Armadillo and the Viking spirit: military names and national myths in transnational military interventions

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecent studies have shown that names of military bases, equipment, operations, sites, units, and weaponry have played a key role in the demonstration of power, the legitimization of war, and the formation of cohesion in the ranks. This paper argues that such naming practices form part of a broader process of the construction of meaning, or what Hans Blumenberg has termed the ‘work on myth’, since names function as principal devices for creating, reproducing, and transforming cultural narratives. Based on a case study of the Danish experience as part of Task Force Helmand in Afghanistan, the paper elucidates how the army’s names have brought stories of national origin, heroic greatness, and warrior ancestry into the banal space of life abroad, where a mythscape has grown and changed in response to the situation on the ground and changes in the wider figuration of the Afghan War. On this basis, the paper stresses the importance of nationally orientated and highly emotional myths in transnational military interventions, and calls for other researchers to look into the elusive and largely ignored cultural factor of warfare.