Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset

Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset

I am so grateful to the Times Literary Supplement for broadening out my education! A little while back it had an article on Manzoni’s The Betrothed, describing it as Italy’s foundational novel and placing Manzoni almost alongside Dante in the Italian literary pantheon. To my shame, and in spite of a degree in literature from Cambridge, I had not only never read but not even heard of Manzoni. So I bought a copy and loved it. Yes, some elements of the plot are a bit creaky in a librettish kind of way, but the tone of the narration is amazingly engaging and a passionate faith burns throughout.

Now the same has happened with Sigrid Undset and Kristin Lavransdatter, the novel that won her the Nobel prize. Never heard if it or her – feature in the TLS – bought it – absolutely bowled over. There are deeply felt descriptions of nature, especially early on when Kristin goes up into the high mountains that surround her home for the first time, there’s acute psychological insight, wonderful dialogue and epic themes. It’s remarkable to follow Kristin growing up in a world where men seem to have all the agency, yet seeing that she retains her inner life and power throughout.

Undset has a very rare gift for describing spiritual experience. She goes right to the threshold of ineffability yet still finds authentic words and images. Here’s an extract from Kristin’s teenage meditations: it’s on p.118 of my Penguin edition published in 2005.

Kristin placed her candle on the altar of St Laurentius and knelt down on the prayer bench. She stared steadily into the flame as she said her Pater Noster and Ave Maria. Gradually the glow of the taper seemed to envelop her, shutting out everything else surrounding her and the candle. She felt her heart open up, brimming over with gratitude and promises and love for God and His gentle Mother – she felt them so near. She had always known that they saw her, but on this night she felt that it was so. She saw the world as if in a vision: a dark room into which a beam of sunlight fell, with dust motes tumbling in and out, from darkness to light, and she felt that now she had finally moved into the sunbeam.

She thought she would gladly have stayed in the quiet, night-dark church forever – with the few tiny specks of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet fragrance of old incense and the warm smell of burning wax. With herself resting inside her own star…

Kristin lay awake for a long time, but the deep current of sweetness which had borne her as she knelt in the church would not return. And yet she still felt its warmth inside her: she fervently thanked God, and sensed a feeling of strength in her spirit as she prayed for her parents and her sisters…

I think part of the effectiveness of this is that the spiritual content is thoroughly incarnated in and conveyed by the circumstances – the church interior, the candle flame, the smells of wax and old incense – while at the same time utterly transcending them: God manifesting Himself through, not in spite of, the materiality of time and place, like the bush, burning but not consumed in the transcendent flame. Thank you Lord for this extraordinary blend of longing and comfort, joy and pain, love and sorrow, of being overwhelmed and yet for the first time truly ourselves in “the deep current of sweetness” that is Your presence, all too rarely while it lasts, and yet still near, just a breath away.

It’s like an altered state of consciousness, as John Wimber put it, in which the things around us are still there, but they just don’t matter compared to the One Thing whose beauty both surpasses and gathers up everything else. For me this is the sunbeam into which Kristin has moved, which dims but does not negate her surroundings, and becomes the star in which she rests.

By contrast, Undset also presents an inversion of Kristin’s blossoming spirituality in her mother, Ragnfrid. Ragnfrid’s fastings and mortifications read like a sort of dark bargaining with God, a doomed attempt, not to enter more fully into what God wants, but to make God do what she wants. She worships a distant, disapproving God who withholds love. The prayers and fasts are about trying to find a lever by which this God can be manipulated. They are therefore more like expressions of hostility towards God than love for Him. As such they can only wound the soul. 

Undset was a Roman Catholic so it is to her credit that she is awake, not only to positive versions but also to those toxic states of faith which are always going to arise among broken human beings. There is a similar, though less embittered, manifestation in one of the nuns at the Convent in Oslo where Kristin is temporarily staying. Sister Cecilia’s religion is to make atonement for herself, through her own efforts, rather than to receive the atonement offered in Christ. The Mother Superior’s response is to make sure that all the nuns treat Cecilia with acceptance, love and honour: this is effective because it is follows the dynamic of grace, not works.

It turns out, many chapters later, that the root of Ragnhild’s bitterness lies in the rape she suffered as a young woman. To cover up their shame, the family arranged her marriage to the young and inexperienced Lavrans, who ever afterwards felt that she was not the woman of his choice but was thrust upon him. Though he sought to be an exemplary husband and always treated her respectfully, Lavrans’ lack of enthusiasm for her compounded her wounded self-worth. Because he never gave his heart to her, Ragnhild could only feel unloved and unlovely. A classic reaction of secrecy, uncommunicated feelings, guilt and self-loathing followed. On a very deep level she experiences Lavrans’ disengagement as rejection, intensified by the artifice of his niceness. So here are two desperately hurting people whose deepest need is clearly to reach out to each other but, because of their pain, are completely unable to do so. Neither is at fault. Both accuse themselves. 

Undset gradually unfolds all this with extraordinary insight and compassion. But she is leading us to a most beautifully related reconciliation (pages 544-50 of my Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). They have now been married for 34 years and Lavrans is dying. He gives her a ring he has always kept for himself exclusively. Clearly this ring is symbolic of his heart, his deepest self, that innermost private being he has until now never shared. This is both a statement of sorrow and repentance, acknowledging the great wounding he has inflicted upon her by his coldness, but better, the communication of the love for which they are both starving:

With this last ring (referring back to the betrothal and wedding rings he gave before) she felt as if he were marrying her again. Now that she would soon sit beside his lifeless body, he wanted her to know that with this ring he was committing to her the strong and vital force that had lived in this dust and ashes.

Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the furthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at the world’s end.

Undset seems to be describing the painful birth of agape, the divine love, through all the torments Ragnhild has endured in her quest for human love. Like Kristin’s experience of God’s presence in the church at Oslo, like the bush that burns and is not consumed, it does not negate but completes and heals the broken human love in which it took root.

For the author presents this poignant and moving story in deeply Christian terms: repentance, forgiveness, love. They go back in their minds to the church where they were married in the presence of God. They kneel before the crucifix, symbol of the terrible woundedness of love, and pray the evening prayers. Before they sleep, Ragnhild reflects that:

God had not forsaken her. In His mercy, He had heard her cries for help when she called on Him, as she sank more and more into her misery – even when she called without believing she would be heard. It felt as if the black sea were rushing over her, now the waves lifted her towards a bliss so strange and so sweet that she knew it would carry her out of life.

“Talk to me, Lavrans,” she implored him quietly. “I’m so tired.” Her husband whispered, “Venite ad me, omnes qui laborate et onerati estis. Ego reficiam vos.”

Undset clearly believes, as I do, that since God is love, and we are made in His image, then it is our great destiny to love and to be loved: and that because of this, nothing is so fulfilling and enriching for us as when love goes well, and nothing is so painful or destructive for us as when love goes badly.

Another reconciliation that takes place in this episode of Ragnhild and Lavrans’ love concerns her questioning why Lavrans seemed to take it so calmly, apparently at least, when she first told him another man had taken her before she became his. The thought of her wounded mind was that he could not have cared enough for her to be affected by her “betrayal.” But Lavrans explains what went through his mind on page 549: “I thought about all the times I had betrayed Christ.” We are both fallen, broken human beings, how could I berate or blame you, as you expected, when I am no better than you?

A great poignancy underlying these pages is that Lavrans is experiencing symptoms of the heart disease that, over the next couple of chapters, will kill him. He is, in various other matters, but especially in this most important matter, aiming at the Christian tradition of a good death: one in which, as far as possible, wrongs are set right, those who have been injured are asked for forgiveness, and forgiveness is offered to those who have caused injury, that Gospel peace and reconciliation are established. It is very bittersweet that Lavrans and Ragnhild are only able to establish this right at the end of their lives. It is very beautiful that they establish it at all.

I just want to conclude this long section on Lavrans and Ragnhild by commenting on Undset’s masterly use of symbolism. This quality is present throughout the novel but there’s a great example here. Lavrans arrives late one night after a deeply sorrowful parting from their daughter Kristin and sees a flicker of light at the window. His heart is warmed. The light of home clearly symbolises the home and the relationship they have shared together, for sure enough, it comes from Ragnhild, who is waiting up for him. There she is, mending his clothes. He takes a spool of the thread she is using, its spindle ornamented with the carving of a bird. He remembers carving it and others like it through their years together. It is damaged: he repairs it, taking out his knife and whittling it anew… The spool is the winding of their life together over the years, the knife is the pain that has accompanied it too much of the time, but this time there will be repair, not more pain. The clothes Ragnhild mends are Lavrans’ riding breeches, worn from many hours in the saddle – hours that probably took him away from her too many times… everything connects to the texture of their 34 years together. But it’s not an imposed symbolism. Each object is a symbol of their life together because it has been part of that life, the objects are themselves the texture of their joys and sorrows. It’s very beautifully done.

But it’s time to get back to Kristin, it’s her book after all! While staying at the convent in Oslo, she bumps into Erlend, and they quickly fall in love, plus a massive amount of lust, with each other. There are huge difficulties, including the fact that Kristin is engaged to the man her parents have chosen for her, and that Erlend has a very mixed past, including children by an ex. 

These problems are compounded when Kristin falls pregnant by Erlend. But somehow they battle through. Kristin’s fiancé, who deeply loves her, and whose story would make a substantial novel on its own, accepts that her heart has been given to another and reluctantly gives way, marrying her sister on the rebound. In a scene of grand guignol (there’ve been enough spoilers already, so I won’t say more), the problem of Erlend’s ex is cleared away.

They finally marry – but this is not a happily ever after story! Erlend brings her home to his massive estate, where chaos reigns, because Erlend simply has no interest in or aptitude for running it. He’d sooner be hunting or commanding his warriors in battle. As a result of his indifference, everything is filthy, nobody does anything, and poor Kristin is expected to manage a household in which she is a complete stranger. 

Through sheer firmness of character, and through various battles, while rearing a large brood of children, she brings order, and with it, prosperity and happiness, to the estate and the large number of people who are part of it. Kristin arrives as a sort of Flora Post figure, taking civilisation to Cold Comfort Farm. Undset presents a powerful female character who overcomes and who makes a big difference to the betterment of other people’s lives. Erlend needs Kristin for more than she needs him. She is undoubtedly the stronger character. And so they row constantly in this attraction / repulsion of opposites.

Contemplating Undset’s feminism as above reminds me that I found myself having to stop reading several times for sheer embarrassment and shame at being a man – the readiness to appropriate women’s bodies, futures, feelings and relationships, and use them for their own ends... Undset doesn’t lecture her readers about this, she just tells it, as part of the texture of her characters’ lives, and it cuts all the deeper for that.

This is literature working as it should, isn’t it, opening up insights on other people’s lives, viewing them from the inside, and thus enabling us to experience something of life as they experience it, to empathise. If it is painful sometimes to see ourselves as others see us, that is a healthy pain. It’s also a very different take on literature to a contemporary one in which literature seems to be treated as a branch of women’s studies: women should write for women and men with their stupid thrillers and potboilers should keep out! It is sad to contemplate this narrowing of empathy.

I’ve probably given away far too much plot already. Let’s talk about Undset’s Catholicism for a bit. It’s notable how well served Pre-Reformation Norway is served by its beautiful churches and transcendentally inspiring  music. Several times Kristin approaches and then enters a church building new to her and is overpowered with awe by their lofty construction, gorgeous stained glass and beautiful singing. Question: at what point do these amazing aesthetics cease to be vehicles for the presence of the One who transcends them all and become objects of adoration in their own right? Is this the point of the scene where Lavrans’ beloved village church is struck by lightning and burns to the ground? Has it come to mean more to its parishioners than God Himself? As with so many other events, Undset describes but does not comment. Her art is to leave it to us to respond in our own way…

Its priests are also amazingly effective. There is one who isn’t particularly helpful and another who is a scoundrel and rapist, whom Kristin manages to fight off early in her story. Otherwise they are holy, humble, wise, intelligent, excellent communicators, highly motivated, with a deep concern for the welfare of their flock. How far this is from the highly fallible church we hear about in today’s media!

In setting all this out Undset shows considerable theological acuity. For example there is a very interesting discussion between the impulsive Erlend, Kristin’s husband, and his brother Gunnulf, a priest in the mould mentioned above, who is increasingly Kristin’s mentor. The two brothers are very close, with a deep love for one another, and some parallels in their histories: for example, Erlend goes forth as a chieftain to fight the Finns, while Gunnulf goes forth as a missionary to evangelise them (incidentally, for any Finns reading this, sadly you don’t get a very good press in Kristin Lavransdatter - It’s still a magnificent novel though!) The brothers have just bade farewell to Kristin, who has set off on a pilgrimage to Trondheim Cathedral to seek atonement for her sins.

Erlend and Gunnulf fall into a discussion of Erlend’s history with Kristin, revealing a deep divergence in their understanding of sin. Erlend is trying to convince himself that he neither sinned nor dragged Kristin into sin when they made love before their marriage, firstly because they had made vows to one another which were binding in God’s sight, and secondly because there had been no legal marriage to Eline, the mother of his children, and their sexual relationship had come to an end. Gunnulf isn’t having it. Erlend came very close to destroying permanently Kristin’s standing in society, implicated her in deceiving the sisters at the nunnery, trampled on the feelings of her parents and her fiancé, and would cheerfully have thrown Auntie Aashild to the lions to get his way.

In short, Erlend’s view of sin is transgressional: did you break the rules? If not, fine! It leads to a “how much can I get away with without technically breaking the rules” approach. Gunnulf’s is relational: “how many people did you hurt?” Erlend’s self-centred actions left a trail of damaged people in his wake. This offends the God who is love. He gave commandments, not so we could appear righteous to ourselves by ticking boxes, but to protect the vulnerable from the harmful actions of their exploiters.

Another interesting dimension is the interaction with pre-Christian spiritualities. You get the feeling, in little incidents scattered throughout the book, that C13th Norway, while avowedly Christian, is only a few steps away from paganism. Just a few paces from the forest trail or past the edges of the fields, or during a famine or a difficult childbirth, there are spirits with their own non-human agendas, powers to be invoked or placated, even rites to be tried out if the church or the saints won’t help. As a sincere Christian, Lavrans removes pagan imagery from the family home – but this leaves many members of his household feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

Yet again Undset doesn’t give a sermon on the Catholic view of such things, she just presents it as part of the texture of the people’s stories. Two particular incidents stick in the mind. Very early on, while she is still a girl, Kristin gets lost in the hills. She sees a beautiful girl child about her own age, but of some sort of faery kin; but there is a bond of some sort between them. Did it really happen? Was it a projection of her distress at being lost? Or some sort of dream? Undset doesn’t tell us, she just lets it resonate… But Aashild, who has the reputation of being a witch, and it is never resolved whether this is a justified reputation or not, advises her not to speak of it. 

Much darker is an event at the end of the story. The plague has swept through Norway and destroyed whole communities, including most of Kristin’s family. Erlend is now dead and Kristin has become a nun. She learns of a plot to sacrifice a child, the son, with severe learning difficulties, of a desperately poor widow. The people are frantic, reduced to absolute despair by the terror of the plague and, as God has not responded to their prayers, they want to turn back to the Old Ways. With amazing strength of character, Kristin confronts them and prevents the murder. She then goes to find and comfort the widowed mother – whom she finds dying of the plague. In a St Francis like action, she holds the mother in her arms, contracts the disease herself, and soon after dies horrifically.

I felt terrible after reading this. Not Kristin, not like this… Undset is unsparing. Yet so is life. We must all face our own mortality, and most forms of death, especially long drawn out ones, are pretty squalid. Undset doesn’t leave us with a happy ending, any more than life does. Perhaps Kristin has witnessed faithfully to Christ, who died in the place of the wretched woman’s child so that he wouldn’t have to, so that no further sacrifice can ever be valid... Perhaps she has acted for “the least of these my brethren” and therefore for the Son of Man, and will be welcomed to the place prepared for her… Perhaps she has returned to her first calling and first love in the via contemplativa, having had the via activa with Erlend so terribly wrenched away from her… Perhaps she has taken up her cross and given herself completely in love for God and others… But we have to bring whatever our own faith may be to the story to answer these questions, for Undset won’t preach to us.

One last reflection on Undset’s faith. Isn’t it the case that her Christianity, far from narrowing the humanity of her novel, as carping secular critics were wont to assert of Christian writing in the twentieth century, has actually vastly deepened and broadened it? Isn’t the tenderness, expressiveness, pathos, beauty and compassion of Kristin Lavransdatter deeply rooted in the Gospel of God incarnated in humanity and suffering for and with us? Doesn’t it open up sympathies, symbols, insights and perspectives that are simply not available on naturalistic terms?

Of course there are poor Christian novelists, and good secular ones. But if we look to the great novelists from the heyday of the sort of huge epic novel I find myself increasingly drawn to these days, it’s those Christian perspectives on suffering, redemption, love and death, the value of every human being in the eyes of God and the compassion that springs from that value, that give them their power and reach – their humanity. I’m thinking Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Manzoni, Dickens. I’m going to squeeze George Eliot in there: though she succumbed with regret to “the Germans” and abandoned her faith, she was still imbued with its values through her Christian upbringing. And I’m going to go forward into the C20th and 21st and rejoice in the works of Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Donna Tartt and Francis Spufford (see reviews elsewhere on this blog) which for me reach higher than many of their contemporaries because they have a Christian foundation to build upon.

And now to end where we began, many paragraphs ago, with the TLS. It made the point that Sigrid Undset was born in the same year as Virginia Woolf, and their novels were appearing at the same time. For all their experimentation, for me Woolf’s work seems unstructured, self-indulgent and shallow by comparison. There, I’ve said the unsayable and offended everyone. But where is the reach? Where is the compassion? Where is the humanity?

 

Lucky Per, Henrik Pontoppidan

 

I don't think this Nobel prize winning novel is very much known in England, though I gather it is still very famous in Denmark and well regarded in much of Northern Europe. I certainly hadn't heard of it and yet again am grateful to the Times Literary Supplement for bringing it to may attention.

This is a painful read for people like me who have come to the Christian faith and found it joyous and fulfilling, alongside its many challenges. Per is brought up in a repressed and repressive Church family, so much so that the only way he can find any freedom or sense of being himself is to throw it all over and start again as an atheist. Then after years of searching he eventually finds his way back to the faith of his father – only to discover ultimately that it still doesn’t work for him and turn his back on God, at least as Christians understand Him, forever. More of this later, after a general survey of Pontoppidan’s masterpiece.

One service Lucky Per does in fact render to Christianity is its identification of atheism with the Oedipus complex. I have several times been told by arguably rather arrogant atheists who don’t know anything about me at all that belief in God comes from nothing more than my “daddy issues.” Unfortunately for their point of view, the Oedipus complex is the best attested daddy issue in psychological literature. So we may just as legitimately ask whether atheism is nothing but the desire to murder one’s father… 

That’s certainly Per Sidonius’s case. Dad, who is a Danish Lutheran pastor, and the distant judicial god who is the projection of dad’s judgmental mind, must both be rejected and trodden down if Per is to achieve any individuality. Pastor Sidenius presiding over the dinner table surrounded by his eleven offspring is a parallel Christ with his eleven disciples, and it’s Per who becomes cast as Judas in their eyes.

There is a further resonance with the story of the Prodigal Son, though Per doesn’t spend his capital on wild living and prostitutes (Luke 15:13 and 30). Yes he has affairs and associates with a  bohemian crowd: but his inner wealth is his genius for vast engineering projects. This is the far country to which Per flees, manifested in the city of Copenhagen where he hatches his masterpiece (his “Tower of Babel” as he calls it on p.288 of the Everyman edition). And of course as the Prodigal Son he has to have a disapproving older brother, a role more than adequately fulfilled by his brother Eberhart. At one point they meet and talk in a conversation entirely lacking in understanding or empathy. Eberhart says, “Of course we don’t judge you” – while it is very obvious that he and the whole family do.

Anyway Per sees his new friends and lovers, together with his own plans, as the herald of a new age in which Man (I should say humankind of course but Pontoppidan / Per says Man) throws off the shackles of superstitious priestcraft, seizes his destiny and achieves mastery over nature. Interestingly some of Per’s ideas, such as the harnessing of Denmark’s abundance of wind and wave power to produce energy, are back with us in a big way today. I recently flew over Denmark on a journey to Finland and there is an amazing number of wind turbines down there.

Although the novel is set in the lateish nineteenth century Per’s views seem to me more of the eighteenth century, at least as we experienced it in the UK: the triumph of rationalism, empiricism and utilitarianism. A character known as Dr Nathan, thought by the commentators to represent the historical Georg Brandes, a friend of the author’s, is a Voltaire figure who calls for the abandonment of the medieval faith that has held Denmark back for so long. 

However Per doesn’t stay in that Enlightenment mode for very long. When he goes on a premature honeymoon in the Alps with his long suffering fiancée Jakobe, he feels a Coleridgeian imaginative response to the imperturbable silent eternity of the mountains – see Hymn before sunrise in the Vale of Chamounis for the sort of thing, or Caspar David Friedrich’s alpine paintings. In effect Per, who is also under the influence of Jakobe’s ecstatic love for him, perceives the littleness of his engagement with utilitarianism by contrast with the vast beauty of his surroundings. It’s empty, it appealed to his mind but it cannot fill the soul which now awakens within him. Per comes to believe that, in the end, little humanity will never overthrow great nature. So Per is moving in parallel with the development of Western culture from Christendom to Enlightenment to Romanticism. The spirit of the Lake Poets awakens in him…

But this provokes a crisis because it compromises the whole foundation of Per’s life goals up to this point. Who exactly is Per? Is he the good Christian boy his family intended? Is he the heroic engineer who will yank Denmark into a brave new future? Is he the hedonistic lover of many women? The good fellow whose apparent openness wins over people’s hearts? Or the calculating man of the world in search of the main chance? Or now, could he be a great soul tugged heavenward by the majesty of the Alps? 

There is a resemblance here to another Bible source, the Book of Ecclesiastes, with its “Vanity of vanities” theme. In chapter 2 the writer tries everything his world has to offer: hedonism, “great projects”, the arts, philosophy. He finds it all meaningless. Nothing satisfies his desire for fulfilment. Per shares in this crisis of meaning, has a breakdown and runs away from everything – his project, his financial backers, his fiancée, the Alps – to try and work out the answers in the depths of rural Denmark.

This is where he falls in with Pastor Blomberg, who apparently is a stand in for a historical Dane, Pastor Grundtvig, who led a revival of sorts of Christianity in Denmark and is still apparently a major cultural influence. Blomberg also has an extremely attractive daughter, Inger. Per abandons Jakobe and attaches himself to both the Pastor’s daughter and his faith.

But this is a book full of shadow twins. Per has one in his brother Eberhardt. Jakobe has one in her lascivious sister Nanny. They take us deeper into the story and the characterisation by giving a very different point of view of the one Pontoppidan initially shows us. Nanny seems merely attractive and fun-loving until through Jakobe we see her in a different way. Per might be taken for a hero until Eberhardt shows us how shoddily he treats other people. There is a constant undercutting of our previously built up perceptions of various characters which the author seems deliberately to employ in order to unsettle us and make us question whether they all have depths which neither the people themselves, nor the other characters, nor the reader can fully get to grips with, a modernist view of personality as unfixed and unstable.

Pastor Blomberg also has a shadow twin in his fellow Pastor Fjaltring, whose much grimmer and more cross-centred faith makes Blomberg seem bland and superficial. There is a passage where Blomberg addresses a festival gathering and it’s all about the purity of the mother tongue, the virtues of Danish culture and people, land and race. It doesn’t have any Christianity, doesn’t even mention Jesus, it’s sentimental nineteenth century romantic nationalism of the kind that turned into twentieth century militarism and Hitlerism. Per’s meetings and discussions with the melancholic Fjaltring completely deflate this theological blancmange.

But Fjaltring is too extreme to take as a guide and Blomberg is too neutral to inspire. Between them Per ends up unable to feel at home either among Christians or in the world, neither one thing not the other. So he falls away from Christianity altogether.

After a crisis with her parents, Per tries to explain his dark moods to Inger, who is now his wife and has borne him children. He says, “I haven’t (believed in God) for a long time. Everywhere I looked for Him I found only myself. And for those who know themselves well, God is superfluous. For him there is nothing either consoling or frightening in the representation of such a supernatural being that is thought of either as a father or judge.” 

Sadly, in spite of his words, Per doesn’t seem to know himself at all, he has barely been able to keep in touch with all the different Pers that have been flowing through him at various times. It is possible that he has overlooked one of the benefits of Christianity, that of knowing a God who knows me better than I know myself, and letting those parts of my being that are hidden and mysterious to my consciousness be held in the mindfulness of God. It is certainly, in Christian terms, a very narrow view of God that confines Him to the roles of father and judge. What about Saviour? Stream of living water? Friend? Good Shepherd? Bread of life? Jesus spoke of his mission in terms of fulfilment when He said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” This fulness of life is the pearl rejected by unlucky Per.

So is Per lucky or unlucky? He certainly has an amazing knack for getting his way. He needs money? People queue up to throw it at him. Sex? Any woman he fancies melts into his arms. Power? With a couple of exceptions, everyone he meets believes in him and his projects and gives an unbelievable amount of support to him. Spirituality? One trip to the mountains is all it takes to set his soul soaring. But unluckily none of these things is able to bring him the fulfilment he seeks…? But luckily he sees through them and renounces them…?

Is then the reason Per renounces everything at the end because it all came much too easily? Or is it because in some way there’s nobody there inside him to receive all these gifts? He’s had very strong emotions and experiences, but they’ve all come in episodes, none of them lasted that long. It’s like he’s kept swapping personalities all his life until finally he just gets too tired to keep on doing it. 

He says, “We seek a meaning in life, an aim for our struggles and suffering. But one day we are stopped by a voice from the depths of our being, a ghostly voice that asks, ‘Who are you?’ From then on, we hear no other question… Is what we call the soul merely a passing mood?  … Or do we have as many souls in us as there are cards in a game of Cuckoo? Every time you shuffle the deck a new face appears: a jester, a soldier, a night owl.”

For me, for all its Buddhist overtones, Per’s final days look like a kind of suicide rather than the attainment of enlightenment. Some of his “shadow twins” have committed suicide, like his rival for the love of a society mistress in his early days in Copenhagen, or the depressive Pastor Fjaltring, and I think Pontoppidan leads us to expect Per to follow their example. But his suicide is social, personal and aesthetic rather than physical as he rejects his wife and children and goes to live far away from his friends in the most barren and inhospitable part of Denmark he can find. 

I view this as an act of self harm, not a spiritual renunciation. He says he can now truly be himself, but we, and I’m sure he, still have no idea who he really is. One refrain that pops up two or three times in the course of his journey is that of a cave troll who is drawn to the light and to human society but who also can’t cope with it and so always returns to his gloomy cave. Somewhere in there among all the Pers is therefore a person who has a deeply negative self image. 

This I think connects with Per’s off / on / off relationship with God. As he says himself, “I looked for God but I found only myself.” If his view of himself is so maimed, then his view of God is maimed too. If he is an unlovable cave troll then there must also be something wrong with the God who says He loves him. This is painfully manifest in the attitude Per takes when he has abandoned his schemes, his patrons, and his fiancée, who is his most direct connection to wealth and power. Having rejected all of this, he blames God for wanting him to be poor and needy and decides that God is doing it to force him to make atonement for his past sins. 

This is not the God who forgives! This is not the Father who welcomes back His prodigal but beloved son! Per has no conception of the grace of God. He, not the Lord of the Cross, must make atonement. Somewhere among his final thoughts, Per expresses his regret that he was baptised as an infant into the Christian faith, as if the crucifixion were the kiss of death. There is no resurrection in Per’s distorted version of Christianity.

I would like to hear from women readers what they think of Pontoppidan’s female characters. I felt one part of the ending, where we are to believe that not just one but both of the women he has been closest to, made love to, who have borne his children, but whom he has now jilted and rejected, trampling on their most intimate feelings, these women come to thank him for doing so. One, his wife Inger, writes a letter of thanks. She would not have remarried a man more suited to her and to the children if Per had not divorced her. The other, his fiancée Jakobe, when she hears that Per has died, also thanks him. His rejection of her enabled her to find her destiny in caring for poor children.

I just don’t believe this. I think a high-minded or a pious woman might be very capable of finding meaning and purpose in a profoundly negative experience, and even of perceiving a duty to forgive Per – but to thank him? Come on!

More positively, I think Jakobe is absolutely wonderful. I wonder whether women readers, in this age where men are felt to be underequipped to portray female characters, find her as vivid as I do?  She is so passionate, so principled, so full of fire and tenderness, of soul and intellect, that I’m sure every reader will feel Per’s biggest mistake ever was to turn his back on her. Per doesn’t even bother to find out that she is expecting their child. What a skunk. She has given everything to him, heart, soul and body and he just sends a letter. Jakobe is the real hero of this story. Her going on to work with underprivileged children is a testimony to her own resilience and resolution, not to anything Per did for her by rejecting her. By comparison with Jakobe Per’s episodism comes to seem shallow.

One final reflection on Christianity in relation to Lucky Per. Pontoppidan was ahead of our post-modern times in presenting character as protean, indeterminate, essentially fluid. We have completed a journey here which began in Christianity, led through enlightenment and romanticism and is now meandering through the muddy delta of post-modernism. But I think Pontoppidan, from the viewpoint of structuring his novel around a main protagonist, takes it too far. It feels as though we are trying to connect with a person who isn’t really there, or if, momentarily, he is, won’t stay there for very long. 

Though I see this as a fault in Lucky Per, it nevertheless reminds me that character has fluidity in Christianity too. In the Christian universe the real me is someone who is known only to God, not very much to others and often not to myself. Therefore character in Christianity is a process of formation, not a steady state, and we should not be the same at the end of the process as we were at the beginning, or we have stagnated, and are of the tomb rather than the resurrection. It’s a journey of metanoia, discipleship and personal growth that demands change, “from one degree of glory to another,” God and I working together to release the true potential God put inside me and to achieve the destiny He desires for me in Christ.

So will I keep this book? Space is very limited on the bookshelf these days, and I often write these reviews to retain some handle on what inspired or gripped me in them so that I can move the actual ink and paper book along. If I do keep it, it will be for Jakobe, not Per.

The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan

 

The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan

The Earth Transformed is truly planetary in its scope and ambition. It's 658 numbered pages don't even include introductory material, plates, index, or the very comprehensive footnotes: to see those you will have to go to the publisher's website at bloomsbury.com and search there. It is unfortunate that there doesn't appear to be any mention of the whereabouts of the footnotes in the published edition. Just as well that they are online though because this is already one bulky tome and to include the thousands of footnotes would make it too awkward for use.

Frankopan takes us back temporally 4.5 billion years to the formation of the earth and forward into the future. We travel upwards and outwards from the earth’s core to ocean depths and land masses, then through the atmosphere to the farthest reaches of the solar system. Even more impressive is the scale of his learning. He has not only mastered the histories of most cultures in most parts of the world, he has also immersed himself in all the latest research on anthropology, biochemistry, climatology, dendrochronology, epidemiology, all the way through to zoology, and goodness knows how many other disciplines besides. 

However I am concerned about one or two errors of fact and interpretation that I have come across. Most of my knowledge, especially over such a vast purview, is general and fairly superficial. Often it's acquired through my pursuit of literature, rather than academic research into say ethnology. So when I come across statements that from this limited perspective I know to be inaccurate, it weakens my confidence in the project as a whole: what if there are similar mistakes present in other areas I know far less about? I'm very impressed by the breadth of Frankopan's learning, but I don't have the means to assess its depth. Here are two examples that have caused me concern:

• John Newton is castigated on page 363 for hypocritically writing hymn lyrics about being set free from his chains in Christ while having participated in the slave trade. There is a massive error of fact here and an even bigger failure of perspective. The words quoted are not by Newton, they are a 21st century insertion into his hymn Amazing Grace in a reworking of it as a contemporary worship song, one I have sung myself in Church. It's easy to look up Newton's words in the Olney Hymns, on which I wrote a dissertation while studying English Lit at Cambridge. If you do so you will not find the offending words but you will notice that the insertion is not even in the same metre as Newton's original. But that's piffling compared to the implied charge that Newton's sympathies were all with the slave traders. He certainly was sent to sea as a boy, press ganged into the Navy, became a slave himself at one point, and sailed on a number of slave ships. He led an unimaginably hard life in those days. However he rejected this wicked past and took a very prominent part in the abolition movement, writing pamphlets and preaching powerfully against slavery, and mentoring the young William Wilberforce. Is Frankopan unaware of these salient facts? Or is he going along with a contemporary campaign to discredit Newton, also manifest in Empireland, reviewed elsewhere in this blog?
• Also on the subject of British involvement with slavery, on page 366 Frankopan badly misrepresents Lord Mansfield's handling of the notorious Zong* massacre. Mansfield, who was Chief Justice at the time, is stated to have approved of the slaughter by throwing overboard of a number of slaves on the grounds that they were merely chattels, on a par with farm animals. This totally horrifying view is probably nonetheless a fair statement of British Law at the time. However the case actually came to Mansfield on appeal, after the lower court had found for the ship owners and against the insurers. Mansfield summarised the findings of the jury in the lower court as above, but clearly did not approve of their view, because he decided in favour of the insurers and against the wicked ship owners. That Mansfield was a prominent abolitionist I again discovered through literature: an anniversary programme on the BBC was trying to establish that Jane Austen was a firebrand social activist on the basis of a single remark in her novel Mansfield Park - and also on the much more substantial grounds that its titular setting emblazoned the name of a known abolitionist, Lord Mansfield. Suspicions aroused, I checked it all out on Wikipedia...

It is very much to be hoped that these errors will be corrected in any future edition, and especially that there aren't more lurking in areas where I don't have sufficient knowledge to discern them. Nevertheless the focus of The Earth Transformed is not on particular details but on the state of our interactions with our home planet, and its strength is in its mind-bogglingly comprehensive overview . If you have ever bemoaned the fissiparation of knowledge into ever tinier areas of specialism that become more and more remote from one another and from the awareness of ordinary people, fear not! Peter Frankopan is out there: he gets it and is doing something about it. He wants to see how raft after raft of new discoveries stack up together, and thus give a big picture – a Frankopanorama - of what we are doing to the planet and what it is doing to us.

Some of his key findings:

• The earth has always been in a state of flux. Conditions were originally unrecognisably different from anything we experience today and would have been lethal to contemporary life forms. Changes have come in the form of cataclysms: asteroid impacts, massive volcanic events, the collisions of continents, soaring and plummeting temperatures, orbital changes for both the earth and moon… There have been periods of relative stability too, when the various forces that circulate energy round the world have been in balance: but only until the next catastrophe. The idea that the state of the world is pretty much a given, roughly what it is now, is an illusion deriving from our ignorance of the deep past.

• Climate is an important driver of this flux. Frankopan is not in any way a climate change denier. The research he quotes shows a clear correlation between higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past and raised temperatures, and between lower levels and reduced temperatures. The connection is indisputable. Climate change deniers have to accept that the world’s climate is changing, as the evidence is there: but they attribute this to “natural cycles,” in a naïve way that omits to examine the role that levels of CO2 play in those cycles. Does it matter how the CO2 gets there? It’s still going to warm the planet, however it comes, isn’t it? So why add more when there's already a problem? Stop junking our atmosphere, you oil barons!

• Climate directly impacts human history, including pestilences, famines, migrations, the economy, the winners and losers of political struggles and so on. So for example, a wetter climate across Central Asia allowed the hordes more fodder for their horses and enabled repeated incursions Westward into Europe: a period of stable warmth supported the crops that underpinned Roman prosperity and expansion: rainfall promoted the rise of South American civilisations and droughts led to their fall. However this requires more nuance than many recent historians have given us. Why for example did the Romans succeed in benefitting from the Roman Warm Period in ways that their many rivals, Etruscans, Persians, Carthaginians, Dacians, did not? Was it military might? Or better administration? Or those beautifully engineered aqueducts that enabled the expansion of Roman cities? Or why did a grassier steppe enable the Mongols to spread West, but did not lead to Europe spreading East? What were the cultural differences that set Eastern expansion against Western defensiveness? 

• These questions militate against pure climatic determinism, thus putting human agency back into the mix. Was one people better organised, or more adaptable, or technologically or culturally better resourced than another, to resist adverse conditions and benefit from favourable ones? Like other forms of fatalism, climatic determinism robs us of decision. As it defines human strategies and policies for making the most of the conditions we inhabit, this enquiry – how we deal with the conditions that confront us - is of first importance. 

• Volcanic eruptions are a constant bass underpinning this vast song of the Earth. Huge clouds of particles block out the Sun, suspend photosynthesis, reduce plant growth and plunge the world into famine, often for years at a time. Some concentrated bouts of eruptions seem to have permanently altered the entire biosphere: but even the lesser eruptions of historical times have brought massive effects. My take on this is that recurrent proposals to artificially introduce reflective particles into Earth’s atmosphere in order to combat global warming by shielding us from solar radiation is absolute lunacy. We will duplicate the effects of all those eruptions: less photosynthesis, reduced crops, smaller harvests, it all adds up to starvation for the world’s burgeoning human population. Worse, it will actually be counterproductive since photosynthesis is the leading means of reducing atmospheric C02. Please, anybody who reads these words, speak out against this dangerous stupidity!

So how to make use of this monumental opus? It is so wide-ranging yet so detailed that any attempt to absorb it in one go is certain to fail: I really tried! In fact I'm a second read through now, to try to pick up on all the matter that flooded past me first time, and that's why this review keeps being updated. Like this book, Frankopan’s earlier and very popular The Silk Roads took a very broad survey of its subject through time and space, but The Earth Transformed feels like it is telling multiple stories rather than just one. This may be why it tends to exhaust rather than inform. Much better to take it as a reference book. Dip into particular epochs or cultures or places in the massive index, read what amounts to an essay on the subject you are exploring, then investigate further using Bloomsbury's footnotes, while checking out names, places, movements, technologies etc on Wikipedia. All the best with that!

* Zong was the name of the slave ship concerned.

Baltic - the future of Europe: Oliver Moody

 

The motivation for this timely book is renewed Russian aggression in Europe. Post Cold War stability has been severely shaken up following the invasion of Ukraine. Various countries formerly within the Soviet sphere are asking themselves, “Who will be in Putin’s sights next?” Formerly neutral nations – Finland and Sweden – have abandoned neutrality and joined NATO, despite Russian warnings, in search of security: but Donald Trump’s blinkered America First rhetoric has left them wondering whether they made the right choice. It was shocking to see all the various actions of Russian sabotage, harassment and surveillance listed together in one volume. Moody leaves us in no doubt that Russian hostility, only just below the level of open warfare, always testing and probing for vulnerabilities, is the reality of European political life.

Oliver Moody is a journalist who has worked for The Times in Northern Europe since 2018 and is a thoughtful contributor to The Times Literary Supplement. As well as seeking a strategic overview of the situation in the Baltic region, he is concerned to introduce us to some its lesser known nations, particularly the frontline states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They, together with Finland and Poland, will be first up in any Ukraine-style assault on Western Europe. Do they have the resolve and the resources to make Putin think twice? And what sort of support might they receive from other European powers?

I had a personal motivation for choosing this book. I am married to a Finn and frequently travel there to meet up with friends and family. I know firsthand how Finns reacted to the Ukraine war and to America’s recent anti-Europe stance. Having declared independence from revolutionary Russia in 1917, and fought a war of survival against them in 1939, and having Europe’s longest land border with them, Finland is seriously worried about the ambitions of their long term enemy. 

I have also been to Tallin via a ferry from Helsinki, shortly after Estonia’s exit from the Soviet empire. There I witnessed for myself the economic devastation visited on the country by their former masters. I wasn’t there very long, but the sight of a grandmother standing by the side of the road, trying to sell a couple of chipped teacups to be able to get a bit of bread for her family, has stuck with me. I also witnessed the sense of kinship with Finland, whose businesses were investing heavily in the country and already helping to bring about the Estonian resurgence so manifest today.

I certainly learned a lot about Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (“the Baltic states”) from Baltic – as Moody rightly supposes, like most English speakers I have just about heard of them but have little further knowledge. There are potted descriptions of their pre- and post-Soviet histories, literature, national myths, musical traditions and other cultural strata, leading to an assessment of their resilience, particularly in terms of the strength of their sense of identity as peoples who have been subjected to russification and are determined never ever to go back there again. 

Baltic expects that the nations in the region will have national psyches that are reflected in their legends and cultures and are played out in their political and strategic aspirations. Estonia’s “Singing Revolution” is a great case in point: that country’s powerful choral traditions led its people to gather and sing as an act of resistance that helped to break Russian rule. 

Nonetheless Moody’s assessment has a rather nineteenth century feel to it, reminiscent of all those people who went about collecting folk songs, collating local tales into national epics whose episodes were then interpreted by leading artists of the day, championing their languages against those that had cultural ascendancy over them, and generally cultivating the late Romantic nationalisms that united some nations – Italy, Germany – and are still creating subdivisions in others – Basque and Irish separatism and the break up of Yugoslavia, among others. Finland is a great example of late 19th century nationalist awakening: Elias Lonnröt collated various folk tale fragments into the Kalevala, which were then iconised in music and paint by Jean Sibelius and Axeli Gallen-Kallela, and went on to challenge both Russian political and Swedish cultural hegemonies. Their new sense of identity made the Finns ready to seize their own destiny in 1917. 

This ferment undoubtedly brewed up negative as well as positive cultural effects. Arguably imperialism, colonialism, the first world war, and fascism are all dreams of romantic nationalism which soured into nightmares. An increasingly sceptical Europe turned from its Christian roots and made idols of its nations, which ended up, in the way of idolatries, devouring their children…

So is Moody right to look to a strong sense of national identity as the best way to repel Russian domination? He certainly does justice to the complexity of the issues in the Baltic states. After Stalinist russification Estonia was nearly 50% Russophone, so a key aim of the newly liberated nation was to suppress that alien culture, phasing out the teaching of Russian in schools, and closing down Russophile political parties and media. It’s very telling that although many people of Russian heritage are unhappy with these changes, none of them are so unhappy that they choose to return eastwards. 

But it’s also troubling for readers in a UK context, where the great aim seems to be to downplay ethnic and cultural difference so that we can all get along. Does this mean we are effete westerners who no longer have enough sense of our cultural and historical identity to resist 21st century aggressors and oppressors? Is cultural homogeneity too high a price to pay for national resilience? Do we need to become politically and culturally more conservative to withstand Russian ambition, and perhaps add to the growing list of “strong men” playing at identity politics among contemporary world leaders? Let’s hope not – but Baltic might have benefitted from further interrogation of these underlying issues.

What is apparent is Moody’s admiration for these small but tough and determined states. They are facing up to the challenges of Russian expansion and preparing to make Putin regret invading them if it comes to that. Having experience of Finnish “sisu” I get the attitude. They gave the Soviets a bloody nose in 1939 and if forced to are prepared to do it again: they have universal military service, up to date equipment and enough bunkers to shelter every single one of their 5 million population. Did you see the recent Scandinavia series on the BBC? It’s clear that Simon Reeves shares Moody’s admiration.

However facing down the overwhelming domination of Russia in arms and manpower will require some measure of unity among resisting countries. Moody evaluates the will to resist in each of the other states in the region, with varying results. Shakiest in his view is Germany, sadly enough as they are the largest West European nation in terms of population and economy. He sees them as still attached to the Ostpolitik of a now vanished era, hankering after the benefits of rapprochement with Russia in terms of trade and energy supply, and too ashamed of past militarism to convey deterrence in our period of heightened tensions. The description of shortages among German forces was both laughable and excruciating. There are signs that attitudes are changing and resources are being redirected: the question is, will it be too little, too late?

There are gaps in Moody's coverage. Sweden has recently joined NATO, like Finland, an example of Russian aggression producing the opposite rather than the desired effect, a strengthening rather than weakening of NATO. There was hardly any analysis of this, of how the Swedish people currently feel about it, or of the history and culture of Sweden, even though they are a much larger player than most of the others. There is a direct history of Swedish and Russian confrontation, for example Charles XII’s invasion of Russia (Poltova, where he was finally defeated, is in Ukraine). Sweden built castles across their then domains in Finland to keep the Russians out. Napoleon finally wrested the Grand Duchy of Finland from the Swedes and gifted it to the Czar, with whom he was temporarily allied, leading to a century of Russian rule.

An even bigger omission is some sort of handle on Russian motivation. Yes it is clear that Russia under Putin is deeply antagonistic towards the rest of Europe – but why? Is it the age old fear of invasion from the West, following in the footsteps of Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler? Is it the constriction of geography? Russia’s only westward subarctic maritime outlets are via the Black Sea and the Baltic, both leading to narrow straits firmly in the control of NATO member states. Or is it just the remembrance of past glories? Is it even a Russified version of that rather 19th century romantic nationalism in which Russia is the state destined to rule the world? Sadly this is the odious view of Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has backed the unprovoked onslaught upon Ukraine, and clearly identifies these massacres as the will of Jesus Christ. Or is Kirill perhaps simply too aware of what would happen to him if he didn’t support his master, who is not Jesus but Putin? We don’t know, but if we did we might be able to counter the poison. There are more economic, spiritual and cultural prosperities available to Russia as a participant with the West than as a foe. Why can’t they see them?

Some conclusions:

• Baltic leaves us in no doubt that Russia is a hostile actor towards Western Europe that demands a firm and determined response.

• Little states such as the Baltics are not fazed by this and in spite of their small size are confident that they can be tough enough to give Putin pause for thought.

• Europe has cultures and traditions, sadly often obliterated in the case of the UK, which are worth cherishing and should not be given up to the oblivion of Russification.

• Strategically the first step Putin will take against NATO is likely to be in the Baltic. This is the impetus behind the multiple incidents of sabotage and surveillance in the area. From a Russian point of view this aggressive campaign has had the negative effect of drawing attention to their strategy. The Baltic Sea must therefore be sealed off immediately in the event of any Russian military incursion. It sounds as though Finland and Estonia are already taking steps in the setting up of anti-ship missile batteries on both sides of the Gulf of Finland.

• It’s getting late to respond adequately but it is not too late! The region is revising its priorities, reallocating its resources and is on the road to readiness.

• It’s all a double edged sword for Ukraine though. I don’t see how Russia could even consider an assault anywhere else as long as they are bogged down in Ukraine. But if peace were to be achieved in Ukraine, as we all long for it to be, that would free Russia to pursue its ambitions elsewhere…

 Femina - Janina Ramirez

A new history of the middle ages by the women written out of it.

This book was a pleasure but at times an annoying one! I have always enjoyed Janina Ramirez’s TV presentations about history and the arts and love watching this bouncy Goth discoursing about high culture. I certainly learned a lot, but also encountered highly opinionated views which I couldn’t always agree with.

Early on I was very interested to learn that the Suffragettes were inspired by their medievalism. This was a connection I have never made before, in the absence of Ms Ramirez’s guidance. I have recently been reading Sigrid Undset’s massive epic, Kristin Lavransdottir. Set in medieval Norway, there is clearly a bond being forged between medievalism, Christianity, and early feminism. Looking back to pre-Raphaelitism, Arts and Crafts and late Victorian Christian Socialism, it all makes sense in a UK context too. A great insight there.

However the fact that there was enough material to inspire the sisterhood surely indicates that it can’t have been entirely the case that women’s history was written out. Not even the suffragettes could have been inspired by a history that simply didn’t exist. So some medieval women at least did get into the records. I am a non specialist but even I can name several who for whatever reason don’t make it into Femina. What about…

• The Empress Matilda? Finding that her inheritance of the English throne had been usurped, she went into battle for it with King Stephen and was a tough and effective general.

• Margaret of Anjou, one of several French queens who were power brokers deciding the fates of the realms of England and France?

• Clare, colleague and confidante of St Francis and founder of the Poor Clares?

• Eloise, former lover of theologian Peter Abelard and a writer, leader and thinker in her own right?

Completely new to me before I read Femina were the Loftus Princess, the Birka Warrior woman and Queen Jadwiga of Poland. I was absolutely delighted to find out about them and to know that they were treated with great honour and respect by their communities. 

Hildegard of Bingen was one person I already had some familiarity with. What an inspiring figure! Her accomplishments in leadership, music, letters, philosophy, medicine (as Femina informed me), theology and spirituality are outstanding. To be effective in one of these fields is good, to be exceptional in so many seems beyond mortal attainment. I am blessed that Ramirez extended my acquaintance with such a brilliant woman. However there is one part of her description which jarred, when she says that Hildegard was a “woman writing for women.” She clearly intended to write for everybody! Surely she saw her visions as intended for the whole of Christendom? Her letters to the Pope demonstrate that she thought her views belong to all humanity.

Also known to me were Hilda of Whitby, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, and the embroiderers of the Bayeux tapestry. I find it hard to be a fan of MK, and I’ve got to say that, while acknowledging its importance as a vital historical source, I just cannot share Ramirez’s evaluation of the Bayeux Tapestry as a major work of art. It is crude, lumpy and misshapen, the people are expressionless, the text is messy and all the penises and severed limbs have a year 7 look about them. The exquisite illuminations in manuscripts of the era show just how refined and impressive medieval art can be. Julian of Norwich is a gem though, as most people seem to agree. 

Ramirez brings out an unavoidable point in her comments on Hilda, Julian, Kempe and Hildegarde: it was the Church that provided the arena in which women could escape from childbirth, housework and fieldwork, and gain education, independence, meaningful employment, leadership roles, the life of the mind and significant artistic power. We have been so blinded by a narrative that condemns the Church as backward and oppressive that we don’t see the opportunities it provided. Ramirez herself follows this lazy, me-too approach when she dismisses the Bible, in a completely non-nuanced way, as misogynistic. The Bible’s assertions that male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free are all one in Christ, were millennia ahead of their time.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us, female and male, live lives of total obscurity and sadly are swiftly forgotten. We don’t always need to see a conspiracy behind every example of what is the common lot of almost every one of us. 

Another area where I felt uneasy was in the balance between texts and archaeological objects. Ramirez has a very modern suspicion of texts because they are likely to follow the biases of their narrators. She is much happier with objects because they can’t tell lies. However the reason they can’t tell lies is because they can’t actually tell that much: in the absence of text, the interpretation of objects is left up to us, and we of course inevitably bring our own narratives and prejudices to bear. For example, without any text we don’t know why a prominent Scandinavian woman was buried with a whole lot of battle goods. Could it be that she was a battle hardened warrior? Of course it could be – but it could also be that her tribe was merely following their custom for burials of the chieftain’s family. Or perhaps they intended some kind of protection for her in the afterlife. Maybe she was supposed to pass the weapons on to others who had predeceased her, but whose bodies were not recovered from the battlefield. Without any text, we just cannot know what their intentions were. It is only in text that the minds of people of the distant past can be made known to us.

For the women who really light up Femina for us are those, like Margery Kempe and Hildegard, whose personalities, thoughts and experiences have come down to us in writing. Ideally of course we would have both objects and texts to corroborate and throw fresh light upon one another. But without text our knowledge of Julian of Norwich, say, is all but a blank. With it, she lives and breathes before us and speaks deep wisdom to us. 

I am now going to invite controversy by asking some questions of Ramirez’s feminism. One passage that baffled me was a comparison between Alfred the Great and his daughter Aethelflaed, who married the king of Mercia and was co-ruler of that kingdom. In this comparison we are told that  Aethelflaed was the better ruler of the two, and if not for historical prejudices against women this would be an acknowledged fact. I just don’t understand why it’s a contest? I have no doubt that Aethelflaed was an able and astute leader, but then Alfred was also effective in a number of fields, including law, administration, literature and theology. How exactly do his achievements diminish hers? I don’t have access to their personal interactions, but I wish to hope that as father and daughter they were very proud of each other and took pleasure in each other’s successes. Unfortunately Ramirez doesn’t present us with her evidence for asserting that one of them should be seen as superior to the other, and I think in a work of history we should expect her to do this.

Another concerns Ramirez’ eagerness to identify women of the past as warriors. There certainly have been female warriors from time to time – Boudicca is a few centuries before the era surveyed in Femina – and by the law of averages there will always be some women who are larger, stronger and tougher than most men, and some men who are smaller, weaker and feebler than most women. However is there not a case for a feminism that looks to women to promote wisdom rather than warfare and compassion rather than carnage? I’m reminded of a brand of New York feminism that demands that women be equally represented with men in the ranks of billionaires and CEOs of blue chip companies. But these people are the ones who are pillaging the planet with their greed, destroying civil life with their toxic masculine games and converting education into a conveyor belt to feed the money machines. Couldn’t there be a feminism that challenges these coercive, mechanistic and dehumanising values?

I was also dubious about Ramirez’ support for gender fluidity in medieval times. I don’t know much about the subject but the instances she cites, of a tiny figurine of Odin supposedly wearing a dress and a story about Thor impersonating the goddess Freya don’t cut it for me. It’s hard to be sure what such a miniaturised Odin is wearing, looks like a surcoat to me, perhaps of chain mail. And the story about Thor and Freya reads like an extended joke about the stupidity of the Giants, who want Freya to marry their king and are thick enough to be taken in by Thor’s ridiculous subterfuge. I think she needs to give more evidence if she wants her position to be accepted. More than that though, it seems naïve in our times, when the fluidity agenda is so often used against women, to propose that it may be a good thing for feminism.

So – am I a feminist? As a follower of Jesus Christ I distrust all -isms. They represent a deification of some persons or principles over others which may lead on to disastrous idolatries. They form ideologies which limit people’s thinking, excuse their bigotries, create barriers between people and set them in conflict with one another. For example, I believe in communities, but I distrust communism, which historically has only replaced one set of Czars with another. I believe in humanity, but humanism has been wrenched from its Christian roots and now indicates mainly negative beliefs about the nature and destiny of human beings. I love my nation, but nationalism became an idol that has devoured millions of people in the last couple of centuries. I love many traditions - they give people a sense of roots - but traditionalism denies the present and the future in its fixation on the past. And so on. I distrust rationalism but I absolutely believe in reason. I accept and enjoy the reality of material things, but materialism, the indemonstrable belief that nothing except what is material can be allowed to exist, I find untenable…

So I believe in women. I wouldn’t exist without women. I have a wife, a daughter and a granddaughter and I am serious about promoting their welfare, wanting them to do well and fulfil their potential. When women do well, everybody benefits, men and women too, as has been demonstrated repeatedly by programmes for lifting people out of poverty. I detest misogyny, which is a dismal refuge for inadequate and fearful men. Of course women should have equal rights and equal value with men in society. I love women’s creativity, humour, resourcefulness, insight, wisdom and strength.

That is why, in spite of my quibbles, I am grateful to Janina Ramirez for sharing her stories of inspiring women in this book.