The student priests

I meet Ingrid and Sigurd outside of Ur. It’s Friday, the sky is as high as it can be in mid February. The snot from your nose freezes and thaws whiles you breathe. Not one oxeye daisy (Clerical Collar) is to be seen.

Journalist: Ragne Kyllingstad
Photographer: Margreta Brunborg
Translator: Sofie Palstrøm

Ingrid is wearing a long, black padded jacket and sunglasses, and is the University’s newest student priest. Sigurd has been a student priest at NMBU for many years already. He is wearing a pair of reasonable Gore-tex shoes, skiing pants and a forest green padded jacket. I notice that both priests are wearing thin gloves compared to my enormous mittens, and I catch myself wondering if warm hands are something you get at the Congregation Faculty, or if that’s something they’ve had all their lives. The sun is in our backs as we enter Nordskogen.

Ingrid is the daughter of missionaries and was born in Camerun, but most of her childhood was spent in a village outside of Ålesund. An important part of her upbringing was her religion. She tells that back in the day she thought that only those who went to church on Sundays were real Christians. Over the years her religion has become more nuanced, but for Ingrid, God has always belonged to the community. This becomes apparent in the way she has taken on the role as a priest. To questions about how her weekend was, she could tell about youth clubs and family meetings, church and confirmation meetings. And all that in these socially miserable times!

The apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree, and this is the case for both of the priests. Sigurd has taken his mother’s religion into his profession, but his religious upbringing was quite different from Ingrid’s. He never went to church on Sundays, his mother regarded religion as something more private. It wasn’t until much later that religion became a social platform for this very social priest. Sigurd’s father was an entomologist at what later became NIBIO. At junior high, Sigurd brought his father’s profession into something that became a lifelong passion and hobby: butterflies. By following his passion for butterflies, the priest can completely disconnect and is the proud owner of about 20 000 butterflies in his collection at his home in Ås. He compares the butterflies’ course of life to the resurrection from the bible , where the butterfly in many ways resurrects from dust within the cocoon. «Man comes from dust and becomes dust, but at the same time is more than dust», he says. The link between religion and nature is important both for Sigurd and Ingrid.

For the oldest priest, God appears most prominent out in nature. «Being in the nature, to me, is a kind of religious service», he says. The sun is close to a 45 degree angle on the sky and hits our side of the path in just the right way, so that is seems as though the trees light up on their own. One can almost become religious from such a sight. To Ingrid, God is closest to her when she watches the sundown.

Ingrid and Sigurd both graduated from Menighetsfakultetet (the Congregation Faculty) in Oslo, only with a thirty year gap between them. Sigurd tells of a more restrictive attitude towards alcohol in his happy student days than what he observes among students today. The communion wine was for communion only. But the discussions could still get heated when the theology students met after lectures and could talk more or less without a filter. Han lived in Ås during his studies and can recall long discussions with his fellow students at cafes. Ingrid also recalls the good discussions as an important part of her happy student days: «I must have at least ten credits from cafeteriology» she laughs, while she longs back to an open student community.

Sexuality is one the topics they both discussed with their respective fellow students. A topic which has developed immensely in Norway since the 1980s, with the church following along a bit slower. As a student, Sigurd was told to keep a table in between if he were to speak with someone of the opposite sex. Today we also have to keep some distance between each other, but this is not something the church has decided. Norway had their own female priest when Ingrid Bjerke took the job in 1961, but when Sigurd started his studies 14 years later, it was still an uncommon sight at the Congregation Faculty. In terms of equality there has definitely been an advancement. Ingrid is a walking example of just that.

Our chat is fast paced, and the volume is increasing when Ingrid and Sigurd first begin to discuss the social advancement in the church. Time flies too. We are back in front of Ur, and it is time to round off the conversation.