Not seeing the forest for all the spruces?

”Granskogsfolk: Hur naturen blev svenskarnas religion” (Spruce Forest People – How nature became the religion of the Swedes) is a book in Swedish by David Thurfjell, a scholar of comparative religion. The author has interviewed a number of people who had spiritual experiences while spending time in nature. The interviewees often avoid religious or spiritual terms when describing their experiences, however, and many seem embarrassed talking about them – especially if their experiences are seen as religious. They are afraid to be seen as irrational or weird, Sweden being the most secularized nation in the world. At the same time, the idea that spending time in nature (often in the forests) is healing, meaningful or has some kind of deeper existential dimension is very common in Sweden. Nature has become the new “religion” of the Swedes and Thurfjell tries to explain how this happened. The book covers *a lot* of ground, and only an outline is possible in a review of this kind.

Thurfjell argues that current spiritual experiences of nature cannot be seen as exemplars of timeless mysticism. Rather, the experiences are strongly culture-bound and based on modern presuppositions. The idea that humans have a distinct individuality that takes precedence over community and *should* have spiritual experiences is a modern construct. So is the idea of “Nature” as something set apart from humans, something “spiritual” or “other”. Even “religion” is a modern category – in pre-modern cultures, what we call religion is embedded in the rest of the cultural matrix.

The view of nature in pre-modern society was complex, and not always negative, not even when paganism was replaced by Christianity (which didn´t view nature as sacred). The dark and wide forests could be seen as a promise of freedom (at least for males). However, what´s more striking are the pragmatic or negative views. That peasants usually had a pragmatic view of nature is hardly surprising, given the fact that they spent much of their time either in nature or working with objects taken from nature. To the peasants, “Nature” didn´t exist as a separate conceptual category. It was simply an embedded part of their everyday world, a part necessary for their physical survival. Negative views were also common, with nature seen as threatening, either by itself or due to various spirit-beings said to inhabit it. The Christian religion, while seeing nature as God´s creation, usually emphasized the world´s fallen character and the need to leave it behind, going home to God. In Lutheran-inspired school textbooks, the nature shown was often exotic – Palestinian, in fact – and far removed from the everyday reality of Swedish peasants. During the 18^th century, nature romanticism (often of a pastoral character and/or inspired by Greek mythology) was popular among the upper classes of society, but this didn´t affect the general mood of the population.

Nature romanticism didn´t become a mass phenomenon until the 19^th and 20^th centuries, due to industrialization and modernization. Suddenly, nature was no longer “embedded” into everyday culture. It became a sphere of its own, obviously separated from the spheres of industrial labor, office work or engineering. The concept of leisure and leisure time was invented, and nature became something people “went back to” over the weekend to recuperate from the rigors of modern work. Since the public work-sphere was associated with science, rationality and “maleness”, nature became the sphere of the private, the intimate, the emotional and the “female”. It was in nature that people could have deep experiences of existential meaning. This nature romanticism would have been unthinkable to most people in a traditional peasant society. Thus, nature became romanticized and seen as spiritually meaningful precisely because people had become alienated from it! Nationalism was another important factor in the growth of nature romanticism. Both Swedish nature and Swedish folk culture were seen as unique and typically Swedish, and both were promoted for the benefit of city-dwellers, for instance through Skansen, an outdoor museum in Stockholm with old farmhouses on display.

As already mentioned, the social construction of the free and sovereign individual with a rich interior life that *mattered* (at least to him or her) also took place during the modern period. One of the wellsprings of modern individualism was Pietism, with its emphasis on personal salvation and the need of each believer to constantly monitor his or her inner states and emotions. The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (early 19^th century) played an important role in the individualist-emotionalist turn of religion, with Christianity redefined as a personal feeling of dependence on the infinite. At some point, the new individualism and sentimentalism was fused with nature romanticism. This happened even within Christian denominations. Some Christian currents also became strongly nationalist, another conduit for nature worship. In modern society, “religion” became another sphere separated from the others. In its individualist and emotionalist form, the Christian religion (or religion-in-general) was easy to combine with romantic Schwermerei for Nature.

Thurfjell´s interviewees fit the modern format with their emotionalist views of nature, Christian backgrounds, individual-existential preoccupations, need to “get away” from the drudgery of everyday life, and so on. What is probably more typically Swedish is their reluctance to even discuss spiritual experiences, and their seeming inability to even describe their experiences, since they lack an adequate language. One paradox of secularization is that people have more spiritual experiences, but can´t properly communicate them! However, here we also see a potential weakness in the author´s analysis. Can a subjective experience really be entirely culturally constructed if those having it can´t express it in words? Are the spiritual, crypto-spiritual or quasi-spiritual experiences of the interviewees really completely different from ancient mysticism or mysticism in other cultures (which seems to be the implication of Thurfjell´s argument)? One of the people interviewed seem to have seen fairies or something similar in the forest. But fairies have been seen since pagan times! They are not modern social constructs (whatever else they might be).

My guess is that mysticism isn´t entirely culturally constructed. There must be something universally human that triggers these experiences. Either something psychological, or something “out there”. God maybe. Or the fairy? Only then are the experiences mediated by cultural expectations. I don´t know if the author really denies this – he seems sympathetic to the topic and I wouldn´t be surprised if he had similar experiences himself. However, the book does give a “postmodern” impression I don´t fully embrace.

Deep down, we may indeed be Spruce Forest People, after all…