Abstract
According to an anecdote, the Norwegian historian Johan Schreiner (1903–67) once uttered the following significant statement to his students: ‘The older I get, the less I think about women and the more I think about the decline of Norway (Norges nedgang).’ As everyone in the audience knew, Schreiner was referring to one of the major research problems of his history career: How could one account for the decline of the Norwegian state in the late Middle Ages?
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Notes
Jørgen Sevaldsen, ‘Forfaldets fascination: “the Decline of Britain”-debatten’ (Danish), Historisk tidsskrift ser.15, 3, 2 (1988), 282–312, in his discussion of the ‘Decline of Britain’ debate, uses the heading ‘The Fascination of Decay (Forfaldets fascination)’.
Sverre Bagge, ‘The Middle Ages’, in W.H. Hubbard et al. (eds), Making a Historical Culture. Historiography in Norway (Oslo, 1995), 111–31;
Quoted from Anders Johansen and Jens E. Kjeldsen, Virksomme ord. Politiske taler, 1814–2005 (Oslo, 2005), 19 (my trans.). The mentions of Adelsten and Sverre refer to Norway’s international standing. Håkon I was raised at the English court in the late tenth century. Sverre proudly challenged the pope.
Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (eds), The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo, 1997), 6.
Sivert Langholm, ‘The New Nation and the New Universities. The Case of Norway in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 20 (1995), 51–60, at 60.
Teis Hellevik, ‘Ulike syn på Norges nedgang i senamiddelalderen. En historiografisk analyse av fem allmenne historieverk fra det tyvende århundre’ (Hovedfagsoppgave [master’s thesis], University of Oslo, 2004).
Mark Mazower, The Balkans (London, 2001), 14.
Steinar Imsen, Norges nedgang (Oslo, 2002); id.
and Günther Vogler, ‘Communal Autonomy and Peasant Resistance in Northern and Central Europe’, in Peter Blickle (ed.), Resistance, Representation and Community (Oxford, 1990), 5–64.
Ole Jørgen Benedictow, Plague in the Late Medieval Nordic Countries. Epidemiological Studies (Oslo,1992).
See the articles in Holmsen and Simensen (eds), Norske historikere i utvalg (1968).
Sverre Bagge, ‘Nationalism in Norway in the Middle Ages’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 20/1 (1995), 1–18.
Knut Helle (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia. Vol. I: Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge, 2003).
Jørgen Haavardsholm, ‘Vikingtiden som 1800-tallskonstruksjon’ (PhD dissertation, University of Oslo, 2004).
According to Stian Bromark and Dag Herbjørnsrud, Norge. Et lite stykke verdenshistorie (Oslo, 2005), 405–6.
Kåre Lunden, Norsk grålysning: norsk nasjonalisme, 1770–1814, på allmenn bakgrunn (Oslo, 1992);
Kåre Lunden, ‘Was There a Norwegian National Identity in the Middle Ages?’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 20/1 (1995), 19–33;
Inge Lønning, according to Iver B. Neumann, Norge — en kritikk. Begrepsmakt i Europadebatten (Oslo, 2001).
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© 2011 Jan Eivind Myhre
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Myhre, J.E. (2011). The ‘Decline of Norway’: Grief and Fascination in Norwegian Historiography on the Middle Ages. In: Evans, R.J.W., Marchal, G.P. (eds) The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States. Writing the Nation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283107_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283107_3
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