What will you take with you?

In one burial a spear had been hurled over the head of the deceased and lodged in the wall of the grave chamber. In another the deceased is a male Sámi wearing typical Norse women's clothing. Another is a double cremation where, after the fire, the man's and woman's remains and effects were carefully separated out and buried apart from each other, in contrasting fashion, again with some normally female-associated goods placed with the man and vice versa. These burials are among those discussed in Neil Price's The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia.

Thanks to the wonderful people at my local library, I finally got my hands on a copy of this book--the first edition, that is, not the second, although I suspect I may have to purchase the latter at some point. It's a big, big book, with lots of information that's new to me. I appreciate Price’s introduction to scholarship on the noaidi - the "Sámi shaman." I'm still 100 pages shy of the finish, and I feel like I'm reading a detective novel, trying to make some guesses of my own in advance of the thrilling conclusion. I just read about the Sámi view of the Northern Lights and it kind of blew my mind. I woke up this morning with it all spinning around in my head.

In the meantime, though, the burials have really captured my imagination. Archaeologist Dr. Price discusses several Norse and Sámi graves in connection with his topic. They include intriguing assemblages of grave goods, and show evidence of what must have been profound, meaningful funerary rites.

He has singled out graves that he believes may house the remains of sorcerers or spiritual specialists, and as these people operated toward the outer limits of human society, their graves are bound to be extraordinary. Still, it seems to me that graves in general represent a category that is fair game for both religious symbolism and intimate associations.

Even within the general body of Norse graves that I've read about from this period there exist enormously varied burial practices - aside from clothing, grave goods, and their arrangement within the graves there are differences in topographical situation, shape, lining, markers, etc. And, of course, there are both inhumation and cremation graves.

The lack of standardizaton has posed problems for those trying to "make sense of" these graves in the light of known mythologies. Ellis-Davidson simply wrote that differences indicate the presence of strong family traditions. Some contemporary scholars look at regional patterns in burial preferences as one way of trying to delineate different political/social/religious spheres of influence within Scandinavia of the period. I don’t have enormous experience in this area, but in reading accounts of graves here and there, exact parallels among them seem to be relatively rare. Perhaps the more "run-of-the-mill" graves simply don't get written about. The ones on the farther reaches of the bell curve, however, seem to be numerous and remarkable.

An acquaintance back here in the 21st century recently encountered numerous deposition options for a relative’s ashes, including the possibility of housing them within the structure of a birdbath! I guess I've been lucky so far – I haven’t had to delve into this subject in a personal way - but I was very surprised to hear that the birdbath option is a standardized one available through a local funeral home!

If, however, most of our burials today seem unremarkable when compared with those of the past, it is perhaps partly because we entrust them to corporate entities. What if, instead (and I’m not suggesting that we actually do this), we buried our own loved ones ourselves? Not only would we be forced to plan every aspect of the disposal of their physical being, but we would also have a more intimate, tactile, and perhaps, profound, association with death itself. How would this impact our view of death? How would this be manifested in our choices of grave types, sites, or grave goods (or lack thereof)? Would our final resting situations remain as uniform as they are today? Or would our choices be as baffling to future archaeologists as those of our ancestors are to us?

References:

Ellis Davidson, Hilda. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Price, Neil S. The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala, 2002.

Söderberg, Bengt. Aristokratiskt rum och gränsöverskridande. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetets förlag, 2005.

Photos: A Viking-age grave at Li, Fjärås, Sweden; A Bronze-age stenhög (stone burial cairn) overlooks the sea from the Swedish west coast; More Viking-age graves at Li; A kyrkogård (churchyard), Kungsbacka, Sweden. Click the photos to enlarge.

Lofty Thoughts/Summer Laborlore

It's been so long since I've posted that I couldn't even remember my password. I had to look it up in my folder of passwords, usernames, and answers to security questions, which, thank goodness, I was able to find wedged into an overflowing drawer of the messy desk that is nominally mine.

My time in Sweden was truly fantastic, and I'm sure that I'll have lots to write about, assuming I can endure until my little lovelies are back in school. If you're a stay-at-home parent by trade (or by default), perhaps you know what I mean.

This summer is better than previous ones, though, in that I have had some actual thoughts in my head, like air in an otherwise deflated balloon. However, when it comes to the point where I'm ready to tie it and hang it up for display, motherhood obliges me to let go--for just a second--and with a long, farty noise (which, if it wasn't purely metaphorical, would delight the little ones) my balloon/head shoots erratically around the office and lands flaccid and empty on the long-unvacuumed floor.

But if truth be told I did have the opportunity one morning this week to visit the Library of Congress to hear the keynote speaker at the Laborlore symposium: none other than my former colleague Nick Spitzer. His talk was called "In Katrina's Wake: The Building Trades in New Orleans."

Nick is, of course, the host and creator of the American Routes radio program, in which capacity he delves into the vernacular music of the U.S. To a great extent this music retains its links to roots music and to the people who combine night time and weekend music-making with ordinary day jobs. This has been the practice in New Orleans as well, going back at least a century, where the same largely Creole community that created jazz in response to the tightening talons of Jim Crow also built, ornamented, and maintained that beautiful city's homes and public buildings. Those New Orleans families still practice the building trades, having passed them down through the generations along with the music, which, though one may be led to believe otherwise, is not the drunken excess of libertines but rather a remarkable commentary and elaboration by the working people themselves on their city, their place within it, and their lives. Rebuilding New Orleans--body and soul--is about bringing these families back, letting them do their thing (actually, things) and insuring that the city continues to be a fertile place for people to work and play.

Because the music, the architecture, and other creative expressions come out of both work and play, of course. Work and play and life give meaning to each other. And if this seems a far-fetched idea, difficult to apply to one's own humdrum life and job, then let Nick be an example. His own career, even when I first knew him (way back when) as an agent of the government bureaucracy (!), has epitomized experimentation, creativity, play--as well as care for the nuts and bolts-- as clearly as Louis Armstrong's banjo player/plasterer Johnny St. Cyr, or any of those other gentlemen he spoke of at the symposium.

Nick can speak on any topic but when you get him going on something he really cares about, it's preaching. At the LOC, in front of an audience of colleagues and friends, Nick may have been preaching to the converted. But that's largely what preachers do, I suppose. In any case I sensed strongly that this particular crowd was both inspired and spurred to further action in the field of documenting and explicating labor lore.

How inspired I am to continue on with my summer labor is another issue altogether. In any case my audience is a captive one, even as I am captive to it. With two weeks still remaining, I'm going to fill up some balloons, of the literal variety. Up, up and away! Farty noises, ahoy!

I like the ice cream at the pool better

In a couple of days I'll be on an airplane heading home to Sweden and family, ocean and rocks, lakes and woods, the beauty that I remember from girlhood and that still inspires me. But before I leave my suburban US existence behind for a few weeks, here's a silly ode to the sun-baked, chlorine-scented, sunscreen-slicked flipside of my childhood memories.

They sell ice cream at the pool.

At the front desk there's a chart with pictures

Of twelve different kinds or more.

Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer

So we're not going to buy it here,

But I like the ice cream at the pool better.

I like it when the ice cream sandwiches fuzzy my fingers with chocolate

And I have to lick it off.

I like it when the rocket pop paints my lips and tongue with reddish-purply blue

And my fingers trickly drops of sticky.

I want a drumstick salty with peanuts and a hard plug of chocolate

At the bottom of the cone.

I want to bite into a premium ice cream bar and feel the chocolate sheathing split and slide

Like the earth's techtonic plates

And cool vanilla lava slipping down my throat.

I want a choco-taco

Here and now

On the hot desert concrete

By the pool

Right

Before

Dinner!

Mom says she's got ice cream at home in the freezer

So we're not going to buy it here.

But I like the ice cream at the pool better.

Swimming in Lane 2, Odin

On Friday I had the happy experience of finding and reading Neil Price's "The Archaeology of Sei∂r: Circumpolar Traditions in Viking Pre-Christian Religion," which I found while "surfing the net." (Many thanks to Dr. Price and to Brathair for making it available. The academically affiliated have no idea how much we ivory-tower refugees appreciate the access to papers and such that would otherwise be out of our reach.) The paper served, for me in any case, as an introduction to Dr. Price's work on shamanism as well as Viking age warfare. It pointed, at its conclusion, to the possible existence of a type of Viking-age battle magic that drew on both shamanic traditions from, presumably, the Sami and other northern neighbors, fused with the organized, larger-scale warfare of traditional Germanic societies.

On Saturday I was treated to my children's first swim meet of the season. Perhaps it was the unrelenting sun beating down on my head, but I found that the various "battle rituals" associated with the meet provided me a different point of access to Dr. Price's paper.

Dr. Price, and other eminent researchers, please don't be insulted! Obviously, you have made it a life-long goal to gain greater specificity, deeper knowledge, and a more thorough understanding of your subjects, and perhaps the type of observation that I am making will offend in its tendency to generalize or trivialize...but hear me out!

There was an air of expectation, excitement, focus. The pool was clean, still; lanes marked, chairs rearranged, flags flying, victory signs mounted, concessions displayed. Warm-ups and last minute strategies were completed. Then the chanting commenced. The swimsuit- and swimcap-clad, goggle-eyed figures looked elemental, dancing and splashing in the fractured, glittering water, lit by the sun. There were innumerable cheers. They began softly, grew in volume and pitch and ended in hooting and body percussion. Then the teams retired to the secrecy and darkness of the locker rooms, where veterans taught the novices some new cheers. Soon the swimmers emerged covered with geometric war paint and the team names inscribed on backs and chests. More huddling, chanting, and finally the boys with letters on their chests dove off the board, one by one, spelling the name of the team.

True, there was no magic or shamanism in evidence. But my children did perform feats that I hadn't thought possible. And a non-military person like myself, who, I must also admit, has never been on a sports team, gained perhaps a little bit of insight into a culture of long ago and far away.

A Tale of Two Parties

I recently read E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News. Set in an economically depressed Newfoundland town that’s kind of creepy as well as quirky, it was a lot of fun to read. Like a gallery of pencil sketches, bristling with odd details, that you are free to color in yourself.

One memorable scene is the farewell party for Nutbeem, a British expat who’s spent over a year outfitting a boat with which to make his escape. In Proulx’s words, the party ends up having “more in common with a parking-lot fight behind a waterfront bar than a jolly good-bye to Nutbeem.” When I finished reading the scene I immediately thought of the party for Doc in John Steinbeck’s classic Cannery Row. And then I thought of both of them in light of the posts on drinking I’ve done on this blog. (On the mythical origins of drinking and toasting and On the not-so-mythical outcomes of drinking and toasting.)

Both Proulx and Steinbeck seem to emphasize the ritual aspect of these parties. Each has a specific raison d’être that has been collectively agreed upon: the one is to bid farewell to Nutbeem; the other is to repay Doc for earlier events gone sour. Both authors describe the individual and collective preparatory action: securing valuables (including dependent children); hoarding supplies (especially drink, but also food); bathing (in the case of the flophouse bums on Cannery Row); and music selection. Steinbeck’s party is more structured, but both include drinking to excess, music, food, verbal pursuits (i.e. poetry or storytelling), and, notably, both parties come to a climax that includes fighting and destruction of property.

What is interesting to me is that the trajectories of these two parties are, as described by the authors, inevitable and even inherent. Both authors emphasize the organic, fluid nature of the party as a collective creation. That alcohol is the number one necessity is clear, and that its “inspirational” qualities allow the impulses behind the parties to be realized is implied. In Cannery Row, the activities that take place at the party reestablish the normal order and good-feeling of the neighborhood. In The Shipping News, the party and its culmination in the deliberate and wanton destruction of Nutbeem’s boat reveal the anger, envy, resentment and frustration of the men of Killick-Claw, who are trapped into either staying in this poor little town or leaving it. Both parties, ultimately, are expressions of the natural order and condition of the participants.

The aftermaths of the parties are also similar, in that both honorees (Nutbeem and Doc) seem fully accepting of the destruction. There is no anger, perhaps because there was no malice intended. Especially in the case of Nutbeem, it’s almost as if the outcome is preordained and as such, he takes it as a positive:

“I wouldn’t have made it anyway,” he said. “Storm coming. Gale warnings, sleet, snow, followed by deep cold, the whole string of knots. By Tuesday there’ll be fast ice. I wouldn’t have made it.”

Although, in fact, Nutbeem does leave Killick-Claw, by air if not by sea, it hardly matters, because the collective has spoken. Regarding ritual, Durkheim says, “men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its normal physiognomy…” I think it’s fascinating the way these parties do just that, in highly dramatic fashion.

Are there any other good party scenes out there?

Melted Ice and Withered Blossoms

Spring in Washington doesn’t just bring pretty pink cherry trees this year. It also brings cool, Swedish ICE to the waterfront in Georgetown.

That's how the House of Sweden (see photo) introduces its theme for the spring: Water and Environment. Sweden officially lists climate issues as a top priority and this exhibit and related programs offer education about and different views of the climate crisis.

The mention of the “pretty pink cherry trees” refers to April’s cherry blossom festival, centered around cherry trees given to the U.S. by Japan in 1912 and planted around the tidal basin on the National Mall.

The Japanese love of the cherry blossoms is due, in part, to their transience, symbolizing the transience of beauty, youth and life. Here in Washington, the “peak days” for the blossoms around the tidal basin are eagerly awaited and announced with due fanfare by the National Park Service. Tourists, joggers, bikers, and workers on their lunch breaks or playing hooky circle the tidal basin en masse, admiring the knobby, silver trunks and clouds of pale pink blossoms.

It’s quite something, really, for a city seemingly so immune to natural beauty, to celebrate a few blooming trees in this way. It’s the only “rite of spring” that we collectively have.

Yesterday I was in Georgetown and walked down to Sweden House, the new home of the Swedish Embassy, where earlier in the month they had arranged monumental sculptures made of Swedish ice around their sundial on the waterfront terrace. I figured the blocks of ice would have long melted away, but thanks to an unusually cool spring, they were still there and still quite large. The hot sun was at work, though, speeding up those molecules to the point at which gravity could pull them into the tanks below with the dripping sound of spring.

One tends to associate ice with coldness, hardness, barrenness and blankness. But in Norse mythology ice plays an important part in the creation of the world. Indeed Ymir, the first living being, is “born” through the contact of fire and ice. The outdoor exhibit at the House of Sweden certainly highlighted the creative potential of ice. Even after the forms of the scultures were melted beyond recognition, the ice was not at all blank or barren, it was patterned with interior cracks and bubbles, different colors, and, on the surface, different textures for touching. Illuminated by sunshine, it was more beautiful, and certainly more evocative, than any stained glass I’ve ever seen.

For us earthlings at this point in time, the life-giving, life-sustaining nature of ice has become apparent and even urgent. If the endangered polar ice is melted away, the predictable cycle that brings us the cherry blossoms, among other things, will be disrupted. And we will, belatedly, truly understand the meaning of transience.

Click on the images to enlarge.

Read my earlier piece on Climate Change in the North.

Just how bad were those Vikings? I mean, relatively speaking...

I recently had a familiar conversation. A friend had been reading Egil’s Saga and commented on all the (apparently) wanton destruction and killing that takes place. And I found myself, as always, trying to defend these old buddies of mine. Trying to explain how they really weren’t all that bad.

But how bad were they really?

I don’t subscribe to a black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us view of things. The way I see it, there’s one world, with good and bad all mixed up in it and in us. If you put Egil’s behavior into the cultural context, of course, it looks pretty normal and it brought him success. You could see it as an example of a Darwinian struggle to pass on one’s genetic code. You could see Viking behavior in general as a cultural evolutionary strategy.

But that’s not good enough for me. I just love these guys (and girls) and I hate to see them put down. I can list their accomplishments. Egil’s poetry, for one. Evidence of other literature (albeit oral) and legal codes. Ship design and navigation. Architecture, runestones, metalwork, wood carving, agriculture and animal husbandry, trade, and—don’t laugh!—foreign relations and statecraft.

Okay, I admit it, I have a strong interest in promoting a positive view of the Vikings, even if it means pointing out everyone else’s negatives!

So just what were the European non-Viking alpha males of that era up to? (I mean, when they weren’t at church.) Surely they couldn’t have been, uh, killing anyone?

Around the time of the first Viking attacks on England, we have the “rise of the Kingdom of Wessex, which overcame the Cornish Welsh and the southern dependencies of Mercia…enforced the submission of both Mercia and Northumbria.” Just how did they enforce the aforementioned submission? Did they make the Northumbrians wear women’s underwear?

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the Uí Néill and the Eóganachta were the primary adversaries, with the Laigin stuck in the middle, forced--upon pain of…uh…having their lunch money stolen--to accept the “overlordship” of one or the other. They had been fighting for centuries and when the Norse appeared on the scene they made no bones about using alliances with the newcomers to further their own agendas.

And then there was Charlemagne, whom people seem to love for reviving Roman “culture.” (I'm not sure whether gladitorial combat to the death was included in that.) He was operating around the same time as our friends from Wessex. Here’s how he’s described by one author: “…[Charlemagne] spent his long reign fighting continual aggressive wars…conquered the remaining fragment of Frisia and…Saxony…absorbed Bavaria…establish[ed] protectorates over the nearer Slavs…[in] conflict with the Avars, whose downfall he contrived with the aid of the Bulgars…annexed the Lombard kingdom…” And in his spare time he did needlepoint, skipped gaily through the forest, and hosted telethons to raise money for poor starving orphans…actually that last bit is true, and I understand it helped him get into heaven in spite of it all. (That and protecting Pope Leo III when he was assaulted by his enemies, who, by the way, were not Vikings.)

Have I made my point yet? Bear with me, I've got one more example.

I can't forget the Germans in the tenth century. Henry the Fowler collected tribute from the Danes, I believe. What he had to do to get that tribute, I can only imagine. Otto I “humbled or dethroned other dukes...spent [years] fighting in south Italy…suppress[ed] Bavarian revolt…attempted invasion of France…died…while organizing a campaign against the Saracens.”

“Excuse me, but I’d like to try out that throne now.”

“Oh, yes, Otto, please, do have a sit! And can I get you a nice mug of cold beer?”

Perhaps I’m being snide, but there are some important points to note here. Most obviously, these guys had literate public relations people at work from the very start, whereas the Vikings did not write their own stories. Even the modern vocabulary is telling: the Vikings plundered and pillaged, but the others “overcame,” “enforced submission,” “conquered,” “annexed,” “absorbed,” “humbled and dethroned,” etc. Anti-pagan bias historically played a big part, too.

Finally, the English, Irish, French and German leaders fit within a traditional, and in a sense, evolutionary, view of history that sees the creation of the nation-state as an end that justifies the means. Thanks to newer currents in historiography we can move away from that view now. The Vikings certainly used violence, but they were not alone, and they also had their creative, honorable sides. The more we discover about them, the more there is to admire.

References:

Hoffman, Ross J.S. and James J. Flynn. Medieval History With Questions and Answers. Littlefield, Adams and Co. 1965. (Okay, so this one’s a little old, but this is the stuff we were given when I was in school.)

McEvedy, Colin. The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History. Penguin Books. (And would you believe it? I can’t find a date on this thing! I promise it’s not from the dark ages, like that other one. The ISBN is 0140512497.)

Moody, T.W. and F.X. Martin. The Course of Irish History. Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1994.