Learning from history
(Nimue)
One of the things I like about re-enactment work is the opportunity to engage people with history. This very much ticks some boxes in relation to things the ancient Druids seem to have been into. Living history and bringing the past to life for people and can really open things up, and lead to conversations about the everyday lives of ordinary people now and in the past. I’ve never been keen on the kinds of history that focus on wars and rulers, and most of us don’t have much to connect with around that. Talking about food, clothes, ways of life are much more relevant.
When you don’t know much about history, what you’re most likely to have is a progress narrative. Many people have the impression that human history is about progress, that things get better, and that how we do things now is best, and also inevitable. Get to know more about the past and it becomes obvious that people have always been complex, and that brilliance and innovation are not modern. There are lots of ways of doing things, and our current, exploitative and unsustainable take on capitalism isn’t inevitable, or any kind of pinnacle of achievement.
The Romans had both cement and plywood. At the same time they raise issues for us about military organisation, imperialism, colonialism, social structure, and storytelling, to name but a few obvious points. Our sense of the Iron Age British comes almost entirely from what the Romans had to say about them – especially so with the Druids. The Romans are the sources we have from the time, which is complicated. People only being seen from the outside rather than leaving their own record is not just a Druid issue.
We’re so used to seeing history as told by the victors, but you can’t hope to understand people without hearing their story of who they are and what they do. The absence of information around the Iron Age British is a good jumping off point for raising the issue of other absent and silenced voices.
Take a look at history and even when you are dealing with your own ancestors, you will find people who are not like you and whose lives are wildly different. And at the same time you’ll find people who needed all the same basic things you need, and who dealt day to day with the same basic realities and challenges of existing. We have a lot in common with our ancestors. Learning to see both the shared experience and the diversity can, I think, open us up to better relating to the diversity of people around us.
I had one striking encounter with a chap who had been amazed to discover that the Romans worshipped many Gods. “When we know there’s only one,” he said. “No,” I said. He’d never met a Pagan before, never talked to a polytheist, thought that everyone needed Jesus, and in the space of a few minutes discussion based around history, had to rethink his entire world view rather dramatically. I was gentle with him, but also fairly firm. I did not ask if he would like me to pray that he found Odin, or Zeus, or Jupiter.
