Following the exhilarating tour of the ancient Norse heritage sites at Hedrum and Istrehågan, I was satisfied enough with my visit of Norway’s Vestfold County to not look for anything more Pagan-y in the neighborhood. At that point, I would have been content to just eat good food, jog in the woods, and visit some of the local landmarks related to the region’s prized polar history.
Our host, Synnøve, however, had other plans.
“Tomorrow we can take you to this really amazing place. It’s just half an hour driving west.”
“Is it some kind of monument?”
“I won’t say anything! It’s gotta be a surprise! Just be ready to hike outside a bit.”
The following morning we all got together in the car: me, my wife, my kid, Synnøve, and her boyfriend, and started driving to wherever this mystical place was. After a short drive through rolling fields and small hamlets, Synnøve told us to pass by a large camping-car village, towards a forested backroad close to the coast. Despite the overall scathing summer heat, it felt rather cold out there, due to the powerful winds coming from the North Sea. We put our jackets on, and headed over the rickety shrubby woods by the water.
Once we got over the small ridge, the beach landscape opened to us – and what a landscape! Nothing but rocks, huge pebbles, polished by centuries and millennia of tides and tempests. Not a grain of sand in sight, just large grey stones completely covering the shoreline for close to a mile.
A small funeral mound in the Mølen beach in Vestfold. Lyonel D Perabo (2023).
This was Mølen (“The Gravel”), one of the main attractions in these parts, and not just for its natural properties. True, the beach might have been created over 10,000 years ago, at the southern edge of the Scandinavian ice-shelf, but what makes this place special is what people later did with all these rocks: dotting the eerily colorless shoreline stand over 200 funeral barrows, most of which just a few feet long, but a couple about 100 feet long.
While there has never been any significant attempt to analyze those formations, scholars believe that they were likely erected over a period of one or two millennia, covering most of the Early Metal Age period all the way to the dawn of the Viking Age. This is a time period which is equally fascinating, important, and mysterious. No contemporary sources describe what took place down here in southernmost Norway in those olden days, long before Vikings set sails westwards, or what rites and gods they had.
It would be tempting to see in those graves facing the water a dedication to maritime deities like Njörd, Ægir, or Rán, but truly it is impossible to tell. We nevertheless know that the shoreline did play an important part in pre-Viking Age Scandinavia, looking for example at the numerous stone carvings that have been found in the region, most of which near the sea.
Regardless of what those beachfront properties for the dead really mean, it is hard to imagine a more fitting place for them. The greyness of the rocks, the greyness of the clouds, the greyness of the sea – they all merge up after a while, giving a feeling of peace and timelessness. Truly, if I ever saw a liminal space, this was it, even with all the hiking Norwegians stumbling around.
After a little while, I stop daydreaming. The wind just got actually cold, so I head back towards one of the large mounds where everyone else is resting. This massive pile of rocks, much taller than even a tall human makes actually for a pretty decent windbreak. It is under its not ominous at all presence that we take a break, snaking on fresh baked goods and drinking ink-black coffee.
Whoever you are who is buried here, thanks for the shelter, I thought, as large crumbs of pastry fell into the cracks of the mound. This one’s for you buddy. The shrieking seagulls can go to Hel!
One of the large mound in the Mølen beach in Vestfold. Lyonel D Perabo (2023)
A few days after visiting Mølen, it was time for us to leave Vestfold. The plan was to visit some friends in Moss, on the eastern side of the Oslo fjord before getting into the capital. On the way, I suggested that we could still do a little bit of sightseeing, as there were one landmark I particularly wanted to see: a stave-church.
Although stave churches have become emblematic of Norway and Norwegian heritage, the near 30 that have survived to this day are all located down south in the country and I, living in the far north, had unfortunately never seen one before. However, last year, as I visited the site of the once temple at Uppåkra, my interest towards stave churches grew significantly.
Numerous scholars believe that the architecture of Norwegian stave churches, some as old as the early 12th century, might have been based upon earlier pagan temples. Seeing the small scaled-down model of the temple in Uppåkra and stepping upon the ground that once harbored the old structure made me want to see the closest living relative, a stave church.
While almost all surviving stave churches are to be found in the mountainous interior of the country, one, I found out when planning this trip, was located not too far from Larvik, about an hour away, kinda on the way to Moss, so I was able to persuade my wife to take a pit stop there on our way east.
Leaving our friends behind, we headed north through the countryside. Cows, horses, fields, woods and sometimes a house or two; there was not much to look for until we neared the hamlet of Høyjord. Once called Haugagerðr and nested in between the forested hills and a small lake, this farming community would feel no different from any other similar hamlets if it was not for the tall, dark spire suddenly making an appearance when nearing the settlement.
The Høyjord Stave church as seen from the road. Lyonel D Perabo (2023)
I am not going to lie: when I spotted the building, I got more than a little bit excited. Here it was, one of those legendary medieval houses of worship, standing tall. Made of darkened, tarred timbers, and roofed by equally swarthy wooden shingles, the church looked nothing like any other churches I had ever seen, in Norway or otherwise.
The church was closed, but that was okay. I was enthralled enough just by looking at the church’s construction. I will be fine, I thought, if I miss a few Marian altarpieces kept within. Most interesting for me was seeing the structure, how it met the gaze and the presence of the pilgrim that I suppose I was. Wandering around the church and throughout the cemetery, I got a feeling of restrained grandeur, a sober magnificence akin to a work of art birthed by an artist who honed his arts through the ages.
It looked and felt exactly like I would have imagined a stave church would. But maybe a bit too much so? When looking at the Høyjord church, I could almost picture the same structure standing proud in the distant Middle Ages and even further in the Pagan heydays of the North. While on one hand I would love nothing more than seeing a similar-looking building consecrated for and used in the practice of the Old Religion, I realized that my feelings, regardless how strong they are, were not entirely my own.
After all, the fascination for stave-churches is a relatively recent phenomenon, born from 19th century National-Romanticism. Indeed, up until the middle of that period, few in Norway cared about those crummy old churches, and it took the advocacy of numerous influential artists and intellectuals for the general public to start getting involved actively preserving those buildings.
Over time, as more and more of those famed stave churches underwent restoration and, following the artistic spirit of the time, later architectural and artistic features were often overlooked if not outright erased. Panels were replaced, paint, scraped, roofs, reconstructed and various ornaments, reminiscent of medieval and Viking Age art were often added. This sort of aesthetic feedback loop resulted in a sort of “stave church look” that was supposed to represent the state of the buildings during an idealized, mythical time, rather than the more amalgamated appearance that centuries-old buildings are bound to showcase.
Thinking about this phenomenon, it struck me how the restoration of such physical churches mirror the process of religious reform and evolution in the spiritual world as well. After all, isn’t contemporary Paganism somewhat akin to this very church? A relic from ages past that fell or nearly fell out of use, only to be rediscovered and refitted in order to conform to both the needs of a new age, and the idea we modern men have of a sacred past?
While there are numerous parallels between these two processes, I find it fascinating that, looking at it closely, their starting point and aims are actually the reverse of one another. The stave church was very much a religious entity, used solely in a sacral context but was slowly withering away. Ultimately, it owes its preservation to esthetic, historical and ideological factors that, through physical transformation and intellectual reevaluation took it (to a large extent) away from the religious sphere into the profane, where it took on another life.
The Høyjord stave church as seen from the cemetary. Lyonel D Perabo (2023)
When it comes to the Old Religion, it is the complete opposite. When the wealth of European spiritual heritage was rediscovered in the Modern Era, it was soon utilized for political, intellectual and esthetic goals and remained thus in profane existence for centuries. It was from this dusty, stasis-like state that what was left of the Old Religion was rekindled into a living and breathing network of faiths, traditions, and spiritual communities.
This interplay between the spheres of religious expression and mundane permanence is not something that is talked enough I believe, and yet, as we’ve seen, it informs the dynamics of religious emergence and progression more than one would think. This is also a hugely important tool in grounding oneself, understanding one’s place, not necessarily in the cosmos, but first and foremost in history, society and within one’s own spiritual tradition.
So, next time you spot either a pretty little church, or an antediluvian pile of rocks, ask yourself not only how it came to be, but what its continued existence elucidates about the people, the land, the history, and no less the soul of its surroundings. Understanding the complex processes these landmarks arose from and the role they subsequently played in the world might lead you to intellectual or spiritual places you would never have wandered into otherwise.
Maybe this is the true spirit of a pilgrimage? Turning a physical journey into immaterial introspection, acknowledging the pull of spiritual forces unto the material world and the power of corporeal constructs to evoke higher truths, all the while pondering about one’s own place in the incalculable mechanisms at play?
Maybe. Or maybe it just feels good to travel and see beautiful, new things. My daughter would probably be content with that, but as much as she likes pretty old buildings, a very tangible hunger has turned her attention away from the stave-church and back to the car. “Daaaaaad! I’m hungry! I want blueberries,” she moans in despair as my wife buckles her up in the back seat.
As I reach for the box of jumbo blue fruits, I take a last look at the stave church. For all the thinking I got to do thanks to it, I am grateful. Yet, even as I recall one last time the convoluted patchwork of expectations, feelings, and processes that lead me to this place, I still come back to my initial conclusion: this would make for a stunning Heathen temple, even more so in the company of an enormous stone barrow across the road. I hope that one day in the future, my pilgrimages will take me to a place like that.
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