I felt that the time had come for some anthropologist to introduce the rugged ancestors of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants into the company of our "underdeveloped" or "developing" peoples. I also wanted to check an arresting assertion made by Professor Toynbee (1934-39, II: 98-100, —427-33) that the embryonic Viking civilization had exhibited a precocious rationalism and a remarkable freedom from superstition. If the Northmen of the ninth and tenth centuries were as rationalistic and unsuperstitious as asserted, this, I thought, should be called to the attention not only of anthropologists and students of comparative religion but also of the followers of Max Weber, since, after recognizing that Western civilization was uniquely hostile to magic and traditionalism, that scholar had then traced the origin of this hostility to the rational ideology of the Hebrew prophets. Finally, I may justify my unusual choice of anthropological subject matter by confessing that the Old Scandinavians, with their preference for action even in the face of certain disaster, provided me with a refreshing change from the atmosphere of college faculty meetings.
It occurred to me that most of these Old Icelandic and Old Scandinavian materials fell squarely into an area of investigation to which anthropologists and sociologists have been selectively inattentive. Anthropologists, at least the greater number, have studied the most primitive peoples they could find and sociologists the most civilized. If the former studied change, they tended to define it as an aberration from a primitive ideal; if the latter studied change they tended to look for the causes or factors that kept peoples from reaching the ideal of urbanization. Durkheim and Redfield, each in his own way, may have tried to bridge this gap, but each did so by concentration on a definition of the actual or ideal extremes. With such notable exceptions as W. I. Thomas, nobody has tried very hard to study and understand the people who are struggling in the middle—on their own terms —and not as deteriorating primitives or incomplete urbanites.
Having come this far in my observations, I decided to learn to read the Old Icelandic and the modern Scandinavian languages and see what an exploratory study of the "gap" would reveal. At the beginning of my exploration, I had many good intentions. I hoped to throw some light on the process that Redfield called the transormation of the primitive world. I also hoped to discover and describe how the people of the late Viking age (850 to 1000) and the Icelancers of later centuries (1150-1300) looked at the world and at themselves. I intended to find out what lay behind Toynbee's impression that these people had developed "a fascinating and puzzling combination of self-confidence and pessimism, a precocious clarity and rationalism," a tremendous curiosity about the real world as opposed to the world of the spirit, and a remarkable freedom from superstition and tradition." I further intended to check a strong personal hunch that some of the notions or conceptions that underlie western science—notions about the nature of matter and "scientific" evidence, the importance of the external world and of brute fact, the belief in self-determination—are rooted in the indigenous Weltanschauung of the northern Europeans and are not to be derived entirely from the gifted and long civilized peoples of the Mediterranean regions. If I had any basic premise it was the unprovable but reasonable assumption that a people cannot say or write anything without revealing a part of themselves and a part of their conception of what the world is, was, or ought to be. I did not, of course, expect that my explorations would give me a complete picture of a ninth or a twelfth century world view or Weltanschauung. But I did expect that if I studied the literature carefully, it would impress me with whatever notions, ideas, or conceptions its creators thought important.
I worked away with more enthusiasm than prudence for several years, and among other things I learned that one of the hardships of entering an unexplored area is that no journal publisher knows what to do with your material. Anthropologists think an article on the Vikings belongs to Scandinavian Studies, and experts in the Scandinavian area think an article upon the Viking world view restates in strange dress what they have already perceived. Finally, in 1959 my husband suggested that we join forces in a comparative study of the ancient Hebrews and the Scandinavians—our object being to see what we could learn about the process of change from traditionalism to what Weber called rationalism. This study resulted in our—by now, somewhat notorious—sequence of attacks on certain of the classic and currently popular anthropological definitions of magic, religion, and science (Wax and Wax, 1962, 1963, 1964) and developed in us a high regard for the works of de Angulo, Freuchen, Evans-Pritchard, Gluckman, Lee, Tempels, Carpenter, and others.
But our attempt to set the stage for a theory that, at the least, would be rudely related to the data bearing on the process of transition, did not get my materials on the Northmen either polished or published, and when, in 1963, a research foundation refused us a grant on the grounds that we would probably do the work anyway (which they may have meant as not uncomplimentary), I became exasperated. If I am to work only for the sheer fun of it, I might as well go fishing. But like other and more noted personages, I was not to be allowed to escape my fate. At an annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association I ran into an editor who asked me reproachfully when I was planning to finish my monograph on the Vikings. I, as sometimes happens at these conventions, had been ignoring the wise precept of the Hávamál which states, "Over beer the bird of forgetfulness broods," and as a result of the forgetfulness I forthwith gave my word that I would finish the job. When the Wenner-Gren Foundation gave me the grant for which I asked, I had no recourse but to do the best I could.
I have not been pedantically "scientific" in this study, mostly because I did not want to deform the phenomena I hope to understand. Perceiving an alien or different world view is very like learning the themes and patterns of alien musical compositions. If, for example, I suggest that the opening chorus of Bach's "Saint Matthew Passion" is based on a particular chorale, the most efficient way to check my statement is to listen to both compositions. Similarly, if the reader wants to check any notion I attribute to the Old Scandinavian literature, the best way for him to find out how wrong I have been is himself to read that literature. I know that this present monograph has ignored important areas and has missed the mark in others. On the other hand, the reader may take some comfort in the fact that I make no important factual assertion about the Old Scandinavian views that has not previously been made by some expert. All I have done is to study the literature, distill something of its views of the world, and suggest some sequences of development from the most enchanted to the thoroughly disenchanted views.
When I feel most satisfied with this work I am tempted to call it Hungrvaka (Appetizer), after an early Icelandic attempt to interest people in the lives of the saints. Perhaps this monograph, incomplete as it is, will arouse an appetite for more investigations into the largely unexplored territory lying between the land of the Little Community and the rarefied regions of the Great Traditions. When I feel most dissatisfied, I remind myself that Thór once tried to drink the ocean and pull Miðarð-Worm from the earth. And though all present, including Thór, thought that he had failed utterly, his efforts did create the tides and jerk loose one of the great serpent's feet.
|
Last Modified 28 April 2000
Comments to Manny Olds, oldsma@pobox.com