Service to Commemorate the Centenary of Norway’s independence from Sweden
Southwark Cathedral
29th October, 2005.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Read by the Bishop of Southwark.
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Readings: Proverbs 4:1-9/Romans 12:3-21
Shortly after moving to Portsmouth, I went to a meeting and noticed that someone was not just looking at me, but staring at me. I was beginning to wonder whether I had something unusual on my face, when the tea-break came. So I decided to go up to her; before I could introduce myself, she said to me, ‘I have been staring at you, and the reason is that I am a professor of archaeology, and you have a Viking skull, and I want to know why.’ This is not the normal kind of conversation I have with people, I must confess: but it didn’t take long to explain a bit of family history, which also explains why it has fallen to me to preach to you this afternoon. I do indeed have a Viking skull, but from which Nordic forebear I do not know: mother was Danish through and through, father’s mother was Danish, but she was descended from a Norwegian fur-trader up in Verdahl, who in turn could trace his family-name back to the little town of Sidensjö, over in Central-northern Sweden. Father and son began a clerical dynasty in 1595, and there are so many Lutheran pastors right through the family that I’m not sure if I really belong in the Church of England at all. So I suppose you could sway that in the family tree Norway is the meat in the sandwich, and the bread is supplied by Norway’s two neighbours!
It is indeed a pleasure to be with you today. I know it is an important occasion, a commemoration that has brought out an unexpected degree of enthusiasm among the young. There is certainly a sense of occasion to be here, only one day after the actual centenary of the Norwegian Government’s historic message to other countries, to ask them if they would deal with her separately. And because 28th October 1905 was a Saturday, it took just a little bit of time for the official replies to come in, with Russia, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy and the USA forming the first group on Monday 30th, and Denmark and Sweden taking a little bit longer, on the 1st and 9th November. It was not all a foregone conclusion, and no doubt the long-term viability of Norway as an independent nation was helped considerably by the arrival of a Danish Prince with an English wife to be the first King.
All that, of course, is in the past. And the various events and publications this year will help many people, not just Norwegians, to learn more about what led up to October 1905, including the cession of Norway to Sweden from Denmark at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814; and the many events and influences that have helped to shape the new nation in the hundred years since. ‘We are a small nation on the outskirts of Europe, and it is not easy to describe our country’, writes Crown Prince Haakon in his Introduction to the great book, ‘Norway: Portrait of a Nation’. But I don’t think it’s easy to describe any other country either. Some are easily defined by language or culture, or even by the way they have been buffeted by their neighbours. History is not kind to those who want clear, slick answers to events and influences that are in themselves very complex. Whenever I have been to Norway, I have been struck by its mixture of distinctiveness and the very different strands that make up its entirety, starting with the West Coast dialect I tried to listen to as a teenager, and going on to a deeper understanding of how many Norwegians have felt in the past about Sweden and Denmark. And it’s no coincidence that a group of peoples who have depended on sea-trade across the centuries should start the process towards independence by asking for independent shipping rights early in 1905.
But a service of this kind is not about telling ourselves how marvelous everything is. Nationhood is a delicate flower, and it takes many forms. There was a time when Norway was an amalgam of different groups of people, under local kings, just like the British Isles. And who knows what the future will hold? The purpose of this afternoon is to stand back and think more deeply about what this centenary really means in spiritual terms. Norway is now becoming multicultural – but it probably always has been, if one digs deep enough into the past, with the mix of local traditions and identities that have helped shape its identity across the centuries. Norway is now becoming multi-ethnic – but again, this is a process that really began a long time ago, when one thinks of the Sami community, from whom my father’s mother was also descended. Both these trends, multicultural and multiethnic, are simply features of a landscape that has been with us for a long time, and all we are noticing now is a gentle increase, along with other European nations. Perhaps the challenge that earmarks today’s service concerns what we may mean by the third ‘multi’-description – multifaith. The Lutheran Church has long been an important point of reference for the Norwegian people, in its many different forms, with a sometimes nervous relationship with local prayer-groups and revival meetings. ‘Other faiths’ are a challenge not just to Norwegians, they are, as is well-known, a challenge to this country as well: nationhood is one thing, collective faith is another, and there is always more than we can learn about other people, who may believe in different things, but can still share (we hope) a sense of corporate belonging.
All these features of national life, multicultural, multiethnic, and multifaith, have profound spiritual realities to them. And they are addressed in this afternoon’s two readings. First, in the Book of Proverbs, to seek for wisdom: not technical knowledge, but something deeper, a wisdom that sees below the surface, and is able to look at people, events, situations, trends, and even disasters, in order to understand what God is saying through them. Wisdom is often referred to in the Bible in female terms, as a woman to be loved, to be cherished, to be understood, and from whom one is always able to learn more. There is something profoundly countercultural about her, because wisdom will not allow herself to be gift-wrapped, or made cut-price in the supermarket. Wisdom is about God’s way of looking at us, about penetrating our motives, and steering us sometimes towards risks, like Norwegian independence, or about setting up a Street Church in Oslo young people who seem to have nowhere to lay their spiritual heads.
Then in the second reading, St Paul provides some practical advice that goes beyond the obvious or the immediate. Don’t think more highly of yourselves than you should - nationhood is not, at its best, about sideswipes against others. There are many members to the Body of Christ – Paul’s Christian community in Rome was already wrestling with the issue of multiculturalism and multiethnicity! Take care with your enemies – don’t harbour lasting grudges, because they can eat up your soul. And much more besides, including that flourish at the end, ‘do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.’
There is much here to ponder, whether for the Norwegian Church in London, with its special relationship with Southwark Diocese and Cathedral, or with a new initiative to help secure and develop the Sami community’s rights and education in the far north of Norway. National identity is not something once given and staying the same. It needs spiritual foundations that are capable of self-criticism as well as flexibility. I can’t put Norwegian identity into words, because I am only a friendly outsider. But I don’t expect anyone here could manage it either. We are here to give thanks to God for a wonderful accident of history, and we are here to commend consequences, historical and spiritual, to his eternal blessing.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth 11/viii/05
