One does not look for great variety in Bruce Beckham’s Inspector Skelgill novels, set in England’s Cumbria. Skelgill himself is a thoroughly eccentric country detective, not a linear thinker but intuitive, his instincts honed by time spent in nature. Nor do his subordinates surprise us much. DS Leyton, a London transplant, is stolid but loyal and dependable, the Watson of the team. DS Jones, an attractive young woman, is smart and can be expected to rise in the service. There’s also deep but private attraction between her and Skelgill.
In Murder on the Farm, their publicity-hungry superior agrees to lend Jones to a team of television documentarians who are re-examining an old unsolved murder. Back in the 1970s, a young man was murdered with a shotgun while making a delivery to a posh country estate. Later, two local criminals were arrested and convicted in the case. But their conviction has been overturned, based on police misconduct. There is another possible suspect, an unpleasant fellow who served ten years for a later, similar shotgun killing. The star of the documentary team, a celebrity criminologist, is certain this man is the true killer. He has a plan to unmask him in front of the cameras, producing amazement and high ratings.
Skelgill is concerned, first of all, that the criminologist has sexual designs on DS Jones. But more than that, he thinks the criminologist’s scenario is simplistic. He himself perceives deeper and more sinister possibilities and a wider range of suspects.
Murder on the Farm offers all the usual pleasures of this series: Skelgill’s disingenuous simplicity, political and departmental pressures, Cumbrian food and dialects, wheels within wheels. I enjoyed reading it. No bad words that I recall or gratuitous sex or violence.
“If you peel away the layer of ideas and conceptions that are particular to your own time period,” Undset once said, “then you can step right into the Middle Ages and see life from the medieval point of view—and it will coincide with your own view.”
In Sigrid Undset’s skillful hands, it’s impossible to imagine any other outcome.
Your humble correspondent is at loose ends tonight. Haven’t finished reading my next book for reviewing. Tomorrow I’m driving up to Fargo, so I can speak to the Flere Lag Stevne (Several Society Gathering). It’s an assembly of bygdelags, which are organizations of descendants of immigrants from particular regions of Norway. They do genealogy and try to preserve traditions. Every lag holds a stevne annually, but some now pitch in and do their stevnes together. This group used to be the Tre (Three) Lag Stevne, but others have joined in this year, so now it’s the Flere Lag Stevne. And I’ll be giving a lecture on my trip to Norway last year to visit the Hafrsfjord Jubilee. It’s the third time I’ve lectured for them.
And, oh yes, I’ll be selling books.
Actually, I’ve just been hired as the editor of the magazine of the Valdres Samband – which is a lag, but not one of the lags at this particular stevne. But I expect I’ll be attending their stevne in the future. They’re the oldest lag in America. Being their editor won’t make me rich but it pays a little, and it’s work I believe I can do decently.
Above, a short video showcasing the work of the Norwegian painter Adolph Tidemand (1814-1876), who is famed for romanticizing the lives of Norwegian peasants. It seems a little sentimental to us today, but at the time it was a social breakthrough – poor people were acquiring some dignity in the eyes of the world. The Haugean movement, of which I wrote recently, had a lot to do with that.
Tidemand’s most famous painting is the one in this video where a man stands on a stool, preaching to a group in a house. It’s called “The Haugeans,” and the preacher seems to be Hauge himself.
You’ll note several paintings featuring young women in bunads (national folk costumes) with golden crowns. These are bridal crowns, a Norwegian tradition. Every bride got to be a queen for a day in Norway.
Image of Knut the Great from Liber Vitae, written in 1031, during Canute’s lifetime.
Had a pretty good weekend at the Antique Power Show at the Little Log House Pioneer Village, near Hastings, Minn. This is the third year my Viking group has been there – though nobody’s quite sure why we’re even around at a steam engine and tractor event. It amuses me that we have no apparent connection to the event theme, but people still like to see us there. The weather was cooler than we’ve been experiencing lately, and we were in the shade, so we didn’t suffer much from the sun smiting us by day nor the moon by night. And my book sales were good. But as always when I sit long hours on my Viking chest with no back support, I came home creaky. That’s the price you pay for staying alive into old age. By the way, it’s my 100th birthday today. Approximately. In round, subjective numbers. Close enough for freelance writing.
My work on The Baldur Game, the epic final volume of my Erling saga, continues apace. I’ve come to the part where Erling meets King Knut the Great of Denmark/England, and I figured I’d better bone up on that fellow’s life (did you know he was at least half Polish?). Having a weekend of Viking reenactment to fill, I pulled up my old Kindle version of Laurence M. Larson’s Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age. I’ve reviewed it here before, but it’s more interesting (in spite of its age) than the other Knut biography I own.
Knut (or Canute, as it’s spelled here) is a fascinating character in English history, despite the fact that his complete failure to provide an heir with survival skills doomed his accomplishments to be overshadowed by those of other kings. Still, he started out as a disfavored son of King Svein Forkbeard of Denmark (who conquered England first, then died, leaving Canute with all the weary work to do over again), knocked about as a pirate for a while, and finally fought his way up (Conan-like) to the throne of a great kingdom. His union of Denmark with England, Scotland, Norway and bits of what is now Poland could arguably be called the first British Empire.
Scholarship has advanced quite a lot since Larson wrote this book (1912), but in my opinion it’s sometimes advanced in the wrong direction. So I generally like Larson’s saga-friendly approach. It does skew the narrative a bit, I think, though, since the author spends a lot of time on Norway and St. Olaf, probably just because the sagas have described that business more completely than the English chroniclers recorded other aspects of Canute’s reign. As the drunk who hunted for his car keys under a street lamp said, “I lost them over there, but the light’s better here.”
My main complaint is the author’s uncritical acceptance of the traditional view that Olaf was somehow the “legitimate” king of Norway, and that his opponents (like Erling Skjalgsson) were rebels, bought by Canute’s treacherous “bribes.” In fact they were defenders of the land’s organic constitution, and Olaf was the usurper trying to overturn the ancient laws. And giving gifts to supporters was what overlords did in those days. Olaf did it himself, as I plan to point out in my book.
But other than that, I liked Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism during the Viking Age, and found it useful. I recommend it. It’s out of copyright and cheap. Watch out for OCR typos.
For the next several weeks, I want to take up the theme of faith in our hymn selections. Many hymns speak of our response to God, the comfort we receive, our gratitude, or our confession, so I want to break our pattern of monthly themes for this continuing topic of our life sustained by faith.
Today’s hymn is originally by Irish Pastor Wade Robinson (1838-1876). The words in the video above may reflect his original. The words I’ve copied below are the ones revised by Edmund Clowney of Westminster Seminary.
1 Loved with everlasting love, drawn by grace that love to know, Spirit sent from Christ above, thou dost witness it is so. O this full and precious peace from his presence all divine; in a love that cannot cease, I am his and he is mine.
2 Heav’n above is deeper blue, earth around is sweeter green, that which glows in ev’ry hue Christless eyes have never seen. Birds in song his glories show, flow’rs with richer beauties shine since I know, as now I know, I am his and he is mine.
3 Taste the goodness of the Lord: welcomed home to his embrace, all his love, as blood outpoured, seals the pardon of his grace. Can I doubt his love for me, when I trace that love’s design? By the cross of Calvary I am his and he is mine.
4 His forever, only his– who the Lord and me shall part? Ah, with what a rest of bliss Christ can fill the loving heart. Heav’n and earth may fade and flee, firstborn light in gloom decline, but while God and I shall be, I am his and he is mine.
When I read on Twitter (X) that novelist and editor Walter Kirn, along with David Samuels, had created “a magazine about America in the form of a 19th century newspaper,” I looked up the website, and when I saw it would be for sale at one of my town’s cute local stores, I decided to check it out.
County Highway is meant to represent the heart of America, a place with natural rhythms, relationships, and grassroots sense. It’s written by “actual human beings,” which is more than some websites can say. “We hope to advance the same relationship to America that Bob Dylan had when he wrote his versions of folk songs” or when Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Mark Twain, and Ralph Ellison wrote of their country.
I enjoy the feel of reading this paper, which cheekily touts itself as “America’s only newspaper” and plans to publish six issues a year for a $50 subscription. Kirn’s front page piece is on his visit to The Miracle of America Museum in Polson, Montana, a place where memorabilia, props, and junk attempt to preserve a moral history. Duncan Moench has a report on artificial intelligence and the imminent threat of corporate technocracy.
I was pulled in by a review of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead (2023 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction), which says Kingsolver’s skill is clear and subject matter well chosen, but this “protest novel” in the form of Dicken’s David Copperfield is heavy on ranting, light on humanity. Other articles in this first issue include a lengthy piece that circles around Joshua Tree National Park, a front story on an American con man from last century, four pages on music, feature on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s falconry hobby, and a full page of legit classifieds: Wyoming cabins, bookstores, alpacas for breeding, and ‘shrooms.
I’ve enjoyed reading some of these, and there are a few more I’d like to get to. There’s a little poetry, a few wisecracks tucked in a small column, and attractive illustrations of a vintage sheen. The articles feel like those I’ve seen online and hoped to get back to, but often don’t. The Internet is ethereal; newspapers sit on the desk.
I may buy the next issue to try to balance what I read in the first, but I’m put off by the feel of the whole. Is it cynical? Maybe too secular? There’s a column about fugitives from someone who speaks positively about the Weather Underground. I believe he says he helped a couple of them back in the day. That’s like longing for time when your granddad would tell stories of fighting alongside Che Guevara. And then there’s this in a joke section: “Drag queen story hour — it’s what my pops used to call church on Sundays.” I don’t know what to do with that. Maybe I should untie my laces. (I wrote about the second issue also.)
Alt Culture: To balance the earthiness of America’s newspaper, let me point you to the new season of Doubletake from World News Group. This is a podcast of long features that can get complicated. Today’s episode is on what some people are doing in the Metaverse and a church trying to reach them.
Today is the anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach‘s death in 1750, making it his day of commemoration in the Lutheran calendar (for Lutherans who tend a little higher church than I do). As good a reason as any to post some Bach music, as if I needed a reason. My intention was to find some footage of E. Power Biggs playing Bach on the organ, but there don’t seem to be any live performances on YouTube.
However, I found the clip above. It’s Air on the G String, performed on original period instruments by the Early Music Ensemble of a group called Voices of Music. If you go to their YouTube channel, you can contribute to their work if you like.
Somebody also said it was National Chocolate Day. I can get behind that too.
Tomorrow and Sunday, for those in the area, the Vikings and I will be at the Antique Power Show at the Little Log House Museum in Hastings, Minnesota.
On the beach at Southend, England, a ragtag group of young “guerilla filmmakers” is shooting a movie, one they hope will lead to their big break. Their “star,” a washed-up, alcoholic TV actor, appears to be dozing by the pier. But he’s not dozing – he’s dead. It looks as if he fell asleep there the night before and froze to death. But the crime scene investigator notices suspicious signs. This brings in the police team – Inspector Joe Hogarth and his younger subordinates, Detectives Palmer and Simmons. Then, when Hogarth’s oldest, greatest enemy appears, a villain who’s now a member of Parliament (Tory, of course), Hogarth’s back is well and truly put up—for better or worse. So begins The Poison Path, by Solomon Carter.
I’ve read one Inspector Hogarth book before. I found it well-written but rather dreary; the hero is solitary, depressed, and has a drinking problem. This is a later book, and he seems to be doing a little better – there’s some subdued flirtation with his female subordinate, Palmer. Still, he remains driven, lonely, and obsessed. He’d fit in well in a Scandinavian Noir story, I think. One interesting and unusual element was that our hero is not always right, like so many fictional detectives. In fact, he’s wrong quite a lot of the time. Mostly, he lets his feelings run away with him.
So, all in all, The Poison Path wasn’t bad. Not my favorite kind of story, but I’ve got no real complaints.
Portrait discovered in Copenhagen,, believed to be Hans Nielsen Hauge.
I wrote a fairly long meditation on Pietist Christianity and legalist Christianity yesterday. And I think I failed to actually say one of the things I meant to say.
Which is ironic, because that was one of the very weaknesses I meant to criticize (gently) in my hero, the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. Some years back I began work on translating his works, a project another linguist has since taken over. Mostly to my relief. Because Hauge is exceedingly hard to translate. I’ve heard of one scholar who started the same project years back and simply gave up in frustration. “He’s untranslatable!” that person said.
I think that’s an exaggeration, but I sympathize. Hauge is very hard to translate. The man was in no way a systematic thinker. He was an enthusiast. He poured his words out onto the page, it appears, just as they came to him. Sometimes he goes on for pages without a period or a paragraph break. I imagine Hauge as being very much like a certain pastor I once worked for. He hired me precisely for my writing skills. Because he found it almost impossible to actually get to the point. He communicated all right in person, because he could supplement his words with facial expressions and gestures. But when writing he just lost his way.
After many years, I think I finally figured out Hauge’s point. It’s a point he never states in so many words, but once you’ve figured it out, it illuminates all the rest of his verbiage. And it explains some of the puzzling – or even apparently unorthodox – things he seems to say.
That central point, I think – and I mentioned this part last night – was that he believed that a true believer – someone who was genuinely “awakened,” as he put it, would find the Christian life easy. They would be filled with the same joy and love he felt. We all know how love lightens burdens. When I was in love, long ago, I would have done many things far outside my comfort zone – and sometimes I actually did those things – just to please her. Just to be close to her. Love made hard tasks light.
This is a beautiful vision, and I believe it’s true in the Christian life to some extent.
But it’s not equally true for everybody. And it’s not always permanently true . I have good reason to believe that Hauge himself, during his ten-year imprisonment, when he was denied books and visits from his friends for long periods, eventually learned that the Way could be hard. He never lost his faith, but he learned that even true believers can struggle.
Some of us aren’t like Hauge. Our experience with God may be lower-key, less emotional. We have a smaller tank of emotional fuel to burn (those of us who are introverts feel this especially). We’re more like John Haugvaldstad, who needed rules and lists to keep himself on the straight path. I believe he took it to an extreme, but for some people this pattern seems prudent. Books like Jordan Petersen’s 12 Rules for Life fill a need for them (us).
Among us Lutherans there’s an old tension – sometimes fiery verbal warfare – between the Pietists and the “Confessionals.” The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod is the largest and best-known Confessional church body in the US. Going back to the days of immigration, the Pietists and the Confessionalists anathematized one another. The Pietists (like Georg Sverdrup, subject of the journal I edit) condemned the Missouri Synod as cold, formalistic, Catholic-adjacent, and spiritually dead. Confessionalism, Sverdrup wrote, provided a “sleeping pillow” on which members of dead congregations could slumber while their pastors tried futilely to do all the work of the church on their own.
The doctrine-centered Missourians, on the other hand, condemned the Haugean Pietists as unstable, emotional enthusiasts. If synods and pastors didn’t keep a close eye on the laity, checking their every statement for orthodoxy and basically barring them from any kind of spiritual ministry, then everybody would just go crazy. Subjectivism would take over. You’d have churches abandoning traditional sexual morality, and syncretizing with other religions, and reciting something like, oh, “the Sparkle Creed.”
Which, sadly, is just what happened. Missouri Synod theologians rarely hesitate in making the charge that all the aberrations we see today in The Very Big Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless (as I call it) spring from the subjectivism inherent in Pietism.
I have to admit their prophecies came true.
But I still think Hauge and Sverdrup had a point.
The heart of my own theology, for many years, has been the Incarnation. The Word became Flesh. Somehow, through the power of God, body and mind came into harmony. Justice and Mercy kissed. The absolute and the subjective cooperated perfectly in the one perfect Man.
That’s what I want to see reflected in the church, and in myself.
Bust of John Haugvaldstad outside the Mission School in Stavanger.
My mind was so uplifted to God that I had no consciousness, nor can I express what occurred in my soul. For I was outside myself, and as soon as I had come to my senses again, I understood that I had not been serving the beloved God who was good above all things, and that I now thought nothing in this world worthy of esteem. That my soul experienced something supernatural, divine, and blessed, that it was a glory that no tongue can express. I remember it to this day as clearly as if it had been a few days ago, though 20 years have now passed since God’s love visited me so overwhelmingly. Nor can anyone dispute this with me: for I know that everything good in my spirit followed from that moment, especially the sincere, burning love for God and my neighbor, that I had a wholly altered attitude and a sorrow over all sins, a passionate desire that people should share with me in that same grace, a particular desire to read the holy Scriptures… (Hans Nielsen Hauge’s memoirs, trans. by me)
I hope this little essay won’t be too provincial to interest our readers. I’m writing, as I do so often, about the Lutheran “sect” in which I was raised, the Haugeans. I came to some realizations about the Haugeans this past weekend, based on reading I’d been doing and some conversations I had with other members of the Georg Sverdrup Society. The wider implications, I think, touch all Christians.
The Haugean movement, especially as it developed among Norwegian-Americans in this country, was probably best known for its legalism. We were the kind of people who (by and large) did not drink or smoke, did not play cards, did not attend the theater or dance. There were great revivals among the Haugeans in America, especially in the 1890s and the 1920s. After that, the rains never seemed to come again. My own observation, based on what I know of people who grew up in my church in the 1920s, was that the young people were embittered and driven away by all the rules. Being “awakened” seemed to mean (to those young people) a commitment to following the rules. Forever.
Based on some recent reading, I think the fault for this probably lies, not with Hans Nielsen Hauge himself but with another man, John Haugvaldstad (1770-1850). I suppose I bear some familial guilt for this development, since Haugvaldstad was a neighbor to my Hodnefjeld ancestors on Mosterøy Island (before he moved to Stavanger), and they were close friends and supporters of his.
Look at the excerpt from Hauge’s memoirs above. That’s not the testimony of a rule-bound soul. It’s the testimony of a man in love. I think Hauge ought to be imagined as a man with a big smile on his face. All his work, all his rugged foot-journeys, his long days and hard work, even his imprisonments, were experienced with joy, because he’d fallen in love with Jesus. For Hauge, the Christian life was fun. That was how the movement began.
But when Hauge went to prison, John Haugvaldstad arose as leader of the movement – at least in Stavanger, an important Haugean center. And Haugvaldstad was a very different soul from Hauge. Haugvaldstad struggled with temptation. At last he decided that the only way to handle temptation effectively was to avoid all questionable activities (“if it’s doubtful, it’s dirty”). Debauchery and fights happened at parties, so avoid parties, dancing and drinking. In fact, avoid all music other than hymns. Don’t play cards. (Smoking was acceptable in some circles; it depended.) Don’t attend the theater. Don’t read worldly literature. And on and on.
It was Haugvaldstad who made the Haugeans teetotalers. Hauge himself was always opposed to drunkenness, but he sometimes seems to have served brandy at social gatherings and he served beer to his household at Christmas. In a famous conversation, he said to John Haugvaldstad, “Ditt Væsen er taget, ikke givet!” Which means, “Your temperament is taken [upon yourself], not given [by God]!”
But Hauge went to prison, and he died young, and Haugvaldstad prospered as a businessman in Stavanger. He was highly regarded (he’s considered one of the founding fathers of modern Stavanger), and not without reason. He was a very good man, a man with great concern for the poor. He did much good for his neighbors, and for Christian missions. The esteem in which he was held led many people to make him their role model. The “temperament” of Haugvaldstad became the Haugean norm.
Today, in our situation, I would very much like to see the spirit of Hauge return. I think we could use it.
