Gripla - 20.12.2009, Side 111

111
In ancient Greece, the word ‘barbarian’ was used in the Iliad (l. 2,867),
where it figures as an adjective to the unintelligible language of a named
group of people. Barbarians were inarticulate within the ethnocentric
framework of the Greeks. It was Herodotus, however, who in the 5th cen­
tury B.C. was to launch an absolute distinction between the Hellenes and
the barbarians, the latter simply being people who were not Hellenes
(Lund 1993: 10ff). In the process, Herodotus inadvertently defines a Greek
‘nation’, when he – in The Histories – renders the Athenians’ reasons for
not submitting to Xerxes, the Persian king:
No doubt it was natural that the Lacedaemonians should dread the
possibility of our making terms with Persia; none the less it shows
a poor estimate of the spirit of Athens. there is not so much gold
in the world nor land so fair that we would take it for pay to join the
common enemy and bring Greece into subjection. there are many
compelling reasons against our doing so, even if we wished: the first
and greatest is the burning of the temples and images of our gods
– now ashes and rubble. It is our bounden duty to avenge this
desecration with all our might. Again, there is the Greek nation –
the community of blood and language, temples and ritual; our
common way of life; if Athens were to betray all this, it would not
be well done (Herodotus, 1972, 574–575).
What transpires is a sense of distinction relating to descent, language and
religion that had to be protected, not only against the Persians, but against
all barbarians, who by the same token could not take part in the Athenian
sports and games. Interestingly, the first Grammarian also speaks of
nations (þjóðir), each with their own language. Possibly as significant in
relation to the Icelandic case is Herodotus’ overarching notion of history
being a well researched story about what had happened; where true his­
torical sources are lacking, Herodotus draws on (sometimes conflicting)
oral traditions (Burn 1972, 9–10). We know a similar feature from Ari’s
Íslendingabók (‘The Book of the Icelanders’), written sometime between
1122 and 1130 (Íslendingabók. Landnámabók 1968).
At the present stage of my argument my main point is that within the
classical scheme of thought, barbarians were not an ethnic group as were
noRtHeRn BARBARIAnS