When Christianity gained a foothold in Norway and Europe, many pagan beliefs survived, such as superstitions, folk tales and folk medicine. The Catholic Church only persecuted witchcraft, i.e. people who believed they had the ability to cast spells on another person, animal or property. The rest of superstition lived in peace with the Church, and much of the ethnographic material is also preserved in medieval ecclesiastical source material, where chroniclers, poets and others have noted local traditions as part of the knowledge a local king or bishop had to possess (but not necessarily persecute). This tolerance, which we rarely hear of, is the reason why much pagan material survived in Europe until the Reformation and the 19th century, when Protestantism’s (wider) persecution of witchcraft, and the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment put an end to the last remnants of paganism in European folk religion.
The Catholic Middle Ages
This coexistence of Christianity and pagan customs can also be observed in the small villages along the long coast of Norway, where a new folk religion developed, a mixture of Christianity and paganism. This process occurred all over Europe during the Middle Ages.
The medieval mass was held in Latin, but the sermon was allowed to be held in the vernacular, with the permission of the Papacy and the local bishop’s use of broader principles formulated by the theologians of the Papal State or the theologians of various monastic and nun orders.[1] The art in the churches was intended as visual aids for the generally illiterate local population. So when the priest (with permission) preached in the vernacular, he could point to frescoes on the church wall, statues, carved pillar heads, etc. to illustrate the biblical story or saint’s legend which was the topic of the sermon.[2] For this reason, Catholic art has also been called Biblia Pauperum, i.e. the poor man’s Bible. The decoration of the churches often alluded to the feast day of the church, i.e. the day of a biblical event or the anniversary of the death of a saint. These feast days were also market days, which began with mass in the church, and ended with a public festival after the merchants had received their due.
The Catholic calendar was also intended to be a tool for meditation, where people celebrated and meditated on the life of Jesus and the sacrifices of the saints over the course of a year. It was not so important whether the day fell on the right date for an event (unless, for example, they knew the date of the anniversary of a saint’s death), the main point was that the calendar year should follow the events in a theologically correct way. In this sense, the church year is a tool for meditation, just like the rosary or the cross, church art and medallions.
Through church art, sermons and the church year, the Bible gained a strong place in the people’s consciousness, already during the Catholic Middle Ages.
The Bible in Norwegian coastal folk religion
Elderly people along the coast had alternative Bible legends, which is a common element of folklore in Europe. Farmers could tell ethnographers in the 19th century that the Bible had contained an addition to the creation story, but that it had been lost. A woman from Frafjord said that the addition supposedly stated that Our Lord often used to look in on Adam and Eve. Then one Saturday He came unexpectedly. The children had been playing and were dirty and unkempt. Eve had washed some of them, but not all. When Our Lord came, she hid the unkempt children and showed him only the washed ones. Our Lord asked if there were any more. Eve denied it. Then Our Lord said: “The hidden shall be invisible.” And thus, the people of the underworld came into being.
People believed in trolls, sea people, underworldly people and mythical creatures. Both this legend and folk tales contain some material from pre-Christian times, including mythological material. Since the Bible did not explain elements of Norse superstition, people had to create legends with Our Lord, Saint Peter or the Virgin Mary in the main role, to explain the origin of superstitions in the Middle Ages and well into the early modern period. [3]
In the old days, illnesses were often explained by witchcraft: for example, illnesses such as lumbago or hives. If a person’s illness was attributed to witchcraft, wise women could read over the sick person, and these often had Christian content. One of them is based on the biblical image of the three Marys at the tomb, but in the formula against illness the three women do not arrive at the tomb, as in the Gospel story. Instead, Jesus walks or rides across a bridge and meets the three Marys in this way.[4] This also contradicts the Gospel, where only Mary Magdalene meets the risen Christ. Such traditions show that medieval peasants had very basic biblical knowledge, mostly gleaned from sermons and church art, not directly from reading the Bible. But the Black Plague was a catastrophe of such great proportions that people took a biblical point of view and believed it was a collective punishment from Our Lord, as God is described as sending plague and disease upon sinners, both Egyptians and Israelites. For this reason, during the Black Plague, the response when a person sneezed was: Deus prosit = God be with you. This is the origin of the Norwegian phrase “prosit” for someone who sneezes.
After the Reformation, confirmation became a requirement for young people in order to be considered adults and full members of society. This was a kind of initiation, of which there are many ethnographic examples from various cultures. Compulsory confirmation was introduced in 1736, and since it required reading and writing skills to memorize Luther’s catechism, it contributed to the passing of a royal law on public schools in 1739. This way, most people learned to read and write a little for household use. But the vast majority did not yet read the Bible daily, which later became a requirement in small free church communities from the 19th century onwards. In the 18th century, most people mainly read almanacs, hymnbooks and, if they could afford it, sermon collections called postils, which often had a sermon for every Sunday of the year. If one could not go to church due to illness, bad weather or fishing, the postil was read, but both the reader and the listeners often had poor reading skills. An important source of Bible knowledge was the hymns and ballads of Petter Dass, which were sung and danced to along the coast right up to the present day.[5] Petter Dass managed to popularize basic Bible knowledge in this way.
Bibliomancy
The Bible was also used to ask about God’s will. Ethnographers classify it as a form of divination, called bibliomancy, where one said a prayer and then opened the Bible at random and tapped a verse with one’s finger. This verse was supposed to be a message from God, which was to be interpreted for the situation. Bibliomancy was widespread throughout Christian Europe, in both Catholic and Protestant societies.
An example of Norwegian bibliomancy among Protestants occurred among the first sailor families who brought women to Svalbard. These were the first women in a polar environment, who wintered with men and children at Adventfjorden. Before they set off for the Arctic, the atmosphere in their home village in Furfjorden was tense, as if something bad was going to happen. Neighbors and families were deeply shocked that women and a three-year-old child would winter on an Arctic hunting trip. Before the beginning of the journey in 1898, one of the trappers therefore opened the Bible, and it fell on Genesis 28:15: “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” These words had a redeeming effect on both those who left and those who remained.
After the winter in Adventsfjorden, the families were struck by illness and a hunting accident in the spring. Then they used the hymnbook for divination. According to old custom, they held the hymnbook behind their backs with their faces turned to the sun, and let the book rise. “The hymn that appeared they interpreted as saying that the year would be good: “- but in the east it dawns again, a newborn sun rose from the grave. The light from the darkness rises as on the first day of creation. Sun and day born to victory, darkness doomed to defeat.” [6] In Christian symbolism, the sun has also been a symbol of the risen Christ since ancient times.
The Bible was the only book many families owned, and it was passed down through generations. It was also used to record births and deaths in the family in the margins. This way, genealogies can be traced through family Bibles. If a family owned several books, it was often a hymnbook and an almanac, perhaps the catechism. When Ane Pedersen from Bud drowned herself in 1843, two hymnbooks written by the Danish hymn poet Thomas Kingo (likely the version from 1699) and the Danish Prime Minister Ove Høegh-Guldberg (first edition: 1778) were listed in the inheritance (the family Bible was likely the widower’s property).[7]
Such hymnbooks, the Lutheran catechism, and the early editions of the Bible became the starting point for Pietism in the Nordic countries.
Pietism
Pietism spread in the coastal culture in the 19th century. The stern message was well received among sailors who lived with death as a daily companion, either at sea, or from illness caused by bad weather and poor hygiene.
Women were heavily involved in Pietist chapels. Several free churches arose in a power struggle between spiritual need and the state church, which was the Danish king’s tool to oppress and exploit the Norwegian people, with the Bible in hand. Many poor people then turned to free preachers, who interpreted the Bible without any official theological education. This also led to increasingly literal interpretations of originally symbolic or allegorical Bible verses. The Church Fathers had distinguished between four types of Bible readings: historical, allegorical, topological and anagogical.[8] Modern Bible research also shows several books and chapters of the Bible to be fiction, which were intended to be read symbolically or even humorously or ironically (these readings were covered by the theological and allegorical interpretations of the Church Fathers). But free church preachers no longer read the Church Fathers, and this ancient knowledge was forgotten.
The depth of the faith of the poor is well illustrated by the following anecdote: Martha Melchiorsen on Æsøy was the chairman of the local Santal Mission. She had dedicated one of her little lambs to Our Lord. But when the fishing failed that winter, the family starved and they had to slaughter the little lamb. Martha felt that she owed Our Lord something in return. When Martha attended the chapel, she cried bitterly during the sermon and had a hard time singing along during the collection. When the hymn verse read: “It is pleasant to serve God, pleasant for man and woman. Imagine casting out the net, winning souls,” the collection basket came to her, but she had nothing to put in it. She then took off her wedding ring, put it in the basket, and could with a clear conscience sing along to the fourth verse: “The silver and gold are the Lord’s, – you are no more than a borrower – Lord my God, how merciful you are! Take what you will of the loan, you yourself are the source of wealth.” The preacher found the wedding ring with the inscription “Your Johan” and wanted to give it back, but Martha was offended. When the fishing improved, the settlement slip showed the same amount that her mother’s lamb had been valued for. The merchant then sent the amount to the head office of the Santal Mission in Stavanger free of charge. Then the gold ring was returned.[9]
Priests were not always present in the fishing villages. Priests travelled around to hold services. In the absence of the priest, the “friends” invited people to gatherings in the fishermen’s huts or piers on the weekends. Sometimes the væreier opened up his stately living room for Bible reading and prayer. Itinerant preachers preached about grace and salvation and urged the fishermen to abstain from alcohol, and to spend their days on land working on things such as net weaving, carpentry and needlework, instead of making noise. Far too many men drank up their hard-earned pennies in the tavern. The preacher reminded them of the families waiting at home. The clergy regarded such gatherings of laymen with suspicion.[10]
The Norwegian Seamen’s Mission was founded in 1865, to promote better conditions physically and spiritually among Norwegian seafarers, as conditions at sea at the time were untenable, due to a political lack of regulations and rules. [11] The captain had a legal mandate to bury, and to marry spouses at sea. This involved reading from the Bible as part of the ritual. The captain was also the acting doctor and pharmacist on board, but with little training. A painting by Professor Hans von Bertel shows the captain with an apothecary’s box by a sickbed. [12] Another painting by Bengt Nordenberg shows a sailor, perhaps the captain, reading from the Bible to a sick sailor. Many sailors died of malnutrition or tropical diseases at sea. [13]
The captains acted with great responsibility towards their sick and their dead, with one example being a captain who broke into the morgue to find a sailor he did not believe was dead, finding him alive. [14]
During funerals, the sailmaker would sew the deceased into a canvas sack, and place iron or something else heavy at the feet. The deceased was laid on a hatch, the outer edge resting on the bulwark, and a flag was placed over the body. While the funeral was taking place, the carpenter took the helm. The entire crew was assembled. A hymn was sung and the captain read the ritual. Then the hatch was lifted from the inner edge and the deceased slid into the sea and sank.[15]
Photograph of a funeral at sea on the barque Støveren of Kristiansand. The body was dumped sewn in canvas and covered with a Norwegian flag, without a coffin. The body was lowered while hymns were sung and the Bible was read aloud. The news of the death was often communicated to the corresponding shipowner in brief. Skipper Eilertsen on the Laura wrote from Fecamp in 1850: The cook had fallen ill and was cared for by the skipper, but he passed away after a few days, “and was handed over to the Waves with the usual Ceremony (states latitude and longitude)”.[16]
A painting by Carl Sundt-Hansen shows a funeral on board. The body does not have a coffin but lies on a piece of wood and is covered with a Norwegian flag, while the captain conducts the funeral and reads from a book, which could be a prayer book or the Bible. The body would later be dumped overboard wrapped in sailcloth.[17]
The hymnal with texts from biblical motifs and Bible quotes was also one of people’s central sources of Bible knowledge. It had a very central place during births, baptisms and confirmations. It was also common to place the dead in coffins in their own homes, hold vigils, and then “sing them out” as the coffin was carried out and transported by cart or by boat to the cemetery.[18]
Nevertheless, it became common in the Pietist community to bring the Bible on long sea voyages and fishing trips. When the men went fishing in the spring in Lofoten, the women packed the chests with food and clothes they had made during the winter. This included five pairs of sea mittens, two pairs of regular mittens, five pairs of boots, three pairs of stockings, three sets of underwear, a mid-shirt, and a boat rug. This was the result of nearly 400 hours of work, more time than the men spent fishing in Lofoten. The food included bread, lefse, and flatbread. Forty loaves of lefse were one man’s ration. The pieces of flatbread were folded into a quarter to make a crumpled loaf, called “bokning”. One crumpled loaf was the daily ration that each Lofoten man took from his food chest. The old chests were divided into a large room and a small room. In the small room the women reverently placed the medicine bottle, the glasses, the stationery, and the Bible.[19]
Women were in charge at home, while men were at sea. If the men drowned or died of illness contracted in harsh weather conditions, the women inherited everything, along with the hardship that entailed. At least one woman became the owner of her own shipping company. Women were rarely allowed to join on sea voyages, because men were worried about pregnancy and childbirth in difficult conditions. The women who were allowed to work on boats were usually “virgins” who worked as cooks. The captain was strict about morality. If children were born, they were subjected to the same simple baptism ceremony, even if a priest was not present: the cross was drawn on the forehead and chest, and three handfuls of water were poured onto the child’s head, before the Lord’s Prayer was recited.[20] This first baptism served just in case the child should die, so that its soul could go straight to Heaven. The baptism later had to be officially confirmed in the church. Then the child was entered into the church registers, which also provided state and legal identification.
In line with the teachings of the New Testament, the families were strictly monogamous, adultery was not tolerated, and prostitution was virtually unknown in the fishing villages. The church was very strict regarding extramarital affairs until the end of the 19th century. Most people went to communion, but with obligatory confession (unlike the Catholic Church’s confession in the confessional, this was a more public affair). Each individual was promised the forgiveness of sins before receiving the body and blood of the Lord. Up until the mid-19th century, grave sins had to be confessed in front of the entire congregation, as an alternative to the pillory. It is written about a girl named Marit Andersdotter who had to confess in front of a packed church because she had had a child with her fiancé (out of wedlock). The husband ran away and thus did not have to confess. Six years later, Marit got married, but the child was born prematurely, and she had to confess again. After her husband became a leper and unapproachable, Marit had a child with her neighbour. For this, she was deprived of everything she owned and had to flee from the parish.
With only one priest in the village and a full church, the administration of the sacraments took a lot of time.[21] By 1900, the Church of Norway had become more humane in its treatment of people who had children out of wedlock. If a child was born out of wedlock, the woman might receive mocking words from the villagers, but was forgiven by the priest.[22] The children were baptized like other children of all ages, as it was a Christian principle that no child should die unbaptized. Families with numerous children were common, but infant mortality could also be high in the fishing village, due to harsh weather, infectious diseases such as outbreaks of scarlet fever, and drowning accidents. The home of Los Erik Andersen was twice threatened by storm surges, which took one house, and almost the youngest child in the cradle, but his father managed to save him. He rebuilt the house further up, but both the house, the pilot boat and almost the children as well were taken by the next storm surge. He built the third house on the highest mound.[23] The Bible and the hymnal were then a great comfort to the bereaved, and often the only thing that helped them through their grief. Sivert Jørginius Knutsen Dale and his wife Gurine Caroline Rasmussdatter from Bjørnsund lost 7 of their 8 children to illness and drowning in the mid-19th century. After their last son drowned while fishing, the couple sat and read the Bible, prayed and sang hymns and cried, helping each other through the grief. A few years later, Gurine became a widow at the age of 47 after her husband also drowned. When her last surviving daughter and granddaughter passed away, Gurine was left all alone in the world out on the shore.[24]
Both boys and girls were required to memorise the catechism, several hymns, and some Bible quotes for their confirmation. Some Pietists, including women, were said to have memorised large parts of the Bible.[25]
Several of those in the revivalist community received missionary calls, either to serve in Norway or, for example, in China. They often considered themselves the only Christians, and excluded ordinary members of the State Church.[26] The fiddle, on which Norwegian folk music was played, was considered “Satan’s instrument”. The hymn writer Mathias Orheim (1884-1958) from Nordfjord introduced both the fiddle and Nynorsk into the chapel environment. Before his hymn books were published, Nynorsk was considered “the language of the free thinker.” Orheim travelled around to chapels with his fiddle case under his arm and awakened many young people.[27]
Another member of the revivalist movement was Lina Lothe (1851-1922), who lost her vision after the doctor performed a reckless operation under the influence of alcohol. When a spiritual awakening broke out in Stjørna in 1890, Lina became a zealot. They were inspired by the Swedish healing preacher Fredrik August Boltzius, and it led to Lina going on a pilgrimage to Skåre in Sweden, blind and alone. She was not healed there, but still considered this pilgrimage to be the holiest time of her life. From that time on, she never sought a doctor again and abstained from all medicine (not surprising, after a doctor made her blind). Her best moments after she returned home were when someone would take the time to read the Bible or edifying books to her. She authored a poem of 25 verses describing her life from cradle to grave.[28]
Sources
Berggreen, Brit: Norsk sjøfart, b.1-2, Dreyers Forlag 1989.
Molaug, Svein: Vår gamle kystkultur, b.1-2, Dreyer Forlag 1985.
Oterhals, Leo: Havets døtre – sterke kvinner i kystmiljøet. AS Lagunen, Molde November 2004.
Oterhals, Leo: Havlandets kvinner – om kystens slitere og deres menn. AS Lagunen, Molde June 2012.
[1] For more information, see: Jan Odstrčilík: Multilingual Medieval Sermons: Sources, Theories and Methods. In: Medieval Worlds, no. 12, pp. 140-47. Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; and Carolyn Muessig: The Vernacularization of Late Medieval Sermons: Some French and Italian Examples.’ In Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and Its Neighbors. Edited by Keith Busby and Christopher Klienhenz (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 267–84.
[2] See C. Matthew Philips: “Preaching the Cross of Penance: The Use of the Image of the Cross as a Guide for Penance in Early Scholastic Sermons.” Medieval Sermon Studies I: Stephen Langton and His Successors as Pastors: In Memory of Phyllis Barzillay Roberts 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 10, 2019)
[3] Molaug: Vår gamle kystkultur, b. 1, p. 49.
[4] Molaug: Vår gamle kystkultur, b. 2, p. 132 – 133.
[5] Molaug: Vår gamle kystkultur, b. 2, p. 106-108.
[6] Oterhals 2004, p. 14-20.
[7] Oterhals 2012, p. 77.
[8] For more information, see: Lubac, Henri de. 1998. Medieval Exegesis. Volume I. The Four Senses of Scripture. Overs. Mark Sebanc. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Group. Lubac, Henri de. 2000. Medieval Exegesis. Volume II. The Four Senses of Scripture. Overs. E. Macierowski. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Group. Lubac, Henri de. 2009. Medieval Exegesis. Volume III. The Four Senses of Scripture. Overs. M. Macierowski. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Group.
[9] Oterhals 2004, p. 23-25.
[10] Oterhals 2012, p. 71.
[11] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 1, p. 326-27.
[12] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 1, p. 327.
[13] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 2, p. 90.
[14] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 2, p. 91.
[15] Molaug: Vår gamle kystkultur, b.1, p. 200.
[16] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 2, p. 107.
[17] Berggreen: Norsk sjøfart, b. 1, p. 326.
[18] Oterhals 2004, p. 67.
[19] Oterhals 2004, p. 79.
[20]Oterhals 2004, p. 108.
[21] Oterhals 2012, p. 54-55.
[22] Oterhals 2012, p. 12-13.
[23] Oterhals 2012, p. 94.
[24] Oterhals 2012, p. 88-89.
[25] Oterhals 2004, p. 135.
[26] Oterhals 2012, p. 124.
[27] Oterhals 2012, p. 127.
[28] Oterhals 2012, p. 132.
