Nature, Work, and Transcendence - Thomas Mohnike* - De Gruyter
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
ejss 2022; 52(1): 6–25 Thomas Mohnike* Nature, Work, and Transcendence Christian intertexts in Selma Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson’s Marvelous Journey through Sweden and the modern Swedish Welfare state https://doi.org/10.1515/ejss-2022-2067 Abstract: This article analyzes the function of Christian intertexts in Selma Lager- löf’s Nils Holgersson’s Marvelous Journey Through Sweden (1906/7). The intertexts structure the story both narratively and ethically. For the most part, however, they are not explicitly used as Christian. The intention of the book is not to transmit these stories, but to translate them into the new, national discourse. They were stripped of their original religious context and placed in the service of what might be called a national religion. In this process, the loss of the Christian framework did not mean the abolition of central ethical elements that were significant for Protestant practice. In particular, the pietistic heritage of a work ethic, the ne- cessity of learning and education in order to become a true Christian – or, in its secular version, a true human citizen of the world with respect for others, taking responsibility for one’s own life and that of others, being humble and industri- ous – are central to the propagated morality of Nils Holgersson’s travelling school. Moreover, the transition from vertically to horizontally ordered space in the course of nationalizing the organization of the imagined community of Sweden seems to demand that the location of metaphysical transcendence be moved from heaven to earth; nature takes the place of the divine. Keywords: Selma Lagerlöf, Nils Holgersson, Protestant heritage, Christian inter- texts, nationalisation of Christian ethics Selma Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson’s Marvelous Journey through Sweden (1906/7) is probably the internationally best-known 20th century Swedish novel and has con- sequently been thoroughly studied. Few scholars, however, have been interested in the influence of Christian contexts and intertexts on the book and the role it may have played in the transmission and translation of Protestant ethics and aes- thetics into a national value frame. As I want to show in the following pages, Nils *Corresponding author: Thomas Mohnike, Professeur d’études scandinaves, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France, e-mail: tmohnike@unistra.fr
Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 7
Holgersson can be read as an instrument for the transformation of Sweden from
a Protestant kingdom, in which the Protestant state church and Christian teach-
ings were seen as the guarantee of a functional community, to a nation-state, in
which faith in God was replaced by faith in the nation, its people, its nature and
its destiny. The use of Christian intertexts played an important role in this pro-
cess of transformation, as the intertexts could be read in either a Christian or a
national way, and thus avoided opposing the national reading to the traditional
Christian frame, but provided the possibility of double interpretation. Whereas
the national interpretation was mandatory, though, the Christian one was more
implicit and could easily be dismissed, as can be shown by the fact that certain
paratexts were removed in subsequent editions.
In what follows, I will first shortly discuss the form, structure and genre of
the book in its historical context, then analyse the use and function of impor-
tant Christian intertexts by studying four main principles of transfer: framing,
palimpsest, transformation and free combination of formerly Christian narrative
elements. These principles will be exemplified at four occasions in the text. First,
in the framing of the text by a hymn, the “Christian Day Song” (“Den kristliga
dagvisan”). Second, through the book’s staging of Easter in a national setting.
Third, through the strategy of transforming nature into the book of God or rather
an enchanted space that transmits central ethics of the Swedish welfare state in-
herited from Protestantism. Fourth, through references to the story of St Martin.
My article follows this structure, focusing on the third example, which undoubt-
edly is the most complex.
Contexts
When I wrote in the opening paragraph that the book was a novel, I proposed an
interpretation that is not as evident as it might seem. In fact, the book was not pri-
marily written as a novel, but as a textbook in geography for 9-year-old Swedish
children especially from the less favored classes of society. As it is well known,
the book was ordered by Sveriges allmänna folkskollärareförening, a liberal and
socially proactive association of schoolteachers that sought to develop new di-
dactical approaches and further an egalitarian society. One of its major protag-
onists was Fridtjuv Berg, a public school teacher (folkskollärare), member of the
Swedish Riksdag (1891-1916) and twice secretary of the ecclesiastic ministry (eckle-
siastikminister in 1905/6 and 1911-14). In this function, he was responsible for the
school system. He fought for a common primary school that would overcome the
segregated situation of the two-way system of public/private schools. Berg was8 | T. Mohnike
thus one of the forerunners of the Swedish Welfare State school model, even if he
was not yet successful in overcoming the old system. Together with Alfred Dahlin,
the innovative school principal from Huskvarna, he published a schoolteachers’
association book series for these political goals. Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgersson was
the first book in the series. These ideas, individuals and groups were considered
so radical and revolutionary that Lagerlöf’s involvement almost disqualified her
from receiving the Nobel Prize (Landahl 2016, 9–10).
Despite these controversies, Nils Holgersson’s Marvelous Journey through Swe-
den became one of the most used manuals in Swedish schools until the 1950s
and 60s with the school edition printed in more than 500 000 copies. As such,
it can be said that it has had an enormous influence on Swedish literature and
aesthetics: Even if perhaps not all pupils studied the novel as thoroughly as their
teachers asked them to do, the novel was certainly what can be called a shared
cultural reference for many Swedes in the Swedish Welfare State’s high days. It
transmitted not only knowledge of physical, natural and cultural geography, but
even aesthetic and ethical values and categories. Through the eyes of the 14-year-
old boy Nils Holgersson, transformed into an imp and travelling with wild geese
from the South of Sweden to Lapland and back again, the schoolchildren were
supposed to learn the physical, natural and cultural geography of Sweden as a
national space. Most parts of Sweden were encountered in one way or another,
transforming through the united plot the heterogeneous plentitude of landscapes
and people into a united whole (see Ahlström 1958, 90; Thomsen 2004). As Anna
Bohlin and others underlined, the traveling geese were not only a powerful narra-
tive device to travel all over Sweden in imagination, but even a quasi-allegorical
incarnation of the new ideal society of the coming welfare state, using for exam-
ple the leader goose Akka as a representation “of Ellen Key’s concept of the ‘Social
Mother’, promoting early ‘folk ideology’” (Bohlin 2018, 117).
Did I thus describe the book erroneously as a novel? I do not think so. Ac-
cording to Benedict Anderson, one of the most influential scholars of national-
ism, the genre of the novel was – besides the newspaper – an effective medium
for creating the particular imagined community that was the national, transform-
ing space from a vertically structured complex to a horizontal, flat and homoge-
nous one, changing the majestic We of the feudal-religious community to the col-
lective we of nationalism (Anderson 1991, 22–36; Cf. Culler 1999). In the modern
novel, actions do not take place one after the other, but independently, in parallel
ways, and are only united through the action of the novel’s protagonist. Homi K.
Bhabha adds that an important pedagogical technique of nationalistic discourse
– and the novel is one of its vectors, – is to identify the particular with the gen-
eral, to read the personal experience of details of life as a symbolic emanation of
the national truth (Bhaba 2004). This is exactly what happens in Nils Holgersson.Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 9
It is a textbook, but it is also a novel, that creates the national horizontal space
of collective identity through the telling of personal, but emblematic details. As a
novel, it teaches the national frame of the imagined community of Sweden, and
as a frequently used textbook, it becomes the canonical tool of societal transfor-
mation.
From this perspective, Nils Holgersson seems to be an ideal case for the study
of the influence of Protestant ideas and thought on popular welfare narratives. In
this sense, I want to ask where can we trace the Protestant heritage in this book
written and used for a modern, national and, at least intentionally, secularized
state? How can we describe the transformation of religious ideas into a national
frame that, as we know, replaced Christian religion as the major narrative for com-
munity building in Europe through the 19th and 20th century? Lagerlöf’s book is
written in a transitional period, in a time when, on the one hand, the Swedish
Lutheran Church was still a central institution of the state with a major influence
on educational programs, while on the other hand, new social-liberal groups such
as the aforementioned Teachers’ Association were campaigning for a new, more
egalitarian and less ecclesiastical society. That Nils Holgersson can be placed in
the later discursive context becomes already evident through some first glance ob-
servations. Interestingly enough, even if the novel tells and negotiates a thousand
things, religion emerges almost only as a social practice: Nils observes funerals,
weddings, church bells ringing, etc. The word “Gud”, however, appears only 14
times in a text of roughly 200.000 words, to which can be added 17 occurrences of
“Vår Herre” that are used in one single chapter at the occasion of the tale of the
creation of Småland.1 This is remarkable at a moment when Christian teachings
still were an important part of Swedish educational programs.
As we know, the author’s relationship with religion cannot explain this, quite
the contrary. While working on what would become Nils Holgerssons underbara
resa genom Sverige, Lagerlöf published several books that openly and sympathet-
ically drew inspiration from Christian faith and practice. We might mention here
the two parts of her Jerusalem-novel (1901–2) on Christian revival movements in
Dalarna and the subsequent migration of a large number of farmers to Jerusalem
in order to join a Christian Pietist community. In 1904, Lagerlöf published a collec-
tion of Kristuslegender, popular, mostly non-canonical stories of the life of Jesus
Christ. After Nils Holgersson followed among other works Körkarlen that is very
much informed by Pietist educational and abstinence literature, relating the in-
tertwined destiny of a violent drunkard and a young slum sister from the Salvation
1 All statistical data are based on computational analysis using our Mytheme Laboratory (Strap-
pazon and Mohnike 2021).10 | T. Mohnike
Army that culminates in the prayer “Gud, låt min själ få komma till mognad, in-
nan den skall skördas!” (Lagerlöf 2012, 141). Faith and religion were undoubtedly
important themes for Lagerlöf.
However, in Nils Holgersson, Christian references and intertexts appear to be
much less present, they seem not to support the narrative. This must therefore
have been a conscious choice by the author, who probably adapted them to the
horizon of expectation (Jauss) of her intended readers of schoolchildren and,
more importantly, teachers of the public schoolteachers’ association. Nonethe-
less, an attentive reading reveals that Christian texts and intertexts structure
or influence key moments of the narrative as I want to show in the following,
transferring thereby Christian elements to the Welfare State repertoire of national
mythemes.
Framing: The Christian Day Song
Most readers of Nils Holgersson after 1950 might not know two texts that introduce
the book in its first edition, as they have been excluded in later editions as well as
in translations, including the recent complete translations into French and Ger-
man. Indeed, when opening the book, the interested reader will not encounter the
narrative proper, but a Christian hymn and a poem by the Swedish poet Carl Snoil-
sky. The latter describes a schoolboy looking at the map of Sweden, traveling in
fantasy through its space and history. The poem is thus a kind of summary of the
book that follows, reflecting the teaching situation and the narrative challenge of
telling Sweden as a cartographic unit. The first poem, however, is an excerpt from
a hymn from the Swedish Hymn-book. As it is in fact the text that opens the book,
it is supposed to be the prelude to what follows – and perhaps conceived as the
song that might open the school exercise of reading Nils Holgersson:
Den kristliga dagvisan.
Den signade dag, som vi nu här se
av himmelen till oss nedkomma,
han blive oss säll, han låte sig te
oss alla till glädje och fromma!
Ja, Herren, den högste, oss alla i dag
för synder och sorger bevare!
Men såsom en fågel mot himmelens höjd
sig lyfter på lediga vingar,
han lovar sin Gud, är glad och förnöjd,
när han över jorden sig svingar:Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 11
så lyfter sig själen i hjärtelig fröjd
till himlen med lovsång och böner.
Ack, låtom oss lova och bedja vår Gud,
när stunderna växla och skrida,
så skola vi stärkas att hålla hans bud
och vaka och tåligen lida.
Ja, låtom oss verka med allvar och flit,
så länge oss dagen förunnas!
Sv. Ps. 424: 1, 5, 6 (Lagerlöf 1906, 1: 1)
As we know, the Swedish Hymn-book was a collection of songs to be performed
in church or at home, arranged in such a way that the reader could find a suitable
song for all occasions of Christian life. In our case, it is probably the 1819 edition
Den svenska psalmboken av konungen gillad och stadfäst or one of its reeditions
that is relevant here. The Christian Day Song is part of the Morning Hymns, which
could be sung by the family as they gathered before beginning the day’s work.
As a Morning Hymn, it functions nicely as an opening of the exercise of reading
the book that follows, and it foreshadows in some way the opening situation of
the book when Nils’ parents prepare to leave for church on a Sunday morning.
Lagerlöf’s version lacks stanzas 2–4 and 7–9; the hymn is therefore rhetorically
not quite complete, but in this way it shows all the more openly what Lagerlöf
was interested in.
The first stanza opens with the prayer that the beginning day will be happy
and well with us, and God will keep us from sins and sorrows. It establishes a
vertical axis between the day that comes from above and the faithful beneath,
evoking the spheres above as the source of the blessing. It is interesting that it is
day that is defined as the actor that shall protect men from sins and give them
joy and happiness – and not directly God. The day is an expression of God, part
of God’s presence in men’s life; God is placed in the background, the day in the
foreground. It is nature that mediates God’s action and will. In the same sense
and following the same vertical logic, the fifth stanza alludes to the bird as an
example to follow: Just as the birds praise God when they rise from the earth, so
shall men’s souls do in praise and prayer. Moving to the sky is like approaching
heaven, coming nearer God in happiness. The sixth stanza ends with the wish to
praise God and keep his commandments – and work with sincerity and diligence
as long as the day allows.
It is probably the fifth stanza that can be seen as the most significant for the
following book. Indeed, it suggests an allegorical reading of the entire book. From
the perspective of this peritext, Nils’ journey on the back of a bird can be inter-
preted as the soul’s journey through God’s creation, even though the actual nar-
rative of Nils’ journey does not explicitly mention this spiritual reading; however,12 | T. Mohnike
it does not oppose it either. Moreover, the sixth stanza reminds us that work, as a
form of worship, is also part of the Christian tradition, and as we shall see, it is an
important part of the ethics propagated by the book.
The hymn thus suggests a possible Christian interpretation of Nils Holgers-
son’s journey through peritextual framing. Consequently, viewed from the con-
text of the book’s creation for a liberal, rather anti-ecclesiastical milieu outlined
above, the hymn could be read as a proposition to understand the book also in
a Lutheran State church context. Later, when the political context changed and
the book was established as an important text for national education, and Protes-
tant ideas were no longer seen as important to the education of future citizens,
the song was no longer necessary. Thus it had lost its function and was no longer
used in later editions and translations.
Palimpsest: The two Cities and the message of
Easter
Christian holidays have structured the civil year in Sweden down to the present
day. However, only two are explicitly narrated in the story of Nils Holgersson:
Easter and Martinmas. We will discuss the latter below. Christmas is of course
not part of the narrative as Nils does not travel in the winter, but Pentecost is not
mentioned either, nor are the Ascension days of Christ or Mary or any other high
day. This suggests that the liturgical year, on the one hand, is deliberately left out
of the narrative, but that Easter, on the other hand, seems to be of particular im-
portance. In fact, Easter is told here in the form of an allegory of two cities that
represent humanity in the two states before and after salvation through the death
of Christ. The two cities of Vineta and Visby are transpositions, in the terms of
Gérard Genette, of the message of Easter, a palimpsest where the old story line is
followed in the background and can be seen through the lines of the new story
invented by Lagerlöf.
The chapter in question is titled “Två städer”, announcing from the start a
comparative experience of two cities, a comparison that could announce a moral,
and this is indeed the case. Nils first learns about the legendary city of Vineta,
which was ravaged by a storm flood because of its sinful life. Later, he encounters
the historic and lively city of Visby, which is not as magnificent today as it once
was, but lives in joy and happiness because it has gained internal spiritual quality
what it has lost in external material richess. In its narrative order, the chapter thus
tells the story of sin and virtue, death, sacrifice and resurrection, pointing strongly
to the message of Easter.Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 13
The chapter opens with Nils having problems to sleep in the strong moonlight
and understanding that this evening is not one in a long row, but Easter Eve:
Han låg och tänkte på hur länge han hade varit hemifrån, och han räknade ut, att det var tre
veckor, sedan han hade börjat resan. På samma gång kom han ihåg, att det var påskafton
denna kväll. (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:154)
The stork Ermenrich that Nils had encountered before passes while the geese sleep
and asks him whether he would like to make a trip to the other coast of the Baltic
sea in Pomerania. Once arrived, Ermenrich pretends to take a nap, and Nils discov-
ers a splendorous city on the coast. He enters and is full of wonder and admiration
for the richness of the city,
han hade sett trappstegsgavlar, som buro bilder av Kristus och hans apostlar på de olika
avsatserna, gavlar, där bilder stodo i nisch vid nisch hela väggen uppefter, gavlar, som voro
inlagda med mångfärgade glasbitar, och gavlar, som voro randiga och rutiga av vit och svart
marmor. Medan pojken beundrade allt detta, kom en häftig brådska över honom. “Något
sådant har aldrig mina ögon förr sett. Något sådant får de aldrig mer se,” sade han till sig
själv. Och han började springa inåt staden, gata upp och gata ner. (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:157)
However, not everything is splendid. When the rich merchants discover the young
boy, they try to sell him all their riches for a penny. Unfortunately, the boy does
not have even a penny to pay. Afterwards, Ermenrich explains that is was the city
of Vineta that was
så rik och lycklig, att ingen stad någonsin har varit härligare, men dess invånare hängav
sig olyckligtvis åt övermod och praktlystnad. Till straff för detta [...] blev staden Vineta
översvämmad av en stormflod och nersänkt i havet. Men dess invånare kan inte dö, och inte
heller förstöres deras stad. Och en natt vart hundrade år stiger den i all sin prakt upp ur
havet och ligger på jordytan jämnt en timme. (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:161)
In spite of the pictures of Christ and the disciples, the merchants of Vineta did not
worship God, but only their own wealth. The city can only escape punishment if
its inhabitants are able to sell some of their splendor on the night when it is on
the surface of the earth, and this was the hidden purpose of Nils’ journey. Since he
had no money, his mission did not succeed. Inconsolably saddened by this, Nils
is taken by the geese the next day to Visby, the formerly wealthy town on Gotland.
When they arrive, it is Easter Sunday, spring is calling everywhere, happy people
are playing and singing, old and young. The city of Visby was at the same time
like and unlike Vineta: “Det var samma skillnad, som om man ena dagen finge se
en man klädd i purpur och smycken och en annan dag såge honom utblottad och
i trasor” (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:164–65).14 | T. Mohnike
In spite of the apparent joy and happiness of the people and nature of Got-
land, when looking at Visby, Nils is quickly disenchanted; it seems to have lost
all its former glory. However, the narrator underlines that the images of the gone
Vineta hindered Nils from seeing its present beauty: “de trevliga kojorna vid bak-
gatorna med svarta väggar, vita knutar och röda pelargonier bakom de blanka
fönsterrutorna eller de många, vackra trädgårdarna och alléerna eller skönheten
hos de rankklädda ruinerna” (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:165–66). And even more, “när män-
niskor bli gamla och ha fått vänja sig att vara nöjda med litet, då äro de mer glada
åt det Visby, som finns, än åt ett grant Vineta på havsbottnen” (Lagerlöf 1906,
1:166).
Neither the animals nor Nils celebrate Easter as one should, but the intertext
is present and structures the plot and experience of the protagonist. Vineta is the
town of the Old Testament, a sister of Sodom and Gomorrah, characterized by
outer, not by inner beauty. It is a town that still longs for salvation, for its savior
to come. It is humanity in the night before resurrection, the night before Easter.
Visby, however, is the symbol of a new life without sin. Visby is a model because it
did not hold on to wealth, but sings and plays and is humble, frugal – and works.
It is a world of simplicity, modesty and diligence. It is resurrected from death,
spiritually elevated through frugality. And this is part of the propagated ethics of
the book as a whole, as we have seen in the sixth stanza of the hymn and we will
see again below.
However, it is important to note that the reference to the Easter story is not
direct, not themed in any explicit way, the date is merely mentioned; it can only
be understood if one reflects on the various intertexts as one probably would have
done at the beginning of the 20th century. Christian doctrine is here transferred
into a different narrative, a narrative with historical depth and within a national
framework. Visby is not anti-Christian, but neither is it Christian: the churches
in Visby are just ruins from which the people draw their life. The photograph of
the ruin of St. Katarina in the first edition of the book underlines this aspect. The
churches are part of a history of which the populations are proud, but they are
also part of a history that has been overcome. The working people of Visby and
Gotland are living in joy and happiness next to the ruins of the old churches.
Transformation: Work, Nature and Salvation
The Christian Day Song and the story of Easter are rather obvious uses of Christian
heritage. A closer reading of the book shows, however, that the influence is more
profound than one would imagine, it is part of the central elements of the didacticNature, Work, and Transcendence | 15
message that is transmitted by the book. In the beginning of the book, Nils Hol-
gersson looks like any fourteen-year-old boy that is not happy in his home and
family; objectively, though, as the narrator suggests, he does not have any reason
to be so, as his parents exemplify the ideal family, hardworking, content with their
destiny, pious, and grateful to God:
De voro ett fattigt husmansfolk, och deras ställe var inte mycket större än en trädgårdstäppa.
Då de först flyttade dit, kunde där inte födas mer än en gris och ett par höns, men de voro
ovanligt strävsamma och duktiga människor, och nu hade de både kor och gäss. Det hade
gått ofantligt framåt för dem, och de skulle ha vandrat nöjda och glada till kyrkan den vackra
morgonen, om de inte hade haft sonen att tänka på. (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:10)
For their unassuming, industrious work and for their respect for creation, Nils’
parents are rewarded by prosperity and welfare. They work all day long except
Sunday when they go to church to thank God for his blessings. Nils’ parents are
ideal Christians, and they represent perfectly what Max Weber called the Protes-
tant Work Ethic.
In his seminal work on the The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
from 1905/1920, Max Weber investigated the idea that Protestant practices unin-
tendedly led to the creation of what he called the spirit of capitalism, that is cer-
tain ideas and a methodology of life that create fortune. To summarize his ideas,
he describes Protestantism as the transfer of monastic practices to secular life.
He defines Protestants therefore as secular monks that methodically act for God
through working and praying (Weber 1950; 2017) – just as we have seen above
in The Christian Day Song. A brief glance at Luther’s Kleiner Katechismus (1529)
shows, for example, that this central book of Protestant culture not only presents
the central parts of the doctrine, but also how the “head of the family should teach
his family to bless themselves in the morning and evening” and how he “should
teach his family to ask for a blessing and to give thanks”.2 The Katechismus thus
intervenes directly on the way in which the faith must structure daily life. Weber
observed that in Protestant circles, this methodological work for the glory of God
and for redemption in the afterlife had an impact beyond religious reassurance.
Diligence and modesty also lead to savings and the accumulation of capital, which
can then be invested, which in turn leads to prosperity, which is not, however, to
be used for ostentation – as the merchants of Vineta did – but be invested again.
2 The Kleiner Katechismus was reedited a many times and translated and retranslated to many
languages. The original quotations here are as follows. The above translations are mine, in-
spired of 19th century editions. ”Wie ein Hausvater sien Gesynde soll leren Morgens und Abends
sich segenen’,”Wie ein Hausvater sein Gesynde sol lernen das Benedicite und Gratias sprechen”.
(Luther 1529, n. p.)16 | T. Mohnike
In Lagerlöf’s book, curiously – and perhaps, against the background of the sec-
ularizing tendency in the book, consistently – it is not God who directly rewards
the parents, but the tomte, the household spirit. It is tomte that “hade gjort dem
gott under många år” (Lagerlöf 1906: 13). It is no coincidence that Nils, in his re-
fusal to follow his parents’ ideals, comes into conflict with the tomte. The tomte
can be read as the folkloristic representation of the spirit of the good Protestant
housekeeper, working humbly, diligently and with respect for all members of the
household and being consequently rewarded with welfare.
A common critique of any scholar trying to apply Weber’s ideas to Scandi-
navia is that many of Weber’s examples are Calvinist, not Lutheran. Lutheran
reformation was much less radical, less iconoclastic, less exclusive than many
Calvinist communities. In the Scandinavian countries, in addition, Lutheranism
did not change church organization and practice as radically as in German coun-
tries or other sites of the Lutheran Reformation, because it very soon became the
leading doctrine of the state churches. Competition with other confessions was
not as urgent as when different confessions were present in the same town or in
the neighboring village. How did it then come to Sweden? The answer can mostly
be found in the so-called Second Reformation, Pietism.
In recent years, a number of scholars have inquired into the importance of
Pietism and Revivalist movements for the modernization process in the Nordic
world. For example, Henrik Horstbøll showed the impact of Eric Pontoppidan’s
Pietist Catechism on Danish and Norwegian social and ethical thought, demon-
strating that the notion of Welfare entered the Scandinavian societal discourse
through State Pietism (Horstbøll 2004). Cultural historian Nina Witoszek argues
that the many Pietist-inspired movements “were not just reforming religion but
contributing to a civic Bildung” (Witoszek 2011, 61). The “Scandinavian Sonder-
weg” of nation-building emerged in the milieu of pastors and religiously moved
people, characterized by reformation instead of revolution in the 19th century and
by the creation of a specific “ecohumanist” discourse deriving the special char-
acter of Nordic nationalities from Nordic nature (Witoszek 2011, 60–85). Pietist-
inspired religious movements such as the Moravian Brethren or the Halle Pietists
around August Hermann Francke thus had a far too long overlooked influence on
social practice, ideas, and aesthetics in the Nordic countries.3
Pietism originated during the 17th century in German-speaking countries as
a movement that sought to fulfill the reformation that was started by Luther, but
3 Important contributions to the study of the impact of Pietism in Northern Europe include Jarlert
1997; Sørensen 1998; Öhrberg 2008; Jarlert 2012; Jakob 2014.Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 17
that had not been, they thought, carried to its end. As Douglas H. Shanz and oth-
ers observed, many Pietists were inspired by Calvinist writings and ideas (Shantz
2013). An institution of considerable importance for further development was the
orphanage founded by August Hermann Francke near the city of Halle. The or-
phanage was inspired by similar Calvinist institutions; its central idea, though,
was not only to take care of orphan children, but to create an educational institu-
tion that would enable children to become true Christians. Many of the pupils in
fact were no orphans, but children of rich families from the region and beyond,
including Scandinavians. The children were supposed to be educated according
to God’s will, to fulfill their call that was given to them by God. Every child was
therefore to be educated according to his talent. The school had therefore pro-
grams adapted to all talents – manual and intellectual, handcraft as well as an-
cient Greek.
Francke and his collaborators also managed a very active publishing house,
which they used to describe their techniques and disseminate their ideas. They
found an attentive audience in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, including the
king; the ophanage Det Kongelige Vajsenhus in Copenhagen, founded in 1727 af-
ter Francke’s model was but one example, Erik Pontoppidan above-mentioned
catechism Sandhed Til Gudfrygtighed, Udi En enfoldig og efter mulighed kort,
dog tilstrækkelig Forklaring over Dr. theol. Martin Luthers Lille Katekismus (1737)
another. The reception in Sweden was not as straightforward, but nonetheless
strong. Among public school teachers, there was a great interest in pedagogical
ideas originating from Pietism. For example, Fridtjuv Berg (1851–1916) wrote both
on Philipp Spener and Herman August Francke as models for good pedagogy
and didactics. As we know, Selma Lagerlöf had studied in this milieu; before
becoming a professional writer, she had become a public school teacher at Högre
lärarinneseminariet (HLS).
The importance of learning is underlined several times in the text. Nils was
lazy in school and did not have any respect for other creations of God.
Far klagade över att han var trög och lat: ingenting hade han velat lära i skolan, och han var
så oduglig, att man nätt och jämnt kunde sätta honom till att valla gäss. Och mor nekade
inte till att detta var sant, men hon var mest bedrövad över att han var vild och elak, hård
mot djur och illvillig mot människor. “Måtte Gud bryta hans ondska och ge honom ett annat
sinnelag!” sade mor. “Annars blir han till en olycka för både sig själv och oss. (Lagerlöf 1906,
1:10–11)
As Angelika Nix notes, Nils is taken by his experience of forced travel out of the
world of paper learning into a pedagogical journey in the real world, leaving the
boring reading of a sermon that his father had assigned to him as a replacement
task for not going to the church service and entering the experience of life (Nix18 | T. Mohnike
2002). Nils is taken out of the conflictual situation with his all too perfect parents,
to discover his talents, and the importance of integrating in social communities
characterized by social trust. This mirrors nicely many Pietist-influenced peda-
gogues’ demand for an education grounded in real experience and their ideal of
the individual as part of a community of mutual trust. Interestingly enough, Nils
joins the wild geese, because he wants to preserve the prosperity, i. e. welfare of
the family. When the goose Mårten begins to fly away in order to join the wild
geese on their journey to Lapland, Nils tries to hold him back, forgetting that he
has become too small to be able to do this. Nils does not want to quit his wonder-
ful family; it is the goose Mårten that is longing for other horizons. Nils wants to
stay in the family, but he needs to enter society to grow up. Hence, the motiva-
tions for the journey at the beginning and at the end are different. As noted above
and by Anna Bohlin, the wild goose Akka represents the ideal social mother who
educates to freedom and respect, across the boundaries of her family.
The encounter with the world is, however, much closer to the Christian ideas
than one might think. When preparing this article, I was wondering which ser-
mon Nils was obliged to read. As readers of Nils Holgersson know, Nils refused to
follow his parents to church for Mass; the parents accepted, but told him to read
the Sunday’s sermon from Luther’s Hauspostille instead. It is in fact possible to
identify the text in question. As we have seen above, Nils’ travel starts three Sun-
days before Easter. It is thus Midfastosöndagen (Laetare Sunday) according to the
liturgical year, and the sermon which Nils consults is a text about the feeding of
the 5000 (Joh. 6:1–15). A central element of the sermon is that men should trust in
God, and not always think in rational terms. Those who trust in God and follow
their God-given calling diligently and steadfastly will be provided for, even if it
seems improbable to the rationally thinking person. In the Swedish translation,
the sermon reads:
Liksom wille Herren säga: kära själ, lär dig att söka först efter Guds rike; hör mitt ord, tro
på mig och gör med flit, hwad dig i din kallelse är befaldt; Om du gör det, så låt mig sörja
för resten. Är du icke rik, har du icke många tusen kronor, så will jag dock skaffa dig din
nödtorft. Ty du kan ju icke äta guld, silfver, penningar, ädla stenar, utan du måste ju hafwa
bröd, som wäxer fram ur jorden. Kan du icke få bröd ur jorden, har du hwarken hus eller
gård, åker eller trädgård, tro blott och följ mig, så skall du få bröd nog. (Luther 1877, 204)
Interestingly enough, this also seems to be the moral lesson of the first adventure
with the wild geese. In the night, while all the geese are asleep, a fox kidnaps one
of them. Nils notices this and chases the fox until he releases the goose. The fox
understandingly being angry with Nils, turns now against Nils who takes refuge at
the top of a small tree. The fox waiting below, Nils feels lonely, hungry, abandoned
by his new companions, and is about to give up. At this moment of deepest sorrow,Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 19
the sun addresses some comforting words to Nils in the very last sentences of the
section, reminiscent of Luther’s sermon:
Pojken var nära att gråta av ångest, men solen stod nu på himmelen guldgul och glad och
satte mod i hela världen. ‘Inte är det värt, Nils Holgersson, att du är ängslig eller orolig för
något, så länge som jag finns.’ sade solen. (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:40–41)
Consequently, the next chapter and the next day begin with the goose game, i. e.
the playful strategy used by the geese to wear down the fox by constantly flying
very close to his head without him being able to catch them. The geese free Nils
Holgersson from his uncomfortable position and now gratefully give him a place
in their small community.
The sun thus takes the place of God in the sermon. It takes care of Nils and all
beings that respect the laws of nature. If he trusts in the sun and the laws of na-
ture, he will be nourished. Nature functions like the „living word“ in the pietistic
tradition, revealing to those who can read its text the meaning of life, the place
of all beings in it, the laws that are given, and the existence of a supreme being
who cares for his creations. As in the Christian tradition of a theologia naturalis
(Natural Theology), nature can be read like the Old and the New Testament as a
testimony of the divine. Nature in Nils Holgersson can be understood as an expres-
sion of God.
However, as in the case of The Christian Day Song, the Christian framing is
fragile. For the majority of readers, the link to Luther’s sermon will not be intuitive.
The Christian interpretation is not obligatory; Nature, Lagerlöf suggests accord-
ing to Christopher Oscarson, has “a voice independent of human consciousness
and history” (Oscarson 2009). Becoming an actor in its own right with profound
knowledge and agency, nature becomes so to say sacralized as “extraordinarily
powerful in both dangerous and beneficial ways [...] and worthy of reverent care”,
to quote Bron Taylor’s definition in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (Taylor
2005: x). Its different emanations (landscapes, animals, plants and so on) become
sites of contemplation, education and, at times, transcendence as a means to get
into dialogue with nature, just as the Bible and other Christian texts had been for
the Pietist reader. The experience of nature takes the place of the experience of
God – in the sense that Nina Witoszek was probably thinking of when speaking
of the ecohumanist discourse that marked the nationalization of Scandinavian
societies.
The sacralization of nature through Lagerlöf’s narrative is also suggested by
the passages that contain direct references to God; they tell in fact of nature be-
ing endangered by humans. Thus, for example, four of the fourteen occurrences
mentioning God are found in the story of the draining of Lake Tåkern in the last20 | T. Mohnike
part of the first volume. Lake Tåkern is known as a bird paradise, but the neigh-
bouring farmers want to transform it into farmland. The day before signing the
contract, the farmers’ little son gets lost and seemingly drowns in the lake, and
first the mother and later the father understand that their action was not good.
The mother asks herself, whether it was “Guds mening, att sorgen skulle komma
och öppna hennes hjärta till barmhärtighet just i dag, innan det var för sent att
avstyra den grymma handlingen?” (Lagerlöf 1906, 1:225) until both decide: “Det
kan hända, att Gud inte vill, att vi ska rubba på hans ordning” (Lagerlöf 1906,
1:226). Interestingly enough, it is the two protagonists that reflect on God, not the
narrator. Significantly, the narrator remains neutral on the question of whether
or not God intervened, but not neutral on the destruction of nature itself and the
sacred treasure that nature itself represents.
The sacralization of Nature in the Swedish nation-building process can be
observed even outside the book. A well known example is Otto Hesselbom’s
(1848–1913) painting Vårt Land. Motiv från Dalsland (1902) for the National Mu-
seum that depicts a landscape of water, forest and meadows in the yellow light of
the rising sun. Another prominent painting is the altar picture painted by Prince
Eugen for the church in Kiruna in Lapland (1912). The church had been built in a
style that combines national romantic ideas about Nordic architecture and Sami
dwellings. The altar picture by Prince Eugen shows a small forest in a peaceful
green-blue landscape with divine light coming from above – but with no direct
reference to God.
The church nor the painting existed yet when the book was published, but
Prince Eugen’s paintings and, possibly the disponent (director) Hjalmar Lund-
bohm, who commissioned and partly paid for the church, make an appearance.
The reader discovers for example Prince Eugen’s painting of the castle of Stock-
holm in the first edition of Nils Holgersson, and the director might be seen as the
model for the disponent that has an important role in the funeral of little Mats
an important protagonist.4 In fact, parallel to Nils’ journey through Sweden, two
children are travelling about the same route through Sweden, having lost their
mother to tuberculosis, in search of their father, whom they have heard has fled
to Lapland. After an accident in Lapland, Mats dies, and his sister Åsa wants to
organize a grand funeral for her brother. The director of the mining company in
Kiruna is skeptical about the money the supposedly beggar girl wants to spend
unnecessarily on the funeral, but he is convinced when Åsa musters the courage
to tell him their story. She describes Lille-Mats as an industrious and God-fearing
4 The name of Lundbohm is not mentioned in the text; however, he was the director in the time
described.Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 21
merchant in the spirit of Weber’s Protestant work ethic (Lagerlöf 1907, 2:349–50).
As a model Swede, he fully deserves an honorable funeral.
It is no coincidence that Mats finds the fulfillment of his destiny in Lapland. In
Nils Holgersson, Lapland is a heterotopia in the Foucauldian sense, a place that is
simultaneously a location on earth, but also a world unto itself, a place of inner-
worldly transcendence. Whereas most of the chapters in the book are precisely
dated and located, the chapters concerning Lapland are devoid of any reference to
time. They are only loosely dated as taking place during the time of summer, when
the geese and many other animals get offspring and live mostly without any dan-
ger in an earthly paradise. Nils remarks that “han aldrig hade varit i ett så vackert
och härligt land, och han hade inga andra bekymmer haft än att hindra myggsvär-
marna från att äta upp honom” (Lagerlöf 1907, 2: 370). The Sami are depicted as
living in perfect harmony with nature. Everything is perfectly balanced in a time-
less otherworld. In contrast, when the company leaves Lapland, the chapters are
again precisely dated.
Of course, this vision of a Laplandic earthly paradise outside of civilization
proper is moderated by the fact that the great ore mines of Gällivare and Kiruna
herald the advent of civilization and industrialization. However, Nils states clearly
that this is a danger when he for example confirms that “Akka hade rätt, när hon
sade, att det här landet kunde de svenska nybyggarna gärna lämna i fred och över-
låta det åt björnarna och vargarna och renarna och vildgässen och fjällugglorna
och lämlarna och lapparna, som voro skapade för att leva där” (Lagerlöf 1907,
2: 370–373). Swedes and industry are no part of this ecological heterotopia, they
should leave the land to the animals and Sami people, the latter thus being con-
ceived of as clearly distinct from the Swedes.
Åsa’s and Mats’ father lives withdrawn from society, which he fled because he
did not understand God. In fact, just as Hiob did not understand the punishment
of God, as he had not done anything wrong, the father quarrels with God as he has
seen his family dying as they took care of a sick, poor woman. He flees like an ermit
into the desert of Lapland, just as Jesus withdraws to the desert before accepting
his call. In the end, though, he is found by his daughter, returns and becomes a
rich man as if rewarded by God. However, he fled because of God, but is redeemed
through science, since his daughter tells him that it was no punishment coming
from God, but just a simple disease that can be dealt with. The economic reward
comes not from God, but from the discovery of an ore mine.
In Nils’ journey, Lapland is the goal, the turning point after which there is only
the return home and reintegration into his family and human society. This also
means that Lapland is framed as alien to society as such. For Nils too, Lapland
is a place to experience transcendence, a paradise on earth – but without God.
It is nature that takes its place. Space and the experience of transcendence are22 | T. Mohnike
transferred to nature, the encounter with God and the divine are transformed into
an encounter with nature and the ideal ecological balance. The Sami is the noble
savage in this world, not part of the civil sphere of national Sweden, but in some
ways the ideal representative of it, just like the leader of the geese, Akka, who has
a Sami name. Lapland and its inhabitants are idealized as the national earthly
paradise, Sweden’s heterotopia of ideal balance.
Playing with Intertexts: Saint Martin
When coming home at the end, Nils understands that his parents have lost their
trust in God and in life because of grief and sorrow. They believe that Nils has left
them, stealing the goose, in order to live a life of pleasure and sin. When he comes
back, his return mirrors the parable of the Prodigal Son, even if he only lived the
sinful life of the son of Jesus’ parable in his parents’ imagination. They are all the
more happy when they hear from visiting Åsa and her father what good, selfless
work Nils has done, and when the goose Mårten returns before the son himself,
they understand that their son was not a thief. Their trust in God returns, and they
look positively again at life’s prospects.
Future earnings are presaged by the return of the goose Mårten with his fam-
ily, consisting of his wild goose wife and their beautiful children. They are cap-
tured by Nils’ mother and are now to be butchered and sold as St. Martin’s geese,
promising a good and necessary profit. However, the geese are saved by Nils who
hears their plaintive cries; Nils in turn resumes his human form when he enters
the house to save his goose friends, resurrecting from being believed to be dead.
All this happens explicitly between the day of Saint Martin’s death (8th
November) and Martinmas (11th November). It seems thus not by chance that
Nils’ goose friend is called Mårten and that the story of Nils ends at this mo-
ment. The narrator is thereby recalling the story of St. Martin, the semi-legendary
founder of the first Christian monastery and an important figure in the pantheon
of Saints, even in Protestant circles, which was perhaps facilitated by the fact that
Martin Luther bore his name. St. Martin signaled the last day of the economic year
and announced the time of Advent and Christmas.
The intertextual relations between the legend of Saint Martin and the story of
Nils are visible in the penultimate chapter of the book, but without being further
developed. Saint Martin is often represented as riding on a horse, as he was first a
soldier, and it is as such that he did one of his good works. When Nils comes home,
he helps to cure a horse without showing himself to his father. He then hides in
the barn just like Saint Martin in another part of the legend, when the latter doesNature, Work, and Transcendence | 23
not want to become a bishop. However, in contrast to Nils, the geese betray saint
Martin. Their cries tell the people where to look for Martin. Nils, however, shows
himself to those who long for him, his parents, because of the geese’s cries. Self-
lessly helping other creatures as Martin had done, Nils shows that he has grown
up, that he has become an adult, the good heir his parents wanted to raise.
These intertextual references to St Martin’s figure and legend are fairly obvi-
ous, but in contrast to the other aspects of Nils Holgersson’s story discussed above,
there seems to be no deeper purpose to them. The narrator plays with these Chris-
tian intertexts and reuses them because they are assumed to be part of the general
popular knowledge of schoolchildren, but they serve as nothing more than a kind
of repertory of narrative elements for new stories. They provide the experience
of seeing something familiar, of being at home, or what I have elsewhere called
pietistic nostalgia (Mohnike in press).
Conclusion
Christian intertexts are important elements in the story of Nils Holgersson. They
structure the story both narratively and ethically, as becomes most evident in the
examples of Easter and especially the sermon Nils is obliged to read, or they frame
the interpretation to suggest a Christian interpretation of a national narrative, as
was the case with The Christian Day Song. Sometimes, as we have seen in the Mar-
tin/Mårten examples, they are cited merely as narrative elements that ensure an
impression of familiarity by linking the text to the known, the familiar. Interest-
ingly enough, these Christian intertexts are not explicitly used as Christian, except
in the case of The Christian Day Song. The intention of the book is not to transmit
these stories, but to transfer them into the new, national discourse. They have
been deprived of their original religious context and are placed in the service of
what might be called a national religion.5 The example of The Christian Day Song
showed that the direction of transfer is indisputably from the Christian to the na-
tional discourse: whereas the exploration of Sweden as a national cultural and
natural landscape is at the heart of the story, the possible Christian interpretation
of the book is optional, as the removal of the song in later editions indicates.
We have also seen that the loss of the Christian framing does not entail the
suppression of central ethical elements that have been important to Protestant
practice. In particular, the pietistic heritage of a work ethic, the importance of
5 As Benedict Anderson has rightly stressed, nationalism should not be discussed as an ideology,
but in the same class of concepts as religion (Anderson 1991, 5).24 | T. Mohnike
learning and education in order to become a true Christian – or, in its secular
version, a true human citizen of the world with respect for others, taking respon-
sibility for one’s own life and that of others, humble and industrious – are at the
heart of the propagated morality of Nils Holgersson’s itinerant school.
As the transition from vertically to horizontally ordered space seems to de-
mand in the process of nationalizing the organization of Sweden’s imagined com-
munity, the place of metaphysical transcendence is transferred from heaven to
earth; nature takes the place of the divine. The most self-evident place in this
metaphysical imaginative geography is attributed to Lapland, a Swedish hetero-
topia, an image of the earthly Nordic paradise that has not yet been destroyed
by modernity and must therefore be protected. What we have observed here can
be interpreted as an expression of the ecohumanist discourse described by Nina
Witozcek, as we have mentioned in the introduction, and it seems that a further
enquiry into the interaction of Christian heritage, ecological thought and nation-
alist discourse would be a fruitful endeavor. It is perhaps not by chance that the
specific expression of a religion of nature is (also) a Nordic phenomenon. How-
ever, this question needs to be investigated in more detail in future studies.
References
Ahlström, Gunnar 1958: Den underbara resan. En bok om Selma Lagerlöfs Nils Holgersson.
Stockholm.
Anderson, Benedict 1991: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London.
Bhaba, Homi K. 2004: “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation.”
In: Bhaba, Homi K.: The Location of Culture. Abingdon, New York. 199–244.
Bohlin, Anna 2018: “Nils and the social mother as a migrating goose.” In: Tijdschrift voor
Skandinavistiek 36 (2). 117–124. [https://rjh.ub.rug.nl/tvs/article/view/31573].
07.09.2021.
Culler, Jonathan 1999: “Anderson and the Novel.” In: Diacritics 29 (4). 20–39.
Den svenska Psalmboken av Konungen gillad och stadfäst år 1819, och Nya Psalmer 1921
medgivna att qnvändas tillsammans med 1819 års psalmbok. 1932. Stockholm/Göteborg.
[http://runeberg.org/psalmbok/1932/].
Horstbøll, Henrik 2004: “Pietism and the Politics of Catechisms.” In: Scandinavian Journal of
History 25 (2). 143–160.
Jakob, Lars 2014: Wege in den Norden der hallische Pietismus in den skandinavischen Ländern
des 18. Jahrhunderts. (= Kleine Schriftenreihe der Franckeschen Stiftungen 14). Halle.
Jarlert, Anders 1997: Läsarfolket – från gammalläseri till nyortodoxi. Förändringar i västsvensk
kyrkoväckelse med särskild hänsyn till utvecklingen i Marks, Bollebygds och Kinds
härader under 1800-talet. (= Västsvensk kultur och samhällsutveckling genom tiderna
6). Göteborg.Nature, Work, and Transcendence | 25
Jarlert, Anders (ed.) 2012: Piety and Modernity. (= The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Church,
State and Society in Northern Europe, 1780–1920 3). Leuven.
Lagerlöf, Selma 1906/1907: Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige. 2 vols.
Stockholm.
Lagerlöf, Selma 2012: Körkarlen. Berättelse. Textkritisk utgåva med inledning av Maria
Karlsson, textkritisk kommentar av Petra Söderlundoch ordförklaringar av Jenny
Bergenmar. Stockholm.
Landahl, Joakim 2016: Politik & Pedagogik. En biografi över Fridtjuv Berg. Stockholm.
Luther, Martin 1529: Der Kleine Catechismus Fuer die gemeyne Pfarherr vnd Prediger. Marburg.
[http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/1164-60-theol-3s/start.htm].
Luther, Martin 1877: Doktor Martin Luthers Huspostilla. Translated by S. G. Cavallin. Stockholm.
[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100436688]. 07.09.2021.
Mohnike, Thomas (In Press): “Pietist Nostalgia. Aesthetization of Faith and the Nordic Revival
Movements in Scandinavian Post-WWII Literature.” In: Grage, Joachim et al. (ed.):
Aesthetics of Protestantism in Northern Europe – Exploring the Field. Turnhout.
Nix, Angelika 2002: Das Kind des Jahrhunderts im Jahrhundert des Kindes. Zur Entstehung der
phantastischen Erzählung in der schwedischen Kinderliteratur. Freiburg im Breisgau.
Öhrberg, Ann 2008: “Imagery of God in Moravian Songs from Eighteenth-Century Sweden.”
In: Harsting, Pernille/Jon Viklund (ed.): Rhetoric and Literature in Finland and Sweden,
1600–1900. (= Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric 2). Copenhagen. 1–28. [http:
//www.nnrh.dk/NSHR/nshr2/index.html]. 07.09.2021.
Oscarson, Christopher 2009: “Nils Holgersson, Empty Maps and the Entangled Birds-Eye View
of Sweden.” In: Edda 96 (2). 99–115.
Shantz, Douglas H. 2013: An introduction to German pietism. Protestant renewal at the dawn of
modern Europe. Baltimore, Md.
Sørensen, Aage B. 1998: “On Kings, Pietism and Rent-Seeking in Scandinavian Welfare States.”
In: Acta Sociologica 41 (4). 363–375.
Strappazon, Ludovic/Thomas Mohnike 2021: Mytheme Laboratory. Université de Strasbourg.
[https://mythemes.u-strasbg.fr/w/]. 07.09.2021.
Taylor, Bron 2005: “Introduction”. In: Taylor, Bron (ed.): Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.
London/New York, VII–XXVI.
Thomsen, Bjarne Thorup 2004: “Lagerlöfs relative landskaber. Om konstruktionen af et
nationalt territorium i Nils Holgersson.” In: Edda 91 (2). 118–133.
Weber, Max 3 1950: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. With a foreword by R. H.
Tawney. London.
Weber, Max 2017: Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus. Edited by Andrea
Maurer. (= Reclams Universal-Bibliothek 1947). Ditzingen.
Witoszek, Nina 2011: The Origins of the “Regime of Goodness”. Remapping the Cultural History
of Norway. Oslo.You can also read
