Katharina Preißler: Fromme Lieder – Heilige Bilder. Intermediale Perspektiven auf die skandinavische Ballade und die spätmittelalterliche Bildkunst Schwedens und Dänemarks

This book, presented by Katharina Preißler in 2019, is a rigorous, well-designed and intermedial study on the wide-ranging world of the late medieval Scandinavian legendary ballads. The study discusses four case studies – St Staffan, St Olav (of Norway), St George and St Catherine of Alexandria – in the context of regional, national and international political and religious developments of medieval and early modern Christian belief and art. In order to fully investigate the varying levels of textual and iconographic backgrounds to the respective legendary ballads and related iconographic art, the study is based on well-selected research and safe methodological approaches from the fields of art history and philology.

Preißler divides her book into four chapters. In chapter one, on the basis of parts of the legend Holger Dansk og Burman as painted in the late medieval Swedish parish church of Floda, the complex intermedial reality of the legendary ballads is showcased and set in the wide-ranging context of the local church architecture and interior, as well as the textual background to the well-known ballad itself. Also the question of clientship and other socio-historical circumstances of the paintings at Floda are presented and set in relation to the subsequent case studies in the book. The chapter closes with a short overview of the political, religious and not least cultural-historical developments in mainland Scandinavia between the late thirteenth up to the sixteenth century; a time during which most of the ballads are composed and the associated art painted. The chapter closes with a short yet concise overview over the Stand der Forschung, as well as presenting the state of the art of the most relevant databases that include legendary ballads and other subclasses of the Nordic ballads. It is apparent from the introductory chapter that the intrinsic and complex cultural-historical background of the legendary ballads of (late) medieval Scandinavia is best studied from interdisciplinary perspectives. Already the example from Floda exemplifies well that classical, hierarchical relations of text and image that have often been claimed to structure their reading in medieval art and literature are less present in the vernacular legendary ballad tradition of Scandinavia. On the contrary, it is the inherently multidisciplinary character of the ballads, legends and related pictorial representations that provide new and extended insights into late medieval religious veneration. Both image and text are mutually influencing media of Christian belief and early folkloristic traditions in Scandinavia.

Chapter 2 provides a broader and more complex picture of the late medieval ballads. Preißler (pp. 41–43, 416, 418) discusses the question of origin of the legendary ballads as being possibly based on two particular monastic orders (Dominicans and Franciscans), and on regional and/or (inter-)national veneration of specific saints. A particular focus on the complex and varied narratological development and long durée of the pictorial representations in the Scandinavian village churches helps to further understand the broad variety of topics found in the oral/written material. Overall, the historical, cultural and not least political context of the Scandinavian legendary ballads and their numerous variants is well displayed in the book. Especially the question of how the legendary ballads not only were perceived by the contemporary medieval societies, but also how their content was altered through the “Long Middle Ages” (a term adopted from Jacques LeGoff). As the book shows, both the textual and iconographic content of the legendary ballads inherit a number of problems concerning their genesis, use and change of function and their categorisation. It is clear from chapter 2 that the corpus to be investigated is first and foremost interpreted as a mixture of oral, written and pictorial representations. According to Preißler (pp. 102–104), the borders between these three forms of media are at times fluid and are best understood as a form of transmediality.

Chapter 3 consists of the four case studies mentioned above. Among other things, it investigates cultural-historical, religious and not least temporal developments of four legendary ballads dedicated to St Staffan (Staffan Stalledräng), St Olav (Hellig-Olavs væddefart), St George (several redactions known as St. Jørgen og dragen) and St Catherine of Alexandria (Liden Karen). According to Preißler (pp. 159–167, 262–265), of these four examples it is especially in the legendary ballad traditions of St Staffan and St Olav that most similarities between the written/oral and the pictorial features are found, although the ballads show a disagreement to conventional hagiographic traditions of the two saints. It is the very same independent nature of these ballads that make the two examples particularly relevant for the present study. St Staffan is, according to Preißler (p. 121), likely based on a number of legends adapted from biblical texts on St Stephan, among others. Yet, the ballad tradition of St Staffan was freely combined with a number of vernacular Christmas traditions and was, according to the famous ceiling paintings from the thirteenth-century church of Dädesjö in Sweden, established at an early date in mainland Scandinavia. The following example, consisting of the regatta legend of St Olav and his brother Harald, is likewise based on relatively old visual material dated to the fifteenth century from Sweden, as well as its earliest written contest dated to the late sixteenth century. Similar to the legendary ballad about St Staffan, also this ballad about St Olav is not directly based on earlier written material, e. g. redactions of the Old Norse-Icelandic Óláfs saga helga and the Passio Olavi. Instead, it draws on a number of combined features of these texts, as well as cultural-historical and especially religious functions that the saint had in Scandinavia during the late Middle Ages. Examples are the religious function of St Olav for sea voyages and fighting against supernatural beasts both on land and at sea. With numerous examples from late medieval Sweden that were painted by the famous Albertus Pictor, Preißler concludes that the paintings were made with influences stemming from monastic learning and sermons (Franciscans in particular), as well as rural faith traditions.

The following two examples, consisting of legendary ballads about St George and St Catherine, differ from these patterns. In legendary ballads and related late medieval art, also St George is portrayed as a knightly saint, a dragon slayer and helper in need. But when it comes to St Catherine, her saintly functions as well as her iconographic features largely vanish in post-Reformation legendary ballad tradition. As for St George, the legendary ballads display him very much in accordance with contemporary medieval Scandinavian Church art and edifying religious literature. As Preißler argues (pp. 274–279), this is likely based on the fact that, during the fifteenth century in particular, a renewed interest in chivalric culture and values became en vogue again in Scandinavia, which strengthened the cult of St George also in related legendary ballads and contemporaneous medieval art, such as the impressive St George and the dragon sculpture by Bernt Notke in Storkyrkan in Stockholm, dated to 1489. Accordingly, apart from a number of minor changes in the later renditions (e. g. weapons of choice and details regarding the killing of the dragon), the overall features of the saint continue, even after the Reformation, to follow similar traditions known from earlier centuries.

The legendary ballads dedicated to St Catherine in late medieval and post-Reformation times, on the other hand, are largely different from their earlier, religiously-connotated renditions. Only structural patterns and, especially, moral values of her cult remain in the ballads and associated art. The example used is Liden Karen where post-reformatory piety retained both structural and religious traditions about the Catholic saint. As Preißler (p. 393) concludes, Liden Karen could be seen as a reflection of the late medieval veneration or popularity of the saint. Yet, it contributes more to our understanding of the changes that medieval material has undergone in the early modern period than in its surviving form of medieval piety. The book closes with a concise conclusion on the differences and similarities of the four legendary ballads in their individual intertextual and intermedial contexts.

To sum up, the author should be congratulated for a very meticulous and successful cross-disciplinary analysis on a largely neglected subject. In combining previous research that has been restricted to single disciplines only with a broad yet critical view on the Scandinavian legendary ballad material in both text and image, Preißler has made a seminal and innovative contribution to the research of this highly understudied material of late medieval Scandinavian art and culture.