Constant Crisis

Constant Crisis focuses on the culmination of struggles in the medieval Norwegian kingdom to examine whether these conflicts underscored a breakdown of society and polity or whether they created an equilibrium among factions that in fact "served to contain violence." Applying the term "constant crisis" for its deliberate "dissonance," Hans Jacob Orning observes that two properties were manifest in Norwegian political and social structures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: a systemic balance achieved in an environment of "endemic power struggles," and a normalization of these conflicts that made it "possible to maneuver and make plans and strategies." The kings' sagas Sverris saga and Böglunga sögur are virtually indispensable sources of information on this period of Norwegian history, and Orning relies extensively on them, as well as on other medieval sources, to depict this era and its protagonists, including the major rival armed groups (the Birchlegs and the Croziers); and among kings, bishops, and earls, the person of King Sverre himself.

Hans Jacob Orning is Professor of History in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. His primary research field is the Nordic Middle Ages. His books include Unpredictability and Presence: Norwegian Kingship in the High Middle Ages (2008); The Reality of the Fantastic: The Magical, Political and Social Universe of Late Medieval Saga Manuscripts (2017); and with Øyvind Østerud, Krig uten stat: Kriger i middelalderen og i dag (2020, English version forthcoming). He has led or co-led several research projects, including one on medieval and modern civil war in collaboration with Jón Viðar Sigurðsson and funded by the Norwegian Research Council and the Center for Advanced Research, as well as Legitimation of the Elites in Medieval Poland and Norway funded by Norway Grants in Poland.