And Tradi"On in Norwegian Li#Rature and Folklife
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My! and Tradi"on in Norwegian Li#rature and Folklife Essays Henning K. Sehmsdorf Copyright 2020 S&S Homestead Press Printed by Applied Digital Imaging, Inc, Bellingham, WA Cover: Theodor Kittelsen, Ashlad & Soria Moria Castle, 1881. e of onens oreord rohes h o rdiion nd oregin ierre h ierre rhees of he Sef in iing hoog he irrored n Kn Hmsns n nd he h of he nonsios gore nd ess nfene or ffini o hs of oe Srindergs rem nd eder . eens Serre he o nd he ord erd h nd soi in e ensens . oore ierre rnserne rnsons rond reing oregin diom he rm of Henri sen oore he oer of Hdis oren ess rdiion . o rrie oife n nd er in r Soie eief nd enre he eif nd he g in he e nd s Soior one he oe in he ssroom en hrogh o of iser he Sories of red Simonsen oregin merin ishermn ors ied Foreword Does it make sense for an octogenarian academic and biodynamic farmer — and a German immigrant to boot — to compose a book of essays on the role of myth and folk tradition in Norwegian literature and culture? At my age, the adage of “publish or perish” takes on a whole new meaning. Obviously, I no longer need collegial approval or academic advancement. However, when I left the university a quarter of a century ago to dedicate myself full-time to farming, I left behind an unfinished body of work — unfinished because the daily pressures of teaching and related tasks had kept me from gathering together and completing preliminary studies in the subject matter of the present volume. !e majority of these essays were offered at professional meetings and universities in seminal form and printed either in obscure conference proceedings or published in Norwegian, Swedish or German in academic journals abroad. So, in short, the motivation behind this book is to finish the work and publish before the author perishes. !e overall topic of this book has been a major focus of scholarly and personal interest to me ever since, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I came across a correspondence between Jakob Grimm and his Norwegian colleague, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, in which Grimm argued that contemporary Norwegian culture had preserved traditions and a world view mostly lost in the rest of Europe, and in America, during the Industrial Revolution. In the rural areas of Norway, where modern industry made few inroads until World War I, old understandings of self and nature continued to construe reality in ways no longer available to urbanized societies steeped in science, technology and commerce. While the Grimm Brothers re-invented their famous tales from scant oral sources, Scandinavian collectors up to the middle of the nineteenth century were able to gather folktales, legends, folk beliefs and material traditions directly from the farmers, foresters, and fishermen still living in keeping with reality constructs based on the understanding that nature was animate and endowed with spirit. Later, when teaching Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington, I enlisted the help of Norwegian folklorist 1 Reimund Kvideland to provide scholarly precise documentation of these oral traditions in English, in three co-authored volumes: Scandinavian Folk Belief & Legend (1988), Nordic Folklore: Recent Studies (1989), and All the World’s Reward: Folktales Told by Five Scandinavian Storytellers (1999). As a student of comparative literature, however, I was interested not only in Norse myth and folk tradition, but also both how these traditions shaped the cultural revival in Norway after the country made itself independent of Denmark in 1814, and how they continue to inform Norwegian cultural life and literature today. !ese lines of inquiry were made possible by the methodology of text-centered readings of literary works, as taught by the Chicago Critics, and by the methodologies of myth criticism spearheaded by Mircea Eliade and his colleagues that I encountered at the University. During the 1970s, folklorists like Alan Dundes and Roger Abrahams developed analytical models illuminating how folk traditions are “performed” in literary texts. So-called “myth criticism” bore rich fruit for several decades until eventually eclipsed in the 1990s by postmodern approaches focused on the dissonances of modern culture, and by marxist, feminist and, most recently, eco- criticism. However, the underlying questions asked by the myth critics, while no longer in fashion, remain just as relevant today. As American anthropologist Jarold Ramsey famously said, mythical stories and traditions tell us who we are, where we come from, and how we should live in the world and with each other.1 !e thirteen essays offered in the present volume explore how that statement applies to the literature and cultural experience of Norway. Part I offers a methodological introduction to myth criticism and how it informs Norwegian literature since its beginnings in the ninth century. While this essay sets the framework for the analyses that follow, any reader new to this discipline may want to read it last. Part II, focused on myth and literature, presents an exploration of Norse mythology from an archetypal perspective, followed by discussions of Knut 1 Ramsey, 1983, 4. 2 Hamsun’s use of Classical myth in his novel Pan (1890); Hindu myth in the poetry of Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970); Christian myth in Peder Cappelen’s drama Sverre: !e Rock and the Word (1977) about the medieval Norwegian king by that name; and “everyday myths” (in the sense of Roland Barthes) in Axel Jensens dystopic novel Epp (1965). Part III, foregrounding folklore and literature, discusses Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s story “Trond” (1857) to illustrate how oral tradition became a model for Norwegian writers to develop a national idiom; Ibsen’s indebtedness to Romantic concepts of folklore in developing his symbolist drama !e Master Builder (1892); and the use of folk life description, folk belief and certain mythic images in the poetry of Halldis Moren Vesaas (1907-1995). Part IV, on folk narrative and folk life, presents an essay on how beliefs surrounding fear and envy controlled social life in traditional culture; followed by the study of a selected folktale in its socio-cultural context; then a study of the use of folktales in public schools; and finally a study of the personal narratives of a Norwegian-American fisherman who lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest in the 20th century. Henning Sehmsdorf, Lopez Island, Summer 2020 3 4 Approaches My!, Folk Tradi"on, and Norwegian Literature1 “Everyday My!s” The goal of this essay is to explore, briefly, the place of myth and oral tradition in Norwegian literature by bringing together perspectives of cultural criticism, folkloristics and the approach to literature known as myth criticism. Among postmodernist critics of the late 20th century, it became a common notion that myth and tradition — folklore — belong to the past, are outdated and pre-modern, and their role in contemporary life, literature and criticism are therefore regressive, if not exploitive. For example, in an article concerned with the postmodernist understanding of the work of art in the age of reproduction, Kjartan Fløgstad castigated the literary establishment and mass media for projecting a mythological pseudo-reality in which the complex and contradictory facts and problems of contemporary social life are systematically ignored. The aims of the entertainment industry are blatantly commercial, its purpose the exploitation of the market for profit; therefore controversial issues are obscured by directing the consumer's perception backwards to "esthetic myths, to texts seen as beautiful and organic unities, to the myth of a coherent, classic system of esthetic norms, to the myth of the beautiful beyond time and space, beyond society and politics, to all the other hermetic concepts intended to protect their messengers, in a grand gesture back to origins, the folk, tradition, coherence, quality, and truth.”2 Fløgstad asserted, that, on the contrary, the real task of the writer and critic is precisely the opposite, namely to "ask (the) essential questions (that are) offensive to the public,”3 in other words to dismantle the myths that obscure reality. 1 This essay is an updated version of “Myte, folketradisjon og norsk litteratur,” in: Sehmsdorf, 1991, 139-157; in English: Masát, 1992, 85-104; reprinted (in Norwegian) in: Alver, 1995, 59-75. 2 Fløgstad, 1988, 102. 3 Ibid, 94. 5 To a point Fløgstad's views echoed those of Roland Barthes. 4 The French critic analyzed the communicative systems — "everyday myths" — by which society expresses and reinforces the concepts that lie behind the existing socio-cultural order. For Barthes, the term "myth" carries the negative connotation of social lies by which the powerful manipulate and disenfranchise the have-nots for political and commercial ends. But unlike Fløgstad, Barthes understands myth and myth-making not as literary strategies directing the consumer toward the past, but as central cultural functions of the present: that is, the myths of a society exist on a secondary semiological plane, where objective language is vested with meanings that are tacitly exempted from being questioned in critical discourse and therefore have a powerful effect on public opinion as well as on the personal convictions of individuals. The Western notion of “progress” and the specifically American idea of individual self-realization are examples of such unexamined myths shaping personal and social life. Barthes' observation that mythological thinking is not peculiar to the past, but continues to inform cultural expression — literary or otherwise — in contemporary society, is an important one. Examples come crowding up from literary works, newspapers and the electronic media. For example, in an article published in Die Welt, German journalist Alfred Zänker speculated on the causes of the mass migrations currently criss-crossing the globe.