the end of the nineteenth century. Anker Gemzøe notes this as well, saying that in Pelle erobreren, “Fortælleren er for så vidt solidarisk med folkesnakken, som han anvender den til sit formål” [The narrator is in such great solidarity with the folk speech, that he uses it for his purposes] (Gemzøe 1975: 17). Throughout Pelle erobreren, Nexø accesses this narrative power freely, particularly in the first volume describing the exploits of the young immigrant Pelle and his life on the large, cold Stone Farm. The first volume of Pelle erobreren opens with a depiction of a small harbor on the Bornholm coast, everyone waiting expectantly for the arrival of the steamer carrying a human cargo of Swedish immigrants. The early descriptions of Bornholm life reveal a series of oppositions that exist in a dialectic tension and animate these communities. A visitor’s queries concerning the lateness of the steamer’s arrival fall on deaf ears, and it becomes apparent that, in this community, there is a clear demarcation between insider and outsider, urban and rural, rich and poor. The uneasy relationship between the farmers and fishermen and the equally uneasy relationship betwen the Danes and the immigrant Swedes are also made explicit. On Nexø’s boat, the Swedes engage a rhetorical tactic designed to assuage their collective fears by telling each other stories of the bounty of the Danish promised land: ...om dette land, hvor lønnerne var så ufattelig høje, og hvor man somme steder fik pålæg på sit brød og altid øl til, så vandvognen i høstens tid ikke kørte rundt til arbejderne men kun til kvæget. Og – ja de der ville kunne drikke brændevin som vand så billigt var det, men det var så stærkt, at det slog sin mand i tredje omgang...Og aldrig skulle pøjken fryse dér, for det var uldent inderst... (Andersen Nexø 1906: 19).

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[...the country where the wages were so incredibly high, and where in some places you got meat or cheese to eat with your bread, and always beer, so that the water cart at harvest time did not come around for the laborers, but only for the cattle. And – why if you liked you could drink aquavit like water, it was so cheap; but it was so strong that it knocked you down after the third shot...And the lad would never feel cold there, for they wore wool next to their skin...(Andersen Nexø 1989: 18)].

Meanwhile, on Nexø’s shore, the Danes engage in a strategy of domination and, to a certain extent, a tactic of wishful thinking, by telling each other stories of the laborers (de Certeau 1984: xix; Tangherlini 2000): Jo ser De, vi venter jo damperen i dag fra Ystad med en gevaldig ladning slaver. Billig svensk arbejdskvaj forstår De, som lever af fedtebrød og spegesild og slæber for tre... (Andersen Nexø 1906: 11-12). [We’re expecting the steamer from Ystad today with a big cargo of slaves – cheap Swedish laborers, that is, who live on black bread with lard and salt herrings, and do the work of three (Andersen Nexø 1989: 11)].

Nexø’s novel is not solely a depiction of the overlapping and conflicting attitudes of the rural populations and the folk beliefs and attitudes that pervade their communities. Rather, he explores the difficulties of life in an oppressive agrarian system – one in which the disenfranchised poor are constantly exploited by the land owning elite. Despite the move away from the manorial system with the land reforms starting in the late eighteenth century, by the 1870s, the landholders, particularly on Bornholm, were still able to maintain aspects of the strong control of the land and of labor that had been a hallmark of the earlier feudal system (Bjørn 1988). As the Ingwersens mention, “Although in the rural areas where the majority of the people still lived, feudalism had supposedly been abolished the traditional way of life as the early parts of Pelle the Conqueror and Ditte, Humanities child show continued along age-old patterns. The common peasantry the almue worked on the farms for food, lodging and meager wages” (Ingwersen and Ingwersen 1984: 3). Pelle erobreren is one of the more complex novels in Nexø’s authorship as it chronicles not only a remarkably important yet convoluted time in the development of the modern industrial Danish state, but also because it follows the development of Pelle’s own political thinking – thinking that changes considerably over the course of the novel’s four

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volumes. Accordingly, Pelle erobreren avoids the tedious ideological homogeneity of Nexø’s later novels such as Martin hin Røde (Andersen Nexø 1945). Because of its ideological and narrative complexity, Pelle erobreren has been the subject of far ranging research, from Børge Houman’s useful compendium of historical sources and reviews (Houmann 1975), through various literary-historical considerations that often focus on the ideological underpinnings of Nexø’s authorship and literary developments in nineteenth century Denmark (Gemzøe 1975; Holst and Wentzel 1975; Mylius 1975; Gundlund Jensen 1983; Finnemann 1985; Bredsdorff 1994) as well as detailed considerations of symbolism and narrative structure (Andersen 1983).3 Although Nexø’s reliance on folklore as part of his progressive political project is considered by some of his critics, none do it as eloquently as the Ingwersens, who propose that: Nexø was...at his best when he wrote about what he knew most intimately from experience for example in the first two parts of Pelle the Conqueror the early short stories about Bornholm and his memoirs but he was certainly not at his best when he wrote that very personal but listless record of his later life Morton the Red. Consequently it should be stressed that Nexø faired well as a writer as long as he retained his storyteller’s ability to fabulate and should be noted that that ability remained with him as long as he relied on the lore of the almue (Ingwersen and Ingwersen 1984: 140).4

Nevertheless, few critics acknowledge the seeming ideological contradiction between Nexø’s growing communist orientation and his frequent return to the almue as a “rural proletariat.” Holst and Wentzel however suggest that the almue represent a “step” on the path toward the development of a true proletariat: “et opbrud som af almuen og af romanen opfattes som et brud på en mere omfattende orden i tilværelsen. Og almuens opbrud, der fremtræder som det første trin in en vækst” [a break that is regarded by the almue and by the novel as a break in a more comprehensive order in life. And the almue’s break, that appears as a first step in a development] (Holst and Wentzel 1975: 107). This interpretation of Nexø’s reliance on the almue as ideological device aligns well with his

3

Nexø and his work have of course also been the subject of various symposia and essay collections. See, for example, Scandinavica 1969 and Nordica 1994. 4 An interesting discussion of the rural in Nexø’s short stories appears in Lisbeth Gundlund Jensen’s evaluation of Nexø’s authorship (Gundlund Jensen 1983).

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later development and helps explain why the almue fade from prominence in his later works. Nexø’s increasing focus on the urban proletariat, even over the course of the four volumes of Pelle erobreren, is certainly more in line with classical Marxist theory. Pelle erobreren is frequently characterized as the first overtly socialist Danish Bildungsroman (Andersen 1983, Ingwersen and Ingwersen 1984). Such a characterization is not only remarkably apt but also opens the concept of Bildung up to a more collective conceptualization than traditionally ascribed to the genre. The position is also consistent with the sense of community that pervades the storytelling of almue narrators like Jens Peter. Finally, the idea of the Bildungsroman also resonates with its folkloric counterpart, the fairy tale. Just as with the fairy tale, Holst and Wentzel propose that the driving force throughout the novel is the concept of the lykkedrøm [dream of happiness]: Hvad driver proletariatet frem og bestemmer dets vandring fra miljø til miljø er det der gennem hele romanen kaldes lykkedrømmen. I denne ubestemte skikkelse fremtræder den som en forestilling der – knyttet til eventyrets anonyme symbolverden – drejer sig om prinser og prinsesser og halve kongeriger der skal erobres (Holst and Wentzel 1975: 114). [What drives the proletariat forward and determines its wandering from environment to environment is what is called throughout the novel, the dream of happiness. It treads forth in this indeterminate form as a conception that – bound to the fairy tale’s anonymous world of symbols – concerns itself with princes and princesses and half kingdoms that are to be conquered.]

Extending this argument, Andersen goes so far to suggest that: Drømmen om eventyret er knyttet til den undertrykte hverdagskulturs lykkedrømme og forbundnet med forestillingen om at erobre prinsessen og det halve kongerige. Således er jo også i Garibaldi en eventyrlig skikkelese, som der går sagn omkring... Almuens myter og fortællinger indeholder som nævnt eventyrlige og fantastiske elementer (Andersen 1983: 109-110). [The dream of the fairy tale is bound to the suppressed everyday culture’s dream of happiness and connected to the notion of conquering the princess and half of the kingdom. In this same manner, there is a fairy tale form in Garibaldi, about whom stories are told... The peasants’ myths and stories contain, as mentioned, fairy tale and imaginary elements.]

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Here the fairy tale – rather than the more tactically resistant legend – becomes a considerable component of the folkloric in Nexø, at least at the level of narrative structure. The sense of the “optimism” these critics ascribe to the fairy tale is possibly somewhat misplaced, and may be more a reflex of Romantic interpretations of the genre informing subsequent critical endeavors, than the apparent almue orientation toward the fairy tale. For instance, in his analysis of the fariy tale, Bengt Holbek calls into question the extent to which fairy tale narrators were expressing optimism through their stories (Holbek 1987). He proposes that the fairy tale is likely more a case of wishful thinking than a reflection of a shared optimism and a genre that, in any event, reflects local community and family politics, rather than describing a grander developmental arc. On the other hand, the analysis of the fairy tale as optimistic may well be one that informed Nexø’s use of the genre in shaping his socialist Bildung, as the concept of lykke is certainly all-pervasive in Pelle erobreren. Pelle’s lykkedrøm of course turns out to be just that – a dream – and is consistently derailed by one barrier after another. The most obvious barrier is the immobile Stone Farm that looms as a brooding mass on Pelle’s horizon, a mass that can only be rocked by the weight of one damaging story after another pushing against it year after year. Stone Farm is the all encompassing metaphor for the oppressive land owning system in Nexø’s opening volume. Workers on the farm and day laborers in the surrounding area can only attack it through narrative. Nexø writes, I folkestuen sad de og dasede de lange aft[e]ner uden at have noget at tage sig til. De brød sig ikke meget om pigerne men sad og spillede kort om brændevin – eller fortalte uhyggelige historier, der gjorde det til en halsbrækkende ting at slippe over gården ned til stalden når man skulle i seng (Andersen Nexø 1906: 108). [...the men sat moping through the long evenings without anything to occupy themselves. They took little notice of the maids, but sat playing cards for liquor – or told terrifying stories that made it a hazardous venture to run across the yard down to the stable when it was time to go to bed (Andersen Nexø 1989: 97)].

Through this almue storytelling, the Stone Farm acquires a dangerous quality – it becomes the locus for horrible misfortunes and Satan’s playground. Nexø’s description of the farm’s owners and the history of the farm itself are told from the perspective of the farm workers, and reveal their perceptions of the evil inherent in the landowning class:

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Pelle eroberen: Folklore, Ideology and Film Da Lasse og Pelle kom til Stengården, mindedes de gamle husmænd endnu bonden fra deres barndom Janus Køller – ham der mere end nogen anden satte fart i sagerne. I sin ungdom sloges han en nat kl. 12 med fanden oppe i kirketårnet og overvandt ham – og siden lykkedes alting for ham. Hvordan det nu var eller ikke røg på hans tid den ene nabo efter den anden, og Janus gik rundt og overtog efter dem. Behøvede han en hest mere spillede han sig den til i trekort – og sådan på alle områder; den lede selv lagde alting til rette for ham. Hans største fornøjelse var at køre gale heste til, og de der traf til at være født julenat på slaget tolv, kunne tydelig se den onde sidde hos ham i sædet og holde tømmen. Han fik en beskidt død som ventelig var! En tidlig morgen kom hestene løbende hjem til gården, og ham selv fandt man ved vejsiden med hovedet knust mod et træ (Andersen Nexø 1906: 28). [When Lasse and Pelle came to Stone Farm, the older tenants still remembered the master from their childhood, Janus Køller, the one who did more to get things moving than anyone else. In his youth he once fought with the devil at midnight up in the church tower, and overcame him; after that he succeeded in everything. Whatever the reason, during his time one after another of his neighbors was ruined, and Janus went around and took over their holdings. If he needed another horse, he played for and won it at three-card. It was the same with everything – the Loathsome One himself fixed it all for him. His greatest pleasure was to break in wild horses, and people who happened to have been born at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve could distinctly see the Evil One sitting on the box beside him and holding the reins. He came to a bad end, as might have been expected. Early one morning his horse came galloping home to the farm, and he was found lying by the roadside with his head smashed against a tree (Andersen Nexø 1989: 26)].

Although in this story one finds a certain respect for the manor lord and his ability to fight Satan and win, the alliance leads to his inevitable death much like the countess’s shocking death in Jens Peter’s story. Claiming an alliance with Satan for the manor lord also allows the workers to undermine the legitimacy of the claims of the land owner to power and, to a great degree, allows the farm workers to feel superior to him. Satanic alliances at Stone Farm are not reserved solely for the former owner, but creep into the current owners’ lives as well: Nu kom fruen og proprietæren også... Men sikken et par øjne der sad i hovedet på hende i dag! Pelle skyndte sig at se til den anden side da hun vendte ansigtet ned mod gården – folkene hviskede om, at hun kunne se et menneske i ulykke når hun ville (Andersen Nexø 1906: 39).

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[Now the mistress came out and the landowner too...But what a pair of eyes she had today! Pelle hastily looked away when she turned her face down toward the yard – it was whispered among the servants that she could bring misfortune upon anyone just by looking at him, if she wanted to (Andersen Nexø 1989: 35)].

This suspicion concerning the evil nature of the manor lady is confirmed by a local wise woman as well: “Det har altid været pinenes galt med blodet hos kvindfolkene i den familie!” vedblev den gamle. “Og det har sig nok sådan, at der engang var en af dem som holdt omgang med selve Satanas. Siden har han jo kravet på dem, og farer ilde med dem hvergang månen er i aftagende – hvad enten de så vil eller ej selv. De rene har han ingen magt over forstår sig...” (Andersen Nexø 1906: 102). [“There’s always been something really wrong with the blood of the women in that family,” the old woman continued. “They say one of them once gave herself to Satan. Since then, he’s had a claim on them and mistreats them whenever the moon is on the wane – whether they want to or not. He has no power over the pure, of course... (Andersen Nexø 1989: 91)].

For Pelle, all that he hears, all that he sees and all that he experiences lead to the inevitable conclusion that the manor lady is a witch: Sidste dag Pelle var hjemme omkring, var han også oppe hos fruen og sprang sit ærende for hende. Og den dag så han noget uhyggeligt, som fik ham til at være glad ved at dette var forbi – hun tog tænder, gane og alting ud af munden og lagde det foran sig på bordet! Hun var en heks! (Andersen Nexø 1906: 154). [On the last day that Pelle stayed home, he went up to the mistress and ran her errand for her. And that day he saw something spooky that made him glad that this was over – she took her teeth, palate and all, out of her mouth and laid them on the table in front of her! So she was a witch! (Andersen Nexø 1989: 138)]

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Of course, the witch, Satan’s close ally, is one of the most terrifying figures in Danish tradition, as she destroys the community from within (Tangherlini 2000).5 Nexø’s description of rural life is not at all one dimensional. The rural proletariat does not stand as an undivided group, but rather their ranks are rife with in-fighting, jealousies and internal divisions. Holst and Wentzel note, “Hvad den beskriver er den gamle almues livsform, samlet omkring den enkelte lille gårdhusholdning, hvor forholdet mellem over- og underordnet i produktion samtidig er et familiært forhold mellem forældre og børn” [What it describes is the lifestyle of the old peasantry, centered around the small farming household, where the relationship between superior and inferior in production are at the same time a familial relationship between parents and children] (Holst and Wentzel 1975: 109). The division between haves and have-nots is also nuanced. Nexø delineates the entire range of rural workers – the servants, the day laborers, the quarry workers, the small holders, the fishermen – along with his descriptions of the small merchants, the schoolteacher and the parson, and the large land owners. Nexø notes the complexity of organization on the island as well as at the farm: “Stengårdens folk hold lige så stærkt over rangfølgen som øens egen befolkning, og den var lige så indviklet” (Andersen Nexø 1906: 167) [The men of Stone Farm were just as strict about their pecking order as the native inhabitants of the island and it was just as complicated... (Andersen Nexø 1989: 150)]. Given this understanding of social organization and its complexities, Nexø’s use of folklore functions politically on several levels. On one level, he refers to the peasants’ use of legends as a means for taking narrative revenge on their oppressors. On another level, he accesses the role that folklore plays in determining social organization and the attendant power struggles of any complex community. On the level of structure, he plays with the lyykedrøm and happy ending of the fairy tale that stands in stark contrast to lived reality for the working classes. On yet another final level, he engages the role folklore plays in late nineteenth century Danish literature, particularly in the context of “det folkelige gennembrud” [the folk breakthrough] led by the small group of folk realists of which he was part (Hvidt 1990: 42-75). In this context, folklore becomes part of the realistic depiction not of a rural idyll as the Romantic nationalists such as Drachmann would have it, but rather of an oppressed

5

Not surprisingly, accusations of witchcraft have long played a pivotal role in community politics (Tangherlini 2000b).

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class struggling against structural impediments to self betterment and a fair distribution of wealth across communities. The use of folklore on all these levels is, accordingly, an integral part of Nexø’s sustained critique of Danish agrarian economic organization and the burgeoning capitalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its effect on the rural populations. Fast forward eighty years. In 1987, Bille August’s film version of the first volume of Nexø’s epic took the film world by storm, garnering the Palme d’Or award at Cannes and the award for best foreign film (Oscar) from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The film was an overwhelming commercial success, grossing over two million dollars in the United States alone and creating a windfall for the Danish film industry. But something happened when Nexø’s ideological novel was wedded to the apparatus of film. Once on celluloid, the work transformed from being an exploration of rural life in turn of the century Denmark, focusing on the daily struggles of oppressed workers to survive and the need for significant socialist change, into the story of a boy and his father, their relationship and their personal struggles. Certainly, making a film out of a novel requires changes, and it is impossible to capture the narrative complexity of several hundred pages in a film. In a discussion of this very problem, Dudley Andrew notes, “the making of film out of an earlier text is virtually as old as the machinery of cinema itself. Well over half of all commercial films come from literary originals but by no means all of these originals are revered or respected,” and continues, “unquestionably the most frequent and most tiresome discussion of adaptation (and of film and literature relations as well) concerns fidelity and transformation. Here it is assumed that the task of adaptation is the reproduction in cinema of something essential about an original text” (Andrew 1984: 421-423). Rather than engage in a discussion of “what is different” in the film version, a more important discussion concerns what these “differences” lead to. In this case, the differences signal a significant ideological shift enacted not only through overt changes to the storyline and the concatenation of several characters into a single character, but also in a more subtle accession of folklore in a manner that is reminiscent of the simplistic manner in which folklore is used by the more reactionary Romantic nationalists. The apparatus of film is intimately linked to production and profit which are, ironically, two of the oppressive forces that Pelle struggles with and against throughout the novel. They are also two of the forces that any director must consider. Echoing Andrew, Bille August mentions that, in

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filming Pelle Erobreren, he was forced to change Nexø’s work, in part due to the pressures of the commercial film market: You can’t take books and just directly transfer them, it has never been done successfully in the history of film. One has to find the filmic expression, the visual nerve. For example, one also has to rationalize the character gallery. In the novel...there were a bunch of secondary characters, who I didn’t think there was place for in the film but, by the same token, I felt that some of their stories were important. So I combined many of the people and certain events. At the same time, it was important that everything that happened revolved around Lasse and Pelle’s relationship...That’s not the way it is in the book. There are certain parallel stories which in principal have nothing at all to do with Lasse and Pelle’s life, so I had to omit them (Wolden-Ræthinge and August 1993: 100).

Thus, the film no longer aspires to the ideological critique of social organization – the inspirational basis of Nexø’s work, and the reason for his accession of folklore in the spirit of the folk breakthrough. Rather, it aspires to commercial success by describing a relationship between father and son – the social conditions simply form the backdrop for August’s sentimental examination of paternal love and filial piety. The film also becomes a critique of immigration and a paean to cultural assimilation. This last ideological aspect of the August film of course situates it on the polar opposite end of the political spectrum than Nexø had likely intended.6 Surprisingly, Bille August was not the only one hard at work on a filmitization of Pelle the Conqueror in the 1980s. Christian Steinke, working with East German television, was handed a project early in 1984 based on Nexø’s novel (Steinke 1994). The project, according to Steinke, had a long and convoluted history, starting as an attempt at coproduction across the Iron Curtain in the mid 1970s (Steinke 1994). As the curtain was drawn ever more tightly, the Danes pulled back from the collaboration and it looked unlikely that any production of Nexø’s work

6

While one must always be careful arguing intentionality lest one fall prey to the hobgoblin of literary criticism, the intentional fallacy, given Nexø’s political ideology and his own foreword to Pelle erobreren, it is not overstating intentionality to suggest that Nexø was not interested in proposing an assimilationist policy for recent immigrants as part of a valorization of the bourgeois idyll of the Romantic Bildung, that by hard work coupled to a clear desire to assimilate, the immigrant can also be successful in Denmark.

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would ever see the light of day. Questions of film rights, production costs, and the outcome of Danish parliamentary elections – all utterly antithetical to Nexø’s ideological project and all artifacts of the cinematic-industrial apparatus – had seemingly sounded the death knell. Steinke rather curtly summarizes the events leading to the abandonment of the project: Nun muß ich allerdings auch erklären, daß wir 1976 alle 4 Teile von Nexös Roman machen wollten, also nicht nur die Kindheit Pelles, sondern auch sein Wachsen zum proletarischen Kämpfer und sogar den letzten, sicherlich problematischsten Teil des Romans. Das wäre natürlich eine riesige, sehr teure Produktion geworden... Aber noch bevor es zu einer Entscheidung über 2 oder 3 oder 4 Teile der Romanverfilmung kam, gab es in Dänemark Wahlen zum Parlament. Und in der Folge der Wahlen einen Wechsel des Intendanten im Dänischen Fernsehen und in dessen Folge keine Möglichkeit mehr einer Zusammenarbeit mit dem DDRFernsehen (Steinke 1994: 178). [Now I must clarify of all things that in 1976 we wanted to make all four parts of Nexø’s novel, not only Pelle’s childhood, but also his development as a proletariat fighter and the last, doubtlessly most problematic part of the novel as well. Of course, that would have been a giant and very expensive production... But before a decision was reached over two or three or four parts of the novel’s filmitization, there were parliamentary elections in Denmark. In the aftermath of the elections came a change in the Directorship of the Danish television and as a result of this, there was no longer a chance for a collaboration with the DDR television.]

Many years later, Pelle der Eroberer is green-lighted by the DDR television and Steinke is brought on board to direct. He details some of the problems confronting his team, including the death of the original screenwriter: Der Chefdramaturg und Autor des Szenariums, Dr. Kaltofen, dem das Verdienst gebührt, die Romanverfilmung vorgeschlagen und immer wieder in die Diskussion gebracht zu haben, war inzwischen gestorben, der Film mußte nun auschließlich auf dem Boden der DDR realisiert werden (Steinke 1994: 178-179). [The chief dramatist and the author of the screenplay, Dr. Kaltofen, to whom credit should go for the original idea of filmitizing the novel and for making sure the discussions continued, had, in the meantime, died, and so the film finally had to be produced from the bottom of the DDR.]

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As with the Danish production, Steinke and his group decide to focus on the first volume of Pelle erobreren. Steinke readily admits that his poorly funded production could hardly compete with the well-funded Nordic production, mentioning that, because of the DDR’s stringent controls, “Wir hatten ja auch in der DDR keine mit Bornholm vergleichbare Landschaft, keine Insel in der Ostsee, die vulkanischen ursprungs war, nicht einen Hafen an felsiger Küste, nicht eine einzie weiße kirche in freier Landschaft” [In the DDR, we had no landscape that was similar to that of Bornholm, no island in the Baltic of volcanic origin, no harbor along a rocky coast, no solitary white church in the open landscape] (Steinke 1994: 182). He was also unable to find actors who were not utterly urbanized, “Naturlich war auch unser Pelle ein Großstadtkind mit Angst vor allen größeren Tieren, zumal vor Kühen und Ochsen, von einem Stier ganz zu schwiegen. Und dazu ein Kind von heute, wohlbehütet zwischen Fernseher und Autos aufgewachsen und Erfahrung von körperlichem Schmerz durch Arbeit und ohne Vorstellung von sozialer Demütigung...” [Of course, our Pelle was a city boy, afraid of all big animals, cows as well as oxen, to say nothing of a bull. And also a child of today, who’d grown up safely between television and cars without any experience of bodily pain from work and no idea of social humiliation...] (Steinke 1994: 182). But unlike August’s ideological right turn in his production, Steinke focused his production, perhaps not surprisingly, on the collectivity and the class struggle that have been identified by critics such as Gemzøe as the most important ideological foundations of Nexø’s work. Steinke says of his production, “die DDRFassung aber demonstriert immer noch das Klassenkampfmodell, dies ist sein heimliches dramaturgisches Ordnungsprinzip” [the DDR-production always demonstrated the model of class struggle, which was its secret dramatic organizing principle] (Steinke 1994: 179). He also notes that the differences between the two productions seemed to him to be “typisch” [typical] (Steinke 1994: 179) and adds: Sie werder sehr schnell feststellen, dass die DDR-Verfilmung, anders als der dänische Film, sich sehr eng an das bei Nexö auch vorgegebene Klassenmodell hält, also das Gegenüber von Herrschaft und Gesinde. Während in der dänischen Verfilmung der Steinhofbauer und vor allem seine Frau kaum eine Rolle spielen, ist dieses Gegenüber von Oben und Unten bei Uns sehr viel wichtiger (Steinke 1994: 179). [One ascertains quickly that the DDR-production is different from the Danish film, as it clings narrowly to the class model also given by Nexø, namely the opposition of the gentry and the servants. While in the Danish

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film, there is a role for the manor lord of Stone Farm and for all his women, the opposition of the top and bottom for us is far more important.]

Unlike August, Steinke relies on the complexities of almue culture as an important component of his elaboration of this class model. As with Nexø’s novel, August’s film opens with the distant hoot of a steam whistle lost in the fog out at sea. But instead of turning the narrative focus toward the fishing community as Nexø does, August turns to Pelle and Lasse fabulating over the endless possibilities that Denmark holds in store for them. As such, from the very opening scenes, the film situates itself in Pelle and Lasse’s relationship first and foremost. In one very short move of the camera, the Danish countryside, the social organization of village life, and the conflicting groups that form the backbone of late nineteenth century Denmark are relegated to playing a secondary role. Indeed, the use of det folkelige [the folkloric] in August’s film is reminiscent of the static Romantic representation of folklife known from the folk museum, and in line with the nationalistic endeavors of the earliest Germanic folklorists such as Wilhelm Gottfried Herder and later in Denmark in the work of Just Matthias Thiele and Sven Grundtvig. Rather than using folklore as a powerful and relevant resource for the workers’ resistance to the class system as Nexø does, August uses folklore as a means for projecting a particular reactionary vision of Danishness that contributes to a conservative cultural politics. This vision of Danishness is then used as a contrastive element for the immigrant Swedes who refuse to assimilate. Pelle, who assimilates well to Danish society, melds with this otherwise elusive Danishness, keyed primarily in his loss of his Swedish accent, and his quick and steady rise in fortune both at the farm and in the Danish school. Jörgen Persson’s photography of August’s scenes also contributes to the ideological shift in the film. His establishing shot of Stone Farm – a high tracking shot using a long focal length – conveys the harshness of the farm and its isolation far out in the Bornholm countryside. But as the film progresses, the depiction of Stone Farm softens, and the general cold and isolation often dissipates. Perhaps one of the most startling changes between Nexø’s novel and August’s film – a change that plays directly into the change in ideological stance – comes in the conflation of Nexø’s Gustav and Erik into the single film figure of Erik. Where in the novel, the confrontation between the foreman and Erik stands as yet another confrontation between the foreman and the workers – a confrontation stemming from no particular single event, but rather from pent up frustrations over the harshness of the life of a farm worker and a conflict

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steeped in their storytelling – August constructs a scene in which the conflict arises from a personal distaste between Erik and the foreman. As the scene opens, the audience’s sympathies can only lie with Erik. But as the scene progresses, the camera shifts its allegiance from Erik to the manager. It begins with a montage of a series of medium shots, showing the harvest, and the pacing foreman and his puppy dog-like trainee. It then pulls back to a medium long crane shot in which Erik and his coworkers move slowly through a half mown field, a scene reminiscent of Dinesen’s “Sorrow Acre,” a short story entirely based on a legend of the harshness of manor lords and the manorial system and that considers the ethical underpinnings of such nonegalitarian systems (Dinesen 1942). As the others one by one move back in the frame to rest, Erik continues to mow the field, before finally lowering his scythe to rest as well. A confrontation with the manager ensues and the camera remains remarkably neutral, showing both the manager and Erik in profile. As the manager and the trainee leave, a subtle shift begins to take shape in the visual endorsement of the characters. As the two depart, the camera moves back to the earlier medium long crane shot, with Stone Farm in the background. After a pause, Erik, now a man possessed, lurches off toward the farm with his freshly sharpened scythe appearing more as an individualistic psychopath concerned primarily with his own “self,” than a determined revolutionary who has suffered the brunt of the foreman’s blows and is fighting to preserve the integrity of the community. Indeed, the crowd that follows Erik up to Stengården in the film seems to be an interested crowd of bystanders, rather than the revolutionary comrades-in-arms that Nexø describes in the novel, a status signaled by the distance between them and Erik when they enter the farm’s courtyard. As Erik approaches the farm, the camera, positioned at shoulder height, follows the small parade of farm workers up the road, while on the soundtrack an ominous cello counterpoint accompanies mournful yet revolutionary oboes – the audio cues suggest something dangerous is about to happen. The camera itself, with its static positioning, constructs an ever increasing distance between itself and Erik, who is clearly set on blood revenge. A medium shot establishes Pelle’s presence in the courtyard, and a quick reverse shot at eye level catches Erik and the farm workers’ procession as they round the corner of the barn. Another quick reverse shows the spreading panic on the face of the foreman as Pelle announces their arrival, “Nu kommer de far!” [“Now they’re coming, dad!”] and a quick cut brings the viewer back to Erik. Within a few short cuts that build the tension of the scene, the audience regains his point-of-view, signaled

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through a switch to jumpy handheld camera. However, as Erik lashes out at the foreman with his sharpened scythe, the alliance shifts – Erik takes on an even more crazed look caught in a medium close-up and the subsequent shots begin to endorse the manager’s position. Another closeup reveals the unhooked water bucket and, with a long shot, one sees the counterweight swinging towards Erik’s head. Then, from a shot that could only be from the point of view of the manager, we see the fast approaching counterweight. The ensuing medium shot confirms the manager’s point of view. The thud of the rock against Erik’s head guarantees the end to any type of revolutionary fervor. A long silence on the soundtrack is followed by the manager’s calls for assistance for the now unconscious Erik. Thus, in one short sequence, August encapsulates and then abandons one of Nexø’s major motivations for writing Pelle Erobreren in the first place, namely to write a story “om arbejdernes brede gang over Jorden på hans endeløse, halv ubevidste vandring mod lyset!” (Andersen Nexø 1906: 5) [about the bold stride of the worker across the earth on his endless, half-unconscious journey toward light! (Andersen Nexø 1989: 241)] By shifting the point of view to that of the manager in the sequence leading up to Erik’s defeat, August rejects once again the struggle of the proletariat as the driving force of the work. In August’s film, the one time member of the rural proletariat gets it together enough to fight, he does it solely as an individual. August’s Erik, rather than being a revolutionary, is a character whose stubborn unwillingness to assimilate into Danish culture leads him to the murderous rage of a criminal. When he raises his scythe in his final murderous gesture, the counter-weight comes undone through no agency of the manager and ultimately, the stubborn immigrant worker turned criminal sinks to the ground defeated and becomes a loyal puppy to the film’s representative of production. Writing about this significant change from agency to accident, Elias Bredsdorff says, Da karlene på Stengården er drevet så vidt, at de forsøger et oprør, er det store Erik der er deres anfører. Han søger den forhadte forvalter “med fordrejet ansigt og en bredbladet kniv i hånden” og ligner “en olm tyr”, skriver Martin Andersen Nexø, men han bliver brutalt slået ned af forvalterern og er derefter en sløv og forkuet stakkel resten af livet. I filmen er det ikke ved en bevidst handling, at store Erik bliver slået til idiot, det sker ved et uheld, og jeg er overbevist om, at Martin Andersen Nexø ville have protesteret mod denne ændring i en film, der ellers så smukt følger handlingen i romanens første del (Bredsdorff 1994: 27-28).

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Pelle eroberen: Folklore, Ideology and Film [When the farmhands at Stone Farm have gone so far that they attempt an uprising, it is big Erik who is their leader. He seeks out the hated manager “with a twisted face and a broad bladed knife in his hand” and resembles “an angry bull,” writes Martin Andersen Nexø, but he is brutally knocked down by the manager, and after that he is a listless and subdued wretch for the rest of his life. In the film it is not a conscious action, and I am convinced that Martin Andersen Nexø would have protested this change in the film, which otherwise so beautifully follows the plot in the novel’s first part.]

By reducing the strong Erik figure to an imbecile, and then side-stepping the thorny issue that, by the second chapter of the second part of the novel, “Erikmand har fået talens brug igen og begyner ligesom at blive lidt menneske...” (Andersen Nexø 1906: 288) [Well, Erik has gotten his speech back and is starting to be a human being again… (Andersen Nexø 1991: 27)], August’s ideological position of punishing the outsider is complete.7 Steinke readily admits that in his adaptation he too is forced to make changes to character and plot, but he resists ideologically unsound changes such as conflating the characters of Erik and Gustav into one. Instead, Steinke’s Erik becomes the clearest spokesperson for the rural proletariat, leading his coworkers toward a revolutionary confrontation with the representative of the oppressors. Steinke says of his Erik, “in der deutschen Fassung... man Erik für einen sozialistischen Agitator halten konnte, der noch ein paar Begriffe bei Marx und Engels persönlich, wenn nicht gar bei Lenin aufgeschnappt haben musste” [In the German production... one can hold Erik up as a socialist agitator, who must have snatched several concepts directly from Marx and Engels personally, not to mention Lenin] (Steinke 1994: 180). Steinke’s necessary silence concerning Erik’s later recovery has far less ideological weight for two very real reasons. First, in the Steinke film, the manager’s agency in destroying Erik is never in question. Second, at the end of the Steinke film, Pelle marches onward toward his predestined socialist Bildung, a path that Erik can of course rejoin. By contrast, August’s Erik is carted off by the authorities – most likely for deportation – when his employer’s contractual obligations end. Erik’s dream of a better life in a capitalist America – a dream that August constructs for Erik and has him plant in Pelle’s head – is taken from him and that, one is to understand, is the great tragedy. “If

7

Bredsdorff seems to forget Erik’s burgeoning recovery as well.

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only he’d learned to be Danish like Pelle,” one is left thinking, “he could have made it to America.” August’s own account of how Pelle erobreren came to be made underscores his interpretation of Nexø’s work and his insertion of himself and the apparatus of commercial film production between Nexø’s project and the eventual film: It was the Danish Film Institute or, more correctly, the film consultant at the time Jørgen Melgaard, who suggested that I make Pelle erobreren. I said to him that it was a fantastic idea, because I loved that book. After our meeting, I went down to the bookstore, bought the book, hurried home and read it. I had in fact never read it before. And what a story, what a moving and beautiful picture of the lives of two deprived people. I immediately became a part of the story...(Wolden-Ræthinge and August 1993: 99).

By the time filming starts, August’s manuscript has undergone ten revisions and, by his own admission, after the first draft, he has not returned at all to Nexø’s book. Whereas Nexø’s book is also intended as a beginning, an opening salvo on the path toward a socialist Bildung, August’s film stops short, and Pelle remains fully encapsulated within the film, unable to walk off screen even during the credit roll. The role of folklore in ideological debate and its deployment in literary production (of which cinema is part), is a difficult issue to tackle. While the prevailing wisdom proposes that nineteenth century folklore collectors – and by extension the participants in the folk tradition – were motivated by and engaged in a crude Romantic nationalist project tinged by a nostalgia for an endangered way of life, such an evaluation proves to be overly simplistic and ignores the complex motivations that lay behind individuals’ reasons for telling stories and for collectors to collect. The storytellers from whom collectors such as Tang Kristensen collected were not mired in a feudal past but rather were active participants in the rapid contemporaneous transformation of political, social and economic organization. Their stories were not survivals from some ancient time, but rather part of their everyday expression, deployed rhetorically to negotiate the tricky social waters of their communities. Similarly, not all nineteenth century collectors were allied with Romantic nationalist projects of cultural urban elites. Rather, folklorists such as Tang Kristensen became increasingly allied with progressive intellectual trends such the folk breakthrough that continued the realist agenda of the earlier moderne gennembrud [modern breakthrough]. One need only look at Tang Kristensen’s Gamle Kildevæld to realize that, despite the title of the work,

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he is deeply concerned with the plight of the individual rural dweller (Tang Kristensen 1927). In this sense, Tang Kristensen’s ethnographic endeavor has more in common with the progressive literary projects of authors such as Jeppe Aakjær and Nexø than it has in common with Herder’s Romantic nationalism and the early Danish Romantic nationalists such as Drachmann or contemporaneous bourgeois nostalgists such as Sophus Bauditz. Indeed, Tang Kristensen’s Gamle kildevæld can arguably be seen as a precursor to the progressive ethnographic works of James Agee and Walker Evans for the WPA presented in their Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Agee and Evans 1941). The deployment of folklore in literary texts necessarily includes an ideological dimension, as made abundantly clear by the versions of Pelle erobreren discussed here. Although the use of folklore as part of a nostalgic backdrop for a Romantic depiction of agrarian life is well known in world literature, Danish authors from the folk breakthrough chose a more progressive deployment of folk culture. In so doing, their use of folklore aligns much better with the tradition participants’ use of narrative tradition and with the motivations of some late nineteenth century folklore collectors as well. This progressive use of folk culture echoes up through the twentieth century in Blixen’s modernist project, most evident in her short story “Sorg agre,” but is stymied by a continued Romantic and often nationalist use of that same folk culture as part of an ideologically reactionary project by right wing ideologues. With the shift to the right of the Danish government in the 1980s (a shift that continues to resonate through the late 1990s and early 2000s with the shocking ascendancy of Dansk folkeparti), this Romantic and nationalist use of the folk has gained traction once again. Bille August’s use of folk culture as a nostalgic background for his interpretation of Pelle erobreren perhaps stands as the best known and clearest representative of this tendency. By contrast, Steinke’s nearly simultaneous reading of Pelle erobreren suggests that an understanding of folk culture as a progressive force, something that Nexø himself recognized, is still accessible. Ironically, Steinke’s film falters under the weight of its heritage and not under its progressive message, as the dissolution of the DDR revealed that regime to be as oppressive and morally bankrupt as the feudal system against which the almue railed in their storytelling.8 What remains is August’s revisionist reading of Pelle erobreren in which folk culture supports an assimilationist and capitalist lykkedrøm of danskhed. This contrasts sharply with Nexø’s reading of folk

8

Sadly, Steinke’s film is no longer accessible for reasons that are unclear.

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culture, a reading that understands the complex phenomenon that animates folklore, namely the dialectic tension that exists between the individual and tradition, and the role that folklore can play as part of a discourse of dissent.

Works Cited Agee, James and Walker Evans. 1941. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton Mifflin company. Andersen, Elise. 1983. Pelle Erobreren: en analyse med hovedvægt på symbolbrug og kvindebillede. Århus: Arkona. Andersen Nexø, Martin. 1906. Pelle Erobreren. København: Gyldendal. —. 1945. Morten hin Røde. En Erindringsroman. København: Gyldendal. —. 1989. Pelle the Conquerer. Vol. 1, Childhood. Seattle: Fjord Press. —. 1991. Pelle the Conquerer. Vol. 2, Apprenticeship. Seattle: Fjord Press. Andrew, James Dudley. 1984. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Auring, Steffen, Søren Baggesen, Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Søren Petersen, Marie-Louise Svane, Erik Svendsen, Poul Aaby Sørensen, Jørgen Vogelius, Martin Zerlang. 1984. Dansk litteraturhistorie. København: Gyldendal. Bjørn, Claus. 1988. Det danske landbrugs historie under medvirken af Troels Dahlerup, S.P.Jensen, Erik Helmer Pedersen [Bind] 3 18101914. Odense: Landbohistorisk Selskab. Bredsdorff, Elias. 1994. “Danmarks store proletarforfatter.” Nordica 11: 27-36. Busk-Jensen, Lise, Per Dahl, Anker Gemzøe, Torben Kragh Grodal, Jørgen Holmgaard, Martin Zerlang. 1985. Dansk litteraturhistorie. København: Gyldendal. de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dinesen, Isak. 1942. Vinter-eventyr. København: Gyldendal. Finnemann, Niels Ole. 1985. I broderskabets aand. Den socialdemokratiske arbejderbevægelses idéhistorie 1871-1977. København: Gyldendal. Gemzøe, Anker. 1975. Pelle Erobreren: en historisk analyse. København: Vinten. Gjesing, Knud Bjarne. 1994. “Rubrik. Det frie ord.” Nordica 11: 9-12.

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Gundlund Jensen, Lisbeth. 1983. Fra Pelle Erobreren til Morten hin Røde en analyse af udviklingen i Martin Andersen Nexøs forfatterskab. København: Københavns Universitet. Holbek, Bengt. 1980. Forord. Danske sagn : som de har lydt i folkemunde udelukkende efter utrykte kilder. København: Nyt nordisk forlag A. Busck. Holst, Lisbet and Knud Wentzel. 1975. Solidaritet og individualitet : en analyse af Nexøs Pelle erobreren. Kobenhavn: Fremad. Houmann, Børge. 1975. Omkring Pelle Erobreren. København: Hans Reitzel. Hvidt, Kristian. 1990. Det folkelige gennembrud og dets mænd 18501900. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Ingwersen, Faith and Niels Ingwersen. 1984. Quests for a Promised Land:The Works of Martin Andersen Nexø. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. Mylius, Johan de. 1975. “Ideologiske mønstre i Pelle Erobreren.” Edda: Nordisk Tidsskrift for Litteraturforskning/Scandinavian Journal of Literary Research (1975): 209-20. Steinke, Christian. 1994. “Pelle der Eroberer – ein Film des DDRFernsehens.” Nordica 11: 177-184. Tang Kristensen, Evald. 1923. Minder og Oplevelser. Viborg: Forfatterens forlag. —. 1927. Gamle Kildevæld. Nogle Billeder af Visesangere og Æventyrfortællere. Viborg: Forfatterens forlag. Tangherlini, Timothy R. 2000. “Heroes and Lies: Storytelling Tactics among Paramedics.” Folklore 111: 43-66. —. 2000b. “‘How do you know she's a witch?’: Witches, Cunning Folk and Competition in Denmark.” Western Folklore 59: 279-303. Taussig, Michael T. 1980. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wolden-Ræthinge, Anne and Bille August. 1993. Bille August fortæller om sit liv og sine film til Anne Wolden-Ræthinge. København: Aschehoug.

PERCEPTIONS OF EDUCATION AND LEARNING FROM STOLEN SPRING TO BORDERLINERS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DANISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE 20TH CENTURY NETE SCHMIDT

In one of his most famous novels, Stolen Spring1 (1940), Danish author Hans Scherfig could easily have applied to his text the traditional school teacher’s cliché “Ad Astra Per Aspera”2 to further emphasize the sarcastic tone of his scathing criticism of the Danish educational system at the time. Set in a large school in central Copenhagen, the novel vividly portrays how the unfortunate and hapless students find it insurmountably difficult to perceive the “stars” that they are expected to reach. The stars are obscured by an impenetrable pedagogical fog, and the students are in a daze from the mounds of dry, heavy school books, and overly zealous parents, who are trying to ensure that their offspring stay detached from the less fortunate, lower elements of society. However, as the novel takes its starting point when 19 former classmates meet at their 25th reunion, we see a surprising resemblance between the students, their parents, and former teachers. The former 1

Synopsis of the book: 25 years after their graduation from the gymnasium, 19 former classmates meet at their reunion. They have not quite achieved what they had hoped to accomplish, but most of them are leading quite satisfactory lives. They reminisce about old times and talk about their childhood and school days back in the 1930s. Through their conversation we gain a lucid insight into their experiences in the rigid, elitist school. At the time it was believed that teaching should be implemented through rigorous discipline and complemented with physical punishment. The following years witnessed many dramatic events, but the culmination was the murder of Head Teacher Blomme. This murder was never resolved, and only on this day, 25 years later, is the guilty person found. 2 To the stars through the rough, difficult place (hardship). (My translation).

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students have inherited the attitudes and prejudices that they so abhorred in their parents and teachers and now contemplate their good fortune and comfortable existence vis-à-vis those poor souls belonging to the lower, uneducated, or less-educated echelons of life. They are now, in other words, the elite, and as such, they have been pampered, spoiled, protected, and praised by the society into which they fit so neatly after their formative school years. Of course, there are exceptions – most notably the renegade entrepreneur who made a fortune through shadowy wheeling and dealing, and the outcast loner, the token “loony” of the university café who merely observes life and attempts not to participate in it. But the majority of the flock is secure and happy in the knowledge that they – almost – achieved what they were striving for, and in so doing fulfilled their parents’ ambitions even more than their own. In 1940, only 3.4 % of the students of a particular year were found to be eligible for the 10th, 11th and 12th grade. The “Gymnasium”, as these three years are called, is comparable to the junior-senior years of high school and the freshman-sophomore years of junior college. The enrollment rate today, however, is 38% (Larsen 2005: 1), and this dramatic rise in the percentage of students getting a Gymnasium education is the starting point for my discussion of the change that has taken place in the philosophy of education and learning since pre-World War II. More specifically, this change begs the question of how and why an educational system has changed its focus and content to such an extent that what used to be a decidedly elitist education is now available to almost half of the youngsters graduating from 9th or 10th grade. The change is even more radical when one compares the future destinations of those who left school after either the 7th, 9th or 10th grade in 1940 with those who opt out of the Gymnasium track today. In 1940, the students would have gone directly into an apprenticeship or a job, and would have immediately progressed to becoming full-fledged members of society with no vestige of youth and adolescence in their make-up. Today, 95% of the students who do not enter the Gymnasium enter a technical school or a commercial school instead, thus continuing their education, albeit in different, debatably less-bookish directions (Hansen 2004). Nonetheless, they continue their education another 3 years and leave the educational system when they are between 18 and 20, ready for a job. Based on such trends and changes in attitude over the past 70 years, it could be argued that meritocracy3 is now seen as the panacea, where the 3

An intellectual elite, based on academic achievement; a system in which such an elite achieves special status, as in positions of leadership. Webster’s New World Dictionary. 3rd. College ed. 1994.

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long-term absorption of education directly translates into leadership and power. The more education one gets, the better one’s position, income, social status, and life will be, and presumably, the society created from this educated majority will benefit even more. The question is, then, whether this is true. Peter Høeg’s book Borderliners4 (1994) regards this meritocratic philosophy with clear and undeviating skepticism, critically questioning the merits of a system trying to squeeze everybody into a long education while simultaneously distinguishing between the levels obtainable by individual students and, consequently, the chances that life will offer them after graduation. Wrapped in a confusing blanket of time and place perceptions, the students at Biehl’s Academy, a private, elitist, high brow school with strict discipline, stellar standards, and clear-cut solutions to any digressive or deviant behavior, follow the straight and narrow, chronological path to success. But into its spotless universe, “damaged” children are introduced: “They had a grand plan. Of bringing all children together in the Danish public school system, including the mentally defective and delinquent, including the slow pupils – everyone right down to the borderline with severe retardation. Biehl’s Academy was to be turned into the model for this unification” (Høeg 1994: 213-4). However, because of what happens at the Academy, this experiment in “the integration of defective children into normal schools” (229) is finally abandoned and seen as a failure. The conclusion is that the various social and intellectual levels don’t mix; some children are cut out for standard education, and others are not; some children belong in mainstream society while others will always remain on the fringe. The narrator in Borderliners, who tells the story retrospectively, survives the ordeal and buys himself a life and future by means of an instinctual, almost animalistic, primitive ability to survive and barter against all odds, and, 4

Synopsis of the book: Following years in orphanages and reform schools, the narrator, Peter, is placed in an exclusive private academy where he is integrated with normal, privileged students. Here he meets and befriends the abused child, the outcast August, and the semi-normal girl Katarina who becomes his first love. What they don’t know is that they are subjects of a secret experiment in social Darwinism. All they have is time which is rigidly managed in their everyday lives, and which allows them to ponder their existence in the large scheme of things. In their attempts to escape and recreate an individual existence with time and space for themselves, August ends up committing suicide, Katarina is placed in a different institution, and Peter manipulates his way into adoption by a family. His story is written retrospectively after he is an adult with a family of his own, but he is still grappling with the issues of time and space that run though the entire novel.

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certainly, in spite of the well-meaning education that the well-meaning society has forced upon his parched and abused soul. In between these two selected extremes of elitism versus inclusion, there are other noteworthy attempts to include a description of the Danish educational system in fiction. In Den Kroniske Uskyld [The Chronic Innocence] by Klaus Rifbjerg (1958), the two protagonists of whom one is the narrator, Janus, experience the same kind of Gymnasium that is depicted in Stolen Spring. Here, a sharp distinction is drawn between the sons of academics with a sterling academic future, and the sons of laborers and farmers who stumble down the path of erudition trying to salvage the life of their failed parents. The first intro-level (class) in the Gymnasium is described as a “grødfad” (Rifbjerg 1958: 8), a bowl of porridge, where nobody has any individual identity, where the advantage for the would-be academic is his academic parents, and where the older classes are idolized as having achieved a god-like status because of their wisdom and age. The years from 1940 to 1958 have only effectuated a minor change in the outlook on discipline with less corporal punishment and, consequently – as it is described – less fear of and respect for the teachers. However, the fear and respect in the relationship between teacher and student still dominate the academic experience and shape the minds of the impressionable youngsters who strive to find a life elsewhere, away from the confines of the physical school and its spiritual limitations. In Rend mig i Traditionerne [Up the Traditions] by Leif Panduro (1958), another aspect of the Danish educational system is exposed and ridiculed. This time the protagonist, David, experiences massive inner turmoil and disturbances whenever the word tradition is mentioned and revered, and his own search for identity leads him far from the beaten path of Academia. He is, however, a sympathetic guy who respects his teachers, his fellow school mates, and himself. His dilemma is finding a sound identity in the midst of regurgitated, parroted, and irrelevant bookish “wisdom” that is inapplicable to his own adolescent experience. Having placed the protagonist in the most elitist of all gymnasiums in Denmark5, the author proceeds to disseminate his background in a witty flow of irony and sarcastic humor. David is left to figure out his own life, his own ambitions and dreams, quite far removed from the demands of an inflexible school system that leaves little room for existential crises – unless these crises can be expressed through the words of someone distinguished in the accepted canon.

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Presumably, Herlufsholm Kostskole.

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The contrast in the student perception of his or her learning environment between mid-1900s and now is also worth considering. In a recent college survey, a number of students were asked to describe the main qualities that constitute the good teacher, and the good student (Schmidt 2005: 1). Not surprisingly, respect ranks at the top of their list. From the student perspective, respecting one’s teacher for his or her knowledge, expertise, teaching, demeanor, and personality is the key to creating the most valuable learning environment. Furthermore, when respecting the teacher, the students anticipate respect in return. They want the teacher to respect their motivation and dedication along with their struggles and shortcomings. For many, the underlying factor is mutual, reciprocal respect which then engenders a degree of closeness and sympathy between teacher and student. The runner-up qualities most often described are passion and motivation. If a teacher shows passion for his or her subject and seriously tries to impart as much knowledge as possible in a varied, interesting, and entertaining manner, the students will respond with increased motivation and eagerness to learn. Many other excellent qualities were mentioned, none of which are surprising within the context of our current educational environment. Yet these unsurprising, contemporary, and quite simple, straightforward answers form a stark contrast to the philosophy of education evinced in the books and reflected by students 50 to 60 years ago. Stolen Spring eminently mirrors the dominating – quite literally – qualities of the education before the youth rebellion of the late 1960s changed the educational landscape for good. Obviously, as we see in Stolen Spring, the relationship of teacher to student in 1940 is characterized as a one-sided affair in which the fear of the student is proportionate to the teacher’s show of power. Students are viewed as blank slates upon which wisdom is to be imprinted and inscribed in the shape of knowledge already available and established. The classical subjects have precedence as they have had for nearly 850 years. Aarhus Katedralskole in Aarhus, Denmark, recently celebrated its 800th anniversary as an institution of learning6. Naturally, Latin was the supreme subject of study and the door to academia. Without a solid knowledge of this dead language, one was nothing but a regular member of working class society. Latin was, thus, the great divider, and the tool to ensure sufficient absorption of Latin language and culture was fear. This is eminently portrayed in Stolen Spring where the Head Teacher, Professor Blomme, easily and repeatedly projects himself into the role of Roman 6 Aarhus Katedralskole [The Cathedral School of Aarhus, Denmark], 800 years, 1993.

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Emperor, sovereign in his realm, the school, and primarily the classroom (Scherfig 1986: 55). As portrayed vividly in the 1993 movie version, Head Teacher Blomme forges his way to work with great difficulty. He is squeezed by other people when getting on the bus. He is squeezed again and almost stumbles when getting off. He is a small man of negligible physical stature. But when he passes through the school’s gates, he is transformed. The teacher at the gate retreats in awe, trepidation, and fear. All the students in the school yard prostrate themselves in front of him, hailing him with silent worship. Music from the opera “Aida” sounds in his ear in great, sweeping waves of supremacy. Majestically, he walks through the parted sea of mesmerized students and ascends the steps, turning around at the top to wave once more to the adoring masses. Only then does he realize it was all a dream. No one has taken any notice of his presence, and he is swallowed up by the school building. In Borderliners, Principal Biehl is portrayed in a similar, powerful position, albeit using history and its chronologically factual interpretation of reality to wield the power over the students. If they don’t remember his lectures – without the luxury of being allowed to take notes – they are academic failures. The protagonist, Peter, finds a way to master this seemingly impossible task: he listens for breaks in time, where Biehl pauses subconsciously before delivering an important date or bit of information (Høeg 1994: 51-2). Thus, Peter beats the unbeatable by using his perception of time as a tool in the face of oppressive education; time which, instead of being perfectly linear, can be bent to allow for lapses and human flaws. This helps him conquer his paralyzing fear of the towering educational monolith and its efforts to crush him under its weight. Fear, then, is the motivating factor in spurring students on towards further accomplishments up through the mid 20th century. Fear is the tool of choice for oppressive educators, responding to discord, disinterest, or perceived deviation with physical threats and intellectual brow-beating. Corporal punishment with a cane was not abolished in the school system until 1967 (“Tidslinie” n.d.). Slapping the cheek, however, was made illegal in 1814 (“Set og Sket i Folkeskolen siden 1920” 2005), but many teachers disregarded this, and various instances brought to the attention of the press show that some teachers even today still succumb to the pressures by physically assaulting their students, and thereby propagating and perpetuating a learning based on fear. Another tool deemed essential in education, both then and now, is learning assessment, which, through its inherent subjectivity, has the potential for the abuse of power. For example, if one applies the famous Jantelov, Law of Jante (“Janteloven” n.d.), to learning assessment, it is

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obviously tempting to interpret the constant, vigorous, and diligent teacher assessment of students as an evident means of oppression and putting people in their proper, low place. A “we” versus “you” position – the collective versus the individual. Teachers have the means of academically punishing their students for taking initiatives that are perceived to be overly ambitious in a given social context. Historically, learning assessment has always taken the form of evaluating compatibility to established norms, thus returning poor grades to or withholding degrees from students who show independence, initiative, or think “outside the box”. That kind of “different” behavior is a threat to the hierarchical structure reflected in Janteloven, where the students are inexorably placed beneath the teachers, by definition, as academically and socially blank slates to be written upon as is deemed acceptable. In Borderliners, assessment reflects an additional contradictory quality in the shape of praise. Contrary to assumptions, praise also instills fear, “the fear of not being just as good as last time; of not being worthy this time as well … when one praises, one also judges. And then one does something that has a profound effect”(Høeg 1994: 50-51). In a community where everyone is being judged and compared to others, in a vicious circle, the end result is a group of people feeling completely alone and alienated, “Every individual is part of a frightening collective and is terrorized by that collective – there is no solidarity, and all individuals are fundamentally alone”(Lien 2004: 281). In Stolen Spring, the students are constantly made aware of their lack of worth and uniqueness. However, in the end – and, paradoxically, to a certain extent during their education – they are shown that they are, indeed, the most valuable members of society and, hence, not merely subjected to Janteloven but instead in a position to pass on its oppressive norm to subsequent generations. Thus, they don’t transcend or overcome Janteloven, but rather, they absorb it, travel their preordained, elitist path, ending up as equals with their former evaluators. The discouraging conclusion is that instead of creating the ideal, egalitarian society that the young boys are fantasizing about – and which would efficiently eliminate Janteloven – their education lures them in the opposite direction to become advocators of the established norms. The educational ascent of the select few, based on their academic assessment and “progress,” actually prevents them from attaining their young ideals and ensures the perpetuation of academic and social oppression. It might appear from the above that the young students portrayed in these novels are being manipulated and maltreated by dysfunctional adults merely to provide these adults with sadistic pleasure and vicarious

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existence. However, it is important to remember that the primary objective of any educational system is instructing, if not manipulating, students in what is deemed necessary by the society in which they will participate. The students are expected to learn in order to create a future for themselves and their community. Some of the most fundamental questions surrounding the theories used to achieve the education of a community’s members are tied to the perennial question of nature versus nurture, and its concurrent theories of the noble savage7, the blank slate8, and the ghost in the machine9 (Pinker 2002: 1-3). In this context, the obvious next step, then, is following a historical path through theories on education and comparing the development and application of their inherent ideologies. John Locke (1632-1704) was a philosopher often considered to be the first of the great English empiricists. This reputation rests on Locke’s greatest work, the monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the primary goal of which is to determine the limits of human understanding (Uzgalis 2005). According to Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between ideas, which, whether simple or complex, are ultimately derived from experience. The consequence of this approach to learning is that the knowledge of which we are capable is severely limited in its scope and certainty. He proposed a theory of learning called associationism in his attempt to explain human intelligence, positing that on the blank slate ideas are inscribed as sensations which will gradually become associated. As an Enlightenment thinker, his embracing of the concept of the blank slate, rejecting the concept of innate ideas, and claiming that all ideas are placed in the mind through experience, was also “a weapon against the church and tyrannical monarchs” (Pinker 2002: 18). Locke states: I think I may say that, of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. ‘Tis that which makes the great difference in mankind. The little, and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies, have very important and lasting consequences; and there ‘tis, as in the fountains of some rivers where a gentle application of the hand turns the flexible waters into channels, that make them take quite contrary courses, and by this little direction given them at first in the source they receive different tendencies and arrive at last at very remote and distant places (Locke 1998 [1693]a).

7

i.e. people are born good and corrupted by society. i.e. the mind has no innate traits. 9 i.e. each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology. 8

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Furthermore, as modern parents and educators today, we nod in recognition of the concerns and goals he voices in 1693: I myself have been consulted of late by so many, who profess themselves at a loss how to breed their children, and the early corruption of youth is now become so general a complaint, that he cannot be thought wholly impertinent, who brings the consideration of this matter on the stage, and offers something, if it be but to excite others, or afford matter for correction; for errors in education should be less indulged than any…The well educating of their children is so much the duty and concern of parents, and the welfare and prosperity of the nation so much depends on it, that I would have every one lay it seriously to heart; and after having well examined and distinguished what fancy, custom, or reason advises in the case, set his helping hand to promote that way in the several degrees of men, which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings (Locke 1998 [1693]b).

While retaining the gist of his wisdom about the essential role of education, it is clear that Locke’s wholehearted belief in the blank slate is too rigid in the eyes of most contemporary educators. Similarly, the ideas of John Stuart Mill, (1806-73), albeit enlightened and articulate, emphasize the ability and goal of education to be an inscription on a ready, yet empty, mind. Mill further refined Locke’s theory of associationism, stating: My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it (Mill 1873).

Having gone through a rigorous education himself, he also discussed the inclusion of fear and punishment as means to an end in an educational setting, saying: They [The teachers] seemed to have trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I did not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be created, and

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John Stuart Mill formulated his political views to encompass his educational theories, including his support of women’s suffrage, and the improvement of the living conditions of the lower classes. He perceived the role of political institutions from his utilitarian viewpoint as being both moral and educational in pursuing improvement in “life and culture … for the people concerned” (Mill 1873), and he advocated democracy while finding the power of the ruling classes demoralizing since it perpetuated its own advantage immorally to hereditary riches. He realized that a general, compulsory education of the lower classes would be contrary to the self-interest of the ruling classes as education was “tending to render the people more powerful for throwing off the yoke” (Mill 1873), yet speculated that in the long run education would lead to a more just and equitable society, also for the nobility. Thus, while being distinctively progressive in his educational theories, as they applied to pragmatic political philosophy, he still maintained that students were blank slates: In particular, I have long felt that the prevailing tendency to regard all the marked distinctions of human character as innate, and in the main indelible, and to ignore the irresistible proofs that by far the greater part of those differences, whether between individuals, races, or sexes, are such as not only might but naturally would be produced by differences in circumstances, is one of the chief hindrances to the rational treatment of great social questions, and one of the greatest stumbling blocks to human improvement (Mill 1873).

Nonetheless, arguments against the blank slate concept also existed from early on. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) in New Essays on Human Understanding stated “There is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself” (quoted in Pinker 2002: 34). Hence, there must be something already in the mind, something innate, which brings order into the perceived world. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) places education in a social context, arguing that its primary goal is the transmission of information from the sovereign to the citizens about their expected duties and obedience (Williams 2003). Interestingly

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enough, Hobbes seems to generate a paradox which resounds within the previously discussed novels. On one hand he argues for absolute power, obedience, and the suppression of personal beliefs, but on the other hand he states explicitly that it is the duty of the sovereign to educate the people on political matters. By substituting teacher or principal with sovereign, and students with people, this paradox is reenacted in both Stolen Spring and Borderliners. Logically speaking, one would assume that education is incompatible with absolute obedience and suppression of contrary beliefs, for education might lead to opposite beliefs which would then lead to rebellion against the educator. Hence, if the Sovereign/educator desires peace and/or stability, he or she should not educate his or her subjects, whereas if he or she desires education of the masses, peace and/or stability becomes impossible (Marshall 2000). Both Hobbes and Leibnitz believed that intelligence is a “form of information processing and needs complex machinery to carry it out” (Pinker 2002: 35). The computer similarity is obvious as it is common knowledge that computers need software to function. Without installed software they would be nothing but inert machines, and the comparison with humans and their brains is temptingly plausible. Finally, the Behaviorists, who dominated psychology from the 1920s to the 1960s, wholly endorsed the blank slate philosophy. John B. Watson (1878-1958) wrote in 1930: Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, merchantchief, and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors (“John B. Watson” 1999-2001).

Watson believed that humans as well as animals are extremely complex machines that respond to situations according to their nerve pathways, conditioned by experience. In 1913, he published an article outlining his ideas, and basically establishing Behaviorism as a new school of psychology. Watson disagreed with Freud, finding his views on human behavior philosophical and bordering on mysticism. He also dismissed heredity as a significant factor in the shaping of human behavior, and, therefore, made a very strong case for the “nurture side” of education, an argument that has persisted throughout most of the 20th Century. B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) followed in the footsteps of Watson and expanded the behaviorist philosophy of learning. Behaviorists believe that

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behavior can be understood independently of the rest of biology as a kind of passive movement determined by the structure of the organism and the nature of environmental forces. Man is reduced to the status of a laboratory animal that can be studied and explained rationally based on its cognitive patterns, and whose genetic makeup is of no significance. In his book Walden Two (1948), Skinner creates a utopian world where everything is controlled from birth to death. Children are conditioned continuously, everything is created to benefit the greater good of the community as well as fulfilling the desires of the individual, and the end result is the eradication of aggression, violence, negativity and friction. However, as in most other utopias, this perfect world has its snake in the form of the older pre-Walden generations, who might subscribe to the idealized ideas in theory, but find it much harder to apply them in practice. Skinner argues that this “baggage” is the result of flawed conditioning in the world outside the commune, but to those less involved in the experience, there are obvious flaws in this reasoning, and they have been quick to point towards the existence of inherent, natural personalities as the cause of conflict and unrest among many of the older inhabitants. A heated discussion which has taken place during the 20th century involves the debate over collective versus individual teaching and learning. Not surprisingly, the individual was historically the focus of education. If we recall Locke’s words about education being meant to “produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings,” it is quite clear that every citizen had a duty towards his or her own education and the improvement of society. The ultimate teaching situation was created in a one-on-one student-teacher scenario, and the committed student would then excel through his or her own will power, diligence, and dedication. At any point in time, the official educational philosophy in the Danish school system is stated and reflected in the Ministry of Education Executive Orders. These useful instruments for charting the development of learning in Denmark reveal a seminal change during the 20th century. At the time of the creation of Stolen Spring, 1940, the Gymnasium contained a highly motivated, specially selected minority of students from a particular year. At the end of 5th grade in the elementary school, a series of tests and examinations selected the few who were destined to go through the so-called “unified school” to the top, the Gymnasium. In order to reach this goal, 4 years were spent in the so-called “middle school,” which concluded with a highly respectable, decisive examination, following which most students entered the ordinary life of ordinary workers. Indeed, the desired unification was only attained in name since it was the curriculum throughout the 9 years of school that was unified and

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cumulative. Most of the 3.4% of the students of a particular year who continued into the Gymnasium came from the upper middle class and upper classes in the cities, leaving the farmers’ and workers’ children behind on their educational road (Nielsen 2003). At the end of each year the students were examined orally and individually in chosen subjects (“Anordning om ændring” 1925), and their final grades rested solely on their own shoulders, be they shaky or firm. Therefore, there was nobody to blame for failure but oneself, and, of course, the teachers. The growing-up process incorporated this attitude, and it was considered a sign of maturity to accept full responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences. This maturity was supposedly reached through the rigorous hardships experienced in trying to find one’s place in a school system where the strong bullied the weak, and where both the students and teachers were placed in neat hierarchies. For the teachers, the hierarchy was based on academic excellence and control of the students as exerted in the classroom. The academic excellence would place the physical education teacher at the bottom of the rung, presumably inducing more physical cruelty during classes as a compensation for this teacher’s low academic status. At the top of the pedestal rested the Latin and Greek teachers together with the science teachers. These represented the epitome of academic learning, and from their vantage point they regarded the more “humble”, ordinary teachers with disdain and pity. The hierarchy for the students was first based on one’s parents’ (i.e. father’s) status in society. Rich or influential parents automatically yielded a higher rank in the social structure of the class, whereas the sons of middle or lower class families had to use different means to achieve respect and recognition. The most obvious one, and the soul of the second hierarchy, was the students’ academic prowess. Students were ranked in the classroom according to their biweekly grades. These grades were frequently read aloud to the entire class, following which chairs were switched to accommodate the new rankings. When the official grade books were handed out, most commonly bi-annually, the entire school would be privy to the individual academic ranking of the students. Furthermore, at least at the end-of-year graduation ceremony, the parents would also witness the success or failure of their sons, with dire consequences for those who failed to reach the mark. Thus, for the students there was nowhere to hide. Their successes and failures were trumpeted out, and they were all constantly made aware of where they fit into the academic grid system (Schmidt 2004). While this idea of the student as a blank slate and the focus on the individual achievement and failure may seem rigorous, damaging or old-fashioned, it persisted through 1973 with then Secretaries of Education, K.B. Andersen,

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Helge Larsen, and Knud Heinesen as strong advocators (“Politikere” 2005). In 1958 a new Executive Order for the Gymnasium was put into operation (“Lov om Gymnasieskoler” 1958), but it did not change the structure or content of the education. Major changes had been implemented in a new Executive Order for the preceding school years with a complete reform of the Elementary School system. The “middle school” was abolished and replaced with a 7-year “main school,” which was followed by a 3-year “real” (secondary) school as well as 8th and 9th grade. Instead of dividing the students after the 5th grade, they were now divided after the 7th grade, depending on the results of tests and examinations. The academic students took the 3-year alternative while the less-bookish students finished their education with 9th grade. The most important purpose, as formulated in the Executive Order, is still that the students learn, and learn how to learn, gathering real knowledge, skills, and proficiency in an academic sense, especially in the highly demanding “real” school, which was perceived as the gateway to success and maybe the Gymnasium (Nielsen 2003). However, with the ascendancy to Secretary of Education of the Social Democratic politician, Ritt Bjerregaard, in 1973, new winds began to blow into the educational philosophies. She kept her post, with one 2-year hiatus, until 1979, by which time she was replaced with a like-minded colleague, Dorte Bennedsen, who remained in power until 1982. By the time the Conservative Party gained the political power in 1982, with Bertel Haarder as Secretary of Education until 1993 (“Politikere” 2005), a seminal change had taken place in the perception of learning and education within the Danish school system. In 1975, the next Executive Order for the Elementary Schools in Denmark was implemented after a protracted battle between the Social Democrats and the so-called “Venstre,” the right-wing, traditionally liberal, farmers’ party. The oil crisis and economic crisis had an impact on the political climate making it more difficult to reach compromises, but nevertheless, a solution was finally reached. The division of students after 7th grade was now abolished, but instead, two levels of teaching were introduced in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades, a basic and an advanced level. Furthermore, in spite of the wishes of the Social Democrats, examinations and grades were still mandatory. Nonetheless, this party managed to introduce revolutionary verbiage in the sections defining the purpose of education: Folkeskolen forbereder eleverne til medleven og medbestemmelse i et demokratisk samfund og til medansvar for løsningen af fælles opgaver.

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Skolens undervisning og hele dagligliv må derfor bygge på åndsfrihed og demokrati (Helsted 1975). [The elementary and middle school prepares the students for active participation and decision making in a democratic society and for joint responsibility for the solution of shared tasks. The teaching and entire daily life of the school must, therefore, be based on intellectual and spiritual freedom, and democracy.] (My translation)

Concurrent with this statement, there was a tendency to emphasize skills and proficiency rather than knowledge, so in a shift away from focusing on the academic benefits of an education, the social aspects of schooling now came to the foreground. Along with this law, Ritt Bjerregaard also initiated a major project called U 90, an overall, comprehensive educational plan whose purpose was to create equality in the society, by, among other things, a 12 year mandatory education for all. Simultaneously, she restricted admission to institutions of higher learning in 1976, forcing students to look for alternatives to the straight and statefunded path through the educational system (“Ritt i Folketing og EU” n.d.; “Ritt Bjerregaard” 2003). Finally, she introduced the notion of anti-elitism by asserting that that which is taught in the public schools should be readily digestible to all students, ascribing to the principle of, “that which cannot be learned by everybody should be learned by nobody” (Schmidt, Ole Theodor 2004). It is obvious that the educational system depicted in Stolen Spring falls into the category of more conservative educational philosophy, while that described in Borderliners belongs to the more modern, contemporary one. While the two books both portray learning based on the blank slate principle, they also encompass a manifestation of the economical and political situation in Denmark from 1940 to 1993 as it is reflected in educational ideologies and policies. The more conservative view of education emphasizes the individual in an efficient, competitive, ambitious endeavor to better him- or herself, and to realize his or her own potential. However, at the same time, the individual elite will benefit the surrounding society by adding competitive power to its struggle in the global economy. To sharpen and hone the individual skills, division, differentiation, and extensive examinations must be the order of the day with the consequent academic hierarchy subduing social interaction and a shared feeling of joint responsibility for success. The more contemporary view, on the other hand, accentuates the development of social networks, fellowship, and co-operation as integral

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parts of the formative years of education. Instead of praising the strong individual, the classroom dynamics must reflect active solidarity with the weakest links in society while seeking to generate a quality of life which can be carried into the years following graduation. The contemporary view places greater importance on and concern for the atmosphere in the work place and the natural environment. The ultimate purpose is to create “whole” human beings who are well-rounded, well-balanced, and able to survive in a world characterized by increasing stress, changes, and challenges. In 1993 came the latest Executive Order for the Elementary Schools, which abolished the two levels in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. Instead, the teachers must differentiate their teaching within the parameters fixed by the central, national curriculum, so that they consider the best interests of the individual students while retaining their perspective of that which is best for the whole class. Teachers are now facing a special challenge, or perhaps a paradox, of making their curriculum accessible at different levels for students with different needs and abilities, while removing aspects that classify students academically and socially. Examinations and grades are maintained, but an important change is the introduction of project and group work leading up to group exams. Independent project work is assumed to lead to new teaching and work methods based on experimentation, trial and error, reflection and selection, with each student assuming the primary responsibility for his or her work. School experience is meant to reflect the essential elements in a person’s function in society. Instead of the traditional, sharp distinction between subjects, working across the curriculum is now encouraged and even obligatory on all levels. This element is anticipated to encourage and develop social interaction skills in the students both during their school years as well as afterwards when they take their place as full-fledged members of a democracy (Nielsen 2003). Thus, the transition away from an individual’s success and accomplishments at the cost of his or her fellow students’ success has been fully accomplished. The students are walking down a path built on participation in the decision making process and on taking joint responsibility. They are expected to work across the curriculum, on independent and group projects, in a unified school with diversification of the subjects taught without differentiating among different student levels and abilities, with an education in democracy, and, furthermore, the automatic inclusion of academically challenged children. Team-teaching is designed to lighten the teachers’ load, but also to create new educational and pedagogical parameters that may present new challenges.

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This, of course, is the scenario observed from the outsider’s point of view in Borderliners. The narrator, Peter, states, “Biehl explained about Darwinism – the survival of the fittest. It still applies, he said, even in our society, but it is mitigated because we alleviate its consequences” (Høeg 1994: 36). Nonetheless, alleviating these “consequences” is described as an impossible task. The students are trapped in personalities, determined by their early upbringing, and the uncertainty of their place in existence. Speculating on the perception of students and the best way to teach them, the narrator writes, “There must be something deeper and greater than the historical explanation. It is as though these scientists and philosophers, people with power and knowledge in Western civilization, all have something in common. As though none of them could stand the darkness, did not want to know doubt and uncertainty” (Høeg 1994: 232). In other words, students who don’t fit into the accepted system, the ones embracing darkness, doubt, and uncertainty, will forever be on the fringes of education, which effectually refutes the blank slate ideology. These children are so thoroughly “damaged” that no amount of conditioning can bring them back to mainstream society, in spite of the best intentions of the educators. The previously mentioned notion of the brain functioning like a computer becomes more relevant the more we advance technologically. Most would argue that the structure of a computer and its function is modeled on the human brain, “Belief and memories are collections of information – like facts in a database, but residing in patterns of activity and structure in the brain. Thinking and planning are systematic transformations of these patterns like the operation of a computer program” (Pinker 2002: 32). And, of course, the field of artificial intelligence poses the question whether a machine can, in fact, perform feats of intelligence superseding any human’s mental capacity. If capacities, traditionally considered solely human, such as the ability to make judgments, reflection and creativity, may be considered forms of information processing that can be implemented in a computational system, then maybe the artificial teacher is not too far away. “Recent artificial intelligence systems…suggest that reasoning, intelligence, imagination, and creativity are forms of information processing, a wellunderstood physical process” (Pinker 2002: 34). So, technological advances help exorcise the idea of a soul, which functions unrelated to biology, and advance the notion of a brain that is created as a blank slate. This blank-slate mind can be compared to a computer that is turned on, but which just sits there, doing nothing. It may possess advanced software, but

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something or somebody must make connections by pushing the right keys to produce the end result of learning. Returning to the contemporary Danish school systems, politicians are repeatedly accused of applying hasty patchwork solutions to and basing their educational philosophy on perceived problems with the achievements of Danish students compared to those of the rest of the Western world. One such recent example is the PISA survey, Program for International Student Assessment, within the OECD and a number of other countries. Its purpose is to measure the degree of readiness in 15-16 year old students for the challenges of the information society. The PISA survey emphasizes the skills and competencies within reading, math and science, as well as personal and social competencies. So far, two of three survey rounds have been completed; the first one in 2000, covering reading as the main subject and math and science as minor subjects. The second round was in 2003 and covered math as the main subject and reading and science as minor subjects. The final survey is scheduled for 2006. 32 countries participated in the 2000 survey, 41 countries in the 2003 survey, and 58 countries are expected to participate in the 2006 survey. 4,218 Danish students, all born in 1987, made up the Danish contingent in 2003 out of the total of 276,165 students (Rasmussen 2004). Both surprisingly and very disappointingly, the Danish students did not do very well. The average score across all nations was 500, and Denmark scored 497 in reading, 514 in math, and 481 in science. The Danish students placed 18th out of 21 countries. This result must be viewed in the light of the fact that Denmark is the country in the world spending, proportionately, the highest amount of money on its elementary and middle schools. The Danish school system obviously produces quite a few weak readers and only a minority of really strong ones. However, on a positive note, Danish students like going to school, and they have a positive attitude towards learning. Furthermore, they believe in themselves and their abilities, they score high in the new category of problem solving, and they are truly eager to compete and co-operate in comparison with 15year-olds from other countries. Nonetheless, the survey does not measure whether they are excelling in these fields, and, on a disappointing note, their professed liking for and interest in math did not lead to good scores. The most distressing result of the survey is perhaps some indication of the inability of the Danish elementary and middle school to break down social barriers based on social heredity and environment. This is a sad paradox since one of the primary objectives in recent Executive Orders has been to abolish social heredity and environment as a factor in the Danish educational system. The conclusion of the survey is that in comparison

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with students in similar countries, the Danish school system produces a large middle group of students with acceptable competencies, while the weakest and strongest students do not measure up to the level of those in other countries (“OECD PISA” 2004). Obviously, the educational conditioning in the schools is not working according to its intentions, and several tools to remedy the situation are being introduced. Four immediate changes are sought to be implemented in the elementary schools: 1) a mandatory language screening of all children beginning in school. This will also identify potential problems with the growing number of 1st and 2nd generation bi-lingual children whose parents are immigrants or refugees. 2) The school must explicitly refer to the end-goal of its education when evaluating how much the individual student benefits from the teaching. 3) As part of this evaluation, mandatory testing is required. This is comparable to the Statewide and National testing of students in the 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 10th grade in the U.S. (TerraNova n.d.); however, the Danish tests are solely for internal use, and results will not be made public. These tests will be newly developed “profile-tests”, quite different from the diagnostic tests used previously. The profile test is technology based and aims at giving a better picture of the development of the individual student throughout his or her school years. 4) Finally, the parents must be informed in writing about both the results of these mandatory tests as well as the initial language screening. Further evaluation methods will be available to the teachers who will be following the progress of each individual student very carefully to assess whether or not the student is on the right track towards the final goal of his or her education (“Danske PISA-resultater” 2004). Obviously, this is an emergency reaction to disappointing test results in a global context, but it should be noted that these new proposals point towards a different educational philosophy. The “feel-good, you’re special” generation will suddenly meet a barrage of tests meant to enlighten them about their own levels of proficiency, skills, and progress, and place them in hierarchies. The primary difference between this and the ranking process of the 1940s is that the evaluation has as its main purpose to further individual development and learning, and to do this in a positive, encouraging manner. While the ideology reinforces the idea of meritocracy as the driving force, it modifies and tempers it with the objective of individual attainment and satisfaction. In the Gymnasium, new and radical changes are in the process of being implemented. Students are now, in their first year, receiving a basic education where specific subjects are taught as a foundation for the selected subjects of the final two years. The individual student’s choice is

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important, as it will influence the ability to obtain a job or an occupation of choice later on. However, there is a multitude of subjects to choose from, and it should be possible for any inclination to be satisfied. What is the most interesting aspect, however, is the introduction of more project work, and in some subjects, project examinations. These aspects of the educational philosophy are clearly outlined in the statement of intent and objectives of this new reform. Paraphrased, it says that the Gymnasium is preparatory for any further studies, and provides the student with an allround education. It leads to knowledge, depth, perspective, and abstraction, separately in each subject and through cross-curriculum interaction, with the students achieving knowledge, skills, and competencies. The students must be exposed to various teaching and learning methods in order to develop independence and co-operation. The students must reflect on and be responsible for their surrounding world, nature, society, and their own development. Furthermore, they must develop creativity, innovation, and critical thinking. Students should be raised to participate in decision making, taking responsibility, and understanding their rights and obligations in a democratic society. The basis for all teaching must be liberty, equality, and democracy in order to prepare the students for active participation in both local and global perspectives (“Lov om uddannelse” 2004). It is obvious from the above that contemporary students must perform in many fields outside those of the narrow subject matter taught in Stolen Spring. Participation in democracy ranks very high on the list of accomplishments to be expected from one’s path through the school system. In addition, the student must be able to work with others, share his or her progress, and even share in the most highly individualized of all endeavors, examinations. There is a chasm between the educational theory applied in the 1940s and that propounded today. Naturally, only time will tell if the concerted efforts of Danish educators will succeed in reaching the goal of at least being equal to other countries regarding skills and knowledge. Certainly, there is no lack of concern about the issues regarding contemporary education. “It is necessary to raise the level of education if Denmark is to play a competitive role in an increasingly global marketplace,” says Torben M. Andersen, Head of the Welfare Commission (“Hver fjerde falder” 2005). With Denmark having the most expensive educational system in the world combined with expenses for the state funding of students, he wants to generate a discussion of whether the money is poorly spent. Experts agree that a change in attitude is necessary to entice youngsters to the long haul of an education that will also benefit the country in the long run (“Hver fjerde falder” 2005). And this is where

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the notion of meritocracy as an essential element in the educational philosophy reenters the discussion. David Brooks claims in “The Merits of Meritocracy” that “the prime ethical imperative for the meritocrat is self-fulfillment” (Brooks 2005: 194). Contrary to our instinctual, negative reaction to this notion as narcissistic and egotistical, philosophers have argued that there is a serious moral force contained in this idea of self-fulfillment, saying “Meritocrats may not necessarily be able to articulate this morality, but they live it nonetheless. It starts with the notion that we have a lifelong mission to realize our capacities. “‘It is a bringing of oneself to flourishing completion, an unfolding of what is strongest or best in oneself, so that it represents the successful culmination of one’s aspiration or potentialities.’ [as Alan] Gewirth wrote in Self-Fulfillment (1998). The way we realize our potential is through our activities. By ceaselessly striving to improve at the things we enjoy, we come to define, enlarge, and attain our best selves. These activities are the bricks of our identities” (Brooks 2005: 195). Seen in this light, the students struggling to find a way through what they perceive to be the dark, suffocating strait jacket of education, in both Stolen Spring and in Borderliners are performing necessary rites in order to pass from childhood to fulfilled adulthood. Meritocracy becomes a positive force, lending the students guidance and strength in their quest to fill in their “blank slates”. From an elitist meritocracy, aiming only for self-righteous power, we are today endeavoring to create a “broad” meritocracy, arguably still producing losers, but with the primary goal of self-fulfillment. The fear of physical punishment is replaced with the fear of not making it, not succeeding in the “material” world. Increased evaluation and assessment are introduced to help both students and educators determine who succeeds and in what fields. Assessment is still basic, and Janteloven might still exist, but the student of today is clearly to be regarded as more than just “another brick in the wall” (Pink Floyd 1979). The ideological environment as expressed in the educational philosophy has, then, perhaps inadvertently, allowed students to retain a thriving form of humanity along with their academic brains. Their “blank slates” are not covered in illegible figures but instead used as foundations for self-discovery and self-fulfillment, a state of affairs which by a twist of fate can be linked to the “school of life” of older days. In the end, they are given the tools of survival against the odds of negative meritocracy, fear, testing and evaluation, and Janteloven. As is often the case, a compromise between contrasting elements produces the most tenable results; in this context it means that an acceptance and integration of both nature and

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nurture is conducive to the creation of the optimal learning and teaching environment.

Works Cited “Anordning angående undervisning i gymnasiet.” 1935. Online version: . Accessed 2 June 2005. “Anordning om ændring af de kgl. Anordninger af 1.december 1906 og 23.maj 1920 angående undervvisningen i gymnasiet og angående fordringerne ved og eksamensopgivelserne til studentereksamen m.m.” 1925. Online version: . Accessed 2 June 2005. Brooks, David. 2005. “The Merits of Meritocracy” in Reading Critically Writing Well. Ed. Rise B. Axelrod, Charles R. Cooper, and Alison M. Warriner. Boston: Bedford/St.Martin’s. Pp. 193-7. “Danske PISA-resultater skaber behov for øget indsats.” 2004. . 7 December 2004. Accessed 6 June 2005. Det Forsømte Forår, [Stolen Spring]. 1993. Dir. Peter Schrøder. Screenplay by Peter Bay. Regner Grasten Film. Hansen, Erik Jørgen. 2004. “Restgruppen.” 23 January 2004. . Accessed 11 February 2005. Helsted, Henrik. 1975. Lov om Folkeskolen af 26. juni 1975. København: Finn Suenson Forlag. “Hver fjerde falder igennem uddannelsessystemet.” 2005. . 19 May 2005. Accessed 6 June 2005. Høeg, Peter. 1994. Borderliners. Trans. Barbara Haveland. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Janteloven.” n.d. . Accessed 31 May, 2005. “John B. Watson”. 1999-2001. . The Psi Café. Accessed June, 2005. Larsen, Bjarne V. Personal Communication. Bjerringbro Gymnasium, Bjerringbro. Received 11 February 2005. Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm. 1996. New Essays on Human Understanding. Bk.II, chap. i, 111. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lien, Asmund. 2004. “Aksel Sandemose” in Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 297. Farmington Hills, MI: Bruccoli Clark Layman.

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Locke, John. 1998 [1693]a. “A Sound Mind” in “Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke, 1693.” Online version: . Nijmegen University, NL. Accessed 1 June 2005. Locke, John. 1998 [1693]b. “Dedication” in “Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke, 1693.” Online version:

. Nijmegen University. Accessed 1 June 2005. “Lov om Gymnasieskoler.” 1958. Online version: . Accessed 2 June 2005. “Lov om uddannelse til Studentereksamen.” 2004. . 18 February 2004. Accessed 6 June, 2005. Marshall, James D. 2000. “Thomas Hobbes. Education and Governmentality.” Online version: 1 Feb., 2000. . Accessed 2 June, 2005. Mill, John Stuart. 1873. “Chapter Five” in Autobiography. Online version: . Accessed 2 June, 2005. Nielsen, Vagn Oluf. 2003. “Folkeskolen i 100 år – kampen om struktur og indhold” September 2003. . Accessed 3 June 2005. “OECD PISA.” 2004. . 7 June 2004. Socialforskningsinstituttet. Accessed 6 June 2005. Panduro, Leif. 1958. Rend mig i traditionerne. [Up the Traditions]. København: Steen Hasselbach. Pink Floyd. 1979. “The Wall.” Pink Floyd Music Publications Inc. EMI UK Compact Disc remaster, issued 1994: CDEMD 1071, UPN 7243 8 31243 2 9. Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking. “Politikere.” 2005. . Accessed 3 June 2005. Rasmussen, Jørgen Balling. 2004. “PISA Undersøgelsen” 12 June 2004. . Accessed 6 June 2005. Rifbjerg, Klaus. 1958. Den kroniske uskyld. [The Chronic Innocence]. København: Det Schønbergske Forlag, 1958. “Ritt Bjerregaard.” 2003. . Kvinfo. Accessed 3 June 2005.

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“Ritt i Folketing og EU” n.d. . Accessed 3 June 2005. Scherfig, Hans. 1986. Stolen Spring. Trans. Frank Hugus. Seattle: Fjord Press. Schmidt, Nete. 2005. “What constitutes the good learning environment?” Unpublished paper. Madison, WI. Schmidt, Ole Theodor. 2004. Interview with author, 8 August 2004. “Set og Sket i Folkeskolen siden 1920.” 2005. . Accessed 11 Febr. 2005. Skinner, B.F. 1948. Walden Two. New York: Macmillan. TerraNova Basic Multiple Assessments, grades 5 and 7. Wisconsin Student Assessment System, grades 4, 8 and 10. n.d. Online version: . Accessed 1 March 2006. “Tidslinie.” n.d. . Accessed 11 Febr. 2005. Uzgalis, William. 2005. “John Locke”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2005 Edition). Ed. Edward N. Zalta. . Accessed 1 June 2005. Williams, Garrath. 2003. “Moral and Political Philosophy, Thomas Hobbes”. Online version: . Accessed 6 June 2005.

REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IN AN APOLITICAL WORLD: KJARTAN FLØGSTAD’S DET 7. KLIMA. TANYA THRESHER

Kjartan Fløgstad’s novel Det 7. klima (1986) is rigged upon a foundation of postmodern theory, a foundation which spins the reader into a vortex(t) of linguistic games, theoretical slapstick, deconstructive decoys and, if we take note of the text’s critical response, frustrated turmoil.1 Claiming that Fløgstad was a “forkyntt, smålig og autoritær forteller uten talent,”[preachy, petty-minded and authoritarian storyteller without talent,]2 the critic Knut Johansen of the newspaper Klassekampen even went as far as to suggest that “boka vitner tydeligvis om en forfatter som helt har mista interessen for det virkelige livet,” (quoted in Linneberg 1987: 70) [the book bears clear witness of an author who has entirely lost interest in real life]. Rather than exemplify a novel by an author divorced from everyday life, I read Det 7. klima as an intense endorsement of political action, in particular of socialism, in a postmodern era in which the production of goods and labor has evolved into the production of text and communication.3 While Fløgstad makes use of a postmodern aesthetic to 1

Arild Linneberg provides a detailed critique of the reception of Det 7. klima in his article “Det kritiske klima i Media Thule.” 2 All translations are my own. 3 Nils Dalgaard similarly interprets the text as an attempt to unify socialism and postmodernism, but criticizes the novel for its lack of organizing principle. Unwilling to fully embrace the postmodern possibilities of ontological indeterminacy, Dalgaard perceives a paradoxical problem in the text because it “for at kunne gennemføre sin kritiske samfundsvendhet er nødt til at tale gennem teksten der er konstruet ud fra en udigelsesposition, der er så veldefineret, at der under læsningen framstår en ‘klar stemme.’ Paradokset opstår, når man ønsker at være æstetist konsekvent og lade sin sprogkritik og kritikken af de store fortællinger følge op af et formmæssigt sammenbrudd med tilhørende tekstuel selvreflektion” (1998: 214) [in order to implement its critical turn towards society

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represent a critique of the social conditions of postmodernity, it is his purposeful positioning of the fictional nomadic “grensespråkdikter” (Fløgstad 1986: 7) [poet of the border languages], Salim Mahmood, at the intersections of language and society that best exemplifies the possibility of an alternate form of political agency. Such a form would reinstate the cultural significance of both the author and the text in an era that has become suspicious of intellectualism, political activism, and of the text as a vehicle for either. Throughout his career Fløgstad has been a writer conscious both of his art and of the socio-political environment in which he works, something reflective of the politically active period in which he made his debut when artists in Norway were engaged in a reassessment of their aesthetic practices and simultaneously considerably influenced by leftist politics4. Defined as “ein sosial utopist, som vil avfeie den fragmenterte og nihilistiske postmoderne verdsåskodinga” (Nordstoga 1998: 361) [a social utopian, who wishes to brush aside the fragmented and nihilistic postmodern world view], Fløgstad combines a personal interest in working-class culture and the products of contemporary consumer society with knowledge of global literature (in particular that of Latin America), cultural theory, philosophy, and linguistic theory. Alongside the publication of fictional works in all genres and some translation work, Fløgstad has also written biographies, company histories, travel books, a history of Norwegian immigration to South America, and several collections of essays. One such collection is Tyrannosaurus Text (1988), a collection published partly in defense of Det 7. klima. In this book Fløgstad characterizes his novel both as postmodern, and as: [e]in sosiografi, ei forakteleg stor fortelling forkledd som ei lita fortelling, ein biografi. Det er også ei bok som freistar å halda fast den formrikdommen som modernismen har sett fri. Språket som redskap og mirakel, orda som løyser seg frå tinga og driv fritt omkring i eit samfunn som brukar eit språk som er for gammalt for det. Det er ei bok propp full necessarily has to speak through the text which has been constructed based on a statement position that is so well defined that during the reading a “clear voice” appears. The paradox arises when one wishes to be aesthetically consistent and let one’s linguistic critique and the critique of the grand narratives be followed by a breakdown of form with matching textual self-reflection]. 4 The artists organized around the Oslo student literary magazine Profil were at the forefront of this movement, Dag Solstad perhaps being its most ardent proponent. While Fløgstad was never formally affiliated with the Profil group, it is reasonable to assume from his works an acute awareness of the cultural debates they instigated.

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av politikk, av dårleg skjulte formaninger, misjonering, framtidshåp, historisering; av begrep, inngrep, angrep, overgrep mot lesaren (Fløgstad 1988: 79). [a sociography, a contemptibly large story disguised as a little story, a biography. It is also a book which tries to keep hold of that richness of form which modernism has liberated. Language as tool and miracle, words which are freed from the thing and drift around in a society which uses a language that is too old for it. It is a book full to the brim of politics, of badly hidden exhortations, proselytizing, hope for the future, historicization; of concepts, infringements, attacks, encroachments towards the reader.]

The suggestion that the novel is overtly political is made with the linguistic word play of begrep, inngrep, angrep, and overgrep and provides an indication of how the text unites the political with the linguistic. This is reiterated in one of the several pre-novel texts that supplies a breakdown of “Det 7. klima” [The Seventh Climate], which does not, as one may expect, represent the parts of the novel which is itself divided into eleven main sections. The seven parts of the climate are “stemmemateriale, stemmeleie, stemmeskifte, stemmekveg, stemmesetlar, stemmestyre, stemmeurne” (Fløgstad 1986: 13) [voting material, vocal register, changing voice, ignorant stupid voters, ballots, voting management, ballot box]. As stemme means both voice and vote in Norwegian, each word necessarily contains multiple meanings in spite of its one recognized meaning. This multiplicity becomes evident through the very listing of the words, which encourages the reader to engage in a kind of double reading, a practice that is also necessary for an understanding of Salim Mahmood. In order to get to the bottom of Salim Mahmood’s life, the reader has to follow Kjartan Fløgstad’s advice and “opna det bakfrå, lik ei arabisk bok. Samstundes må ein tolka livssoga framanfrå, på vestleg vis. I summen av desse to uforeinlege handlingane ligg sanninga om Salim Mahmood” (Fløgstad1986: 9) [open it at the end, like an Arabic book. At the same time one must interpret the life story from the beginning in a Western way. In the sum of these two incompatible actions lies the truth of Salim Mahmood]. In attempting such a double reading of the text, an action which necessitates a unification of Oriental and Western, of Same and Other, the reader, pursuing the voyeuristic tracks a biography necessarily connotes, seeks a unified subject. Nevertheless, in this text she only finds a complex multiplicity grounded in self-reflexivity. The subject of this biography is a fictional author narrating his own existence, a text within a text. A child of text inscribed into the birth register of the

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Pakistani border town of Paschwar, Mahmood is above all an arty-fact, a symbolic being. Like other individuals in Media Thule, the neighboring country to Babel at the furthest extreme of civilization, Mahmood: er heller ikkje … lenger natur, men bilde. I moderne arvelære talar ein heller om fotogenese enn om genese, heller om fotogenetikk enn genetikk. Dette inneber at bildet av ein gjenstand eller eit menneske er viktigare enn sjølve gjenstanden og det indre mennesket. … Imaget som blir bore på dei offentlege scenar blir primært i forhold til mennesket bak maska (Fløgstad 1986: 296). [is not either … nature any longer, but image. In modern genetic study one speaks rather of photo-genesis than of genesis, rather of photo-genetics than genetics. This implies that the picture of an object or a person is more important than the object itself and the inner person. … The image which is carried on the public stage is primary in relation to the person behind the mask].

Conceived not only of his biological father, Attah Mahmood, but also of his publisher, Robert McGee, who with the tip of his dripping pen pierces a sealed condom in Salim Mahmood’s mother’s handbag, Mahmood is nothing but text. A clear example of the Derridian maxim that there is nothing outside text, Mahmood is symbolically birthed twice and thus he has a multiple subjectivity. The multiple sources of Salim are echoed in the multiple beginnings of the novel itself which offers a series of pre-novelistic texts; a poem by a Samurai warrior, a foreword defending the contents of the book written by a narrator who is a character in one of Mahmood’s own texts, a list of main characters or dramatis personae of the text,5 and the aforementioned breakdown of the seven parts of “Det 7. klima.” Paralleling the multiple births, Salim has two deaths; one ‘real’ and the other symbolic. As he physically dies his text disintegrates into aphasic atrophy and he is only able to mumble monosyllables, certain names and nonsense words. His symbolic death not only supports this notion of disintegration, but also, true to deconstructive mode, the groundlessness of this subject. In one of the final parts of the book, Mahmood is represented as a labyrinthine oil-rig boring into “hypersemantiske lag” [hyper-semantic layers] in order to produce “oljeglatt underhaldning” (Fløgstad 1986: 373) [slippery smooth entertainment]. The rig is situated in Gullblokka which is again a cross reference to text as Gullblokka is the name given to a book 5 Fløgstad surreptitiously includes himself in the text as the list includes the Indian businessman Natraj K, an inversion of the name Kjartan.

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of interviews and notes written by Mahmood and also the title of one of the chapters in the novel itself. Described as an abstract steel sculpture, this rig is constructed differently than the other rigs named Ibsen and Kielland, these “episke strukturane frå eventyrfortellinga” (Fløgstad 1986: 65) [epic structures from folktale stories]. Instead the rig Salim Mahmood “kviler på eit fundament av is og kulde” (Fløgstad 1986: 376) [rests on a foundation of ice and cold]. It rests upon a foundation of cold indifference, an ice block only kept solid by an artificial cooling system through which the rig penetrates to produce raw material. As another character observes, once the artificial system is removed, berre rammeverket på botnen sto igjen. Salim Mahmood braut saman, og spreidde alt og alle om bord som typografiske teikn ut over Gullblokka. Men Salim Mahmood var framleis knytt til det eksplosive brennstoffet under havbotnen med ein tynn borestreng. Djupt under seg høyrde Robinson Freytag eit døyvt bulder. Han fekk tid til å sjå sjøen bobla, falla til uverkeleg overflatero, før ein gul eldsprut loga opp frå Det mørke havet (Fløgstad1986: 378). [only the framework on the bottom was left. Salim Mahmood broke down, and scattered everything and everyone on board as typographical signs out over Gullblokka. But Salim Mahmood was still connected to the explosive fuel under the bottom of the ocean by a thin drill pipe. Deep below himself Robinson Freytag heard a muted rumble. He had time to see the sea bubble, fall to unreal calm on the surface, before a yellow flash blazed up from The Dark Sea].

If, as we have seen, the foundation of Mahmood is a text, then this final episode emphasizes the instability of such a basis. In acknowledging the text as an unstable transcendental signified and simultaneously accepting it as a prerequisite for individual subjectivity, Fløgstad suggests that individual identity may be revised by a re-working of the text. The importance of language and its relationship to our social environment is a recurrent theme in Tyrannosaurus Text in which Fløgstad notes that “[v]i oppfattar då det sosiale i språkleg forstand, blant anna fordi språket er den delen av samfunnslivet som er mest sosialisert. Å legge vekt på språket er derfor det same som å forsvare kollektive, sosiale verdiar” (Fløgstad 1988: 51) [[w]e thus comprehend the social in linguistic terms, among other things because language is that part of social life which is most socialized. Emphasizing language is therefore the same as defending collective, social values]. In the society of Media Thule, language has become less a mode of communication than a mode of production, and this has consequences for

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the citizens of this area, the Media Thulinger.6 Of the Thulinger, Fløgstad says: [o]rda deira har forlate den historiske røyndommens orden, debattane deira har forlate den historiske røyndommen, institusjonane deira har forlate denne røyndommen. Dei går og dei går ikkje ut i den same informasjonsstraumen. Dei er og dei er ikkje. Dei finst berre i Media, der alt kan seiast, berre det ikkje er sant, der det aldri er snakk om tale, men omtale, ikkje om å vera god eller dårleg, men om å vera synleg (Fløgstad 1988: 88). [their words have left the order of historical reality, their debates have left historical reality, their institutions have left this reality. They go and they do not go out in the same stream of information. They are and they are not. They exist only in Media, where everything can be said, only as long as it is not true, where there is never talk of speech, but of discussion, not of being good or bad, but of being visible.]

Words have become meaningless babble ripped out of any historical context, important only for their visibility. Speeches have become talk that is nothing but circulation. Thus, language is just like the naïve tourists at the Hotel Borealis who believe they have been taken on a long journey into uncharted arctic territory and visited a Sami encampment. What has in fact happened to these “Thulinger” is that they have been taken for a ride around the hotel itself. And the hotel has a dual purpose as a set for the longest-running television soap opera, where reality and fiction merge, “tingen og teiknet går i ett” (Fløgstad 1986: 49) [the thing and the sign are one], and actors are indistinguishable from everyday people. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to reference their own tracks in the snow, these tourists are situated in a centrifuge that separates them from history, society and politics, and that centripetal force operates because the medium of communication has become media. Nevertheless, language still has the possibility of escaping media and becoming a medium for social change. Dr. Klaus Rieding (or “close reading”), is a scrutinizer of text and the co-inventor of the Dadamachine, the computer which transforms data into dada and undermines consumer society by breaking the inevitable connections between muzak, newzak etc. and the subconscious by exposing the inherent instability of these

6

Thulinger is the same phonetically as “tullinger” which means “half-wits” or “idiots”. Inherent in the use of this name is thus an indiscreet comment of the citizens of Media Thule, which has clear associations with Norway.

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artificial structures. Rieding best explains what is necessary in this society, stating that: [p]oenget i mediasamfunnet ser ut til å vera at før vi kan rekonstruera fornufta, må vi dekonstruera teksten. Den må øydeleggast innanfrå, spaltast opp fonem for fonem, musem for musem, proton for nøytron, til vi står att med eit knippe språklydar utan særlege eigenskapar, utan dei lange ideologiske skuggane til orda bak seg (Fløgsad 1986: 175). [the point in the media society seems to be that before we can reconstruct reason, we have to deconstruct the text. It has to be destroyed from inside, split up phoneme by phoneme, museum by museum, proton by neutron, until we are left with a bundle of linguistic sounds without special characteristics, without the long ideological shadows of the words behind them].

To pull language out from its ideological shadows, Rieding suggests a chaotic everyday language willing to risk everything. In his very literary style and his overtly political choice of Nynorsk as a means of expression, Fløgstad himself uses what may be referred to as a risky language, given its minority status as a written form.7 A man-made normalization of dialects, Nynorsk is a representation of the very constructedness of text that highlights the problematic relationship between spoken and written communication in Norwegian, and thus Western, culture. Beyond the choice of written form, Fløgstad also emphasizes the constructedness of text through word plays, and his particular brand of hyperrealism in which he offers so much detail to describe an object that the object itself disappears. Sveinung Nordstoga in his article “… få fyr på bålet på ny” characterizes Fløgstad’s literary style as one that breaks with traditional realism “ved å gå bak metaforane i språket, ved å mytologisere personar og hendingar og ved å gje heile diktverket ein mystisk botn som det kling mot. Fløgstads språk går dermed ikkje berre over grenser, det skaper også nye” (1998: 371) [by going behind the metaphors in language, by mythologizing people and events and by giving the entire work a mystical basis against which it resounds. Fløgstad’s language does not only step over boundaries, it also creates new ones]. Likewise Fløgstad 7

In The Nordic Languages: Their Status and Interrelations, Lars Vikør states that “[n]o census has been taken of Bokmål vs. Nynorsk users, but 17% of all school children are taught Nynorsk as their first written variety, the rest Bokmål. Many of the Nynorsk children change to Bokmål if they move to a Bokmål milieu later in life (and almost all urban centers are dominated by Bokmål), so the actual proportion using Nynorsk is probably less than 17%” (1993: 54-55).

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himself has stated that “språket alltid er mest vitalt ved yttergrensane for si utbreiing” (Fløgstad 1986: 25) [language is always most vital at the outermost limits for its circulation]. Salim Mahmood is also able to push language to its limits, to turn linguistic data into “dada” and transform “språk” [language] into “spjåk” [copy-cat]. As a child of the margins, both geographically and linguistically, Mahmood is a student of several languages, namely Pashto, Urdu and Media Language, and yet he is master of none. His masterpieces, the stories which he writes, are described as masterpieces in the original sense of the word as pieces that reveal his mastery of his profession. Rather than possessing “ein slik aura og slike oppsamla mystiske kvalitetar at tiden gjer folk blenda og hevar verket over all kritikk” [such an aura and such collected mystical qualities that time makes people blind and lifts the work above all criticism], these pieces “slår i auga, men blenda ikkje” (Fløgstad 1986: 25) [hit the eye, but do not blind] and “gjer tekstmasse om til språkleg energi” (Fløgstad 1986: 42) [change textual mass to linguistic energy]. The kind of linguistic energy Mahmood dreams of is one in which the text itself has creative power, one in which the subject “ville forsvinna. Eg ville bli borte. Eg ville laga eit verk så stort at eg sjølv kunne gå fullstendig opp i det, utan eit spor. At eg sjølv skal bli borte, kverva heilt i verket, det er einaste grunnen til at eg har drive med kunst. Dess større verket blir, dess mindre blir eg” (Fløgstad 1986: 127) [wants to disappear. I want to go away. I want to make a work so large that I myself could be completely absorbed in it, without a trace. That I myself will be absent, completely disappear in the work, that is the only reason that I have made art. The larger the work, the smaller I become]. In that possession of the text is surrendered, Mahmood recognizes that his particular linguistic practice has the ability to erase the stable subject and reposition her elsewhere. This elsewhere, which Fløgstad calls “Den andre sida” [The other side], is unexplored territory for the political and allows the individual to turn over a new leaf. Beyond the borders of Media and forbidden to “Thulinger,” it is only apparent to them as a distant roar, a roar heard at the dissolution of the Self (i.e. when Mahmood looses himself to Kari and later the sea). This noise demands a reconfiguration of the senses and reinstates the primacy of the ear rather than the eye. It would denote a return to orality and language as communication, where language is not removed from its source, a source, which given the linguistic practices outlined, would be without foundation. Mahmood and his girlfriend Kari Ærum succeed in crossing to the other side, and as they do Kari is “bortanfor kropp og sansar, frå dei kvite hendene som hang lik klør på

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styret, frå dei sjelvande beina under seg, frå seg sjølv, i eitt med brølet som forfølgde henne” (Fløgstad 1986: 255) [beyond body and senses, from the white hands which hung like claws on the steering wheel, from the trembling legs under her, from herself, at one with the roar that pursued her]. Paralleling Mahmood’s earlier dream, Kari has literally disappeared into text and lost herself to The other side. Her frozen body is later found covered in writing which “tok form, bokstav for bokstav, som på eit pergament der den opphavlege skrifta var sletta ut av rynker, livserfaring, tidas tann” (Fløgstad 1986: 267) [took shape letter for letter, like on a parchment upon which the original script was erased by wrinkles, life experience, the ravages of time]. This body of writing in which the subject is simultaneously present and absent, goes far beyond an abstract, disconnected signifying system floating in the “bla bla-osphere” above Media Thule. Even after a ritual cremation “kunne folk både på denne sida og milevis inne på Den andre sida finna fjørlette små oskeflak innprenta med lausrivne og uskjønlege ord frå eit framandt alfabet svevande i lufta, flytande under frostrøyken på ope vatn, dansande på skaresnøen” (Fløgstad 1986: 269) [people both on this side and miles into The other side could find feathery small flakes of ash imprinted with disconnected and unintelligible words from a strange alphabet floating in the air, flowing under the frost mist on open water, dancing on the crusted snow]. In its timelessness and ability to unite a social group, this corpus shows that: [m]enneskets vesen finst ikkje i mennesket. Det er aggregatet av sosiale forhold mellom menneske. Dei forholda er det som blir prega inn i kroppens pergament som teikn på gylne skinn. Å legge vekt på desse teikna er det same som å forsvara kollektive og sosiale forhold (Fløgstad 1986: 47). [[t]he essence of the person is not to be found in the person. It is the aggregate of social relationships between people. Those relationships are what are imprinted on the parchment of the body as signs on gilded leather. To place emphasis on these signs is the same as defending collective and social relationships.]

A staunch defender of the social collective, Mahmood has been searching for a philosophy where life is “ein overgang fra fødsel til full oppløsning i einskildspartiklar og fonem” [a transition from birth to complete dissolution into individual particles and phonemes] and where “kollektiv solidaritet og kontinuitet er viktigare enn individuelle sjelekvalar og moralsk sjølvkritikk og slik” (Fløgstad 1986: 252) [collective solidarity and continuity are more important than individual agony and moral self

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criticism and such]. He has placed importance on the writing on gilded parchments. After the death of his fictional childhood friend, Ditleif Scheel, who is so like Mahmood that they “merkeleg går inn over kvarandre” (Fløgstad 1986: 23) [strangely go over into one another], Mahmood is left with Scheel’s hide pouch which bears the cryptic inscription RIG, or from the other side GIR. It is this bag which precipitates Mahmood’s journey that ultimately leads him to The other side where the unified subject disintegrates but still carries within it the potential to give something to society. The potential for social critique lies thus in the meeting place of the social and language. In a chapter appropriately entitled “Den andre sida,” Fløgstad depicts this in the only meeting between Klaus Rieding and Robinson Freytag,8 the assistant to the semiotician Roman Jacobson. Freytag, also a multiple subject where colonizer and colonized, master and slave unite,9 is an apolitical linguist, while Klaus Rieding is a social activist. As these two meet in the jungle of war-torn Vietnam they shake hands and: [m]ed dette flyktige og motstrebande handtrykket knyter historia saman den siste, og samstundes den første, av dei historiene som utgjer Salim Mahmoods biografi, knyter saman denne sida og den første og andre og alle sidene…. I denne kurven, i dette grepet, i dette handtrykket mellom den upolitiske språkmannen i det formelt nedlagde Kominterns teneste, og den overtydde sosialisten Klaus Rieding i nordamerikansk, er denne livssoga fortald, og Salim Mahmoods leiting etter den innarste knuten i seg sjølv, som løyser seg opp lik fingrane på to hender, som tar avskil ved vegs ende, er over (Fløgstad 1986: 390). [with this cursory and reluctant handshake, history connects the last, and at the same time the first, of the stories that make up Salim Mahmood’s biography, connect this side and the first and second and all sides … in this curve, in this move, in this handshake between the apolitical man of language in the service of the formally disbanded Comintern, and the 8

Arne Melberg in “I Fløgstads marginaler” points out that Freytag’s fictive life, like that of Mahmood’s two female companions, extends over one hundred and fifty years, thus undermining the veracity of the character and narrative chronology as an organizing principle for the text. He states “[r]omanen öppnar för en illusion av biografiskt formad framtidsroman men punkteras omedelbart illusionen och kan därmed lika gärna handla om vår tid som om historien; om nuet lika väl som framtiden” (1986: 111) [the novel provides an illusion of a biographically formed novel of the future but immediately breaks the illusion and can therefore just as well be about our time as about history; about the present just as the future]. 9 The name connotes a unification of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday.

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convinced socialist Klaus Rieding in the North American, this life-story is told, and Salim Mahmood’s search for the innermost knot in himself, which dissolves like fingers on two hands that take their leave at the end of the road, is over.]

Linguistic research and social activism hand in hand are the defining symbol for an understanding of Salim Mahmood and thus this text. In his essay “Rekviem eller varemesse? Kjartan Fløgstads arktiske magiar” Atle Kittang also interprets this final act as a symbol of “eit romanprosjekt som både er utforskning av språk og samfunn, og handling i språket og samfunnet” (Kittang 1986: 20) [a novel project which is both an investigation of language and society, and action in language and society]. By scrutinizing language and society and taking action within that language and society, Fløgstad constructs the political as a continual process of negotiation while deconstructing the assurance of a unified subject. Thus he refuses to close down the question of difference, and creates what he has termed an “uleseleg” [unreadable] text. He characterizes such a text as one “som vil det umulige for å vera sikker på å vera ute av stand til å oppnå det, og for å avleia frå det tragiske storslegne ved dette nederlaget vissa om at det finst noko anna enn det mulige” (Fløgstad 1988: 80) [that wants the impossible in order to be certain of being incapable of reaching it, and in order to divert certainty that there exists something other than the possible from the tragic grandness of this defeat]10.

Works Cited Dalgaard, Niels. 1998. “Mod en socialpostmodernisme? Fantastik, science fiction og satire i Kjartan Fløgstads Det 7. klima” in Litterære skygger. Ed. Torgeir Haugen. Oslo: LNU & Cappelen. Pp. 201-219. Fløgstad, Kjartan. 1986. Det 7. Klima. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. —. 1988. Tyrannosaurus Text. Oslo: Det Norske Samlaget. Kittang, Atle. 1986. “Rekviem eller varemesse? Kjartan Fløgstad’s arktiske magiar.” Vinduet 3.40: 15-21. Kjærstad, Jan. 2002. Tegn til kjærlighet. Oslo: Aschehoug. 10

Jan Kjærstad in his novel Tegn til kjærlighet has also given voice to this desire in stating that “[d]et er bare én verdig oppgave i livet: Vi skal forsøke å gjøre det umulige” (2002: 49) [there is only one worthy task in life: We shall attempt to do the impossible]. Kjærstad like Fløgstad attempts to achieve this within a unification of a postmodern aesthetic often grounded in linguistic analysis, and a wide-ranging social critique.

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Linneberg, Arild. 1987. “Det kritiske klima i Media Thule.” Samtiden 1: 69-82. Melberg, Arne. 1986. “I Fløgstads marginaler.” Norsk litterær årbok 1986: 106-113. Nordstoga, Sveinung. 1998. “… få fyr på bålet på ny.” Syn og segn 4: 358371. Vikør, Lars. 1993. The Nordic Languages: Their Status and Interrelations. Oslo: Novus.

CONTRIBUTORS

Julie K. Allen is Assistant Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She earned her Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. One of her research areas involves intersections of Danish and German culture. She is currently working on a book about the impact of Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen on Continental perceptions of Danish and Nordic identity. Susan Brantly received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1987. She is Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of WisconsinMadison. Her books include The Life and Writings of Laura Marholm and Understanding Isak Dinesen. She has written several articles on contemporary Swedish historical fiction by writers such as P.C. Jersild, Sven Delblanc, Sara Lidman, Per Anders Fogelström and others. Thomas A. DuBois holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Finnish Folk Poetry and the Kalevala, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age and Lyric, Meaning and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe. With Leea Virtanen he co-authored Finnish Folklore, and he has edited a collection of articles entitled Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia. Barbro Klein is Professor of Ethnology at Stockholm University and permanent fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) in Uppsala. She received her Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1970 and has published extensively within folklore and related disciplines. Her books include Legends and Folk Beliefs in a Swedish-American Community and several co-edited or co-authored volumes, among them Swedish Folk Art and Narrating, Doing, Experiencing. James P. Leary is Professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies and Director of the Folklore Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books concerning the folklore of diverse peoples in the Upper

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Contributors

Midwest include Folklore of Wisconsin, So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest, and Polkabilly. John Lindow is Professor of Scandinavian at the University of California, Berkeley. His research and teaching focus on Old Norse language and literature and on Northern European folklore. Among his books are Handbook of Norse Mythology and Death and Vengeance among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology. James Massengale, Professor Emeritus from U.C.L.A., has written books and articles on music and poetry in 18th-century Scandinavia (The Musical-Poetic Method of C. M. Bellman, Systerligt förente), as well as articles on H. C. Andersen's tales and the folktales in Asbjørnsen and Moe's and Tang Kristensen's collections. Scott A. Mellor received his Ph.D. from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1999. He is a Senior Lecturer of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Beginner's Swedish and Function and Formula: An Analysis Of Ten Poems From the Poetic Edda. He has written several articles on topics including Hans Christian Andersen, Saint Ansgar and his mission to Sweden, oral tradition and Volsunga saga, and Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. John D. Niles is the Frederic G. Cassidy Professor of Humanities in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He holds affiliate appointments in Folklore, Medieval Studies, and Religious Studies. In addition to his many contributions to the study of Old English literature and Beowulf, he is the author of Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature and other studies of folk narrative, including the ballad. He has long been an admirer of the work of Arthur Rackham. Mary Kay Norseng received her Ph.D. From the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975. She is Professor of Scandinavian Literature at UCLA. Her books include Sigbjorn Obstfelder, a study of the Norwegian symbolist poet, and Dagny Juel Przybyszewska: the Woman and the Myth. She co-edited with Faith Ingwersen Scandinavian Fin(s) de Siecle: Studies in Honor of Harald S. Naess. She has also written articles on the later plays of Henrik Ibsen.

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Tracey R. Sands received her Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 1998. She has taught courses on Scandinavian literature and culture from the Viking Age to the present, and is the author of The Company She Keeps: the Medieval Swedish Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria and its Transformations, as well as articles on Scandinavian oral tradition and saints’ cults. Nete Schmidt received her Ph.D. from The University of Copenhagen. She is a Senior Lecturer in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her books include Beginner´s Danish and A Taste of Horror. She has given talks at conferences and seminars and written articles on contemporary Danish fiction by writers such as Svend Aage Madsen, Peter Hoegh, Jan Sonnergaard, Inger Christensen, and others. George C. Schoolfield received his doctorate at Princeton in 1949, and became Professor of German and Scandinavian at Yale in 1969, retiring in 1995. His disparate interests have been in German (musicians in fiction, baroque, Rilke), Neo-Latin (Janus Secundus, Jacobus Balde), Fennica, especially Finland-Swedish, and the decadence. Kathleen Stokker received her Ph.D. from the University of WisconsiMadison in 1978 and is a professor of Norwegian and Director of Scandinavian Studies at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Her books include Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway 1940-45, Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land, and Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land. Her articles have appeared in The Journal of American Folklore, International Journal of Humor Studies, Journal of Popular Studies, Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore, and others. Larry Syndergaard is Professor Emeritus of English and Member of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University. He has written articles on interpretive approaches, gender, incest, translation, and illustration in the Scandinavian and English-Scottish ballads. He is the author of English Translations of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballads: An Analytical Guide and Bibliography. Timothy R. Tangherlini is a professor at UCLA in the Scandinavian Section. He has written extensively on legend and legend tradition in Denmark. His main works include, Interpreting Legend, Talking

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Trauma, Nationalism and the Construction of Korean Identity, and Sitings: Critical Approaches to Korean Geography. Tanya Thresher, Associate Professor at the University of WisconsinMadison, received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1998 and an MA from the University of East Anglia, UK in 1992. She has published Cecilie Løveid: Engendering a Dramatic Tradition and edited A Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twentieth Century Norwegian Writers. Kirsten Thisted received her Ph.D. in 1994. She is an associate professor at the Minority Studies Section, Institute of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her books include Jens Kreutzmann. Fortællinger og akvareller, Således skriver jeg, Aron: Samlede fortællinger og illustrationer af Aron fra Kangeq, and Grønlandske fortæller: Nulevende fortællekunst i Grønland. Apart from her work with the oral tradition she has also translated several works of modern Greenlandic fiction and poetry into Danish. She has written a great number of articles about Greenlandic literature, Danish representations of Greenland and Danish literature seen from a postcolonial point of view. Kirsten Wolf received her Ph.D. from University College London in 1987. She is the Torger Thompson Chair and Professor of Old Norse and Scandinavian linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her primary areas of research are Old Norse-Icelandic philology and hagiography. She has published several editions of medieval Icelandic texts, including a number of saints' lives.