Working in the Archives – The Rijksarchief te Gent

RA Gent, K56, Klooster de Filledieusen

This post contributes to our ongoing special series, “Working in the Archives.” Previously, our bloggers have explained the archival procedures in Morocco and in France. Today, I will discuss some strategies and tips to make a trip to the The Rijksarchief te Gent in Belgium a productive one.  

The State Archives in Gent is one of the major depositories of medieval manuscripts in Belgium. I resided and researched in Gent for nine months and hope this blog will help scholars who are traveling to Gent, to the Rijksarchief, to complete research in a short amount of time and with limited knowledge of the city.

Below, I will discuss the practical knowledge needed to make an archive visit productive: how to get to the Rijksarchief from the train station (Station Gent-Sint-Pieters), what is needed to access the archive, how to search for material, how to request that material, and how long the material takes to arrive. Additionally, I will mention some quality of life information- a good place for lunch, for coffee, and for dinner and a drink after a long day in the archive.

How to Get There- Bagattenstraat 43, 9000 Gent

The train to Gent from Brussels Airport (BRU) takes either an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the available trains at the airport when you land. One can take any train going to Brussels Central and switch trains there to arrive faster. Train travel in Brussels is quite easy, with train times and destinations presented in Flemish, French, and English (most of the time, but not always). Upon arriving in Gent-Sint-Pieter’s, there are three easy ways to get to the Rijksarchief- tram, taxi, or by foot.  Taking a taxi in Gent is a bit pricey, so if one is on a budget, taking the tram or walking is the better option.

There is a tram that runs regularly from the front of Sint-Pieter’s Station. It is on the Red Line (1) that goes straight into the city center. The stop on the Red Line next to the Rijksarchief is called Verlorenkost. The stop is one street before Bagattenstraat, the street on which the archive is located.

To walk from the train station, one will want to follow the same path as the tram: first, take Konigen Elisabethlaan away from the station; after about a quarter of a mile, bear to the left onto Kortrijkseestenweg; remain on this street through a major intersection. The street changes in name to Kortrijksepoortstraat; continue on this street until you reach Bagattenstraat on the right, and the archive is the third building on the left. It is a large white building.

What You Need to Access the Archive

To access the material in the archive, one needs a research card (Lezerskaart). One can spend 5 euros for a weeklong visitor’s research card, or one can spend 20 euros for a yearlong card. You must show your personal reader’s card at every visit. It can be purchased on-site: the annual card gives access to all the reading rooms of the State Archives of Belgium. If one has a student card from the University of Gent, the card is half price.

How to Search For Material

RA Gent K54, Grauwe Zusters bij Sint-Jans
RA Gent K52, Klooster van Arme Klaren

One can search the Rijksarchief online at arch.be/. However, many of the inventories of the collections held in the archive are not online, and can only be consulted in-person. The inventories are shelved on the second floor in the reading room.

To fully understand what the inventories and search tools say, one needs to have some grasp of Dutch. Most of the finding tools are only in Dutch, although one can ask the staff for clarifications and assistance. At minimum, bring a Dutch dictionary, as there is no Wi-Fi at the archive to look up words and phrases online.

How to Request Material and its Arrival Time

To request a manuscript, one can email the archive a day before to have the material ready in the morning. Otherwise, you must request them in person. The manuscripts are brought to the reading room on the top of every hour, so plan your time accordingly.

Quality of Life

In terms of walkability, Gent is a very manageable city. While it only takes about 15 minutes to walk to the city center from the Rijksarchief, there are nearby cafes and restaurants that are of excellent quality and affordable. My favorite spot near the archive is Vooruit- a restaurant at the other end of Bagattenstraat. It has good food at a good price, with a daily special every day. Vooruit also has excellent coffee. For an afterwork drink or game of pool, turn right out of the archive and go two buildings down to Kaptein Kravate.

Sean Sapp
University of Notre Dame

Skin-changers: Werewolves in the Medieval and Modern Imagination

This Halloween, I’d like to talk about werewolves, one of the classic monsters whose image helps to characterize this—my favorite—holiday.

Werewolves, while sometimes overshadowed by the more frequent and high-profile appearance of other monsters such as vampires and zombies in popular literature, have a mythology that has endured for millennia and still finds a way to haunt our cultural imagination. Unsurprisingly, werewolves feature in Victorian Gothic literature, including works such as Hugues, the Wer-Wolf by Sutherland Menzies (1838), Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1847) by G. W. M. Reynolds, “The Man-Wolf” (1831) by Leitch Ritchie, “A Story of a Weir-Wolf” (1846) by Catherine Crowe and The Wolf Leader (1857) by Alexandre Dumas.

Werewolf from Stephen Sommers’ ‘Van Helsing’ (2004).

When werewolves have appeared in more recent popular literature, they often do so in the context of a prescribed, age-old struggle between their kind and vampires. Werewolf-vampire racial animosity is dramatized in the film series Underworld (2003), which injects an unlikely love story into the ancient war between these monstrous groups. This conflict has since become a regular feature of modern vampire films, such as in Van Helsing (2004) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014), and in TV series such as Twilight (2008) and True Blood (2008). Penny Dreadful (2014), a show which delights in Victorian monstrosities, also nods to this tradition when two werewolf characters (Ethan and Kaetenay) are forced to battle a gang of vampires, while Hemlock Grove (2013) alternatively features both a werewolf named Peter and a vampyric upir named Roman who share mutual respect and admiration.

Vampire lord, Viktor, battles against a werewolf in Len Wiseman’s ‘Underworld’ (2003).

Generally whenever we see werewolves in modern popular literature, it is in this shared context, which is also true of the the TV series Being Human (2011); however, werewolves have (in a few cases) been given center stage. The classic and most obvious examples are the films An American Werewolf in London (1981) and An American Werewolf in Paris (1997).

More recently, in Harry Potter and the of Azkaban (2004), Remus Lupin, who is one of the wizard professors at Hogwarts and also a werewolf, is a main protagonists in the film, despite that vampires feature nowhere in the series and are rarely mentioned even in J. K. Rowling’s novels. For Teen Wolf (2011), a TV series focused on a teenage boy’s struggle with lycanthropy, the absence  of vampires is a point of pride. Often werewolves have been gendered male, but the TV series Bitten (2014) challenges this stereotype by centering the plot on a female werewolf protagonist and her struggles within a werewolf patriarchy. Unfortunately, and counterproductively, the series is plagued by a consistent hyper-sexualization of her character in a manner all too familiar from the modern vampire craze. I’d like to believe this inconsistent and contradictory messaging might have contributed to the show’s discontinuation in 2016, but somehow I doubt it.

Professor Lupin (David Thewlis) transforming into a werewolf in Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004).

Today, we will discuss skin-changing and werewolfism in the medieval literary traditions of Northern Europe, primarily as contained in the context of the Old Norse fornaldarsǫgur. We will also consider how lycanthropy in the Old Norse Hrólfs saga kraka and Vǫlsunga saga inform certain instances of skin-changers in modern literature, especially in the fantasy worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin.

Numerous academic blogs have explored the topic of lycanthropy, usually—and unsurprisingly—around this same time of year. In fact, the website Sententiae Antiquae has, in years passed, written a blog series on werewolves in the classical tradition, including blogs on Petronius’ werewolf story from Satyricon (62), Pliny the Elder’s emphasis on clothing and description of werewolf superstitions in his Natural History (8.80-4), and an overview of classical lycanthropy producing a list of sources including, Herodotus’ Histories, Plato’s Republic, Pausanias’ Geography of Greece, anonymous Greek Medical Treatises on the Treatment of Lycanthropy, St. Augustine of Hippo’s City of God, and the 11th century medieval Latin poem, Poemata 9.841, by a monk named Michael Psellus (which is notably influenced by Greek medical treatises). These blogs have tended to focus especially on classical superstitions, such as nakedness being a prerequisite for transformation and the belief that a wolf’s gaze could paralyze humans.

Miniature of wolves and (below) the man paralyzed by their gaze from the ‘Rochester Bestiary’ in BL, Royal MS 12 F. xiii, f. 29r.

The British Library has also composed a blog on lycanthropy in the context of the influence of classical werewolf mythology on later medieval literature. This blog references classical werewolf stereotypes primarily derived from Pliny’s description of versipelles ‘skin-changers’ (his term for werewolves) in Natural History, and then moves to consider especially Bisclavret, the famous Breton lay by Marie de France, and Gerald of Wales’ description of an Irish folktale concerning lycanthropy in his Topographica Hibernica, both of which present a very positive image of a werewolf, complete with the capacity for human understanding and compassion.

Two werewolves and the priest from Gerald of Wales’ ‘Topographica Hibernica’ in BL Royal MS 13 B. viii, f. 18r.

However, as mentioned earlier, werewolves appear also in the vernacular traditions of medieval Scandinavia, and this blog aims to expand the web-conversation surrounding versipelles ‘skin-changers’ in medieval literature to include examples from Old Norse saga prose literature, which contain numerous references to humans transforming into various beasts, usually wolves or bears.

This Old Norse tradition of skin-changers contributes directly to Tolkien’s character of Beorn, the werebear from The Hobbit (1937). Gandalf describes Beorn in chapter VII “Queer Lodgings” when Thorin and his company are traveling through the Misty Mountains:

“He [Beorn] is a skin-changer. He changes his skin: sometimes he is a huge black bear, sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard. I cannot tell you much more, though that ought to be enough. Some say that he is a bear descended from the great and ancient bears of the mountains that lived there before the giants came. Other say that he is a man descended from the first men who lived before Smaug or the other dragons came into this part of the world, and before the goblins came into the hills out of the North. I cannot say, though I fancy the last is the true tale. He is not the sort of person to ask questions of. At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own.”

Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) speaks with Beorn in bear-form in Peter Jackson’s ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ (2013).

Beorn, like his namesake Bjǫrn (a hero from Hrólfs saga kraka), transforms physically from man to bear—though Bjǫrn’s transformations are the product of a curse by his evil stepmother, Queen Hvít, as opposed to Beorn who seems in full control of his metamorphoses in The Hobbit. Jesse Byock’s The Saga of the King Hrolf Kraki reads:

“She [Hvít] then struck him [Bjǫrn] with her wolfskin gloves, telling him to become a cave bear, grim and savage: ‘You will eat no food other than your own father’s livestock and, in feeding yourself, you will kill more than has ever been observed before. You will never be released from the spell, and your awareness of this disgrace will be more dreadful to you than no remembrance at all.’ Then Bjorn disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him…. Next to be told is that the king’s cattle were being killed in large numbers by a grey bear, large and fierce. One evening it happened that Bera, the freeman’s daughter, saw the savage bear. It approached her unthreateningly. She thought she recognized in the bear the eyes of Bjorn, the king’s son, and so she did not run away. The beast then moved away from her, but she followed it all the way until it came to a cave. When she entered the cave, a man was standing there” (37).

This passage describes the power of the queen’s curse to physically transform Bjǫrn, which leads ultimately to his death at the hands of his own father and his warriors. However, it also emphasizes that, while Bjǫrn is dangerous to the livestock, he retains his humanity and at night transforms back into a man.

Beorn in bear-form in ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’ by Justin Gerard (2009).

The character of Bǫðvar Bjarki, son of Bjǫrn (who too shares characteristics and some parallel achievements with Beorn from The Hobbit), also from Hrólfs saga kraka, trances and in doing so is able to inhabit the mind of a bear and control its actions. This is particularly crucial during the saga’s climactic battle between the monstrous army of Hjǫvard and Skuld and the forces of King Hrólf.

The ability to enter into and take over an animal’s consciousness, as a form of shape-shifting through meditation, appears also in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (1991)—and corresponding HBO series Game of Thrones (2011)in the contexts of characters called ‘wargs’ who possess this distinct ability. This group includes a number of those in the Stark family (whose family sigil is appropriately a direwolf). In Martin’s series, characters described as wargs are always from the wintry North, and regularly use their possessed animals to battle their enemies, as in Hrólfs saga kraka.

Robb Stark and his direwolf Grey Wind confront a captured Jaime Lannister in HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ (2011).

The Old Norse Vǫlsunga saga, more famous for its dragon and dwarf (namely, Fáfnir and Regin) than its werewolves, does nevertheless have a section in which Sigmundr and Sinfjǫtli specifically wear wolf-pelts in order to transform themselves into wolves and roam the wilderness together in wolf-form. Jesse Byock’s The Saga of the Volsungs reads:

“One time, they went again to the forest to get themselves some riches, and they found a house. Inside it were two sleeping men, with thick gold rings. A spell had been cast upon them: wolfskins hung over them in the house and only every tenth day could they shed the skins. They were the sons of kings. Sigmund and Sinfjotli put the skins on and could not get them off. And the weird power was there as before; they howled like wolves, both understanding the sounds” (44).

This passage describes the ability to “skin-change” into a wolf by literally wearing a wolf’s skin. This version of ‘skin-changing’ is picked up and adapted in two of Martin’s fictional works: his short story “In the Lost Lands” (1982) and his novella The Skin-Trade (1988).

Illustration of Grey Alys from George R. R. Martin’s ‘In the Lost Lands’ (1982).

In Martin’s short story, a character named Boyce travels into the formidable ‘Lost Lands’ to the north, which constitute an endless frozen wilderness, with a witch named Grey Alys (who borrows heavily from mythology of Freya, especially with regard to her cloak of feathers).

I won’t spoil the ending for those who haven’t yet and might be interested in reading this text, except to say that lycanthropy appears initially as a physical transformation, but by the end we learn that wearing the skin of a werewolf can produce the same metamorphosis for those whom the transformation isn’t biological.

George R. R. Martin, ‘Skin Trade,’ cover of graphic novel adapted by Daniel Abraham and illustrated by Mike Wolfer (2014).

Similarly, in his later novella, The Skin-Trade, Martin establishes a world in which both biology and werewolf skin-wearing can result in lycanthropy. Werewolf fans may be happy to learn that The Skin-Trade is currently ‘in development’ by Cinemax under the direction of scriptwriter Kalinda Vazquez, who has written for other TV series such as Prison Break (2005) and Once Upon a Time (2011). However, particularly because there is currently no clear sense as to when Cinemax and Vazquez will have their version of The Skin-Trade ready for the silver screen, it may still be a while before there is a werewolf series to rival HBO’s True Blood or AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Richard Fahey
PhD Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame


Online Resources

Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (8.80-4)

Petronius’ Satyricon (62)

Marie de France’s Bisclavret 

Gerald of Wales’ Topographica Hibernica

Hrólfs saga kraka

Vǫlsunga saga


Translations

Byock, Jesse. The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. London, England: Penguin Books, 1998.

Byock, Jesse. The Saga of the Volsungs. London, England: Penguin Books, 1999.

Working in the Archives – Navigating Archival Research in Central Europe

Chapter 58 of the Rule of St. Benedict describes a postulant requesting entrance into the religious life:

“Anyone on first coming to the religious life should not find the entrance made easy, but as the apostle says, “Test the spirits to see if they are of God.” If, however, the newcomer continues to knock at the door, and for four or five days shows a patient bearing,…He shall then be allowed to enter…”[1]

The process of archival research was once described to me in such terms by a seasoned medieval scholar, and I haven’t forgotten the analogy. Planning archival visits often involves persistence and patience, but the experience can be rewarding and the time spent in research worthwhile. Utilizing digital resources in conjunction with archival visits can help make the best use of precious time and research funding. Here are my tips for successfully navigating research in Central Europe:

1. Be aware of digital resources that will make your research and archive visit easier. Monasterium.net  is a virtual archive of digitized monastic charter documents from archives throughout Central Europe. The “Find” option allows you to search by archival location, while the “Search” tool allows you to pull up documents by keywords like monastery name.  A second valuable digital resource is Prague-based manuscriptorium.com. Sign up for free as a user. Search through the database for manuscripts and organize your favorites in research folders of your creation. Manuscript entries vary from basic catalog description to full digital facsimiles. Check the site for participating libraries, as the database continues to expand to other areas in Europe.

Missale monasterii Chotěšoviensis, XIV C.3 Národní knihovna České republiky, Prague, fol. 6r. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

2. Be prepared to communicate in languages other than English. Regardless of whether or not you used it to arrange your visit, security personnel and archivists on site don’t always know English. Have a list of your requested documents handy and the correspondence granting you access printed off to streamline your processing time. And don’t forget your passport!

3. Do not count on the use of a camera or printer. If photos are not allowed, request that the archive provide images for you (you will likely pay a fee). Among the archives I found most photo-friendly were the Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno (Moravský Zemský Archiv) and the Czech National Archives in Prague (Národní Archiv)–I faced no photo restrictions at these sites. The Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek) will allow printing of microfilm documents and some photography of sources depending on the items you are consulting.

Czech National Archives, Prague. Photo Credit: Lisa Scott

4. Getting around Central Europe is relatively easy with pre-planning. Trains and buses are inexpensive and will get you reliably from A to B. For busing between cities I recommend Student Agency, which travels all over Central and Eastern Europe.

5. I’ve had the privilege of visiting several outstanding archives and research libraries around Central Europe; I will recommend one in particular. The Moravian Provincial Archives in Brno is a modern and active location. The atmosphere is airy, well-lit, and professional, and the archivists on duty are extremely helpful. I had no problems arranging my visits in advance, and archivists communicate in German if you do not have sufficient Czech. Local transport can be a bit daunting as the archive is out of the city center, but it is doable. Acquire a city bus ticket at any of the yellow kiosks (Select one 60-minute ticket for 2 “Zones”. This includes a free transfer. Don’t forget to validate your ticket once you enter the bus.). From the main train station, you’ll get to the archives in about 30 minutes. Google Maps is equipped with adequate route planning capabilities; there are several bus lines available.

6. Be aware of your resources back home. Despite making multiple attempts to do so, I was unable to see a few manuscripts pertaining to my dissertation housed in a rural Austrian monastery. Upon returning to the U.S., however, I was able to access microfilm copies of the manuscripts in question at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in St. Joseph, MN. The large-scale effort to photograph manuscripts housed in European libraries began in Austria in 1965 and continues to this day. The newly-renovated Austria/Germany Study Center is a lovely facility, and the staff is eager to work with scholars pursuing research on manuscripts in the collection.

Amy Nelson
Ph.D. Candidate
University of Notre Dame

[1] Benedict of Nursia, The Rule: from The Rule of Saint Benedict, trans. Cardinal Gasquet (London, 1909), Ch. 58.