Connective Visions

The nearest geocache to where I’ve been staying, and so the first that we visited, is located by Tveit Kirke, between Kristiansand and Boen. The trip to the church takes you down a drive from Topdalsveien (literally, “Topdals Way”), past a couple sheep, and into a parking lot by a pleasant cemetery. The white church lies on the right; the monument to Hubert Humphrey, on the left.

If you are American and you have not stopped and said, “Wait, what? Hubert Humphrey?” you have adopted the very bad habit of not seeing what you are reading. (Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert discusses this phenomenon in his book Stumbling on Happiness. I found it rather unnerving to consider that I might remember something I wasn’t aware I was experiencing, so I’ll put off pursuing that topic to another time.)

Apparently, the Norwegian-American tradition of recognition cuts both ways. There is indeed, in the parish of Tveit, a monument to American senator and vice president Hubert Horatio Humphrey, “faithful son of Norwegian emigrants” (well, his mother was Norwegian; his father was Welsh), commemorating his visits in 1951 and 1969. The motto, “Strongest of all is the spirit of freedom and humanitarianism,” conveys a message dominant in Norwegian society and strongly underpinning the ethics of many conversations I’ve had on this trip.

So, I was feeling right at home at Tveit Kirke: liberal American politician on the one side, historic Lutheran church on the other. Rather the story of my life.

The main body of the church – not discussed by Lonely Planet, Frommer, or any of the other travel guides – dates to some time around 1100, and evidence of the Romanesque style can still be seen in the outlines of the arches on the stone walls. The sacristy was added in 1828 and the tower in 1831. Thirty-five years later the church was extended and a wooden porch was added. The church hasn’t undergone archaeological investigation, so much more may be learned about it in time.

I’ve always liked straightforward, smaller churches. My father preached in two in the valley of Virginia before he came to Philadelphia – Bethlehem Lutheran in Waynesboro and Melancthon Chapel in Weyers Cave – which I visited often in my childhood. When I served briefly as treasurer on my own church‘s Congregation Council, and got a good sense of the property insurance for Trinity’s building, I developed a considerable nostalgia for those smaller edifices.

Norwegian churches don’t yet face the problem of independent cost management, as there is no separation of church and state in Norway and such upkeep is “on the state bill,” as my friend here puts it. They do, however, face many of the same struggles with declining attendance that plague mainstream U.S. Protestant churches: while about 81 % of the nation belongs to the (Lutheran) Church of Norway, only about 3 % attend on anything approaching a regular basis. Buildings such as Tveit Kirke, while still valued, are becoming more museum sites than living places of worship.

It’s hard to say how I feel about that. The historian in me wants these sites preserved, and the American churchgoer is painfully aware of how hard that is to do in a society with runaway insurance costs, and without a national interest in preserving older structures. If the Tveit Kirke baroque altar, with its statues of Moses and Jesus, were in my Germantown, Philadelphia church, selling it would at least have been discussed. Such ripping of a sacred object from its original context is increasingly common in the United States, and poses a sad challenge for each congregation that faces it.

Yet I wouldn’t want my government having a role in my worship choices. The encroachment of “someone else’s morality” via government channels is already too great, in my opinion. And some part of me wonders if Norway’s social safety net does not, in fact, make it easier to turn away from spirituality, at least in its corporate form.

Back outside the church, I am impressed by the rough stone sculptures on the south wall – pagan motifs of animals and humans, echoes of the struggle between life and death. The ancient religion surfaces often amid Christianity in the decoration of many of Norway’s historic churches (most notably in medieval stave churches, such as Borgund and Heddal). I find it a salutary reminder: regardless of what humans think will happen, modes of interpreting the world endure and find their way into the future.

It throws a new light on “Don’t worry about tomorrow.”

And Tveit Kirke is hardly deserted. The gravestones are well tended and, in this sunny weather, diligently visited. Flowers adorn the tombstones and flank the church door. Families with children picnic on the side of the road and wander into the church afterward.

And somewhere in this area is a film container with its own visitor log, now marked with the geocaching nickname of a woman from the sixth-largest city in the United States, who was spending this weekend in the eighth-largest city in Norway.

Thanks for the cache, lauritf. I learned a lot.