Make No Bones About It: The Invention of Homo islandicus

Abstract

Emphasizing the shift from textual studies to physical and biological anthropology and the relevant contexts of academic production during the twentieth century, this article explores anthropological discussions of the history and characteristics of Icelanders, Homo islandicus. Our discussion is largely based on the works of several Icelandic scholars and the social memory they represent, the ways in which the past is collectively established and preserved. Drawing upon different takes on nationalist and academic agendas, we argue that the “thought styles” involved differ significantly on method and sources, the relative merits of texts, bones, and DNA material. With each shift in style, the spokespersons in question triumphantly claim they have privileged access to the past: “Make no bones about it!” Thought styles, however, do not develop from thin air; rather, they are intimately connected to the contexts in which they are embedded, both constituting and being constituted by the imagined communities of nations, cultures, and disciplines and their traditions of remembrance and authority.

Keywords:

• Remembrance
• Iceland
• Physical anthropology
• Homo islandicus
• Skeletons
• Genetics

Acknowledgements

An early draft of this article was presented to a conference on “Biohistorical Anthropology: DNA and Bones in Cultures of Remembrance” at the University of Zürich, 7–10 October 2010. The article appeared in German as “Knochenarbeit: Die Erfindung des Homo islandicus” in Marianne Sommer and Gesine Krüger (eds.) Biohistorische Anthropology: Knochen, Körper und DNA in Erinnerungskulturen (Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2011). We thank Gesine Krüger and Marianne Sommer for their excellent comments on the arguments presented.

Notes

1. During most of his career, Stefánsson was a freelance writer, speaker, and consultant, based in New York, frequently commenting on Arctic matters. It was only at the end of his life that he took up an academic position, at Dartmouth College, as the Director of Arctic Studies.

2. Helgason and one of us (Pálsson) organized a research project, the Inuit Genetic History Project (IGHP), focusing on the genetic history and migrations of Inuit populations in the North-American Arctic, based on samples from the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut, Canada, the homeland of the Copper Inuit. Given the results of the IGHP project (Helgason et al., 2006), it seems unlikely, contrary to Stefánsson's hypothesis, that the Norse and the Inuit mixed.

3. Ironically, in some respects Hooton's antiquated thesis of the hierarchy and the “blood stream” of human races would resonate with some aspects of hypermodern notions of rhizomes and recombination. Evidence of “alien” genes laterally borrowed from other organisms has complicated the genealogical view of life, replacing it with rhizomic notions of relations and challenging the basic assumptions of gene talk.