People Over the Sea: Nordic and Scottish Perspectives
29 August - 1 September
Abstracts
Peter I. Crawford
People of the Sea and People of the Land. Visual Representation(s) of Two Neighbouring Communities in the Reef Islands
The Reef Islands are inhabited by the Pileni-speaking (Polynesian) people of Vaiakau, living on small coral atolls, and the Aiwoo-speaking (Papuan, Melanesian) people on the larger islands of the archipelago. Reef Islanders have traditionally relied on fishing in the lagoon, horticultural production of root crops, and the harvesting of breadfruit, coconut, pandanus, and betel nuts as their means of livelihood. A trade system, based on the use of the famous te puke trade canoes, contributed significantly to survival, especially on the small atolls. The system ensured a vital exchange of produce, goods and marriageable women between the islands and with the outside world.
Despite living as neighbours for centuries, and intermarriage being very common, the two ethnic groups remain distinct in several ways, a distinction acknowledged by both groups. This presentation will look into some of these ways, particularly those that seem directly related to the fact that people of Vaiakau are more directly related to the sea whilst the Aiwoo-speaking group of Ngasinue are mainly oriented towards the land. Focussing on visual representations, the presentation will explore various perceptions of sea and land, including the significance of both in e.g. kinship terminology and mythology, arguing that local conceptualisations of the relationship between nature and culture are closely related to differences in perceptions of seascapes and landscapes and they way people engage with them. The presentation will be accompanied, to the extent time permits, by the screening of film excerpts from the long-term Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Project.
Keywords: Pacific, Solomon Islands, Reef Islands, Melanesia, seascape, landscape, perception, visual representations, ethnographic film
Lauren Doughton
Walking on Water: Blurring the Boundaries Between Land and Sea in Prehistoric Shetland
From its Norse place names, through the Hanseatic traders and the vibrant herring fisheries to the North Sea oil boom, Shetland's history is inextricably bound up with the sea and the people who move about on it. Yet discussing the relationship between the islands' prehistoric inhabitants and the sea is much more problematic. Direct evidence for maritime activity during this period is scarce, and there has been much debate over the seeming rejection of marine resources during the Neolithic period.
Yet in a location like Shetland, where you are never more than three miles from the coast, it would seem to be folly to ignore the sea as a media for movement and social interaction during this period. The question then is how we come to understand and perceive this through a collection of seemingly terrestrial based sites and materials.
In this paper I intend to illustrate that in order to fully appreciate this relationship we first need to reassess the way we think about the sea, and in particular the way in which we conceptualise the boundary between land and sea. By examining the practises involved in the creation and use of these sites and materials I argue that it is not only possible to demonstrate that prehistoric Shetlanders were actively engaged with the sea, but that the sea was so deeply interwoven into their understanding of life that they were, in essence, walking on it.
Keywords: Prehistoric, Bronze Age, Neolithic, Burnt Mounds, Sea, Boundaries
Johanna Markkula
“Changing Course”: Navigating the Global Maritime Industry
Seafaring, as the main vehicle for trade, conquest and movement between societies, has in some sense always been global in nature. However, the maritime industry has also seen a number of recent changes that can arguably be conceptualized as globalizing.
Looking at recent developments in seafaring, one of the most significant changes has been the improvement of shipping technologies, which has considerably accelerated speed of transport. Maritime trade has also undergone an economic and political globalization, which has opened the faucets for the circulation of shipping's goods, capital and labour. Finally, commercial registers, popularly referred to as Flags of Convenience, have de-territorialized ships from their countries of ownership, enabling shipowners to avoid taxes, labour regulations and restrictions on crew nationality imposed on them by more traditional maritime nations. This has contributed to a globalization and flexibilization of seafaring labour, and to an increase of mixed nationality crews.
Based on anthropological research carried out onboard a Swedish flagged cargo-ship with Swedish-Filipino crew, this paper discusses the above-mentioned globalizing processes by paying particular attention to the often contradictory impact of these changes on the everyday lives of people working at sea. I argue that the accelerating mobility of goods has in fact decreased the mobility of the people involved in moving these very goods, turning seafarers into “prisoners of passage” (Foucault). Similarly, whereas borders have become increasingly porous for shipping's goods, capital and labour, for individual seafarers the borders have instead become increasingly “watertight”. Finally, while the flexibilization of seafaring labour has greatly benefited shipowners, for seafarers it has decreased employment security, undermining crew cohesion and crewmembers' sense of belonging onboard. “change of course”, I suggest, constitutes a significant alteration of the ways contemporary seafarers navigate their situation in the global maritime industry.
Keywords: Maritime Industry, Seafarers, Globalization, Unequal Mobilities
Silke Reeploeg
Of Boats and Men: Flows of Objects, Narratives and Memory in Shetland and Western Norway
With a maritime history that stretches back to pre-history, the cultural heritage of Scotland's islands has always been connected to a dynamic perspective that sees the sea as an opportunity rather than a barrier, a chance for communication and development rather than defence and insularity. This year Scotland's “Year of Islands Cultures” has been celebrating the “diversity of culture special to each island group” – an aim that has also inspired this research.This paper will explore seafaring and maritime social spaces between Scotland and the Nordic world as a significant factor in the construction of regional identity, by comparing the representation of seafaring and maritime history in local folk-museum exhibitions. Using the micro-historical approach of Alltagsgeschichte or historical anthropology, the paper will compare how Shetlanders and West Norwegians participate in the construction of 'kystkultur' or the coast as a 'seafaring place' via objects, narratives and aspects of communal memory.
What can maritime heritage collections tell us about the stories of past seafarers and coastal communities in Shetland and Western Norway, its past and present? What impact has maritime activity had on international links between the two places, both socially and culturally?
Keywords: regional identity, maritime heritage, north atlantic, narratives, cultural memory
Cristián Simonetti
Moving on Land and Underwater: Changing Mediums and the Imposition of Dimensional Space
In the last 60 years archaeology has been moving both on land and at sea in the attempt to understand the ways humans have inhabited different environments in the past. Particularly, maritime archaeology is carried out at the dynamic edge where these contrasting environments meet. Moving ‘in’ and ‘across’ them involves different skills and a dynamic understanding of their contrasting mediums. In most cases maritime archaeologists get involved in diving, which fully contrasts with the experience of walking. Like the inhabitants of the environments they attempt to understand, archaeologists end up appropriating these environments as they develop skills in them. However, in human underwater exploration there seem to be different forms of appropriation. The general tendency in maritime archaeology, like in other sciences where measurement of space is privileged, Euclidean dimensions seems to direct how scientists move. Ultimately, this influences how they understand their own ways of moving in the environment and the relationship other animals have developed with it. This paper present ethnographic work carried out with land and underwater archaeologists both in Chile and Scotland. It attempts to explore how archaeologists move at sea looking at how this might contrast with the movements of the discipline on land. The analysis will pay attention to other non-scientific forms of diving and walking. I will argue that in underwater archaeology there is a constant tension between the dimensional understanding of space and the experience of the environment as a dynamic field of forces.
Keywords: land, water, archaeology, walking, diving, movement, techniques of the body, space and place.
Bente Sundsvold
Eider Performances
Eider ducks (Somateria Mollissima) are one of the most common sea birds of the circumpolar north. Along the coasts of the North Atlantic there seem to exist different traditions of eider down harvesting, which implies different extents of domestication. What is mutual is that wild eiders seek human protection during the brooding season.
In certain parts of Norway the coastal people have prepared nests and shelters for the birds on their seasonal return. During the brooding season the settlements in the islets are turned into bird sanctuaries, where every human activity is adjusted to the eiders’ needs for peace and quiet. When the duckling are hatched, the eiders return to their wild state, the precious down is collected by the bird tenders and everyday life of the islanders turn back to normal.
Doing fieldwork in the islets during a brooding season is being as much an ethologist, as an ethnographer. In the presentation I want to look closer into the observational aspects of understanding what the birds are up to. How is it possible to identify one eider from the other? By its appearance, by character, by behaviour and performance, or by the paths it takes in the landscape?
The practice of eider down harvesting rests upon the axiom saying that a successful hatch makes the eider return to the same nesting ground next year, and also the ducklings when they are sexually mature. So, what kind of mnemonic energies are involved and how are these linked to navigation and ritual performances?
In the presentation I would like to link these questions to different theoretical approaches on performance. Both Goffman and Turner started out from ethology when they developed their dramaturgical metaphors for their theories (Goffman, 1976, Turner in Huxley,1966). The past decade theoretical approaches on performance and performativity have flourished, stressing constructivist or virtual dimensions. The virtual realities of new media have also strengthened these developments. Most things in this world seem invented, anything is possible, places are constructed, invented, fashioned for specific tastes and purposes. Are social scientists thus running errands for marketing industries, capitalistic growth, and for stronger emphasis on controlling mechanism in nature management? Could a re-look into these theories bring in new perspectives?
Keywords: Eider ducks, domestication, performance, ritual, memory, Northern Norway
Catherine Turnbull
Singing Around the North Atlantic Rim: the Voyage of Two Songs
This paper looks at the culture and traditions of songs, which travelled round the North Atlantic Rim, with Orkney at its epicentre. Traditional songs have a strong presence in Orkney to this day and there has been a recent resurgence of interest through the BOSP (Big Orkney Song Project) which was funded to collect, record and archive songs that have been sung in Orkney. Nearly a thousand songs with Orkney connections have been found. Many of the songs have clearly originated elsewhere or appear to have begun in Britain and travelled outward. Songs travelled with men to other places in the North Atlantic Rim as they were sung by sailors on merchant ships for trade, whaling and the Hudson’s Bay Company. To illustrate these points, this paper examines two songs which were recorded in Orkney for the School of Scottish Studies. Both have versions recorded from Britain, America and Canada. The first, Greenland Whale Fishery went from Britain and crossed the Atlantic west while the second, The Bride’s Lament, appears to have originated in New York and travelled to Orkney. There are variations with the travelling and with time.
This paper examines how songs travel and questions if they form part of a shared identity. It concludes; whatever their origins they are part of a collective Atlantic identity.
Keywords: North Atlantic; voyage; traditions; songs; cultural identity
Gro B. Ween
Stories from Tanafjord: An Elaboration on Forms of fluidity
In Tana Fjord, in sub-arctic Norway, fluidity as a term describes the mutual constitution of water, people and fish. In the fjord, water has always connected tiny places such as the Sami fishing village, Lavvonjarg, of twenty inhabitants, with the rest of the world. Water has always been an element enabling communication and exchange, the circulation of people and objects. Southern Norwegian Fishermen, European and Russian traders have been brought by the ocean in waves, since the 13th century. The resources that draws new people to the fjord changes with needs and events in far off places; dried cod to the continent, pollack to Russia, salmon to Britain, pemmican for voyagers and explorers, fish oil for lamps.
People in the Tana fjord experience water as an active and constantly changing element. It is a physical and audible presence. As is the case for many who live on coasts, people never assume that water or weather can be controlled, nor that there is a point to worrying about it. Water and what is in it, figures as an en essential element of people's lives and practices. The same fluidity moreover, characterises local knowledges, natures and subjectivities.
How could one describe the origins of this epistemological difference? It could be that the sensation of being in a place of flux does not inspire ambitions of control and domination. That the ongoing movement between locations that characterises coastal peoples' lives, regularly brings new and different perspectives of established connections. Maybe the ongoing experience of water, with all that it brings, ressonates with and brings comfort to an awareness of knowledge as in the making, as in flux and with room for discontinuities and contradictions.
Flux, contradictions and multiple agencies not only describes relations between man and elements, man and animal, but also relations between peoples. In the Tana Fjord, movements of people and things have always contributed to the constitution of people. Subjectivities are performative and situated. This paper asks if all this structure-defying resistance mimicks the ambiguities that characterises water as an element.
Keywords: Arctic, coastal Sami, knowledge practices, human-animal relations.
