804
factors of human metabolism and its conceptual byproducts, as distinguished from
the inextricable paradox which we simplistically characterize as a nature/nurture
problem.
7
The perception of a paleoglobalism, comprising Ice Ages, lightning
strikes, the sound of thundering waves on the farthest beach, the early winds of
Winter pounding forest depths, or rain continually crashing down upon our ancestors, conveys the intuitive sense of ecological asymptotes—natural connections that
seem to both engage and repel species. We can relate, even though such original
experiences can never quite touch their Kreatur der Anziehung, like so many tourists bumper-to-bumper in Yellowstone, longing to meet the primeval beast. This
asymptotic view of humanity’s isolation was further enshrined in the canon of literary expulsions. One recalls that famed image by William Blake designed for William
Hayley’s 1802 Ballads Founded on Anecdotes of Animals, of the Orpheus-like figure whose expressive, conversational nakedness, between the lion and horse, the
ram, the snake, the peacock, the eagle, and the rooster, exhibited an unabashed and
unambiguous assertion of paradise, not yet lost.
8
Even clambering homeward, soaked to the bone, to the fox hunter’s hut near the
base of a bleak and weather-tormented glacier in early century Iceland. There is the
human-foundering belief system that inescapably confuses folklore with reality,
isolating the human brain from the more likely truths surrounding it. In the case of
that hunter, Icelandic anthropology suggests that stories passed down for generations posited a similitude of souls between human and fox. Unequivocally, fox and
human shared all the “same feelings and emotions.”
9
We have heard similar assertions from among the Inuit in Greenland, just as the Icelandic Sagas are rife with
“the betrayal of Gunnlaug,” “the death of Grím,” “the exile of the Helgi Droplaug’s
son” (“a hero to the bone” as recounted in the “Droplaugarsona Saga”):
10
a world
where “brothers slay one the other for gains sake, and none spareth father or sons in
that manslaughter and sibslaying… Whoredoms many, an axeage, a swordage,
shields are cloven, a windage, a wolfage, ere the world stoops to doom.”
11
And all
this in a time where, by the Late Middle Ages, it was noted that Iceland, unlike
continental Europe, was ruled by no King, but by law: laws where confirmation and
collaborative focus were measured by opposition, its protagonists judged by their
moderation or complete barbarism, in various turns.
7 See Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, A Shearwater Book,
Island Press, New York 1992, p. 19.
8 For a superb overview of this cultural moment, see David Perkins’ Romanticism and Animal
Rights, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003. The cover photo on the book is that of
the William Blake image.
9 See The Anthropology of Iceland, Edited by E. Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson, University
Of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1989, “The Hunter and the Animal,” by Haraldur Ólafsson, p. 46.
10 See Three Icelandic Sagas, Translated By Margaret Schlauch and M. H. Scargill, Princeton
University Press For the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey, 1950, p.131.
11 “Gylfi’s Mocking,” The Prose or Younger Edda Commonly Ascribed to Snorri Sturluson,
Translated From The Old Norse by George Webbe Dasent, Norstedt And Sons, Stockholm, 1842,
p. 78.
92 A Lost Species
factors of human metabolism and its conceptual byproducts, as distinguished from
the inextricable paradox which we simplistically characterize as a nature/nurture
problem.
7
The perception of a paleoglobalism, comprising Ice Ages, lightning
strikes, the sound of thundering waves on the farthest beach, the early winds of
Winter pounding forest depths, or rain continually crashing down upon our ancestors, conveys the intuitive sense of ecological asymptotes—natural connections that
seem to both engage and repel species. We can relate, even though such original
experiences can never quite touch their Kreatur der Anziehung, like so many tourists bumper-to-bumper in Yellowstone, longing to meet the primeval beast. This
asymptotic view of humanity’s isolation was further enshrined in the canon of literary expulsions. One recalls that famed image by William Blake designed for William
Hayley’s 1802 Ballads Founded on Anecdotes of Animals, of the Orpheus-like figure whose expressive, conversational nakedness, between the lion and horse, the
ram, the snake, the peacock, the eagle, and the rooster, exhibited an unabashed and
unambiguous assertion of paradise, not yet lost.
8
Even clambering homeward, soaked to the bone, to the fox hunter’s hut near the
base of a bleak and weather-tormented glacier in early century Iceland. There is the
human-foundering belief system that inescapably confuses folklore with reality,
isolating the human brain from the more likely truths surrounding it. In the case of
that hunter, Icelandic anthropology suggests that stories passed down for generations posited a similitude of souls between human and fox. Unequivocally, fox and
human shared all the “same feelings and emotions.”
9
We have heard similar assertions from among the Inuit in Greenland, just as the Icelandic Sagas are rife with
“the betrayal of Gunnlaug,” “the death of Grím,” “the exile of the Helgi Droplaug’s
son” (“a hero to the bone” as recounted in the “Droplaugarsona Saga”):
10
a world
where “brothers slay one the other for gains sake, and none spareth father or sons in
that manslaughter and sibslaying… Whoredoms many, an axeage, a swordage,
shields are cloven, a windage, a wolfage, ere the world stoops to doom.”
11
And all
this in a time where, by the Late Middle Ages, it was noted that Iceland, unlike
continental Europe, was ruled by no King, but by law: laws where confirmation and
collaborative focus were measured by opposition, its protagonists judged by their
moderation or complete barbarism, in various turns.
7 See Tuan, Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, A Shearwater Book,
Island Press, New York 1992, p. 19.
8 For a superb overview of this cultural moment, see David Perkins’ Romanticism and Animal
Rights, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003. The cover photo on the book is that of
the William Blake image.
9 See The Anthropology of Iceland, Edited by E. Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson, University
Of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1989, “The Hunter and the Animal,” by Haraldur Ólafsson, p. 46.
10 See Three Icelandic Sagas, Translated By Margaret Schlauch and M. H. Scargill, Princeton
University Press For the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Princeton, New Jersey, 1950, p.131.
11 “Gylfi’s Mocking,” The Prose or Younger Edda Commonly Ascribed to Snorri Sturluson,
Translated From The Old Norse by George Webbe Dasent, Norstedt And Sons, Stockholm, 1842,
p. 78.
92 A Lost Species