The Town Hall Prison in Christiania

The prison, originally located in central Christiania and an annex to the town hall, was mostly used for prisoners remanded in custody. When sentenced, the prisoners were mainly punished with hard labour.  

Originally the building had been an outhouse – a cowshed – that was rebuilt as a prison at the beginning of the 19th Century. Before this, prisoners had been thrown into the town hall cellar, a dark and sinister dungeon, so dripping wet that they occasionally drowned. All prisoners shared the same dungeon: men, women and children, thieves, assailants, murderers along with minor offenders. At times the prison was overcrowded, especially during the market, when the police was busy arresting beggars, vagabonds and vagrants.

During the 1790s more humane treatment of prisoners in custody was decreed. They were not to risk their health. Cells were to be kept dry, clean and airy. Every prisoner was to have his or her own bed plank with a woolen blanket and straw mattress. The straw was to be changed every four weeks. Different categories of prisoners were to be separated. Accordingly, the ground floor of the prison was fitted out with three cells: one cell for malefactors – or drunks, one for women and one for citizens. But were men and women really separated? In 1823, a prison inspector’s report, records that the separation of male and female prisoners was an ideal still not carried out in practice.

In 1804 the lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge was taken into custody, and remained imprisoned here for seven years, while awaiting his sentence. At the time, the revival movement he had started was seen as an attack on the church and the established order of society. Gradually, his movement became a popular rising that in the 19th Century made its mark on modern Norway. The town hall prison was demolished in 1918 to be rebuilt at Norsk Folkemuseum in order to commemorate Hans Nielsen Hauge and his struggle for freedom. At the museum the prison is a monument to fundamental rights: freedom of belief, freedom of speech, freedom to decide one’s own future.

 


Dangerous for his country?

One spring day in 1796 a young farm boy, Hans Nielsen Hauge, ploughing his field and singing a hymn, experienced a religious vision. He immediately acted on this and travelled all over Norway, preaching the Word of God. He had a remarkable voice that in a «wonderful way spoke to the hearts of the people». He attracted large crowds of followers, many of them in their teens and early 20s.
Hauge was a charismatic preacher and a productive writer of religious literature. He also advocated the right of common people to better their plight. The economic-religious activity he started resulted in small enterprises all over the country: paper mills, book binding and printing shops, boat peddlers, mining enterprises, grain mills and shipyards. 
Right from the beginning the authorities tried to stop Hauge and his followers. He was regularly arrested for «Vagrancy and Fanaticism», for criticising the clergy, for enticing young people to leave their services, for tricking money out of people, and for trading illegally. It was forbidden by law to preach without theological education, and the law also commanded young, unmarried people to enter service. Breaching these laws, Hauge was seen as a danger to the state, to the «simple» common man and to the «common good». In the autumn of 1804, the authorities wanted to put a stop to Hauge and his activity once and for all. He was arrested and thrown into the Town Hall Prison in Christiania.
He was to remain here for seven years, isolated in a room in the attic. Hauge was rarely allowed to take fresh air, suffering the stench of a reeking stove and of the prisoners in the room below. He was not allowed to keep his books or use pen and ink: «What was worst was the Slowness of Time, as I had nothing to do, no Books to read, and no one to talk with». In order to survive, he resumed the work of his childhood: he knitted gloves of silk and cotton that became highly prized by the ladies of Christiania.  In 1811, he was released from prison due to bad health. In 1814, he was finally sentenced to two years of hard labour, which when he appealed was commuted to a large fine. Hauge died in 1824.