Solveig-Karin Erdal traces her Quaker heritage back to the first Norwegian Friends, who converted as prisoners of war in England and brought their faith back with them after Napoleon’s defeat. The meetinghouse where her ancestors worshiped was also the place where Lars Hertervig, nineteenth-century Norway’s most famous painter, was introduced to Quaker faith and practice.
Solveig-Karin shares a passage from Melancolia, a novel by the Nobel laureate Jon Fosse, in which the young Hertervig’s father takes him to his first Quaker meeting. “It describes meeting for worship in almost childlike words,” she says of Fosse’s prose, “in a very touching way, in a very poetic way.” After reading Fosse, she says, “It’s so clear how the light [in Hertervig’s paintings] is not just the sunshine, it’s also the Inner Light.”
Transcript and Discussion Questions Available Here
Produced by Layla Cuthrell
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