MASTERPIECES IN WOOD - Medieval Wood-Carvers in Norrland

One way of starting this article would have been to refer to Olof Broman's Glysisvallur, Abraham Hülpher's Travels and other old, classical works of literature on northern Sweden. But that would not provide us with the true story of how Norrland's medieval art and architecture have been regained. It would merely be a pre-history of antiquarian and topographical events. In addition, this is a pre-history that has already been told under various headings, and which it is therefore unnecessary to duplicate at this time.

A much better way to start is to focus on the year 1853.

In that year Lars Landgren, Vicar of Delsbo and later Bishop of Härnösand, took the initiative and founded the Antiquarian Association of Hälsingland. The main task at hand was to preserve the abandoned and dilapidated medieval church at Enånger and to bring together there what were then called church antiquities, i.e., mainly medieval wooden sculptures.

As early as 1862 some 129 church objects had been collected, and in records from the previous year there is mention of "several loads of pictures and paintings from the parishes of Delsbo, Norrbo, Bjuråker, Tuna and Njutånger". Many of the pictures were in poor condition, and it may be a fair assumption to say that without the zealous work of the association these would have been destroyed or scattered. That is something we will never know for sure, however. But one thing is certain, and that is that the medieval sculptures of Hälsingland would have remained unknown for a long time to come and would not have been able to testify, as they did then, to the fact that Norrland also had an impressive medieval culture and a valuable fund of medieval art.

At that time some of Norrland's oldest and most remarkable medieval churches had recently been torn down: Styrnäs in Ångermanland (1845) and Skön in Medelpad (1850). But in a few other cases the parishes had done as they did at Enånger. There they let the old church remain as it was when a new and more modern one was built (Ragunda in 1853, Ytterlännäs in 1854 and Ramsele in 1857). During that period there was a mixture of disdain, doubt and, at the same time, a recently awakened respect for anything old and medieval.

In the old church at Enånger the study of art history could then get under way and the versatile Landgren went ahead. However, when he let the antiquarian society choose between printing a work about the churches of the province and printing a grammar of the local dialect, the society chose the grammar. This might surprise us today, but in the 1860s language was as important as antique monuments for those with a newly awakened interest in the history of the people. It was during the 1860s that some famous future museum curators, such as Artur Hazelius and Gustaf Upmark sr., wrote their doctoral dissertations on Scandinavian languages.

The study of the material took quite some time, and it was not until 1890 that a published catalogue of the Enånger collection appeared, written by Johan Alfred Wiström, Doctor of Philosophy and a secondary school teacher in Hudiksvall. Once again we encounter the study of the Middle Ages in a surprising context, since Wiström was a botanist by profession, an authority on the phanerogams and ferns of Hälsingland. But this is not as strange as it may seem to us now, and Wiström is certainly not the only one who has taken the step from botany to art history.

Both disciplines encompass processes of ordering and systematising, and in both it is a question of "mapping out the country". It is important to identify and to name.

While it is true that in both disciplines there was great joy in anything rare or beautiful, from a scientific point of view prevalence was equally important, the distribution of the ordinary. Mere presence was of interest. Moving the northern boundary for the hazel-bush or hepatica; moving the northern boundary for the Romanesque baptismal font or the late medieval triptych - the methods and the goals were similar in establishing this great inventory.

According to Wiström's catalogue there were 220 items in the collection, all iconographically identified, and registered by place of origin, but only in some cases dated. Wiström was assisted by Hans Hildebrand and Oscar Montelius and had also been helped, to some extent, by Nathan Söderblom (later to become Archbishop). He knew the names of two artists: Måns Gadd, a 16th century church painter, known from Olof Broman's book, and Haaken Gulleson, whose name could be read on the base of the Enånger sculpture of Saint Anne: JAAK:HAAKEN:GULLE:SON:MALER (I:Haaken:Gulle:son:painter) , with the year 1520.

But Wiström's interest in crucifixes and the portraits of saints, which, at this point, crowded the old church at Enånger, was not only that of a scientist. If we are to take him at his word, he was also a pious and serious Christian who wanted the visitor to remember the religious message of the art.

There is much more to tell of the 19th century - for instance, Nils Månsson Mandelgren's travels in Jämtland and through other northern provinces between 1868 and 1869. But it was the making of the collection at Enånger that was the great event.

Then, everything happened at once during the second decade of the 20th century. These studies acquired a new intensity and the inventories were extended to include all of Norrland. There was a broad presentation of the material in three large exhibitions: "The Sacred Art of Jämtland and Härjedalen" in Östersund in 1911, "The Sacred Art of Ångermanland and Medelpad" in Harnösand in 1912 and finally "The Sacred Art of Hälsingland" in Hudiksvall in 1913. This rapid succession of exhibitions seems to imply joint production, but in fact the opposite was true. There was a certain amount of rivalry between the northern cities, and what they had in common was merely the inspiration which came from the church exhibition in Strängnäs in 1910.

Everything happened very rapidly and a remarkable number of those involved were young, even very young.

Gerda Boethius and Henrik Cornell were 22 years old at the time of the Harnösand exhibition. Erik Salvén, who was a driving force behind the Harnösand exhibition, was 24. Those who were older, Erik Festin from Östersund and Theodor Hellman from Harnösand, were a little over thirty, like Johnny Roosval, who was a member of the exhibition committee which arranged the Harnösand exhibition.

As these names imply, there was a break-through in the decade after 1910 both for art history as an academic discipline and for regional interest in ancient historical monuments and objects. At the same time, there was a great break-through for Norrland as a province for art history. No other part of the country could display three such grand and simultaneous exhibitions of medieval art.

The recently discovered Överhogdal tapestry was shown for the first time in Östersund, although there were as yet only a few who understood how unique it was. Soon it was to be the most widely discussed piece of art in medieval Norrland, as enigmatic and difficult to interpret as the Rök Stone (Sweden's most famous runic inscription). The Flemish triptych from Nordingrå, the Saint Michael from Haverö and a work of art that was actually foreign to the area under investigation, the rare Madonna from Övertorneå, which at the same time served as a shrine, were all shown in Harnösand. In Hudiksvall the tapestry from Skog in Hälsingland was on display (now in the State Museum of History). It was also a new sensational find. Haaken Gullesen's grand and splendid sculptures and other pieces from Enånger were, of course, also exhibited. The fact that northern medieval art included both domestic works of a regional character and European imports of the highest quality was something that appealed to local pride and patriotic feelings.

When the exhibitions were closed, studies continued and, thanks to Cornell and Salvén, these were not limited to the printed catalogues. In 1918 Cornell's doctoral thesis "Sacred Art in Norrland during the Middle Ages" was published in the series entitled A Northern Reference Library, which usually dealt with the countryside of Norrland and its natural resources. It is an impressive work that aimed to cover the entire subject and, even though some seven decades later it is sometimes referred to only because of an occasional mistake, it is in fact characterised by strict scholarly norms. It has nothing of the narrative and poetic approach to medieval art that can be found in the works of both Roosval and Andreas Lindblom. Cornell's enthusiasm is unexpressed, yet its presence can be felt.

Cornell's thesis is a work that contradicts the common notion that examination of details comes first and conclusions come later. The reverse procedure is not uncommon: the conclusive work comes first! But without the exhibitions the thesis would not have been possible.

Erik Salvén devoted most of his time in the decade between 1910 and 1920 to drawing up an inventory of all the churches in Norrland (except for Norrbotten and a few parishes in Västerbotten). This is why he did not finish his thesis about his great find, "The Skog Tapestry", until 1923, but naturally it also belongs to that same decade. Quite some time then elapsed before the next thesis was presented on the subject of sacred art during the Middle Ages in Norrland.

During this same period some important restorations were carried out or were being prepared. They made Norrland's sacred art and church settings more accessible and more understandable than before. After the restoration of 1912 the country's northernmost stellaI vault decorated with medieval paintings could be viewed.

In 1920 at Trönö in Hälsingland it was possible to see the old church restored to a condition that was at the same time educational, aesthetically inspiring and almost authentic. Three years later Hackås Church was reinaugurated, yet another example of the fact that it was the old restored churches, and not those which had been newly designed and recently built, that were the churches par préférence of the period from 1910 to 1930. The same thing might also be said of some later northern restorations, e.g. that in Oviken in 1935.

Remarkable in quite a different way is the reconstruction of Hackås Church to its original Romanesque style. It was completed in 1923 and was placed in Murberget's open-air museum in Harnösand. This reconstruction had been carried out during a time when such work simply was not done. Nor was it common any longer to house medieval sculptures anywhere but in the local parish churches where they originally came from. As a consequence, the Enånger sculptures were returned to their places of origin from 1919 and on. This was started in connection with the Trönö restoration. After 1940, only the original items remained at Enånger. Those works of art that were not returned ended up in the museum at Hudiksvall. Still there is enough left. For all its simplicity the old church at Enånger is a great attraction which is well worth seeing.

After the eventful years from 1910 to 1930 things slowed down. The strong alliance between national romanticism, interest in the Middle Ages and the professionalisation of art history continued to have an impact, but only through individuals who were slowly growing older. This was no longer a youth movement, either down south, or up north. New themes and new spheres of interest were competing for attention.

The study of Norrland for the great inventory entitled Sveriges Kyrkor ("The Churches of Sweden") did make progress, but rather slowly. Instead of the large and significant provinces such as Hälsingland, Jämtland and Ångermanland, it was the small provinces of Gästrikland and Medelpad in the 1930s and Härjedalen in the 1960s that were the subject of publications.

Art historians have traditionally made a very sharp distinction between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

As far as the north is concerned this division has much to support it. No new paintings of saints were added, and for a long time after the Catholic Middle Ages were over, no new church buildings were erected. Building in stone ceased completely for more than two hundred years in Norrland. On the other hand, the result of this was that the culture of medieval Norrland, in spite of the limited number of works of art, continued to stand out as something outstanding.

As late as the 1650s, the Flemish, late medieval triptych of Ljusdal was copied when a new altar piece was going to be made for Oviken. Per Gustaf Hamberg wrote in 1953: "This speaks for itself concerning the survival of the medieval cultural tradition in Norrland". He also showed in 1974 how they were still building medieval stellar vaults in Norrland during the 18th century, albeit of wood instead of stone. Although their subjects per se were the 17th and the 18th centuries, other researchers have also, expressly or indirectly, pointed out the connection between Norrland's medieval period and the centuries which followed, e.g. Manne Hofrén, Hans Beskow, Maj Nodermann. Art history is a field which constantly increases in complexity and becomes more and more interesting.

Considering this background it matters less that there have also been some disappointments. The old idea that the northern church villages (due to the great distances between settlements in the north, entire villages were built around a church so that families could stay overnight for important church holidays) were of medieval origin has never been verified. They cannot be dated any further back than the 17th century. The same goes for the wooden bell-towers, however ancient and elementary they may seem from a structural point of view. These have not been dated to any earlier period than the end of the 16th century, or the end of the 17th century in the case of Norrland. Even Cornell's remarkable discovery, the vault painter called Eghil, was revealed, in the 1960s, to be a misconception due to misreading. It did not say "Painted Eghil" on the ceiling at Ytterlännäs. It was, in fact, the beginning of the alphabet written in decorative Gothic lettering. In agreeing with this correction of Cornell we do so without the slightest malice. We would certainly have wanted to share his enthusiasm at the discovery at long last of a definite name in this long line of anonymous masters! And although he never existed, Eghil has been allowed to live on as a name which can stand as a signature for an anonymous artist.

Finally, it is up to each individual to attempt to regain Norrland's art and architecture. What is being shown at the exhibition is after all only a glimpse of the wealth of our heritage. Anyone who has not visited the country churches at Nederluleå and Piteå, at Lövånger and Bygdeå, at Grundsunda, Vibyggerå and Ytterlännäs, at Ragunda and Hackås, the old churches at Alnö and Liden, at Enånger and Trönö, anyone who has not seen the collections in the country parishes of Övertorneå and Skellefteå, or at Bollnäs, Forsa and many other places, can look forward to a Norrland that yet awaits discovery.