The King and the Hoard

Picture from the must-see Guder og Grave web site on the Danish Bronze Age.

In the December issue of excellent Danish pop-sci archaeology bimonthly Skalk, Bente & Jens Henrik Jønsson tell the tragicomical story of Denmark's largest Early Bronze Age hoard find.

The Smørumovre hoard dates from Montelius's Period II (15th or 14th century BC). It came to light in 1851 near Copenhagen when farmer Peter Sørensen was digging a ditch to drain a bog. He collected 163 bronze objects, most of them axeheads and spearheads, and dutifully took them to the Museum for Nordic Antiquities in town. At this time the museum was still headed by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, the father of archaeology, and housed in a wing of the Christiansborg royal castle. Unfortunately, the museum wasn't open on the day when Sørensen came to call. Instead he was told that there was another person around who collected antiquities and might be interested: King Frederick VII.

Frederick received farmer Sørensen, took a look at the find and immediately bought every single piece of it. This meant that the hoard didn't enter the state collection housed in the museum, but became the property of the king himself. He promptly commissioned an excellent publication of the find by J.J.A. Worsaae, which appeared in 1853. And then, in 1859, the royal apartments at Frederiksborg castle burned down and the king's collection was largely destroyed.

Today, 68 pieces from the Smørumovre hoard survive, most of them fire-damaged to some extent, with splotches of lead from the roof of Frederiksborg. If you didn't already know, you can now see that monarchy is wrong.

[More blog entries about archaeology, bronzeage, Denmark; arkeologi, bronsåldern, Danmark.]

Another Great Dane

As noted here before, I'm a big fan of Danish archaeology. They have cool material, good scholars, a solid scientific tradition and hardly any tiresome wannabe philosophers nibbling away at their archaeological university funding.

Esben Schlosser Mauritsen is one of the great Danes, and here is his web site. Esben is into archaeology as extreme sports: aerial photography and underwater excavations are his specialities. Check out his project gallery!

[More blog entries about archaeology, Denmark; arkeologi, Danmark.]

Namesakes

Dear Reader, let me introduce you to Martin Rundkvist.

Martin has trained as a seaman and worked as a chef. The 26-year-old is now a teacher at the Nakkebølle boarding school for troubled teens on southern Funen in Denmark. I haven't had the pleasure of meeting him.

Danish Martin is the only person I'm aware of who spells his name just like mine. There are at least five more Martin Rund**ists in Sweden, living in Borensberg, Tibro, Norrköping, Staffanstorp and Hjo. But they spell their surnames Rundquist, Rundqvist and Rundqwist. There used to be one in the Stockholm area too, but he changed his surname -- gasping with relief, one imagines.

Funny how unimportant a name is as long as it blends in with the surrounding flora. Martin Rundkvist, Mattias Sundkvist, Markus Lindkvist, whatever. Danish Martin's name, though, must look slightly odd to his compatriots, a bit like if I were named Ole Krag Nielsen.

Another Bog Body Song

I've talked before about a great song about a bog body, The Triffids' "Jerdacuttup Man". Now Markus Andersson has pointed me to another song in this lyrical niche, The Mountain Goats' "Tollund Man". It's from the 1995 disc Sweden. The Goats are actually mostly one Californian guy named John Darnielle, and the music is a wistful little piece with just an acoustic guitar, a bass and vocals.

Tollund man
by John Darnielle

I was sitting at the edge of the marsh
when the council came to bring me the news.
They handed me a bowl of cooked wild grasses and they
gave me the ceremonial shoes.

Goodbye young Danish women.
Goodbye Danish sky.
Goodbye cold air I am going away.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

The Tollund man is an uncommonly well preserved Danish bog body found in 1950 near Silkeborg in Jutland. He was hanged and his body buried in a bog some time in the 4th century BC.

Why these people were killed and bogged is a matter of dispute. Some point to something Tacitus wrote and suggest they were army deserters or gay men, which cannot explain the many female bog bodies. Others contend they were simply criminals, sacrifices or criminals used as sacrifices. Most recently, Allan Lund has suggested that some bog bodies are victims of witch hunts, as occur still in some African cultures. This would explain the often extremely violent deaths of these people, as well as the unusual disposal of their bodies. Bogs may have been seen as safe for getting rid of dangerous bodies with uncanny powers.

[More blog entries about music, mountaingoats, archaeology, denmark; musik, mountaingoats, mosslik, arkeologi, danmark.]

Subjectivity Research

Dan Zahavi

The other day I was checking out job ads at the web sites of Scandinavian universities, when I happened upon something that intrigued me. The University of Copenhagen is looking for a doctoral student in subjectivity research.

Center for Subjectivity Research invites applications for a Ph.D fellowship for 3 years in the area of subjectivity research with special focus on the relation between core self and extended (narrative) self. [...]

The Center for Subjectivity Research is an interdisciplinary research center under the directorship of Professor Dan Zahavi. The fellowship is open to applicants coming from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. Projects involving both theoretical and empirical perspectives will, other things being equal, be preferred.

It is recommended that those interested in applying should orient themselves concerning the research program and the activities of the Center by consulting its website: www.cfs.ku.dk.

Neither my core self nor my extended (narrative) self understood any of this. But I had a very bad feeling about it. To someone with my scientific ideals, "subjectivity research" sounds about as good as "contaminated samples studies", "heavily biased sociology" or "studies in sub-atomic physics performed while tripping on acid". So I tried to learn more.

The Center's web site explains that they place particular focus on the question whether subjectivity can be explained on the basis of principles and models that the natural sciences use and accept.

Is it ultimately possible to account adequately for the first-person perspective and the experiential dimension from a third-person perspective? ... The research of the Center is divided into three parts-the first focusing on phenomenology and philosophy of mind, the second on hermeneutics and philosophy of religion, the third on psychopathology. ... An investigation comprising philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, and psychopathology is unorthodox. But the complex problem of subjectivity demands an unorthodox approach, one that integrates a diversity of complementary theoretical and empirical investigations.

This, Dear Reader, is seriously spacy stuff. This is Timothy Leary's and Robert Anton Wilson's old turf.

And the Center isn't just a guy with a desk, either. Fifteen people appear to work on the Center's premises, and it's got nine affiliated scholars at departments for Bible exegesis, systematic theology, philosophy, medical anatomy, psychology, neuroscience and mental health, one even being the lit-crit editor of the main Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende! Starting 2002, the state of Denmark (pop. 5.4 million) has been pumping some serious money into this effort. And I don't even understand what it is they seek to achieve. But I like the empirical bit. My fears are pretty much assuaged. This is not likely to be all verbiage.

The Center's director, Dan Zahavi, is only 39, but clearly a hard-working, talented and ambitious man. He's a philosopher of the Continental persuasion, specialising in phenomenology, consciousness studies and the works of Husserl. This suggests that if the Center realises its goal, then it will have a very hard time explaining to people like me exactly what they found out. We just don't speak their language. And it makes me wonder if even the Center's various staff members and affiliates understand each other.

As for "whether subjectivity can be explained on the basis of principles and models that the natural sciences use and accept", well, that's a yes/no question. I should be able to understand the answer to that. Though to my mind it appears implicit in rationalist science that the answer is yes. Because otherwise we would have to believe in discredited old superstitions about an immaterial soul.

I wonder when the Center's answer is due.

[More blog entries about philosophy, phenomenology, Denmark; filosofi, fenomenologi, Danmark.]