OCH Publications > Oregon Humanities table of contents
Oregon Humanities is a journal of ideas and perspectives published twice a year by the Oregon Council for the Humanities. Each issue includes essays and articles that explore a particular theme from a variety of perspectives, broadening the ways in which readers think about a subject and providing a basis for further thoughtful discussion.
Oregon Humanities Fall/Winter 2007
- Kathleen Holt
- EDITOR
- Jennifer Viviano
- GRAPHIC DESIGN
- Leigh van der Werff
- PUBLICATIONS ASSISTANT
- Allison Dubinsky
- COPY EDITOR
- Editorial Advisory Board
- Tom Booth
- Brian Doyle
- Debra Gwartney
- Julia Heydon
- Marianne Keddington-Lang
- Guy Maynard
- Win McCormack
- Camela Raymond
- Kate Sage
- Linny Stovall
- Rich Wandschneider
- Curt Yehnert
Oregon Humanities, a journal of ideas and perspectives about the humanities, is published biannually by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, 812 SW Washington Street, Suite 225, Portland, Oregon 97205.
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Reading Houses: Zorngarden
The dominant architectural feature of Zorngarden, a nineteenth-century house located in central Sweden, is the Viking connotation of its east wing: the high, steep roof with its gables crossed like spears that covers the pointed rafters jutting under it. More modest, but equally interesting, is the house's centered, cottage-style facade with a tiny shed-roof porch. Connecting these two incongruous styles is a third: English country house, visible in the symmetrical, low-roofed wings on either side of the cottage. This smorgasbord of styles results in such architectural delight that we might surmise, correctly, that the house belonged to an artist.
Anders Zorn, born in 1860 to a single mother, was raised on his grandparents' farm in a small village in the province of Dalarna. During their many years abroad, Anders and his wife, Emma, frequently visited the farm, staying in the large room of his mother's cottage. In 1896, they returned to the village permanently, building Anders's mother a new house and moving her cottage to their own property. The cottage's large room became Zorngarden's dining room. The low cottage ceiling, heavy beams, and furniture designed by Anders to reflect traditional peasant woodworking imply that its inhabitants valued the past.
In tribute to the Zorns' ancestral history as well as Anders's childhood, the main room of Zorngarden invokes the Vikings. The thirty-foot ceiling, dark wood, insignificant windows, long benches, medieval wood carvings, and tapestry-covered walls bespeak heroic grandeur. The Roman sculptures are not incongruous, though the billiards table would be if the room was an attempt to replicate earlier eras. It is, instead, an apt setting for a Viking-style love of entertaining, where eminent artists, composers, archbishops, and royalty clinked glasses across the large table.
But where, one wonders, in this overwhelmingly masculine house, is Emma? Upstairs, in a small apartment, is her library of books in several languages, and in a corner near the Viking hall stands her piano. She had wanted it more centrally placed so its music would be most resonant, but that location didn't suit Anders's scheme. That piano shoved into a corner tells its own quiet story about the Zorns' marriage.
--Diana Coogle
Published in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Oregon Humanities.
© 2007 Oregon Council for the Humanities