The Kristiania Bohemians (Norwegian : Kristiania-bohemen) were a political and cultural movement in the 1880s centered in Kristiania (now Oslo). [1] Hans Jæger was the central figure in the movement, [2] and other prominent members included Christian Krohg, Oda Krohg, Jon Flatabø, Haakon Nyhuus, and Nils Johan Schjander. The Kristiania Bohemians were naturalist artists and belonged to the period of Naturalism, but the clear emphasis that they placed on feelings also points towards the next literary period, Neo-Romanticism. The movement consisted of about twenty men and a few women, and others loosely associated with the movement, such as Arne Garborg.
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.
Hans Henrik Jæger was a Norwegian writer, philosopher and anarchist political activist who was part of the Oslo -based bohemian group known as the Kristiania Bohemians. In 1886 he was prosecuted for his book Fra Kristiania-bohêmen, then convicted and sentenced to 60 days' imprisonment and a fine of 80 kr for infringement of modesty and public morals, and for blasphemy. He also lost his position as a stenographer at the Parliament of Norway. Jæger was defended in court by barrister Ludvig Meyer.. He and other bohemians tried to live by the nine commandments he had formulated in Fra Kristiania-bohêmen.
Christian Krohg was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist. Krohg was inspired by the realism art movement and often chose motives from everyday life. He was the director and served as the first professor at the Norwegian Academy of Arts from 1909 to 1925.
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The Kristiania Bohemians are also known for their Nine Bohemian Commandments, [3] which had its origins in an article published in Impressionisten no. 8 in February 1889 and is often attributed to Hans Jæger. However, in the biographical novel Jæger – en rekonstruksjon (Jæger: A Reconstruction), Ketil Bjørnstad writes that the journal's publisher, Johan Collett Michelsen, wrote the piece together with Oda and Christian Krohg as a parody of Jæger, with whom they were in dispute. [4]
The Bohemian Commandments or Nine Bohemian Commandments is a frequently cited text from the Kristiania Bohemian movement in Oslo:
- Thou shalt write thine own life.
- Thou shalt sever thy family roots.
- Man kann seine Eltern nie slecht genug behandeln
- Thou shalt never smite thy neighbor for less than five crowns.
- Thou shalt hate and despise all farmers, such as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.
- Thou shalt never wear celluloid cuffs.
- Neglect not to make a scandal in the Christiania Theater.
- Thou shalt never repent.
- Thou shalt take thine own life.
Ketil Bjørnstad is a pianist, composer and author. Initially trained as a classical pianist, Bjørnstad discovered jazz at an early age and has embraced the emergence of "European jazz".
