A Sami hat and how it affected my view of culture

Photo by Elisabeth Eriksson, Nordiska museet

I have not posted in awhile due to a deadline of a grad school application on Monday (August 1st 2016). My PhD project involve Viking colonialism and therefore the concept of culture is at its center. It has a long tradition in archaeology and has from time to time been slightly misused, but more on that later, because first I want to tell you a little story.

The hat in the photo above is part of the Sami exhibition Sápmi at Nordiska museet (Nordic Museum) in Stockholm and it had a great influence on my view of cultural interactions. It is a traditional Samish hat intended to be borne by a little girl and it dates to the 1930's (or maybe 1940's, I do not remember the exact date the guide told us.). It is traditional in every way, but an older lady taking the same tour as myself seemed really surprised by the images from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) in the front. She claimed it was not Sami, but the tour guide informed her that the Sami people did not live in any kind of vacuum either in the 1930's or today. They are just as much a part of the modern world as anyone else and like we are influenced by other cultures, so are they.

I had been influenced by Postcolonial Theory before this incident, so I was used to the hybrid concept of culture that they talk about, but I think this was the time when I realised how to define the term and also how it probably is best to view it.

The concept of culture as we know it today is actually to a greater extent a product of European imperialism and the foundation of the nation state in the 19th century. The archaeologist Bruce G. Trigger has made a very good overview both on the origin and development of the concept in his book A History of Archaeological Thought (2nd edition 2006, Cambride) which I found to be fruitful both for archaeologists and others. With time it was combined with Charles Darwin's theories about evolution given the concept a biological foundation. The borders of a culture was also equalled to the borders of a Nation State proclaiming its origin in a homogenous, biological entity (or a race). The biological evolution shown by Darwin was also used as model for cultural evolution and they were classified in a hierarchical structure from simple to complex (Of course with Western cultures on top!). (In a post from about a month ago I discussed how this imperialistic perspective also has shaped our view of the Stone Age.) This "biological" definition of culture has really had some terrible consequences throughout the last 200 years and I think it is about time that we talked about this issue.

What most people do not know is that Sweden was actually sort of "the inventor" of Scientific Racism as a academic discipline. The first institute in the world was opened in Uppsala in 1922 and was then spread across the world, not least to Nazi-Germany. So it has had really terrible consequences indeed...

Back to the Sami children's hat from the photo above. It is one of those artefacts that really can show us how cultures interact. It is made according to Sami tradition, but its use of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs makes it unique because it shows how traditions changes in the meeting with influences from some place else. Snow White was a popular children's movie when it first came out in 1937 just as any Disney film of today is. Therefore it should not be so surprising that even a Sami girl has seen it and probably liked it (Why would the maker otherwise include it in the hat?). To me it shows that cultures is much better seen as entirely social. I think it is ongoing negotiations of what works socially in different settings. Anything that carries a social value will be picked up and only the phenomena that looses their social value will disappear. It gives us a much more flexible and open-minded view of cultures which hopefully will not cause any trouble for anyone in the future.

And on that note: To me the biggest problem with Snow White on the Sami hat is that Snow White seems to be much smaller than the dwarfs...


Photo from http://digitaltmuseum.se/011023761482?query=m%C3%B6ssa%20samisk&pos=7