Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule

[twovultures]

Interesting. So, let's throw it out a little further. What sort of organizations did the Indians of the New World have and how did it emerge? What's the situation of the Anasazi, the Iroquois, the Miqmaq, the Algonkwin, the Haida, the Cherokee?

The Anasazi form of government isn't very well known as the Anasazi are long extinct, but some of their successor tribes like the Zuni are basically theocracies, where religion governs day to day life. However, even the pre-contact Zuni were post-collapse ('post-apocalypse') Anasazi, so their form of government is quite probably very different from their Anasazi ancestors.

The Haudonasee confederacy had a pretty complex form of government. Each individual tribe was co-governed by a men's council and a woman's council. The different tribes got together at a Grand Council, which did not have government power over the constituent tribes but was more of a ceremonial get together for the tribes to coordinate their work.

Traditionally, men from certain families were chosen by the women's societies to represent the tribe at the Grand Council. Decisions had to be reached by unanimity, and tribes that did not want to abide by decisions were free not to as long as they did not harm other members of the confederacy (So, for example, "We Oneida will not make war with the Erie, but we won't aid the Erie against the rest of you").

According to their own myths, the Haudonasee confederacy formed as a classic social contract to prevent the member tribes from warring with each-other.

The Micmaq and the Haida I don't know much about.

The Algonquian peoples seem to have been governed by chiefs when the English began their settlement on the East Coast, but how much actual power these chiefs had over their people is controversial. Wahunsenawcah (Pocahontas' father) was described by John Smith as running an 'empire' which forced other groups to give tribute to him or be conquered.

Is the 'Big Man' model of tribal governance found in Africa a likely model?

I can't speak for all of Africa, but I know that some people in East Africa were governed by councils of elders, like the Maasai and the Kikuyu*. For the these, government worked a lot like Athenian democracy-all free men of the tribe above a certain age got to work as part of the government, deciding punishments for crimes, conducting religious ceremonies, and making legislative decisions, although without a complex state you couldn't have a 'big government' making many laws governing people's day to day lives. I recall when I visited the Belle in Liberia that they were also governed by elders, but the elders appointed a village chief for each village. This might be a post-colonial development, though.


*the Kikuyu were another people who had chiefs imposed on them by the British.

 

[Danbensen]

Interesting. So, let's throw it out a little further. What sort of organizations did the Indians of the New World have and how did it emerge? What's the situation of the Anasazi, the Iroquois, the Miqmaq, the Algonkwin, the Haida, the Cherokee?

Is the 'Big Man' model of tribal governance found in Africa a likely model?

What sort of organization was perceived for the barbarian tribes who invaded the Roman and Byzantine Empires - the goths, vandals, avars, bulgars, magyars, etc.?

I can talk about the Algonquin and Bulgar peoples. And so I shall:

What I know about Algonquin people comes from the Miami tribe (previously of the area around Chicago, now in Oklahoma), but I think it holds well for all Algic-speaking peoples, except that in the Algonquin heartland on the east coast there might have been more stratification. Anyway, a Miami camp or band usually had a few dozen people in it. Everyone was expected to be self-reliant and responsible, but in some situations they needed someone to make decisions for many. Civil matters were decided by the men's and women's councils, with men's councils focusing more out decisions outside the camp (hunting, diplomacy) and the women's council inside (farming, arbitration, land use). The councils were chaired by akimas, who were people generally recognized to be smart and knowledgeable and worthy of respect. An akima couldn't order anyone to do anything against their will, but could only suggest and drum up popular support for his or her opinion to eventually brow beat you into compliance. Other civil positions of less responsibility were assistant akima (kaapia) and Councilor-in-Chief (maawikima). Akimas were usually but not always men.
For buffalo hunts and war-parties, you have a war-chief (neenawihtoowa) who, within his (always his) preview commands much more power than an akima. A war-chief can give you order which you're expected to carry out. However war-chief was considered a junior title to akima. One might gain esteem through leading sucsessful raids and eventually become well enough respected to be an akima.
There were also medicine-men or spiritualists (meenitoowita), although they were weaker than civic authorities. Mostly they concentrated on healling and dream interpretation.

So the three main groups of authorities (civil, military, and religious) were all there even in the stateless Miami-Illinois. If I wanted to apply their history to the Thule, I might see the rise of the shaman class as an extension of medicine men first into the women's council (agriculture) then into the war-chief (war), then into the men's council and akima's prerogatives (civil order). The question to ask here is what makes a person NOT a shaman?

 

[Danbensen]

And about the Bulgars

The history about them is sparse, since they had no writing and very quickly adopted Slavic and Byzantine customs when they settled in Bulgaria. But in general they were a lot like other central-asian horse-riding peoples (they either spoke a Turkic language with a lot of Persian loanwords, or vica-versa). They worshiped the sky-god Tangre and ate lots of yogurt and dried sausage. Their shamans were called "memories" (the current word is Slavic and obviously a calque for the original Bulgar word) and were in charge of keeping the rites observed correctly.

Their leaders were khans "elected" (that is to say followed) byclans, made up of families, all of them on horseback. When they settled, one of the things the khans had to do was solidify and centralize their government, which involved the ruling clan (Dulo) forcing the other clans to adopt the Slavic language, which is why modern Bulgarian has a lot of folklore and culture, but very little linguistic inheritance from the Bulgars.

Applied to the Thule, the Bulgars I think tell us that a state-building society suddenly becomes very interested in centralizing power. Early on there is a competition between rival factions that ends with the complete marginalization (or extinction) of all but two or three. In Bulgaria it was just one, the khans of the Dulo clan. Granted, they had the advantage of an agricultural peasantry (the Slavs) and civilized neighbors (the Byzantines), from whom they copied their governmental and religious structure almost verbatim. The Thule don't have any models like that, except maybe the Scandinavians. I do expect some clever shaman or merchant to notice the supreme power of European monarchs and try to set up a similar system for himself. The idea of primogeniture (picked up damn fast by the Bulgars) will be especially tasty.

 

[Michael Douglas]

Half of an evolved eye is no good at all. (I'm generalizing here, so you evolutionists stay off my back.) What we likely have are an accumulation of pre-eye traits which are useful in and of themselves, and eventually a tipping point, a rapid development of a complex feature.

I'd like to applaud your use of this analogy. The development of Eyes is the best theory so far as to what caused the Cambrian Explosion; that is to say most animal phyla evolved in a very short time as soon as primitive eyes evolved, and eyes went from simple lenses to their more complex modern state with the speed of what is to evolutionary terms the equivalent of a bullet fired from a gun.

 

[DG Valdron]

I'd like to applaud your use of this analogy. The development of Eyes is the best theory so far as to what caused the Cambrian Explosion; that is to say most animal phyla evolved in a very short time as soon as primitive eyes evolved, and eyes went from simple lenses to their more complex modern state with the speed of what is to evolutionary terms the equivalent of a bullet fired from a gun.

Really? I got such grief for using it.

 

[Shevek23]

I audited a class on Native American sacred traditions once; a lesson I recall was on the nature of shamanism. This might have very little to do with Thule shamanism, but the basic syndrome is:

Someone gets sick, very sick, or have some other severe life crisis afflicting them. They go into a dream state, and encounter some non-human Power or other, that as the teacher (himself a Cahuilla Indian) described it "makes you an offer you can't refuse." When the victim recovers, he or she has new insights and powers--but is not revered, or followed, the way a secular leader is. They are uncanny and people tend to keep their distance, because no one quite trusts their power. But they come in handy so they aren't outcasts--just viewed with caution and suspicion.

What you've described among the Thule as "shamanism" seems like something else to me.

It's an interesting fact, unknown to me before reading this thread, that OTL the Inuit were so much feared by their neighbors. I don't find it entirely implausible that even if their outsider neighbors fear them even more ITTL, that they aren't a particularly quarrelsome, brutal warlike bunch among themselves, no matter how ruthless they are with non-Thule. Human beings "against" nature tend not to be in too terrible a position, even in as extreme an environment as the Arctic. We have culture and plans, nature does not, so humans tend to win given a fraction of a chance. One wouldn't think the Arctic offers many chances but here you've turned up all these dozens of plants and animals they might cultivate on top of their finely honed gathering and hunting skills.

The sparseness of the environment does raise the question of how soon would they be up against the raw edge where there just aren't enough resources locally for all the Inuit who are already there to have enough. It seems though the Inuit of OTL often sidestepped the question by moving into new ranges previously deserted, or occupied by others they ruthlessly displaced (into death and oblivion of course.) Here they also have the ability to move the goalposts by adopting and intensifying cultivation of various kinds, and exploiting the widespread net of general knowledge that a more intense level of trade supported by generally more productive abilities offers them, so that if they abandon or out-emigrate from a marginal territory they have some good idea where they should go.

So in the matters of war and peace, they are a bit schizophrenic, at war with all outsiders but mainly at peace with each other.

I've deferred to your ideas of "big men" because I figure you know some real Inuit and have some personal insights into the pattern of their culture--as I said I never got a hint before reading this thread that they were known as fierce and implacable enemies.

But it clashes with my generalized idea of what human societies were like before cultivation, and the notions I have of a more egalitarian and relaxed pragmatic human pattern that we evolved in; societies polarized around a class of "big men" whose awe includes fear of their willingness to have recourse to force are I believe characteristic of what happens after surplus becomes consistently available, and therefore can be seized from its creators and concentrated in the control of a ruling class. I had thought the evidence of anthropology was largely on the side of the more militarized societies we now take for granted being a recent innovation, and that our gatherer-hunter ancestors lived quite differently.

So I accepted your proto-Thule as being different largely on your say-so, and also because the people you describe, within their own cultural sphere, don't look much like a warrior people and look a lot more like the sort of gatherer-hunters I learned about in anthro classes. That is, they lack stratified classes; social influence is earned by people of exceptional ability who then share the outcomes of their abilities and the wisdom of their insights with their peers. One might say they trade superior ability for the coin of social support, which everyone, no matter what sorts of paragons they might be, needs the aid of from time to time.

Studying the classic example taught (or anyway, once taught, this was the 1980s) of the Mbuti "pygmies" of the Ituri rainforest as presented by Colin Turnbull, but then apparently backed up by other examples (including the "bushmen" of the Kalahari desert, who live in a harsher environment) I was struck by how fearless and fluid their basic belief system seemed. I account for the contrast with what I thought of as the rather fearful and strict superstition of "primitive" people in general by the realization most of those are not primal gatherer-hunters but agriculturalists or pastoral herders--people like the Mbuti's Bantu neighbors in the rainforest, a contrasting example Turnbull brings up specifically. The Bantus feared the forest as a haunt of dangerous spirits; the Mbuti laughed at their superstitions and moved freely in it. The difference is--a cultivating people can achieve a far higher population density, but they are doing so by pushing a few elements of the environment far from their natural equilibrium. A good trick as long as you can keep it up, but environmental fluctuations of various kinds guarantee bad years, and the cultivators are then stuck. They must stay with the crops and herds they've invested so much in and hope for the best, and when the worst happens many die, and the worst often happens for reasons they have no control over, and otherwise generally because they are rather forced to undermine their own basis of existence. Gatherer-hunters live with very low numbers and low density on the land and can therefore expect that somewhere within the ranges they know, they can find something to sustain them before they starve to death. There are other stresses that living in the much greater numbers cultivation can enable bring as side effects, and these too tend to contribute to fear and anxiety. One way to manage fear and anxiety is to focus it into hatred and anger; when we consider that the "redistribution" of surplus we regard as normal is almost always a matter of a few taking from many and offering threats in return (they may offer something of more value too, but generally not without the threats) then anger and resentment are only reasonable--the trick is, these emotions can be diverted and manipulated, and the result is civilization as we know it.

So when I was learning what I took (and still take) to be astonishing facts about the actual basis of human societies at the most primitive levels we know of, at the same time I was taking some other, less respectable in scientific circles, courses about the mythic evolution of human consciousness from a teacher I revere, for all her New Agey woo-woo, as the best educator I ever met. And partially from her I have this notion that actually even after the development of agriculture and the foundations of all the arts of civilization in general--land works, writing, city-building, metallurgy, etc--human beings tried, for a remarkably long transitional period measured in thousands of years, to cling to the ideology of the gatherer-hunter societies they evolved from. They kept on valuing consensus, distributed power, respect of elders of both genders, and a pragmatic, relaxed (if increasingly anxious) view of the world in general. The mere fact that surplus now existed and could be seized did not immediately lead to the sorts of terror-based societies we now accept as necessary and normal; it took time to work out the mechanisms whereby a militarized society could be sustained. I'm sure a big part of that was, outsiders never have the same status as people one lives with and regards as "real people;" I don't believe hostility and cruelty to outsiders is our evolutionary heritage, but indifference is. So the beginnings of the modern ideology of civilization as we know it today were rooted in raiding others, and having to defend from such raids by others; it was this that tipped the balance in favor of patriarchy and organization around military priorities, which favored cliques of quarrelsome, ambitious "big men" redefining society to revolve around them and their epic struggles for supremacy.

I believe that in the Old World, many civilizations arose independently, then there was a time of drastic transition--a veritable Dark Age, in which most of these ancient foundational societies collapsed and then were gradually rebuilt--on a new model, one with only mythic memories, filtered by priesthoods beholden to Big Man patrons, of what went before. This was, I believe, a state change, analogous to a solid melting to a liquid or a gas condensing, after it we have civilization as we know it.

Your Thule are in the middle of the transition period, or even quite early into it, when they run into other civilizations with roots ten thousand years before theirs could get started. To outsiders they present, generally, a highly warlike face, but they haven't internalized it yet. Maybe they are well on the way to doing so in Siberia but in most Thule country, they aren't up against neighbors who would seriously intrude on their territory, which for everyone else is essentially uninhabitable. Thule steal land from people who could live on it and were, but no one else before the Europeans was in a position to try to steal from them. (And the Europeans would do it mainly out of habit, because they would be hard put to even survive in the Thule Arctic and while riches are to be found there, at this point in the development of European expansion comparable goods are to found in less forbidding places still!)

Any notions I have on my own, about what sorts of society Thule would have within their own sphere and what sorts of spiritual world-view they see things through are colored by my notions of the general heritage of humanity evolved as gatherer-hunters. Since they often clash with some broad declarations you've made, yet when you give examples as in the story of how ptarmigans were domesticated or the ventures of Grandfather, they look a lot like how I think sophisticated and venturesome gatherer-hunters would act and react, I've been confused and waiting for guidance based on what I've been taking to be your own personal interactions with Arctic peoples in general and Inuit in particular.

I certainly don't find the pragmatic, quasi-scientific "shamanism" you've described to be unreasonable, I just wonder if the "shamanist" label really fits it.

I'd think that first in Siberia, then in the Thule heartlands as European stuff penetrates, there would be a transition toward what we'd take as a more "normal" sort of civilization, with social classes and patriarchy and kings and warlords and grandiose palaces and temples and all that, and along with it a rather harsh new religion--say for instance a version of Christianity! In just a handful of generations the transition may be catalyzed rapidly by European examples as well as pressures, and their society quite dramatically changed.

At the same time--there would be stubborn resistance, and the preservation of memories of a time when things were quite different. And if Thule societies are still strongly distinct, or even independent, come a time in European metasociety comparable to the shift from 18th to 19th century OTL, a romanticized but perhaps not unworkable version of the remembered Thule old ways might form part of their version of the revolutionary spirit that swept American colonies and core nations of Europe alike.

Given the Deism and outright religious skepticism that permeated so much of the Enlightenment, I could also see a rather Unitarian sort of Thule spiritual revivalism, both in syncretic Christian versions (that might supplant the skepticism of one generation with a fervent "Great Awakening" in another) and even in forthrightly pagan/scientistic versions. The Thule, even after devastating plagues and brutal military campaigns against them, have the Arctic Fastness to retreat to, and from there they can defy the hegemony of Europe and make it come to terms with them as much as they must come to terms with it. And I trust some would do both--as envoys of the Thule heritage they'll make impressions on European culture, and they will refashion European learning to serve their own purposes--well.

 

[DG Valdron]

Remember that culture is always a moving target. Let's take that description...

I audited a class on Native American sacred traditions once; a lesson I recall was on the nature of shamanism. This might have very little to do with Thule shamanism, but the basic syndrome is:

Someone gets sick, very sick, or have some other severe life crisis afflicting them. They go into a dream state, and encounter some non-human Power or other, that as the teacher (himself a Cahuilla Indian) described it "makes you an offer you can't refuse." When the victim recovers, he or she has new insights and powers--but is not revered, or followed, the way a secular leader is. They are uncanny and people tend to keep their distance, because no one quite trusts their power. But they come in handy so they aren't outcasts--just viewed with caution and suspicion.

What you've described among the Thule as "shamanism" seems like something else to me.

Actually, it's quite like Thule Shamanism in its early history. It's a good picture of Shamanism for a hunter/gatherer society wrestling with the spirit world. Thule Shamanism circa 800 or 1000. Not the Thule Shamanism circa 1500 or 1600.

But its worth talking about the Shamanism of 800 or 1000, to try and begin to illustrate how it changes over 500 or 800 years.

I think I've confused people with my relentlessly pragmatic and dispassionate approach to things. Certainly devout Christians will feel uncomfortable around me. And in writing about Shamans, I'm often shocked when someone reads this as me describing or inventing a proto-scientist genius class... when I felt that what I'd talked about was superstition driven trial and error machines.

I've written over and over again about the Shamanic tradition as a way of coping with the fundamental uncertainties of a subsistence existence, particularly a hunter/gatherer existence, and the use of 'magic' to try and manipulate the overarching randomness - to guarantee or affect everything from good hunts to illness.

Okay, let's look at it from another point of view. From the subjective experience of the Shaman... which is really where your quote comes in.

I'll make some comments about your quote though. To the extent that these things are or can be chosen, they're frequently chosen.

Sometimes they fall into it 'ie, are chosen by the spirts or circumstance' That's the supernatural 'offer you can't refuse' - its rarer than is let on. It happens sometimes, but most people in one sense or other go looking for it. But there's a cachet to say or believe that you were summoned - a lot of religious leaders talk about the 'calling of the lord', and there's also in modern parlance the talk of 'callings.' Political leaders all like to claim that they were chosen or drafted or enlisted for the job that they fought and clawed and pursued.

But in almost every case, the reality is that the person who was 'summoned' or 'called' was out there looking for it, or at least making themselves very open to the experience.

The people who end up being Shamans tend to be social outliers, they're smarter, less socially competent, there may be syndromes that in our culture are described as mental illness - bipolar, manic, schizophrenic, prone to hallucination, or other syndromes. They are often intense.

Persons showing such features are often selected by the community for shamanism, or select themselves, once in a while they fall into it. This selection can come early in life. It can also happen much later in life. I suspect that if you were to collect a statistical sampling of case histories for Shamans, you'd find clusters around puberty through early adulthood, a smattering of cases through the productive adult years, and then another cluster in senior years.

The Shamanic existence is often accompanied by trauma or extremity. Sometimes the trauma is right up front, catapulting a formerly fairly ordinary person into a mediator for the supernatural. That's a good line to claim by the way. Mostly, the traumatic experience or extremity comes after a lot of training and preparation, learning and apprenticeship.

There's a lot of literature the world over of Shamans undergoing or entering altered states of consciousness either through psychedelic drugs, intoxication, fasting or famine, or torture either self torture or outside inflicted.

In addition to mystics of every faith, S&M fanatics describe a Euphoric state of consciousness called 'subspace', marathon runners describe a 'runners high'. Extreme monomania - ie, forced repetitive chanting, or meditation can do the trick. These are not usually accompanied by hallucination, but there's a strong ecstatic/euphoic component.

Extreme illness can produce the altered state of consciousness, I once had a fever so bad I began to hallucinate strongly. I was lucid through the hallucinations, but accepted their reality without question. I can still remember the vividness. Extreme emotional crises can produce many of the same symptoms.

This is the dream state. This is all the shamanic dream state is. It's violently altered brain chemistry, a sense of surreality, super-reality, visual and auditory hallucination, and hyper-cognition. There's all sorts of ways to get there.

Different cultures will characterize it in different ways. But the core is the same, regardless of whether its a sub being whipped, a mystic starving himself, a buddhist meditating, a hippie on hallucinogens, a runner on a marathon, etc. etc.

Now, where culture makes the difference is how the individual contextualizes or receives the experience. When I hallucinated, it was about floating machines and floating engine parts. A Christian will feel Christ close to him. A submissive is self involved. An animist will commune with spirits.

Doing that to yourself is risky. Schizophrenics often feel impelled or controlled by external forces. Get into an altered state of consciousness where your messed up brain chemistry starts creating auditory and visual hallucinations, you will find that those hallucinations are very very insistent on being listened to and obeyed.

Shamans are regarded with a bit of wariness for that reason. Altered brain chemistry is a screwy dangerous thing. Remember Abraham being told by god to sacrifice his son Isaac? Or the story of Hercules afflicted by God-sent madness and slaughtering his family. People in that state are potentially dangerous, and even when the danger is past, they never quite stop being unpredictable and dangerous.

But there's a value. Altered states of consciousness are also associated with unusual creativity or insight. Artists or musicians often refer to a 'trance'-like state when involved in intense creative activities. There's the famous story of the shape of the DNA molecule coming out of a dream. Intuition, hunches, the flashes of insight... That can be useful to a community. It can also be useful to the practitioner within a community.

And there's the cachet. People are no stranger to suffering and discomfort. Someone who undergoes the kind of serious trauma, fasting, flagellation or whatever, that induces brain chemistry screwups - you respect that kind of stuff. You know what pain feels like, you know what hunger feels like, you don't like that stuff. Suddenly, you meet someone who not only does not run away from that crap, but they go up and ask for seconds? Respect.

Of course, genuinely crazy folk are not going to live too long. The schizophrenic in a primitive culture who is so seriously screwed up that he can't tell when he's on fire... he dies, either natural causes, accidents, self-inflicted illness, starvation or his peers kill him.

This is the other side of Shamanism, the deliberate humbuggery. By this, I don't mean fraud. There may be some of that. But the reality is that you can't spend all your time in altered consciousness, you have to come down from that. And you have to deal with people, which includes dealing with people who want things from you.... answers, cures, intersession with the spirits, etc.

So, you're an ordinary rational person... you're smarter than average, you've had a lot of experience or history with people coming to you for healing... what are you going to do? You make like a Doctor, you pick up some genuine healing - potions, plants, medicinal techniques, either by trial and error, or from other Shamans - you learn what seems to work, and you go with that.

You also learn to read people really well. Comes with the territory. You're in a people profession - lawyers, doctors, poker players, policemen, con-men, they learn to read people, they learn to pay attention, to look for things and respond to that. A good Shaman is an astute reader of people, and manipulates or uses those readings.

If its part of your culture, you learn the dances, you learn the chants and songs, or you make up your own - partly mystical inspiration, but partly rational calculation. You take credit when things work, you blame the spirits when things don't work, and the way people are, they remember your successes.... unless you've had a big string of failures or a critical humiliation.

This is your Thule Shaman from 800 CE, and perhaps your Shaman from most every culture with a Shamanic tradition. You have a caste of people who don't fit in, who are generally smart and talented, and they're diverted into a lifestyle where they induce a profound altered brain chemistry often as a profound shaping moment, and thereafter from time to time, and outside of those altered brain chemistry situations, they're smart people readers, smart trial and error machines, social arbiters, thinkers, etc.

Their viewpoints and outlooks are profoundly mystical, you can't avoid that. They're having flipping hallucinations where spirits come and talk to them and insist on them doing stuff, where they believe that they turn into and out of animals, etc. This is subjectively real to them, its part of their experience and world view.

But they're also within that framework a rational, canny, effective and manipulative group... because they have to be. Because the really crazy ones, the really far gone mystical ones... they die.

This was the subjective world of the Shamans of 800 CE among the Thule, and to some extent, it's still the subjective world of Shamans of 1500.

Did Grandfather fast or self flagellate or suck back a shitload of magic mushrooms and have conversations with walrus and unicorns and transform into a caribou and gambole with spirits. Sure he did. He believed every bit of it. But he didn't do that all the time. He made it work for him. And when he wasn't high as a kite, he was a thorough schemer.

Manupataq, on the coast of Greenland, huddling between two Caribou, half starved, shivering, her body temperature slowly dropping towards hypothermia, half conscious, her memories full of villages of the dead, rotting whales on the beach, dogs eating corpses in the streets, stories of survivors ringing through her head.... the realization that Christ is the spirit bringer of plagues and sickness, that's as much a mystical revelation as a logical conclusion.

Sometimes mystical revelations plays us false. Sometimes it worked. For a large part of our history, prior to the scientific method, mystical revelation was pretty darned effective in terms of motivating people, getting stuff done, and even producing some degree of innovation and cultural and technological advancement.

 

[Danbensen]

Just caught up with the Greenland plague. Awesome. Really really awesome. It rings really true to me.
I love the idea of an anti-missionary, a person who effectively inoculates at least the Greenland Thule against Christianity. Very interesting.

Now, I suggest that in Greenland and the East Coast of the continent, the Shaman Class will seize upon disease prevention as a way to consolidate power. The shamans already have control over food production, and using plague control measures and rites as their tool, they now have the means to control settlement and law-enforcement.

"Village A has to depopulate and move 50 km north to avoid plague. Village B, you guys go to, you guys were slow to follow orders last time. 60 km. And call me 'sir.'"

"Skilled artisans and roseroot cultivators from village A. When you relocate, it should be closer to my house. It's safer here in my influence. No need to thank me. Although I wouldn't say no to some lavish decorations and enough of the good stuff to keep my concubines high for a month, if you know what I mean. Yeah you do."

"Oh, that rival shaman has been telling people I'm a power-mad tyrant? He's obviously gone mad with plague! Kill him before he infects anyone else. And you'd better kill his followers too. And isolate anyone who listened to him. They're probably carriers."

 

[DG Valdron]

Just caught up with the Greenland plague. Awesome. Really really awesome. It rings really true to me.
I love the idea of an anti-missionary, a person who effectively inoculates at least the Greenland Thule against Christianity. Very interesting.

Now, I suggest that in Greenland and the East Coast of the continent, the Shaman Class will seize upon disease prevention as a way to consolidate power. The shamans already have control over food production, and using plague control measures and rites as their tool, they now have the means to control settlement and law-enforcement.

"Village A has to depopulate and move 50 km north to avoid plague. Village B, you guys go to, you guys were slow to follow orders last time. 60 km. And call me 'sir.'"

"Skilled artisans and roseroot cultivators from village A. When you relocate, it should be closer to my house. It's safer here in my influence. No need to thank me. Although I wouldn't say no to some lavish decorations and enough of the good stuff to keep my concubines high for a month, if you know what I mean. Yeah you do."

"Oh, that rival shaman has been telling people I'm a power-mad tyrant? He's obviously gone mad with plague! Kill him before he infects anyone else. And you'd better kill his followers too. And isolate anyone who listened to him. They're probably carriers."

Interesting, very interesting. Something as devastating and universally applicable as an intense pandemic, particularly a series of them, is indeed going to have intense effects on a society, and particularly on the mystical components of a society. Nothing bends a man or women towards mysticism like seeing their whole family die horribly in the space of a week. This will almost certainly have impacts on power relationships in the community.

You are quite correct that Greenland has been inoculated against Christianity... and westerners. The next missionary who shows up on Greenland shores is going to be crucified, and the next, and the next.

Also, in the south particularly, there will be a lot of paranoia about 'hidden christians' - ie, people whose families are from the areas of the old Norse settlements and who might have converted overtly or secretly or at least have some knowledge of Norse Christianity. It will resemble some of the blood libels and persecution directed towards the Jews in medieval Europe.

Prior to this of course, there was a small smattering of people in the South who had some Norse blood or whose families and lineages had some affiliation with the Norse (as those Norse made the mistake of getting involved in Thule politics), who actually had some Christian influence - this ranged from people who actually had a fairly decent illiterate lay Catholic Christian identity, to those who had various bits and pieces, to those who simply integrated Christ as another spirit in their spiritual world.... all of those people are going to find themselves unpopular and targeted for outbursts of persecution or hostility.

It's another meme that will eventually make it into the mainstream Thule Realm, the 'secret christians among us'. But of course there, it will be entirely fictional - like the moral panic about Satanism and Satanic Cults from a couple of decades ago.

Westerners will not be welcome in Greenland, and if trade eventually starts up again, it's going to be along the lines of the old Carthaginian situation. You dump a bunch of stuff in the middle of a field, retreat to the edge of the field and wait - the people at the other edge come and look at it, take some away, and dump some of their own stuff, and if anything goes too wrong, arrows start to fly. It will also take place well away from the south, at the higher accessible points along the East Coast... in part driven by new people from the Ellesmere network.

The closing of Greenland is going to do more than inoculate Greenland Thule, however. It's going to delay further western penetration a little bit, ten years, possibly twenty. Essentially, as far as the Danes and the Germans are concerned, the one valuable commodity, Roseroot, is offset by the fact that it can be obtained locally or semi-locally, and further offset by the fact that the natives further out are psychopathically hostile. Not much incentive to go looking further and further.

As it was, the Danes and Germans were right on the verge of beginning to explore and map the Greenland coasts, and sailing from there right into the centers of the Thule realm.

Of course, we can also take from this that with their newfound xenophobia, contac between the Greenland Thule and the Iceland Thule is going to decline rapidly. Perhaps entirely, perhaps not. But further communication after this is going to decline to a trickle.

Contact with the northern Sea Thule may actually increase. I can see the Svalbard and Franz Josef Thule actually recolonizing parts of the Greenland Coast.

By the way, the local Sea Thule, are also going to be colonizing the northern coasts of Norway and the Kola Peninsula. Nothing too magical about that - a combination of accumulating population and population pressure on one hand, and increasingly better seamanship and even a few pandemic panics. There won't be enough colonists, and there will be far too many locals - Sammi, Finns, Pomors and even Swedes and Norwegians, for them to dominate, except locally. But you'll see a colourful mixture of ethnic enclaves - like the Balkans in the old days.

From Greenland, the Thule are going to be much more aware of the Europeans than vice versa. Towards the end, there was some amazing stuff starting to flow into the Ellesmere trading network, a lot of those artifacts are still in circulation, so certain kinds of people have their ears pricked up. But that awareness is still pretty vague and hazy mostly, and will remain so until the Europeans start showing up.

 

[eschaton]

Also, in the south particularly, there will be a lot of paranoia about 'hidden christians' - ie, people whose families are from the areas of the old Norse settlements and who might have converted overtly or secretly or at least have some knowledge of Norse Christianity. It will resemble some of the blood libels and persecution directed towards the Jews in medieval Europe.

Prior to this of course, there was a small smattering of people in the South who had some Norse blood or whose families and lineages had some affiliation with the Norse (as those Norse made the mistake of getting involved in Thule politics), who actually had some Christian influence - this ranged from people who actually had a fairly decent illiterate lay Catholic Christian identity, to those who had various bits and pieces, to those who simply integrated Christ as another spirit in their spiritual world.... all of those people are going to find themselves unpopular and targeted for outbursts of persecution or hostility.

Is this going to cause a diaspora of those who have Norse blood?

Presumably they won't be able to make it to the Sea Thule, let alone any western nation, but I could see them fleeing to Ellesmere or Labrador.

Hell, enough stigmatization, and they could develop into a distinct sub-identity within the Thule. I would presume that they'll be more plague-resistant than fullbloods, meaning as long as less die due to pogroms than would die in epidemics, they'll do better demographically in the long run.

 

[Hobelhouse]

Just caught up with the Greenland plague. Awesome. Really really awesome. It rings really true to me.
I love the idea of an anti-missionary, a person who effectively inoculates at least the Greenland Thule against Christianity. Very interesting.

Now, I suggest that in Greenland and the East Coast of the continent, the Shaman Class will seize upon disease prevention as a way to consolidate power. The shamans already have control over food production, and using plague control measures and rites as their tool, they now have the means to control settlement and law-enforcement.

"Village A has to depopulate and move 50 km north to avoid plague. Village B, you guys go to, you guys were slow to follow orders last time. 60 km. And call me 'sir.'"

"Skilled artisans and roseroot cultivators from village A. When you relocate, it should be closer to my house. It's safer here in my influence. No need to thank me. Although I wouldn't say no to some lavish decorations and enough of the good stuff to keep my concubines high for a month, if you know what I mean. Yeah you do."

"Oh, that rival shaman has been telling people I'm a power-mad tyrant? He's obviously gone mad with plague! Kill him before he infects anyone else. And you'd better kill his followers too. And isolate anyone who listened to him. They're probably carriers."

Yeah, maybe this is where the division between ruling caste and other shamans happens. In a crisis situation the most charismatic shamans will be able to arrogate the community's resources to themselves, Inca-style, to put it to whatever use will best placate the plague-spirits. Those who can appease the most powerful spirits should have the most power, after all.

Of course they are not always going to agree. One shaman may have a psychedelic vision that life must be traded for life, so we should sacrifice all the livestock we get our hands on. Another shaman may stare into the flames too long and declare that since the plague brings a fever, the fire spirits must be appeased, so we should start burning valuables. Another may have a fever dream and decide there's nothing wrong with his village, it's the assholes in the villages down the river burning things and killing livestock who are pissing off the spirits, so we should kill them and take their land. There's going to be a period of darwinian selection among shamanistic responses to plague which will probably shake out into a network of small shaman-dominated polities.

An interesting thing to note is that with all these sicknesses going around, lots of people are more likely to have a fever-induced vision. The survivors are likely to have a much higher shaman-to-non shaman ratio than before the plagues.

 

[DG Valdron]

Is this going to cause a diaspora of those who have Norse blood?

Hhmmm interesting question. It might. There's just not that many of them, so its hard to say if there's going to be any significant effect.

The Norse were a rapidly declining population. There were really only a few hundred left from a peak of about 2500/5000, and that remnant was malnourished and slow reproducing. Counting adoptions and intermarriages, I'm not sure you'd see more than a few score people having discernible norse ancestry by 1550. Maybe a few hundred if we're generous. Certainly less than a few thousand.

For the most part, I think that most of them would just repudiate their foreign roots. Any indigenous Christianity is probably pretty attenuated by this time, passed down hand to hand and somewhat muddled by immersion in Thule culture. Easy enough to renounce.

Presumably they won't be able to make it to the Sea Thule, let alone any western nation, but I could see them fleeing to Ellesmere or Labrador.

Still, blonde thule in Greenland may start to feel unwelcome, and may go elsewhere. Farquarson argued for some significant Greenland/Labrador interchange. So that might be a force that drives a late period interchange.

I wouldn't rule out departures for Iceland, or the Sea Thule. Ellesmere is actually the hardest to get to. You're basically travelling from the South-West or Southern Shores, up along the Eastern Coast, all the way across the North, and thence to Ellesmere. You might sail up the western coast, but then you've got to get past a thousand miles of glacier locked coast with no place to land or rest.

Hell, enough stigmatization, and they could develop into a distinct sub-identity within the Thule. I would presume that they'll be more plague-resistant than fullbloods, meaning as long as less die due to pogroms than would die in epidemics, they'll do better demographically in the long run.

Actually, not much more. The Greenland Norse, were a subset of the Icelandic Norse, who were themselves a subset of the Norwegian Norse, who were a subset of the Norse, who were a subset of the Northern European/Germanics, who were a Subset of Indo-Europeans. It's those Russian nesting dolls all over again.

I don't know how well the Greenland Norse would have done with epidemics, but the Icelandic Norse proved to be an extremely vulnerable population. Pandemics wiped out half the population each time in 1420 and 1490.

So, not much in the way of a significant comparative advantage - some but not much, certainly not sufficient to overcome the risks of pogroms and purges.

On the other hand, there are naturally blond inuit, did you know that? Sightings of blond eskimos go back to the 1700's. No big deal, probably just a local mutation that spread. There's no indication that our modern blonde inuit get their light hair colour and complexions from European mixing. In OTL, they're located inland, around the McKenzie Basin, coronation gulf, Victoria Island.

In this ATL, I would imagine that their population has increased significantly, and that they're a measurable local minority in the region.

So it would be easy to see them being targeted as a visible local 'Europeanish-looking, Christian-seeming' minority if and when Manupataq's xenophobia spreads out to that region.

I imagine the big reaction of the Blond Thule will be 'WTF? Christ who?' Lots of possibilities for some very interesting permutations in local history.

 

[DG Valdron]

Yeah, maybe this is where the division between ruling caste and other shamans happens. In a crisis situation the most charismatic shamans will be able to arrogate the community's resources to themselves, Inca-style, to put it to whatever use will best placate the plague-spirits. Those who can appease the most powerful spirits should have the most power, after all.

Yeah, its definitely going to produce local shake ups, both in individual and communal power hierarchies. Some major ones too.

Of course they are not always going to agree. One shaman may have a psychedelic vision that life must be traded for life, so we should sacrifice all the livestock we get our hands on. Another shaman may stare into the flames too long and declare that since the plague brings a fever, the fire spirits must be appeased, so we should start burning valuables. Another may have a fever dream and decide there's nothing wrong with his village, it's the assholes in the villages down the river burning things and killing livestock who are pissing off the spirits, so we should kill them and take their land. There's going to be a period of darwinian selection among shamanistic responses to plague

Exactly this. And its the strength of the Thule Shamanistic system. There's no centralizing ideology or authority for Thule Shamanism, so their responses to any problem or any challenge, amounts to Darwinian selection. They all pull stuff out of their ass - the ones who stumble onto the best responses have the best survival rates and the best chances for their ideas and responses to spread.

So, for example, the Shaman who decides that the best way to fight the evil spirits is by slaughtering and dressing a handful of caribou, which makes sure that food is close at hand, will tend to have more survivors, more followers, and spread his methods more than the Shaman who decides to slaughter all the caribou and dump their bodies down the river so that the evil spirits will ride them away (much the way Christ cast demons into pigs and had them run off a cliff).

Of course, it'll take time, each time, for the best responses to become apparent. Look for a lot of crazy ass stuff coming out every time a pandemic runs through. In the medium and long run, the Thule response to pandemics will just keep getting more and more competent, even as the population becomes more and more resistant.

Darwinian response. I like that. Says it all. Tons of trial and error, a lot of people die, the survivors are the ones that stumble onto stuff that works, and spread it from there.

One possible response, that may be survival neutral, but which might have some Cachet is the emergence of Thule necropolis or funerary hills/pyramids. Thirty per cent of your population goes corpse... where you going to put all those bodies? And better yet, if they're riddled with evil spirits.... well, you can't just do the regular funeral rites can you?

An interesting thing to note is that with all these sicknesses going around, lots of people are more likely to have a fever-induced vision. The survivors are likely to have a much higher shaman-to-non shaman ratio than before the plagues.

I was thinking that too. I wonder how that will work out. A lot more mystical heterodoxy? Challenges to the official order? An undercurrent of 'amateur shamans' who have not been formally trained or accredited, but are in tight with the good spirits? Very very interesting and challenging stuff.

 

[Hobelhouse]

I was thinking that too. I wonder how that will work out. A lot more mystical heterodoxy? Challenges to the official order? An undercurrent of 'amateur shamans' who have not been formally trained or accredited, but are in tight with the good spirits? Very very interesting and challenging stuff.

Maybe this is where the division of shamanic labor will come in. The pre-plague shamans may set themselves on top in a coordinating role and 'apprentice' several 'amateur shamans' who are responsible for a given subject area. Certainly one person is not going to be able to co-ordinate a region by himself.

In some places it might have the opposite effect and create a more egalitarian order. After all, the plague infects everyone equally. Doesn't this mean that everyone has the potential to become a shaman? Some post-plague shamans may claim that surviving the touch of the plague spirit makes them better qualified to lead than those know-nothing pre-plague shamans. In fact, maybe the pre-plague shamans were doing everything wrong, which caused the plague in the first place! I think the plague may be a catalyst for a movement making for shamanic knowledge accessible to everyone. 'Talking to the spirits' may become a coming-of-age rite or something done on an irregular basis in response to a life problem. For most people the easiest way to do that is consume psychedelics. The peoples of the Southwest have a tradition of ceremonial consumption of peyote when they want guidance in life. IDK what the Thule would use; I don't think psilocybin mushrooms grow that far north and I am told Amanita is fairly unpleasant and unpredictable.

 

[DG Valdron]

Maybe this is where the division of shamanic labor will come in.

Well before that. Consider that the pivotal cultural shift comes probably about 700 CE. The Thule are bursting out of Alaska around 900 - 1000 CE. Following that we have serious divergence starting with intensifying and accumulating pre-agricultural practices starting around 1100 CE. 1250 CE the Agricultural revolution kicks off and since then its been one damned thing after another. Here we are, up to 1550's, and basically, Thule culture's been in a state of extreme flux in all sorts of ways for about 600 years. Let's take it for granted that the role and positions of Shaman's been morphing right along with it.

The pre-plague shamans may set themselves on top in a coordinating role and 'apprentice' several 'amateur shamans' who are responsible for a given subject area. Certainly one person is not going to be able to co-ordinate a region by himself.

Possible.

In some places it might have the opposite effect and create a more egalitarian order. After all, the plague infects everyone equally. Doesn't this mean that everyone has the potential to become a shaman? Some post-plague shamans may claim that surviving the touch of the plague spirit makes them better qualified to lead than those know-nothing pre-plague shamans. In fact, maybe the pre-plague shamans were doing everything wrong, which caused the plague in the first place! I think the plague may be a catalyst for a movement making for shamanic knowledge accessible to everyone. 'Talking to the spirits' may become a coming-of-age rite or something done on an irregular basis in response to a life problem. For most people the easiest way to do that is consume psychedelics. The peoples of the Southwest have a tradition of ceremonial consumption of peyote when they want guidance in life.

The democratization of the mystical experience is an interesting thing. The Thule go hippy?

Of course, a mystical experience is not always a positive thing. It can be pretty damned terrifying and traumatic in itself, and can leave a person screwed up and damaged. Enlightened and enhanced is only one outcome, not the guaranteed outcome. And as I've said, the vision critters constructed from altered brain chemistry may be nice.... or not nice... but are almost always insistent. The Thule could go Manson.

I think on the whole, the Thule realm is vast enough that you could end up seeing almost every sort of social experiment played out somewhere.

IDK what the Thule would use; I don't think psilocybin mushrooms grow that far north and I am told Amanita is fairly unpleasant and unpredictable.

I think that the one human constant, worldwide is that no matter where you go, and what you do, people always find a way to get f*cked up.

 

[Hobelhouse]

Well before that. Consider that the pivotal cultural shift comes probably about 700 CE. The Thule are bursting out of Alaska around 900 - 1000 CE. Following that we have serious divergence starting with intensifying and accumulating pre-agricultural practices starting around 1100 CE. 1250 CE the Agricultural revolution kicks off and since then its been one damned thing after another. Here we are, up to 1550's, and basically, Thule culture's been in a state of extreme flux in all sorts of ways for about 600 years. Let's take it for granted that the role and positions of Shaman's been morphing right along with it.

Sure, but this seems like it would be the key moment for the ruling shaman class, if it already exists, to seize pre-eminent power.

The democratization of the mystical experience is an interesting thing. The Thule go hippy?

Of course, a mystical experience is not always a positive thing. It can be pretty damned terrifying and traumatic in itself, and can leave a person screwed up and damaged. Enlightened and enhanced is only one outcome, not the guaranteed outcome. And as I've said, the vision critters constructed from altered brain chemistry may be nice.... or not nice... but are almost always insistent. The Thule could go Manson.

Well, this is true, but proper set and setting can go a long way. As someone who happens to know a fair amount about psychedelics, I can tell you one universal characteristic of these drugs is that the environment you're in when you take them is more important than the kind of drug you're taking. This is why for example, the Native American Church uses rituals to get peyote takers in the right state of mind. This is also probably why so many hippies ended up messed up since they would take them in stressful environments full of strangers, or just because it was Tuesday. Notably, members of the Native American Church do not display any abnormal brain function.

My point is, the shamans are of an experimental enough temperament that they could probably devise similar, safer ways to have regular people commune with the spirits.

Also, 'seeing insistent vision critters' isn't a completely representative description of what a psychedelic vision is like. I mean, that's one form it can take, but, they can also be a lot more... abstract than that. The spirit's message may be shown, not told, if that makes any sense.

I think on the whole, the Thule realm is vast enough that you could end up seeing almost every sort of social experiment played out somewhere.

Absolutely. I do wonder if they'll end up sorting themselves into large regions based on the results of these experiments or splinter into a variety of minipolities enacting different solutions. Certainly some responses lend themselves to expansion more than others; an egalitarian shamanistic movement based on the idea that the old shamans were wrong has more of a proselytizing impulse than one where all we need to do to appease the plague spirit is make some sacrifices etc.

 

[Danbensen]

An interesting thing to note is that with all these sicknesses going around, lots of people are more likely to have a fever-induced vision. The survivors are likely to have a much higher shaman-to-non shaman ratio than before the plagues.

Perhaps we will emerge from the plague with a certification system of official shamans versus hedge shamans. Another step toward centralization.

 

[Danbensen]

There's no indication that our modern blonde inuit get their light hair colour and complexions from European mixing.

Seriously? Wow! Has anyone done the genetic tests to corroborate that? If so, blond Inuit make the third independent evolution of blond-ness in humans (mutation of MC1R 11,000 YA in Europe, mutation of TYRP130-5,000 YA around the Solomon Islands, and now this one in northern Canada). Very interesting.

http://www.nature.com/news/blonde-hair-evolved-more-than-once-1.10587

 

[Danbensen]

Darwinian response. I like that. Says it all. Tons of trial and error, a lot of people die, the survivors are the ones that stumble onto stuff that works, and spread it from there.

I agree it makes sense, and that's probably the way a lot of OTL religions developed.

But the ruthless extermination of heterodoxy is a VERY competitive meme. Even stupid, maladaptive, obviously wrong ideas can get spread if they attach themselves to a "kill-the-unbeliever" super-meme. And I agrue that the Greenland Thule are perfectly primed to invent and spread a universal orthodoxy.

First, they have a pressing need to compile an index of best practices that help prevent people from dying. Next, they have the normal human distribution of power-hungry bastards looking for an excuse to settle scores and set themselves up above their neighbors. Finally they some of them are aware of Catholic church structure (at least to the extent that they know religious heirarchy is possible). Let's say some enterprising southern Greenland Thule attaches himself (or herself) to Manupataq (or more likely Manupataq's following) and declares a True Text of Plague Avoidance.

 

[DG Valdron]

I agree it makes sense, and that's probably the way a lot of OTL religions developed.

And the way a lot of OTL culture and technology developed.

But the ruthless extermination of heterodoxy is a VERY competitive meme. Even stupid, maladaptive, obviously wrong ideas can get spread if they attach themselves to a "kill-the-unbeliever" super-meme. And I agrue that the Greenland Thule are perfectly primed to invent and spread a universal orthodoxy.

That's quite an interesting thought. But I'll caveat it. The Greenland Thule may be primed to invent a Universal Orthodoxy, but it's not well positioned to spread beyond Greenland... yet.

The issue is the geography of communication and contact. For most part, there's only one route from Greenland's South and East Coasts back to the Thule mainstream - travel far north, then west, cross over into Ellesmere, and then through.

Basically that's why the Measles epidemic fizzled as it moved north. Population density and movement dropped away to almost nothing, and the disease could not find new hosts before it killed or burned out of its current carriers.

The northern route is the only real point of access - but it's a physical and cultural barrier.

From Greenland, of course there's access to the Iceland Thule, but my impression is that's going to decline. There's also access to the Sea Thule chains of islands. We'll see how that turns out.

Finally there's a hypothetical southern access by sea to Labrador and Baffin, but these are much longer voyages than even the Sea Thule undertake, and are by no means regular channels.

For Greenland itself, particularly the South and the central and lower East, I could see Manupataq essentially inventing a crude theocracy.

But the rest of the Thule realm is going to be hard to access, Manupataq's writings and ideas are going to become part of the heterodoxy and treated as such. The round of plagues on the mainland won't begin for at least a decade.

It's an interesting thought. You're quite correct that 'Exclusive Orthodoxy' is a powerful meme and does tend to spread and reinforce. It also seems to me though that the establishment of Orthodoxy comes with an end to Heterodoxy as an inevitable consequence, and the ending of Heterodoxy robs society of some capacity for innovation and flexibility.

I think that what has worked for the Thule in the past, and allowed for remarkable developments has been the Heterodoxy of the Shaman class, among others. All those trial and error machines operating on a vast scale.

But orthodoxy is almost inevitable, conservatism sneaks in, the tried and true conservatism ultimately dominated trial and error based systems. So when and how does this happen to the Thule? Is it happening now?

Will the coming series of pandemics or contact with Europeans bring about the closing of the Thule mind, or a new round of shaking things up?

I apologize if all this seems abstract.

First, they have a pressing need to compile an index of best practices that help prevent people from dying. Next, they have the normal human distribution of power-hungry bastards looking for an excuse to settle scores and set themselves up above their neighbors. Finally they some of them are aware of Catholic church structure (at least to the extent that they know religious heirarchy is possible). Let's say some enterprising southern Greenland Thule attaches himself (or herself) to Manupataq (or more likely Manupataq's following) and declares a True Text of Plague Avoidance.

Interesting.