Abstract
A reviewer of Edward Jerningham’s The Rise and Progress of the Scandinavian Poetry: A Poem (1784) mocked the “Runic hobby-horse” of the author and those who shared his interest in the “incomprehensibly wild and uncouth” and “absurd and preposterous fictions” in Scandinavian mythology. They conceded that some Scandinavian myths exhibited “a rude magnificence, a kind of savage sublimity, bespeaking a wonderful boldness of conception; at which, perhaps a chastised and cultivated imagination never could have arrived.” They also noted contemporary polarization of opinions on Scandinavian mythology as either “illustrative of the character and mansions of the northern nations, or merely as objects of enquiry to the archaeologist.”3 This lies in contrast with John Pinkerton’s reference to the northern countries as “the most important of all to the history of Europe.”4 The idea that culture emanated from the north was expressed in such literary works as Robert Colville’s “On the Winter Solstice” (1765),5 and by the early nineteenth century, direction was sought from northern literary traditions for the formation of a “national” British literature. This chapter considers these conceptions of the north through the prism of debates on the origins of peoples and cultures, and contemporary notions of northern peoples and cultures as representative of a lost English past. The first half of the chapter outlines the social contexts of knowledge on Northern Europe, and the second considers the influence of environmental thought on perceptions of Northern European cultures.
On the third day after we left the shores of Britain, the rocks of Norway appeared… I renewed my acquaintance with every hill and mountain, and hailed the ancient domains of our conquerors.1
[Iceland] is to-day a living Pompeii where the northmen races can read their past.2
Quoted from S. Hibbert (1822) A Description of the Shetland Islands, Comprising an Account of their Geology, Scenery, Antiquities, and Superstitions (Edinburgh: A. Constable and Co.), p. 400, referring to the island of Unst.
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Notes
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© 2013 Angela Byrne
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Byrne, A. (2013). An “Aboriginal District of Britain”:* The European North, Traditional Cultures, and the Search for Common Roots. In: Geographies of the Romantic North. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137311320_3
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