“The Haugians” by Trygve Riiser Gundersen – Reviews and recommendations
The main character himself is largely absent in the first chapters of Trygve Riiser Gundersen’s story about the great religious revival that haunts our country.
Instead, he starts by telling about Hans Nielsen Hauge’s rather astonishing image transformation from being state enemy number one in the Danish-Norwegian state (arrested ten times) to becoming almost a national saint throughout the 19th century.
From prison bird to common property
Copies of Adolph Tidemand’s famous painting from 1848 ended up in the thousand homes. Hauge became the very figure of the Norwegian indremisjonen, he had a sailing vessel named after him, and we have celebrated him ever since.
Well most recently during the 250th anniversary of his birth last year.
Gundersen is a historian of ideas, and it shows. Historians of ideas are concerned with how people think and how these thoughts are handed down to us in objects, images and writing.
Some of the central documents about the Haugian movement are naturally found in Copenhagen, which was still the country’s capital when Hauge traveled around the country preaching.
Disaffected clergy
The arrest warrant which went out to all the country’s counties (then counties) has been preserved. The same are the letters of complaint from irritated parish priests who were fed up with the fact that this newly freed sheriff’s son from Rolvsøy in Fredrikstad stole everyone’s attention.
That this story has been told many times, not least by Hans Nielsen Hauge himself, is not something Gundersen tries to conceal. On the contrary, Gundersen believes that the first biography of Hauge, written by the young, northern Norwegian theologian Anton Christian Bang in 1874, is:
Perhaps all the books that have been written contribute to the fact that Gundersen is extra concerned with serving a slightly different story. He pays little attention to Hauge’s much-publicized revelation in the field on the family farm.
His main theme is to show how a lay Christian rebel movement arose from below in the Danish-Norwegian society, and then the assembly that sits and listens is as interesting as the main character himself.
No more divide and conquer
In this assembly, on certain occasions, priests, bailiffs and futers were present who tried to stifle the rebellion in its infancy. What was said at the revival meetings was not the main problem.
Hans Nielsen Hauge had no heretical thoughts to offer, as Luther did in his time. The problem for the state power and its present representatives was that people gathered and that religion was no longer an instrument of control from above.
Many people gathered together on farms (and in houses in Bergen) were in themselves a threat to the ruling system.
Gundersen presents the Haugian movement as the starting point for a people who began to organize themselves.
Soon it was to follow other popular movements, parties and organizations. The Haugians showed how it had to be done in a time when communication took place in different ways than today.
When the priest Peder Hansen compares Hauge to the extreme Islamist Ibn Abd al-Wahhabthe founder of the so-called Wahhabism, in his letter of complaint to the Danish-Norwegian authorities, we understand that news travels around the world – even then.
Digging up gold from the old
“The Haugians” is history writing with a sky-high level of ambition. Trygve Riiser Gundersen has worked with this material for years, and the book has become a knowledge bomb.
It is, like previous books, pictures and documents, a product of its time. Right now it is characterized by a renewed interest in which source material we base our story on.
This interest gained momentum in the wake of the debate surrounding Marte Michelet’s books. Conducting archival studies has also been a central working method in Espen Søbye’s writing.
Gundersen works within the same tradition, and he is sometimes too much in love with these ancient, yellowed documents.
With the magnifying glass, he makes constant discoveries. The closer we get to the sources, the more complex and diverse the political and religious life appears.
A source of self-understanding
It is our country for two centuries that must be captured here – both the Danish-Norwegian society Hauge was born into, and the Swedish-Norwegian society in which he died.
During these years, the country was ruled from Copenhagen and later Stockholm. Bergen was the country’s most important city. We were much more international than most of us have brought with us, and the religious undergroundsmovements abounded.
We were simply a people who were difficult to manage. If those in power acted too hard in a way that was perceived by most people as unreasonable, the people talked about it.
And there came a charismatic young man to talk toclothes in order, we were fully able to collect ourselves in oxygenpoor rum and let’s get carried away.
“The Haugians” is a cunningly told story and a intellectual power performancewhich can contribute to us understanding ourselves a little better.