INSCRIBING SPIRALS
There was a time when oak trees were at the centre of belief. Honoured, worshipped and at the core of life. The qualities of strength, wisdom and longevity that we know about the oak today don’t just refer to the wood, but to the god of Thunder, Thor, or as the germanic folks called him, Donar. Until this present time it is commonly known to mind an oak during a storm- as it will be struck by lightning first.
The abundance of oak groves all throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages shaped a pagan society. The wood of the trees, with its high density, resistance to weather and decay, provided structural strength to buildings, and this set the beginning of centuries of timber carpentry to come, which built the foundations of Europes’ cities.
When Christianity arrived During the Early Middle Ages most of Europe underwent Christianisation, a process essentially complete with the Baltic Christianization in the 15th century. The cutting of holy Oak trees was a common procedure during the Anglo-Saxon mission in the 8th Century, the most known story being the one about missionary Saint Boniface. By cutting down Donor’s oak, a tree of great significance to the pagan people, and building a church from it, he didn’t end pagan beliefs in the oak, but reintroduced them in a new form.
This brutal yet affective procedure helped Christianise most of Europe, with the shapeshifted oak still present at its core.
Today trees go through endless transformative processes under human force. The oak being one of the most popular building materials all throughout Europe up until the Victorian times, out of the sudden became a luxury good due to massive deforestation, and only high quality floor panelling, furniture, oak barrels and ships were left being made out of the wood. The significance of the timber in building culture can also be observed in contemporary language- with the origins of the word door- being rooted in “duir” - the old German word for Oak.
This oak beam is the inconspicuous remnant of a 200-year-old wooden barn from southern Holland. Isolated from the rest of the gable skeleton, the wood is being sold by companies that buy it in bulk and pick up on the trend of recycling historic wood- shaping it into tables, and floorboards with that special rustic feel. As of Russia’s Invasion of the Ukraine, the supply of oak from the region has come to a full time stop. Timber prices are soaring and there is now a real an urgency to rethink the oak once again and use the supplies already present.