Nordenskiöld, Erland

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Nordenskiöld, Erland

Nils Erland Herbert Nordenskiöld (1877-1932), Swedish ethnologist, came from an aristocratic family that had a tradition of scientific interests. His father was the first man to navigate the Northeast Passage; his brother Gustav made valuable contributions to archeology through his excavations in the Mesa Verde area of the southwestern United States; and his cousin Otto was a distinguished geographer and Antarctic explorer.

Nordenskiöld began his scientific career as a zoologist and as such visited Patagonia in 1899 and Argentina and Bolivia in 1901-1902. He soon became more interested in anthropology, however, and in 1904-1905 went to Peru and Bolivia to do archeological research in the highlands among the little-known Indians of the Madre de Dios area. On two other expeditions he studied the Indians of the Gran Chaco and those of the forests in the border regions between Bolivia and Brazil.

In 1913 he was appointed chief curator of the ethnographical department of the Goteborg Museum, and in 1916 he received an honorary ph.d. from the University of Goteborg. He was appointed professor of American and comparative ethnology at that university in 1924. Nordenskiold also taught at the University of California in 1926, as a visiting professor. He did not give up field research entirely, however, and in 1927 returned to South America, this time to the Cuna and Choco tribes of Panama and Colombia. But his health had been impaired by his travels, and he died in 1932.

Nordenskiöld was primarily interested in South American ethnology and archeology from a historical point of view. Besides writing semipopular narratives of his travels, he was the author of many scientific articles and books, of which the ten-volume series entitled Comparative Ethnographical Studies (1918-1938) is the most important.

This work benefited from Nordenskiöld’s familiarity with even the rarest and most inaccessible books of the early Spanish and Portuguese literature on South America, as well as from his correspondingly thorough study of the available museum material. This background enabled him to map the distribution of a great number of elements in South American culture. In his mapping methods he was a pioneer, substituting a system of dot signs for the earlier, crude, planar indications. The advantage of these dot signs was that they enabled him to present a much clearer picture of so complicated an area as South America. Although his objective was primarily the reconstruction of cultural history and his method to a large extent was based upon the geographical distribution of cultural elements, he was extremely skeptical of the German and Austrian Kulturkreis theory, not only on account of the often deficient knowledge of its devotees but in particular because he did not believe in universal Kulturkreise. On the contrary, he always held that South American problems should be solved on the basis of South American facts alone.

The first three volumes of Comparative Ethnographical Studies contain a detailed analysis of the material culture of various tribes in the Gran Chaco and of the Moxos in Bolivia. In these volumes Nordenskiold attempted to show the relation of the natural environment to other influences that might have been brought to bear on a culture pattern. He concluded, for example, that the culture of the tribes of the rain forests was less affected by the Incas than that of the tribes of the more accessible Chaco. He demonstrated convincingly that the basic culture of the Chaco tribes must have been very similar to that of the Patagonians and Ona: several later elements are due to influence from the north and east, but this influence has essentially modified their life only in one respect—the introduction of manioc cultivation and, perhaps, of some other plants. The Andean influence is restricted to a number of “articles of luxury.” A number of elements reveal the connection of the various tribes that had migrated to the borderland of the Chaco (the Chiriguano and the Chane) with their kinsmen in the tropical area, and there is also evidence of a considerable influence from the Andes—whereas they have adopted very little from their Chaco neighbors. Among the Moxos practically no vestiges of the basic Chaco culture are left, and there are but few elements of Peruvian origin. However, several cultural elements would seem to derive from the northern Andean area of Colombia.

In Volume 4, Nordenskiold attempted to demonstrate that New World cultural development paralleled that of the Old World, in that the Copper Age had preceded the Bronze Age. Volume 5 contains his conclusions on various routes of cultural development, which he traced by using the distribution of certain post-Columbian loan words. Volume 6 studies ancient Peruvian astronomical knowledge and the use of Peruvian knot-records, throwing new light on both subjects. Volume 7 deals with the remarkable picture writing of the Cuna; and volumes 8 and 9 deal, to a great extent, with the independent Indian inventions, some of which are still in use. Nordenskiold’s deep admiration for the Indians is particularly apparent in these last three volumes. Details in his work may need correction, but there is no doubt that the principal results will remain.

In Nordenskiöld’s last volume his skepticism toward the Kulturkreis theory is particularly evident. After having pointed out a considerable number of cultural parallels between North America and southern South America, he proceeded to discuss the so-called Oceanic elements in South America and the origins of the ancient civilizations of Peru and Mesoamerica. He arrived at the conclusion that insofar as there was any influence from Oceania, it must have been in the exceedingly remote past and that the high American civilizations were built up of intensified Indian cultures.

Among his purely archeological papers it may be well to single out for particular mention his description of urn burials and mounds in Bolivia (1912); a paper on the eastern distribution of the Tiahuanaco culture (1917); and a profusely illustrated survey of the archeology of the Amazon area (1930). Nordenskiold was also an outstanding museum director. Under his leadership, the Goteborg Museum amassed a very fine collection dealing with South American ethnology and archeology. His university teaching has deeply influenced Scandinavian anthropology, particularly in Sweden and Denmark.

Kaj Birket-Smith

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