PHOTOGRAPHIC CONQUEST
by Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson
Published in:
Linde-Laursen, A. and J.O. Nilsson (eds.)
(1995) NORDIC LANDSCOPES. Nord: Copenhagen.
It was also published in a danish version:
Linde-Laursen, A. and J.O. Nilsson (red.)
(1994) Möjligheternas landskap: Nordiska kulturanalyser. Nord: Copenhagen.
The myth of the objectivity of the photograph is alive and well, the myth that an individual, unique moment is captured by the photographer on his film - independent of any political or cultural context. This view is fundamentally wrong. Photographs have no meaning outside their social context. It is therefore mistaken to claim that photographs do not represent specific ideologies. Even "innocent" landscape photographs are an expression of a practice anchored in specific ideological circumstances. [1]
In Iceland there is a long tradition of photography, but it has not been particularly well researched. We therefore know virtually nothing about how Icelandic photographers perceived the landscape before the Second World War. On the other hand, we do know of numerous foreign tourists who took photographs before this. Some came to Iceland solely to take pictures of the Icelandic landscape. The first photograph we know of an Icelandic natural phenomenon was taken by a foreign tourist in 1856. [2] In the last decade, however, Icelandic landscape photographers have really woken up, and this has rapidly resulted in the idea of Iceland being a sort of world centre for landscape photography. [3]
The production of pictorial landscapes has deep roots in the history of European ideas [4] and has been well represented in the widespread national debate in Iceland ever since the first decades of the eighteenth century, when landscape was hailed in poetry and prose as an element in the struggle for independence.
In this article I shall discuss Icelandic landscape photographs and their relation to Icelandic national identity. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the so called freedom-fighters regarded their actions as a national revival among Icelanders, a reclamation of their forefathers' conquest - the first settlement or landnám of the country. I argue that today's landscape photography and exhibitions of landscape photographs in Iceland and abroad can be regarded from exactly the same perspective.
In the nineteenth century the Icelanders struggled to free themselves from the Danish yoke and win a self-governing country for themselves. At the same time, they worked to consolidate the Icelandic national identity, which was thought to be lying dormant in the population ever since the days of the settlement. Today, fifty years after the foundation of the republic and the re-establishment of independence, the national debate is still about the same values as before. Now the struggle for political independence is not waged primarily against the Danes, but against "globalization" represented, for instance, by the flow of tourists and by satellite television. In the past the Icelanders were not the sovereign masters of their own territory and therefore strove to reclaim it; they achieved complete success in 1944. Fifty years later, the policy of reclamation continues, aiming as before to consolidate an awareness of the Icelandic nation. [5]
Benedict Anderson has argued that nationalism and national consciousness are historical products. This consciousness is not based on anything natural or any distintive character, as nationalists claim. Clifford Geertz has distinguished two kinds of forces that are in opposition in all debates about nationality in former colonies: on one hand there is "essentialism" and on the other hand what he calls "epochalism". The first concept comprises the narrow debate about cultural "roots" or "traditions", in addition to which there is "national character". Epochalism, on the other hand, points towards the broader contexts of which the nation is a part, and it is expressed primarily in debates about the politics and the position that the nation has chosen to adopt and pursue. [6] In a political sens, the former concept is reactionary, the latter progressive. As in all other nations, Icelanders also have differing attitudes to these questions. On one hand there is an emphasis on the indissoluble bond that ties the Icelanders to their land(scape), as if the Icelanders were a pure, unspoiled product of this and of the forces of nature which have shaped it. On the other hand is the historical - and also the official - attitude to the nationality, which says the land(scape) was entrusted to the Norse settlers in the ninth century. These two views are always competing and attacking each other.
The Icelanders' consciousness of themselves as a distinct nation can be traced back to the start of the nineteenth century, to Icelandic students and academics in Denmark, which was strongly influenced by the political climate that followed the French Revolution in 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830, and by the general romantic currents in Europe at the time. These currents were one source of the idea that nations exist and that they have a right to their own country. J. G. Herder's theories were central to this debate. Herder saw a close association between nature and culture; whithout nature, mankind would be nothing. Nations - their language, culture, and history - were determined by the nature that surrounded them. Nature in each country or each province was therefore decisive for the distinctive features and the destinies of individuals and nations. [7] These ideas agreed well with the romantic notions of man and nature, and nationalism and romanticism therefore went hand in hand. Romanticism emphasized heroworship, the adoration of the past and the distant, of nature and the people's relations to it. [8] As in so many other nations, in Iceland it was academics who - under the influence of the currents mentioned above - signalled the beginning of discussions about separation from the Danish colonial masters, finding inspiration for this in history; in the time when Iceland was a Free State. They began to look for the nature and distinctive character of the Icelandic people, and found that the landscape played a major role in this, assuming the status of a mother for the nation, in both literary and historical writings.
For contemporary social life, too, history and nature played a decisvie role, not least in the shape of the Icelandic sagas. In a personal letter written in 1837 by Jónas Hallgrímsson to Konrá> Gíslason, who were both leading figures in the struggle for independence, we find and interesting statement: "I have just finished reading Njál's Saga in preparation for the meeting of the Althing [Icelands General Assembly]." [9] According to fiórkatla Óskarsdóttir Helgason, formulations like this were general at this time, showing the importance of the glorious past in the political struggle of the Icelanders. Jónas Hallgrímsson, one of Iceland's foremost poets, writes in his works of the great significance of nature for the Icelandic nationality. His poem Iceland is reckoned his most important contribution to the political struggle for the Icelanders. [10] Apart from this historical legitimation, the independence struggle contained another component: the issue of economic improvement. Jón Sigur>sson, the hero of the struggle for Icelandic independence, wrote an article in 1843 about trade in Iceland in which he argued that the Icelanders had never been as prosperous as when they were independent. It was with this argument that Jón Sigur>sson demanded that the Danes should pay compensation for the property confiscated in preceding centuries. [11]
To make a long story short, it can be said that the two aspects of the argument for independence from Denmark are like oil and water. The first, "essentialism", basically seeks to stabilize the existence of the nation and the national consciousness, while "epochalism" questions this independent existence, since it points to the future and the value of seeking intercourse with other nations. Jón Sigur>sson and Jónas Hallgrímsson were in some respects representatives of these two opposing tendencies. An ordinance of King Christian Vlll in 1840 decreed that a suitable place should be found in Iceland to establish a consultative parliament for Icelandic affairs. Jónas and his supporters wanted this to be situated at Thingvellir, the site of the Althing in the days of the Free State, whereas Jón and his followers thought that it would be more sensible to locate it in Reykjavík, to strengthen the position of the town as the capital of Iceland. Jón Sigur>sson's view received most support. [12]
The landscape in a colony, whether portrayed in words or pictures, is first and foremost the image one wishes to see, the one with a political and ideological potential abroad. W. J. T. Mitchell has shown that this situation is not unambiguous. It also has a face that is directed inwards: colonies create an image of their own landscape which is primarily intended to appeal to the national consciousness. We can ask, with Mitchell, whether it is by chance that the landscape was one of the favourite subjects for painters and photographers in the nineteenth century, at the same time that European imperialism and nationalism were expanding. Michell claims that the nations that strove to acquire colonies have had a special view of landscapes which have supported them ideologically in their conquests; that every nation has had its specific pictures which have in reality been the dreams of the colonial masters, whith all the ambivalence that utopias contain. [13]
Mary Louise Pratt demonstrates a comparable vision in the writings of European travellers in Africa and South America from 1750 until the end of the nineteenth century. Descriptions of the landscape focus on the social and material privation - as seen with European eyes. [14] The idea that the colonies lacked things - whether these deficiencies were depicted as economic, social, or cultural - was part of the evolutionistic way of thinking that characterized the nineteenth century; it was simultaneously a legitimation of the imperialist seizure of territory. Today it is precisely these deficiencies that attract tourists. If one looks at visual representations of the colonies of the great powers, with their landscapes and populations, one sees that they are characterized by the same deficiencies. Edward Bruner has shown this in the texts of guidebooks, and the same applies to drawings, paintings, and photographs. Paul Breidenback has compared Victorian woodcuts from Africa with contemporary photographs in British guidebooks for safaris in Africa. He argues that alienation among Europeans in the nineteenth century and their quest for the past, for the original landscape, wild animals and "primitive" peoples, is an exact parallel to the alienation of modern man in a fragmented postmodern world. [15] Icelandic landscape pictures, consequently, "lack" Icelanders and traces of Icelandic culture.
Modern Icelanders' conceptions of the landscape [16] can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when romantic writers composed poems about the land, and the nation as an individual whole. Before that time, the beauty in the poets' descriptions of nature is more questionable. Helgason claims, for example, that nineteenth-century writers falsified the medieval view of nature. The fifteenth century Saga of Bishop Gu>mundr Arason, for example, certainly, does not describe an idyllic landscape. On the contrary, we see a terrifying picture of the environment and the forces concealed in it:
Greindr the servant of God was bishop of the land that books call Thule, but which the Norsemen call Iceland. It must indeed be said that this was the proper name for the island, since there is ice aplenty on both land and sea. On the sea there are sheets of drift ice which with their overwhelming size threaten to fill the oceans to the north, while over the high mountains on land there are nevermelting glaciers of such exceeding height and breadth that they must seem incredible to those who were born far away. These glaciers at times discharge powerful currents with extraordinary eddies and the foulest stench, so that the birds in the air die of it and men and other living creatures on land. Other mountains in theis country cast forth dreadful fire with the most terrible cascades of stones, so that the noise of the outburst can be heard all over the country. [17]
Pictures like these would not have agreed with the picture that romantic poets conveyed in the nineteenth century. If anyone then had expressed himself in this way, it would undoubtedly have been interpreted as a hostile attack on, or even a denial, of Icelandic nationality.
It has been argued that the tradition of pictorial art in Iceland has primarily served to satisfy the nostalgic needs of those who moved from the countryside to the town, rather than serving in the discourse about a specific nation. [18] This need not conflict with the hypothesis put forth here. Individuals are not only Icelanders but are also differentiated according to the part of Iceland they come from, the district or the farm. Within Reykjavík people are also classified according to which part of town they come from: the west, the east, Brei>holt, and so on. It was the town-dwellers who led the struggle for independence in the nineteenth century, people with an education or with experience of working in foreign cities, and not farmers living in the countryside. Everything suggests that the ties of the Icelandic nation to the land must have arisen from a distance from it. [19]
The Icelandic art museums have been criticized for their failure to buy any of these photographs for their artistic value. [20] This - justified - criticism is extremely important in this context. If we ignore the banal explanation that the museums did not have enough money to acquire the photographs, and instead focus on the role of photographers we see something interesting. Icelandic landscape photographs which are published in guidebooks for Icelanders and foreigners, on postcards and in Icelandic newspapers, generally appear with a caption that describes the locality from a historical or geological point of view. Only a minority of photographs is accompanied by an impressionistic description of the mood evoked by the picture, or by a literary quotation. Photography has been associated with realism, but it also has another aspect - an opposite side: photography as art. Here it is the angle of the individual artist that prevails, not that of society nor social consciousness as an anonymous subject. The cocktail that is mixed with Icelandic landscape photographs as an ingredient suggests that Icelanders in general regard the photographs and their text as the one true picture of the country: the photographs are neutral, showing us the extensive landscape. The fact that they are supported by scientific texts only increases their credibility. [21]
The Icelandic photographer Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson's book Íslandslag (Icelandscape) from 1992 is a good example of this, with its mixture of Sigurgeir's magnificent landscape photographs, the inspired ode to the native land written by the president of the republic, quotations from literature, as well as topographical and geological descriptions. Part of the book was written by a geologist, who provides geological and historical data in a postscript. [22]
This book is a typical, I suggest, in many ways of the Icelandic view of photography. Books like these are not furnished with texts which give pride of place to the pictures, in accordance with artistic demands. The pictures are parallel to the scholarly observation, which give the product an impression of objectivity, underlined by the scientific and historical data. Another aspect of the role Icelandic landscape photographs which is worth mentioning, and which corroborates this view, is their uncritical character, which is paralleled in Icelandic historiography well into the present century.[23] Instead of photographing what has gone awry in the interaction of man and landscape in Iceland, and thereby giving the pictures an explicit political twist, the focus is on "unspoiled" scenery. Yet Icelanders do have a great deal to deplore in their treatment of nature. There is much talk of the need to plant the country to prevent soil erosion, which is due in large part to the way sheep have been allowed to graze vulnerable belts of vegetation. Photographs of this kind of "spoiled nature", however, are not used in the debate about national identity, except when rescue actions are called for. These photographs are therefore only agruments in debates about environmental problems.
Landscape photographs are often accompanied by texts which refer to the historical role played during the age of the Free State by a fiord or a tract of land. It is remarkable that little thought is given in these texts to what might have happened since the Free State. There is no mention of geological changes or changes for the people who have lived in and farmed the land. The following text, for instance, could be read alongside a landscape photograph on the back page of the daily newspaper Morgunbla>i> on 5 September 1993:
Now autumn is coming on, the most beautiful season in the opinion of many. The picture shows the view from Vatnsskar> over the manor farm of Bólsta>arhlí> and the parish hall of Húnaver in Austur-Húnavatnss[[daggerdbl]]sla, and in the distance one can glimpse where the rivers Svartá and Blanda converge. The Svartá valley opens where the valleys of Blöndudalur and Langidalur meet. In older times it is said that the place was called Ævarsskar>, and in Lándnámabók [The Book of Settlements] we read that Ævar Ketilsson, who settled Langidalur, lived at Ævarsskar>.
In the foreground we see horses and sheep grazing, domestic animals that many people regard as the worst enemy of the Icelandic people, [24] although most Icelanders would prefer to put it somewhat more mildly. It is of course difficult to make any certain estimate of the transformations of the landscape that have occurred in the relatively short period that has elapsed since the settlement; geologists normally work with periods that are much longer than thousand years. It is all the more easy to say something about the possible transformations of the landscape as a result of the interaction of man and nature. We can determine where the fields have been flat and where they have not, where the course of roads has been changed, and where animals have gnawed the vegetation down to the roots and hastened the process of soil erosion. Landscape photographs which demonstrate such changes and are accompanied by critical subtexts are much more rare than pictures portraying the close harmony that is supposed to have prevailed ever since the age of the Free State. The quotation above is a typical example.
I have maintained elsewhere that the paradox of the landscape photographs is that the distance of the photographer from the motif is generally so large that the observer does not feel any contact with the landscape. [25] The pictures are often taken with lenses which exaggerate the distance of the background and the closeness of the foreground. On the other hand, landscape photographs are presented as very "close-up" observations of the landscape. Wide-angle views of Icelandic scenery underlines its timelessness. On one hand the photographs become representations of the slow shifts undergone by the landscape itself; on the other hand they depict a stability and integrity which Icelandic society is assumed to have had ever since the settlement. Looking at these photographs, one can easily imagine that sights like these greeted the first settlers, although this is more an illusion than a reality, since the Viking's eysight was no different from our own - the camera's wide-angle lens gives a different vision.
This form of landscape photography is highly noticeable, being almost the only kind found in books and newspapers, on calendars and chocolate boxes. It is scarcely possible to glimpse any objects in the pictures which have ever been in contact with a human hand. The observer is too far away for this. Perhaps we have here (on photographic paper) the very ideal conception of the settlers which the colonial masters in Europe undoubtedly had: a landscape that is uninhabited but nevertheless inhabited by the Icelanders who own it. Close-up photographs, on the other hand, show us quite a different picture of the landscape. We find the more familiar angles of everyday experience, with all its paradoxes and coincidences. It is noteworthy that these pictures are rare compared with the landscape photographs, while the Icelanders' struggle with nature is displayed in order to explain the origin of Icelandic culture. The same applies to photographs which show in one way or another the smallest elements of the landscape, such as a bubbling mini-crater in the lava or a moss-covered stone. The focus is on wholeness, not on details that correspond to everyday sense impressions.
The Tourist Council's campaign for 1993 is an excellent example of the combination of panoramic pictures and close-ups. I would argue that the link with the national consciousness is highly striking in these advertisements, as is seen in the photographs they display. The advertisements were constructed so that the top part showed the geographical borders of the country, enclosing a photograph. [26] The photographs depict such motifs as a child lying on a beach, a person riding an Icelandic horse in the sunset, and people bathing in a waterfall. The lower part of the advertisement consist of texts incorporating close-up pictures. The example reproduced below has the following text:
Test the Icelander in you. How long is it since you visited the spirit of the waterfall with the people who are near and dear to you? Give yourself the treat of renewing and increasing your knowledge of Icelandic nature - introduce the children to the trolls in the mountains, the fairies in the elfin fortresses, the beauty of the small flowers, life by the fiord and between the mountains. Catch fish, climb an ancient peak, defy the wind, discover your Icelandic nerves...Enjoy Icland - the Icelanders' travel paradise.
The photograph and the text are framed by key words referring to all the natural and supernatural things that a tourist can experience. In our example we find:
Babbling brooks. Sea-monsters. The smell of cave-dwellers. Bathing in the midnight sun. Elfin fortresses. The purling rivers. Petrified trolls. Birdsong. Saga trails. Silence. Tours on the beach. Water spirits. Riding out in the summer night. On the mountain peak. A coffee break on the lava. Catching shellfish. Bright nights.
We see how the Tourist Board's advertising campaign placed the emphasis on a renewed acqaintance with the magical creatures inhabiting the Icelandic landscape. The aim of "renewing" this acqaintance is to make the citizens into truer Icelanders: they are supposed to "discover their Icelandic nerves". Bruner has found similar features in tourist brochures from Africa, which emphasize the tourists' contact with Africa's "prehistoric" and "primitive" culture, which will "change their perspective forever". [27] Another parallel to Bruner's analysis is that society and culture of East Africa are presented as untouched and uninfluenced by the culture of the colonial lords, the nationalism of the indipendence struggle, the war waged for freedom, and - not the least of all - by the tourist industry. Although Iceland's struggle for independence was waged without the bloodshed that many African countries have witnessed, one might sometimes be led to believe that the country had never been a colony under first Norway, then Denmark. Instead of referring to this period in the depiction of Icelandic culture, we go back to the time before 1262, the year when Iceland submitted to the Norwegian crown, to find Icelandic culture to present. The text of the advertisement is in this respect parallel to the African tourist prochures. Note that reference is made to a "renewed acquaintance" with Icelandic nature, which consists of meeting supernatural beings such as trolls and fairies. It is also pointed out that the "Icelandic nerves" that Icelanders will discover on their travels around the country will give them the faculties of a troll, with all the possibilities that this involves. It is clear from the frame around the advertisement that Icelanders can use their genetically inherited ability to smell the mysterious cave-dwellers. "Icelandic nerves" are thus renewed primarily by contact with Icelandic nature and the Icelandic landscape and the fabulous creatures that are supposed to inhabit it. There is no mention at all that people are incorporated in a modern culture, as can be seen from the swimming gear they are wearing in the photograph.
I have described here some fundamental features in the debate about Icelandic nationality, as represented in and by landscape photographs, a "debate" that is of quite a different form from what we find in language - whether spoken or written. In the first phase of the struggle for independence at the start of the nineteenth century, the most important media were the language and the heritage of the sagas. I have pointed out some parallel aspects in the discourses of the two media, the written language on one hand, and photography on the other hand, both of which are part of official Icelandic cultural policy, the former long since institutionalized.
It is clear from Icelandic landscape photographs, both the angles and the motifs, that they arise from an ideology associated with an institutionalization. I am thinking of the tourist industry, which until a few years ago was controlled by the Icelandic state. One of the things that photographers themselves want, if we can believe Sigur>ur A. Magnússon's words about the limited opportunity of photographers to practice their art, is a liberation from this institutionalization of landscape photography in Iceland. [28] In this sense, Icelandic landscape photography must be said to have sold itself to the Icelandic nation's policy of land conquest, with the state as the prime mover. It is therefore understandable that landscape photography is not flourishing as an art form in Iceland today. Societal formation until the present day and the political ideology of the independence struggle regarding the use of the land needed and still needs all conceivable means to strengthen the national identity - to meet the demands of the future. Landscape photographs have played a central role in this.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Arnar Árnason, Hanna Ragnarsdóttir and Kristin Birgisdóttir for many useful viewpoints. Any errors or deficiences are of course my own.
4 photographs accompany this article.
TEXT WITH PHOTOGRAPHS:
1) Photograph by Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson. The picture comes from his book Íslandslag, the title of which is a composite word maing "Icelandscape". The texts in the book are by a geologist, who writes (p.150): "The north-east-facing ridge of tuff surged up from a volcanic eruption under the Ice Age glacier. The volcanic belt originated in the volcano at Torfajökull, and the southern edge of the enormous field of rhyolite extends over the middle of the picture. The mountains to the right are Kaldaklofsfjöll. Hrafntinnusker is in the centre and Jökultungur to the left. The road to the south behind the mountains goes east of Álftavatn, where the Icelandic Tourist Board has an overnight hut." In the preface, written by the President of Iceland, we read (p.9): "We feel at home, we remember that land from our own and other people's experience, but we never lose the amazement that the country provokes by letting us feel that we are witnesses every day to the creation of the world."
2) Photograph by Gu>mundur P. Ólafsson from his book Perlur í náttúru Íslands [Pearls of Icelandic Nature] (1990). Icelanders rarely see pictures like this, and the technique is unusal tool. Perishability is seen in the foreground, close-up, but is balanced by the way the photograph leads our gaze towards the vast expanses of eternety.
3) Photograph by Árni Sæberg, bublished on the back page of Iceland's biggest daily newspaper, Morgunbla>i>, along with a text full of historical references. Landscape photographs, wide-angle photographs, play a central role in the newspaper, along with political articles about national affairs.
4) This advertisement was made by the "Her and Now" advertising agency for the Tourist Board in 1993. It was intended to appeal to "Icelandic nerves". Wide-angle pictures and close-ups interact in an interesting way. The picture of the people bathing in the waterfall appears self-contradictory, since this kind of behaviour spoils nature and the countryside.
(Translated by Alan Croizer)
Published in:
Linde-Laursen, A. and J.O. Nilsson (eds.)
(1995) NORDIC LANDSCOPES. Nord: Copenhagen.
It was also published in a danish version:
Linde-Laursen, A. and J.O. Nilsson (red.)
(1994) Möjligheternas landskap: Nordiska kulturanalyser. Nord: Copenhagen.
The myth of the objectivity of the photograph is alive and well, the myth that an individual, unique moment is captured by the photographer on his film - independent of any political or cultural context. This view is fundamentally wrong. Photographs have no meaning outside their social context. It is therefore mistaken to claim that photographs do not represent specific ideologies. Even "innocent" landscape photographs are an expression of a practice anchored in specific ideological circumstances. [1]
In Iceland there is a long tradition of photography, but it has not been particularly well researched. We therefore know virtually nothing about how Icelandic photographers perceived the landscape before the Second World War. On the other hand, we do know of numerous foreign tourists who took photographs before this. Some came to Iceland solely to take pictures of the Icelandic landscape. The first photograph we know of an Icelandic natural phenomenon was taken by a foreign tourist in 1856. [2] In the last decade, however, Icelandic landscape photographers have really woken up, and this has rapidly resulted in the idea of Iceland being a sort of world centre for landscape photography. [3]
The production of pictorial landscapes has deep roots in the history of European ideas [4] and has been well represented in the widespread national debate in Iceland ever since the first decades of the eighteenth century, when landscape was hailed in poetry and prose as an element in the struggle for independence.
In this article I shall discuss Icelandic landscape photographs and their relation to Icelandic national identity. Around the middle of the nineteenth century the so called freedom-fighters regarded their actions as a national revival among Icelanders, a reclamation of their forefathers' conquest - the first settlement or landnám of the country. I argue that today's landscape photography and exhibitions of landscape photographs in Iceland and abroad can be regarded from exactly the same perspective.
In the nineteenth century the Icelanders struggled to free themselves from the Danish yoke and win a self-governing country for themselves. At the same time, they worked to consolidate the Icelandic national identity, which was thought to be lying dormant in the population ever since the days of the settlement. Today, fifty years after the foundation of the republic and the re-establishment of independence, the national debate is still about the same values as before. Now the struggle for political independence is not waged primarily against the Danes, but against "globalization" represented, for instance, by the flow of tourists and by satellite television. In the past the Icelanders were not the sovereign masters of their own territory and therefore strove to reclaim it; they achieved complete success in 1944. Fifty years later, the policy of reclamation continues, aiming as before to consolidate an awareness of the Icelandic nation. [5]
Benedict Anderson has argued that nationalism and national consciousness are historical products. This consciousness is not based on anything natural or any distintive character, as nationalists claim. Clifford Geertz has distinguished two kinds of forces that are in opposition in all debates about nationality in former colonies: on one hand there is "essentialism" and on the other hand what he calls "epochalism". The first concept comprises the narrow debate about cultural "roots" or "traditions", in addition to which there is "national character". Epochalism, on the other hand, points towards the broader contexts of which the nation is a part, and it is expressed primarily in debates about the politics and the position that the nation has chosen to adopt and pursue. [6] In a political sens, the former concept is reactionary, the latter progressive. As in all other nations, Icelanders also have differing attitudes to these questions. On one hand there is an emphasis on the indissoluble bond that ties the Icelanders to their land(scape), as if the Icelanders were a pure, unspoiled product of this and of the forces of nature which have shaped it. On the other hand is the historical - and also the official - attitude to the nationality, which says the land(scape) was entrusted to the Norse settlers in the ninth century. These two views are always competing and attacking each other.
The Icelanders' consciousness of themselves as a distinct nation can be traced back to the start of the nineteenth century, to Icelandic students and academics in Denmark, which was strongly influenced by the political climate that followed the French Revolution in 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830, and by the general romantic currents in Europe at the time. These currents were one source of the idea that nations exist and that they have a right to their own country. J. G. Herder's theories were central to this debate. Herder saw a close association between nature and culture; whithout nature, mankind would be nothing. Nations - their language, culture, and history - were determined by the nature that surrounded them. Nature in each country or each province was therefore decisive for the distinctive features and the destinies of individuals and nations. [7] These ideas agreed well with the romantic notions of man and nature, and nationalism and romanticism therefore went hand in hand. Romanticism emphasized heroworship, the adoration of the past and the distant, of nature and the people's relations to it. [8] As in so many other nations, in Iceland it was academics who - under the influence of the currents mentioned above - signalled the beginning of discussions about separation from the Danish colonial masters, finding inspiration for this in history; in the time when Iceland was a Free State. They began to look for the nature and distinctive character of the Icelandic people, and found that the landscape played a major role in this, assuming the status of a mother for the nation, in both literary and historical writings.
For contemporary social life, too, history and nature played a decisvie role, not least in the shape of the Icelandic sagas. In a personal letter written in 1837 by Jónas Hallgrímsson to Konrá> Gíslason, who were both leading figures in the struggle for independence, we find and interesting statement: "I have just finished reading Njál's Saga in preparation for the meeting of the Althing [Icelands General Assembly]." [9] According to fiórkatla Óskarsdóttir Helgason, formulations like this were general at this time, showing the importance of the glorious past in the political struggle of the Icelanders. Jónas Hallgrímsson, one of Iceland's foremost poets, writes in his works of the great significance of nature for the Icelandic nationality. His poem Iceland is reckoned his most important contribution to the political struggle for the Icelanders. [10] Apart from this historical legitimation, the independence struggle contained another component: the issue of economic improvement. Jón Sigur>sson, the hero of the struggle for Icelandic independence, wrote an article in 1843 about trade in Iceland in which he argued that the Icelanders had never been as prosperous as when they were independent. It was with this argument that Jón Sigur>sson demanded that the Danes should pay compensation for the property confiscated in preceding centuries. [11]
To make a long story short, it can be said that the two aspects of the argument for independence from Denmark are like oil and water. The first, "essentialism", basically seeks to stabilize the existence of the nation and the national consciousness, while "epochalism" questions this independent existence, since it points to the future and the value of seeking intercourse with other nations. Jón Sigur>sson and Jónas Hallgrímsson were in some respects representatives of these two opposing tendencies. An ordinance of King Christian Vlll in 1840 decreed that a suitable place should be found in Iceland to establish a consultative parliament for Icelandic affairs. Jónas and his supporters wanted this to be situated at Thingvellir, the site of the Althing in the days of the Free State, whereas Jón and his followers thought that it would be more sensible to locate it in Reykjavík, to strengthen the position of the town as the capital of Iceland. Jón Sigur>sson's view received most support. [12]
The landscape in a colony, whether portrayed in words or pictures, is first and foremost the image one wishes to see, the one with a political and ideological potential abroad. W. J. T. Mitchell has shown that this situation is not unambiguous. It also has a face that is directed inwards: colonies create an image of their own landscape which is primarily intended to appeal to the national consciousness. We can ask, with Mitchell, whether it is by chance that the landscape was one of the favourite subjects for painters and photographers in the nineteenth century, at the same time that European imperialism and nationalism were expanding. Michell claims that the nations that strove to acquire colonies have had a special view of landscapes which have supported them ideologically in their conquests; that every nation has had its specific pictures which have in reality been the dreams of the colonial masters, whith all the ambivalence that utopias contain. [13]
Mary Louise Pratt demonstrates a comparable vision in the writings of European travellers in Africa and South America from 1750 until the end of the nineteenth century. Descriptions of the landscape focus on the social and material privation - as seen with European eyes. [14] The idea that the colonies lacked things - whether these deficiencies were depicted as economic, social, or cultural - was part of the evolutionistic way of thinking that characterized the nineteenth century; it was simultaneously a legitimation of the imperialist seizure of territory. Today it is precisely these deficiencies that attract tourists. If one looks at visual representations of the colonies of the great powers, with their landscapes and populations, one sees that they are characterized by the same deficiencies. Edward Bruner has shown this in the texts of guidebooks, and the same applies to drawings, paintings, and photographs. Paul Breidenback has compared Victorian woodcuts from Africa with contemporary photographs in British guidebooks for safaris in Africa. He argues that alienation among Europeans in the nineteenth century and their quest for the past, for the original landscape, wild animals and "primitive" peoples, is an exact parallel to the alienation of modern man in a fragmented postmodern world. [15] Icelandic landscape pictures, consequently, "lack" Icelanders and traces of Icelandic culture.
Modern Icelanders' conceptions of the landscape [16] can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when romantic writers composed poems about the land, and the nation as an individual whole. Before that time, the beauty in the poets' descriptions of nature is more questionable. Helgason claims, for example, that nineteenth-century writers falsified the medieval view of nature. The fifteenth century Saga of Bishop Gu>mundr Arason, for example, certainly, does not describe an idyllic landscape. On the contrary, we see a terrifying picture of the environment and the forces concealed in it:
Greindr the servant of God was bishop of the land that books call Thule, but which the Norsemen call Iceland. It must indeed be said that this was the proper name for the island, since there is ice aplenty on both land and sea. On the sea there are sheets of drift ice which with their overwhelming size threaten to fill the oceans to the north, while over the high mountains on land there are nevermelting glaciers of such exceeding height and breadth that they must seem incredible to those who were born far away. These glaciers at times discharge powerful currents with extraordinary eddies and the foulest stench, so that the birds in the air die of it and men and other living creatures on land. Other mountains in theis country cast forth dreadful fire with the most terrible cascades of stones, so that the noise of the outburst can be heard all over the country. [17]
Pictures like these would not have agreed with the picture that romantic poets conveyed in the nineteenth century. If anyone then had expressed himself in this way, it would undoubtedly have been interpreted as a hostile attack on, or even a denial, of Icelandic nationality.
It has been argued that the tradition of pictorial art in Iceland has primarily served to satisfy the nostalgic needs of those who moved from the countryside to the town, rather than serving in the discourse about a specific nation. [18] This need not conflict with the hypothesis put forth here. Individuals are not only Icelanders but are also differentiated according to the part of Iceland they come from, the district or the farm. Within Reykjavík people are also classified according to which part of town they come from: the west, the east, Brei>holt, and so on. It was the town-dwellers who led the struggle for independence in the nineteenth century, people with an education or with experience of working in foreign cities, and not farmers living in the countryside. Everything suggests that the ties of the Icelandic nation to the land must have arisen from a distance from it. [19]
The Icelandic art museums have been criticized for their failure to buy any of these photographs for their artistic value. [20] This - justified - criticism is extremely important in this context. If we ignore the banal explanation that the museums did not have enough money to acquire the photographs, and instead focus on the role of photographers we see something interesting. Icelandic landscape photographs which are published in guidebooks for Icelanders and foreigners, on postcards and in Icelandic newspapers, generally appear with a caption that describes the locality from a historical or geological point of view. Only a minority of photographs is accompanied by an impressionistic description of the mood evoked by the picture, or by a literary quotation. Photography has been associated with realism, but it also has another aspect - an opposite side: photography as art. Here it is the angle of the individual artist that prevails, not that of society nor social consciousness as an anonymous subject. The cocktail that is mixed with Icelandic landscape photographs as an ingredient suggests that Icelanders in general regard the photographs and their text as the one true picture of the country: the photographs are neutral, showing us the extensive landscape. The fact that they are supported by scientific texts only increases their credibility. [21]
The Icelandic photographer Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson's book Íslandslag (Icelandscape) from 1992 is a good example of this, with its mixture of Sigurgeir's magnificent landscape photographs, the inspired ode to the native land written by the president of the republic, quotations from literature, as well as topographical and geological descriptions. Part of the book was written by a geologist, who provides geological and historical data in a postscript. [22]
This book is a typical, I suggest, in many ways of the Icelandic view of photography. Books like these are not furnished with texts which give pride of place to the pictures, in accordance with artistic demands. The pictures are parallel to the scholarly observation, which give the product an impression of objectivity, underlined by the scientific and historical data. Another aspect of the role Icelandic landscape photographs which is worth mentioning, and which corroborates this view, is their uncritical character, which is paralleled in Icelandic historiography well into the present century.[23] Instead of photographing what has gone awry in the interaction of man and landscape in Iceland, and thereby giving the pictures an explicit political twist, the focus is on "unspoiled" scenery. Yet Icelanders do have a great deal to deplore in their treatment of nature. There is much talk of the need to plant the country to prevent soil erosion, which is due in large part to the way sheep have been allowed to graze vulnerable belts of vegetation. Photographs of this kind of "spoiled nature", however, are not used in the debate about national identity, except when rescue actions are called for. These photographs are therefore only agruments in debates about environmental problems.
Landscape photographs are often accompanied by texts which refer to the historical role played during the age of the Free State by a fiord or a tract of land. It is remarkable that little thought is given in these texts to what might have happened since the Free State. There is no mention of geological changes or changes for the people who have lived in and farmed the land. The following text, for instance, could be read alongside a landscape photograph on the back page of the daily newspaper Morgunbla>i> on 5 September 1993:
Now autumn is coming on, the most beautiful season in the opinion of many. The picture shows the view from Vatnsskar> over the manor farm of Bólsta>arhlí> and the parish hall of Húnaver in Austur-Húnavatnss[[daggerdbl]]sla, and in the distance one can glimpse where the rivers Svartá and Blanda converge. The Svartá valley opens where the valleys of Blöndudalur and Langidalur meet. In older times it is said that the place was called Ævarsskar>, and in Lándnámabók [The Book of Settlements] we read that Ævar Ketilsson, who settled Langidalur, lived at Ævarsskar>.
In the foreground we see horses and sheep grazing, domestic animals that many people regard as the worst enemy of the Icelandic people, [24] although most Icelanders would prefer to put it somewhat more mildly. It is of course difficult to make any certain estimate of the transformations of the landscape that have occurred in the relatively short period that has elapsed since the settlement; geologists normally work with periods that are much longer than thousand years. It is all the more easy to say something about the possible transformations of the landscape as a result of the interaction of man and nature. We can determine where the fields have been flat and where they have not, where the course of roads has been changed, and where animals have gnawed the vegetation down to the roots and hastened the process of soil erosion. Landscape photographs which demonstrate such changes and are accompanied by critical subtexts are much more rare than pictures portraying the close harmony that is supposed to have prevailed ever since the age of the Free State. The quotation above is a typical example.
I have maintained elsewhere that the paradox of the landscape photographs is that the distance of the photographer from the motif is generally so large that the observer does not feel any contact with the landscape. [25] The pictures are often taken with lenses which exaggerate the distance of the background and the closeness of the foreground. On the other hand, landscape photographs are presented as very "close-up" observations of the landscape. Wide-angle views of Icelandic scenery underlines its timelessness. On one hand the photographs become representations of the slow shifts undergone by the landscape itself; on the other hand they depict a stability and integrity which Icelandic society is assumed to have had ever since the settlement. Looking at these photographs, one can easily imagine that sights like these greeted the first settlers, although this is more an illusion than a reality, since the Viking's eysight was no different from our own - the camera's wide-angle lens gives a different vision.
This form of landscape photography is highly noticeable, being almost the only kind found in books and newspapers, on calendars and chocolate boxes. It is scarcely possible to glimpse any objects in the pictures which have ever been in contact with a human hand. The observer is too far away for this. Perhaps we have here (on photographic paper) the very ideal conception of the settlers which the colonial masters in Europe undoubtedly had: a landscape that is uninhabited but nevertheless inhabited by the Icelanders who own it. Close-up photographs, on the other hand, show us quite a different picture of the landscape. We find the more familiar angles of everyday experience, with all its paradoxes and coincidences. It is noteworthy that these pictures are rare compared with the landscape photographs, while the Icelanders' struggle with nature is displayed in order to explain the origin of Icelandic culture. The same applies to photographs which show in one way or another the smallest elements of the landscape, such as a bubbling mini-crater in the lava or a moss-covered stone. The focus is on wholeness, not on details that correspond to everyday sense impressions.
The Tourist Council's campaign for 1993 is an excellent example of the combination of panoramic pictures and close-ups. I would argue that the link with the national consciousness is highly striking in these advertisements, as is seen in the photographs they display. The advertisements were constructed so that the top part showed the geographical borders of the country, enclosing a photograph. [26] The photographs depict such motifs as a child lying on a beach, a person riding an Icelandic horse in the sunset, and people bathing in a waterfall. The lower part of the advertisement consist of texts incorporating close-up pictures. The example reproduced below has the following text:
Test the Icelander in you. How long is it since you visited the spirit of the waterfall with the people who are near and dear to you? Give yourself the treat of renewing and increasing your knowledge of Icelandic nature - introduce the children to the trolls in the mountains, the fairies in the elfin fortresses, the beauty of the small flowers, life by the fiord and between the mountains. Catch fish, climb an ancient peak, defy the wind, discover your Icelandic nerves...Enjoy Icland - the Icelanders' travel paradise.
The photograph and the text are framed by key words referring to all the natural and supernatural things that a tourist can experience. In our example we find:
Babbling brooks. Sea-monsters. The smell of cave-dwellers. Bathing in the midnight sun. Elfin fortresses. The purling rivers. Petrified trolls. Birdsong. Saga trails. Silence. Tours on the beach. Water spirits. Riding out in the summer night. On the mountain peak. A coffee break on the lava. Catching shellfish. Bright nights.
We see how the Tourist Board's advertising campaign placed the emphasis on a renewed acqaintance with the magical creatures inhabiting the Icelandic landscape. The aim of "renewing" this acqaintance is to make the citizens into truer Icelanders: they are supposed to "discover their Icelandic nerves". Bruner has found similar features in tourist brochures from Africa, which emphasize the tourists' contact with Africa's "prehistoric" and "primitive" culture, which will "change their perspective forever". [27] Another parallel to Bruner's analysis is that society and culture of East Africa are presented as untouched and uninfluenced by the culture of the colonial lords, the nationalism of the indipendence struggle, the war waged for freedom, and - not the least of all - by the tourist industry. Although Iceland's struggle for independence was waged without the bloodshed that many African countries have witnessed, one might sometimes be led to believe that the country had never been a colony under first Norway, then Denmark. Instead of referring to this period in the depiction of Icelandic culture, we go back to the time before 1262, the year when Iceland submitted to the Norwegian crown, to find Icelandic culture to present. The text of the advertisement is in this respect parallel to the African tourist prochures. Note that reference is made to a "renewed acquaintance" with Icelandic nature, which consists of meeting supernatural beings such as trolls and fairies. It is also pointed out that the "Icelandic nerves" that Icelanders will discover on their travels around the country will give them the faculties of a troll, with all the possibilities that this involves. It is clear from the frame around the advertisement that Icelanders can use their genetically inherited ability to smell the mysterious cave-dwellers. "Icelandic nerves" are thus renewed primarily by contact with Icelandic nature and the Icelandic landscape and the fabulous creatures that are supposed to inhabit it. There is no mention at all that people are incorporated in a modern culture, as can be seen from the swimming gear they are wearing in the photograph.
I have described here some fundamental features in the debate about Icelandic nationality, as represented in and by landscape photographs, a "debate" that is of quite a different form from what we find in language - whether spoken or written. In the first phase of the struggle for independence at the start of the nineteenth century, the most important media were the language and the heritage of the sagas. I have pointed out some parallel aspects in the discourses of the two media, the written language on one hand, and photography on the other hand, both of which are part of official Icelandic cultural policy, the former long since institutionalized.
It is clear from Icelandic landscape photographs, both the angles and the motifs, that they arise from an ideology associated with an institutionalization. I am thinking of the tourist industry, which until a few years ago was controlled by the Icelandic state. One of the things that photographers themselves want, if we can believe Sigur>ur A. Magnússon's words about the limited opportunity of photographers to practice their art, is a liberation from this institutionalization of landscape photography in Iceland. [28] In this sense, Icelandic landscape photography must be said to have sold itself to the Icelandic nation's policy of land conquest, with the state as the prime mover. It is therefore understandable that landscape photography is not flourishing as an art form in Iceland today. Societal formation until the present day and the political ideology of the independence struggle regarding the use of the land needed and still needs all conceivable means to strengthen the national identity - to meet the demands of the future. Landscape photographs have played a central role in this.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Arnar Árnason, Hanna Ragnarsdóttir and Kristin Birgisdóttir for many useful viewpoints. Any errors or deficiences are of course my own.
4 photographs accompany this article.
TEXT WITH PHOTOGRAPHS:
1) Photograph by Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson. The picture comes from his book Íslandslag, the title of which is a composite word maing "Icelandscape". The texts in the book are by a geologist, who writes (p.150): "The north-east-facing ridge of tuff surged up from a volcanic eruption under the Ice Age glacier. The volcanic belt originated in the volcano at Torfajökull, and the southern edge of the enormous field of rhyolite extends over the middle of the picture. The mountains to the right are Kaldaklofsfjöll. Hrafntinnusker is in the centre and Jökultungur to the left. The road to the south behind the mountains goes east of Álftavatn, where the Icelandic Tourist Board has an overnight hut." In the preface, written by the President of Iceland, we read (p.9): "We feel at home, we remember that land from our own and other people's experience, but we never lose the amazement that the country provokes by letting us feel that we are witnesses every day to the creation of the world."
2) Photograph by Gu>mundur P. Ólafsson from his book Perlur í náttúru Íslands [Pearls of Icelandic Nature] (1990). Icelanders rarely see pictures like this, and the technique is unusal tool. Perishability is seen in the foreground, close-up, but is balanced by the way the photograph leads our gaze towards the vast expanses of eternety.
3) Photograph by Árni Sæberg, bublished on the back page of Iceland's biggest daily newspaper, Morgunbla>i>, along with a text full of historical references. Landscape photographs, wide-angle photographs, play a central role in the newspaper, along with political articles about national affairs.
4) This advertisement was made by the "Her and Now" advertising agency for the Tourist Board in 1993. It was intended to appeal to "Icelandic nerves". Wide-angle pictures and close-ups interact in an interesting way. The picture of the people bathing in the waterfall appears self-contradictory, since this kind of behaviour spoils nature and the countryside.
(Translated by Alan Croizer)
posted by Sigurjon at 12:01 PM
1 comments
