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| Engelsberg manor, in the mid-afternoon sunlight. |
After an unusually busy term and
Oxford History admissions week, in a final gasp of academic activity before
Christmas, I flew to Sweden for a seminar on ‘Declinism’ organised by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation. One of the hallmarks of the Foundation’s seminars is that
they are often held in a late 17C manor house in the village of Engelsberg,
160km north of Stockholm. Engelsberg itself is listed as a UNESCO World
Heritage site due to its preserved ironworks, a monument to the importance of
iron ore mining in Swedish history. The aim of the seminars is to stimulate
interdisciplinary debate in the Humanities – this month’s, on ‘Declinism’, was
the third in a series which had begun with ‘Decadence’ and ‘Decay’.
And so as
part of a group of some ten speakers – from Mexico, the UK, the USA, Germany – we
found ourselves crunching across hard frost with our suitcases, in air several
degrees below freezing, towards a manor house decorated with candles, evergreen
and traditional glazed stoves. We were taken into a room rigged up with television
cameras, ready to film the seminar for broadcast by the Foundation. Throughout
the day, we heard papers on how the notion of ‘decline’ did, or did not, play
out in ancient Assyria, ancient Greek literature, in perceptions of the Ottoman
or Aztec worlds, in 20C America or in modern debate on climate change. I spoke
on the Jagiellonian dynasty, perceptions of its demise, and claims of its rebirth,
in 16C Central Europe. The event, deep in rural Sweden in December, felt like a
cross between a country-house party and a monastic-style retreat for academics.
The
discussions continued late into the night, and the interdisciplinary
conversations in particular were memorable. We have various fora in the UK for
talking to scholars in other Humanities (and/or social science) subjects, not
least the dynamic TORCH here in Oxford. But sometimes I wonder if we are so
careful to be polite to each other that we don’t say what we really think.
Before Engelsberg, the closest I’d come to having very open interdisciplinary
conversations (of the sort where you can look an esteemed colleague in the eye
and say: ‘I just don’t understand why you do what you do’) was in the
Somerville Medievalists group meetings, with my German & Italian literature
colleagues. At Engelsberg, (in a smoke-filled room, with low lighting and lots
of loud intellectual exchanges going on), I was able to have very frank
conversations on whether it is possible to write history at all, on
postmodernism, text and, indeed, truth. It is good to be challenged on the fundamentals
of what you do as a scholar. I think there are some misperceptions of what
historians do, or think they are doing, which suggests that there are things we
could articulate better. I learnt at Engelsberg that the gaps between
Humanities disciplines can be quite big, maybe bigger than we like to admit
outside of a darkened room. But I also learnt that – however heated the
discussions – even in the early hours of the morning they are tempered with
genuine mutual academic respect and curiosity.