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A day trip, and historical meditations

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I shall tell you the tale of my adventures last Friday. I was part of a group of members of the Georg Sverdrup Society, and we went to visit a seminary not our own.

I think I won’t mention the name of this seminary, though there’ll be enough clues to work it out, if anybody cares to. It is an impressive cluster of buildings on an impressive campus, with a  history going back to the 1870s. However, the church body it serves, which I generally refer to here as the Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless, finds itself now unable to support the institution’s real estate, so the property is being sold. The seminary will continue, but in more modest quarters.

Because of this approaching change, our society president arranged a visit. It would allow us to view the buildings, the library (now being packed up) and the archives (soon to be packed up). We got to see a number of interesting items on display. Below is a copy of Martin Luther’s death mask, with matching hands (his right one swollen and cramped from much writing). Luther was a man who liked his carbohydrates:

There was also the legendary bust of Hans Nielsen Hauge, the Norwegian lay evangelist about whom I’ve written a lot on this blog. I had the pleasure of informing those present that this bust is not actually a portrait, but the product of an artist’s imagination, originally carved in wood for a ship’s figurehead.

Our guide was very cordial, so nobody mentioned the well-attested fact that seminary students have a tradition of holding a beer bash on Hauge’s birthday, with the bust present, in order to demonstrate their contempt for the man and his movement.

We also got to visit Old Muskego Church:

Old Muskego Church is often called the first Norwegian Lutheran church building in America. This is not true – I, for one, favor the Haugean church in Fox River, Illinois. But Old Muskego, which was moved here in 1904, is the oldest surviving one. A new location will have to be found for it. All our guide would tell us was that they were in negotiations about the matter. I have my suspicions, and I wish the project well. The old place deserves preservation.

We sang the old Scandinavian hymn, “Children of the Heav’nly Father” in harmony before we left.

Afterward we wove our way through circuitous highway repairs to Lakewood Cemetery, traditional resting place of Minneapolis’ great and good. There we visited the graves of Professors Georg Sverdrup and Sven Oftedal, the founders of the Lutheran Free Church. Our guys.

This outing got me thinking about our tradition, the Haugean movement, and its place in history.

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Gjest Baardsen

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Nothing to review tonight. I have a sudden break in translation work (it only began this afternoon, and if recent history is any guide it won’t last long. As I fervently hope it won’t).

The video clip above (in Norwegian, but much of it is without dialogue) is from a 1939 Norwegian movie called “Gjest Baardsen.” For some reason it occurred to me to write a little about this character tonight. I am by no means an expert on the man, but I’ve read a little.

Gjest Baardsen (1791-1849) is sometimes called the Robin Hood of Norway. But in fact Jesse James would be a closer historical parallel (though his legend admittedly has a more Robin Hood-ish flavor).

Gjest already had a long rap sheet in 1827 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Akershus Fortress in Oslo (a major tourist attraction today for many reasons. I’ve been there, but not as long as Gjest stayed). During this imprisonment he did something visionary and memorable – he wrote his autobiography. In this book he portrayed himself as a clever rogue and a defender of the common folk, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor (as you can see in the clip above). A historian named Erling T. Gjelsvik published a serious biography in 2000. His conclusion was that in real life, Gjest stole from pretty much anybody who didn’t lock up their possessions well.

Not a real surprise.

He was pardoned in 1845, and supported himself until his death in 1849 by selling his books.

As a phenomenon of the 19th Century, however, Gjest is interesting. He was contemporary with my great hero, Hans Nielsen Hauge the lay preacher. Although it would be hard to imagine two characters more different from one another, there are similarities in their cultural impact. Both were common men who became famous through taking advantage of their literacy and the expanding publishing industry. A burgeoning, literate public was hungry for reading matter aimed at them. Those whose hearts were set on higher things read Hauge. The more carnal turned to Gjest Baardsen. And many, no doubt, read both.

Eventually, books like Gjest’s would be parents and grandparents to innumerable paperback novels, tabloid newspapers, blogs, and reality TV. But Gjest was, in one country, a sort of a grubby pioneer.