The Virgin Spring

"Hvad ska' vi nu göra för syndamehn?"

"Vi ska' bygga en kyrka af kalk å sten.

Den kyrkan skall heta Kerna

Den skall vi bygga upp så gerna."

 

"What shall we do for our sins?"

"We shall build a church of lime and stone.

That church will be named Kerna,

                                                      And we will willingly build it."

I viewed The Virgin Spring last night, the sixth in the Seattle Art Museum's current Ingmar Bergman series.  It's a harsh movie of a harsh time -- widely acclaimed when it was released in 1960, but also criticized by some.  Fort Worth, Texas, banned it as "obscene," which by today's standards seems absurd. 

The film is based on an ancient, thirteenth-century ballad, "Töres döttrar i Wänge" ("Töre's daughters in Vänge"), and appears set in that century.  Several characters appear to be still pagan, followers of Odin, and the movie contains elements of both paganism and Christianity. 

Christianity became established in Sweden in the 12th century.  Pat M., with whom I've been seeing this series, suggested after the conclusion that he suspected the ballad had been essentially pagan, with a Christian overlay to satisfy the relatively new religion.   This certainly seems plausible, or the ballad may have originated at a time when both pagan and Christian ideas floated about together and were confused in many people's minds.

The film's plot deviates in important respects from the ballad, but it was the film -- Bergman's own vision -- that we watched last night.  As in the 14th century Swedish world that Bergman portrayed in The Seventh Seal, life was fragile, starvation was always just around the corner, and for those not blessed with minimal security, passion was something you grabbed any time the opportunity presented itself.

Töre and Märeta are a devoutly Christian married couple who lived in what, for the times, passed as a secure life as landed farmers.  Their only surviving child is a beautiful, sweet, but excessively spoiled daughter, Karin.  Karin is sent out to carry newly formed candles to their parish church, a rather lengthy horseback ride through the forest.  Being vain, she insists on wearing her most expensive clothes.

On the way, she has the misfortune of meeting three brothers, goatherds, who lure her off her horse and into conversation.  One brother is sweet-talking and crafty, another is unable to speak -- both are scary in appearance and clearly up to no good.  The third is a boy, about 12 or 13, who only witnesses the events that follow.

After sharing her food with the brothers, Karis is brutally raped by both older brothers and then killed with a blow to the head.  The two elder brothers strip her and put her fine clothes into their bags, telling the boy to keep an eye on the goats until they get back.  Stunned by what he's witnessed, the boy finally approaches Karin's body and tosses several ritual handfuls of dirt over her.

Karin's family members are worried sick when she does not return from her errand, but they extend hospitality to the three brothers when they unwittingly appear, starving, at the home of the girl they've just murdered.  The eldest brother shows the mother the expensive, but bloody and torn, cloak of her daughter, offering to sell it.  She shows great control and says she needs to discuss it with her husband.  She quietly bars the exit to their quarters as she leaves the guest house.

When Töre sees the garment, and hears a confirmation of his daughter's murder from her frightened pagan servant, he methodically goes to the sauna, beats himself with birch branches, washes, and puts on his war clothes.  He enters the brothers' room, stabs the speechless brother, and chokes the eldest to death.  Approaching the terrified boy, who had been unable to eat dinner out of shock and had been beaten at bedtime by his brothers, he hesitates only slightly and then lifts the lad over his head and smashes him lifeless into the wall.

The family and their servants later visit the scene of the murder.  Each feels guilty.  Each feels that actions or failures to act on his or her part had caused God to cause or allow Karin's death.  The pagan servant is overcome by remorse, because she had been jealous of the beautiful daughter and had prayed to Odin for the girl to somehow die.  The father fears that he had harbored incestuous feelings toward his own daughter, and realizes that his vengeance against the brothers, and especially the boy, were sins without justification. 

Töre walks away from the family, who are grieving over the girl's body, and asks God where he was hiding, why he allowed such horrors to occur.  But, he sobs in prayer, he has no other way of making sense of life but to seek God's forgiveness.  As a penance, he promises to build at the site of the murder a new church with his own bare hands.  Not a wooden church, as were most in Sweden, but a church of "lime and stone," as he knows existed in more civilized parts of Europe.

He picks up Karin's body, and as he does so a miraculous spring bursts forth from the earth, a sign of God's forgiveness.

A disturbing film, a beautifully photographed film, and a story that stays with you after you leave the auditorium.