Ingeborg Refling Hagen - Philosophy

Philosophy

Ingeborg Refling Hagen was in many ways a self-taught philosopher, who based her way of thinking on romanticism, Plato and the church fathers. This was strangely blended with a vast knowledge of world literature. She was in a way connected to Carl Jung and his thought of collective unconscious when she fitted together different pieces of literature into a whole. This notion is most clearly perceived in her analysis of the entity she often called The Old One, similar to Jung's archetype "the old man" or philemon. Hagen recognized the figure in several fairy-tales. In this respect, she unknowingly takes a Mythopoetic point of view.

In her autobiographical works, her fictional "self" learns how to listen to her own "old one", and gaining wisdom from it. She called it "a grey and wide eye inside her mind". In a wider sense, this way of thinking is connected to her respect for old oral traditions handed down. In many of her books, one finds an old storyteller, giving advice, pointing out the way, or setting the plot. This also occurs in her poems.

From childhood she had been somewhat of a visionary, and in her autobiographical works she describes her visions in many places, often prompted by hard pondering on philosophical problems occurring in literature. She developed a clear feminist statement based on an interpretation of the Bible, especially Mother Mary and Eve, whom she often compared as female archetypes. She was, however, known to think of males as weaker in many ways than her own gender, and discussed many times the relationship between man and woman, and the way they treated children. She would often criticize certain types of self-righteous women. Much of her thinking in this respect derived from the fact that she herself had experienced what a defenseless child could suffer under the hands of a mighty farmer's wife. She believed that women often would discriminate pauper's children on behalf of those they themselves had given birth to. She often cited the Norwegian phrase: "One's own children, other people's brats", to explain an attitude she opposed.

Ingeborg Refling Hagen's basic philosophy and thinking is a strange blend of old Christian ideas and socialist thinking. The vision of collecting all myths and stories in one universal system of thoughts was in a way her lifelong project, as she put it: "making an archive for those that are to follow, so that they can work further". This way of thinking may be characteristic for her generation - the thought of a common ground for stories prompted her English contemporary J.R.R. Tolkien in his epic project of a mythology for England.

Hagen's philosophical outlook can most easily be spotted in her 1972 poem Guds Tuntre (The Courtyard Tree of God). Here, she describes the Norse World Tree Yggdrasil as planted by God, and takes comfort in the mythic explanation when she gets "dizzy from hurrying thoughts". She finds a quiet point, Tangen, and decides to work from there. Here, she finds friends and family, but acknowledges that "life comes from the same root". Yggdrasil is in fact the revolving earth, and all the world, all humanity, are inside its branches.

Then, war comes, and the father in the poem enlists to defend the country. His farewell-song contains the statement that a conquering power never will win over a small country, mostly because the country always will live in the stories and the songs. The poem is patriotic, and universal at the same time. The father advises his children to

"...learn all the stories, all the songs, all the inherited wisdom from the generations before. Own the language, and you will prevail. Through the stories, you will find your way to the roots of the old tree, which is rooted in the old days, and spreads its branches all over the world. The people with a memory will live."