Violence and murder were the reasons to why some places in Norway were yet not mapped out by scholars.
The isolation
Most of Norway’s settlement and development happened along the coast — in all it’s history human groups had chosen to hunt and farm along the fjords and coastal lowlands. 2000 years ago most mountain valleys in Norway were not yet farmed, so when the Roman Empire collapsed and migrating tribes arrived in Norway, they went up in the valleys where they could live in peace. The toughest and most resilient tribes survived on the harsh mountain soil, and thus built their own cultural lifestyle which formed in isolation.
With the influx of Christianity, came the opportunity for more money as well: Local wealthy families of these mountain valleys were given glory and money if they gave away their land for church building and hosting priests. But the cultural shock became huge for the city-born priests and bishops working and visiting in the area. The social codes from the Viking age were still very much alive among the village farmers, so honor, revenge killing, and blood oaths were still rampant between families. No amount of preaching and church visits seemed to have changed the social structure. Bishop Øystein Aslaksson visited the area of Telemark in 1395, and were quite shocked over the farmers lifestyle and behavior. He noted there were more murders in Telemark than any other place, too much betrayal and too little compassion and love between people. “Love lies thinly amongst them” which could hurt their souls, he believed. It wasn’t good that the farmers also hosted exiled criminals. Aslaksson ironically banned the entire regional population to “forever torture in Hell, together with all those devil souls full of all such evil, such as the fake Judas…” if the locals continued to break the peace between each other.
The bloodthirsty farmers
The violent and dangerous behavior of the locals continued to be reported from those poor priests who were stationed up in those inhospitable valleys through the next centuries. If we look at national court documents from the Middle Ages, one third of them regarding murders happened in Telemark, as well as half of the documents regarding witness statements. The 1300’s was an especially rampant and violent time, with plagues and a colder climate making life harder for the farmers. The isolation and a steep decline in the population gave the surviving farmers more opportunities to claim more land, start more feuds and use literacy as a tool to gain status. The church and nobility were far away, so the farmers had to solve their own issues.
As Catholic Christianity were replaced by Protestant Christianity in 1537, the priests faced a new problem: the locals didn’t wanted to switch. They kept on doing the Catholic rituals for centuries after the Protestant Christianity were introduced, and did certainly not see the point of listening to the new moral preaches from the priests about morality, children born out of wedlock and drunkenness. Not to mention honor killing and fighting. The Danish-Norwegian king sent his army together with German engineers when they started mining gold, silver and copper from the mountain valleys in the 1500’s because of the dangers. The Germans and the Danish soldiers were not well-liked as they often stole, raped and exploited the locals for food or a warm bed. The revolt against the foreigners turned into a local guerilla warfare — and with the local leaders being executed in an ambush, the German engineering team ran away in fear for repercussions. So the rumors continued to spread that Telemark was a dangerous and violent place.
Terra Icognita
The world maps continued to develop in the 1600’s in such way that local maps often were copied and put together into bigger ones by European publishing houses. In Norway the hobby cartographer and bishop, Laurids Clausen Scavenius (1562–1626) continued to map out the places he lived and traveled to, without knowing the consequences: He had the areas of Stavanger, Agder (West Coast), and Hallingdal to Valdres (Eastern mountain valleys) in his diocese, and thus focused on these areas when drawing his map in 1618. This map was only intended to be a regional map over his diocese, but unfortunately became a part of the standard map of Norway from the 1600’s, as it was published by a Dutch man in Atlas Major to all of Europe. And here lies the problem — Scavenius had drawn Telemark as a “terra icognita”. Maybe due to lack of interest, having no other cartographer material from Telemark to lean on, or simply not ever traveling there himself. We can’t know for sure if Scavenius was afraid of the mountain farmers in Telemark, or whether he had heard of the rumors surrounding the place. Either way the region did not appear on his maps, and the white spot did not seem to trigger other cartographers up to Telemark to explore the areas either.
All of this meant nothing for the locals, as they continued to murder each other and drink. The 1700’s reached the highest point, as a colder climate had forced a lot of farmers to move closer to one another, which again sparked more disputes. Women often brought “funeral shirts” for their men at parties in case a husband was killed. Wearing a knife was a customary part of the male outfit, and combined with drinking and fighting it could end badly. Many men drank themselves to death or lost property as a result of alcoholism. Forestry, mining and land management became big sources of income for the wealthy city merchant families , and these families abused the fact that Telemark farmers could not read, write or understand the deals they signed. All of this put the villagers in Telemark under great pressure, coupled with being isolated and not experiencing any economic development or progress.
Romanticism
This would slowly change in the 19th century however, as painters, researchers and tourists started to explore Telemark and other isolated mountain valleys. People no longer seemed afraid of the reputed violence or feared they could be robbed and killed by the innkeeper. The cultural life in these valleys were so intact and different compared to the European influence of Norwegian towns, and that inspired the educated cultural elite when looking for something “typically Norwegian”. Telemark had a great influence on developing Norwegian music, arts, costumes and sports. Wealthy English tourists hiked and fished for leisure from the mid-19th century and brought tourism to Telemark, and individuals brought the local activity of cross-country skiing out to the world.
By then, Telemark already got a spot on the map.
