Settler narratives

Growing up in California, the movement of the (white) settlers across the plains, over the rockies, to the shores of California was omnipresent. I mean it was so much a part of my early imagining, I am sure it forms a core metaphor for all sorts of my ideas. We make the joke in California that we live "out west" and everyone else is "back East", we still say that today even though of course California is far from a wilderness frontier anymore. In the opening segment to Little House on the Prairie there is a short scene of wagon coming down a hill, and of course to anyone who grew up like I did, this instantly evokes an entire narrative whereby settlers moved out across the plains. I was always sure that the moment being depicted was the moment when Pa first chose the spot of land. He came over the hill side, and he said, "This looks like a good spot." He made that decision because he had the knowledge and experience to know what to look for; somewhere with a creek, somewhere with a grove of trees, somewhere with shelter from the wind. The raw materials from which to build a farm, a piece of earth upon which his family could grow. And of course, Pa Engil trusted himself, his own skills, to build that house, build that future.

When I read the Icelandic sagas, I am always expecting this sort of narrative, to be really honest. I think in fact it colors my reading. I am assuming there should be a sense of making do with limited resources, struggling against the forces of nature, prevailing. Looking upon the land as a opportunity. When I read a little sentence in Landnamabok about someone "thinking this was a good place to settle", these words become an entire image to me, of Pa Engils on his wagon basically. But then the sagas move right into the politics of it all, who the local chieftain is, who the neighbors are. I do not think politics came into Little House on the Prairie at all in the book, and only in the last few seasons of the television show.

OK, now with that little musing out of the way, I am back to reading. Áfram.

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