Abstract
This article considers external images of Iceland and Greenland from the latter part of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century in terms of their perceived ‘otherness’ during that period. The main methodologies used are approaches derived from imagology, or image studies, and postcolonial studies. The principal sources used are published writings by Western European authors, mostly from Britain and Germany. In essence, the most common discourse on Iceland and Greenland during the period in question reflects that of other marginal lands and territories most under Western European influence. While images of these two countries did have their own characteristics because of their ‘islandness’, they were distinguished first and foremost as being situated in the high north. We can call the qualities that were attributed to them borealism, a kind of orientalism or tropicality of the high north. One of the dominant themes in the otherness of these two northern islands is what might be called ‘primitive utopia’. The representation of Iceland and Greenland as paradise islands, even treasure islands, was also familiar. Negative and dystopian ideas were also common, in fact much more so for most of the period. By these accounts, the countries were described as uninhabitable because of the prevailing cold and wildness, and their crude barbarian inhabitants were depicted as being hardly distinguishable from animals. The same kind of dualism found in the narratives of the European Other in general was clearly an important factor in the process of the identity formation of these two islands.
Highlights
This article considers external images of Iceland and Greenland from the latter part of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century in terms of their perceived ‘otherness’ during that period
Let us examine a text by Gideon Pierreville from the late seventeenth century to explain better what kind of ideas could be expressed about these remote areas and the people who lived there, in this case the Icelanders: The modern Natives for the most part are plain and simple, living on what is given them by nature, without the help of Art; more than that of making Cheese and Butter: the Mountains serving them for Towns, and the Rivers for Drink, and they quarter with their Horses and their Oxen under one and the same roof. As they do not stand in need of either Physick or Physitians, so neither do they use any, their temperance in meat and drink, and the naturally strong constitution of their Bodies enabling many of them to attain to the age of 150 years, and more, Nay, Olaus Magnus affirms they commonly live to the age of three hundred years...[26]. It is the primitive life in Iceland that is praised, and this simplicity is taken as the explanation for a high quality of life, unbelievable old age, good health, and even beauty: ‘The women are exceeding faire, but they do not know how to attire themselves’, Peter Heylyn stated in the mid-seventeenth century
The tradition of how one should describe Iceland and Greenland in the late seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century was full of disparities, so contradictory that many texts appear to be strangely amalgamated fusions of utopias and dystopias
Summary
Icelanders have grown accustomed to the discussion of their country and nation usually being positive, even extremely so: the landscape sublime and the people exceptional, though maybe with the exception of some bankers after the financial crisis in 2008. The ‘best’ zones were the temperate zones, but in the hottest and coldest zones, cultural life could hardly exist.[24] So the coldest and the hottest zones were similar in many aspects, and in both zones people lived in caves or holes because of the extreme cold or heat These ideas on the high north and the extreme south appear clearly in the eighteenth century, for example in the poem ‘The Nature of Man’ (1711) by the English poet and physician Sir Richard Blackmore. It is the primitive life in Iceland that is praised, and this simplicity is taken as the explanation for a high quality of life, unbelievable old age, good health, and even beauty: ‘The women are exceeding faire, but they do not know how to attire themselves’, Peter Heylyn stated in the mid-seventeenth century This text and similar narratives commended the modest lives of unspoiled people in distant lands who even shared their homes with their livestock. The simplicity of the Icelanders and Greenlanders was a testament to a way of life that the rich and civilized Europeans could learn from
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