> The problem I have with this is that this supposes that these
people are
> looking for support, etc, from outside their kin and clan. The
theistic
> cults aren't there primarily to provide community & support, that's
the
> province of kin. Sure Uncle Oddi may be a stickpicker, but we won't
let him
> starve, and there's a place by in the hall for him during the
winter. Of
> course, we expect him to do the smelly, nasty tasks (like digging
out the
> privy when it gets full), but he's kin.
Did I forget to mention that part of why I never did anything about this is that about half the time I believe in homogeneous clans, that have cohesive clan traditions, support each other fully, and have more in common with even the oddest of each other than they do with the most ordinaray of their neighbors. Clan cohesiveness it kept up by a degree of meritocracy, so that you don't mind if you were born to a goose girl and a gardener, you know you could become a thane one day, even if it isn't likely.
On the other hand, aboud half the time I believe that this is basically the view put about by the thanes. After all the chronicles and epics are written by lawspeakers and skalds, not the pig women. That in essence it is like learning about American society by watching network TV. When I'm in this second mood I think that the whole view of Heortling society given in Storm Tribe is accurate for a Heortling 'most' of society, but that it misses a LOT of what goes on at the lower layers.
> By using the word "Societies" you prejudice the reader to assume
that these
> are groups of non-kin, and that an individual "society" possibly
stretches
> across the whole of Sartar.
Yes, and that was quasi-deliberate. By my second view, the carls and thanes form an upper, 'propertied' class that mostly looks out for its own. Oh, sure, they want to keep the cottar's alive and healthy, and exceptional members there may own their own plough team some day, but really they need them to be cottars, their lifestyle depends on a good number of people not having their own land to plough and teams to do it.
In this world view, the cottars do what they have to to get by. Which means that you can forget this whole long bargaining of dowry and brideprice, you just get permission to move in together, and so long as the one moving in seems healthy enough to contribute more than he or she will eat it is usually granted. Few go through second intitiation, and not all will go through first. Forget about the clan trader, sometimes cousin Harvar takes the back trails and swaps scraps of pig leather for sacks of acorns with his mother's sisters husband in the next clan over, and he can usually exchange extra cabbage for new rawhide foot wrappings or arrange other minor trades as well. The pig women meet each other in the deep woods and gossip, and the hunters have arrangements to meet periodically to discuss issues of mutual interest, and to perhaps do some bigger hunts together. With all these forest meetings there is an exchange of gossip, and people get to meet each other, and marriages are usually arranged this way, with little to do with the alliances and tribes that the carls are so concerned with. So families spread in a different way.
Sure all of that violates the traditions and rules that the upper classes follow, but the cottars know what each other is going through, and they hang together and survive. They may be servants and stick-pickers, but it doesn't mean they aren't proud. They too remember their ancestors back to the storm age, and some of their ancestors were great. Maybe their ancestors have to eat the smoke of swine or sheep instead of oxen and fattened cows, but they are still fed.
Now, remove the word "Society", and say that
> this is how the clan or stead treats with local minor entities, and
I can
> see it. "Yeah, the old oak provides us with "Enjoy Acorn Mash", the
little
> pond by the big rock has the best frog-catching magics, and that
patch of
> hillside that looks like a troll-head if you look at it just right
gives us
> a charm to ward off the cold". But it's just "Local Common Magic",
not some
> sort of land-spanning society.
>
Yah, the half of the time that I'm in my homogenous clan, of course
Storm Tribe is accurate, mood, this is how I view things happening.
--Bryan
Powered by hypermail