When did Saint Lucy team up with the Gingerbread Men? How to recycle a Saint.

Being a temporary resident in Rome, not much of mine and my family's everyday life and routines are the same as back home in Sweden. One thing though seems hardly impossible to escape as a Swede, no matter where in the world one reside or travel: the annual celebration of Saint Lucy, or 'Sankta Lucia' as the Swedes put it.
Lucia was, according to legend, martyrized in Syracuse in 304 during the Diocletian persecutions and after several dramatic events: a failed attempt to burn her alive, an equally unsuccessful attempt to make her walk naked through a brothel, and according to later traditions even after having her eyes gouged out. She is celebrated in Sweden as in Italy on December 13th, but - when these two are compared - in most different contexts and interpretations.

The mortal remains of Saint Lucy in Saint Jeremiah church, Venice

Saint Lucy is a popular saint in Italy, and is celebrated in various ways in different Italian cities (an overview in Italian Wikipedia here) though always in a religious Catholic context. In Sweden, however, saints are generally not celebrated since the Reformation in 16th century, and if their pictures for some reason still were around in the churches after that, they had to be clearly washed from all religious and (as the general view on Catholic practices was) 'superstitious' connotations. And yet: The magnitude of Lucia celebration in Sweden equals that of Christmas Eve (which is when Swedes celebrate Christmas. On Christmas Day most Swedes just relax in comfy clothes, eat fudge and cookies or - possibly - have friends and relatives over for dinner). How can this be? And how should this Swedish and very beloved, yet not religious, Lucia be understood?

Saint Lucia, or Lucy, in traditional saintly pose: Holding the palm of martyrdom, and her own gouged eyes on a plate.

The Swedish Lucia celebration became popular and widespread as late as in the early 20th century, but existed already in the 18th century high society. Crucial to understand Lucia's popularity and role in Sweden is the fact that Sweden is a very dark country in December, and the fact that Lucia is celebrated on the day of the Winter Solstice; her function as 'Bearer of Light' ('ljusbärarinna'), the many candles and songs about the returning light in the midst of darkness, and the accentuation of the original saint being burnt at the stake (however unsuccessfully) all go back to this popular Darkness-Turned-Light tradition.

Traditional Swedish Lucia procession with Lucia, her maids, and the boys called "Star Men", alluding to S:t Stephen but wearing cone shaped hats of 'magi', magician's. Be warned: This gang is likely to show up in a church, a school, a retirement home, an office, by a Nobel Prize winner's hotel bed, in a Swedish embassy or an IKEA warehouse near you on December 13.

Lucia in Sweden appears traditionally with a crown of candles in her hair, dressed in white and with a red band around her waist - 'to symbolize martyrdom!' someone sometimes state, despite the general non-religious context. She is surrounded by maids, also in white and with glitter in their hair, and Star Men or 'S:t Stephen's Boys' ('Staffansgossar'), and here we go again: The legend of S:t Stephen following the star of Jerusalem and pointing to it before King Herod was the subject of a popular play in Sweden at least as early as 17th century, and the legend was performed by young theology students going from house to house with big paper stars, sometimes also with Virgin Mary, S:t Joseph, S:t Jude, the Three Kings and other characters from the Bible. We know of this custom not only through appreciating descriptions, but also through court protocols stating that the young boys sometimes were paid in strong drinks and became less pleasant after a number of performances. This led to a prohibition of S:t Stephen's plays in some parts of the country, but as we have seen this tradition, too, was re-installed and re-interpreted within the cultural and non-religious frames of the Sankta Lucia celebration.

A reenacted S:t Stephen's play in Vallentuna, Sweden, early 1980's. King Herod, his soldier, Stephen with the largest star, the Three Kings (or Wise Men), and Virgin Mary. (The latter with slight resemblances to this blogger...)

Today Lucia is celebrated in all possible places and contexts, from pre-school to retirement homes and hospices, in private homes and on national television. Not uncontested, though. In recent years, debates on various political and xenophobic topics have turned up in mid-December. For exemple: Should the National Lucia have blonde hair, or can she have brown complexion and black, curly hair (as was the case in 2012 TV broadcast Lucia celebration)? Can one of the traditional songs about S:t Stephen, in same TV broadcast, really be performed as a rap by a famous artist from an immigrant family? And does the National Agency for Education permit this quasi-religious performance in a school context, when public schools according Swedish law should be non-religious? (The answer to this question was that most of the traditional Lucia songs, despite being about saints, Jesus and other religious matters, were declared non-religious since they were, instead, part of Swedish cultural heritage. As a researcher on heritagised religion I get happy goose bumps by declarations like this.)

What all Swedish parents ask their children some days before Lucia: 'Do you want to be Lucia, Maid, Star Man, Gnome or Gingerbread Man?' Keeping Lucia equipment up to date is no piece of cake.

As a conclusion to understand what Swedish Lucia really is, I strongly recommend Swedish Lucia for Dummies on YouTube. Despite being narrated in a satirical and joking mode, the details are most accurate.

Needless to say, the Swedish re-interpretation of Lucia also generates numerous interior decorating items, such as this lamp.

So, is the case of S:t Lucy unique as an example of a recycled saint in a Protestant context? Well, certainly not. The previously mentioned S:t Bridget of Sweden has been through many different labels and interpretations since her hay days in 14th century, and in the 1920's a large scale celebration of her in Vadstena, Sweden, was strongly debated in local press. It was considered most inappropriate to celebrate a Papist saint and to risk letting the luring Catholicism into Swedish society. On the other hand, it was stated, S:t Bridget was a 'valuable part of our Swedish Cultural Heritage'. Today, the shrine holding parts of her remains is in focus for pious prayers as well as for front edge DNA research; both piety and science can make use of an old saint, it seems.

S:t Bridget's shrine in Vadstena convent church. Materiality, or holy matter, as an object of devotion.

S:t Bridget's shrine and relics carefully examined and analyzed by researchers. Materiality, or holy matter, as an object for research and knowledge.

Sacred, heritage, or a hybrid? The more I follow the clues in these matters, the harder it gets to formulate an accurate answer. The step from a martyrized virgin in 4th century, via centuries of Christian devotion, to where the Gingerbread Men start showing up in IKEA can seem very long, but when regarded as series of interpretations and re-charges, responding to cultural premises and moral and legal conditions, the picture changes. And: in all its integrity, the eye of the beholder is an ever present and non-negotiable factor. Be there Gingerbread Men or not.

What's in a kiss, anyway?

Just at the end of Spring semester this year, I was preparing a paper for a workshop I was co-organizing on Gender, Emotions and Material Culture in Scandinavian History. The workshop was hosted by UGPS Umeå Group for Premodern Studies, UCGS Umeå Centre for Gender Studies (both Umeå University) and ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (University of Western Australia), and it was an intimate explorative workshop with specially invited participants. My paper put forward some reflexions and questions on the theme 'The sulking saint and the headless Jesus: Aspects of materiality and emotions on material sacredness and sacred heritage in post-Reformation Sweden', and while researching and putting together my presentation I was struck by the number of kisses and sensual gestures that (unexpectedly, to me) emerged from my material. 

'Kissing the Relic', oil painting by Joaquín Sorolla (1893)

In the implementation of the Reformation in Sweden, and particularly after the parliament of Västerås in 1544 where a number of Catholic items and practices - lighting devotional candles, burning incense, the use of monstrances and Holy Water, etc - were explicitly forbidden, a new and dramatically different approach to sacred materiality developed. These changes also mirror quite well the heritagisation effects on holy matter: from touching to no touching (if not with white gloves), from sensuality to material preservation, from interaction and communication to one-direction information, from dialogue with material sacredness to cultural or historical admiration. And: from kissing to respectful distance. 

Devotional kissing of the relic of Virgin Mary's girdle while on display in Moscow (normally to be found on Mount Athos)

Facing all those examples in written sources, paintings, satires etc on a sensual past long gone and replaced by a more intellectual view on holy matters, where control of the body, senses and general appearance were major virtues, I had to ask myself: What does it do to a culture when sensuality is banned - in religion, or elsewhere?

Mocking the kissing of the Pope's foot. Satire woodcut by Lucas Cranach the Elder from 'Passionary of the Christ and Antichrist', early 16th century.

The sources for my Master thesis in History of Ideas and Science touched upon this a little. In the Swedish national inventories for antiquities, performed by order of the King from 1666 throughout the century and mostly executed by the local clergy, Catholic practices are mentioned and mocked. One example are the monks said to have been dancing in a field every year before a pilgrimage to Trondheim in Norway, and so violently that the marks in the ground could still be seen decades later. Or another, where the priest giving the report in late 17th century describes how the boards of a liturgic coffin where a wooden Christ was laid during the Holy Week liturgies, were 'licked with the lips so that it was smooth and worn'. I wonder, and presently without a clear answer, where all this kissing and devout relationship to sacred materiality went after 1544 and the eventual establishment of the Reformation?

 Girl kissing a relic of S:t Clare on the Saint's feast day in Monastery of Poor Clares, Laguna, Philippines

Were the physical means of expressing emotions all intellectualized with the change of religious teachings? And in any case, for my research interest: How did the travelers from this (in a religious context) non-kissing country up North react to the physical and emotional expressions in Italy and in Catholic practice? Fact is, I have already found a number of sources giving interesting information on this... but I won't give away every juicy part of my dissertation before it is finished, so I'll get back to you on that topic. Stay patient!

So. What's in a kiss, anyway? Beyond doubt a kiss is so much more than the general romantic kiss between lovers, but is it even always a good thing? It can be soaked in symbolic meaning, far beyond the visual, like the kiss of peace, the kissing of a ring or the feet of someone as an act of subjection, or it can be a kiss of betrayal.

Humble and symbolically charged kissing. Pope Francis kissing the foot of an inmate at juvenile detention centre of Casal del Marmo in Rome, Holy Thursday liturgy 2013. (Photo: The Globe and Mail)

Betrayal kissing. The kiss of Judas, oil painting by Caravaggio (1602)

I would like to wrap up these thoughts on kisses, kissing and sensual experience of strongly charged objects, and the possible effects when this dimension is removed, by giving you some lines from a favorite poem. It is by e e cummings, voices to voices, lip to lip (Read the whole poem here, and a short interpretation here. I recommend it.):

(While you and i have lips and voices which

are for kissing and to sing with

who cares if some oneyed son for a bitch

invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

each dream nascitur, is not made...)

why then to Hell with that: the other; this,

since the thing perhaps is

to eat flowers and not to be afraid.

Come closer! Creating improved access

Coming closer: Dr. Cecilia Lindhé at Umeå university HUMlab using digital visualizing methods to approach medieval images of Virgin Mary in new ways. Learn more about the project here.

When setting up this blog a little more than a month ago, I mentioned that the whole blogging adventure was initiated by the PhD course in Digital History I am following this semester. Within this course, we are required to design and build a visualization project related to our dissertations, and this is why my thoughts now and then have moved beyond my regular 17th century source material to dwell upon the Why's, What's and How's of this task. (For this reason, and general technology nerdiness, of course.)

The coming two weeks I will be a guest blogger at K-Blogg, the blog of Swedish National Heritage Board (have to warn you, though: It's in Swedish). The National Heritage Board is working with and collaborating in many digitizing projects to improve access to cultural heritage, like Kringla (Swedish collective museum search), K-samsök or SOCH, and Europeana. Digitizing what is labeled as the national heritage has been a priority in Swedish cultural politics for almost two decades now, and the primary aim is to create an improved access to this shared physical and immaterial fund of (imagined) shared memory for a broad audience. 

These efforts, corresponding to similar projects internationally, have created a possible overview and countless entries to collections, databases and categories that were accessible only to specialists before. However, I believe that a true and equal access of this kind not only requires efforts concerning the range of databases and on-line availability, but also concerning the receiving part, i.e. the users. Many questions pop up in my head: 

- What prerequisites with the user are necessary for her/him to actually benefit from and make use of all these new and almost unlimited possibilities? Basic knowledge of Swedish and European history and geography? Basic knowledge of culture and religion(s)? Knowledge of colonialism, cultural influences, art history, etc..? Or no prerequisites at all?

Coming closer to the material medieval Marys, here placed in a circle as if talking to each other, in Swedish History Museum's exhibition on Virgin Mary in 2008. Physically closer, but also fragmented, and further from the original content and understanding. (Photo: Christer Åhlin/SHM)

- What do we actually mean by 'improved access'? Is it the possibility to look at and come closer to objects and environments that are normally locked away or closed to visitors? Is it going closer, and aided by digital tools on screen seeing details that were previously - when locked up behind glass in a museum counter - invisible to the eye?

- What values does the digital exhibition (potentially) add, and what values are (potentially) lost with the loss of the physical encounter? An example of an, in my opinion, interesting and innovative on-line exhibition is the Metropolitan Museum's (New York) blog 82nd & Fifth, where the knowledgeable experts in the staff each have picked an item and talk about it. Close-ups of the object are showed, but the strongest impression is, I think, hearing the voices and very personal stories told by people who know their subject well and has a vibrant passion for it. So - judging from this example, at least true passion can be mediated through the web.

- What are the relations between digital exhibitions/digitized objects, the Real McCoy (i.e., the real objects and environments), and authenticity? Is it at all possible to experience authenticity when encountering objects etc. on a screen and not in physical reality, or is the authenticity actually perceived as stronger in a close-up perspective - and will this question be totally irrelevant for coming generations..?

The unsurpassed way to coming very, very close: Touching.

These questions are debated in the museum world, for educational as well as for financial reasons, and a key issue - I presume - must be the future role of the costly storage, care and displaying of authentic objects and environments. Whatever the outcome of these discussions, the importance of education and knowledge with the presumed beneficiaries of the great digital and conservation efforts being made in the growing heritage field is crucial. If basic knowledge is not there, a visitor to the Bode Museum in Berlin will not see a Pietà, the emblematic scene of Virgin Mary mourning her dead son, also according to Christian belief the Son of God who has died to save mankind from eternal condemnation and who will resurrect and conquer Death after three days - s/he will see what is actually physically there, and only that: Two old heads on a wall. The improved access in this scenario can be debated, I think. 

Opinions on this?

(Update 24/10/2103:)

I remembered I wanted to link to this article in The Independent, Tuesday 22 Oct, touching on the subject of basic knowledge and education. The bottom line is that a film like Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' (a film where I have to admit I know most of the lines by heart) would have been impossible in Britain of today. Why? According to the article, because this film is based on references to the Bible and Christian history, and people today would not catch a fragment of the jokes being made since they are religious illiterates. If this is the case, I will safe guard my old Monty Python collection with extra care, since it appears to be on the endangered species list.

Close-up on a fragmented Pietà in Bode Museum, Berlin. The parts left out are filled in by our imagination - given that we have the required knowledge. If not, the two heads make very little sense.

Roman Workday

Yes. I wish this were the regular work look for a Museology researcher in Rome, but, alas: Sweating, no regular motorino driving, sadly no Gregory Peck, and good walking shoes is more like it.

Installed in - at least to a Scandinavian - hot and humid Rome, all children safely arrived as is my research material. Renting an apartment that turned out to be without wifi, we were reminded of how large a part of our lives that is dependent on internet: communication, school, work, banks, information, newspapers, timetables, ticket offices, data storage, and so on. Quite annoying, but we will work it out and try to remember what we used to talk about before smartphones and ipads entered our lives.

Installed also in what will be my work desk until May next year: a table in the beautiful and quiet library of Istituto Svedese di Studi Classici, the Swedish Institute for Classical Studies, in Northern Rome near the Villa Borghese park. Here, the foreign research institutes for art, archaeology, history, architecture, and other humanistic fields are flocking in what was once the outskirts of Rome, but now is regarded as rather central and elegant quarters. The history behind the accumulation of foreign institutes here is quite spectacular; Mussolini decided he wanted foreign states to establish research institutes in Italy, and he offered a piece of land in this Northern part of town to states who promised to build a beautiful and prestigious building and fill it with scientific activity, and also to offer a correspondent piece of land in their respective capitals. The Swedish Institute in Rome was founded in 1925, supported by the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) who had an ardent interest in archaeology. In 1939 the present building in Via Omero, designed by famous Swedish architect Ivar Tengbom, was inaugurated and decorated with furniture and art signed by the most prominent Swedish designers and artists at the time.

Istituto Svedese in Via Omero, 14

Starting out with a classical profile in archaeology and classical studies, the Swedish Institute now has broadened its scope and houses also researchers in Art history, Architecture, Philology, as well as Heritage Studies and other more recently emerged disciplines. Working in this environment means a lot of benefits; first and foremost, a possibility to work in a beautiful and calm environment specially designed for this kind of work, and near the rich sources of historical layers, archives, libraries, buildings, art collections and other such things that make a nerd's eyes sparkle. But also, and not less important, a possibility to meet and talk with a vast range of other researchers from all over the world. In the few days I have been here, I have already met a couple of very good scholars working on journeys to Rome in Premodern time, i.e. with interests quite close to mine - where else would we meet, but here?

Work desk in 1930's design, carrying 2012 computer showing a 17th century diary. A Roman Mille Foglie ('thousand sheets') cake of historical layers.

And then, finally, the magic of authenticity, touching, following the footsteps of... We live very close to the Porta del Popolo, which was the regular entrance to Rome for travelers from the North in 17th century. Though surrounded by cars, motorinos, restaurants, trams and electric light, it is still there. From dusk til dawn and late night, I like to take a walk there just to imagine for a while what it was like to arrive there at different times of the day (as described in the 17th century diaries I study), after what was sometimes a hard journey, and after weeks and months of anticipation - finally there. 

And for me: Finally here.

Porta del Popolo, late 18th century engraving by Giuseppe Vasi

It all started with a headless Jesus

Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. 15th century sculpture in Strängnäs cathedral (Sweden)

Every so often in the enigmatic world of Academia, when confronted with the arduous work of clever colleagues, a question springs to mind: How on earth did s/he come up with this topic? And what in it was so thrilling, so tickling, so calling out to be explored that it was considered worth spending at least four years of hard work on? Not that it doesn't seem interesting (it often does), it is just the level of specialization that might have a deterrent effect on the non-specialists in the field in question - i.e., sadly, almost everyone.   

For me, it all started with a headless Jesus. The time and place were the end of the 1990’s in the medieval brick cathedral of Strängnäs, Sweden, and I was presented to an image showing Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. The sculpture was medieval, made of wood and displaying clear signs of neglect and being out of fashion during the past centuries - not a unique state for Catholic objects that for some reason were spared after the Reformation. Now, however, the image not only was given a prominent position in the cathedral, but even honored with a fresh rose and a living candle placed before it on a small altar. All in all, the signs were clear: This was a living relation, a devotion of and an interaction with the divine. ”—We have brought Mary back into the church!”, the Lutheran parish priest stated. It was when I approached and actually looked more closely on the Virgin that I discovered the headless state of baby Jesus. In an instant I discovered that I reacted in a number of habitual ways: as interested in the heritage field and historical matters in one way, as a former museum emplyee in another, and as a frequent visitor to Catholic churches in yet another way. 

The worn, historic image of Mary with a headless baby Jesus in her arms and candles and a flower placed before it sent out, at least to my mind, mixed signals: Was this a historical object to be regarded with nostalgia, was it part of a national or ecclesiastical heritage to be interpreted as sheer materiality, or was it the sacred image it was once made to be, and – despite the headlessness – still a relevant object for devotion? Or, I asked myself, could it actually be all these things at the same time – a state of hybridity, dependent on the beholder and its gaze, prerequisites and convictions? Standing there in the dusky church, a process started that eventually led to studies in Heritage politics, to a Master thesis in History of Ideas and science, and to the topic for the dissertation I am presently working on.

Skokloster Castle 17th century library, Sweden. (Photo: Bengt A Lundberg)

A clue to the ambiguous relationship to materiality, authenticity and sacredness that I became aware of when meeting the headless Jesus might be the years I worked in the rare book collection at Skokloster Castle. When being bought by the Swedish state in 1967 and transformed into a museum, Skokloster also formed a practice and a view on conservation that is still valid in heritage environments. Here it was actually possible to follow and understand the original building process from start to finish, through the books in the library, through letters ordering tools from Holland and other countries, through the same tools still preserved, and through the woodworks, ceiling constructions and lime mortar that were produced on the building site. Conservation was performed by using these original and authentic methods, and the golden rule was to add as little as possible - just to keep the old parts together. How this practice, with the carefully re-glued flakes of paints on the walls, sometimes clashes with the expectations of the visitors is quite vividly illuminated by the crass statement by an American tourist: "This place needs fixing.".

Being educated in this view, the supremacy of material authenticity, I had no problems with heritage objects looking really scruffy - as a matter of fact, the scruffiness just added to my belief in the authenticity. No, the problem with the headless Jesus was something else: it touched upon sacredness and the claims of being "alive" in its original function, as a devotional object. Could this work, even without a head?

In an article, presently under publication (November 2013, Gotländskt Arkiv), I explore the use of medieval religious materiality and practices on Gotland, Sweden, in premodern time and up to now. Without giving away too much of the article, it can be said that the general attitude towards sacred matter presently out of fashion has been severely unsentimental, down-to-earth and utilitarian, and that the appreciation of immaterial values in this category emerged with Romanticism, Piranesi's etchings of Roman ruins and the entrance of the Artist as a major character.

Today, authenticity and sacredness seem to merge in a highly subjective narrative, not primarily based on historical or theological facts, but on what might very well be the most influential currency of our time: Emotions. In this perspective it is hardly surprising that many visitors to the medieval church ruins of Visby, Gotland, express that they experience a particularly strong authenticity during the annual Medieval Festival ('Medeltidsveckan') when the former Franciscan church of S.t Catherine is filled to the brim with reenacting visitors watching jesters performing a fire show. The former sacred building has transformed into a live scene for medieval reenactment, and the result is experienced authenticity and - for some - even a sense of sacredness.

Returning to Mary and her headless baby Jesus, one question seems inevitable: Sacredness - is it objective, or is it all in the eye of the beholder?

Jester from performance group 'Trix' performing a fire show in S.t Catherine's church ruin, Visby. (Photo: Helen Simonsson)

Visualizing the invisible and Bridging the gap

Arch of Titus, Forum Romanum, Rome

(In the declaration for this blog I promised occasional glimpses of the daily ordeals of life in Academia. Here it goes - scroll down if you find it boring. It's okay, I sometimes feel the same listening to myself.) 

During the past week I have been experiencing a slightly worrying level of scatter mindedness, presently of the magnitude where I have to double check that all clothes are on and that it is the work bag, not the garbage, I am carrying before taking off for work. The reason for this - or so I hope, at least - is our imminent move to Rome for a period, and the thousands of big and small details to get sorted before we go: school for the children, care for our half-blind cat, copies of manuscript sources, packing for four persons (weather: Hot? Cold? Rainy?), deciding what small number of toys and children's books to bring, arrange all cloud based computer storages, databases etc so they work together, writing good old paper letters to research funds to requisition money, sending sad aging smart phone on the last journey, replace with new and happier phone, and so on. Like that, night and day, while simultaneously going back and forth to my university in Umeå and preparing the last lectures in Museology on 17th century antiquity politics before I leave. I will make sure to count the children an extra time before boarding the plane, and the rest will just have to work somehow. (End of Ordeals, back to Research.)

The reason for me to start this blog was, as I wrote previously, the PhD course on Digital History where academic blogging is one of the tasks. Another task is to figure out, design and technically develop a digital project related to my thesis, and at best something that actually helps me in my work and can be useful even after the course is finished. Being childishly delighted over technical gadgets and the countless possibilities of the digital development - in particular when applied to the premodern period and sources I work on - I find this task exciting and challenging, and actually also a bit tricky to solve. Why? The focus of my research topic, the heritagisation of sacredness and religion, are processes that are characterized by the fact that they are invisible to the eye; the statue of a saint which was perceived as sacred and an object of worship and devotion yesterday is being transformed into a museum object today, physically exactly the same but with new and completely different sets of narratives connected to it. So, my challenge seems to be: How do I visualize the invisible in an interesting and academically relevant way?

When starting to explore the possibilites offered to historians in the digital world, one finds quite an impressive number of useful, beautifully designed and generally really cool projects (and, needless to say, some less brilliant work as well). Just to give you an idea of the possibilities brought by various visualization projects, take a look at the Mapping Statues project, where you get a visual idea of statues and their placement in Rome on a chronological line. Or the amazing Orbis: The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, where you can calculate the length of time, resources needed and much more for journeys through the historical Roman Empire. Besides the fact that stuff like this give me goosebumps of excitement, I am convinced they add important dimensions to our understanding of theoretical and immaterial processes, events and cultures. Again, it is the use of all our senses and the way they help us learn and understand things, abilities that have been looked down upon and excluded from academic history research for long periods. I believe much potential knowledge and understanding has been missed in this.

As for my dissertation case study with the Swedish Lutheran peregrination travelers to Rome in the 17th century, one of my crucial questions is: How did these young men, coming from a culturally not very developed country (at least not in comparison to Italy at the time) where a heated debate about the dangers of Catholic influences was going on, experience the Catholic objects, habits, rituals, culture etc. when coming to Rome for a brief visit as (what we now call) tourists? My aim is to say something about how they might have reacted to and classified these objects and events - as exotic, sacred, threatening, aestetic, historical, etc. - based on their travel journals or diaries, but also by trying to find out what they saw and how they saw it. 

No matter how well I do my source studies and my background research, I must be aware of the risk of speculating and getting lost in assumptions; there is an inevitable gap between what I know to be true, what I can read and see and touch, and what I assume and guess to be true. I imagine creating visualizations of a lost past offers not only the fantastic thrills and possibilities to find and share new knowledge and understanding, but also a rather severe temptation to jump to conclusions, draw the lines just a little longer and thicker, to fill in the gap instead of minding it. Is this a risk, or am I being over-cautious?

What I am considering as my digital project at the moment, when having given up on the possibilities of visualizing the invisible (well, perhaps not forever, but for now), is a map based digital visualization of a selected few of my diary writers and their movements and primary sightseeings in Rome. The tools I have started to try out for this are Omeka and Neatline, and among the sources I plan to use are diaries, archive records etc related to these travellers. Her is an example from Uppsala University library of what it can look like:

Travel journal of Olof Celsius sr (1670-1756) showing a plan over the Vatican Library

Another type of sources are the guidebooks published all through the 17th century to meet the demands of a growing number of visitors to the Eternal City - pious pilgrims as well as, perhaps, less pious or at least not Catholic travelers interested in culture, art and history. An example of these guidebooks is Le cose marauigliose dell'alma città di Roma, doue si tratta delle chiese, stationi, & reliquie de' corpi santi, che ui sono. by Girolamo Francini and Andrea Palladio. It was printed in Venice in 1625, issued for the twelfth jubilee of the Catholic church, and based on an original edition from 1575.

When I started to think of possible ways to perform this task, I imagined how it would be to actually walk with my travelers through Rome as it looked at the time: no cars, no concrete buildings, no Mussolini streets. Searching the web for inspiration I found that Emory University, US, had done exactly this and launched the project just a couple of weeks earlier. They have made a visualization that can be explored with gaming controls, based on Giovanni Battista Falda's famous map Roma in Prospettiva from 1676, and where even the shifting light of the day can be adjusted. Check out a presentation of the project here. I am hoping to get a possibility to try this model at some point, and to be able to almost literally walk in the footsteps of the travelers I am trailing; to see at least some of what they saw, based on their own accounts, and then add some of that - after all, inevitable - ingredient of magic that is Imagination.

Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome. Added to and altered since the 3rd century, but still there.

Byproducts of death: Thoughts on the fate of bones

Head of Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) 

In my department, Culture and Media Studies, a group of likeminded colleagues has started to discuss and write on various topics connected to the research field called Death Studies. It all started somewhere early this year with an e-mail popping down in my mailbox, where a Professor just wanted to check if anyone was interested in meeting and talk about death. This is one of the many great things with this job: I suspect such an approach doesn't appear in every office, but it did in mine.

Already up to my knees in the death field (since museums and heritage are tightly related to death, and also to rebirth), and after having received a blessing from one of my supervisors, I happily joined what is now commonly referred to as "the Death Group" (one simply has to like that, right?). It soon was obvious that the concept of "death" triggered a vast range of topics and aspects in our interdisciplinary circle; from the semi-death in cryonics, via zombies and dumpster diving, to Medieval Pietà - and much more in between. In June a special issue of Kulturella Perspektiv ("Cultural Perspectives") was published in Swedish, where my contribution bore the title (translated) "Death in the Souvenir shop: Mortal Remains as Cult and Curiosities" and touched upon the many layers of charging and re-charging in Christian relics.

In brief, I wanted to describe how the many similarities between the concepts 'heritage' and 'sacredness', similarities that are one of my starting points for my PhD project, partially derive from the collecting and veneration of relics. These relic collections eventually developed into art cabinets or proto-museums, and then into Western European museums as we are used to see them.
Relics could and still can be found in the shape of actual human remains, or as second and third degree relics, meaning something that has touched the remains or something that has touched something that was once touched by the saint - a contagious sacredness that is physically transmitted. Relics also strongly emphasizes the material aspect and the sensual relationship to sacred objects, an aspect that has been highlighted by Caroline Walker Bynum in Christian Materiality (2011) and Charles Freeman in Holy Dust, Holy Bones (2011).

Saint Bridget of Sweden (1303-1373): Here, there, and everywhere

From a museological point of view, what I find particularly fascinating is the constant re-charging and creation of new and very different narratives connected to relics. Saint Bridget of Sweden, for example, was not only a well documented spiritual person in 14th century Europe, she was also of royal ancestry and did not hesitate to intervene in high politics. When she died in Rome her body was 'ossificated', which meant the soft parts of the body were removed, and her bones (except for some of them that remained in her house in Rome) were carried in a shrine to Vadstena, Sweden, where she had founded her first convent. Like many bone relics from the Middle Ages and even from the times of the first Christians, Saint Bridget's bones can now be found in a number of countries, settings, contexts and narratives; a small flake of her bones was given to Uppsala Cathedral by Bridgettin sisters in the 1980's, an act that caused an animated debate since the cathedral is Lutheran and the veneration of saints and relics is not commonly accepted there. However, a special silver shrine was made and the relic was given an honorable place in a choir.

Just a few miles away, in 17th century Skokloster Castle with a collection of around 50,000 objects preserved through families and centuries, another flake of Saint Bridget is kept. Here, though, no silver shrine has been made and no veneration takes place, because this part of the Saint's bones is cathegorized as a museum object. It is properly listed in the museum inventory, and dated "19th century" probably due to the papal certificate from that time stating the authenticity of the bone fragment. What is Bridget doing there, in a Baroque collection containing numerous other things but not of a specifically pious character? The answer lies in one of the previous owners, the noble Brahe family, who (wrongly, as it later turned out) proudly announced themselves to be related to this famous saint and thus also of royal blood. This assumed relationship resulted in the collecting of Bridget memorabilia of various sorts and qualities, where the relic is just one of many items.

In my short article I ended up in the souvenir shop, where third degree relics are sold amongst the postcards and amulets with no specific demands on belief or intention with the buyer. I asked how we should understand this multi-layered existence that is a relic: as layer upon layer of death, or as a rebirth upon rebirth as new and different existences? This topic is fascinating, even without having touched upon the excitements of other aspects such as secular relics (pieces of hair etc from famous persons, Jimi Hendrix' guitar - or what's left of it - and so on), and I was glad to hear this morning when meeting my fellow Death Group members that our exploration of death and its connotations will go on and probably result in a publication, and perhaps also in a workshop or conference.

This, dear readers, is one of the many geeky sides of Academia: How contemplating Death can make you feel so vibrantly alive.

Memory Boxing

Thinking in images, or with the aid of images, might sometimes be a useful help to approach and analyze theoretical matters. For me it comes naturally since I have been associating people, feelings, processes, music, etc, with images for as long as I can remember.
One such image, or model, was presented and discussed in a session during the ISCH conference in Istanbul, namely: The Memory Box.

I have had a least two serious memory boxes in my life; the first, a Hofnar cigar box in wood where I collected a treasure of immeasurable value (others would have called it old, broken jewelry that my mom gave me); the second, a tin box with an 18th century woman in a white and blue dress printed on the lid. In this latter box I collected things that were charged with special, and not necessarily material, value to me, through memories of persons, events and emotions. I keep it still on the shelf in my study.

The project presented is a collaboration between universities in Mainz and Turku (Åbo) initiated in 2011, and they use the Memory Box as a method for analyzing the transfer of media (art works etc) between cultures. Aleida Assmans book Cultural Memory and Western Civilization (2011) was referred to as a starting point for the project's use of the concept, and she was said to stress the origin of the word 'box' in Latin's 'arca', arc. A memory box, also when used in this metaphoric way, was described as a fragile container, equal to the human mind. We were given examples of memory boxes in the shape of artefacts, 'topoi' (a collection of stereotypes, used for example as a rhetorical tool) or persons, and an emphasis was put on the content in the box and the (eventual) opening of the box. The papers were very interesting and the project fascinating, and it generated a vivid discussion with objections as well as acclamations, and many questions.

For me, I found myself being most interested in what was left outside of the box (still in this metaphorical sense). Some things, actually most things, are always left outside of the memory production, either on purpose or because they are forgotten, and I believe much of interest can be discovered by turning the museum/memory spotlight in the other direction for a while. This process is referred to by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett as 'the agency of display'; by pointing out things, by highlighting them and appoint them to be representatives of a certain narrative, we also point away from other things. I find this shadowland of forgotten or deliberately dismissed things tremendously fascinating!

And, for the same reasons I guess, I find the wrapping and the wrapper of this imagined memory box even more intriguing than the opening and the opener. Opening a memory box is a question of reception, emotion and associations, while wrapping it - deciding what should be in it, what not, and for what reasons - is in my understanding an act of power and control. This Power Of The Wrapper is executed by museum practitioners, researchers, authors, artists, policy makers and everyone creating narratives of the past - with or without an outspoken agenda. Continuing my reflexions on the memory box as a relevant tool for analyzing the production of memory and heritage, I come to think of a George Orwell quote: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

One crucial question demands an answer from me: As a researcher exploring heritage, heritagisation and museums, who am I: the Wrapper, the Opener, or even a kind of Memory Box?