I have written two entries about the popular image of the Stone Age before on this blog, but based on a discussion in the chat of the ethnology class I am taking this semester earlier today I felt a need to write another one.
The popular image of the time period known as the Stone Age was created through colonial interactions with non-Western cultures in the Americas, Africa and Oceania. Like I wrote in the first Savage Stone Age post, this means that the popular image of this time period more than any others tends to bring out Western ethnocentric and evolutionistic contemporary biases both of the past and the present based in an imperialistic worldview. Indigenous groups were seen as the last remains of the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies, making the distant present become the distant past. This means that there are more to the term "Stone Age" than just being descriptive of a time period. It comes with a set of values and is often used both degradingly and evolutionistic.
Stone Age fishing-hook, Skåne, Sweden
The popular picture of today has not really changed so much either. We still think about a less complex society populated by uncivilised beasts that could not speak, lived in caves and hit each other over the head a lot. And of course their lives was different from ours as I talked about in my second Savage Stone Age post. Their society was complex just like ours today are. However, because there are so very little material left from the time period and most of what we do have are artefacts made out of stone. We know next to nothing about their family constellations, their sexuality or their other relations and it is not so easy to use contemporary societies for comparisons and analogies. There is really no reason to think that the same livelihood means that anything else is the same.
Funnelbeaker pot
Comparisons and analogies between a society in the distant past and in the present degrade the latter society because they deny them a past just as adventurous and complex as our own. They also degrade the contemporary societies by implying that they are static and cannot change themselves but need a "more evolved" culture (like the Western one!) to help them. It acts hierarchically, putting the Western society higher than non-industrialised ones. And last but not least, it also puts the industrialised Western society as the norm for what a real society looks like and strive for.
Battle axe
This does not mean that you cannot use the present for analogies and comparisons however. In fact you can certainly find similarities between societies of today and societies in the past. We are, after all the same spieces and basic needs like food, sleep, love etc. is still ever present in our lives. However, we need to be aware of how we are doing it, because we are stuck with a racist evolutionistic and imperialistic past that can seriously hurt non-Western societies even though it is not intended.
So, today is known as the Lucia day in Sweden. Of course I could tell you how we celebrate it, but that is much better explained in this video
Every year on social media, this tradition is said to be under threat. From what is often quite unclear, but it has been a decline in interest for public Lucia competitions and I have a theory as to why. But first I feel a need to talk about the history of the tradition.
"Sankta Lucia. Ljusklara hägring. Sprid i vår vinternatt, glans av din fägring "(Saint Lucia, Bright mirage. Spread in our winter's night, gloss of your beauty.)
~ Sankta Lucia
Lucia is a variation of the Latin word Lux which means light and in the Julian calendar, 13th of December was the winter solstice and therefore the night was the longest one of the year. According to folklore, a lot of bad spirits were roaming around during this night and legend tells of a demon-like woman called Lussi or Lussekärringen (in the province Västergötland the legend instead speaks of man called Lussegubben though)who came riding together with her followers called lussiferda. It was also a night when the animals started to talk.
Everyone can be a lucia!
Lucia is a Sicilian saint in the Roman-Catholic church who lived in Syracuse during the 4th century AD. However, the Swedish Lucia celebration (which today has spread to the Finno-Swedish population of Finland, Norway and Denmark) has little to do with her. The celebration is actually a mix of both Christian and Pagan traditions. Lucia marked the beginning of the christmas celebrations and in the past it was thought that the preparations needed to be finished by then. Swedes celebrated this by eating and drinking a little extra. The 13th of December was also the day when Swedes slaughtered the so called christmas pig to make the ham which is one of the major dishes in the Swedish christmas dinner. The christmas pig is thought of as to symbolise the pig Särimner from Norse mythology. Särimner is the pig who gets slaughtered every evening in Odin's hall Valhalla, but resurrects every morning just to get slaughtered (and eaten) again by the dead warriors.
The modern Lucia celebration is thought to have its origin in Western Sweden (in the regions kring the lake Vänern in the provinces Dalsland, Bohuslän, Västergötland and Värmland). From there, male students (since there were no female ones at that time) spread it to Uppsala and Lund where they went to university in the late 18th and early 19th century. There they held Lucia performances for their professors. Yes, traditionally it has been common with a male Lucia!
Lussekatter
Saffron buns called lussekatter (translated directly it is "lusse cats") are served during Lucia. This is a German tradition dating back to the 17th century where a legend said that the devil (sometimes refered to as Lucifer) went around as a cat spanking children. At the same time, Jesus went around offering buns to the children. They were stuffed with saffron to ward off the devil from the light colour.
"Staffan var en stalledräng. Vi tackom nu så gärna. Han vattna' sina fålar fem. Allt för den ljusa stjärna. Ingen dager synes än. Stjärnorna på himmelen de blänka."(Staffan was a stable boy. We gladly thank how now. He watered his five horses. Everything for the bright star. No day can yet be seen. The stars in the sky they glitter.)
~ Sankta Lucia
Stjärngossar
Except for Lucia, there are a, traditionally male, character in the Lucia celebration called stjärngosse (star boy). The tradition with this character is actually related to dramatized versions of the birth of Jesus during Twelth Night when the Three Wise Men reach the stable where Jesus is supposed to have been born. Since Twelth Night has losts its importance in Sweden, we have somehow chosen to put stjärngossarna into the Lucia celebration instead. Unfortunatelly, I have not been able to find any answer to the question why this change occured or why they sing the Medieval ballad about king Herod's stable boy Stefanus: Staffan var en stalledräng, but I guess it is just one of those things that happened when traditions adapts to a new reality.
I think it is very important that we actually study from where traditions like the Lucia celebrations come and even more to see how it has changed over time. I have talked about my view on culture as always ongoing negotiatons of sociability before in my entries about the Samish hat adorned with Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and chess. Considering all the memes and discussion there is every christmas about the "threatened" Lucia tradition I think Lucia is actually a great illustration for this. The Lucia celebration will change with time. That thing is clear! Every tradition does and it is totally natural. The celebration still has social value though. It is still extremely popular in schools and work places and such all over Sweden. There has been a decline in "official" Lucia competitions however, but I would not say that this has anything to do with Lucia celebration itself. Instead I think it has to do with the similarities between Lucia competitions and beauty pageants. The latter seems to have lost its social value in Sweden in later years which I think actually is something that we should be happy about.
Lucia celebration, the cat version
Picture of the lussekatter was borrowed from here.
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...
