Utburd — The unbaptized child that will not rest

A hollow off the path. A bog at the foot of a slope. A cairn at the forest edge, half pulled down by frost. These were the places a child had been carried out and left — and the places where a traveller at dusk might hear one crying among the trees, and find, following the sound, nothing, or a small bundle of bones at the foot of a stone.

The utburd was the ghost of a newborn killed or abandoned by its own family and denied baptism and burial in consecrated ground. The name is the noun for both the act and the spirit it made — from ut, out, and burd, a thing borne; from its crying it was also called a ropar, a crier, and Scandinavian tradition more widely knew it as the myling. Shut out of the churchyard, the child could not enter it on its own. It stayed where it had been left. There was one release the tradition allowed: give it a name. A woman who kept her head could still the crying with an emergency christening spoken into the dark — «Eg døyper deg på ei von, anten Sigrid eller Jon» — I baptize you on a chance, whether Sigrid or Jon.

It did not always stay quiet. Walk the path after dark and it would spring onto the back of the first lone traveller and ask to be carried to the churchyard gate. The bundle was light at first, the weight of a newborn; by the first turn of the path it had the heft of a toddler; by the second the weight of a grown man; and by the time the carrier reached the wall of consecrated ground he was on his knees, his back bent double, his boots driving through the snow. The moment he crossed the wall the weight was gone and the bones dropped behind him. In some tellings the voice came back years later, at the mother’s own wedding, under the wedding music, and only the bride could hear it. Some versions gave it wings — the nattravn, the night-raven, the utburd risen into the air to cry over the bogs.

The state took the offence seriously enough to write it into law. Christian V’s Norske Lov of 1687 Christian V's Norske Lov (1687) × Title page, Kong Christian den Femtis Norske Lov (1687), from Otto Mejlænder's edition (Christiania, 1883) About this image ▸ Kong Christian Den Femtis Norske Lov — King Christian V's Norwegian Code, promulgated 15 April 1687, in force from 1688. A wholly new code, drafted by four Norwegian jurists adapting the Danish Code (Danske Lov, 1683); it replaced — rather than revised — Christian IV's 1604 Danish translation of the medieval Landslov. Its Sixth Book, on crimes, was ordered after the Ten Commandments. A woman who concealed her pregnancy, gave birth in secret (fødsel i dølgsmål), and whose child then died or vanished was presumed to have killed it with intent; laying a child out on desolate ground made the exposer a manslayer — both capital crimes. Book Six governed criminal law until the Criminal Code of 1842; portions of the code remain in force, the oldest legislation still operative in Norway. Also discussed in Bytting — the changeling left in the cradleThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you think set down both crimes at once: to lay a child on wild ground where people did not come made you a manslayer, to forfeit your life; and a woman who gave birth in secret — fødsel i dølgsmål — and could not account for the child was presumed a murderer until she proved otherwise. Between 1789 and 1799, more Norwegian women were convicted of concealed birth than of any other kind of murder. The death penalty for it stood until the Kriminallov of 1842.

The archives keep names. On 14 January 1778, at Krossvegen under the farm Fossheim in Bø, Telemark Telemark × August Cappelen, Innsjø i Telemark (NG.M.02409), National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Historic region and county in the inland-southern part of Norway, between the southeastern coast and the central Hardangervidda plateau. Home to Heddal Stave Church — the largest of the twenty-eight surviving Norwegian stave churches, standing nearly thirty metres tall — and to the heavy-water production facility at Vemork whose sabotage by Norwegian commandos in February 1943 disrupted the German atomic-weapons programme. The name Telemark also gives the world the modern ski-turn technique developed there in the nineteenth century. In the folklore record Telemark is the deepest vein of all — the landscape of the ballad collectors, the hardingfele legends, and the lake serpent of Seljord. Telemark Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playTroll — the monsters of the mountainsÅsgårdsreien — the storm that rides through the winter skyHuldra — the girl in the forest with a secretSjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjords , a servant girl named Guro Paulsdotter gave birth alone, and the infant was found in a chest with a band knotted at its neck. Four days later the parish register at Bø recorded the emergency baptism of the boy — uægte drengebarn, illegitimate male child — under the name Ole. Guro was condemned to death, pardoned to hard labour, and died at the Christiania Christiania × John William Edy, City of Christiania (1814), Boydell's Picturesque Scenery of Norway — National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design About this image ▸ Capital of Norway from 1624 to 1925 — the rebuilt town that King Christian IV laid out west of the medieval Oslo after the fire of August 1624 destroyed the old city. Christian founded the new town on a grid plan beneath Akershus fortress, named it for himself, and ordered the surviving Oslo burghers to move into it. Christiania was the capital's name through the four-hundred-year night, the brief war of 1814, the constitutional Eidsvoll moment, the ninety-one-year personal union with Sweden, and the first two decades of fully independent Norway after 1905. In 1877 the spelling was modernised to Kristiania; in 1925 the city formally returned to the medieval name Oslo. The Kvadraturen district preserves Christian IV's grid intact today. On the trip Days 1–2 in Oslo bring both groups through Christiania — Christian IV's seventeenth-century planned grid, still visible today as the Kvadraturen district just below Akershus fortress. Also discussed in The 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Constitution That Saved a Nation — five radical weeks at Eidsvoll, 1814800,000 Norwegians Leave — the century that built a Second NorwayThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayNorske eventyr — the folk tales almost lost foreverStedssagn — local legends, told as warnings workhouse the next year, twenty-eight years old.