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UTSTEIN MONASTERY: AN ISLAND ON AN ISLAND – OR NOT? Torstein Jørgensen Introduction In spite of today’s sub-sea tunnels and bridges connecting today’s Klosterøy with the Norwegian mainland, there is no doubt that Utstein Monastery is geographically situated on an island. But what did this kind of location mean for the community who once established themselves in this monastic institution? Did they seek this place as an escape from the current and busy life of the town and of society at large? Did the people who settled at Utstein belong to the tradition of monastic groups who sought some remote refuge in the wilderness for the sake of quietness and isolation? What kind of a geographical place was Utstein in the history before and during the centuries of community life here? What links did the members of the community have with the outer world – locally and in a wider European perspective? And how did these links – or missing links – influence the daily doings, the business, and the mentality of the brothers who led their lives on this island? Or did the Utstein community find itself in a situation of both-and, i.e., a state of dichotomy between isolation and integration? A place with deep historical roots At the time when the monastery at Utstein was founded in the 12th or 13th century – see the discussion below about the dating – the chosen site innermost in the bay of Klostervågen was already a place with a long history. From times immemorial around what we could call the birth of Norway some 10 000 years ago, when the last glaciers gradually withdrew, the coastline of this area is exactly the place where the oldest traces of human presence in this country have been found.1 The huge field of stoneage rock carvings at the neighbouring Austre Åmøy bears witness to permanent settle1 Mari Høgestøl, Arkeologiske undersøkelser i Rennesøy kommune, Rogaland, Sørvest-Norge (Stavanger: Arkeologisk Museum, 1995), 95-6. UTSTEIN MONASTERY 129 ment in the area based on agriculture and fishing. Archaeological traces from the Iron Age in the immediate neighbourhood of today’s buildings offer evidence of the way of life and subsistence of the people living on this island in this period: a farmstead on the hill of Kneberfjellet west of the monastery, some 120 grave mounds, and a huge stone enclosure formed as a labyrinth on the hill of Bakkahodnet to the east, dated to the period AD 300-500. The enclosure may have been used as a cattle pen or for religious purposes.2 Remains of iron production have been found, which most likely was not meant only for local use. What is more relevant for the topic of this book, however, is the discovery at Utstein of a Roman bronze kettle, one of many similar kettles from the west coast of Norway known to have been produced in the Roman settlements along the Rhine in the two hundred years prior to the migration period.3 We have no solid information about how these and other items from the Roman Empire, such as glass and warrior equipment , found their way to these coasts, but we know that an army from southwestern Norway made an unsuccessful attempt to raid southern Jutland in Roman times. These products may have arrived as a result of trade, booty from raids or as rewards for services as assisting soldiers – so-called auxiliarii – in the Roman army in the Netherlands or British Isles.4 However this might have occurred, these finds enable us to conclude that the Skagerac and the North Sea waters were no obstacle for the people along this coastline to keeping in contact with at least the northern areas of the continent and the British Isles. This leads to the next general point to be kept in mind in the following. From the migration period through the Viking age until the beginning of the Norwegian Middle Ages around the year 1000 the sea was an easier way of communication than was land.5 In fact, the very name of Norway originates from the need to describe the old sailing and trade route along the western coast of the country up as far north as it was possible to come. This means that being located on islands along this coast did not necessarily imply social isolation, perhaps rather the contrary. 2 Jan Petersen, “Utgravninger på Utstein Kloster,” Stavanger Museum Årshefte (Stavanger: Stavanger...

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