Frikirkjan and National Gallery, Reykjavik.

Christmas celebrations in Iceland, a nation that can never be accused of partying half-heartedly, extend over twenty-six days. During a period of just over three weeks, not one Father Christmas but a succession of thirteen Jólasveinar or Yule/Christmas Lads arrive in, and leave, town one-by-one. This piece of folklore is variously commemorated on cards and postage stamps, and is accompanied by songs, dances and stories, much of which is captured on national television. Small, well-behaved children hope to receive a gift from each of these visitors, culminating in a more significant present from the final Lad, Kertasníkir (Candle-beggar), on Christmas Eve itself.

In origin the Lads are somewhat sinister figures, who have only recently been recast to resemble Father Christmas/Santa Claus, swapping farmer’s dress for bright red clothes and white beards. According to old legends, they were sent to town in the winter to search for fresh meat for their mother, Grýla, a troll who feasts on raw human flesh. The family cat, Jólaköttur, also likes to eat poor children.

The Lads’ names, including Bjúgnakrækir (Sausage-thief), Askasleikir (Bowl-licker), and Skyrgámur (Skyr [Curd]-glutton) evoke the fears of a not-too-distant past, when most Icelanders lived at or around subsistence level and a cold winter meant that starvation of livestock and, sometimes, the people, was a real possibility.

Reykjavik’s bars and coffee shops remain full this December, but particularly in the suburbs an increasing number of 4x4s are left at home in favour of cheaper-to-run vehicles, and the queues for Red Cross food parcels are also growing as the economic crisis takes its toll.

Iceland’s financial markets, and with them, its currency, have fallen into the proverbial abyss. Cheap geothermal power and other modern technologies mean that a return to the darkest days of the past is unlikely, but nonetheless I suspect that the bleak connotations of their Christmas traditions have a new-found resonance for many Icelanders this year.

I’ve been teaching history for quite a while now, at several different levels and for various institutions, so a large number of students have had my techniques and quirks forced upon them. What always startles me, though, is the extent to which so many people, perhaps studying history in depth for the first time, treat materials produced in the past (in other words, our primary sources) as if they were repositories of unvarnished truth. When asked to comment on, say, a letter describing the new poor law of 1834 from one of its commissioners, I am stunned at how many students will give a reply that pretty much equates to, “because he said the new law was working well and all the paupers were industrious and happy, we can confidently say the new law was working well and all the paupers were industrious and happy”.

New Poor Law poster, 1834.
[image Wikimedia]

 

Now, of course, you and I know that that simply wasn’t the case. The New Poor Law had its successes, for certain, but it also caused numerous cases of human misery by confining the destitute to workhouses. What concerns me, however, is not that students of history (I include myself) sometimes find it difficult to describe the complex manifestations of past life, but that most students repeat such things despite that they are – rightly – people who would never take the word of a politician, a bureaucrat, or a journalist at face value today. Unless we presume that individuals in the past were markedly more inclined to present the objective truth – and, trust me, on the whole they weren’t – there is just no way of squaring that circle.

On reflection, I suppose that this is one of the dangers of working in a discipline that encourages its scholars so avidly to criticise its basic materials. When faced with a source that supports my interpretation of how things happened, I guess I have been from time to time guilty myself of assuming its truth too easily. When tempted into such complacency, though, I find that Margaret Thatcher’s voice will sometimes cut in to prod me out of it. I’m no fan of the Iron Lady, I must say, but a phrase of hers (a common enough phrase, in fact, but for some reason it’s always delivered in her voice in my mind) has stuck with me. It was back in the late 1980s, and Neil Kinnock had just made a statement about some aspect of Tory policy, to which Thatcher, on being asked about it, had replied – somewhat to the surprise of her interviewer, who had probably expected a more considered response – “well, he would say that, wouldn’t he.” It scarcely matters what the policy issue was and whether it was Kinnock or Thatcher who had truth on their side; in any case, I’ve forgotten the details. The point is that this phrase is the pith of critical source analysis. There are, naturally, more questions to ask, and deeper rummaging required, but essentially if one bears “well, he would say that, wouldn’t he” in mind then it’s hard to go too far awry.

So, if we did read a report from one of the poor law commissioners saying how splendidly the law was working in the 1840s, then, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? After all, he would presumably want to keep his job. The same phrase applies to pretty much any source; it doesn’t have to be a text. Ever wondered why we have so few pictures of ugly princes from the medieval period? Well, artists would paint like that, wouldn’t they, if they wanted to avoid an unpredictable burst of regal displeasure. (Unless, of course, the image was a piece of propaganda generated by a royal opponent: but even then the same phrase applies.) Maggie optimistically wanted British citizens to be more thrifty and entrepreneurial, and I’m afraid she failed miserably in my case; but, in another way, she’s managed to keep me on the straight-and-narrow.

Looking back on what I’ve just written, however, I realise that it sounds rather harsh on the students that I’ve taught over the years. I want, therefore, to make it absolutely clear that none of that criticism could ever be applied to Open University students. But, well… 

Taking it further

If the above blog has intrigued you, you may also find the following resources from the Open University to be of interest:

Exploring history: medieval to modern 1400-1900
The problems and methodologies of history – including how to analyse primary sources correctly – are well covered in this OU course, which gives students a very broad introduction to the study of history. It highlights three big historical themes – changing beliefs, producers and consumers, and state formation – and looks at how they altered from the medieval period through to the nineteenth century. Amongst the topics covered are slavery and the slave trade, the European Reformations, Imperialism, the French Revolution, and the Wars of the Roses.

History for 50p
One of my previous blogs also investigates coping with primary sources.

About the author

Dr Stuart Mitchell has spent seventeen years teaching history in higher education - the last fifteen of which have been with the Open University, amongst other institutions. Currently, he is working on the new history MA, and tutors on Exploring History: Medieval to Modern (A200) and Total War and Social Change (AA312). He also serves as the university's academic consultant on the BBC television programme, Timewatch. His first book, The Brief and Turbulent Life of Modernising Conservatism, was published in 2006.

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India is a country used to terrorism, but the nature and scale of the recent attacks in Mumbai is shocking. As the hotel sieges drew to a close last Friday, military and media attentions shifted to the city’s Chabad Centre in Nariman House, where a rabbi and his family were amongst the hostages, and eventually died during a standoff between terrorists and security services. Facebook and other online groups sprung up in support, and then in memory, of the couple. As a longtime teacher of Judaism, I shared this interest and concern.

There have been Jews in India for many centuries. The synagogue in Kerala (Cochin) is the oldest in the British Commonwealth and was constructed in 1568, when Jews there played an important role in the spice trade. Worshippers enter the building barefoot, in the same manner that their Hindu and Muslim neighbours enter their temples and mosques. Since 1948, however, the community has waned; many people have migrated to Israel. Nowadays, most Indian Jews are Bene Israel, a group who live mainly in Mumbai, also practicing their own distinctive rites such as Malida, the offering of a dish of rice and fruits accompanied by blessings and prayers addressed to God and Elijah.

The building at the centre of last week's tragedy represented a quite different tradition. Chabad-Lubavitch is a form of Hasidism, a type of Judaism that originates in Eastern Europe and seeks to combine mysticism with a carefully observant (‘ultra-Orthodox’) lifestyle. Most Hasidic groups are led by hereditary dynasties, and Chabad’s case, its recent leaders have organised and urged their followers to undertake an extensive programme of ‘kiruv’, ‘bringing close’ or outreach. This work aims to rebuild a kind of Judaism that was devastated by the Nazi Holocaust. Chabad is also – unusually – firmly messianic in orientation. (In fact, members disagree as to whether Menahem Mendel Schneerson, their late leader, is the Messiah.). Reaching out to each and every Jewish soul is seen as a way of preparing for, perhaps even hastening, the advent of the Messiah and Israel’s restoration.

These motivations take Chabad workers to centres around the world, such as Mumbai, an international, cosmopolitan city popular with young Israeli backpackers. Many of the activities Chabad workers undertake are highly visible – approaching Jews in the street and encouraging them to pray or observe other commandments, and erecting large public menorahs (candelabra) during the winter festival of Chanukkah (their work with drug addicts and the homeless is less well known). As such, they risk the opprobrium of more quietist Jews, and the sometimes violent attentions of anti-Jewish, and anti-Israeli groups.  

The deaths of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka are reminders both of the increasingly globalized nature of religion, and of the risks that many ordinary people take each day in pursuit of their religious goals.