A 12th Century Byzantine writer, away from his beloved Constantinople, wrote in a fit of homesickness, “Oh, land of Byzantium, oh thrice-happy city, eye of the universe, ornament of the world, star shining afar, beacon of this lower world, would that I were within you, enjoying you to the full! Do not part me from your maternal bosom.” The Vikings called it Mikklegarth, the Great City. There's no doubt of its greatness: consider a population of 16 million spreading across the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, one of the Seven Wonders glowing on the hill above the water, and a long history influenced particularly by two of the world's great religions.
Arne and I flew in Tuesday and after checking into our hotel room, a small room on the top floor of a rehabbed older wood building overlooking the Sea of Marmara, we headed uphill to the Sultanahment Mosque, or the Blue Mosque as it's more often known. And we fell like the naivest of tourists right into a trap. As we passed into the inner courtyard before entering the mosque a young man came up to us and began chatting casually. The next thing we knew he was our unofficial tour
guide, professing knowledge of architecture (which we discovered after a few questions to be untrue), and taking our picture in a key location. Then we left the mosque together and once outside the main gate he said, “And now, you come to my rug store!” Getting out of that rug store took a good hour and many variations on the theme of “No, we are not going to buy a rug.”
On Wednesday and Thursday Arne attended the conference of international energy economists, hearing interesting talks, meeting smart people from all over the globe, and giving his own well-received talk. Meanwhile, I explored. In 1979, when I traveled around Europe, it was my intention to get to Istanbul, but I heard too many stories about single female travelers having a hard time of it, so I changed my itinerary. Now, thirty years on, I'm weathered--interpret that how you like--and not easily intimidated. What was intimidating was the heat--well into the 90s with high humidity and no air conditioning in many places. Fortunately water is available wherever you go, and if you're shopping, shopkeepers even hand you a paper towel to sop up your own burst system. And if you're on the right side of the hill, there is even a nice breeze off the water.
Istanbul must be an archaeologist's idea of hell: several thousand years of history buried beneath mosque, church, palace, house, and cobble-stoned street, utterly inaccessible, but calling out to be uncovered. It turned to heaven though, when, in 1912 fire struck an area just downhill from the Blue Mosque and the Haghia Sophia (an area where our hotel was located, as it turns out) revealing some of the remains of a palace Justinian, one of the most famous of the Byzantine Emperors, built in the early 500s. What they eventually found were the remains of a mosaic floor from the main hall of the palace, a floor that covered 2,000 square meters. These remains are now on display in a little museum below the Blue Mosque and beside a pleasant though touristy market. One archaeologist calculated that it would require 80,000,000 tessarae (each about 1/4 inch square) to cover a floor this size. The tiles are pottery, glass, and stone, and show every sort of scene, from bucolic to violent.
Justinian was also responsible for one of the Seven Wonders, the Haghia Sophia, Church of the Holy Wisdom. Built as an orthodox church, it was the patriarchate until 1453 when Constantinople was sacked by the Ottoman Turks and the church was converted to a mosque. Part of the conversion involved plastering over the mosaics that covered the walls, ceilings, and enormous dome, the largest in the world until St. Peter's was built. Ataturk, in the early 20th Century, like a modern-day Solomon, solved the problem of Christians and Muslims clamoring for the right to the holy property, by turning it into a museum. Plaster was removed from many of the mosaics, but additions made to the building by the Muslims were protected. Today the building reveals the beauty of expression and, until the 20th century, the mutual tolerance of the two faiths in Turkey.
Everywhere we went in the old part of Istanbul we were reminded of this long history of peoples from two continents, on a key point of the Silk Road, and of two faiths making a home for themselves. Shortly after arriving we were having a coffee on the rooftop patio of our hotel, looking out at the Sea of Marmara where some 30 tankers were anchored and awaiting berth in the port (the Electronics Road, perhaps?), when muezzins from five different mosques nearby began chanting the azan over loud speakers. Below us a train rumbled by with young Turks hanging out the doors catching a little wind over the tracks.
The Blue Mosque is so named for the luscious tiles, predominantly blue, that are made even today in Iznik, in Asian Turkey. The design of these tiles was inspired originally by the blue and white Delft tiles from Holland. Inside the Harem in the Topkapi Palace, the official palace of the Ottoman sultans that was begun in 1459, the Sultan's inner sanctum is tiled in Delft tiles. The Silk Road has led to another interesting Dutch-Turkish connection. One group of rugs woven by the Anatolian masters are known as Holbein rugs--because one of them was featured in a painting by Hans Holbein, who, I'd like to think, purchased the rug from some itinerant rug merchant who just wouldn't let Hans get back to his painting until he'd spilled the contents of his purse.
We, however, exited the rug seller's empty-handed, though the temptation was indeed great.
As the Danish king
Christian IV lay dying in Rosenborg castle, he looked up at a topless
Hera surrounded by cherubs. Hera looks more like a voluptuous
Renaissance Italian woman than like the haughty goddess of
mythology—a delightful
last vision for a man who delighted in life's pleasures.
We spent the afternoon yesterday in Rosenborg castle, Christian IV's Dutch Renaissance pleasure house. Christian lived from 1577 to 1648, and ruled just after Elizabeth I and at the same time as Gustavus Adolphus. Though he was not well educated he spoke several languages, loved conversation and was eager to learn from others, and was generally very curious about the world. He enjoyed the good life and was known as a womanizer and drinker. In his chamber at Rosenborg is a primitive telephone—a tube that ran to his wife's chamber and another that ran to the wine cellar—he could meet his needs at a moment's notice. Still, he had a reputation as hard-working, starting the day early, even after a night of partying. Christian IV oversaw the growth of the Danish navy, sent an expedition to seek the northwest passage, sent an admiral to Ceylon where the admiral declared a Danish colony in Tranquebar, and Christian himself loved sailing and made trips around Denmark and Norway, then part of Denmark, to check on the state of affairs.
He loved music and led the development of an organ culture in Denmark. Dietrich Buxtehude, the great organist and composer, was the organist and music director in Helsingor as a young man, not long after Christian IV's reign. Christian had pipes built in Rosenborg that would carry the music being played by musicians in the basement up into rooms on the main floor.
Perhaps to make up for his bad treatment of Tycho Brahe—causing Brahe to exile himself to Prague—and also because of his interest in astronomy, Christian built the Round Tower, an observatory in downtown Copenhagen.
And Christian had a lively sense of humor. At Rosenborg we saw a special chair for guests. When they sat down, “concealed tentacles in the arm rests” would trap the visitor. Then, at a sign from Christian a servant might pour water into a funnel at the top of the chair. The water then spurted from holes in the arm rests, dousing the visitor in an unseemly way. When the visitor rose from the chair, a horn in the seat—an early version of a rubber chicken—would toot. Ah, the indignity!
Christian's
life ended sadly, as he had involved Denmark in the Thirty Years'
War, draining the coffers and gaining nothing politically.
Nevertheless, he's the most beloved of the Danish royalty and it's
easy to see why. In his later portraits you see a man who ate too
much, dressed dashingly, and met the world with a twinkle in his eye.
*I found the photo of Christian IV at Flickr; it was taken by somebody called jconn.
One thing that distinguishes the Danish character from the American character is attitudes toward privacy. In the United States we value our right to privacy and plenty of air time is devoted to protecting it. But we Americans are a very public people. Bumper stickers announce to the world where we stand politically, what churches we belong to, and what schools our chidren attend, they urge others to behave or think in ways we do, and they even tell our neighbors where to stick it if our neighbors don't meet our standards. We wear t-shirts and buttons that cover that same territory. Memoirs are among the hottest real estate in publishing--even if they're not actually true--the hunger for revelation is so strong and the earnings so tempting. American poets brought us the confessional poem. And our very own brand of revelators, Oprah et.al., make sure nothing personal is concealed.
Danes do not slap bumper stickers onto their cars, they do not wear buttons declaring allegiances, and they don't wear t-shirts that give away anything personal, anything private. Anika put me on to the t-shirt fact: she brought along a number of t-shirts declaring her feminism and pacifism, but she doesn't wear them to school because she would just stand out like a sore thumb. I can't report on memoirs, confessional poetry, or lay-it-all-out-there televisions shows in Danish culture, alas, but they don't appear to exist.
Perhaps the Danes' almost extreme private nature is a result of living in a small place. But whether it's a chicken or an egg problem, Danes' privacy serves well their living small. Most Danes do not cover their windows, so when you walk down the street it is possible to look right into most homes, even right through them into their back gardens. But it's really not culturally acceptable to look. So it's okay to have big glass windows on the front of your house and to live inside your house just as if it were all closed off to the world: no one will look in. When houses are close together and not far from the street, but when you want to get as much light from outside in to counterbalance the long dark winter, then the rule of not looking is necessary.
On the street, Danes do not look you in the eye, much less greet you in any way. To us it seems rude, this Danish reticence; to the Danes we Americans are just pushy and brusque. I've grown to like this public privacy. If I'm in a deep reverie as I walk along, and I often am, I know that little can burst in on me, I'm safe in my own portable privacy.
I wonder how much landscape has to do with it. In the United States we've got “land, lots of land under starry skies above” and we sure don't want to be “fenced in.” But if we're all spread out (and just think of the average suburb today, with houses well back from the street and well apart from the others, and no public space whatsoever, not even sidewalks) then it's easy to feel as though we are nobody, we're disconnected and immaterial. What better way to assuage our fear of total anonymity, than by making a point of saying who we are--via bumper stickers and t-shirts--, by sharing what's private so publicly that we can't be ignored?
I can't help but wonder at how the American character will evolve as gas prices rise and our landscapes change. Perhaps in my grandchildren's time Americans will have learned something about privacy.
