Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

More Saturday sunset views of the Blue Origin New Glenn, shown in five acts. These views are from offshore; when I booked the trip, I thought it would be the last sunset on the pad for the NG-1 mission. Despite the calm water we had last night, the sea conditions for the far-away landing platform warranted delaying the launch.

Description: G292.0+1.8 is a young supernova remnant located in our galaxy. This deep Chandra image shows a spectacularly detailed, rapidly expanding shell of gas that is 36 light years across and contains large amounts of oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon and sulfur. Astronomers believe that this supernova remnant, one of only three in the Milky Way known to be rich in oxygen, was formed by the collapse and explosion of a massive star. Supernovas are of great interest because they are a primary source of the heavy elements believed to be necessary to form planets and life.

 

Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory

 

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray

 

Date: 2006

 

Persistent URL: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2007/g292/

 

Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

 

Collection: X-rays Collection - X-rays are electromagnetic radiations beyond ultra-violet which form a shadow image of the internal structure of the object when passed through a solid object and allowed to act upon a sensitive emulsion.

 

Gift line: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/S.Park et al.;

Optical: Pal.Obs. DSS.

 

Accession number: G292

The origins of the Gargoyle Minifigure from Series 14 have been revealed :)

 

A simple one panel Brick Comic parody :)

Ngan Cute

Binh Chanh, Saigon

04 Dec 2010

 

135mm f2@ f2

 

Special thanks to models and photography friends!

© All rights reserved. Use without permission is illegal.

 

Another sharp one from the Arkham Origins wave 2 shoot. Full gallery at The Toyark here : news.toyark.com/2014/03/21/dc-collectibles-arkham-origins...

Origin: Calesa (Spanish)

Catholic Cathedral in Alba Iulia, 2014

A collaboration with Ryan DeVore.

 

The two triangles are alchemy symbols. The upright triangle is the symbol for air, which is associated with inspiration... and the inverted triangle is the symbol for earth, with is associated with origin.

Replica Benz Motorwagen (world's first petrol-engined car)

 

Intentional Camera Movement abstact with highlights in car details, Gaydon Heritage Motor Centre

Origins

Performed by Drum Feng at the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre during Moonfest 2018 for the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations.

Proyecto de autorretratos hecho mientras estudiaba fotografía, sobre conectar con las raíces aborígenes canarias (Islas Canarias). Inspirado por el concepto de "repatriación espiritual" de Christian Thompson, de su proyecto "We bury our own". / Project of self-portraits made while studying photography about connecting through photography with Canarian aboriginal roots. Inspired by Christian Thompson's concept "spiritual repatriation" from his We Bury Our Own project.

 

Otislnf freecam

 

Samsung camera pictures

Trostbrücke 4-6, 20457 Hamburg

 

In the age of rising nationalism around the world, one may be forgiven to question if patriotism is a code word for neo-Nazism or fascism, but this Patriotic Society from 1765 has much nobler origins. It was founded in 1765 during the Age of Enlightenment as the Hamburgische Gesellschaft zur Beförderung der Künste und nützlichen Gewerbe (Hamburg society for the promotion of the arts and industries). Interestingly, the society was modelled after the 1731 establishment of the Dublin Society for promotion of agriculture, art, industry and science in Ireland (now Royal Dublin Society).

 

The building seen here occupies the original site of the old Hamburg City Hall, which was burnt down during the Great Fire of 1842. Between 1845 and 1847, a new building was erected here, but it again was severely damaged during Word War II. The current building was only completed in 1957 following years of re-building and restoration.

via Instagram bit.ly/2kkxbhc

On Black

Leipzig, Old City Hall: Moses as support of the pulpit from the old St. John's Church, made by Valentin Silbermann, lime wood, coloured, 1586/87

 

Die Johanniskirche war der erste Leipziger Kirchenneubau nach der Reformation. Aus diesem Gebäude stammt die Kanzel. Sie überstand im Museum die Zerstörtung der Kirche im Zweiten Weltkrieg.

 

St. John's Church was the first new church built in Leipzig after the Reformation. The pulpit comes from this building. It survived the destruction of the church in the museum during the Second World War.

 

Das Alte Rathaus wurde in seiner heutigen Gestalt 1556/57 durch den damaligen Bürgermeister, Großkaufmann und Baumeister Hieronymus Lotter erbaut. Aber seine Ursprünge reichen deutlich weiter zurück, das älteste erhaltene Bauteil stammt von 1230. Das Alte Rathaus ist ein Wahrzeichen der Stadt. Der Renaissancebaumit dem im barocken Stil veränderten Turm dominiert den Markt. Von den Resten alter Gefängniszellen im Keller über die historischen Räume des Hauptgeschosses bis zu Turmkugel und Wetterfahne ist das Haus gleichsam ein Kompendium Leipziger Stadtgeschichte und damit das wertvollste Museumsobjekt selbst. Die Ständige Ausstellung des Stadtgeschichtlichen Museums lädt zhum Rundgang durch die bewegte Leipziger Geschichte. Im 2. Weltkrieg brannten der Dachstuhl und das zweite Obergeschoss aus. Die historischen Räume im 1. Obergeschoss blieben unversehrt. Bei dem Umbau des Rathauses im Jahr 1909 war zwischen den beiden Obergeschossen eine eisenbewehrte Betondecke eingezogen worden. Diese bewehrte sich als Feuerschutz, sodass die wertvollen historischen Räume, vor allem Festsaal und Ratsstube, erhalten geblieben sind.

 

Quelle: Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig und andere

 

The Old Town Hall was built in its present form in 1556/57 by the then mayor, merchant and architect Hieronymus Lotter. But its origins go back much further, the oldest preserved component dates back to 1230. The Old Town Hall is a landmark of the city. The Renaissance building with its tower, which has been altered in the Baroque style, dominates the Market Square. From the remains of old prison cells in the cellar to the historical rooms on the main floor to the tower sphere and weather vane, the building is, as it were, a compendium of Leipzig's city history and thus the most valuable museum object itself. The permanent exhibition of the Museum of City History invites visitors on a tour through Leipzig's eventful history. During the Second World War, the roof truss and the second upper floor burnt out. The historic rooms on the first floor remained intact. When the town hall was rebuilt in 1909, an iron-reinforced concrete ceiling was inserted between the two upper floors. This proved to be a fire protection, so that the valuable historical rooms, especially the banqueting hall and council chamber, have been preserved.

 

Source: Leipzig Museum of City History and others

If you haven't noticed by now, I'm a huge Riddler fan. (My favorite villain.)

 

This mini-shelf represents a small number of my Riddler collection, with a custom Riddler trophy I received today, special ordered from Etsy. It features an AC power cord, so it can be on all the time!

This small airport always has something going on. Skydiving, hot air balloons, gliders you name it.

origins

prie ištakų

my site, society6, redbubble, facebook, 500px

Esattamente cento anni fa, il 12 aprile del 1912, appena due giorni prima che il Titanic si presentasse all'appuntamento con il suo destino, in una povera casa di contadini a Sesto Imolese, nella bassa bolognese, ai confini con la provincia di Ravenna, vedeva la luce mio nonno paterno Andrea.

E' da un po' che pensavo di ricordarlo nel centenario della sua nascita, e ho pensato di farlo a modo mio, usando due foto che vengono dalle mie passioni fotografiche: Treni, architettura e abbandono.

Nelle immagini vediamo la Ex stazione ferroviaria di Sesto (come viene chiamato il paese dai suoi abitanti).

Da questa stazione mio bisnonno Cesare nel 1902 prese il treno per recarsi a fare il militare all'estero... a Bologna (!)

E probabilmente anche mio nonno prese il suo primo treno li...

Oggi la linea non c'è più (dal 1964) però si possono trovare ancora le stazioni e molti caselli.

Purtroppo a parte la stazione di Medicina le altre lungo il percorso sono in situazione di totale abbandono, anche se... "abitate"

Un ringraziamento particolare all'amico Franco Galletti che mi ha fatto scoprire queste meraviglie... dal momento che io, dopo esserci passato davanti decine di volte negli ultimi trent'anni, non mi ero mai accorto di nulla ;-)

 

This was NOT easy but I finally managed to make firefly from Arkham Origins, the gears in my head have been turning sense the gamescon trailer and here he is.

à fignoler... ou pas!

L'origine del Santuario della Bocciola nel comune di Ameno, frazione di Vacciago, provinca di Novara, si riconduce ad un espisodio della prima metà del Millecinquecento, in un'epoca che vede anche il sorgere dei Santuari mariani della Madonna di Re in Vigezzo (1494) e del Boden presso Ornavasso (1528), nonchè del vasto Sacro Monte di Varallo nella vicina Val Sesia (1481).

Secondo quanto si legge nel diario di un notaio ortense, Elia Olina, il lunedì 28 maggio (o marzo secondo la tradizione) del 1543, "la Beata Vergine Maria apparve ad una fanciulla che custodiva le bestie". Successive notizie precisano le circostanze miracolose dell'episodio. Giulia Manfredi, così si chiamava la fanciulla, era muta dalla nascita e abitava a Vacciago, in una casa che ancora oggi si trova lungo un viottolo poco prima del Santuario.

 

Quel giorno stava pascolando al solito il bestiame poco lontano, presso una cappella in cui era effigiata la Madonna in trono con il Bambino fra le braccia. Ad un tratto vide sfolgorare fra i rami di un pruno selvatico (BOCCIOLO nel dialetto locale; ovvero su un alberello di bosso) la Madonna con il Bambino. Le parlò e disse che gradiva molto le sue preghiere; che presto l'avrebbe accolta in Paradiso, ma che prima le affidava un messaggio da portare a tutti gli abitanti del posto: la Madonna chiedeva loro di solennizzare in suo onore, oltre la domenica, il sabato pomeriggio; in cambio avrebbero avuto da lei speciale protezione. A prova della verità della promessa e dell'apparizione, Giulia Manfredi acquistò la parola. Quando riferì ai compaesani ciò che le era accaduto e ciò che le era stato comandato, l'incredulità fu vinta da un altro miracolo: improvvisamente le campane della chiesa di Vacciago presero a suonare a festa senza essere toccate da nessuno.

h..

 

Introdotta l'usanza del riposo del sabato, altrettanto rapidamente si pensò all'erezione di una chiesetta devozionale là dove ancora oggi una lapide posta nel 1852 sul ciglio della strada che da Vacciago porta a Miasino, ricorda la discesa della Regina del Cielo.

 

L'accorrere dei fedeli e la fama del luogo richiese poco dopo, a partire dal 1628, l'erezione di un più ampio santuario, in cui incorporare anche l'immagine della Madonna col Bambino davanti alla quale sostava in preghiera la pastorella al momento dell'apparizione. Lì furono anche conservati in una teca alcuni frammenti del pruno su cui era apparsa la Madonna.

 

Il santuario crebbe ulteriormente nelle dimensioni e nella bellezza durante i secoli successivi, assumendo via via l'aspetto attuale nel corso del Millescettecento.

 

Gli annali del santuario registrano copiosi miracoli attribuiti alla devozione e alla protezione della Madonna della Bocciola: non solo di temporali sventati o viceversa di piogge benefiche, in relazione all'ossequio dei Vacciaghesi ai precetti dati da Maria durante la sua apparizione, ma anche benefici accordati a famiglie di Vacciago, in particolare alla famiglia Lorella, custode del santuario nei secoli scorsi: guarigioni di malati gravissimi (1720,1722,1724,1726, 1731), salvezza nel corso di incidenti (1731), La solenne commemorazione della Bocciola si svolge ogni anno nel santuario il 28 di marzo in coincidenza con la data tradizionale del miracolo, e poi nella prima domenica di settembre in coincidenza con la festa della Natività di Maria, recentemente anticipata all'ultima domenica di agosto.

 

La chiesa è stata fregiata nel 1844 dal papa Gregorio XVI del titolo ufficiale di "Santuario", come ricorda una lapide marmorea posta quindici anni dopo, l'8 settembre 1859, quando il vescovo di Novara mons. Gentile incoronava solennemente l'immagine della Madonna e del Bambino.

(da internet)

FACT.

ALL atheistic, natural origin of the universe scenarios are false. The conclusive proof is presented here.

 

The proof is categorised as follows:

1. Contingent

2. Temporal

3. Temporary

 

The fact that EVERY natural entity or event is all three

(contingent, temporal and temporary) definitively rules out a natural entity as the origin or first cause of the universe.

The universe cannot possibly be the result of purely natural processes as atheism requires.

_________________________________________

Contingent.

All, natural entities/events are contingent.

They all require causes, and the scope, extent and potential of their properties/abilities relies entirely on their cause/s.

Their effects/properties are limited to the adequacy of their cause/s. They cannot exceed, in any respect, the abilities or properties of that which causes them.

This is supported by the Law of Cause and Effect.

'Every natural effect requires a cause' AND ‘An effect cannot be greater than its cause/s’.

 

A first cause of everything cannot be contingent, it must be entirely autonomous and non-contingent. Not reliant on, nor limited by, any preceding cause or causes. It cannot be inferior, in any respect, to anything else that ultimately exists (entirely self-sufficient & self-reliant).

Therefore, the first cause of everything cannot be a natural entity or event. This rules out every, proposed, natural origin of the universe scenario as a possible, first cause.

Logically, by virtue of the first cause being FIRST, it had to be uncaused (non-contingent). If it was caused it couldn't be FIRST, as it would be preceded by another cause..

_________________________________________

Temporal.

All, natural entities/events are temporal. They all have a beginning within a physical, time frame. They all begin to exist at some point in time. That which is temporal requires a cause. Therefore, a first cause of everything cannot be a natural entity of event.

 

A first cause of everything cannot be temporal, it cannot have had a beginning and cannot be subject to time. If any proposed, first cause began to exist at some time in the past, it would have required a preceding cause for its own existence, and therefore could not be the 'FIRST' cause. This rules out all natural scenarios, such as as a Big Bang explosion or a singularity, as possible, first causes. They are all temporal, and that is a fact.

The first cause has to be eternally and infinitely, self-existent, not temporal.

_________________________________________

Temporary.

All, natural entities/events are temporary.

As well as having a beginning within a physical time frame, they also face an eventual demise at some point in time.

This is enshrined in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or more specifically, the law of entropy.

All, natural things deteriorate, and will ultimately come to an end.

Therefore, the first cause of everything cannot be a natural, entity or event. That is a fact.

 

The first cause of everything cannot be temporary, it cannot be subject to entropy and deterioration through the passage of time, because its powers and potential would have diminished and ultimately ceased to exist at some point in an eternal past. It could not have survived, or have had the sustained power, to be the first cause.

And an infinitely, long chain of natural causes and effects is impossible. Because, as each cause in the chain is subject to entropy, the chain as a whole would also be subject to entropy, thus deteriorating and diminishing in potential, over time.

_________________________________________

Conclusion:

Logic, supported by science, reveals that the first cause of everything cannot possibly be a natural entity or event. Therefore, ALL atheistic, natural origin of the universe scenarios are patently false. That is a fact.

The first cause of everything HAD to be a supernatural entity (a Creator God). There is no other logical or credible option.

 

The Biblical claim; the fool hath said in his heart “there is no God” (Psalm 14:1) is wholly justified and true.

Only a fool would attempt to claim otherwise.

 

_________________________________________

The implications of the Law of Cause and Effect clarified.

 

Consider this short chain of causes and effects:

A causes B, - B causes C, - C causes D, - D causes E.

'A, B, C & D' are all causes and may all look similar, but they are not, there is an enormous and crucial difference between them.

Causes B, C & D are fundamentally different from cause A.

Why?

Because A is the very first cause and thus had no previous cause. It exists without a cause. It doesn’t rely on anything else for its existence, it is completely independent of causes - while B, C, D & E would not exist without A. They are entirely dependent on A.

Causes; B, C & D are also effects, whereas A is not an effect, only a cause.

So we can say that the first cause ‘A’ is both self-existent and necessary. It is necessary because the rest of the chain of causes and effects could not exist without it. We also have to say that the subsequent causes and effects B, C, D and E are all contingent. That is; they are not self-existent they all depend entirely on other causes to exist.

We can also say that A is eternally self-existent, i.e. it has always existed, it had no beginning. Why? Because if A came into being at some point, there must have been something other than itself that brought it into being … which would mean A was not the first cause (A could not create A) … the something that brought A into being would be the first cause. In which case, A would be contingent and no different from B, C, D & E.

We can also say that A is adequate to produce all the properties of B, C, D & E.

Why?

Well in the case of E we can see that it relies entirely on D for its existence, E can in no way be superior to D because D had to contain within it everything necessary to produce E. The same applies to D it cannot be superior to C, but furthermore neither E or D can be superior to C, because both rely on C for their existence, and C had to contain everything necessary to produce D & E.

Likewise with B, which is responsible for the existence of C, D & E.

As they all depend on A for their existence and all their properties, abilities and potentials, none can be superior to A whether singly or combined. A had to contain everything necessary to produce B, C, D & E including all their properties, abilities and potentials.

Thus we deduce that; nothing in the universe can be superior in any way to the very first cause of the universe, because the whole universe, and all material things that exist, depend entirely on the abilities and properties of the first cause to produce them.

 

So to sum up … a first cause must be uncaused, must have always existed, without any deterioration, and cannot be in any way inferior to all subsequent causes and effects. In other words, the first cause of the universe must be eternally, self-sufficient, self-existent and omnipotent (greater than everything that exists).

It must be non-contingent, non-temporal and non-temporary. No natural entity can have those attributes, that is why a Supernatural, Creator God MUST exist.

_________________________________________

Polytheism? Why only one God?

What about polytheism, can there be more than one God or Creator.

It is obvious there can only be one, supernatural, first cause.

The first cause is infinite - and logically, there cannot be more than one infinite entity.

If there were two infinite entities, for example, A and B. The qualities and perfections that are the property of B would be a limitation on the qualities and perfections of A. and vice versa, so neither would be infinite.

If A & B had identical qualities and perfections they would not be two different entities, they would be identical and therefore the same entity, i.e. a single, infinite, first cause. So there can be only one infinite being or entity, only one supernatural, first cause and creator of the universe.

So when atheists keep repeating the claim - that there is no reason to believe the monotheistic, Christian God is any different from the multiple, gods of pagan religions, it simply displays their ignorance and lack of reasoning.

For this reason the Christian Trinity is not 3 gods, but rather 3 aspects or facets of the same, single God:

"I am in the Father and the Father is in me" John:14-20

_______________________________________

Supernaturalism, naturalism or magic?

Does the first cause of everything have to be a supernatural one? Or is this idea (as atheists claim) just a desperate attempt by ignorant people to fill a gap in scientific knowledge, by saying - God did it?

 

What does 'supernatural' mean? It means something outside of nature. Something which cannot be explained by science or by natural processes.

 

The origin of the Universe must be a supernatural event.

The origin of the universe cannot be explained by genuine science, natural laws or by natural processes. And that is an undeniable FACT.

Why?

Because EVERY possible explanation by natural processes (naturalism) violates both the fundamental principle of the scientific method - the Law of Cause and Effect - and other natural laws.

Hence, the first cause, by virtue of the fact that it cannot be explained by science or natural processes, automatically qualifies as a supernatural entity/event (supernaturalism).

To insist that the first cause must be a natural entity or event is to invoke a magical explanation, not a scientific one. The only choice, therefore is between a supernatural first cause or a magical one? A natural event that is purported to defy natural laws and scientific principles can only be described as MAGIC. And that is exactly what atheists propose. They cynically dress up their belief - that nature can evade natural laws - as science, but genuine science certainly cannot contemplate a causeless, natural event or entity, genuine scientists do not look for non-causes.

_______________________________________

Is atheist naturalism science or just paganism naturalism re-invented?

No one has ever proposed a natural explanation for the origin of the universe that does not violate the law of cause and effect and other natural laws. But, whenever atheists are challenged about this fact, they always make the excuse that the laws of nature/physics somehow DID NOT APPLY to their proposed, natural origin scenario.

The most, well known case of this excuse is the alleged 'Singularity' which, it has been claimed, preceded the Big Bang. Remember, it is claimed to be a "one-off event where the laws of physics did not apply." A natural event that defied natural laws! - That used to be called 'magic', before atheist, so-called 'scientists' hi-jacked science with their religion of naturalism - the worship of an All Powerful, autonomous, Mother Nature.

 

Excuses aren't science. A natural event that violates natural laws is by definition, not possible. There are no ifs, buts or maybes, natural things are bound by natural laws, without question.

Natural laws describe the inherent properties of natural entities and how they react according to those properties. They cannot exceed, in any way, the scope of behaviour dictated and limited by their properties. The whole basis of science is that every natural entity/event is contingent - has to have an ADEQUATE CAUSE.

The idea of 'laws not applying' to a natural event, is not science. It is just fantasy.

 

The Law of Cause and Effect is more than just an ordinary law, it is an overriding, fundamental principle of existence, not just a property of matter/energy like the Law of Gravity. It has been called the law of laws, because it applies to everything temporal; i.e. everything which begins to exist. Which means it applies to everything, except the single, first cause of everything.

 

If the origin of the universe is inexplicable to science, within the accepted framework of normal, natural processes and natural laws, then it is a supernatural event.

You cannot claim something as a natural event that violates natural laws, (i.e. exceeds the scope of its potential based on its own intrinsic properties). For that reason it is inexplicable to science.

In fact. to claim that something natural can defy natural laws is anti-science.

Those who promote such nonsense are enemies of science.

 

ALL NATURAL explanations for the origin of the universe violate the Law of Cause and Effect and other natural laws.

Conclusion: the atheist belief in a natural explanation for the origin of the universe (i.e. that Mother Nature did it) is impossible - according to science.

______________________________________

Did natural laws exist at the beginning?

An argument, often used by atheists, that we don’t know what natural laws existed at the beginning of the universe is a desperate attempt to evade the fact that natural laws are fatal to a natural origin (or natural, first cause) of the universe.

It is a nonsensical argument because, as I have already stated, natural laws describe the operation/behaviour of natural entities, according to their inherent properties, those properties don’t change.

 

The Law of Cause and Effect is exceptional. Nothing can evade the law of cause and effect.

 

Even if we accept the bizarre possibility that some natural laws could have been different at (or prior to) the beginning of the universe, it is irrelevant to the Law of Cause and Effect. That law is an exception.

Why?

Because, as previously explained, the Law of Cause and Effect is in a different category from all other laws, which are based solely on the inherent properties of natural things.

It would be better described as an eternal truth and fundamental principle, rather than just a law.

It is a unique and overriding principle of existence, different from other physical laws which are just pertinent to, and properties of, natural entities. It has rightly been called the ‘law of laws’.

Science (which deals exclusively with natural things), quite rightly, accepts the principle of causality as a natural law, and the scientific method itself is dependent on it being true.

We know the Law of Cause and Effect cannot be different, or non-operational, under any circumstances. That is a fact, because it necessarily applies to ALL temporal things.

Unlike other laws, it is not based on any particular, physical properties of nature, it is based only on the temporal character of nature.

Natural things are all temporal and nothing that is temporal can ever escape from that overriding principle. That would also include any temporal, spiritual entities, such as angels or demons.

 

Everything with a temporal character, wherever and whenever it exists, is subject to the Law of Cause and Effect, . There cannot be any exception to this, and that is why we can rely 100% on the scientific method, which depends on seeking and exploring causes.

 

Everything that has a beginning is subject to the Law of Cause and Effect.

So, even if the argument that "we don't know what laws existed at the beginning of the universe" is correct, it cannot apply to the principle of causality.

The principle of causality had to exist at the beginning. It is an eternal principle and truth, which can never be different, under any circumstances.

 

FACT: To reiterate; if something is temporal, then it is subject to the Law of Cause and Effect.

So, it is not possible to propose a natural, origin scenario that can escape the Law of Cause and Effect. All natural entities and occurrences are temporal and, therefore, are all subject to cause and effect.

The only thing not subject to causality is the first cause, because the first cause is not temporal, it has to be non-contingent, that is - infinite and eternally self-existent.

The first cause is the ONLY exception to causality, nothing else can be an exception, everything else (including other supernatural entities, such as angels) is contingent and owes its existence to a cause, which ultimately originates with the uncaused, first cause (God).

Conclusion: A Creator God MUST exist. It is not sensible, and certainly not scientific, to deny that fact.

 

The poison in our midst - progressive politics.

www.flickr.com/photos/truth-in-science/47971464278/in/pho...

 

Dr James Tour - 'The Origin of Life' - Abiogenesis decisively refuted.

youtu.be/B1E4QMn2mxk

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Le Château Frontenac

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Bergen, historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. As of 2022, its population was roughly 289,330. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway after national capital Oslo. The municipality covers 465 square kilometres (180 sq mi) and is located on the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen. The city centre and northern neighbourhoods are on Byfjorden, 'the city fjord'. The city is surrounded by mountains, causing Bergen to be called the "city of seven mountains". Many of the extra-municipal suburbs are on islands. Bergen is the administrative centre of Vestland county. The city consists of eight boroughs: Arna, Bergenhus, Fana, Fyllingsdalen, Laksevåg, Ytrebygda, Årstad, and Åsane.

 

Trading in Bergen may have started as early as the 1020s. According to tradition, the city was founded in 1070 by King Olav Kyrre and was named Bjørgvin, 'the green meadow among the mountains'. It served as Norway's capital in the 13th century, and from the end of the 13th century became a bureau city of the Hanseatic League. Until 1789, Bergen enjoyed exclusive rights to mediate trade between Northern Norway and abroad, and it was the largest city in Norway until the 1830s when it was overtaken by the capital, Christiania (now known as Oslo). What remains of the quays, Bryggen, is a World Heritage Site. The city was hit by numerous fires over the years. The Bergen School of Meteorology was developed at the Geophysical Institute starting in 1917, the Norwegian School of Economics was founded in 1936, and the University of Bergen in 1946. From 1831 to 1972, Bergen was its own county. In 1972 the municipality absorbed four surrounding municipalities and became a part of Hordaland county.

 

The city is an international centre for aquaculture, shipping, the offshore petroleum industry and subsea technology, and a national centre for higher education, media, tourism and finance. Bergen Port is Norway's busiest in terms of both freight and passengers, with over 300 cruise ship calls a year bringing nearly a half a million passengers to Bergen, a number that has doubled in 10 years. Almost half of the passengers are German or British. The city's main football team is SK Brann and a unique tradition of the city is the buekorps, which are traditional marching neighbourhood youth organisations. Natives speak a distinct dialect, known as Bergensk. The city features Bergen Airport, Flesland and Bergen Light Rail, and is the terminus of the Bergen Line. Four large bridges connect Bergen to its suburban municipalities.

 

Bergen has a mild winter climate, though with significant precipitation. From December to March, Bergen can, in rare cases, be up to 20 °C warmer than Oslo, even though both cities are at about 60° North. In summer however, Bergen is several degrees cooler than Oslo due to the same maritime effects. The Gulf Stream keeps the sea relatively warm, considering the latitude, and the mountains protect the city from cold winds from the north, north-east and east.

 

History

Hieronymus Scholeus's impression of Bergen. The drawing was made in about 1580 and was published in an atlas with drawings of many different cities (Civitaes orbis terrarum).

The city of Bergen was traditionally thought to have been founded by king Olav Kyrre, son of Harald Hardråde in 1070 AD, four years after the Viking Age in England ended with the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Modern research has, however, discovered that a trading settlement had already been established in the 1020s or 1030s.

 

Bergen gradually assumed the function of capital of Norway in the early 13th century, as the first city where a rudimentary central administration was established. The city's cathedral was the site of the first royal coronation in Norway in the 1150s, and continued to host royal coronations throughout the 13th century. Bergenhus fortress dates from the 1240s and guards the entrance to the harbour in Bergen. The functions of the capital city were lost to Oslo during the reign of King Haakon V (1299–1319).

 

In the middle of the 14th century, North German merchants, who had already been present in substantial numbers since the 13th century, founded one of the four Kontore of the Hanseatic League at Bryggen in Bergen. The principal export traded from Bergen was dried cod from the northern Norwegian coast, which started around 1100. The city was granted a monopoly for trade from the north of Norway by King Håkon Håkonsson (1217–1263). Stockfish was the main reason that the city became one of North Europe's largest centres for trade.[11] By the late 14th century, Bergen had established itself as the centre of the trade in Norway. The Hanseatic merchants lived in their own separate quarter of the town, where Middle Low German was used, enjoying exclusive rights to trade with the northern fishermen who each summer sailed to Bergen. The Hansa community resented Scottish merchants who settled in Bergen, and on 9 November 1523 several Scottish households were targeted by German residents. Today, Bergen's old quayside, Bryggen, is on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.

 

In 1349, the Black Death was brought to Norway by an English ship arriving in Bergen. Later outbreaks occurred in 1618, 1629 and 1637, on each occasion taking about 3,000 lives. In the 15th century, the city was attacked several times by the Victual Brothers, and in 1429 they succeeded in burning the royal castle and much of the city. In 1665, the city's harbour was the site of the Battle of Vågen, when an English naval flotilla attacked a Dutch merchant and treasure fleet supported by the city's garrison. Accidental fires sometimes got out of control, and one in 1702 reduced most of the town to ashes.

 

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, Bergen remained one of the largest cities in Scandinavia, and it was Norway's biggest city until the 1830s, being overtaken by the capital city of Oslo. From around 1600, the Hanseatic dominance of the city's trade gradually declined in favour of Norwegian merchants (often of Hanseatic ancestry), and in the 1750s, the Kontor, or major trading post of the Hanseatic League, finally closed. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Bergen was involved in the Atlantic slave trade. Bergen-based slave trader Jørgen Thormøhlen, the largest shipowner in Norway, was the main owner of the slave ship Cornelia, which made two slave-trading voyages in 1673 and 1674 respectively; he also developed the city's industrial sector, particularly in the neighbourhood of Møhlenpris, which is named after him. Bergen retained its monopoly of trade with northern Norway until 1789. The Bergen stock exchange, the Bergen børs, was established in 1813.

 

Modern history

Bergen was separated from Hordaland as a county of its own in 1831. It was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 (see formannskapsdistrikt). The rural municipality of Bergen landdistrikt was merged with Bergen on 1 January 1877. The rural municipality of Årstad was merged with Bergen on 1 July 1915.

 

During World War II, Bergen was occupied on the first day of the German invasion on 9 April 1940, after a brief fight between German ships and the Norwegian coastal artillery. The Norwegian resistance movement groups in Bergen were Saborg, Milorg, "Theta-gruppen", Sivorg, Stein-organisasjonen and the Communist Party. On 20 April 1944, during the German occupation, the Dutch cargo ship Voorbode anchored off the Bergenhus Fortress, loaded with over 120 tons of explosives, and blew up, killing at least 150 people and damaging historic buildings. The city was subject to some Allied bombing raids, aimed at German naval installations in the harbour. Some of these caused Norwegian civilian casualties numbering about 100.

 

Bergen is also well known in Norway for the Isdal Woman (Norwegian: Isdalskvinnen), an unidentified person who was found dead at Isdalen ("Ice Valley") on 29 November 1970. The unsolved case encouraged international speculation over the years and it remains one of the most profound mysteries in recent Norwegian history.

 

The rural municipalities of Arna, Fana, Laksevåg, and Åsane were merged with Bergen on 1 January 1972. The city lost its status as a separate county on the same date, and Bergen is now a municipality, in the county of Vestland.

 

Fires

The city's history is marked by numerous great fires. In 1198, the Bagler faction set fire to the city in connection with a battle against the Birkebeiner faction during the civil war. In 1248, Holmen and Sverresborg burned, and 11 churches were destroyed. In 1413 another fire struck the city, and 14 churches were destroyed. In 1428 the city was plundered by the Victual Brothers, and in 1455, Hanseatic merchants were responsible for burning down Munkeliv Abbey. In 1476, Bryggen burned down in a fire started by a drunk trader. In 1582, another fire hit the city centre and Strandsiden. In 1675, 105 buildings burned down in Øvregaten. In 1686 another great fire hit Strandsiden, destroying 231 city blocks and 218 boathouses. The greatest fire in history was in 1702, when 90% of the city was burned to ashes. In 1751, there was a great fire at Vågsbunnen. In 1756, yet another fire at Strandsiden burned down 1,500 buildings, and further great fires hit Strandsiden in 1771 and 1901. In 1916, 300 buildings burned down in the city centre including the Swan pharmacy, the oldest pharmacy in Norway, and in 1955 parts of Bryggen burned down.

 

Toponymy

Bergen is pronounced in English /ˈbɜːrɡən/ or /ˈbɛərɡən/ and in Norwegian [ˈbæ̀rɡn̩] (in the local dialect [ˈbæ̂ʁɡɛn]). The Old Norse forms of the name were Bergvin [ˈberɡˌwin] and Bjǫrgvin [ˈbjɔrɡˌwin] (and in Icelandic and Faroese the city is still called Björgvin). The first element is berg (n.) or bjǫrg (n.), which translates as 'mountain(s)'. The last element is vin (f.), which means a new settlement where there used to be a pasture or meadow. The full meaning is then "the meadow among the mountains". This is a suitable name: Bergen is often called "the city among the seven mountains". It was the playwright Ludvig Holberg who felt so inspired by the seven hills of Rome, that he decided that his home town must be blessed with a corresponding seven mountains – and locals still argue which seven they are.

 

In 1918, there was a campaign to reintroduce the Norse form Bjørgvin as the name of the city. This was turned down – but as a compromise, the name of the diocese was changed to Bjørgvin bispedømme.

 

Bergen occupies most of the peninsula of Bergenshalvøyen in the district of Midthordland in mid-western Hordaland. The municipality covers an area of 465 square kilometres (180 square miles). Most of the urban area is on or close to a fjord or bay, although the urban area has several mountains. The city centre is surrounded by the Seven Mountains, although there is disagreement as to which of the nine mountains constitute these. Ulriken, Fløyen, Løvstakken and Damsgårdsfjellet are always included as well as three of Lyderhorn, Sandviksfjellet, Blåmanen, Rundemanen and Kolbeinsvarden. Gullfjellet is Bergen's highest mountain, at 987 metres (3,238 ft) above mean sea level. Bergen is far enough north that during clear nights at the solstice, there is borderline civil daylight in spite of the sun having set.

 

Bergen is sheltered from the North Sea by the islands Askøy, Holsnøy (the municipality of Meland) and Sotra (the municipalities of Fjell and Sund). Bergen borders the municipalities Alver and Osterøy to the north, Vaksdal and Samnanger to the east, Os (Bjørnafjorden) and Austevoll to the south, and Øygarden and Askøy to the west.

 

The city centre of Bergen lies in the west of the municipality, facing the fjord of Byfjorden. It is among a group of mountains known as the Seven Mountains, although the number is a matter of definition. From here, the urban area of Bergen extends to the north, west and south, and to its east is a large mountain massif. Outside the city centre and the surrounding neighbourhoods (i.e. Årstad, inner Laksevåg and Sandviken), the majority of the population lives in relatively sparsely populated residential areas built after 1950. While some are dominated by apartment buildings and modern terraced houses (e.g. Fyllingsdalen), others are dominated by single-family homes.

 

The oldest part of Bergen is the area around the bay of Vågen in the city centre. Originally centred on the bay's eastern side, Bergen eventually expanded west and southwards. Few buildings from the oldest period remain, the most significant being St Mary's Church from the 12th century. For several hundred years, the extent of the city remained almost constant. The population was stagnant, and the city limits were narrow. In 1702, seven-eighths of the city burned. Most of the old buildings of Bergen, including Bryggen (which was rebuilt in a mediaeval style), were built after the fire. The fire marked a transition from tar covered houses, as well as the remaining log houses, to painted and some brick-covered wooden buildings.

 

The last half of the 19th century saw a period of rapid expansion and modernisation. The fire of 1855 west of Torgallmenningen led to the development of regularly sized city blocks in this area of the city centre. The city limits were expanded in 1876, and Nygård, Møhlenpris and Sandviken were urbanized with large-scale construction of city blocks housing both the poor and the wealthy. Their architecture is influenced by a variety of styles; historicism, classicism and Art Nouveau. The wealthy built villas between Møhlenpris and Nygård, and on the side of Mount Fløyen; these areas were also added to Bergen in 1876. Simultaneously, an urbanization process was taking place in Solheimsviken in Årstad, at that time outside the Bergen municipality, centred on the large industrial activity in the area. The workers' homes in this area were poorly built, and little remains after large-scale redevelopment in the 1960s–1980s.

 

After Årstad became a part of Bergen in 1916, a development plan was applied to the new area. Few city blocks akin to those in Nygård and Møhlenpris were planned. Many of the worker class built their own homes, and many small, detached apartment buildings were built. After World War II, Bergen had again run short of land to build on, and, contrary to the original plans, many large apartment buildings were built in Landås in the 1950s and 1960s. Bergen acquired Fyllingsdalen from Fana municipality in 1955. Like similar areas in Oslo (e.g. Lambertseter), Fyllingsdalen was developed into a modern suburb with large apartment buildings, mid-rises, and some single-family homes, in the 1960s and 1970s. Similar developments took place beyond Bergen's city limits, for example in Loddefjord.

 

At the same time as planned city expansion took place inside Bergen, its extra-municipal suburbs also grew rapidly. Wealthy citizens of Bergen had been living in Fana since the 19th century, but as the city expanded it became more convenient to settle in the municipality. Similar processes took place in Åsane and Laksevåg. Most of the homes in these areas are detached row houses,[clarification needed] single family homes or small apartment buildings. After the surrounding municipalities were merged with Bergen in 1972, expansion has continued in largely the same manner, although the municipality encourages condensing near commercial centres, future Bergen Light Rail stations, and elsewhere.

 

As part of the modernisation wave of the 1950s and 1960s, and due to damage caused by World War II, the city government ambitiously planned redevelopment of many areas in central Bergen. The plans involved demolition of several neighbourhoods of wooden houses, namely Nordnes, Marken, and Stølen. None of the plans was carried out in its original form; the Marken and Stølen redevelopment plans were discarded and that of Nordnes only carried out in the area that had been most damaged by war. The city council of Bergen had in 1964 voted to demolish the entirety of Marken, however, the decision proved to be highly controversial and the decision was reversed in 1974. Bryggen was under threat of being wholly or partly demolished after the fire of 1955, when a large number of the buildings burned to the ground. Instead of being demolished, the remaining buildings were restored and accompanied by reconstructions of some of the burned buildings.

 

Demolition of old buildings and occasionally whole city blocks is still taking place, the most recent major example being the 2007 razing of Jonsvollskvartalet at Nøstet.

 

Billboards are banned in the city.

 

Culture and sports

Bergens Tidende (BT) and Bergensavisen (BA) are the largest newspapers, with circulations of 87,076 and 30,719 in 2006, BT is a regional newspaper covering all of Vestland, while BA focuses on metropolitan Bergen. Other newspapers published in Bergen include the Christian national Dagen, with a circulation of 8.936, and TradeWinds, an international shipping newspaper. Local newspapers are Fanaposten for Fana, Sydvesten for Laksevåg and Fyllingsdalen and Bygdanytt for Arna and the neighbouring municipality Osterøy. TV 2, Norway's largest private television company, is based in Bergen.

 

The 1,500-seat Grieg Hall is the city's main cultural venue, and home of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1765, and the Bergen Woodwind Quintet. The city also features Carte Blanche, the Norwegian national company of contemporary dance. The annual Bergen International Festival is the main cultural festival, which is supplemented by the Bergen International Film Festival. Two internationally renowned composers from Bergen are Edvard Grieg and Ole Bull. Grieg's home, Troldhaugen, has been converted to a museum. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Bergen produced a series of successful pop, rock and black metal artists, collectively known as the Bergen Wave.

 

Den Nationale Scene is Bergen's main theatre. Founded in 1850, it had Henrik Ibsen as one of its first in-house playwrights and art directors. Bergen's contemporary art scene is centred on BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen Kunsthall, United Sardines Factory (USF) and Bergen Center for Electronic Arts (BEK). Bergen was a European Capital of Culture in 2000. Buekorps is a unique feature of Bergen culture, consisting of boys aged from 7 to 21 parading with imitation weapons and snare drums. The city's Hanseatic heritage is documented in the Hanseatic Museum located at Bryggen.

 

SK Brann is Bergen's premier football team; founded in 1908, they have played in the (men's) Norwegian Premier League for all but seven years since 1963 and consecutively, except one season after relegation in 2014, since 1987. The team were the football champions in 1961–1962, 1963, and 2007,[155] and reached the quarter-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup in 1996–1997. Brann play their home games at the 17,824-seat Brann Stadion. FK Fyllingsdalen is the city's second-best team, playing in the Second Division at Varden Amfi. Its predecessor, Fyllingen, played in the Norwegian Premier League in 1990, 1991 and 1993. Arna-Bjørnar and Sandviken play in the Women's Premier League.

 

Bergen IK is the premier men's ice hockey team, playing at Bergenshallen in the First Division. Tertnes play in the Women's Premier Handball League, and Fyllingen in the Men's Premier Handball League. In athletics, the city is dominated by IL Norna-Salhus, IL Gular and FIK BFG Fana, formerly also Norrøna IL and TIF Viking. The Bergen Storm are an American football team that plays matches at Varden Kunstgress and plays in the second division of the Norwegian league.

 

Bergensk is the native dialect of Bergen. It was strongly influenced by Low German-speaking merchants from the mid-14th to mid-18th centuries. During the Dano-Norwegian period from 1536 to 1814, Bergen was more influenced by Danish than other areas of Norway. The Danish influence removed the female grammatical gender in the 16th century, making Bergensk one of very few Norwegian dialects with only two instead of three grammatical genders. The Rs are uvular trills, as in French, which probably spread to Bergen some time in the 18th century, overtaking the alveolar trill in the time span of two to three generations. Owing to an improved literacy rate, Bergensk was influenced by riksmål and bokmål in the 19th and 20th centuries. This led to large parts of the German-inspired vocabulary disappearing and pronunciations shifting slightly towards East Norwegian.

 

The 1986 edition of the Eurovision Song Contest took place in Bergen. Bergen was the host city for the 2017 UCI Road World Championships. The city is also a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the category of gastronomy since 2015.

 

Street art

Bergen is considered to be the street art capital of Norway. Famed artist Banksy visited the city in 2000 and inspired many to start creating street art. Soon after, the city brought up the most famous street artist in Norway: Dolk. His art can still be seen in several places in the city, and in 2009 the city council choose to preserve Dolk's work "Spray" with protective glass. In 2011, Bergen council launched a plan of action for street art in Bergen from 2011 to 2015 to ensure that "Bergen will lead the fashion for street art as an expression both in Norway and Scandinavia".

 

The Madam Felle (1831–1908) monument in Sandviken, is in honour of a Norwegian woman of German origin, who in the mid-19th century managed, against the will of the council, to maintain a counter of beer. A well-known restaurant of the same name is now situated at another location in Bergen. The monument was erected in 1990 by sculptor Kari Rolfsen, supported by an anonymous donor. Madam Felle, civil name Oline Fell, was remembered after her death in a popular song, possibly originally a folksong, "Kjenner Dokker Madam Felle?" by Lothar Lindtner and Rolf Berntzen on an album in 1977.

 

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway , is a Nordic , European country and an independent state in the west of the Scandinavian Peninsula . Geographically speaking, the country is long and narrow, and on the elongated coast towards the North Atlantic are Norway's well-known fjords . The Kingdom of Norway includes the main country (the mainland with adjacent islands within the baseline ), Jan Mayen and Svalbard . With these two Arctic areas, Norway covers a land area of ​​385,000 km² and has a population of approximately 5.5 million (2023). Mainland Norway borders Sweden in the east , Finland and Russia in the northeast .

 

Norway is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy , where Harald V has been king and head of state since 1991 , and Jonas Gahr Støre ( Ap ) has been prime minister since 2021 . Norway is a unitary state , with two administrative levels below the state: counties and municipalities . The Sami part of the population has, through the Sami Parliament and the Finnmark Act , to a certain extent self-government and influence over traditionally Sami areas. Although Norway has rejected membership of the European Union through two referendums , through the EEA Agreement Norway has close ties with the Union, and through NATO with the United States . Norway is a significant contributor to the United Nations (UN), and has participated with soldiers in several foreign operations mandated by the UN. Norway is among the states that have participated from the founding of the UN , NATO , the Council of Europe , the OSCE and the Nordic Council , and in addition to these is a member of the EEA , the World Trade Organization , the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and is part of the Schengen area .

 

Norway is rich in many natural resources such as oil , gas , minerals , timber , seafood , fresh water and hydropower . Since the beginning of the 20th century, these natural conditions have given the country the opportunity for an increase in wealth that few other countries can now enjoy, and Norwegians have the second highest average income in the world, measured in GDP per capita, as of 2022. The petroleum industry accounts for around 14% of Norway's gross domestic product as of 2018. Norway is the world's largest producer of oil and gas per capita outside the Middle East. However, the number of employees linked to this industry fell from approx. 232,000 in 2013 to 207,000 in 2015.

 

In Norway, these natural resources have been managed for socially beneficial purposes. The country maintains a welfare model in line with the other Nordic countries. Important service areas such as health and higher education are state-funded, and the country has an extensive welfare system for its citizens. Public expenditure in 2018 is approx. 50% of GDP, and the majority of these expenses are related to education, healthcare, social security and welfare. Since 2001 and until 2021, when the country took second place, the UN has ranked Norway as the world's best country to live in . From 2010, Norway is also ranked at the top of the EIU's democracy index . Norway ranks third on the UN's World Happiness Report for the years 2016–2018, behind Finland and Denmark , a report published in March 2019.

 

The majority of the population is Nordic. In the last couple of years, immigration has accounted for more than half of population growth. The five largest minority groups are Norwegian-Poles , Lithuanians , Norwegian-Swedes , Norwegian-Syrians including Syrian Kurds and Norwegian-Pakistani .

 

Norway's national day is 17 May, on this day in 1814 the Norwegian Constitution was dated and signed by the presidency of the National Assembly at Eidsvoll . It is stipulated in the law of 26 April 1947 that 17 May are national public holidays. The Sami national day is 6 February. "Yes, we love this country" is Norway's national anthem, the song was written in 1859 by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832–1910).

 

Norway's history of human settlement goes back at least 10,000 years, to the Late Paleolithic , the first period of the Stone Age . Archaeological finds of settlements along the entire Norwegian coast have so far been dated back to 10,400 before present (BP), the oldest find is today considered to be a settlement at Pauler in Brunlanes , Vestfold .

For a period these settlements were considered to be the remains of settlers from Doggerland , an area which today lies beneath the North Sea , but which was once a land bridge connecting today's British Isles with Danish Jutland . But the archaeologists who study the initial phase of the settlement in what is today Norway reckon that the first people who came here followed the coast along what is today Bohuslân. That they arrived in some form of boat is absolutely certain, and there is much evidence that they could easily move over large distances.

 

Since the last Ice Age, there has been continuous settlement in Norway. It cannot be ruled out that people lived in Norway during the interglacial period , but no trace of such a population or settlement has been found.

 

The Stone Age lasted a long time; half of the time that our country has been populated. There are no written accounts of what life was like back then. The knowledge we have has been painstakingly collected through investigations of places where people have stayed and left behind objects that we can understand have been processed by human hands. This field of knowledge is called archaeology . The archaeologists interpret their findings and the history of the surrounding landscape. In our country, the uplift after the Ice Age is fundamental. The history of the settlements at Pauler is no more than fifteen years old.

 

The Fosna culture settled parts of Norway sometime between 10,000–8,000 BC. (see Stone Age in Norway ). The dating of rock carvings is set to Neolithic times (in Norway between 4000 BC to 1700 BC) and show activities typical of hunters and gatherers .

 

Agriculture with livestock and arable farming was introduced in the Neolithic. Swad farming where the farmers move when the field does not produce the expected yield.

 

More permanent and persistent farm settlements developed in the Bronze Age (1700 BC to 500 BC) and the Iron Age . The earliest runes have been found on an arrowhead dated to around 200 BC. Many more inscriptions are dated to around 800, and a number of petty kingdoms developed during these centuries. In prehistoric times, there were no fixed national borders in the Nordic countries and Norway did not exist as a state. The population in Norway probably fell to year 0.

 

Events in this time period, the centuries before the year 1000, are glimpsed in written sources. Although the sagas were written down in the 13th century, many hundreds of years later, they provide a glimpse into what was already a distant past. The story of the fimbul winter gives us a historical picture of something that happened and which in our time, with the help of dendrochronology , can be interpreted as a natural disaster in the year 536, created by a volcanic eruption in El Salvador .

 

In the period between 800 and 1066 there was a significant expansion and it is referred to as the Viking Age . During this period, Norwegians, as Swedes and Danes also did, traveled abroad in longships with sails as explorers, traders, settlers and as Vikings (raiders and pirates ). By the middle of the 11th century, the Norwegian kingship had been firmly established, building its right as descendants of Harald Hårfagre and then as heirs of Olav the Holy . The Norwegian kings, and their subjects, now professed Christianity . In the time around Håkon Håkonsson , in the time after the civil war , there was a small renaissance in Norway with extensive literary activity and diplomatic activity with Europe. The black dew came to Norway in 1349 and killed around half of the population. The entire state apparatus and Norway then entered a period of decline.

 

Between 1396 and 1536, Norway was part of the Kalmar Union , and from 1536 until 1814 Norway had been reduced to a tributary part of Denmark , named as the Personal Union of Denmark-Norway . This staff union entered into an alliance with Napoléon Bonaparte with a war that brought bad times and famine in 1812 . In 1814, Denmark-Norway lost the Anglophone Wars , part of the Napoleonic Wars , and the Danish king was forced to cede Norway to the king of Sweden in the Treaty of Kiel on 14 January of that year. After a Norwegian attempt at independence, Norway was forced into a loose union with Sweden, but where Norway was allowed to create its own constitution, the Constitution of 1814 . In this period, Norwegian, romantic national feeling flourished, and the Norwegians tried to develop and establish their own national self-worth. The union with Sweden was broken in 1905 after it had been threatened with war, and Norway became an independent kingdom with its own monarch, Haakon VII .

 

Norway remained neutral during the First World War , and at the outbreak of the Second World War, Norway again declared itself neutral, but was invaded by National Socialist Germany on 9 April 1940 .

 

Norway became a member of the Western defense alliance NATO in 1949 . Two attempts to join the EU were voted down in referendums by small margins in 1972 and 1994 . Norway has been a close ally of the United States in the post-war period. Large discoveries of oil and natural gas in the North Sea at the end of the 1960s led to tremendous economic growth in the country, which is still ongoing. Traditional industries such as fishing are also part of Norway's economy.

 

Stone Age (before 1700 BC)

When most of the ice disappeared, vegetation spread over the landscape and due to a warm climate around 2000-3000 BC. the forest grew much taller than in modern times. Land uplift after the ice age led to a number of fjords becoming lakes and dry land. The first people probably came from the south along the coast of the Kattegat and overland into Finnmark from the east. The first people probably lived by gathering, hunting and trapping. A good number of Stone Age settlements have been found which show that such hunting and trapping people stayed for a long time in the same place or returned to the same place regularly. Large amounts of gnawed bones show that they lived on, among other things, reindeer, elk, small game and fish.

 

Flintstone was imported from Denmark and apart from small natural deposits along the southern coast, all flintstone in Norway is transported by people. At Espevær, greenstone was quarried for tools in the Stone Age, and greenstone tools from Espevær have been found over large parts of Western Norway. Around 2000-3000 BC the usual farm animals such as cows and sheep were introduced to Norway. Livestock probably meant a fundamental change in society in that part of the people had to be permanent residents or live a semi-nomadic life. Livestock farming may also have led to conflict with hunters.

 

The oldest traces of people in what is today Norway have been found at Pauler , a farm in Brunlanes in Larvik municipality in Vestfold . In 2007 and 2008, the farm has given its name to a number of Stone Age settlements that have been excavated and examined by archaeologists from the Cultural History Museum at UiO. The investigations have been carried out in connection with the new route for the E18 motorway west of Farris. The oldest settlement, located more than 127 m above sea level, is dated to be about 10,400 years old (uncalibrated, more than 11,000 years in real calendar years). From here, the ice sheet was perhaps visible when people settled here. This locality has been named Pauler I, and is today considered to be the oldest confirmed human traces in Norway to date. The place is in the mountains above the Pauler tunnel on the E18 between Larvik and Porsgrunn . The pioneer settlement is a term archaeologists have adopted for the oldest settlement. The archaeologists have speculated about where they came from, the first people in what is today Norway. It has been suggested that they could come by boat or perhaps across the ice from Doggerland or the North Sea, but there is now a large consensus that they came north along what is today the Bohuslän coast. The Fosna culture , the Komsa culture and the Nøstvet culture are the traditional terms for hunting cultures from the Stone Age. One thing is certain - getting to the water was something they mastered, the first people in our country. Therefore, within a short time they were able to use our entire long coast.

 

In the New Stone Age (4000 BC–1700 BC) there is a theory that a new people immigrated to the country, the so-called Stone Ax People . Rock carvings from this period show motifs from hunting and fishing , which were still important industries. From this period, a megalithic tomb has been found in Østfold .

It is uncertain whether there were organized societies or state-like associations in the Stone Age in Norway. Findings from settlements indicate that many lived together and that this was probably more than one family so that it was a slightly larger, organized herd.

 

Finnmark

In prehistoric times, animal husbandry and agriculture were of little economic importance in Finnmark. Livelihoods in Finnmark were mainly based on fish, gathering, hunting and trapping, and eventually domestic reindeer herding became widespread in the Middle Ages. Archaeological finds from the Stone Age have been referred to as the Komsa culture and comprise around 5,000 years of settlement. Finnmark probably got its first settlement around 8000 BC. It is believed that the coastal areas became ice-free 11,000 years BC and the fjord areas around 9,000 years BC. after which willows, grass, heather, birch and pine came into being. Finnmarksvidda was covered by pine forest around 6000 BC. After the Ice Age, the land rose around 80 meters in the inner fjord areas (Alta, Tana, Varanger). Due to ice melting in the polar region, the sea rose in the period 6400–3800 BC. and in areas with little land elevation, some settlements from the first part of the Stone Age were flooded. On Sørøya, the net sea level rise was 12 to 14 meters and many residential areas were flooded.

 

According to Bjørnar Olsen , there are many indications of a connection between the oldest settlement in Western Norway (the " Fosnakulturen ") and that in Finnmark, but it is uncertain in which direction the settlement took place. In the earliest part of the Stone Age, settlement in Finnmark was probably concentrated in the coastal areas, and these only reflected a lifestyle with great mobility and no permanent dwellings. The inner regions, such as Pasvik, were probably used seasonally. The archaeologically proven settlements from the Stone Age in inner Finnmark and Troms are linked to lakes and large watercourses. The oldest petroglyphs in Alta are usually dated to 4200 BC, that is, the Neolithic . Bjørnar Olsen believes that the oldest can be up to 2,000 years older than this.

 

From around 4000 BC a slow deforestation of Finnmark began and around 1800 BC the vegetation distribution was roughly the same as in modern times. The change in vegetation may have increased the distance between the reindeer's summer and winter grazing. The uplift continued slowly from around 4000 BC. at the same time as sea level rise stopped.

 

According to Gutorm Gjessing, the settlement in Finnmark and large parts of northern Norway in the Neolithic was semi-nomadic with movement between four seasonal settlements (following the pattern of life in Sami siida in historical times): On the outer coast in summer (fishing and seal catching) and inland in winter (hunting for reindeer, elk and bear). Povl Simonsen believed instead that the winter residence was in the inner fjord area in a village-like sod house settlement. Bjørnar Olsen believes that at the end of the Stone Age there was a relatively settled population along the coast, while inland there was less settlement and a more mobile lifestyle.

 

Bronze Age (1700 BC–500 BC)

Bronze was used for tools in Norway from around 1500 BC. Bronze is a mixture of tin and copper , and these metals were introduced because they were not mined in the country at the time. Bronze is believed to have been a relatively expensive material. The Bronze Age in Norway can be divided into two phases:

 

Early Bronze Age (1700–1100 BC)

Younger Bronze Age (1100–500 BC)

For the prehistoric (unwritten) era, there is limited knowledge about social conditions and possible state formations. From the Bronze Age, there are large burial mounds of stone piles along the coast of Vestfold and Agder, among others. It is likely that only chieftains or other great men could erect such grave monuments and there was probably some form of organized society linked to these. In the Bronze Age, society was more organized and stratified than in the Stone Age. Then a rich class of chieftains emerged who had close connections with southern Scandinavia. The settlements became more permanent and people adopted horses and ard . They acquired bronze status symbols, lived in longhouses and people were buried in large burial mounds . Petroglyphs from the Bronze Age indicate that humans practiced solar cultivation.

 

Finnmark

In the last millennium BC the climate became cooler and the pine forest disappears from the coast; pine forests, for example, were only found in the innermost part of the Altafjord, while the outer coast was almost treeless. Around the year 0, the limit for birch forest was south of Kirkenes. Animals with forest habitats (elk, bear and beaver) disappeared and the reindeer probably established their annual migration routes sometime at that time. In the period 1800–900 BC there were significantly more settlements in and utilization of the hinterland was particularly noticeable on Finnmarksvidda. From around 1800 BC until year 0 there was a significant increase in contact between Finnmark and areas in the east including Karelia (where metals were produced including copper) and central and eastern Russia. The youngest petroglyphs in Alta show far more boats than the earlier phases and the boats are reminiscent of types depicted in petroglyphs in southern Scandinavia. It is unclear what influence southern Scandinavian societies had as far north as Alta before the year 0. Many of the cultural features that are considered typical Sami in modern times were created or consolidated in the last millennium BC, this applies, among other things, to the custom of burying in brick chambers in stone urns. The Mortensnes burial ground may have been used for 2000 years until around 1600 AD.

 

Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 1050 AD)

 

The Einangsteinen is one of the oldest Norwegian runestones; it is from the 4th century

 

Simultaneous production of Vikings

Around 500 years BC the researchers reckon that the Bronze Age will be replaced by the Iron Age as iron takes over as the most important material for weapons and tools. Bronze, wood and stone were still used. Iron was cheaper than bronze, easier to work than flint , and could be used for many purposes; iron probably became common property. Iron could, among other things, be used to make solid and sharp axes which made it much easier to fell trees. In the Iron Age, gold and silver were also used partly for decoration and partly as means of payment. It is unknown which language was used in Norway before our era. From around the year 0 until around the year 800, everyone in Scandinavia (except the Sami) spoke Old Norse , a North Germanic language. Subsequently, several different languages ​​developed in this area that were only partially mutually intelligible. The Iron Age is divided into several periods:

 

Early Iron Age

Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 500 BC–c. 0)

Roman Iron Age (c. 0–c. AD 400)

Migration period (approx. 400–600). In the migration period (approx. 400–600), new peoples came to Norway, and ruins of fortress buildings etc. are interpreted as signs that there has been talk of a violent invasion.

Younger Iron Age

Merovingian period (500–800)

 

The Viking Age (793–1066)

Norwegian Vikings go on plundering expeditions and trade voyages around the coastal countries of Western Europe . Large groups of Norwegians emigrate to the British Isles , Iceland and Greenland . Harald Hårfagre starts a unification process of Norway late in the 8th century , which was completed by Harald Hardråde in the 1060s . The country was Christianized under the kings Olav Tryggvason , fell in the battle of Svolder ( 1000 ) and Olav Haraldsson (the saint), fell in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 .

 

Sources of prehistoric times

Shrinking glaciers in the high mountains, including in Jotunheimen and Breheimen , have from around the year 2000 uncovered objects from the Viking Age and earlier. These are objects of organic material that have been preserved by the ice and that elsewhere in nature are broken down in a few months. The finds are getting older as the melting makes the archaeologists go deeper into the ice. About half of all archaeological discoveries on glaciers in the world are made in Oppland . In 2013, a 3,400-year-old shoe and a robe from the year 300 were found. Finds at Lomseggen in Lom published in 2020 revealed, among other things, well-preserved horseshoes used on a mountain pass. Many hundreds of items include preserved clothing, knives, whisks, mittens, leather shoes, wooden chests and horse equipment. A piece of cloth dated to the year 1000 has preserved its original colour. In 2014, a wooden ski from around the year 700 was found in Reinheimen . The ski is 172 cm long and 14 cm wide, with preserved binding of leather and wicker.

 

Pytheas from Massalia is the oldest known account of what was probably the coast of Norway, perhaps somewhere on the coast of Møre. Pytheas visited Britannia around 325 BC. and traveled further north to a country by the "Ice Sea". Pytheas described the short summer night and the midnight sun farther north. He wrote, among other things, that people there made a drink from grain and honey. Caesar wrote in his work about the Gallic campaign about the Germanic tribe Haruders. Other Roman sources around the year 0 mention the land of the Cimbri (Jutland) and the Cimbri headlands ( Skagen ) and that the sources stated that Cimbri and Charyds lived in this area. Some of these peoples may have immigrated to Norway and there become known as hordes (as in Hordaland). Sources from the Mediterranean area referred to the islands of Scandia, Scandinavia and Thule ("the outermost of all islands"). The Roman historian Tacitus wrote around the year 100 a work about Germania and mentioned the people of Scandia, the Sviones. Ptolemy wrote around the year 150 that the Kharudes (Hordes) lived further north than all the Cimbri, in the north lived the Finnoi (Finns or Sami) and in the south the Gutai (Goths). The Nordic countries and Norway were outside the Roman Empire , which dominated Europe at the time. The Gothic-born historian Jordanes wrote in the 5th century about 13 tribes or people groups in Norway, including raumaricii (probably Romerike ), ragnaricii ( Ranrike ) and finni or skretefinni (skrid finner or ski finner, i.e. Sami) as well as a number of unclear groups. Prokopios wrote at the same time about Thule north of the land of the Danes and Slavs, Thule was ten times as big as Britannia and the largest of all the islands. In Thule, the sun was up 40 days straight in the summer. After the migration period , southern Europeans' accounts of northern Europe became fuller and more reliable.

 

Settlement in prehistoric times

Norway has around 50,000 farms with their own names. Farm names have persisted for a long time, over 1000 years, perhaps as much as 2000 years. The name researchers have arranged different types of farm names chronologically, which provides a basis for determining when the place was used by people or received a permanent settlement. Uncompounded landscape names such as Haug, Eid, Vik and Berg are believed to be the oldest. Archaeological traces indicate that some areas have been inhabited earlier than assumed from the farm name. Burial mounds also indicate permanent settlement. For example, the burial ground at Svartelva in Løten was used from around the year 0 to the year 1000 when Christianity took over. The first farmers probably used large areas for inland and outland, and new farms were probably established based on some "mother farms". Names such as By (or Bø) show that it is an old place of residence. From the older Iron Age, names with -heim (a common Germanic word meaning place of residence) and -stad tell of settlement, while -vin and -land tell of the use of the place. Farm names in -heim are often found as -um , -eim or -em as in Lerum and Seim, there are often large farms in the center of the village. New farm names with -city and -country were also established in the Viking Age . The first farmers probably used the best areas. The largest burial grounds, the oldest archaeological finds and the oldest farm names are found where the arable land is richest and most spacious.

 

It is unclear whether the settlement expansion in Roman times, migrations and the Iron Age is due to immigration or internal development and population growth. Among other things, it is difficult to demonstrate where in Europe the immigrants have come from. The permanent residents had both fields (where grain was grown) and livestock that grazed in the open fields, but it is uncertain which of these was more important. Population growth from around the year 200 led to more utilization of open land, for example in the form of settlements in the mountains. During the migration period, it also seems that in parts of the country it became common to have cluster gardens or a form of village settlement.

 

Norwegian expansion northwards

From around the year 200, there was a certain migration by sea from Rogaland and Hordaland to Nordland and Sør-Troms. Those who moved settled down as a settled Iron Age population and became dominant over the original population which may have been Sami . The immigrant Norwegians, Bumen , farmed with livestock that were fed inside in the winter as well as some grain cultivation and fishing. The northern border of the Norwegians' settlement was originally at the Toppsundet near Harstad and around the year 500 there was a Norwegian settlement to Malangsgapet. That was as far north as it was possible to grow grain at the time. Malangen was considered the border between Hålogaland and Finnmork until around 1400 . Further into the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, there was immigration and settlement of Norwegian speakers along the coast north of Malangen. Around the year 800, Norwegians lived along the entire outer coast to Vannøy . The Norwegians partly copied Sami livelihoods such as whaling, fur hunting and reindeer husbandry. It was probably this area between Malangen and Vannøy that was Ottar from the Hålogaland area. In the Viking Age, there were also some Norwegian settlements further north and east. East of the North Cape are the scattered archaeological finds of Norwegian settlement in the Viking Age. There are Norwegian names for fjords and islands from the Viking Age, including fjord names with "-anger". Around the year 1050, there were Norwegian settlements on the outer coast of Western Finnmark. Traders and tax collectors traveled even further.

 

North of Malangen there were Norse farming settlements in the Iron Age. Malangen was considered Finnmark's western border until 1300. There are some archaeological traces of Norse activity around the coast from Tromsø to Kirkenes in the Viking Age. Around Tromsø, the research indicates a Norse/Sami mixed culture on the coast.

 

From the year 1100 and the next 200–300 years, there are no traces of Norwegian settlement north and east of Tromsø. It is uncertain whether this is due to depopulation, whether it is because the Norwegians further north were not Christianized or because there were no churches north of Lenvik or Tromsø . Norwegian settlement in the far north appears from sources from the 14th century. In the Hanseatic period , the settlement was developed into large areas specialized in commercial fishing, while earlier (in the Viking Age) there had been farms with a combination of fishing and agriculture. In 1307 , a fortress and the first church east of Tromsø were built in Vardø . Vardø became a small Norwegian town, while Vadsø remained Sami. Norwegian settlements and churches appeared along the outermost coast in the Middle Ages. After the Reformation, perhaps as a result of a decline in fish stocks or fish prices, there were Norwegian settlements in the inner fjord areas such as Lebesby in Laksefjord. Some fishing villages at the far end of the coast were abandoned for good. In the interior of Finnmark, there was no national border for a long time and Kautokeino and Karasjok were joint Norwegian-Swedish areas with strong Swedish influence. The border with Finland was established in 1751 and with Russia in 1826.

 

On a Swedish map from 1626, Norway's border is indicated at Malangen, while Sweden with this map showed a desire to control the Sami area which had been a common area.

 

The term Northern Norway only came into use at the end of the 19th century and administratively the area was referred to as Tromsø Diocese when Tromsø became a bishopric in 1840. There had been different designations previously: Hålogaland originally included only Helgeland and when Norse settlement spread north in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, Hålogaland was used for the area north approximately to Malangen , while Finnmark or "Finnmarken", "the land of the Sami", lay outside. The term Northern Norway was coined at a cafe table in Kristiania in 1884 by members of the Nordlændingernes Forening and was first commonly used in the interwar period as it eventually supplanted "Hålogaland".

 

State formation

The battle in Hafrsfjord in the year 872 has long been regarded as the day when Norway became a kingdom. The year of the battle is uncertain (may have been 10-20 years later). The whole of Norway was not united in that battle: the process had begun earlier and continued a couple of hundred years later. This means that the geographical area became subject to a political authority and became a political unit. The geographical area was perceived as an area as it is known, among other things, from Ottar from Hålogaland's account for King Alfred of Wessex around the year 880. Ottar described "the land of the Norwegians" as very long and narrow, and it was narrowest in the far north. East of the wasteland in the south lay Sveoland and in the north lay Kvenaland in the east. When Ottar sailed south along the land from his home ( Malangen ) to Skiringssal, he always had Norway ("Nordveg") on his port side and the British Isles on his starboard side. The journey took a good month. Ottar perceived "Nordveg" as a geographical unit, but did not imply that it was a political unit. Ottar separated Norwegians from Swedes and Danes. It is unclear why Ottar perceived the population spread over such a large area as a whole. It is unclear whether Norway as a geographical term or Norwegians as the name of a ethnic group is the oldest. The Norwegians had a common language which in the centuries before Ottar did not differ much from the language of Denmark and Sweden.

 

According to Sverre Steen, it is unlikely that Harald Hårfagre was able to control this entire area as one kingdom. The saga of Harald was written 300 years later and at his death Norway was several smaller kingdoms. Harald probably controlled a larger area than anyone before him and at most Harald's kingdom probably included the coast from Trøndelag to Agder and Vestfold as well as parts of Viken . There were probably several smaller kingdoms of varying extent before Harald and some of these are reflected in traditional landscape names such as Ranrike and Ringerike . Landscape names of "-land" (Rogaland) and "-mark" (Hedmark) as well as names such as Agder and Sogn may have been political units before Harald.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the national assembly was completed at the earliest at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 and the introduction of Christianity was probably a significant factor in the establishment of Norway as a state. Håkon I the good Adalsteinsfostre introduced the leasehold system where the "coastal land" (as far as the salmon went up the rivers) was divided into ship raiders who were to provide a longship with soldiers and supplies. The leidange was probably introduced as a defense against the Danes. The border with the Danes was traditionally at the Göta älv and several times before and after Harald Hårfagre the Danes had control over central parts of Norway.

 

Christianity was known and existed in Norway before Olav Haraldson's time. The spread occurred both from the south (today's Denmark and northern Germany) and from the west (England and Ireland). Ansgar of Bremen , called the "Apostle of the North", worked in Sweden, but he was never in Norway and probably had little influence in the country. Viking expeditions brought the Norwegians of that time into contact with Christian countries and some were baptized in England, Ireland and northern France. Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldson were Vikings who returned home. The first Christians in Norway were also linked to pre-Christian local religion, among other things, by mixing Christian symbols with symbols of Odin and other figures from Norse religion.

 

According to Sverre Steen, the introduction of Christianity in Norway should not be perceived as a nationwide revival. At Mostratinget, Christian law was introduced as law in the country and later incorporated into the laws of the individual jurisdictions. Christianity primarily involved new forms in social life, among other things exposure and images of gods were prohibited, it was forbidden to "put out" unwanted infants (to let them die), and it was forbidden to have multiple wives. The church became a nationwide institution with a special group of officials tasked with protecting the church and consolidating the new religion. According to Sverre Steen, Christianity and the church in the Middle Ages should therefore be considered together, and these became a new unifying factor in the country. The church and Christianity linked Norway to Roman Catholic Europe with Church Latin as the common language, the same time reckoning as the rest of Europe and the church in Norway was arranged much like the churches in Denmark, Sweden and England. Norway received papal approval in 1070 and became its own church province in 1152 with Archbishop Nidaros .

 

With Christianity, the country got three social powers: the peasants (organized through the things), the king with his officials and the church with the clergy. The things are the oldest institution: At allthings all armed men had the right to attend (in part an obligation to attend) and at lagthings met emissaries from an area (that is, the lagthings were representative assemblies). The Thing both ruled in conflicts and established laws. The laws were memorized by the participants and written down around the year 1000 or later in the Gulationsloven , Frostatingsloven , Eidsivatingsloven and Borgartingsloven . The person who had been successful at the hearing had to see to the implementation of the judgment themselves.

 

Early Middle Ages (1050s–1184)

The early Middle Ages is considered in Norwegian history to be the period between the end of the Viking Age around 1050 and the coronation of King Sverre in 1184 . The beginning of the period can be dated differently, from around the year 1000 when the Christianization of the country took place and up to 1100 when the Viking Age was over from an archaeological point of view. From 1035 to 1130 it was a time of (relative) internal peace in Norway, even several of the kings attempted campaigns abroad, including in 1066 and 1103 .

 

During this period, the church's organization was built up. This led to a gradual change in religious customs. Religion went from being a domestic matter to being regulated by common European Christian law and the royal power gained increased power and influence. Slavery (" servitude ") was gradually abolished. The population grew rapidly during this period, as the thousands of farm names ending in -rud show.

 

The urbanization of Norway is a historical process that has slowly but surely changed Norway from the early Viking Age to today, from a country based on agriculture and sea salvage, to increasingly trade and industry. As early as the ninth century, the country got its first urban community, and in the eleventh century we got the first permanent cities.

 

In the 1130s, civil war broke out . This was due to a power struggle and that anyone who claimed to be the king's son could claim the right to the throne. The disputes escalated into extensive year-round warfare when Sverre Sigurdsson started a rebellion against the church's and the landmen's candidate for the throne , Magnus Erlingsson .

 

Emergence of cities

The oldest Norwegian cities probably emerged from the end of the 9th century. Oslo, Bergen and Nidaros became episcopal seats, which stimulated urban development there, and the king built churches in Borg , Konghelle and Tønsberg. Hamar and Stavanger became new episcopal seats and are referred to in the late 12th century as towns together with the trading places Veøy in Romsdal and Kaupanger in Sogn. In the late Middle Ages, Borgund (on Sunnmøre), Veøy (in Romsdalsfjorden) and Vågan (in Lofoten) were referred to as small trading places. Urbanization in Norway occurred in few places compared to the neighboring countries, only 14 places appear as cities before 1350. Stavanger became a bishopric around 1120–1130, but it is unclear whether the place was already a city then. The fertile Jæren and outer Ryfylke were probably relatively densely populated at that time. A particularly large concentration of Irish artefacts from the Viking Age has been found in Stavanger and Nord-Jæren.

 

It has been difficult to estimate the population in the Norwegian medieval cities, but it is considered certain that the cities grew rapidly in the Middle Ages. Oscar Albert Johnsen estimated the city's population before the Black Death at 20,000, of which 7,000 in Bergen, 3,000 in Nidaros, 2,000 in Oslo and 1,500 in Tunsberg. Based on archaeological research, Lunden estimates that Oslo had around 1,500 inhabitants in 250 households in the year 1300. Bergen was built up more densely and, with the concentration of exports there, became Norway's largest city in a special position for several hundred years. Knut Helle suggests a city population of 20,000 at most in the High Middle Ages, of which almost half in Bergen.

 

The Bjarkøyretten regulated the conditions in cities (especially Bergen and Nidaros) and in trading places, and for Nidaros had many of the same provisions as the Frostating Act . Magnus Lagabøte's city law replaced the bjarkøretten and from 1276 regulated the settlement in Bergen and with corresponding laws also drawn up for Oslo, Nidaros and Tunsberg. The city law applied within the city's roof area . The City Act determined that the city's public streets consisted of wide commons (perpendicular to the shoreline) and ran parallel to the shoreline, similarly in Nidaros and Oslo. The roads were small streets of up to 3 cubits (1.4 metres) and linked to the individual property. From the Middle Ages, the Norwegian cities were usually surrounded by wooden fences. The urban development largely consisted of low wooden houses which stood in contrast to the relatively numerous and dominant churches and monasteries built in stone.

 

The City Act and supplementary provisions often determined where in the city different goods could be traded, in Bergen, for example, cattle and sheep could only be traded on the Square, and fish only on the Square or directly from the boats at the quayside. In Nidaros, the blacksmiths were required to stay away from the densely populated areas due to the risk of fire, while the tanners had to stay away from the settlements due to the strong smell. The City Act also attempted to regulate the influx of people into the city (among other things to prevent begging in the streets) and had provisions on fire protection. In Oslo, from the 13th century or earlier, it was common to have apartment buildings consisting of single buildings on a couple of floors around a courtyard with access from the street through a gate room. Oslo's medieval apartment buildings were home to one to four households. In the urban farms, livestock could be kept, including pigs and cows, while pastures and fields were found in the city's rooftops . In the apartment buildings there could be several outbuildings such as warehouses, barns and stables. Archaeological excavations show that much of the buildings in medieval Oslo, Trondheim and Tønsberg resembled the oblong farms that have been preserved at Bryggen in Bergen . The land boundaries in Oslo appear to have persisted for many hundreds of years, in Bergen right from the Middle Ages to modern times.

 

High Middle Ages (1184–1319)

After civil wars in the 12th century, the country had a relative heyday in the 13th century. Iceland and Greenland came under the royal authority in 1262 , and the Norwegian Empire reached its greatest extent under Håkon IV Håkonsson . The last king of Haraldsätten, Håkon V Magnusson , died sonless in 1319 . Until the 17th century, Norway stretched all the way down to the mouth of Göta älv , which was then Norway's border with Sweden and Denmark.

 

Just before the Black Death around 1350, there were between 65,000 and 85,000 farms in the country, and there had been a strong growth in the number of farms from 1050, especially in Eastern Norway. In the High Middle Ages, the church or ecclesiastical institutions controlled 40% of the land in Norway, while the aristocracy owned around 20% and the king owned 7%. The church and monasteries received land through gifts from the king and nobles, or through inheritance and gifts from ordinary farmers.

 

Settlement and demography in the Middle Ages

Before the Black Death, there were more and more farms in Norway due to farm division and clearing. The settlement spread to more marginal agricultural areas higher inland and further north. Eastern Norway had the largest areas to take off and had the most population growth towards the High Middle Ages. Along the coast north of Stad, settlement probably increased in line with the extent of fishing. The Icelandic Rimbegla tells around the year 1200 that the border between Finnmark (the land of the Sami) and resident Norwegians in the interior was at Malangen , while the border all the way out on the

is it so hard to forgive

the way that we've been made to live?

how much is required to set things right?

have you confused your power with mine?

 

//

& i'll be moving on and going forward.

lately, i've been just thinking about who i was last year, or the many years before that. yes, i am young and naive - but i cannot help but think that i am a completely different person than who i was last year. or even five months ago. i've experienced so much and met so many people in between and have lost many things but here i am now, strangely satisfied and so ready to just.... go. yes, i am infinitely disappointed in the losses i have experienced this year, but i know that they were for the best. these empty gaps will be so quickly filed with happiness and love and other states of being.

i know i never type much in my descriptions but i guess this is what these images are about. moving on. going forward from where i have started.

 

Guanyin (la déesse de la miséricorde) et ses deux serviteurs : Shancai (le serviteur aux grands talents) et Longnu (la fille du roi dragon des mers)

divinités de la religion populaire chinoise

vers 1886-1887

Bois polychrome

dépôt du musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, Paris

 

Oeuvre présentée dans l'exposition permanente

Salle "Origines, les récits du monde"

Musée des confluences

www.museedesconfluences.fr/fr/origines-les-recits-du-monde

 

Guan Yin (Quan Am) est pour les chinois, la "Déesse de la Miséricorde" , c'est à l'origine le Bodhisattava de la compassion : Avalokiteshvara ou Avalokitesvara (Celui qui regarde vers le bas), le principal Bodhisattava du bouddhisme du Grand Véhicule. Il est représenté en Chine sous une forme féminine à partir du Xème siècle.

 

Guan Yin est vénérée dans tout le monde asiatique notamment pour avoir un enfant ou pour être protégé lors d'un voyage en mer.

 

Les attributs et représentations de Guanyin sont très nombreux. La divinité peut être figurée debout ou assise, souvent en robe blanche, avec à la main, plusieurs attributs comme une branche de saule, un vase d'eau lustrale, un livre, un lotus, un rosaire,.. . Elle peut être assise en méditation et avec un enfant dans les bras. Elle peut avoir de nombreux bras symbolisant les secours qu'elle apporte. Elle est souvent entourée de dévots et de donateurs.

Name:Markus Shade

 

Powers:Accomplished gymnast, ruthless and brutal fighting style

 

Origin: As a child, the man who would come to be known as Silence was raised by his single father, a ruthless business mogul, who taught him that the ends justify the means. After his father was imprisoned for embezzlement, Markus vowed never to sink as low as his father and began fighting crime under the alias Silence.

From the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.

"Jackson Square - Origin of the Name"

By Richard Heath

 

STONY BROOK divided Roxbury into east and west for over 250 years. During that time the principle highway between the business and civic district of Dudley Square and the village center of Jamaica Plain was Centre Street. Since at least 1662 Centre St crossed Stony Brook over a wooden plank bridge near Heath Lane (a cart path to the Heath Farm; in 1825 it became Heath Street). That junction was called Central Bridge but most people until the turn of the 20th century called it Hog’s Bridge.[i]

 

That intersection is today known as Jackson Square, a familiar crossroads at Columbus Ave. and Centre Street, but no public record has been found to determine who the Square was named after. Hog’s Bridge was used up to end of the 19th century so it is a 20th century appellation.

 

It may be that the Square was named for General Henry Jackson, one of the three Revolutionary War military leaders from Boston[ii]. General William Heath defended Roxbury during the Siege of Boston and afterwards was ordered to the strategic Hudson River command after Benedict Arnold defected to guard that crucial waterway from 1777 to 1783. Heath Square at the nearby junction of Heath St and Parker Street is named after the general on land he once owned. General Joseph Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill. A statue of him stood at Warren and Regent Streets for 62 years[iii]. So it would seem appropriate that when Columbus Avenue was extended to Franklin Park in 1895 that the new crossroad would be named after General Henry Jackson.

 

II.

  

Henry Jackson. Courtesy of New England Historic Genealogical Society. Engraved from a pastel drawing done in 1777. Appeared in the April 1892 edition of New England Historical and Genealogical Register.

HENRY JACKSON was born a British subject and died an American citizen.[iv] His life was in two parts: soldier and civic leader who participated in the rebuilding of Boston after the war. Jackson was born on Oct 19. 1747. His father Joseph was a distiller and his home was more than likely on Essex Street. The center of the distillery business in 18th century Boston was at Essex and South Streets. In 1794 there were thirty distilleries on Essex and South Streets. Ships tied up at the South Street wharf to unload grain and barrels of West Indian molasses.[v] Henry Knox’s father William mastered one of those ships. Henry Knox was Jackson’s lifelong friend. Knox was born 1750; his house was on Sea Street (today Atlantic Avenue) at the foot of Essex directly overlooking the South Bay[vi].

 

Jackson’s father was a life- long military man. In 1738 Joseph joined the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in which he served until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. (He was on duty with William Heath of Roxbury who joined the Ancients at the age of 17 in 1754). Joseph died at the age of 84 in 1790. The Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company gave him a military funeral; he was buried at Kings Chapel burial ground.

 

Henry Jackson was an officer in the First Corp Cadets. The First Corps of Cadets was formed in 1741 as bodyguards for the Royal Governor (the first was Gov William Shirley). After the tumult and in the vacuum of the British evacuation, Jackson reorganized the remaining members and recruited other soldiers to form the 16th Massachusetts Regiment called the Boston Regiment in May of 1777. He was appointed colonel of the regiment and ordered by General Washington to join his army outside Philadelphia. The Boston Regiment fought in the battle of Monmouth (1778), Quaker Hill, RI (1778) and Springfield NJ in 1780. The Regiment was at Yorktown and then joined General Henry Knox in recovering New York City from British occupation after the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Jackson retired from active duty when the Continental Army was dissolved on June 29, 1784.

 

In June of 1783 at Newburgh New York he was among the group of army officers including Major General Heath to form the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati; he was treasurer of it until his death. Criticized by some in the young nation as a new aristocracy in America, the Society was largely fraternal and benevolent in helping veterans and their families.

 

In the summer of 1784 Jackson, a lifelong bachelor, returned to Boston to stay at Mrs. Hatch’s fashionable boarding house at Common (Tremont) and Winter Streets, then a fairly rural part of the city opposite the Boston Common. He was called back into active duty in 1786 to suppress Shays Rebellion, a revolt by farmers, mechanics and small landowners hard hit by post war financial difficulties who sought state assistance for their debts. Jackson found the task unpleasant, had difficulty raising troops but considered the rebellion a noisy mob. After the revolt was quelled, came home and hung up his uniform. Jackson seemed to have played no active or ceremonial role in the celebrations of George Washington’s triumphant Boston visit from October 24 through October 28, 1789.[vii] He and Generals Knox and Heath were certainly at the great banquet held at Faneuil Hall on the Washington’s last night in the city. Washington stayed at Mrs. Ingersol’s boarding house at Common and Court Street a few short blocks from Jackson’s rooms; it could very well have been that he and his friend Henry Knox paid a quiet visit with their former commanding officer.

 

After the war Jackson managed the business and financial affairs of his close friend Henry Knox[viii] whom President Washington appointed as the first Secretary of War in 1785. This included lumber and shipping businesses but mainly the construction of Montpelier Knox’s’ grand hilltop mansion at Thomaston, Maine. In 1794 Congress authorized construction of six new frigates and Secretary of War Knox directed that Henry Jackson be appointed the government’s agent for the construction of the Constitution at Hartt’s Shipyard in Charlestown. Working with Edmund Hartt Jackson approved and signed off on all payments that totaled $302,000. The oak for the famed iron side hull came from Georgia and the masts from Windsor, Maine just east of Augusta. The ship was launched on Oct 27, 1797.

 

III.

 

Henry Jackson’s closest personal and professional relationship after the war until the end of his life was with the fascinating family of James and Hepzibah Swan.[ix]

 

Born Hepzibah Clarke in 1757 her father was a prosperous merchant. In spring of 1776 during the siege of Boston when many families fled the city[x], Henry Jackson and Henry Knox lived at her home on Rawson’s Lane (Bromfield Street) before both went off to the front lines: Knox directed construction of battlements and breastworks at Roxbury defended by General Heath’s troops before going on to become artillery commander of the Continental Army. Jackson raised a regiment that he commanded for the duration of the war.

 

In 1775 Hepzibah Clarke married James Swan one of the most colorful rogues of wartime and postwar Boston. Swan was born in Scotland and arrived in Boston in 1765 at the age of 34 and became friends with Henry Knox. Active with the Sons of Liberty he participated in the Boson Tea Party and served in the artillery with Knox when the British were driven out of Boston. During the war he took over government positions vacated by the British; he was secretary of the board of war for Massachusetts, adjutant general and legislator. With his wife’s wealth he bought the confiscated house and grounds of Stephen Greenleaf the last Royal High Sheriff on Common Street between West and Winter Streets. (On April 30, 1779 The General court passed the Conspiracy and Confiscation Act in which all property of “certain notorious conspirators” was seized and sold to benefit the Commonwealth. The Act listed each one by name.) Three daughters were born to the Swans between 1777 and 1782 and in 1783 a son was born. Swan was allegedly a privateer during the war; ship owners and masters authorized by Congress to harass, seize and profit from the captured cargo of British supply ships on the high seas.

 

Swan squandered his wife’s wealth from gambling and poor land investments and in 1788 he went to France to rebuild his fortune. Hepzibah and James Swan were both pro French; Mrs. Swan in particular was a devout Francophile all her life. During the war and they entertained French naval officers stationed at Newport who brought their ships to Boston for repair, refitting and supplies. It was these French officers, often noblemen, whom James Swan asked for assistance and political access in Paris. A remarkable financier, he reorganized French debt after the collapse of the monarchy and set up a lucrative trading company to purchase food, munitions and merchandise in America. His trusted American agent in Boston was Henry Jackson. Swan made a huge fortune and returned triumphantly to America in 1795. He landed at Philadelphia and was joined by Hepzibah who arranged to have his portrait painted by her new protégé Gilbert Stuart.

 

On his return to Boston James Swan sought to impress the merchant oligarchy by building a grand countryseat on Dudley Street in Dorchester not far from Royal Governor Shirley’s mansion. Swan had purchased the land in 1781 when he was adjutant general of the Commonwealth. It was a 60-acre estate with a house near the road that the State of Massachusetts had confiscated from Loyalist Nathaniel Hatch. Hatch and 1000 other Tories had fled with the British army to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1776. The house and land was confiscated under the enabling legislation of 1779 and Swan bought the property for 18,000 pounds. Planned in large part in the French style by Mrs. Swan, she consulted with another protégé the architect Charles Bullfinch who is given attribution for the design of the most remarkable house of its time in the region. The mansion was set on a high earth berm facing east across Dorchester Bay. Completed in 1796, its signature architectural feature was a two story circular drawing room 32 feet in circumference with a domed ceiling. The bow was pulled out from two traditional Federal style wings and surrounded by a colonnade. Everyone called it the Round House and Mrs. Swan filled it with French furnishings; much of it appropriated by the republican French government from royal palaces and sold to Swan’s import company.[xi]

 

James Swan didn’t live in his great house long. His marriage was deteriorating (even the cosmopolitan Hepzibah Swan was tired of his infidelities), his fortune reduced and his merchant company was in trouble; in he returned to France in 1798 to rebuild his company and restore his finances. He never returned. Arrested in 1808 for non-payment of debts to his principle investor, he spent the remainder of his life in a very comfortable Paris prison. Almost under house arrest, James Swan was in no hurry to return home to the aristocratic Hepzibah and prison kept him away from creditors. He lived well, ate well and entertained the ladies in style for the next 22 years. The Marquis de Lafayette, however, refused to visit him. One wonders about the conversation he had with Mrs. Swan when he called on her at Dorchester in 1825. James Swan was freed in 1830 after a change in government but he was disoriented and apparently unable to adjust. He died in a Paris street a year later.

 

Henry Jackson was Mrs. Swan’s closest friend and confidant after 1798. His boarding house was a block away from Mrs. Swan’s house but he was one of the family there and at the Dorchester mansion. After 1798 Mrs. Swan settled into a luxurious and cosmopolitan life of the Boston merchant and political elite in which she played a prominent role for the rest of her life; leaving her city address for her country home in Dorchester on May 1st. Even before James Swan returned to Paris, Jackson was handling her business and financial affairs, something she could not depend on her husband to do.

 

Acting on behalf of the Swan family, in 1795, Jackson bought the town granary at Park St and Common Street from the town of Boston for $8366. Mrs. Swan deeded the land to her daughters who sold the corner lot to the Trustees of the Park St. Church in 1809.[xii]

 

Mrs. Swan bought out two of the original investors in the largest and most far reaching real estate venture in postwar Boston when she became the only female member of the four person Mt Vernon Proprietors that acquired the John Singleton Copley pasture in 1796. It was subdivided into townhouse lots that became very valuable when the State House opened in 1798. Mrs. Swan built three houses on the land for her daughters at 13, 15 + 17 Chestnut Street (built in 1805 and 1807) and her own townhouse at 16 Chestnut Street in 1817. Jackson assessed the property and handled all financial transactions on all four homes each designed by Charles Bullfinch, who seemed now to be among the members of her salon.

 

Jackson managed the household affairs as well. He was very close to the daughters. He organized and managed the marriage of oldest daughter Hepzibah to Dr. John Howard in 1800 and in 1802 the wedding of Sarah Swan to William Sullivan. Mrs. Swan disapproved of her middle daughters fiancé John Turner Sargent (of the Roxbury Sargents; Lucious Manlius Sargent was his brother). Yet despite that Christiana –obviously as strong willed as her mother- married him anyway in 1806 and Mrs. Swan built them a townhouse on Chestnut Street. (John and Christiana named their second son Henry Jackson Sargent,)

 

Her son James Keadie Swan married Caroline Knox, the daughter of Henry Knox, in 1808. At the time of the wedding Mrs. Swan commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint a portrait of her son and also of herself. [xiii]

 

Henry Jackson was also involved in three major post war civic improvement projects. Jackson was one of six members of the West Boston Bridge Proprietors incorporated by Governor Hancock in 1792 and authorized to collect tolls for 40 years. It was completed in 1793 (replaced by the Longfellow Bridge).

 

In 1791 no doubt at the urging of Mrs. Swan, Jackson and others helped pass legislation which repealed the 1750 law against theater performances. Roxbury state senator William Heath was probably helpful. Jackson was trustee of the Boston Theatre – Boston’s first - designed by Charles Bullfinch at the corner Federal and Franklin Street that opened in 1793.

 

The third was the huge India Wharf project begun in 1803 Jackson. Henry Knox and other investors organized to replace the ramshackle jumble of wooden wharf buildings built on the old dock. Planned by the incorporators to make Boston a competitive international port, the long granite warehouse was designed by Charles Bullfinch with tall gable front entrance facing the city. The wharf was built in 1804 and the brick warehouse with 32 stores opened in 1808.[xiv]

 

Henry Knox traveled frequently to Boston with his wife Lucy and their daughter Caroline (Swan) Knox to visit Mrs., Swan. March 1805 marked the 30th anniversary of the British surrender of Boston made possible by the artillery brought down from Fort Ticonderoga by General Knox’s troops that he strategically placed on hilltops facing the city. There were certainly festivities and dinners at which Knox and his old friend Henry Jackson participated. In 1805, probably at this time, Mrs. Swan commissioned two portraits from Gilbert Stuart of Henry Knox and Henry Jackson. Two portraits could not be more different.[xv]Knox is in full uniform (which suggests he was at the Evacuation Day program) his right hand resting on the barrel of a canon with the smoke of battle behind him. He looks confident but not smug. Jackson is painted more intimately in business suit and ruffled collar. He is painted closer to the frame and his head is cocked back with a slight smile. It’s the face of a kind man.[xvi] Completed in 1806 they joined the earlier Stuart paintings of James and Hepzibah in her drawing room[xvii].

 

This was probably the last time the two old friends saw each other. Knox died the next year and Henry Jackson died suddenly on January 7, 1809. A notice went out that day from the Society of the Cincinnati which notified members of the death of their

 

“brother and friend”. Unlike his father, he was not given a military funeral[xviii]; a service was held at his boarding house. Mrs. Swan was in shock. He loyal friend was gone. The one who never fawned over her but treated her like anyone else. The imperious grande dame of wealth, fine tastes and love of French culture respected the old bachelor because he provided the stability and companionship that James Swan forfeited.

 

Hepzibah Swan had General Jackson interred in a tomb she built in her back garden. The tomb was raised on an earth berm surrounded by a hedge of lilacs and surmounted by an obelisk of blue marble probably quarried and made in Italy. On it was carved “Henry Jackson. Soldier, Patriot, Friend’. [xix] A lane of lilacs led from the house to the tomb that Mrs. Swan often visited and pointed out to guests. One of them was the Marquis de Lafayette in June of 1825 on his triumphal visit to Boston, for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill. He visited Mrs. Swan on his way to Quincy to see John Adams. The Marquis and Mrs. Swan talked in French for over an hour and no doubt Mrs. Swan walked him out to look at the tomb of Revolutionary War General Henry Jackson.

  

Henry Jackson’s obelisk at the Swan lot Forest Hills Cemetery. Photo by Richard Heath

 

Hepzibah Swan died two months later probably of cholera on August 14, 1825. She was buried in General Jackson’s tomb. [xx] The house and grounds were left to Christiana Sargent who lived there until her death in 1867 at the age of 89.

 

The neighborhood then was changing. Howard Avenue was built through the property in 1869 and in 1872 the owners subdivided it again and Harlow Street was built through the garden. It was at that time that the Swan-Sargent family -probably John T. Sargent- had the grave removed to Forest Hills Cemetery. On Oct 21, 1872 the remains of General Henry Jackson, Hepzibah Swan, John T Sargent, Christiana Sargent and Mary Cochran were transferred to a lot on Lilac Path at Forest Hills Cemetery. In the center of the lot on the edge of the earth terrace was placed the blue marble obelisk dedicated to General Jackson.[xxi]

 

The great country house was torn down in 1891 and the two-acre site sat vacant for almost fifty years until the Boston Parks Dept built the Mary Hannon Playground on the land in 1945.

  

Hog’s Bridge in 1873. Atlas of the County of Suffolk Vol 2. G, M, Hopkins, Philadelphia 1873

 

At the time of General Jackson’s death, Hog’s Bridge was the site of Samuel Heath’s tannery established about 1760 adjacent o the farm of his bother William Heath. The Heath tannery was an extension of industry in the Stony brook Valley centered at Pierpont’s Village (Roxbury crossing). Heath’s Tannery was bought and expanded to become the Guild & White Tannery that opened in 1847. It specialized in calfskin gloves and tanned about 10,000 skins annually. Guild and White was located on the right of way of the Boston + Providence Railroad, a 40 mile passenger train route that opened on June 11, 1834 from Park Square through Pierpont’s Village and Hog’s Bridge to the seacoast city of Providence. Rhode Island. The railroad extended straight across the mudflats and marshes of the Back Bay on an earth and wood causeway; in 1850 a stop was added at Pierpont’s Village. The biggest change came in 1866 when freight service was added on additional track. Heath Street Station was added about this time. Also a second bridge was built to carry Centre Street over the railroad. An incline was graded and a wooden bridge carried wagons and carriages to and from Jamaica Plain.

 

In 1872 Hog’s Bridge was a busy crossroads in which was nestled a business district of wood frame and occasional brick buildings of shopkeepers, blacksmiths and mechanics servicing the tan yard, breweries and the railroad; meandering through was Stony Brook – by then contained in a stone channel- crossed by a wooden bridge at Centre and Heath Streets.

 

The New York New Haven and Hartford Railroad announced in 1893 its plan to eliminate the many unsafe grade crossings in the Stony Brook Valley. Beginning at Cumberland Street in the South End and extending four miles to Forest Hills a massive stone viaduct would carry passenger and freights trains over busy cross-town roads. Hundreds of wooden bridges over Stony Brook (many through factories) would be taken down and the entire length of Stony Brook placed in a brick culvert. The $3 million project was the largest public works project ever seen in Roxbury; it coincided with the control of both Stony Brook and Muddy River in the just completed new park called the Back Bay Fens. The project included eight new bridges and the construction of new passenger stations designed by Samuel Shaw chief engineer of the Old Colony Railroad the owner of that portion of the NYNH &H[xxii].

 

Work began in May of 1895.[xxiii] A gravel berm was laid across the old right of way supported by granite walls twenty feet high built to create a multi track viaduct that rose gently at Cumberland Street adjacent to the baseball grounds (near present-day Carter Playground) to Forest Hills. Centre Street was widened to eighty feet and depressed nineteen feet in grade to run under an iron plate bridge about one hundred feet long including abutments. New electric car tracks were also built on a reconfigured Centre Street as it dropped down the Fort Hill slope. A fifty-foot iron plate bridge was over Heath Street that included in- bound and outbound passenger waiting rooms. By the end of 1897 a solid wall of masonry twenty feet high carrying passenger and freight trains extended across the Stony Brook Valley floor[xxiv].

  

Hog’s Bridge in 1890. Atlas of the City Of Boston Proper and Roxbury GW Bromley, Philadelphia 1890.

 

This was not the only change for Hog’s Bridge. In 1894 the State legislature established the Boston Board of Street Commissioners and also passed the Special Legislation Act for Great Avenues designed to extend roads out to the new districts of Boston. That bill authorized the extension of Columbus Avenue from Northampton Street to Franklin Park. Three hundred men were put to work to take down existing structures and build the Avenue that included electric streetcar tracks. Completed at the end of 1895, the new Columbus Avenue created a great X street pattern as old Centre Street crossed at an angle with the new boulevard. Columbus Avenue was built concurrently with the railroad viaduct. Centre Street was straightened and traffic went in a direct line to the underpass. It was now possible to drive – or take an electric car - from the old Park Square railroad station on a straight and smooth avenue to Egleston Square and Franklin Park.

 

Great improvements were also taking place at the other end of Columbus Avenue in the 1890’s. On October 19, 1891 Lt Col. Thomas Edmunds, commanding officer of the First Corps of Cadets laid the cornerstone for their great new armory at Columbus Ave. and Ferdinand St (later extended and named Arlington Street)[xxv]. It was the 150th anniversary of the fabled First Corp of Cadets that moved into its new armory in February and March 1897.

 

Josiah Quincy was mayor of the city, the third Josiah Quincy to hold that office in the 19th century. His grandfather had built Quincy Market in 1826 and his father opened the city to Cochituate water with a groundbreaking in 1846. He himself would cut the ribbon for the great South Station from which trains rolled over the Roxbury viaduct across Centre Street on its way to New York City.

 

It may have been that Lt Col Edmunds had a word with Mayor Quincy as the cadets hung up the pastel drawing of General Jackson done in 1777 in their new head house library. General Jackson was the man who reorganized the First Corp of Cadets in the turmoil of the British Evacuation and he commanded it as an effective fighting force for the duration of the conflict. Mayor Quincy would have been interested. His grandfather, the first Mayor Quincy (born in 1772), was an attorney and state legislator before becoming a Congressman in 1805, so he knew General Jackson.

 

Lt Col Edmunds may have gone on to note that 1897 was the 150th anniversary of the birth of General Jackson. The intersection created by the new Columbus Avenue might be named Jackson Square in his honor; after all the great investment it certainly deserved a better name than Hog’s Bridge. It was also near General Heath Square. Mayor Quincy may have agreed.

  

Richard Heath October 10, 2011

   

Jackson Square in 1978.

  

Jackson Square Centre St. bridge circa 1960. Courtesy of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation

 

Notes:

[i] It got its name from an incident that occurred about 1750. A farm girl found her way blocked at the bridge by a drove of pigs. When the herdsman refused to let her pass, she picked up and tossed one of the pigs into Stony Brook and threatened to heave in another unless she was allowed to pass. Drake, Francis A. The Town of Roxbury. Page 386.

 

[ii] General Henry Knox was born in Boston, but he and his wife were far more invested in his huge land holdings and great mansion in Maine, which was part of Massachusetts until 1820

 

[iii] Paul Barrett sculptor. Dedicated June 17, 1904. Temporarily removed for street widening in 1966, it was taken by the Roxbury Latin School, of which Warren was an alumnus, in 1969.

 

[iv] For Jackson’s biography see.

 

1.“ The Swan Commissions” by Eleanor Pearson DeLorme, Winterthur Portfolio Vol 14, No 4, Winter 1979. Pg 389.

 

2. Drake, Francis A., Memorials of the Society of the Cincinnati of Massachusetts, Boston, 1873. page 360. (General William Heath biography page 329.)/

 

3. New England Historic and Genealogical Register, “Henry Jackson”. April 1892 page 111.

 

[v] Is it just a coincidence that Hogs Bridge was the center of the Boston brewery business?

 

[vi] Drake, Memorials of the Cincinnati, page 91.

 

[vii] Two sources consulted each with detailed descriptions of the four-day event make no reference to General Jackson or Major General Heath. Both veteran officers apparently passed on the honors to younger active duty officers: The Massachusetts Centinel. October 28, 1789. “Some recollections of George Washington’s Visit to Boston” by General William H. Sumner. New England Historic + Genealogical Register, April 1860.

 

[viii] Knox named his son born in 1780 Henry Jackson Knox and all his life Jackson was close to the boy.

 

[ix] “The Swan Commissions” By Eleanor Pearson DeLorme, Winterthur Portfolio, Vol 14, No 4. Winter 1979. The Downcast Dilettante blog. “Obelisks, Regrets, Debts, Swans, Bullfinch…” June 4, 2011.

 

[x] The father and mother in law of Henry Knox were among the Loyalists who took British ships to Halifax that month and then to England. Knox acquired for a nominal sum huge tracts of land owned by the Fluckers in coastal Maine that had been confiscated by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Not for nothing was the Revolutionary War called the first American Civil War. “The fact is that, as far as the Americans were in it, the war of the revolution was a civil war.” The Loyalists of Massachusetts, James H Stark, Boston, 1910. Pg 61. + Pg 403.

 

[xi] For details on the furnishings, many of which are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, see de Lorme. Page 374. For the house, the definitive source is Kirker, Harold. The Architecture of Charles Bullfinch, Harvard University Press. 1969. Pages 128-131. Bullfinch had just completed plans for Montpelier the great house for Henry Knox at Thomaston, Maine

 

[xii] Lawrence, Robert M, Old Park Street and Its vicinity, HMCo, Boston, 1922. page 115.

 

[xiii] For Hepzibahs portrait with detailed commentary see de Lorme page 370. James Keadie’s portrait is on page 378. Both Hepzibah’s portrait and James Swan’s were given to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by her great granddaughter in 1927. The Henry Knox House, Thomaston, Maine, owns James Keadie Swan’s portrait.

 

[xiv] Henry Knox did not live to see it completed. He died in 1806. Half of the wharf was destroyed for the widening of Atlantic Avenue in 1869 and the remainder was razed in 1962. The Aquarium was built on the 1804 wharf in 1969

 

[xv]The famous Henry Knox portrait is illustrated in deLorme page 38. It is at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The Henry Jackson portrait is shown on page 388. It is privately owned.

 

[xvi] Writing in 1876 Francis S Drake described Jackson as “a large man full of wit and gallantry. a gentleman.”

 

[xvii] Did she hang them at her Chestnut Street home and then take them with her to Dorchester? More than likely. The Henry Knox painting was given to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts by the City of Boston in 1876.

 

[xviii] The answer might lie in the Stuart painting: Henry Jackson had hung up his uniform with the epaulets, gold braid and stripes over 20 earlier. He died as Mr. Jackson and as Mr. Jackson he was paid respects.

 

[xix] It may have looked somewhat like the John Codman tomb at the Dorchester Second Church Cemetery at Codman Square. It’s a brick vault crowned with earth from the excavation with a dressed stone front and an arch door to the interior crypt. This was built about 1847,

 

[xx] She joined her son in law John Turner Sargent. When he died in 1813, she had him buried in the Jackson tomb.

 

[xxi] Files of Forest Hills Cemetery. Thank you to Elise Ciregna for her help and the site visit. There are five graves on the lot today. The first one has General Jackson, Hepzibah Swan and Mary Cochran. Mary Cochran – who was perhaps a house servant to Mrs. Swan -died at the age of 91 in 1830. The engraved inscriptions on the obelisk are eroded away and difficult to read.

 

-Orcutt, Dana. Good Old Dorchester, Cambridge, 1894. Page 398, Also pg 397. For a photo of the house taken just before demolition see page 25.

 

-See also Find a Grave .Com; Forest Hills Cemetery: Henry Jackson. Created by Jen Smoots. The biography is by Bill McKern. Included is an engraving of the 1777 pastel drawing of Colonel Jackson when he commanded the Boston Regiment reproduced in the April 1892 NEHGR biography.

 

Also see de Lorme page 390 for the illustration of the original pastel drawing held at the first Corp Cadets Museum.

 

All three Boston Revolutionary War leaders were removed to Forest Hills Cemetery General Warren was removed from a crypt at St Paul’s Church to the family tomb in 1855. General Heath was taken from the family tomb at the Heath farm a placed beneath a splendid pink granite monument at Eliot Hill in 1860.

 

[xxii] A considerable amount of property was taken for this project including the Heath Street freight yard that was given up for the new Heath Street Station and bridge. To satisfy the brewers who had long received grain shipments there, a new one was regraded at Lamartine and Centre Street.

 

[xxiii] For stories on construction see:

Boston Globe July 7, 1893.

 

Boston Globe July 10, 1895.

Boston Herald, March 22, 1896.

The Herald noted that the work was done largely by Italian laborers but had to be replaced in the cold winter months by French Canadians.

 

[xxiv] Train service was never discontinued for the three years of construction. A two track right of way was laid parallel to the construction site for passenger service

 

[xxv] Boston Globe Oct 10, 1891. The Armory was designed by William G. Preston.