Scandinavia in Research on Slavic Wooden Architecture: Inspiration, Point of Reference and Part of Imagined Pasts

ABSTRACT

Based on texts from art history and ethnology, this paper examines three aspects of Scandinavia’s role in studying the wooden architecture of the Slavs up to 1945. First, it is pointed out that Dahl’s book, published in 1837, gave the decisive impetus to this research tradition. Second, the article shows how the early works on Norwegian stave churches established them as a paradigm of wooden construction and thus as the primary reference for other monuments of this type. Third, attempts to use wooden architecture in incorporating Scandinavia and Slavs into the shared, imagined pasts are presented. These were undertaken mainly by German scholars trying to demonstrate the Germanic roots of Slavic building. Scandinavia played a role in these narratives as the source of the forms taken over by the Slavs or the residuum of the East Germanic artistic traditions influencing the Slavic peoples. In this way, Scandinavian culture, incorporated into the common Germanic heritage, was instrumentalised to legitimise German domination in Central Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• stave churches
• log structures
• Pan-Germanism
• Volkism
• Slavophilia
• ethnic stereotype
• Normanist theory
• cultural nationalism

Notes

1 Publication co-financed by the funds granted under the Research Excellence Initiative of the University of Silesia in Katowice.

2 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in the article are mine, J. G.