Lisbeth Mikaelsson

LOCALITY AND MYTH: THE RESACRALIZATION OF SELJA AND THE CULT OF ST. SUNNIVA

Summary The article demonstrates the merging of contemporary processes of resacralization, retraditionalization, and local identity construction embodied in one particular example, the island of Selja on the west coast of Norway. In Roman-Catholic times, Selja was a major pilgrimage site, famous for its legend of St. Sunniva, an Irish princess who fled from her country and took refuge on the island where she suffered a martyr death. The national conversion to Lutheranism in the 16th century put an end to the official Sunniva cult. In our time, however, the legend has been revived and is celebrated for various purposes by the local Lutheran state church, the tourist business, and individuals who are attracted to the symbolic complex of Selja-Sunniva for spiritual reasons. The article argues that the revival of the legend converts the old site with its ruins and landscape features into a narrative space, re-establishing a sanctuary with a variety of symbolic references. Selja meets the requirements of modem seekers and pilgrims, while its history and myth are excellently fitted to serve local identity construction.

Regional approaches to religion: Christianity in Norway

Abstract The topic of regionalisation is debated within European politics and Academia, but its topicality is hardly reflected in the History of Religions, in spite of the fact that a region may be an explicit or implicit spatial category in many studies of religion. This article sketches some understandings of the concept of region and approaches to regional studies among contemporary historians, geographers and others. In addition, some of the connections ‐ actual or imagined ‐ between regions and religion are discussed, exemplified by the regional impact of two popular religious movements in Norway.

The Norwegian Pentecostal Foreign Mission: A Survey of Mission History with an Emphasis on Organization, Expansion, and Gender

Foreign mission has been a part of Norwegian Pentecostalism from an early date. Its decentralized character distinguishes this mission from Norwegian foreign mission in general. The historical overview given here foregrounds the following topics: (1) the attempts to establish a central mission agency, which finally resulted in the creation of PYM (acronym for Pinsevennenes Ytre Misjon—“The Pentecostal Friends’ Foreign Mission”), an institution that coordinates the mission work run by affiliated Norwegian congregations; (2) the wide geographical diffusion of mission activities is sketched and the activities of prominent missionaries are emphasized; (3) besides, attention is given to gender and the role of female missionaries, particularly among early pioneers.

‘Self’ And ‘Other’ As Biblical Representations In Mission Literature

This chapter is a textual analysis of the written missionary narratives on Ambohipiantrana during the two first decades it was run by the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS), from 1887 to 1907. The ambition has been to examine these narratives as literature, and how this literature is part of a discourse interacting with other texts, narratives and understandings of leprosy at the time. The scepticism towards contagionism and segregation – today often referred to as anti-contagionism – included several medical and other branches within the world of leprosy, from Christian-conservative wings to anti-positivists, anti-Darwinists and others fearing that the influence of laboratory medicine and medical positivism would replace traditional Hippocratic and Christian values of Western medicine. The anti-Catholicism and anti-contagionism are united in ambiguous narratives about Ambohipiantrana. The text material from the leprosy work of NMS in Madagascar is extensive. Keywords:Ambohipiantrana; anti-catholicism; anti-contagionism; confessionalised medicine; leprosy narratives; Madagascar; Norwegian missionary society (NMS)