The Power of Words: Studies on Charms and Charming in Europe

Chapter 1 A Genre in the Making.The First Study of Charms in Norway

Chapter 1 A Genre in the Making. The First Study of Charms in Norway Arne Bugge Amundsen In Norway, as in most other European countries, the nineteenth-century collection and analysis of the older parts of the oral and written popular culture took Romantic national ideas as their point of departure . This meant, among other things, that collectors and scholars in the field of folklore were interested primarily in finding or extracting those traces of national identity that were of historical, moral and aesthetic value. Through the systematic study of popular narratives and practices Norwegian scholars aimed at understanding, interpreting and reinforcing notions of historical continuity and cultural contingency within the framework of Norwegian history. Parts of this academic enterprise were practised with standards and theories that from the perspective of modern scholarly research may be described as pre-scholarly. From the perspective of the nineteenth century, however, this meant only that scholarly activities were not restricted to persons employed by a university, that the theories and methods of scholarship were not restricted to a clearly labelled “academic discipline”, and that the non-scholarly intentions and contexts of such academic enterprises are easily identified. However, a new look at these endeavors might in many cases indicate how recent scholarly projects are closely connected to projects and contexts of the past. Scrutinising the history of present scholarly disciplines is therefore a part of contextualising questions relevant to contemporary scholarship. 16 THE POWER OF WORDS A Norwegian Example In the young state and nation of Norway, which became independent in 1814, academic traditions were few and poor. It was not until 1811 that Norway had its own university, and for a couple of generations it had only a small staff of academic teachers. Few of the professors of the new university were of high academic calibre, and their scholarly merits were in general not very impressive (Collett 1999, 56ff). Several decades passed before the new Norwegian university was able to establish a reasonable level of qualitatively and quantitatively adequate scholarly activity. As a consequence, research on the history and culture of the young state was carried out mostly by scholars without formal positions at the University (see Kjus 2003, 39ff). This meant, among other things, that much of the folklore collecting and folklore studies were in the hands of academically trained persons outside the university. In Norway that implied that these persons would be Lutheran clergymen. In the new Norway these were state officials and constituted a group united by its national agenda. Their aim was to establish an interpretative culture of history, culture and nation to the reading, and thus qualified, public of the new state. The determining element of this project was the idea that history, culture and tradition should be transformed into aesthetically and morally acceptable forms. In Norway, the search was for a “Norwegian voice”, where vernacular language and expression were to be distinct from the Danish and foreign, but also acceptable to the small national elite normatively close to Danish culture. Those authors or scholars who did not find the right national voice or literary style were marginalised or condemned to eternal oblivion (Amundsen 2002, 54ff). Few officials of the new Norwegian state other than the clerics were in the position of having had any academic training. The clergy’s point of view, the clerical interpretative strategy, implied a combination of Enlightenment and Romantic ideas and Lutheran theology. Their interest in national history and national language came only as an addition to these points of departure. 17 A Genre in the Making Popular Culture and Moral Evaluation Another very important aspect of the fact that the new national elite should be identified more or less as the Lutheran clergy was the moral evaluation of popular culture. To regard themselves as simple peasants was not at all part of the perspective of the Norwegian clergy. This had an important consequence in that the majority of nineteenth-century Norwegian folklore collectors and editors were clerical: Andreas Faye (1802–1869),1 Jørgen Moe (1813–1882) and Magnus Brostrup Landstad (1802–1880) may be mentioned as the most important. Moreover , elements of the peasants’ culture were traditionally a field of conflict (Hodne 1982; Berge 1920). One very important part of the Lutheran clergy’s concern with popular traditions should be noted: their moral evaluation of certain parts of these traditions. When confronted with remnants from Norway ’s Catholic...