Kildegjennomgang. Middelalderske kirkesteder i Telemark fylke 

Kildegjennomgang for registering av middelalderske kirkesteder er utført av NIKU ved Jan Brendalsmo på oppdrag av Riksantikvaren. Forberedelse av kildetekstene for publisering og kopling til ID-nummer i Askeladden er gjort av Jan-Erik G. Eriksson, Riksantikvaren

De dødes landskap: Måtte man begraves ved sognekirken i middelalderen?

The landscape of the dead. Was burial at the parish churchyard an obligation in the Middle Ages? By A. Jan Brendalsmo Too often one finds that scientists doing research on the skeletal material found in parish churchyards draw firm conclusions about the people who once inhabited the adjoining areas. This probably arises from the assumption that it was obligatory in the Middle Ages, after the establishment of geographically delimited parishes, for people to receive burial at the local parish church. However, analyses of contemporary written sources concerning the see of Nidaros in Northern Norway shows that this cannot have been the case. The only thing that can be stated with certainty is that all law-abiding Christian members of society were to receive burial at a church, while those who had committed certain severe crimes were to be buried “where sea meets land”. Furthermore, it seems that common and more or less private cemeteries coexisted in the area throughout the Middle Ages, and that the location of a particular individual’s grave depended to a large extent on the social and economic standing of the deceased, rather than on his or her place of domicile. As a result, the author argues that – in addition to the familiar (and later) geographical parish – there were two other kinds of parish in the Middle Ages: the “social parish” and the “religious parish”. The main conclusion is thus that the “landscape of the dead” reflects the complexity of the world of the living, and that it is not possible, a priori, to regard the physical remains found in a local churchyard as directly representative of the area’s contemporary population

Om kirkesagn og ødekirker: Muntlig tradisjon og stedsnavn som kilder for kirkeforskningen

Of Migratory Legends and Deserted Churches By Jan Brendalsmo & Frans-Arne Stylegar The main purpose of the article is to argue for observance of oral tradition as a source to deserted medieval churches. Such churches are referred to in place-names, where church- (kirke, kapell) or priest- (prest) are part of the name (eg. Kirkeby, Presterud, Kirkeåketeigen, Kapelløya). Often there are folk tales connected to these places. Some tales just tell that there once stood a church on a specific site, the site often having one of the above mentioned type of name. In other cases there is no name to support the folk tale. Then there are the so-called migratory legends, which tell that the local farmers started to build a church on a specific place, but what was built during daytime was removed to another place at night by supra-natural powers. And there the church was eventually built. A few examples are presented, from the county of Vest-Agder in the south of Norway, where the authors have excavated some of these legendary churches. The various types of tradition in Vest-Agder are then discussed and grouped, with emphasis put on three geographical areas where tradition is especially plentiful. Finally, it is argued that by treating folk tradition as any other source for scientific research, it is possible to develop a much broader understanding of the erection of religious buildings in the medieval periode. A theoretical reason is given for an approach of this kind, and an attempt at decoding the migratory legends is presented

Kanalen i Tønsberg

At some point during the first half of the 1200s the Norwegian King Håkon Håkonsson organized the dredging of a canal called Skeljasteinsund through Stensarmen, an isthmus which, at the time, more or less connected the island of Nøtterøy with the mainland and the medieval town of Tønsberg. This has conventionally been thought to have been the first time that someone decided to improve the south-easterly seaward approach to Tønsberg in this way. However, by comparing information on geology, post-glacial land rise and the necessary depth of water required to accommodate the draughts of larger vessels of the period ca. AD 800–1300, it becomes clear that already by about 800 large ships like those found at Oseberg and Gokstad have had trouble passing Stensarmen at mean sea level. It is argued that Tønsberg had a central role militarily, economically and politically during the period ca. 800 - ca. 1200 when Danish and Norwegian kings struggled for supremacy over the south-eastern part of Norway. With this in mind, it might be suggested that one or more of these kings organized the excavation of a canal during this time in order to uphold two separate access routes to Tønsberg by sea

Prestebol og prestegjeld på landet i Stavanger bispedømme i middelalderen

Vicarage and parish in Stavanger diocese in the Middle Ages By Frans-Arne Stylegar and Jan Brendalsmo In historical research the vicarages in Norway are usually believed to have been common in the 14th century, and to have been established by the owner of the church farm. Our research indicates that while vicarages (prestebol) did exist in the 14th century, the majority of priests lived either in separate rooms or separate buildings at the church farm, and that several of them probably were employed on a yearly basis, as were ordinary farm workers. Only a minority of priests were owner-occupiers, and it was most likely a common occurrence that the priests’ holdings lay in between strips belonging to other farmers (i.e. a runrig system). For different kinds of reasons a structural change in the Church’s organisation occurred at the end of the 14th and in the 15th century, in the sense that parishes were organised, the boundaries of the existing vicarages were regularised and new vicarages established at all churches, each with a resident priest, and the land rent was allocated to the church’s fabrica, i.e. to the church building and its maintenance, and to priest’s mensa, i.e. to defraying the expenses of the priest. The Plague in 1348-50 led to a reduction both in the number of priests and in the level of ecclesiastical revenues, and this contributed to a reorganisation of the Church’s holdings. Furthers reasons for the late-medieval reorganisation was the fact that the Church’s leaders now had a firmer grip on pastoral care in Norway, and that the owners of the private churches had changed their attitutes regarding the ownership of churches and priests. Still, it is primarily in the late 15th and early 16th century that the bishops and, later, the king’s officials took actionand established separate farms for the priests, i.e. vicaragesof a type known in later centuries

Kulturhistorisk atlas for skolens nærmiljø : prosjekt i Den kulturelle skolesekken med det nære landskap som utgangspunkt

Rapporten er et resultat av et samarbeidsprosjekt mellom Vestskogen skole og tre forskningsmiljøer, Høgskolen i Vestfold (HiVe), Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning (NIKU) og Norsk institutt for naturforskning (NINA). Dette er et pilotprosjekt knyttet til og hovedsakelig finansiert av Den kulturelle skolesekken. Denne rapporten skal derfor kunne fungere som en veiledning for skoler og forskningsinstitusjoner som ønsker å jobbe vitenskapelig med særlig kulturhistorie i forhold til barn og unge. Metodisk kombineres tre forskningsmiljøers fagområder i en målsetning om at elever skal selv kunne drive vitenskapelig baserte undersøkelser i sitt nærmiljø: forståelse, kartlegging av, og arbeid med kultur- og naturlandskapet i Vestskogens skolekrets

Mental Health in Immigrant Adolescents -An exploratory study of culture competence as a moderator in the relationship between daily hassles and depression

The aim of this study is to explore the role of immigration and culture change in adolescents' mental health and psychological development. This study explores the proposition of culture competence as a protective factor regarding mental health in immigrant adolescents. Our hypothesis is that culture competence moderates the effect of daily hassles on depression, measured as outcome on the depression scale CES-D. We investigate a sample consisting of 556 students from two junior high schools in Oslo where our main focus is on the group of 373 immigrant adolescents. We presumed that the group of immigrant adolescents would not differ in outcome of reported depression compared to their ethnic Norwegian peers. Nevertheless, our results show that the immigrant adolescents report more depression than the ethnic Norwegians. In accordance with our assumptions, analyses revealed high levels of both ethnic- and host culture competence and low levels of daily hassles and depression. However, we did not find culture competence to have any moderating effect on the relationship between daily hassles and ratings of depression. Future studies should include similar approaches in longitudinal studies to explore our findings and to possibly better detect developmental changes and variation in similar adolescent groups

Kirke og kirkestruktur i middelalderens Danmark – Disputatsopposition 2

Forfatterens disputatsopposition i forbindelse med Jakob Kieffer-Olsen forsvar af afhandlingen Kirke og kirkestruktur i middelalderens Danmark (Odense 2018)

Registrering av middelalderske kirkegårder i tilknytning til dagens kirkesteder. 2014. Vesterålen og Troms

Utført på oppdrag fra Riksantikvare