Terje Vigens Båt

Terje Vigens Båt is a limited edition signed fine art quality book looking at Ibsen’s famous story through landscape photography and nature poetry. As “contemporary Ibsen art”, the work is unique in suggesting that Ibsen’s famous story provides insight into the vital connection between moral integrity and environmental awareness. The result is homage to an Ibsen classic and an original contribution to an idea that is characteristic of Ibsen’s work:  a particularity in Norwegian character is expressed as a universal concern.      

The photography is by Carll Goodpasture, American living in Norway, and verse by the Canadian poet Gray Sutherland. The book has an introductory essay  by the Norwegian writer Sidsel Mørck. The book was funded for printing by Norske Fagfotografers Fond and The Norwegian Ibsen Committee.

Context of the work and background to the project:

The project, a cooperative work,  encapsulates the response of two visiting artists to the Norwegian natural and cultural landscape. It is timely because it coincides with and contributes to the Ibsen centenary in 2006.

The project  started in 1998 with  a search for Terje Vigen’s historical environment, beginning with research at the Ibsenshus and Grimstad Bymuseum. Wooden boat builders working in the tradition of Ibsen’s time were interviewed; existing boats in use today and possibly identical to Terje Vigen’s historical boat were photographed; and local people were questioned about their knowledge and awareness of the story of Terje Vigen.

The photographs in the portfolio were taken over the course of several years on the south coast of Norway, where the photographer was in search of a location where Terje Vigen and his boat may have begun its journey and eventually foundered.  They comprise a sequence of coastal landscapes taken looking out to sea. The cover pages, in acknowledgement of the persistence of cultural tradition among the south coastal people of Norway, picture a contemporary wooden boat built in the tradition of Terje Vigen’s time.

The poems were composed and sequenced as companion pieces to the photographs. They draw their inspiration from and constantly allude to the original story, while resisting too close an identification with the story itself.

Relevance of the work:

In Norway, especially along the south coast, nearly everyone has a connection with the sea and the shore. Historically, this was for transportation, communication, and livelihood.

Today, recreational use dominates much of this landscape – plastic boats and vacation homes. Yet Terje Vigen’s memory is alive at least in one sense: the old boat-building traditions survive and small wooden boats virtually identical to Terje Vigen’s are still being constructed and used in the Grimstad area.

While the place of Ibsen in contemporary culture is well known outside Scandinavia, we were surprised, when asking some of our Norwegian friends and younger students what they knew about the legend and story of Terje Vigen, how few were aware of or had even read the story.  By contrast, we were excited to discover that residents on the south coast and wooden boat enthusiasts were very much aware of it; in the south of the country, it seems that the legacy of Terje Vigen is very much alive in the cultural landscape today.

The artistic intention of the work:

We view our work as an expression of concern for the environment and man’s relationship to it.

As visitors to Norway we noticed early on and remain today deeply moved by the remarkable closeness of the relationship between the people and the land, something not at all common in this day and age. The story of Terje Vigen itself is an example, among other things, of one Norwegian’s encounter with the forces of nature along the shore. 

The setting for this interaction is an edge environment – the land-sea interface, which we regard as a metaphor for communication.  The photographs have been composed and sequenced so as to talk to each other, just as each picture’s form communicates metaphorically within its motif. In other words, the work can be thought of as a unique form of homage to the cultural roots of the relationship between man and the natural environment. 

Publication of the book:

The book has been printed in Norway in an edition of 1,000 copies. It will distributed selectively in Scandinavia and English-speaking countries by its publisher (Imago ans, Gjettum, Norway) to reviewers, galleries, museums, art schools, libraries, foundations, news media, and book stores.  The book has ISBN 0-9737036-2-8 assigned to it by the National Library of Canada.