Re: What to Hunt

From: Joerg Baumgartner <joe_at_...>
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:17:55 +0200


Maybe this should have been "taken to the digest" since I digress a fair bit...

John Huges provided a list of "cultural animals of the Far Point". I missed the giants.

My favourite analogy for the "professional hunter" are the coastal Lapps of northern Norway - called Finns by their Viking contemporaries - who had a culture of marginal agriculture supplemented by (or supplementing) their fishing and gathering and hunting. The products of their hunting were traded to the offshore Vikings who transported them along with the Lofot fish to European markets even before Lindisfarne (although on a smaller scale than after Harald Harfagre's founding of a single Norwegian kingdom). The Hanseatic merchants of Bergen merely took over distribution to the south.

The material I have read suggests that the coastal Vikings of Halogaland and the coastal "Finns" parted culture (and language) some time during their late Bronze Age when the Vikings took to trade, agriculture and fishing and the "Finns" retained their reindeer hunting in addition to agriculture and fishing.

Ok, in this case we have a split of cultures along these ways of life, probably because there were more reindeer hunters inland who remained nomadic.

We know the coastal "Finns" spoke a language different from the Halogaland Vikings, probably related to that of the inland "Finns" - the Lapps we know. The coastal Finns were forcefully integrated into Norwegian culture during the 15th or 16th century, suppressing their native culture, and what Lapp presence there is are inland Lapp immigrants during the 17th to 20th century.

The analogy breaks down because both coastal Vikings and coastal "Finns" were only subsistence farmers but strong on fishing, which they could (and had to) exchange for agricultural products from the south, along with technological imports.

The Lapps did have a metal technology without being able to produce it - they relied on importing metal tools and weapons, but they did produce their own silver jewelry, and I suppose they did maintenance and small repairs on their tools as well. In this regard they continued the practice of metal use throughout Bronze Age Europe well past the Iron Age.

Still, their relation to the coastal Vikings might resemble that of a (solitary, or small worship band) Odaylan to his Heortling farmer neighbours.



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