The Historical-Ethnographic Image of the Drinking Peoples of the North
The Historical-Ethnographic Image of the Drinking Peoples of the North

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I aim to analyse descriptions of Arctic peoples’ drinking as one of the oldest stereotypes concerning inhabitants of the North. I intend to explore philosophical frameworks and ways of observation that influenced the appearance and maintenance of the image of a drinking northerner in literature through the millennia. I have examined different sources that provide descriptions of northern drinking as well as scientific and philosophical texts that reveal how the image of indigenous people and drinking is introduced and supported in the writings of intellectuals in different time periods. I have discovered that since classical antiquity, scholars and travellers have believed that people drink more in the north than they do in the south. Later on, medieval and Enlightenment authors developed this understanding about northern drinking according to religious and philosophical paradigms of their eras. My evidence also shows that drinking was included in the mainstream intellectual discourse concerning the Arctic since the 19th century. From the evidence, I conclude that the appearance and long-term survival of the ethnographic image of a drinking native of the North has been possible because of adaptation of this idea to specific temporary narrative strategies. In different periods this idea of Arctic drinking has been applied to specific theoretical and philosophical settings. This adaptability has made the idea about drinking in the North a rather powerful cognitive model of the northern indigenous peoples.

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