The title of this collection of eleven essays, none of which is undistinguished, puts the Archbishopric of Nidaros [Trondheim, Norway] at the center of a network of “manuscripts, miracles, [and] objects.” Co-editors Ragnhild M. Bø, an innovative art historical and visual media historian, and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, a historian whose deft multidisciplinary investigations on community- and culture-building in medieval Scandinavia have broken new ground in comprehending medieval Scandinavia, quite reasonably make Nidaros the point from which “a Norse community” develops, for Nidaros controlled eleven bishoprics that included all of Norway and the western islands of Man, Orkney, the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland. Limited sources and the special case of Man cut the volume’s compass to Norway, Iceland, and Orkney. Chapters focus mainly on the long period of Latin Christianity’s development and efflorescence, though some investigate important post-Reformation topics. This handsome book’s subtitle lists the range of media through which Northern saints’ cults will be engaged but only suggests the superb comparative, cross-disciplinary readings of a subject that is still under-represented and under-edited compared to other areas in medieval Scandinavian history and media studies (for an expert analysis of hagiography as an under-served subject, with desiderata, see Kirsten Wolf’s chapter “Medieval Icelandic Hagiography: The State of the Art” in Wolf and Bullitta, eds. Saints and their Legacies in Medieval Iceland. [2021]).
The collection opens with Van Deusen and Wolf’s brilliant example of manuscript-centric logic and argument. The co-authors uncover the flourishing Icelandic adaptations of epitomes of saints’ lives, concentrating on what AM 764 4to and AM 672 4to show us about purpose-driven epitomes directed at “medieval Icelandic men and women of the cloth and cloister,” the audiences both learned and learning, distinct and overlapping. As with other essays here, Van Deusen and Wolf supply gentle help to readers not as well-versed in the language and context the co-authors know so well. Christelle Fairise follows with a fully realized appraisal of medieval Icelandic Marian literature, reading “queenship” in Maríu saga II closely (i.e., the redaction based largely on Stockholm Perg. 4to no. 1, according to C. R. Unger’s still authoritative 1871 edition of the whole tradition of this vastly popular saga) and thus opening up how Mary’s (non-scriptural) royal descent might have worked in an Icelandic context where a person’s geneaogy is privileged and royal rule a sore point.
Media other than manuscripts inform Áslaug Ommundsen’s study of St. Óláfr (i.e., Olaf II Haraldsson, killed in the Battle of Stiklarstaðir, traditionally dated to July 29, 1030), whose cult fuels the fame of Nidaros. She traces the amplification of St. Óláfr’s cult throughout the Norse community of Nidaros and beyond by way of liturgical books and material props that aided in celebrating the saint. Next, Caitlin Ellis reveals how the cult of Earl Magnús Erlendsson doubles the martyr’s crown of victory with dynastic aspirations for political victory. To make the Earl “parallel and equivalent” to St. Óláfr is the aim, and Orcadian ambition also influenced the literal building and dual-function structure as an episocopal seat and cult center of St. Magnús Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney, echoing northern English models like Durham Cathedral, center of the cult of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson’s essay powerfully applies his theory of “friendship” (cf. his 2017 study), a voluntary bond, which trumps kinship until squelched by new forms of Norwegian kingship, to fourteenth-century Icelander Bergr Sokkason’s narrative about St. Nicholas, which, at some 43,500 words, is the longest in Europe. Arguing that literary sources can credibly reveal social realities, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson shows that the earthly friendships mentioned in Bergr Sokkason’s epistolary preface to Nikulás saga, as well as the friendship between St. Nicholas and God that the saga details, lift St. Nicholas above the Virgin Mary, whom he is most like.
The next essays consider both “miracles” and “objects.” Cornelia Spjelkavik Sparre brings us close to the the shrine of St. Óláfr in the cathedral at Nidaros, sketching the pilgrims and the radiant shrine itself through a skald’s description. Sparre discusses not only mainline textual sources of miracles found in sagas and saints’ vitae but also the records of miracles kept at a saint’s shrine, the quotidian shaping of a saint’s cult. For Sparre, devotion consists not only of narrative, but also as a compendium of procedures like járnburðr (trial by fire) and of potent objects like rúnir (runes). Sparre’s vignettes also show that stories of miracles beg to be re-told. Ásdís Egilsdóttir’s richly packed survey of written narratives of saints complements Sparre’s account of Norwegian practices. Noting that miracle-working, as well as miracle-writing, must continue for the saint to remain animated in popular devotion, Ásdís Egilsdóttir discusses late medieval and post-Reformation saints, which resemble broader vernacular and likely intersections with oral story-telling patterns. Siân Grønlie’s essay addresses the acts of representation that recall Iceland’s conversion to Latin Christianity. In her 2017 monograph, Grønlie investigated how translated hagiographical literature interracted with Icelandic saga forms. After all, both could be composed and produced in the same venue and consumed by audiences that overlapped. In this rhetorically satisfying analysis, Grønlie works out how some translated figures succeeded better than did some Icelandic ones in representing Iceland’s conversion – and critiqued Icelandic saga-hero types as well.
Objects drive the next essays. Ragnhild M. Bø makes artifacts comprehensible by restoring their contexts in an essay of great imaginative force. Her vividly imagined comparative piece animates Sts. Gertrude of Nivelles and Clare of Assisi, who are rare in Norwegian rituals. Bø suggests that sermons and prayers to St. Gertrude might correlate with the visual differences in imagery that she analyzes, but that St. Clare, to whom no Norwegian churches are dedicated, shows a cross-border negotiation that granted pilgrims pardon by proxy through St. Sunniva’s feast day at Bergen Cathedral, Munkeliv Monastery, and St. Mary’s in Oslo. Noëlle L. W. Stretton explores why noses (and faces) were severed from medieval cult sculpture after the Reformation. Using work on the “Protracted Reformation” in Norway-Denmark, Stretton proves that cutting off a saint’s nose was not just a single swing of a blade but a slow-moving act with judicial precedents and cultural afterlives. Elise Kleivane deftly shifts from the valued manuscripts and liturgical furnishings that supported saints’ cults toward the Roman alphabetic and runic epigraphic corpora. Objects like pilgrim badges, produced in quantity, declared the pilgrim’s devotion. Others vocalize a single plangent plea for protection from the saints.
This collection, seeking to understand better the “elaboration” of the role of saints’ cults Peter Brown pointed to in 1981, wins plaudits for work done now and inspired for our scholarly future. At a time when the space alloted Humanities has been squeezed, this volume should stand on the virtual or actual shelf of all who consider how manuscripts, miracles, and objects construct “sanctity in the North” (Thomas A. DuBois, 2008) and how the worship of some 150 saints makes of a geographical area, the Norse community of Nidaros.
