Review: Trygve Riiser Gundersen «The Haugians»
Nonfiction
Publisher:
Chapel Damm
Release year:
2022
«Impressive, well written and knowledgeable»
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The volume is over 700 pages including a large notepad, an adequate bibliography and a timeline and a personal register to rely on if you occasionally lose track. Because it is an exceptionally detailed picture of Hauge, the Haugians and Norwegian history that Gundersen paints. It is therefore easy to forget simple facts such as Hauge was born in 1771 and died in 1824.
In the first volume, the focus is on his work as a preacher in the years from 1795 to 1799. The second volume will be published in 2024. There, the story will be carried forward to the arrest in 1804 and the ten-year trial.
As the title suggests, this is not a biography. Rather, it is a broad cultural-historical presentation of popular rebellion and various revival movements throughout the 18th century. In light of pietist movements on the continent and the strile rebellion in Bergen, Gundersen gives a teeming depiction of Hauge’s life and work, of the first Haugians and their many opponents. All in order to paint a new picture of the relationship between the common people and the government under the autocracy.
A dangerous extremist
According to Gundersen, the Haugians reveal a structural weakness in the power of the king and the church during the monarchy. With a wealth of examples, he shows that Lutheran pietism led to a new role for priests and common people had ecstatic experiences, revelations and a heartfelt faith that led them to break the law and could pose a threat to power. Haugianism is therefore part of a powerful underground movement that flows through the 18th century, claims Gundersen.
In other words, he has high ambitions with the “Haugians”. I can make out nothing but that he lives up to them in the first volume.
I all fall litter. Because despite its scope, “The Haugians” is a fascinating thriller of the intellectual kind. With great commitment, he writes so that it sparkles, discusses sources and depicts conflicts between fant and fut, priest and congregation, authority and common people. More precisely, Gundersen reads backwards through history in an attempt to show us how the Haugians appeared in their own time.
If today we have a picture of Hauge as a preacher, the picture was quite different in 1804.
A threat
Gundersen starts the story by taking us back to the administrative center of power, the Chancellery building in Copenhagen. For 30 October 1804 “a letter went out from these countries”. The letter was an arrest warrant for “Hans Nielsen Houge, who calls himself Merchant in Bergen”. True, he was already imprisoned, but the arrest warrant was a response to a frightening letter from a bishop. There compared the bishop Hauge with the Arab rebel Abdul Vechab. He is known today as the founder of Sunni Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia.
At that time, Vechab led an armed rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in Arabia. Not just the bishop, but apparently also the king and the entire authority feared that Hauge posed a similar threat to the autocracy.
Yes, Gundersen goes behind the myth. With such surprising anecdotes and dramatic scenes, he writes a new story about the Haugians. At times he can become overly detailed and full of pathos. Not least when he indulges in how Hauge and the other Haugians felt during arrests. In the final depiction of the penitentiary in Christiania, it is as if Gundersen is reduced to tears.
Controversial priest
But above all, he is a critical examiner of sources in search of new and surprising perspectives. For example, he does not emphasize the famous event when God appeared to Hauge in 1796. Instead, he focuses on a sentence in the protocol from the first questioning of Hauge in January 1805. From it it appears that he presumably began to preach earlier than expected. Not because God appeared to ham, but because Hauge already belonged to the circle around a controversial priest. This priest was in turn strongly influenced by previous revival movements. These, so to speak, activated Hauge with his preaching and movement. Together, they led to the decentralization of religion, the strengthening of the common people and the weakening of the autocracy.
With the Haugians, Trygve Riiser Gundersen has written a new piece of Norwegian history of the highest order!