Natalie Smith of the Swedish Defence University recently posted an excellent article on the “rediscovery” of the Vikings by 19th century Swedish historians, and their “role” in the development of a Swedish national identity. You can read the full article here: https://scilicet.org.uk/rediscovering-the-vikings

Natalie argues that the work of the Gothic League – a collection of nationalist Swedish intellectuals – popularised the Vikings in European polite society, through literary activity such as poetry and a project to document Viking-era runestones across Sweden. This rediscovery promoted the idea of the Vikings as a people and the Viking Age as a period of history related to Scandinavian expansion and exploration. Given how ubiquitous Vikings are now in popular history and in popular culture, it’s remarkable to think that prior to the Gothic League’s work, they were largely overlooked.

I can’t really do the article justice here – so please do read it! Her analysis of this rediscovery of a heroic Scandinavian past by nineteenth century nationalists looking for new ways to understand their identity in the wake of the collapse of the Swedish Empire in the Baltic gives pause for thought for anyone involved in heritage and history, especially where identities are concerned.

It’s the job of a historian to interpret the past, primarily through the close examination of evidence. That evidence is always partial, and has biases, sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden. An important aspect of a historian’s work is not just recognising those biases, but choosing what to look for in the sources, and how to place that evidence in a wider context.

It is through the interpretation of sources, and other evidence that we identify peoples, cultures and movements, and attribute labels to them. Sometimes those are labels that the people themselves would recognise (Romans knew they were Romans) and sometimes not (I’m pretty sure the “Beaker People” didn’t call themselves that). It’s not clear that the people we call Vikings would have used that name for themselves.

And the way we interpret sources, identify concepts and attribute labels is constantly developing. Sometimes we redefine or relabel groups in response to new evidence, or to the (justified) protestations of their descendants and the work of academics from those cultures. For example, historians used to refer to one of the main tribal groupings of American First Nations peoples as the “Sioux” (from a French transcription of an Ojibwe word for those peoples). Today, many of those peoples prefer to be known by names they recognise as their own, such as Lakota or Dakota, and most historians respect this.

New ways of interpreting evidence also develop new kinds of history. Social history has its origins in the nineteenth century. George Lefebvre first referred to “history from below” in 1932, but the idea really gained traction in the 1960s. Epitomised by figures such as E.P. Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm in the UK, social history revisited well known archival sources and re-interpreted them to extract the “hidden” histories of ordinary people, rather than monarchs and “great men”. This approach also sought out new sources to interpret, and encouraged interest in other, related, hidden histories. For example the development of histories that position women at the centre, rather than the periphery, and a growing history of crime and punishment. At the heart of such histories is the proposition that what was happening in the lives of ordinary men and women is just as important to our understanding of history as what was happening in the lives of politicians, lords and rulers, and can reveal new ways of understanding the history of a place or an era.

Environmental history has also grown out of a similar approach: re-visiting sources and seeking out new ones to develop our understanding of the role environmental factors have played in human history, and the role humans have played in shaping the environment.

Both of these historical movements were born of their time: it is no co-incidence that social history flourished in a period of intense political activism and renewed interest in radical political ideas, and the growth of environmental history is of course related to growing concern for the state of the natural world , and has picked up pace as we understand more about climate change and humanity’s role in this. Just as the Gothic League was pre-occupied with developing a refreshed national identity from Sweden, today we might be more concerned with understanding how humans have interacted with and impacted the natural world through time, or how social movements developed and changed.

The point I want to emphasis here is that history is what you make it. Of course, it must be based on sound analysis and interpretation of evidence, but what we choose to research and how we choose to research it is in our hands.

Returning to ideas of cultures and peoples, Ichnos Heritage is closely connected to two European countries with contested, controversial histories: Greece and Scotland. Popular history of both countries is littered with iconic ideas and stereotypes.

The figure of the Highlander looms large in our Scottish sense of self today and “Highland Dress” has become a symbol of the whole of Scotland, not just the Gàidhealtachd (the Gaelic-speaking parts of Scotland). And in Greece, national iconography draws heavily on the image of the κλέφτες (klephts), “brigands” who formed the core of the forces fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s. Just as the dress uniform of Scottish regiments in the British Army are an interpretation of “Highland dress”, the uniforms of the Εύζονες (Evzones), elite soldiers of the Προεδρική Φρουρά (Proedriki Froura), the Presidential Guard, are based on the dress of the klephts of the 1820s.

This is not to deny the significance of either Gaelic culture and history, nor the struggle of Greek revolutionaries in the nineteenth century. Both are of course important. Rather, the point here is that these iconic images can present what is at best a partial idea, and at worst a very inaccurate sense, of what was happening in the Greek War of Independence or in the north and west of Scotland in a similar period. It is important that we don’t not lose sight of the influence of our present-day perceptions and other people’s popular interpretations when we think about historical events and peoples.

Here at Ichnos we’re concerned with heritage – the place where history and the environment interface with things that are relevant to us today. We’re keen to explore some of the hidden histories of places, peoples and communities, and to throw up questions about how we understand both the past and the present. Part of that work involves looking at the ideas we have picked up from popular culture and history about aspects of the past, and wondering how these ideas have emerged, what purposes they serve, and how we feel about them when we explore the history behind them and relate them to heritage with which we interact. Another part of that work is understanding from people – members of communities – what aspects of history are important to them.

When we engage with local heritage assets, we can “read” them in different ways and draw out connections. The financial connections of a country estate in Scotland with the slave trade and plantations in the “new world”; how farming practices developed in small island communities in response to global trade; what a waterway means to the people who live along it, and the memories of those communities.

Both heritage and history are fundamentally concerned with interpretation. And our work is to facilitate interpretation that is meaningful and relevant to communities.