Accounts of Cannibalism, Human Sacrifice, Alcohol-Addiction and Filthiness among Northern Poeples

Leete, Art (2005) Accounts of Cannibalism, Human Sacrifice, Alcohol-Addiction and Filthiness among Northern Poeples. Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 50 (1-3). pp. 241-258. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the extreme descriptions of northern peoples, including themes such as cannibalism, human sacrifice, alcohol-addiction and filthiness, in writings of the period from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. These depictions are indicative of cultural barriers, extreme stereotypes and ethnocentrism - all phenomena that were relatively acceptable in the research of that period. In the eighteenth-century accounts, the medieval images were dropped completely and a scientific approach was adopted in the studies of northern cultures. Development of radical accounts of northern peoples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should be examined in a wider context of the most influential philosophers of that period.

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