Dirk Johannsen

• Johannsen, Dirk (2021). How Blasphemy became an Anachronism. Free Thought and the Media Market in Late Nineteenth-Century Scandinavia, In Anne Stensvold (ed.),  Blasphemies compared: Transgressive speech in a globalised world..  Routledge.  ISBN 9780367254223.  s 158 - 174 Show summary

  In the growing media market of late nineteenth-century Scandinavia, blasphemous utterances and blasphemy accusations were widely used to generate attention and denunciate competitors. This chapter discusses blasphemy as a media strategy in the Nordic Modern Breakthrough and details how a series of trials against radical publishers changed the public perception of blasphemy laws.

• Bowman, Marion; Johannsen, Dirk & Ohrvik, Ane (2020). Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe: Introduction to the Special Issue. Numen.  ISSN 0029-5973.  67(5/6), s 439- 452 . doi: 10.1163/15685276-12341597
• Johannsen, Dirk (2020). How to Sense a Ghost. On the Aesthetics of Legend Traditions, In Dirk Johannsen; Anja Kirsch & Jens Kreinath (ed.),  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion.  Brill Academic Publishers.  ISBN 9789004421677.  3.  s 66 - 90 Show summary

  In this chapter, Johannsen suggests reading legend traditions as a sensory practice suited to augment reality with elements of a mythical storyworld. Legends are both descriptive and prescriptive, and the analyses of their social functions have long dominated folkloristic research. Their functional use, however, is always mediated: Narrative scripts develop their social potential in that they translate into aesthetic scripts that play a crucial role in the cultivation of the senses. Proceeding from an argument on the experientiality of legend traditions made by Lauri Honko, the contribution connects the perspective of the aesthetics of religion to the cognitive framework of predictive processing. From a predictive processing perspective, aesthetic scripts are suited to alter perceptions by micro-managing the recipient’s attention economy. The approach allows for new readings of folkloristic sources, contextualizing them in narrative cultures that constitute dynamic “regimes of attention.”

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2020). Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. An Introduction, In Dirk Johannsen; Anja Kirsch & Jens Kreinath (ed.),  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion.  Brill Academic Publishers.  ISBN 9789004421677.  Introduction.  s 1 - 13 Show summary

  Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role the act of storytelling plays in the cultivation of the senses and the cultivation of the world, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from Antiquity until today, in regions ranging from Mesoamerica to Europe, East and South Asia, and Africa.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Ohrvik, Ane (2020). How to Be a Pilgrim: Guidebooks on the Norwegian St. Olav Ways and the Heritagization of Religion. Numen.  ISSN 0029-5973.  67(5/6), s 508- 536 . doi: 10.1163/15685276-12341600 Show summary

  The Norwegian St. Olav Ways are currently the largest Northern European project re-institutionalizing pilgrimage as cultural heritage, providing a new framework for vernacular religious practices to a wide audience. In this article we approach the current pilgrimage revival in Northern Europe as part of a trend toward a heritagization of religion that allows new religious self-understandings to emerge. We analyze pilgrim guidebooks to the St. Olav Ways with regard to their narrative scripts, detailing how they can create expectations, inform the pilgrims’ conduct, and direct their attention toward a history that translates into a heritage. Based on a corpus of published pilgrim journals and diaries, we argue that the guidebooks instruct a process of interpretive drift, which influence the pilgrims toward embracing and embodying a new role within the religious field: The guidebooks invite the pilgrims to take on the role of heirs to a medieval European tradition.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2019). Vis-Knut: Marginality in Folklore and FolkReligion, In Jan N. Bremmer & Laura Feldt (ed.),  Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity.  Peeters Publishers.  ISBN 9789042936744.  VII.  s 135 - 155 Show summary

  The chapter traces the marginality narrative connected to the Norwegian cunning man Knut Rasmussen Nordgaarden (1792-1876), known as Vis-Knut, from its early use in a local religious conflict to its late nineteenth century use in an international debate on parapsychology and alternative spirituality. It is shown that emphasising marginality is a narrative ploy crucial to the folk religious alterity discourse. The three sections of this chapter focus chronologically on three different personas that Rasmussen embodied throughout his life. The first one is as a prophet (1818-1820), where he positioned himself at the centre of pre-existing conflicts and declared himself a persecuted ‘instrument of God’. The second one is as a cunning man (1820-1876), where the folkloristic endeavour was discovered to provide a new medial infrastructure suited to countering the discursive hegemony, telling Rasmussen’s story and to advertising his services. The third persona was as a modern saint (after 1870), where the narrative pattern of the legends about Rasmussen was transferred to literary and scholarly writings to undermine the religious and academic establishment by identifying them as oppressors.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2019). Narrative Strategies, In Anne Koch & Katharina Wilkens (ed.),  The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Cultural and Cognitive Aesthetics of Religion.  Bloomsbury Academic.  ISBN 9781350066717.  13.  s 143 - 156 Show summary

  In this chapter, we approach narrative strategies as a way to theorize the aesthetic formation and effect of both cultural narratives and narrative cultures from a cognitive perspective. Predictive processing-based models of story processing allow us to rethink the role of narration in religious discourse. Based on these models, we suggest a narratologically informed cognitive theory of religious perception, according to which religious worldviews can be understood as specific “augmented realities,” blends of narrative and experiential reality created by immersion into a narrative culture. In a first step, we argue that attracting attention is the most fundamental narrative strategy as it is the requirement for all other cultural, partisan, or individual storytelling strategies to develop their potential. After giving a limited account of the predictive processing framework’s concept of attention, we illustrate means and devices by which cultural narratives gain access to the mind. In a second step, we discuss imaginative strategies that further immersion into storyworlds. In the final step, we exemplify implementation strategies used for a lasting augmentation of reality with elements from these storyworlds.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2018). On elves and freethinkers: criticism of religion and the emergence of the literary fantastic in Nordic literature, In Markus Altena Davidsen (ed.),  Narrative and Belief. The Religious Affordance of Supernatural Fiction.  Routledge.  ISBN 9781138559660.  Chapter 5.  s 103 - 122 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  In the late 19th century, the relationship between fictional literature and religion was up for debate. On the Nordic literary scene, this debate was triggered by Danish literary critic Georg Brandes in 1871, when he famously announced a turn towards critical realism. Fiction was identified as a possible link between secular and religious representations of reality, and modern literature was supposed to act as a catalyst for the criticism of religion. In the following years, literature became the medium to explore the ‘problem of religion’, the utopia of an atheist society and the mysteries of the human mind. This article traces major theoretical impulses and their literary substantiations from 1870s literary realism to the emergence of the literary fantastic in the 1890s. In the literary fantastic, the criticism of religion became religiously productive. Anticipating the cognitive study of religion, folkloristics explained supernatural concepts as the natural result of ordinary mental mechanisms. This radical naturalism allowed for an inclusion of the supernatural in literary realism. The case study of Haugtussa (1895), a work by the Norwegian author Arne Garborg, shows the lasting re-configuration of the understanding of religion that gave way to a ‘modern religiosity’ based on fiction.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2018). The Prophet and the Sorcerer: Becoming a Cunning-Man in Nineteenth-Century Norway. Folklore.  ISSN 0015-587X.  129(1), s 39- 57 . doi: 10.1080/0015587X.2017.1388033 Full text in Research Archive. Show summary

  Cunning-folk offering a wide range of mostly supernatural services were a common part of European popular culture until at least the early twentieth century. Still, insight into how they established themselves as people with extraordinary abilities is limited. In this article I approach two of the best-documented cases of nineteenth-century Norwegian cunning-folk. The preacher-prophet, healer, and clairvoyant Knut Rasmussen (‘Vis-Knut’, 1792–1876) and the diviner and sorcerer Eilev Olsen (‘Spå-Eilev’, 1814–91) were ‘living legends’ who attracted clients from all over the country for more than fifty years. A wealth of historical and folkloristic sources allows us a rare glimpse into their early career stages and the dynamics by which two uneducated day labourers managed to become central actors in a local power play. An analysis of the local ‘folk religious fields’ details strategies, practices, and narratives used to cater to different factions, to convey claims of supernatural efficacy, and to create a regional market.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2017). Erzählungen von Ende und Wiederkehr der Religion. Literatur- und Religionsverständnisse im nordischen Realismus, I: Richard Faber & Almut-Barbara Renger (red.),  Religion und Literatur. Konvergenzen und Divergenzen.  Verlag Königshausen & Neumann.  ISBN 978-3-8260-5495-2.  Article.  s 211 - 229
• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2017). Religiöse Identitätsbildung, I: Matías Martínez (red.),  Erzählen. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch.  Verlag J. B. Metzler.  ISBN 978-3-476-02510-4.  IV.42.  s 274 - 280 Show summary

  Religionen setzen Imaginationspraktiken voraus, mit denen Wirklichkeit transformiert wird. Dem Erzählen kommt dabei eine besondere Rolle zu. Erzählungen haben zugleich modellierende und plausibilisierende Funktion: Sie vermitteln zwischen Sinneswelten und Sinnsystemen. Sie machen das Nicht-Präsente anwesend und modellieren damit religiöse Wirklichkeiten, in denen sinnlich Gegebenes als Ausdruck von etwas anderem erscheint. Zugleich werden diese transformierten Wirklichkeiten durch Erzählungen plausibilisiert. Erzählen ist somit ein notwendiger Teil religiöser Praxis; erst im Akt des Erzählens konsolidieren sich religiöse Identitäten, die ebenso dynamisch sind wie die Erzählkulturen, in denen sie sich ausbilden. Der Beitrag untersucht Erzählen im religiösen Kontext und die Dynamik religiöser Erzählkulturen.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2016). On elves and freethinkers: criticism of religion and the emergence of the literary fantastic in Nordic literature. Religion.  ISSN 0048-721X.  46(4), s 591- 610 . doi: 10.1080/0048721X.2016.1210394 Show summary

  In the late 19th century, the relationship between fictional literature and religion was up for debate. On the Nordic literary scene, this debate was triggered by Danish literary critic Georg Brandes in 1871, when he famously announced a turn towards critical realism. Fiction was identified as a possible link between secular and religious representations of reality, and modern literature was supposed to act as a catalyst for the criticism of religion. In the following years, literature became the medium to explore the ‘problem of religion’, the utopia of an atheist society and the mysteries of the human mind. This article traces major theoretical impulses and their literary substantiations from 1870s literary realism to the emergence of the literary fantastic in the 1890s. In the literary fantastic, the criticism of religion became religiously productive. Anticipating the cognitive study of religion, folkloristics explained supernatural concepts as the natural result of ordinary mental mechanisms. This radical naturalism allowed for an inclusion of the supernatural in literary realism. The case study of Haugtussa (1895), a work by the Norwegian author Arne Garborg, shows the lasting re-configuration of the understanding of religion that gave way to a ‘modern religiosity’ based on fiction.

• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2016). The history of religions read as fantasy: On the construction of (religious) ambiguity in the television show lost. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (JRPC).  ISSN 1703-289X.  28(2-3), s 163- 177 . doi: 10.3138/jrpc.28.2-3.3459 Show summary

  With its intricate “mythology,” the ABC drama series Lost invites a wide range of religious interpretations. Starting off as a survivor drama, the show evolves into a fantastic epic, in which the pilot episode's initial question “Where are we?” triggers reflections such as “where do we come from, where are we going, and what are we” and is finally passed on to the world religions. Against the backdrop of Tzvetan Todorov's and Marianne Wünsch's work on the fantastic, we translate literary scholar Wolfgang Iser's aesthetic response theory into a tool for analyzing narrative structures of contemporary supernatural fiction. Taking storytelling and reception culture into account, this piece shows how Lost uses the enactment of religion(s) to perpetuate structural ambiguity concerning the series' genre. We identify the narrative devices used to create generic indeterminacy both in content and form of the Lost narrative. With this ambiguity reverberating on the religious traditions referred to, Lost suggests the history of religions as an extradiegetic analogue of the literary fantastic.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2015). Begriffe und Zusammenhänge: Okkultismus und Magie, I: Sophia Bietenhard; Dominik Helbling & Kuno Schmid (red.),  Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch.  hep Verlag.  ISBN 978-3-0355-0273-2.  Kapittel.  s 306 - 312
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2015). Der Beitrag der Religionswissenschaft zur Didaktik im Fachbereich "Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft", I: Sophia Bietenhard; Dominik Helbling & Kuno Schmid (red.),  Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch.  hep Verlag.  ISBN 978-3-0355-0273-2.  Kapittel.  s 213 - 219
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2015). Entwicklungstheorien und die Strukturen religiösen Denkens in kognitionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, I: Sophia Bietenhard; Dominik Helbling & Kuno Schmid (red.),  Ethik, Religionen, Gemeinschaft. Ein Studienbuch.  hep Verlag.  ISBN 978-3-0355-0273-2.  Kapittel.  s 128 - 136
• Johannsen, Dirk & Kirsch, Anja (2015). 'Religion' als Stilmittel der Fantastik. Eine wirkungstheoretische Betrachtung der Fernsehserie LOST, I: Jürgen Mohn & Hubert Mohr (red.),  Die Medien der Religion.  Pano Verlag.  ISBN 978-3-290-22012-9.  9.  s 197 - 224
• Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Erzählungen vom Fremden: Zur numinosen Struktur des Motivs der Bergentrückung in der skandinavischen Überlieferung. Hôrin.  ISSN 0945-9634.  17, s 17- 38
• Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Tvilsomme historier. Politikk, fortellerkunst og det overnaturlige, I: Line Esborg & Dirk Johannsen (red.),  "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år.  Novus Forlag.  ISBN 978-82-7099-772-5.  II.1.  s 161 - 171
• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Erschriebene Religion. Die Vielfalt der Stimmen in den Religionserzählungen des modernen Durchbruchs, I: Afe Adogame; Magnus Echtler & Oliver Freiberger (red.),  Alternative Voices. A Plurality Approach for Religious Studies. Essays in Honor of Ulrich Berner.  Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.  ISBN 978-3-647-54017-7.  I. 'Religion' as a contested category.  s 36 - 55
• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Konstruktionsgeschichten, I: Dirk Johannsen & Gabriela Brahier (red.),  Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung.  Ergon-Verlag.  ISBN 978-3899139457.  Innledning.  s 9 - 16
• Johannsen, Dirk (2013). Two Types of Magic in One Tradition? A Cognitive-Historiographical Case Study on the Interplay of Narratives and Rituals, In Gregor Ahn; Vera Nünning & Jan Rupp (ed.),  Ritual and Narrative. Theoretical Explorations and Historical Case Studies.  Transcript Verlag.  ISBN 978-3-8376-2532-5.  II.  s 165 - 187
• Johannsen, Dirk (2012). 'Religion' als diegetischer Raum. Eine narratologische Analyse von Rudolf Ottos Das Heilige, I: Thorsten Dietz & Harald Matern (red.),  Rudolf Otto. Subjekt und Religion.  TVZ.  ISBN 978-3290176082.  Article.  s 237 - 256
• Johannsen, Dirk (2011). Kognition und Narration. Zur Tradierung von Mythen, I: Michael Klöcker & Udo Tworuschka (red.),  Handbuch der Religionen.  Olzog Verlag GmbH.  ISBN 9783789299001.  I-21.  s 1 - 12
• Johannsen, Dirk (2011). No time to philosophize. Norwegian oral tradition and the cognitive economics of belief, In Luther H. Martin & Jesper Sørensen (ed.),  Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography.  Equinox Publishing.  ISBN 9781845537401.  Ch. 6.  s 77 - 88
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2011). Deskriptorengeleitete Seminargestaltung, I: Silke Wehr & Thomas Tribelhorn (red.),  Bolognagerechte Hochschullehre. Beiträge aus der hochschuldidaktischen Praxis.  Haupt Verlag.  ISBN 978-3258076416.  1.  s 15 - 35
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Crossing the Ecotone. On the Narrative Representation of Nature as 'Wild', In Bojan Borstner; Smiljana Gartner & Sabine Deschler-Erb (ed.),  Historicizing Religion. Critical Approaches to Contemporary Concerns.  EDIZIONI PLUS Pisa University Press.  ISBN 978-8884927354.  Chapter.  s 233 - 248
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Religion als Nebenprodukt der Evolution. Religionsgeschichte und die Modularität des Geistes, I: Mariano Delgado; Oliver Krüger & Guido Vergauwen (red.),  Das Prinzip Evolution. Darwin und die Folgen für Religionstheorie und Philosophie.  W. Kohlhammer GmbH.  ISBN 978-3170215016.  Evolution in der Religions- und Wissenschaftstheorie.  s 221 - 238
• Johannsen, Dirk & Deschler-Erb, Sabine (2010). Introduction: Religion and Nature, In Bojan Borstner; Smiljana Gartner & Sabine Deschler-Erb (ed.),  Historicizing Religion. Critical Approaches to Contemporary Concerns.  EDIZIONI PLUS Pisa University Press.  ISBN 978-8884927354.  Seksjonsinnledning.  s 159 - 164

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• Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (ed.) (2020). Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion. Brill Academic Publishers.  ISBN 9789004421677.  376 s. Show summary

  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion presents the aesthetics of narrativity in religious contexts by approaching narrative acts as situated modes of engaging with reality, equally shaped by the immersive character of the stories told and the sensory qualities of their performances. Introducing narrative cultures as an integrative framework of analysis, the volume builds a bridge between classical content-based approaches to narrative sources and the aesthetic study of religions as constituted by sensory and mediated practices. Studying stories in conjunction with the role that performative acts of storytelling play in the cultivation of the senses, the contributors explore the efficacy of storytelling formats in narrative cultures from ancient times until today, in regions and cultures across the globe.

• Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (red.) (2014). "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år. Novus Forlag.  ISBN 978-82-7099-772-5.  352 s.
• Johannsen, Dirk & Brahier, Gabriela (red.) (2013). Konstruktionsgeschichten. Narrationsbezogene Ansätze in der Religionsforschung. Ergon-Verlag.  ISBN 978-3899139457.  428 s. Show summary

  Erzählungen sind wirksam. Sie prägen Selbstverständnisse, strukturieren kulturelle Wissensordnungen und konstituieren Gemeinschaften: Mit diesen Einsichten konnte sich Narrativität in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten als ein Grundbegriff der Kulturwissenschaften etablieren. Für die religionsbezogenen Wissenschaften legt sich ein Narrationsfokus schon aufgrund der Quellen nahe: In Schöpfungsgeschichten und Legenden, Konversionsberichten und Erlebnisschilderungen werden Religionen als Erzählgemeinschaften greifbar. Der vorliegende Band bündelt von der Narrationsforschung ausgehende Impulse und fragt nach der Funktion und der Form des Narrativen in religiösen Traditionen sowie in den mit Religion befassten Wissenschaften. In einführenden Beiträgen und Detailstudien aus Religionswissenschaft, Theologie, Philosophie, Soziologie und Narratologie werden narrative Konstruktionen von Lebensgeschichte und Mythos, Identitäten und Autoritäten behandelt und die narrativen Potentiale verschiedener Medien untersucht. Die Betrachtung narrativer Strukturen in religiösen Systemen, Rhetoriken und Selbstverständnissen erlaubt ungewohnte Einblicke in religionsgeschichtliche Dynamiken.

• Johannsen, Dirk (2008). Das Numinose als kulturwissenschaftliche Kategorie. Norwegische Sagenwelt in religionswissenschaftlicher Deutung. W. Kohlhammer GmbH.  ISBN 978-3170205185.  288 s. Show summary

  Inwieweit kann das Numinose als beschreibend-analytische Kategorie für eine sich als Kulturwissenschaft begreifende Religionswissenschaft dienen? Johannsen geht dieser Fragestellung anhand einer religionshistorischen Untersuchung der Volksüberlieferungen der norwegischen Provinz Telemark nach. Am Beispiel der im Berg hausenden Unterirdischen, die einen zentralen Aspekt volkstümlicher Religiosität in der Neuzeit verkörperten, wird die Ambivalenz der Sagendarstellung aufgedeckt: War einerseits jede Begegnung mit den Trollwesen bedrohlich, so verlockte doch andererseits ihre Schönheit und die Verheißung eines Lebens ohne Not, "viel besser als unter christlichen Leuten". Die narrativen Strukturen innerhalb der Überlieferung, mit denen diese Stilisierung zum Mysterium tremendum et fascinans vollzogen wird, bilden den Kern der vorliegenden Arbeit.

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• Johannsen, Dirk; Kirsch, Anja & Kreinath, Jens (2020). Preface, In Dirk Johannsen; Anja Kirsch & Jens Kreinath (ed.),  Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion.  Brill Academic Publishers.  ISBN 9789004421677.  Preface.  s VII - X
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bowman, Marion Irene (2019). Continuations and Disruptions of Pilgrimage in Northern Europe.
• Ohrvik, Ane & Johannsen, Dirk (2019). "Re-Storied Places, New Pilgrims, and Old Saints: On the Heritagisation of Pilgrimage in Norway".
• Ohrvik, Ane; Johannsen, Dirk & Bowman, Marion (2019). "How to be a pilgrim: Heritagisation religion in Norwegian pilgrimage".
• Esborg, Line & Johannsen, Dirk (2014). Forord: En vild endevending av al virkelighet, I: Line Esborg & Dirk Johannsen (red.),  "En vild endevending av al virkelighet" - Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år.  Novus Forlag.  ISBN 978-82-7099-772-5.  Innledning.  s 9 - 16
• Johannsen, Dirk (2010). Religion als evolutionäres Nebenprodukt. Prospektiv. Theologisches und Religionswissenschaftliches aus Basel.  ISSN 1420-9934.  s 8- 10
• Johannsen, Dirk & Bleisch, Petra (2009). Interessengeleitetes Studium. Eine niveaudeskriptorenorientierte Neukonzeption religionswissenschaftlicher Einführungsseminare. Show summary

  The thesis includes the development and evaluation of revised introductory courses on the study of religion adjusted to the Bologna framework. In the first chapter, we define the general competencies to be obtained in the course of the study as well as the teaching outcomes for specific courses according to the Swiss national qualification framework (nqf.ch HS). Subsequently, we identify the concrete teaching aims for the level of the organization of each single teaching unit. In chapter two, we develop suitable teaching tools and student tasks, aiming at intense student participation and fostering a self-directed learning process. Chapter three presents different support measures for supervising individual students. Chapter four outlines different forms of assessment, aiming at maximum transparency and guidance throughout the learning process. The course structure, as outlined in the thesis, was tested in 2007 and 2008 at the University of Fribourg. Chapter five contains the evaluation and suggests improvements. Chapter six includes a revised tool for designing student-centered and transparent courses.

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