[More blog entries about archaeology, religion, vikings, vikingperiod, Scandinavia; arkeologi, religion, vikingar, vikingatiden.]
Thursday morning I stopped by the Royal Library in Stockholm and read a paper by Johan Callmer in the great big symposium volume concluding the Vägar till Midgård project ("Roads to Middle-earth"). I was mainly there to check what he had said about the above 8th century brooch from Åland, apparently depicting a headless quadruped. But I also found a couple of really good paragraphs on another issue toward the end. Unfortunately the camera in my handheld computer is crap, so I can't repeat verbatim what he said. But the gist of it was as follows.
The concept of an Old Norse religion (as it has been used by e.g. Karl Hauck and Lotte Hedeager) is useless. Such a non-codified, orally performed and transmitted body of mythology and liturgy cannot be coherent across time nor space. So all statements about Old Norse religion must be qualified with two questions: Where? When? And when things don't add up, this is only to be expected.
Think about it. Even heavily codified religions, such as Judaism or Christianity, aren't coherent.
This skepticism of monolithic coherent entities in societies of the past and present is actually a post-modernist viewpoint, and to my mind a valuable one. Unlike real po-mos, however, I don't draw the conclusion that anything goes in interpretation. Quite the contrary, I find it a strong argument to drop all discussion of anything not strongly anchored in source material. Wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber darf man ganz bestimmt schweigen, po-mo Dummköpfe.
This reminds me of something I wrote the other day in a letter to a charming Aard regular:
"The problem is often called 'essentialism', as I think you may have seen in my review of Herschend's The Idea of the Good. The argument presupposes that there's this huge block north of the Imperial border called Germanic Society, that this block has the same essence from the border to the North Cape, and that when the block changes, all of it changes at the same time, in the same way. All this is in my opinion a) pure speculation, b) very, very unlikely."
Oh, yeah, what did Callmer say about the decapitated beast? "Animal sacrifice".
Callmer, J. 2006. Ornaments, ornamentation, and female gender. Women in eastern central Sweden in the eighth and early ninth centuries. Andrén, A. et al. (eds). Old Norse religion in long-term perspective. Lund.
Brooch: Helsinki, Museiverket inv. no 5179:2. Åland, Lemland parish, Mattas.
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That's a strange thing to say about a trilobite.
Here's another strange thing to say about a trilobite:
Jag är en liten mygga, och Hubert heter jag.
Callmer is, of course, quite right. For several years, I have considered writing something to that exact point (now I don't have to). However, the 'essentialist' school may, perhaps have a point when it comes to upper-class culture. But we need to distinguish that from 'popular' or 'general' culture. Also, it is not "real po-mos" who advocate 'anything goes', it is stupid po-mos. Sadly, most po-mo-inspired texts are a sad waste of language. Perhaps that's why I don't write theory myself anymore...
Wait...I don't see the headless quadruped, I see just a head wih two big eyes. My interpretetion of the aforementioned object is, that some Iron Age dude is poking fun at us and has buried an Iron Age ink-blot test. It's a good thing Freud cannot be successfully applied to pre-history (see, Martin, you do have to read that Tomas Ljungberg book, "Människan, kulturen och evolutionen", if for no other reason than I want to see your review of it).
I think I am going to have to get a copy of that paper. I have been dying to find something SCIENTIFIC that says what your quote says. People over here (generally) don't get that idea, because they never grew up in an area where one people (tribe, to be Burenhultian) speak all sorts of different languages and have developed into all these different cultures. Here, we are dealing with that concept in reverse - the onlus lies on people coming together from many cultures and peoples to form one cohesive melting pot unit. I get frustrated trying to explain that a Swede is nothing like a German. Yes, we have some similarites, but as a whole, the cultures are different. Why should people back then, who did not have planes and internet (the great cultural stir-sticks of today), be any different?
Svante, that's no small concession! But I agree, aristocratic culture does appear more cosmopolitan -- though far from homogeneous.
Christina, if those poor Northern Americans realise that the rest of the world can't be divided into large comprehensible blocks, then they'll probably give up on understanding anything about it at all. (-;
BTW, Freud can't be successfully applied to anything. The man was a complete woomeister and fraud.
Martin: "Svante, that's no small concession!"
I know, I'm getting old and complacent.
Christina: "...people back then, who did not have planes and internet..."
Yes, but they (the upper classes) had boats and a lot of spare time.
/Sv.
Svante: Agreed - what I meant was we, today, have our own cultural stir-sticks, which is our version of their ships. It makes for a dynamic rather than a static society. Like Martin said at some point, the Iron Age is loooong. I don't think one ought to cover it with one cohesive blanket that covers the whole area and the whole period. Some of it, particularly, as you said, the practises of the upper class, seems to have lead to joint symbolism and some shared ritual practise, along with other select practises, but that's still a far cry from "cohesive". Now, I just happen to find some of those "select practises" interesting to look at, and I am not going to deny they're there, but at the same time, I am continuously having to explain that position here in Canada (and even more so in the Great Melting Pot).
Martin: Hmmm, yeah, well, I think they already have given up on understanding, but they still insist on trying to research it anyways. That statement is, of course, by no means true for all North American - just the ones I keep butting heads with. The non-Freudian interpretation of that is, that that's because I like to argue with anyone who cares to argue A. because I learn better that way, and B. because I like to know mine enemy. And there is nothing poor about them. If the knowledge is there, but they don't bother to turn it over from all different angles, then that's their own damn problem. They CHOOSE to stick to their own frame of reference only, I CHOOSE not to. Prolly something to do with the penis envy I as a woman obviously must be suffering from.
Penis envy is so obviously a myth. I mean, given the going price on the meat market, any woman with halfway decent looks can clearly with the greatest ease have all the penis she can possibly find a use for. (-;
I must say that I am willing to sign up to your ideas of Po-mos. I see myself a s po-mo, but not a relativist one, but a sceptical and critical one. In a way, that line of po-mo is not very far from a developed modernist view. Sadly, very little useful po-mo is coming out these days. It is just the same stuff being sifted through over and over again.
When Ian Hodder tried to apply his tenents to the practice of archaeology, he suddenly became persona non grata with many po-mos. The man who started it where seen as betraying the movement. This was to me a clear sign of stagnation and dangerous introversion among the archaeological po-mos. By get too close to the material, you where sort of contaminated by its "reality".
And in the end, it is those relativistic po-mos (what a lovely shorthand! Thanks for teaching me that one!) who opened the door wide open, not only for other ethnic groups to claim their right to their heritage but to modern creations, such as druids, AND more dangerously, neo-nazis and their ilks. For why should their interpretations be less valid than some stuck up armchair archaeologists ones?
And then they claim that Martins position about archaeologys irrelevance in society is the thing that makes it dangerous, when it was THEM that opened Pandoras box!
Archaeology can be used to bad ends, but archaeology can rarely be the prime mover. Left alone, archaeology is pretty harmless, compared to other sciences like genetics and bioengineering.
Talk about hybris. Can we not write something upon it? I my not have anything save my Master to back it up, but it could throw my expirience as Museums teacher into the pot and how archaeological knowledge and public relationship?
As for that Pan-german idea, is it not the same idea that Hagerman attacks in her book? I have carried rather baleful feelings toward her, since I felt she ridiculed re-enactors of whose community I am also a part.
But I do agree we must do something about this picture of a Pan-Germanic world.
It is clear that the nobility shared a lot, such as which artstyle was envogue, probably fashion etc... But I would guess that the general population was different.
I think Per Rahmqvist brought forward some good points when he said that you cannot see shared cultural traits in status objects. These will more likely reflect what was internationally envogue and where you had your political contacts, and those could be both peaceful and warlike.
To see connections and similarities between the peoples, you must study the basic material, common objects.
In his study of the migration period "kingdom" of Middle-Norrland, he concluded that much of the jewelley was connected with the south scandinavia, but when you studied things such as bone items, for example the reoccuring triple hairpins of bone, so common from the Middlenorrlandic female contexts, they had their greatest similarity with the norwegian Trondelag, together with a lot of other items.
And if you study later written sources, it seems clear that this connection was an old one. And the oldest saga material does speak of Tronds leaving their area, crossing the mountains and settling in Jamtland and Middle Norrland.
Shared language is not the same as shared culture. It can be seen in relation to the ways in which kingship and warrior structures formed in the "celtic" and the "germanic" world. There are many signs of great similarity in how the chieftains and their professional warrior interacted.
And if one reads Britt-Marie Näsströms latest book about the berserkers, it seems they where a contrast to the "royal" warriors and formed separate "warrior clubs", comparable to the independent irish Fiannas and one might add, the gallic Gaesetae. They where not associated to a certain chieftain, such as a hird or a lid, but more independent.
Well, do we not see a sign for a pan-germanic-celtic view here? No way! If we care to study the native americans and their many cultures (hundreds of different ones, charing common ideas, but under different names, for example the many names and versions of the "Great spirit" diety) there where for example among the prairie indians, bands of warriors that where less affiliated with their tribes with names such as the "Dog warriors" or the "Coyotes".
They where less under the control of the chiefs and elders, and seemed to serve as a kind of standing armed force. They acted a police and scouts, but also as raiders.
The famous chieftain, Crazy Horse, started out as such warrior and became a leader for such a warband, before he became a chief of his tribe.
Damn, sorry for the asperger rant. Hope I made some sense.
My husband looked at it and said it's a horse's head, front on. The big circles are it's eyes, and the "legs" at the bottom of the pic are reins. There are two small circles near the bottom that would be nostrils.
Definitely a horse's head. With a bridle.
:)
You rule, Matti. Maybe you should start a blog too?
Eleanora, Meghan; maybe its intended to allow multiple interpretations? A lot of Scandinavian animal art has that quality. Those people would study each other's metalwork for hours, chuckling at ornamental puns comprehensible only to the connoisseur.
It's a woman.
Turn your screen (or yourself) upside down and view it from the right side, people:
She has big round eyes under two heavy dreadlox coming down besides her body; in the middle, half way down we see her left and right hand each fondling a large globular tit.
The legs are a mess, though!
I like the way you think, man.
Upside down it looks more like a trilobite, not a woman. Freud had it backwards- it's men who obsess about penises... and boobs, and bums.
Bums, yes. Boobs and penises are very nice too, but nothing to obsess about as long as they're simply there.
As long as they're simply there??? All the guys I know seem to be worried about the size of their penis (or look or shape or...), and in general the bigger they are, the smaller they _think_ they are. As for bums and boobs, some guys go for one, some for the other.
I've been in long relationships with women since I was 15, and though my wedding tackle appears to be completely average in dimension, these ladies have been quite happy with it. Very enthusiastic, in fact.
Many women seem to fear that their boobs are too small and their bum too big. Relax, girls! Any boobs are lovely boobs, and no bum is too big as long as it's demarcated from your top half by a detectable waist.
A skinny, bony, sinewy bum though -- then you have a problem, regardless of your emboobment.