In this chapter, I provide a geography of the Christiania printing industry and the publishing and book trade from the 1830s to the 1860s. The location of printers and bookshops within the city can tell us much about the print culture in Christiania at the time. Mapping printers, booksellers and lending libraries and gaining an overview of the development of the print culture and urban culture in Christiania will provide an important background to the following chapters, in which I will take a closer look at the printers, publishers, and editors of the illustrated press in Christiania.
The crux of this chapter is the mapping of the sites where print was produced and distributed at two moments in history: in 1837 and 1856. The locations in figures 2.6 and 2.7 are based on the Christiania address books and the two moments were chosen out of necessity as only two address books were published in the early nineteenth century.1 However, they capture a 20-year interval that happen to be key to the development of the book trade in the city.
I first go through some aspects of the development of the city of Christiania, emphasizing what we can call its public and literary life in the early nineteenth century. I then go on to look at the development of the printing trade and the book trade in the city and at where printers, bookshops and lending libraries were located. In the last part, I briefly discuss literacy, reading and education. The main questions I address are: In what ways were print produced and distributed within the city? What were the most important places where these activities occurred? And what did this mean for how the booksellers, publishers, printers and authors of Christiania conceived of themselves and their public?
1 Christiania Veiviser (Christiania, 1838); Christianias Adresse-Bog Eller Person- Og Bopæl-Veiviser for 1857 (Christiania: Johan Dahl, 1857). As there were no large censuses in Norway between 1801 and 1865, the address books, initially a guide to institutions, craftsmen and merchants in the city (much like a phone book), provides us with snapshots of where the book trade was located in the city in these moments. They were based on voluntary submission of addresses, and did not include everyone in the city. However, as this was a key publication for finding and corresponding with merchants and craftsmen we can assume that it was in their interest to provide accurate locations so that people could find them. The addresses were gathered the year preceding their publication and we can therefore assume that the addresses are valid for the year before publication. To supplement the address books I have also used the tax reports available at: Oslo byarkiv, “Christiania-folk 1845,” digitale kilder, accessed 1 April, 2016: https://www.oslo.kommune.no/OBA/searchpage.asp?table=lign1845&language=nor.
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Public life in the capital
Christiania was, prior to 1859, a patchwork of different legal codes and administrative units. It is most relevant here to distinguish between the “city proper” (den egentlige byen) and the suburbs.2 The city proper was the part of the city that was granted trade and commerce privileges and included the city that was established in 1624 by Christian IV, usually called the inner-city quarters (“kvarterene” or later “kvadraturen”). This was where most of the cultural, political and economic institutions were located (see figures 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3).
Outside of the city proper, there were many suburbs. Some as old or older than the city itself, some established due to strict building policies (all buildings had to be of brick) and trade privileges within the city.3 The suburbs had, by the late eighteenth century, grown to become larger and more populous than the inner-city quarters. Legally all craftsmen and merchants had to be located in the city proper, but by the eighteenth century many small-time merchants, hawkers and artisans had established in the suburbs without much involvement from the authorities. Several of the closest eastern and northern suburbs were therefore, from the late eighteenth century, included into the city proper.4 Two major city expansions in 1859 and 1879 would include more of the ever-growing suburbs, adding to the inclusion of what had become developing industrial areas along the Aker river. The city expansion of 1859 brought together the amalgam of different administrative units into one (see figure 2.1).
Despite a great influx of people from 1814 to the 1830s, one did not need to be particularly urban to find Christiania in the 1830s a quiet town.
Growing up in Copenhagen or even Bergen would probably have been enough to make Christiania seem provincial.5 The British naval officer William Henry Breton, on a tour of Norway in 1834, found its situation in the landscape pleasant. But there was, he stated, “nothing in its appearance that
2 Based on different ways to define the city - legally, administratively and statistically - Jan Eivind Myhre argues that one can speak of 9 different cities in the period before 1859. Myhre, Hovedstaden Christiania, 37–44.
3 Grønland and Leiret to the east had been an old settlement between the medieval city of Oslo and the fortress. Pipervika to the west, was a small community of fishermen and day laborers.
There had been some houses in Vaterland, and the Sagene area where the lumber mills of the old city were located. As its name indicates, Grensen (the border) was established in the seventeenth century on the new borders of Christiania. Urban settlements in Møllergata, Grubbegata, Akersgata and Pilestredet grew from Grensen. Storgata, Fjeringen, Hammersborg,
Bergjerdingen, Telthusbakken and Lakkegata were all settlements established before 1814. By 1850, the suburbs of Enerhaugen and Nordbygata to the east, and Ruseløkkbakken and Tjuvholmen to the west had also been established. Myhre, 36–37.
4 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the suburbs Grensen to the north, Storgata to the northeast and parts of Vaterland to the east were included into the city. In 1839, the whole of Vaterland in addition to Fjerdingen together with large areas to the north of the city and a small area on the edge north western edge of the inner-city quarters were included into the city proper.
After the new artisan law in 1839 (see below), some legal difference between the city and the suburbs disappeared. See: Myhre, 40–41.
5 Myhre, 158.
61 Figure 2.1 Urban expansion in Christiania. Showing the city limits before 1859 in yellow, after 1859 in pink and the city limits after the 1878 expansion in green. Lithography, Christiania Lith.
Aktiebolag, 1887. Oslo Byarkiv, kartsamling.
indicates the metropolis of an extensive country.” Breton did not find Christiania particularly interesting, and his advice to travelers was to get out fast:
The tourist will find no inducement to prolong his stay in the Norwegian capital beyond a day or two, for a place more dull or uninteresting I have rarely beheld; and when we consider the deserted state of the streets, the want of that animation so common to other sea-ports, and the entire absence, in summer, of public amusements, we are no longer surprised at visiters [sic] quitting it as soon as they have made their necessary arrangements.6
In short, Christiania resembled a quiet town more than a capital.
Not only English tourists, but also Christiania’s residents
complained about the lack of public amusements and public life in the 1830s.
Johan Sebastian Welhaven, in an 1834 article, criticized the lack of public and cultural life in the city. Welhaven had left his native Bergen, then the largest city in Norway, to study at the university in Christiania in the late
6 William Henry Breton, Scandinavian Sketches. Or a Tour in Norway, (London: J. Bohn, 1835), 42–43; 49.
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1820s.7 He argued that during both the summer and winter, the finer citizens of Christiania seemed to be in a state of hibernation. At the outbreak of summer, they moved out and “rusticated themselves” in their rural summer villas (løkker) outside the city. This made winter the real social season. There were, however, a lack of cultural institutions and both the dramatic and the musical arts were, according to Welhaven, “exclusively in the hands of dilettantes.” What Christiania needed, he argued, was a “proper facility for public summer amusements,” a place where people of different classes and social backgrounds could intermingle.8 This would have a double function. It would educate the common people and liven up the social life of the elites.
For Welhaven, who was very much a cosmopolite, what Christiania lacked was a more urban way of life.
A more urban way of life was already beginning to take shape at the point in time at which Welhaven wrote his assessment. One of Welhaven’s complaints was that the social life of the elite concentrated around private clubs and private parties, secluded away during summer in their rural summer residences. Private parties and gatherings still played an important role, but social life in the city began to take on a new and more public appearance in the late 1830s and 1840s.9 Cafés, pastry shops and restaurants started to appear and in 1837 the Christiania theater opened in a new theater building at Bankplassen. King Carl Johan in the same year bought the royal estate at Bygdøy (then called Ladegaardsøen), a peninsula to the west of the city and opened the park to the public. He gave the restaurateur H.J. Lorange permission to build a pavilion and a restaurant in the park, and the following year three to four omnibuses and a small steam ship conveyed passengers from the city to Bygdøy. Klingenberg, closer to the city, had been a popular place of amusement from the seventeenth century and in the 1830s several attempts were made to convert it into a more respectable pleasure garden.10
Promenading at the old fortress ramparts (festningsvollen) had also become a favourite past-time. Kirkegata, including Bankplassen and its
7 On Welhaven, see: Anne-Lise Seip, Demringstid: Johan Sebastian Welhaven og nasjonen (Oslo: Aschehoug, 2007).
8 J.S. Welhaven “Christianias Vinter- og Sommerdvale [I-III]” originally published in the journal Vidar in 1834, here quoted from Samlede verker: Prosa, vol. 3 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1991), 193–205. “[…] hvad [Christiania] skammeligen mangler: ordentlige Anlæg for offentlig Sommerforlystelse […] Lyset maa her, som overalt, komme ovenfra. Og det finere Publikum vilde derved vinde Nydelser af en ganske anden, ægte Natur end disse halvdøde Glæder, som en unaturlig, ængstende selskabelig Tvang formaar at give.”
9 See e.g.: Sejersted, “Byen som arena for samhandling og kommunikasjon,” 93–95; Sejersted, Den vanskelige frihet, 302–27. See also: Anne-Lise Seip, “Jakten på nasjonal identitet: Kultur, politikk og nasjonsbygging i Norge i årene rundt ‘det nasjonale gjennombrudd’ 1830-1870,” in Veier til byen: en antologi, ed. Magne Malmanger, Bjarne Hodne, and Karin Gundersen (Det historisk-filosofiske fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo, 1996).
10 Else Boye, “Bevertnings- og forlystelsessteder på Bygdøy,” in Bygdøy: drømmen om Arkadia, Byminner, 2/3 (Oslo: Oslo bymuseum, 1994), 32–43. On changes in the social life of the city, see also: Hammer, Kristianias historie 1814-1877, IV:280ff. On Klingenberg, see Chapter 5 of this thesis. Lorange’s restaurant at Bygdøy closed in 1840, but several restaurants and dance halls were established at Bygdøy in the following years.
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continuation toward what was once the city’s defences, was the “‘Carl Johan’
of its day.”11 The poet Andreas Munch described, in an 1836 poem from his student days, how he left his study room to go for a stroll at the fortress ramparts. People waited here for the steam ships to come in and, on Sundays, a band played music for the “adorned people of the middle class.”12 The more adventurous of the student population ventured out to the suburbs of
Grønland or Vaterland. The dance halls and taverns of Grønland, Vaterland and Vika were popular, particularly during Christmas and the February Market. Dancing and brawling with the population of the suburbs of Grønland to the east or Vika to the west was a popular past-time among students, at least in the 1820s and 1830s.13
Building activity in the city was substantial from the 1830s. The newfound capital needed new buildings to house government functions and cultural institutions, the Stock Exchange building (1829), the building for the National Bank of Norway (1830) and the Christiania Theater (1837) all built by the city architect Christian Heinrich Grosch and placed in the inner-city quarters (see figures 2.2 and 2.3).14 The parliament and the ministries were also housed in older buildings in these quarters. The decision to place the royal palace on a hill west of the city was, however, the most important decision for the development of the city. The royal palace decision prompted plans to expand the city to the west, towards the palace. As I will describe in more detail in later chapters, Karl Johans gate gradually replaced the inner-city quarters as the center of public life. The new university buildings were placed on the north side of Karl Johans gate, Studenterlunden, Klingenberg and a new parliament building which opened in 1866 were all on the south side of the street.
The building of the new royal palace also brought the first
respectable villa suburb in the west, “bak slottet” (behind the royal palace) as it was known at the time. The old rural summer resorts that enraged
Welhaven in the 1830s, were gradually converted into permanent residences from the 1860s onwards. This moved the center of the respectable city westward and created what was described as Christiania’s “west end.”15 Spurred by industrial developments along the Aker river, the old eastern
11 Edv. Mørch, Da Kristiania var Smaaby: erindringer (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1901), 33.
12 Andreas Munch, “Spadseergang paa Fæstningvolden” in Ephemrer (Christiania: Johan Dahl, 1836), 51–54. “Hvor damestadsen og Byenoblessen / Glimrer i Solen heel og holden; / Spadserer rundt om den gamle Muur, / Seer / fornemt ud i den lyse Natur, / Og spörge Uhret om Tiden er omme, / Om ikke Dampskibet snart vil komme […] pyntede Folk af Middeleklassen / Om Musikanterne rolig staae / I tætte Klynger og see derpaa. / Musikken er vel kun saa som saa - / Hvad den mangler i Kunsten, den har i Kraften / Men klinger dog smukt i den stille Aften / Og taber sig fjernt i det rene Blaa […].” See also: Henning Junghans Thue, “Skizzer af
Hovedstadslivet. IV Fæstningen” Morgenbladet, 14 March 1841.
13 Mørch, Da Kristiania var Smaaby, 47–52.
14 On Grosch, see: Elisabeth Seip, ed., Chr. H. Grosch: arkitekten som ga form til det nye Norge (Oslo: Peter Hammers forlag, 2001).
15 “Et Billede fra Kristiania,” Skilling-Magazin no 38, 22 September 1866, 594.
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Figure 2.2. Map of Christiania in 1848 with the most important institutions. Most of them located within the inner-city quarters. Lithography after drawing by B. Hielm, E.M.
Bærentzen & co. Lith. Anst. Statens Kartverk, historisk kartsamling.
Figure 2.3. View of Christiania with notable public buildings and memorials. P.F.
Wergemann hand colored lithography, 1835, printed at H.T. Winther. 402 x 492mm.
Nasjonalmuseet, arkitektursamlingene.
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suburbs developed more and more into working class neighborhoods, with new tenement buildings going up in greater numbers from the 1860s,
particularly at Grünerløkka. New working-class suburbs largely built of wood outside the new 1859 city limits also went up in places such as Kampen, Vålerenga and Enerhaugen.
The rapid change was experienced and eagerly commented on by the inhabitants of the capital. The philologist and literary historian Henning Jounghans Thue noted, in a series of sketches of life in the capital originally published in the Morgenbladet newspaper in 1841, that Christiania was no longer a small town. In fact, it was “amazing how much the city has changed in just the last dozen years.” With an ever-growing population, with new buildings constantly rising and contributing to the “beautification” of the city, life in the capital became more and more interesting. Its role as the center of administration and the university had made Christiania the center of
Norway’s “spiritual” and cultural life.16 In short, Thue stated, Christiania was on its way to become for Norway
what Paris and London are for France and England – si parva componere magnis fas est [if I can compare great things with small] –, the middle point from which the seeds of education and enlightenment will scatter and fertilize the rest of the country.17
An important component of this was the press, the “mighty agitator” as Thue called it. Copenhagen had been the center of a Danish-Norwegian public sphere during the Danish-Norwegian union.18 After Norway’s independence in 1814, Christiania became the center of a Norwegian public sphere,the center for newspapers and periodicals and the most important place for printing and publishing in Norway.19
However, Danish literature and the Danish book trade, centered on Copenhagen, still very much loomed in the background. The written
language was still Danish and much of the literature sold and read in Norway was still published in Copenhagen. The theater was Danish, with Danish actors, and many of the more successful and prominent booksellers and
16 Henning Junghans Thue, “Skizzer af Hovedstadslivet” Morgenbladet 12 February 1841. The five-part series has also been republished as: Henning Junghans Thue, Skizzer af Hovedstadslivet (Oslo: Gyldendal, 1974). “Christiania er ikke længer den Smaastad som den var for ikke ret mange Aar tilbage […] Det er utroligt hvor meget Christiania har forandret sig blot i et Snees Aar. Medens dens Omfang og Folkemængde Aar for Aar tiltager i en betydelig Grad, medens den ene Gade efter den anden slutter sig til de forrige, medens jævnlig nye og smukke Bygninger reise sig og bidrage til dens Forskjønnelse, bliver ogsa med hver Aar Livet i den indholdsrigere og bevæger sig i stedse større og større Kredse. Den bliver mere og mere Centret for det hele Lands aandelige Liv, ligesom den er Centret for dets Administration.”
17 Thue, “Skizzer af Hovedstadslivet.” “Kort sagt, Christiania synes mere og mere at ville blive for Norge hvad Paris og London er for Frankrig og England – si parva componere magnis fas est -, det Middelpunkt, hvorfra Dannelsens og Oplysningens Sæd skal udstrøes over og befrugte det hele Land.”
18 On periodicals and print culture in eighteenth century Norway and Denmark, see: Krefting, Nøding, and Ringvej, En pokkers skrivesyge.
19 Berge et al., Norsk presses historie, 1:195; Myhre, Hovedstaden Christiania, 153ff.
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printers in Christiania were Danish or of Danish descent. Booksellers in Christiania became dependent on being commissioners for the Danish booksellers’ association after it was established in 1837, to be able to sell Danish books in the Norwegian market.20 This dependency on the Danish book trade only increased during the century, and the new generation of Norwegian authors, led by Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, in the 1860s left Norwegian publishers in favor of the Danish Gyldendal. There were a number of reasons why Gyldendal could provide better terms for Norwegian authors than Norwegian publishers. Their greater financial muscle and a larger apparatus meant that Gyldendal could provide better advances and reach larger markets than publishers in Christiania.21
The Norwegian public, then, read Danish books and watched Danish actors in the theater. Many however, wanted to free themselves of the Danish influence. In the 1830s and later in the 1850s, the Danish theater became a topic of heated discussion and sometimes violent confrontation. There were, at the same time, numerous complaints in the press about the state of the Norwegian book trade and Norwegian literature. Most blamed the Danish book trade. Some, however, could also find other reasons for the state of Norwegian literature. The later to be national archivist Christian A. Lange wrote a series of articles on the Norwegian book trade and Norwegian
The Norwegian public, then, read Danish books and watched Danish actors in the theater. Many however, wanted to free themselves of the Danish influence. In the 1830s and later in the 1850s, the Danish theater became a topic of heated discussion and sometimes violent confrontation. There were, at the same time, numerous complaints in the press about the state of the Norwegian book trade and Norwegian literature. Most blamed the Danish book trade. Some, however, could also find other reasons for the state of Norwegian literature. The later to be national archivist Christian A. Lange wrote a series of articles on the Norwegian book trade and Norwegian