Kill Devil

In the shadow of Nordic colonial history

In Norway, kolonialen is a name with cozy associations to the convenience store, where you can buy chocolate, coffee, fruit and tobacco. But Norway's historical connection to the word is more complex than that.

In the production now titled Kill Devil, we examine Norway's connection to the Danish-Norwegian slave trade. Using the mechanism of baroque theater, we illuminate the shadowy sides of Norwegian history - with shadow theater for adults.

- " Norway and the role of Norwegians during the colonial period has long been a non-topic, but recently more information has come to light and received more focus in education, literature and the media," explains director Petter Width Kristiansen. With the performance Kill Devil, he wants more people to get to know this obscure part of Norway's history.

The 400th anniversary night

The just over 400 years that Norway was in union with Denmark have been described by Ibsen as the 400-year night - a dark chapter in Norway's history that did not fit into the new Norwegian identity, where freedom and equality were to be the beacons. When writing the history of Norway and the Norwegian identity, people tended to skip over this period and focus instead on the saga era, national romanticism and the Norwegian farmer.

But during the union with Denmark, Norway was part of a growing global economy, where the colonial and slave trade was an important component.

Black and white illustration of the slave fortress Christiansborg.

The slave fortress Christianborg.

Denmark-Norway took an active part in the transatlantic slave trade. Norwegian investors and merchants made big money - and did big damage. Denmark-Norway had a network of trading forts on the Gold Coast and a colony in the Caribbean called the Danish West Indies. It consisted of three islands. These were later sold to the USA and now make up the US Virgin Islands.

Danish-Norwegian slave ships transported around 100,000 African slaves to work in brutal conditions on plantations.

In 1673, the ship Cornelia sailed from the pier in Bergen. The plan was to transport slaves to St. Thomas, but this did not happen. The ship made two trips to the Gold Coast, but on the second trip it was captured by a Dutch ship and ordered to carry 103 slave goods to Curacao. The first Danish-Norwegian ship to buy up slave goods in West Africa and transport them to the Danish West Indies was the Gilded Eagle. This was the start of the Danish-Norwegian transatlantic slave trade, which was to become the world's seventh largest fleet of slave ships.

Slave shirts

The journey between Europe, Africa and the Caribbean is called the triangular voyage. The ships brought goods from Europe to West Africa. There, they exchanged the goods for enslaved people, before the ships set sail for the Caribbean. In the Caribbean, these were exchanged for colonial goods, which were then transported back to Europe.

Due to disease and cruel conditions on the ships, about 33 percent of the seamen and 15 percent of the enslaved died during the crossing and were thrown overboard. Enslaved people who survived the voyage were sold to plantation owners. At the time, it was common to mark one's belongings with branding irons, and this also applied to slave shirts. The Danish West India Company stamped its slave shirts with an S framed by a heart. It is said that the S stood for slave, and the heart symbolized God's love.

The map shows the course followed by the slave ship Fredensborg on its last voyage in the triangular trade. The crosses mark deaths among the slaves and crew. Drawing by Ants Lepson. Photo, image processing and coloring: KUBEN.

The goods

In the performance Kill Devil, we follow the journey of the goods. Denmark-Norway used bar iron, copper and weapons as a means of exchange for enslaved people. They returned from the plantations with goods such as cotton, tobacco, rum, tropical woods and, most importantly, sugar.

In Norway, buyers from sugar refineries in Halden, Bergen and Trondheim were waiting. Raw sugar from the plantations was processed into fine sugar, both for the Norwegian market and for further sale in Europe.

Molasses, a waste product from the sugar industry, was fermented and used to produce rum. The rum produced in Europe could be used as currency to buy slaves in Africa, while the rum produced on the islands was a kind of moonshine, given to the slaves as part of their wages and used to paralyze them. This was called Kill Devil.

The NRK documentary "Slaveskipet" tells the story of the slave ship Fredensborg, which sank off Arendal in 1768.

The ban

In 1792, Denmark-Norway adopted a ban on Danish-Norwegian participation in the Atlantic slave trade. However, the law would not come into force until 1803, and even though the slave trade was to be banned, it was still legal to own slave goods. This gave plantation owners plenty of time to purchase and collect slave goods.

So even though Denmark-Norway was among the first to ban the slave trade, we were among the last to ban slavery. It was only after major riots that our slaves were freed, as late as 1848.