A ship's final port

The Viking ships of Norway are in need of a new home. Where should it be, and what should it look like?

One of the more important archaeological finds of the previous century was the unearthing in 1904 of a rich Viking burial by the Oslofjord in Norway. It contained a well preserved ship, the Oseberg ship, which is now one of the highlights for tourists visiting Oslo.

Based on the name of the mound, Ose-mound, the excavators hoped the mound would reveal the intact burial of Queen Åsa, the founder of the Yndlinga Dynasty in Norway, and buried in an earth mound around the year 834. At first, their hunch seemed to be correct. In the burial chamber two women was unearthed; a woman of high status in her fifties, accompanied by an elderly woman, perhaps her servant. They were laid to rest on the ship, ready for their final journey, and were surrounded by their earthly goods needed in the afterlife, including, beds, axes, tapestries, silk, a peacock, a sled and a wagon. Sacrificed dogs, hoses and an ox accompanied the two. Today, it is argued that the woman was a volve, a priestess of the Norse religion, or that the older woman is actually Åsa, but the final word on the matter is certainly not said.

The ship itself was beautifully preserved, 21m in length, 5m wide, and with exquisite carvings. Since 1926 it has been on display in a purposefully built museum-house in Bygdøy, near Oslo, where it was joined in 1932 by two other ships. Today the Viking ship Museum probably constitutes the most important exhibition in Norway. The two women were originally returned to their mounds, but have now been re-excavated and are on display in the museum.

The architect, Arnstein Arneberg, designed a chapel to house the three ships, which today seems in many ways outdated. It is difficult to view the ships as a whole in the narrow halls, which is also easily crowded by visitors. As important is the question of the symbolic connotations which the building itself conveys. The shape of the museum, and placement near Oslo should be understood in context of the need for Norway to stand out as an independent new country with ancient roots. Norway achieved independence in 1905, and the Viking-history had a central place in the national narrative. Archaeological context was downplayed and national history underscored. 


The ships and their occupants belong to a very different religious tradition; a time before Christianity reached Norway, and a time before Norway was unified. Even so, when seen from above, the museum has the appearance of a cross, a Christian church, meaning that the ships have been re-buried in a new religious setting. Inside the museum a similar context is conveyed. Here the framing of the ships and the visitor’s experience is more of a Christian mausoleum containing ships, rather than an exhibition. Although an esthetically forceful experience, the Norse burial in this way is not only de-contextualized, but also Christianized and nationalized, making the story told not about the Vikings, but about Norway. One may even get the impression that the ships belong to the early Christian nation, rather than the pre-Christian era.

It is now being discussed whether or not the ship should be moved to a new building near the attractions of Oslo city, or if they should stay where they are. The third alternative, to open a new museum closer to the original mounds is regarded an option by only a few. 

Visualizing political opinion in Holland

Today the blog Islam in Europe reports from the dutch preparations for election. Here a visual compass has been created by the newspaper Trouw to assist voters with reading disabilities to find the party close to their hearts. Among the thirty issues raised are expulsion of immigrants and the right to free speech. 

As Islam in Europe notes, the illustrator has decided that no blondes (or read-heads) should be present in the Muslims crowd, while the presumably right-winged group on the left have several blondes. Another interesting feature is the way the speech bubbles seem to communicate the message that the mullah is propagating a positive message about gays, Jews, and western women, while the blond politician is giving a straight forward-speech on Muslim immigrants. For a reader not fluent in dutch, like me, the message then is "should we be allowed to talk (positively) about other groups in the society", rather than the actual "Everyone may say in public what he wants, even if it leads to discrimination".

Another image show immigrants leaving Holland. A man in a wheelchair, a woman in burka and a family. Here the illustrator is able to communicate the message well. Expulsion has grave consequences for the individuals involved, and should not be done lightly, although I'm quite sure the blond politician above would have drawn the image quite differently.  

Ways of Seeing

The 1972 BBC television documentary, Ways of Seeing, by John Berger was probably one of the earlier attempts to lift our understanding of art beyond its art-historical and aesthetic value. Although visual religion is hardly touched upon in the series, important issues in the study of visual culture are raised. Throughout the documentary, the focus is on the spectator’s ever changing perception of images.

The four program series explains how the meaning of an artwork changes with its context, in particular according to how the artwork is displayed. The same painting can be understood quite differently when it is on a museum wall, in a church or in a book, and its interpretation changes with the gender, age, education and culture of the spectator. Modern reproductions of artworks as postcards or as television images are seen as examples of how the meaning and function of art develop with its media. Here Berger is influenced by the essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") by Walter Benjamin in 1935. Other examples are how an accompanying text, i.e. an art historical descriptions or a commercial text, alter our perception of what is displayed. The textual, architectural, ritual, musical and social setting of an artwork determines how we grasp the message of the image.

Episode two and three in the program focus on oil-paintings and the female nude in particular; the materialization of female form in the images. It is argued that the paintings of nudes had a similar function as photos of female models in modern magazines and commercials. The images are created for the male spectator, but also become the form in which women reflect their own bodily-images. The program also focuses on the presentation of material wealth displayed in the images, arguing that the main purpose of oil-paintings was to display and enhance the owner’s social status.

Episode four talk about commercials. Berger argues here that the commercial photograph has taken the place of the oil painting. Both painting and photograph display material wealth, but where oil-paintings display the owner’s possessions and achieved wealth and status, the commercial photograph show us the possessions and status yet to be achieved.

Ways of seeing Episode 1: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Ways of seeing Episode 2: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Ways of seeing Episode 3: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Ways of seeing Episode 4: part 1, part 2, part 3.

Guinea-pigs in blasphemy?

When writing about guinea-pigs as the main course in some Peruvian paintings of the Last Supper, I came to think about a story which was reported some years ago from Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg, Germany. It took me some time to locate the story on the Internet, but I was at last able to remember that the story was retold by Peter W. Poulsen in Icon, the journal for students of religious studies at the university of Copenhagen back in 2002. It was based on a small story in Hamburger Abendblatt in 1999.

Hagenbeck zoo has a large open outdoor area for free ranging guinea pigs. It consists of a large grassy plain and a miniature alpine village where the critters roam and are their own masters. Among the buildings is also a church standing two meters tall; a monumental building for such small animals.

Way back, now about 40 years ago, a local catholic pastor was enraged when he over time observed how the critters entered the church at all times of day. Only God knows what blasphemous acts the furry animals conducted behind the walls of the church, hidden from view of the priest. The case of the sinful activities of the guinea pigs became a major topic for Sunday lectures in the church, and soon sufficient public support was raised to demand that the door of the church was shut for the critters once and for all, and so was their access to Christianity.

The case was first reopened after 30 years in excommunication, when the Catholic Church and Hagenbeck zoo in 1999 came to an agreement that the doors would again be opened. By then the zoo had received complaints from hundreds of children. Why were the doors of the other houses in the village open, but the church closed, they asked. Do not guinea pigs have access to God? The church backed down and gave the following statement:

“Of course guinea pigs should go to church. The attitude of the church to the creatures of creation has become more conscious and open. The story of creation places the animals of creation under man’s supervision”.

For the study of visual religion, and perhaps for cognitive theorists as well, it is fascinating to take note of yet another example of how animal behavior is made anthropomorphic. First by the animal-keepers when they decided to build an alpine village for animals originally living in burrows, and then later by the priest who must have judged the behavior and church-going practices of the critters by human standards. Also the children’s interpretation has this tendency. The function of the church is important as well, as children and priest alike understand the model-church as a sacred building that may be used or misused by their furry congregation.



(Photo by AMagill)

An update on Muhammad in South Park

In a surprising new twist to the controversy over images of Muhammad in western media, South Park continued the censoring Muhammad's image in the recent follow-up episode (no. 201) of last week's story. This was hardly surprising, in particular as this story has now reached mainstream media, and the threats against the cartoonists have become more vocal. But now, in addition to the visual censorship, Comedy Chanel apparently this time around also chose to censor his spoken name, making the episode full of bliips every time the name Muhammad should have been heard.

At first, it seemed as is this form of censoring was intentional by the South Park crew. A form of hyperbolic  censoring to make it plain as daylight how the show is being repressed. This becomes particularly apprent when, at the end of the episode, the usual moralistic speeches by some of the characters are covered by long bleeps as well. This gives the impression that Stone and Parker are trying to show us how Comedy Chanel is refusing to see the real issue at hand, but is instead giving in to fundamentalist threats. This is the impression one is left with at the end.

However, Stone and Parker have now issued a statement explaining that the new form of editing was not intentional, and that the Comedy Chanel actually did censor the name of the prophet and the moral speeches at the end of the show, one of which actually did not even mention Muhammad.

Here is the full statement as posted on another blog (M. Greenberg):

In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.

Another significant point made in the episode was again to reveal to all of us that an image is nothing but a semiotic device, where we interpret what we see based on our expectations. When the image of a person in a bear suit, claimed by the cartoons in South Park in the previous episode to be of Muhammad in a suit, actually was revealed to actually be Santa in a suit, the joke is on all of us. A cartoon pretending to be a cartoon in a cartoon. Again, an image does not become, or even necessarily represent, a thing just because someone links a sound to an arbitrary image...

"We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world" (Magritte)