Far and Wide
In 1900, five years before Norway regained sovereignty, parliament passed a motion to grant 12,000 kroner towards the publication of Heimskringla in both established forms of the Norwegian tongue, ‘so that the book might reach far and wide, being affordable’. The notion that a nation in search of corporate identity would gain from engaging with its founding narratives was taken for granted and subsidised.
This provides food for thought in a cultural context marked by wilful amnesia. We readily live and speak as if the past were mere overweight, prospect all that mattered. And we’re surprised that we’ve trouble coming up with a sharable account of who we are, what we’re about? Never, perhaps, has there been a time in which the practice of careful remembrance was more necessary, indeed a civic (and ecclesial) duty.
