65° - 01.11.1969, Side 34

establishment at the University of Iceland. Event
analysis is often like the picture of the surface of
an ocean after a submarine has been exploded:
debris floating on the surface. In this event the
tensions and issues of the society came out.
Political issues, revolutionary students, establish-
ment fears, newspaper sensationalism, the crea-
tion of needed jobs, all of it emerged in this
discussion of the establishment of the social scien-
ces. It is a pity that a social scientist was not
there to do a write up!
The proliferation of units and groups is quite
pronounced. A year ago an anthropological
society was established, and I was quite happy
about that. Here at last would be a society which
in the grand tradition of the Royal Anthropo-
logical Society of Britain, or the American An-
thropological Association would gather under it’s
wings all of the issues. I visualized the new work
to be done in the collection of sources in the
social sciences, correspondence and contacts with
overseas scholars, and the establishment of an
agency which could review and guide foreign
requests for population research. Instead the
anthropological society seems interested in the
issues of physical anthropologists, and the frag-
mented approach continues.
The fact remains, when all is said and done,
that as far as Ethnography, Sociology, Social
Anthropology, and Cultural Anthropology is
concerned, Iceland and Scandinavia are at the
moment less know than Mexican peasants. This
is strange when one considers the fact that the
Scandinavians are so damned good at coopera-
tive ventures. The Nordic House in Reykjavik is
full of conferences running the alphabetic gamut
of societies from Agriculture to Zoology. What is
needed of course is the grand man of history who
will one day call all North Atlantic community
researchers together and provide us with the intel-
lectual home we so badly need. I am convinced
that in my lifetime there will emerge a body of
knowledge, a community of scholars and the
paraphenalia of journals and conferences that
may be considered North Atlantic community
studies. Since the Second World War, a body of
literature is coming into being. Such names as
Kimball, Arensberg, Bart, Littlej ohn, Payne, Goff-
man, are all names of scholars who hhave con-
tributed monographic studies on selected com-
munities in Wales, Scotland, Faroes, Ireland,
Norway and the Shetlands. But this material is
not just the property of a few odd scholars, it is
the property of the students of these countries,
and belongs to a community of common interest.
Iceland may be unique to the Icelander, but all
of these communities share such features as rocks,
sheep, rain, sea and fish, and poverty, rural past
and extended family structures.
American field workers and anthropologists
grew up with their eyes firmly fixed on their own
backyard: the vanishing Indian. British anthropo-
logists followed the empire builders. The French
did the same. The social sciences at their best have
grown out of the genuine concern to understand
and analyze the constituent parts of the societies
which touched upon themselves. It is simply an
exercise of semantics and snobbery to voice the
assumption that we find kin structures and social
patterns worthy of our attention only in exotic
societies. The rural communities of the North
Atlantic region are worthy of scholarly interest
and investigation. We may discover they are as
unique and strange to contemporary man as any
other society.
I had visited my rural district a number of
times, and the gossip and questions increased in
volume as time went by. After a couple of months
I was invited to attend the community hall, felags-
heimili it is called, and tell the people what I was
about. One day I was face to face with the as-
sembled community of farmers, their wives, the
hreppstjori, oddviti, parish priest, and school-
master. What do you tell people who ask two
sensible questions of the stranger, “Why are you
here, why did you pick us?”
I think it reasonable to repeat now what I said
more than two years ago. I came because we do
not know very much about Scandinavian people
in general or Icelandic people in particular, that
the lives of common men are the fabric of human
history, that whatever is called the Icelandic way
of life will vanish as surely as the Buffalo, that
I as a scholar needed their help, and they could
help me by inviting me to stay, into their homes,
and by talking to me.
I can report that they did all of that. The
hospitality of these people was gracious and long-
suffering. They did talk an awful lot. Now and
then we had quite a bit of fun dancing all night
and drinking too much. I shall not forget these
people, nor Iceland. That is not in itself remark-
able, since anyone who has stayed there for any
length of time will say this. What to me is so
remarkable was their willingness to permit me to
work as a social scientist.
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