Afro-Nordic Landscapes

Equality and Race in Northern Europe

Michael McEachrane, Michael McEachrane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317685241
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Black Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe challenges a view of Nordic societies as homogenously white, and as human rights champions that are so progressive that even the concept of race is deemed irrelevant to their societies. The book places African Diasporas, race and legacies of imperialism squarely in a Nordic context. How has a nation as peripheral as Iceland been shaped by an identity of being white? How do Black Norwegians challenge racially conscribed views of Norwegian nationhood? What does the history of jazz in Denmark say about the relation between its national identity and race? What is it like to be a mixed-race black Swedish woman? How have African Diasporans in Finland navigated issues of race and belonging? And what does the widespread denial of everyday racism in Nordic societies mean to Afro-Nordics?

This text is a must read for anyone interested in issues of race in the Nordic region and Europe writ large. As Paul Gilroy writes in his foreword, it is a book that "should be studied with care and profit inside the Nordic countries and also outside them by the broader international readership that has been established around the study of racism and 'critical race theory'."

Part I

The Nation

1 Imagining Blackness at the Margins

Race and Difference in Iceland

Kristín Loftsdóttir

The email had been circulating in companies in Iceland for its entertainment value. My husband forwarded it to me in February 2008, after having received it at the bank where he worked. The subject read: “Big news in 1977—The most famous (and the best) headline in the history of Icelandic media.”¹ The headline of the news-story in question read: “Negro in Þistilfjörður.” ² The news reporter informed the readers that he had seen, in his own words, an “African-negro” from Ghana working on one of the farms in the fjord Þistilfjörður who would be working there during the winter. The text of the email message briefly stated: “Times have changed in the Icelandic media.”

In 1977, the news reporter finds it significant enough to see a person with dark skin color at this particular location that it deserves a special column in the paper. I suppose that 31 years later in 2008, the headline is perceived as funny due to the open use of a racist term in combination with a reference to Þistilfjörður, an obscure and isolated place in Iceland. As an introspective self-criticism it seems to establish how naïve Icelanders once were, not knowing what was appropriate to say. A racialist term is in a way obscured as something funny—almost cute—that can be laughed at today.

As I suggest in this essay, it is acceptable to laugh because it is perceived as a testimony of times when Icelanders did not know better. It builds on the assumption that even though such a term was used in the past, racism somehow existed outside of Iceland. Immigration to Iceland from Africa has in fact never been extensive but is not non-existent; 176 people from African countries immigrated to Iceland in 1996 and 668 in 2008.³ In spite of being isolated, Iceland has also been connected to the outside world in various ways, for example, by being a Danish dependency until 20th century. In the course of a relatively short time, the rate of immigration has rapidly increased in Iceland, thereby diversifying Iceland’s population, which today is above 300,000 people. In 2008 immigrants constituted 8% of the population, compared to below 2% in 1996.⁴ In 1996 most of the immigrants were from Denmark, but in recent years immigrants have arrived from more diverse and distant locations. The ratio of immigrants has thus become similar to other Nordic countries, although the ratio of second generation immigrants is much lower or only 0.5% of the population, compared to 0.1 in 1996.⁵ In a relatively short time Iceland has become an increasingly diverse society, giving rise to public debates and discussions regarding not only the future development of Icelandic society, but also what it means to be Icelandic and the meanings of multiculturalism in an Icelandic context.⁶

In this essay I will focus on Icelandic conceptions of race, showing that although people of dark skin complexion have not been present in great numbers in Iceland, the idea of Africa and “blackness” still has an extensive history in Iceland. I pay particular attention to late 19th and early 20th century conceptions of race when Icelandic “white” identity attained meaning in juxtaposition to African “uncivilized others.” Icelanders were— contrary to what is sometimes claimed in the present—familiar with the widespread racist images and ideologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Finally, I stress that past conceptions of blackness are important to understanding current conceptions of race and racism, explaining how recent concerns with race and racial images have to be seen as connected to wider explorations of the meanings of an increasingly multicultural society in Iceland.

For some time now scholars have demonstrated how European national identities were formed by colonialism and imperialism—colonized countries providing important sources of imaginary and counter-identifications in which European identities were formed. Paul Gilroy, for instance, has famously questioned how key ideas that often are seen as foregrounding European history—such as the ideas of modernity, civilization and nationalism—are spoken of as arising in isolation from imperialistic and colonial contexts. Similarly, he has criticized “cultural insiderism”—which sees national entities as fully formed within their own spaces rather than as products of transverse dynamics.⁷ Colonization was not only something happening in faraway places, but at the “heart of European culture” as stressed by Edward Said.⁸ In a similar spirit, Dipesh Chakrabarty has called for the “provincialization of Europe,” stressing the abandonment of the history of Europe as universal for an increased appreciation for the regional particularities of that history.⁹ Such insights stress simultaneously the need to acknowledge transnational and transcontinental connections in understanding European history, and how these connections are played out in localized contexts.

Although these perspectives have been established for some time, it is only recently that scholars have begun looking extensively at the involvement that the Nordic countries had with the colonial project.¹⁰ Scholars on Icelandic history have importantly shown how Icelandic nationalism was influenced by late 18th century and early 19th century European romanticism,¹¹ but have only to a very limited extent analyzed how nationalistic ideas were informed by European—including Nordic—colonial and racialized praxises.¹² In my approach, I stress the need to show how Icelandic identity was shaped by transnational connections and notions of other peoples.

Iceland’s relation to colonialism is an interesting one. During the 19th century Icelanders were becoming increasingly influenced by the colonial ideology of the European mainland and beginning to see themselves as members of the “white race.” At the same time, they were attempting to gain independence as a colony. Iceland’s commonwealth period began with its settlement in the late 9th century. This period of independence ended in 1262 with the union with Norway, and in 1380 Iceland became a Danish dependency with the unification of the Norwegian and Danish Crowns. Few signs of displeasure had been apparent with that arrangement prior to the 19th century when Icelanders started to demand independence.¹³

During the 19th and early 20th centuries Icelanders participated in ongoing discussions about race and racial classifications. They were then familiar with the racial stereotypes that permeated European discourse and situated their own identities as Icelanders and white within such discourses. By focusing on Icelandic identity as constructed in relation to images of Africa, my approach can be seen as part of critical whiteness studies (and critical race studies more generally).¹⁴ Although whiteness has been interrogated since over a century by black intellectuals such as Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, it is only more recently that the construct has been thoroughly studied by white scholars of Western history and culture.¹⁵ An important contribution of whiteness studies is its excavations of how racial classifications have been constructed around white skin color as the norm.¹⁶ As often pointed out, the fact that “white” individuals more readily can forget their own skin color and position of power does in itself draw attention to the privileges associated with being categorized as white.¹⁷

In the following discussion of images of Africa in Iceland, I begin by briefly pointing to the greater diversity of representations in Iceland pre-18th century. I then go on to focus more critically on 19th-century images of Africa and racial imaginary and explore views on race and skin color in contemporary Iceland.¹⁸

Africa in Iceland Prior to the 19th Century

One of the most extensive descriptions of Africa in Medieval Iceland is published in Hauksbók (The book of Haukur)—compiled in 1300 by the Icelandic lawyer Haukur Erlingsson—and was based on the work of Archbishop Isidor from Sevilla, especially benefiting from his Etymologiae.¹⁹ Inter-European echoes and influences were commonplace during the medieval period. Hauksbók reflects how medieval Icelandic authors were influenced by, and replicated, texts from other parts of Europe.²⁰ It presents Africa as a place of strange creatures, such as creatures without heads and beings called Panfagi who eat everything they get hold of.²¹ Images of monstrous races were quite popular in Europe at that time, dating back at least to the classic antiquity and the work of such authors as Plinius the Elder, whose book, Naturalis Historae Praefatio, was copied for centuries after his death in 79 A.D.²² The European depiction of Africa as populated by monstrous species and strange beasts first changed when an increased exploration and knowledge of Africa’s coasts expanded within the continent,²³ even though gross stereotypical representations continued.²⁴

The story of Ham, and how his dark skin color was a curse that forever would follow his descendants, seemed to have been a prominent image of Africans during the medieval period. Edith R. Sanders²⁵ states that, probably first appearing in the Babylonian Talmud in the 6th century A.D., associations between dark skin color and God’s curse—exemplified in the story of Ham’s curse by his father Noah—were later picked up by Christians. In these narratives Ham was cursed with dark skin and migrated to Africa, which since was populated by his dark-skinned descendants. These narratives, different in form and content, gained a general acceptance among European scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries, even though they were known prior to that time.²⁶ Hauksbók replicates an idea of Noha’s third son Ham (often spelled Kam) as the ancestor of African people. In the Icelandic saga Veraldar Saga (World History), thought to originate in the 1300s, there is also a mentioning of Ham’s ancestors living in the southern part of the world,²⁷ indicating some familiarity with this myth in Iceland.

Although Medieval Iceland often characterized dark skin color in negative ways, the representations of Africa were diverse and not always organized around skin color or darkness. As noted by Jenny Jochens, in old Icelandic texts written prior to the 16th century the concept “blueman”²⁸ (blámaður)—later gaining the racialized meaning associated with “black”—is used to refer to all kinds of strange people outside of Iceland.²⁹ Perhaps most notably, dark trolls and giants.³⁰ However, in old Icelandic texts, family relations with giants were not necessarily perceived as negative. To the contrary, some great men of history were characterized as having such relations.³¹ And, although Africans were depicted as “bluemen,” they could be sympathetically characterized. The Icelandic chivalric saga (Icelandic: Riddarasögur),³² Dínus saga Drambláta—probably written in the late 14th century or early 15th ³³—tells the story of the Egyptian prince Dínus. In the book, dark monsters, and dangerous dark men, are to some extent associated with the African continent, but one can still see some emphasis on agency, which is very different from representations of Africans in later sources. And although the saga speaks of the “blue” continent burned by the sun, inhabited by giants and dark men, it also speaks of a king called Maximilanus, who is described as a decent man (ráðvöndum), wealthy and wise.³⁴

As Audrey Smedley³⁵ has stressed, there is no reason to assume that the same conceptions of people existed in the past as in more contemporary racial classifications. In Icelandic as well as other European texts prior to the 15th century, negative attributes were certainly associated with Africa, but Africans were diversely represented and the continent “Africa” had not even been defined.³⁶ The diverse medieval engagements between Africa and Europe are, for example, reflected in that Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia are part of the history of Christianity.³⁷ Between 1300 and 1500 various negotiations were ongoing between European and Ethiopian rulers of joining forces against what they perceived as a Muslim threat.³⁸ And the notion, to give another example, appearing in the 12th century, of Prester John, a powerful Christian king living in the interior of Africa, similarly implies the diverse imaginations of Africa during the medieval period.³⁹

Creating a Racial Community in Iceland

Fast forwarding to the 19th century, we find a less pluralistic and sympathetic image of Africa. The representations of Africa in 19th century Iceland were generally not based on actual e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I The Nation
• Part II Racism
• Part III Diaspora
• Contributors
• Index