gisela

Hi Kharmine, I don't believe the question was about how bellydance and nordic dances connect, but rather if vikings brought middle-eastern people with them home for entertainment and how they would have danced back then. The oldest nordic folkdances I know of are very simple and quite slow, pretty much just walking in a long line holding hands and singing. Dunno if that's a bit later than the viking era though.

We do know that the vikings went to Istanbul (konstantinopel or Miklagård) on the rivers through Europe.Think they also have been to Bagdad, and it seems to be pretty certain that they had contact with the "silk road" to the far east. There have been founds of arabic coins and persian pearls and stuff.

Since some of the vikings took slaves it could be that they bought and brought people back home from the middle-east, but whether they were dancers or not...???? And they would need some musicians as well, maybe?
I have no idea, never heard anything about this but is still interested in learning about some "source" on how we "know" oriental dancers came to sweden.

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You need chaos in your soul to create a dancing star-nietzsche

Sammet

Not sure how early they accually started with the trades with the "oriental", im sorry if I use wrong term here, is "the Islamic countries" more correct?

We got an island on the east coast of sweden, named Gotland. Gotland, and its capital Visby, was a city where there was lots of trades from distant countries. Hansa was often there. (german I belive they came from).

To give example, we found jewellery there parts of them came from Romes art/ jewellery (one I seen an replica on), also we found coins, (loads of them), both scandinavian and from countries faar away. I can not remeber exactly what they had on them (what kind of text).
Also, if I dont remeber compleatly wrong but do not quote me on this yet, they found coins with mixed text/signs.

We also found other goods that comes from "faar away". (sorry I tryed to find the correct spelling for foregn but I cant find it).


You talk about a black man on a painting, can you reffere to "The Morgan Crusader´s Bible" (also known as Cardinal Maciejowsko Bible / Shah Abbas Bible / St. Louis Illustrated Bible).
Origin is Paris and you can see a darkskinned (black, not sure if thats an insult to say? forgive me if so) paladin fighting together with "white" riders, they fight against David and his riders after Saul has promissed David his daughters hand as a reward if David kills a hundred Philistines.
So yes, at least during the middle ages they where mixed.



The vikings themself probbably did not dance pre-bellydance. We had other kind of dances here.
But they had contact with th Islamic countries (? correct name for the countries?) and they did both trade and fight with them. So both slaves and "prisoners of war" could have found their way to the nothen parts.

I also know we lerned in school that the vikings appreciate the women from this countries aswell, since they where "diffrent" in their coulors then people in scandinavian where at the time. It was something exclusive to have a women that was looking "diffrent".
But how true that is, I have accually not asked my source. So no qouting here please.


The vikings traveled alot, they where to America, and was there long before Colombus, of what I understood.
So that they accually was to the Islamic countries is not impossible. I shall ask my source when I get a hold on him (... *sighs*) if he can give me some names on countries the vikings been to.

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With best regards/Sammet

Sammet

*dubbleposted*

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With best regards/Sammet

Suheir

I went to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, two years ago and there was a big map of Viking shipping routes - they definitely went to Alexandria.

Sammet

Thanks, thats good to know.

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With best regards/Sammet

Sammet

On Badia Masabni
they say that Dance du ventre comes from frence travelers, but I also did read somewhere that it came from frence soldiers. Whats correct?

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With best regards/Sammet

Aisha Azar

Dear Sammet,
Probably both. My first teacher, who is Arab and danced on the Eguptian circuit long ago, said that American soldiers coined the term "Belly dance" from the French "Danse du ventre" during World War II. The term was also used by French travelers who were referring to some dances that were performed before the advent of belly dance in the Middle East. Usually the term referred to what we call Ghawazi and also to Algerian dance.
Regards,
A'isha

Kharmine

"Belly dance" was invented very loosely from "danse du ventre" as soon as someone got an explanation from either a French speaker or a French-English dictionary. It just took awhile for it to become common usage considering that for a long time "belly" was considered too vulgar to be uttered in polite society.

The earliest known usage was in 1893 when Middle Eastern and Turkish dancers performed in Chicago at the the 1893 World's Fair and Columbian Exposition. This according to the man who brought the most famous of the dance troupes there, Sol Bloom. You can find his account written in his 1948 memoirs, "The Autobiography of Sol Bloom," which he wrote near the end of a long and distinguished career as a U.S. congressman.

Eddie "The Sheik" Kochak, the dean of American-style belly dance music in the United States, grew up in an immigrant Middle Eastern community in New York City, worked with Middle Eastern musicians all his life, and later traveled as a musician with the United States Army during World War II in the Middle East.

He said the first time he heard "belly dancer" it was used by Americans in the United States to apply to dancers of all Oriental dance styles. Gradually, he says, the ethnic communities also started using "belly dancer" to describe both the American and the foreign dancers who performed in their supper clubs.

It's been decades since Bloom's memoirs were published, but I've come across no other account that disputes his. I've also found no documentation that "belly dance" emerged as a slang term much later outside the U.S. Perhaps there is such evidence somewhere, but it has yet to be produced in a verifiable form.

"Belly dance" ain't nothin' but a slang term that we use for convenience. If we really wanted to be accurate, we would refer to raqs sharqi, dansi oryantal, tchiftetelli, American Oriental, even "cabaret" style, whatever was appropriate for the style we are talking about.

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What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

Sammet

Thank you for your anserws. Both of you.

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With best regards/Sammet

asim

Sammet,

It's true what Aisha and Tarik have said; raqs sharqi, a.k.a "belly dance", is a modern creation. However, there are antecedants, dance forms which Badi'a and others brought together in the creation, and a long, if poorly documented, history of dances with varying similarities to raqs sharqi. For my personal focal point of research, pre-1600 Ottoman Culture, you even have images such as this:



To work from, although you cannot recreate dance from images alone! Lucky for us, there is more; written descriptions, notes, hints, etc. Unlucky for us, a lot of it is hints, and a lot of it is still in Arabic, and likely tucked away somewhere...

I do have a document you might find of interest in your research:

The SCA period dancer in the Middle East: An Overview
The SCA period dancer in the Middle East: A Bibliography

The section on the 'Abbasid culture touches directly on your timeframe in question. There's a number of references to dance during that time which are vague, yet hopeful; I think that we've only seen the tip of the iceburg, such as the reference to a 'Abbasid dance instructional book -- for men, no less!

So there is a lot out there, for the time period in question, yet much of it is still in Arabic, and poorly researched. I have a friend who's job is to do exactly this -- translate older Arabic texts sent over to America -- and it's depressing how little anyone, really, knows about this history, although the research situation is improving, overall.

As far as Orentalism, it really means a lot of things. It's an art movement, born of the growing fascination by Europe regarding the East, overall. It's also an academic movement, one that sought to understand and categorize the East -- indeed, I've often wondered if it's called Oriental Dance due to attempting to connect, in Western minds, this form with something tourists would grasp and understand.
It's also a name of a book, and a movement, by Edward Said, that breaks down the hypocrisy, racism, and even sexism in th approach academia and mainstream western cultures had (and still have, sadly) towards The East. In this context, Orentalism is a negative, a violence done towards the cultures "under the microscope".
So I caution, and strongly request, you check into some history -- not SERPENT OF THE NILE, please! -- to fully understand a lot of these issues. I put together an Amazon List of books on raqs sharqi, ones that I felt were well researched, and didn't contain lots of crap history and/or culture. I highly recommend reading them for some solid background, and to get you set on the straight and narrow path with all this.

And, like others, I have never, in all my readings to date, run into any idea that Vikings spread any form of dance. There _are_ incursions of Arabic dance forms into what we now consider Europe -- Sicliy has Arabic dancer images on a few palace walls, and there are hints that Fredrick II took in dancers -- but it's critical to realize that the concept of a Professional Dancer is a modern invention, as well. Dance was just one of the things the high-end female slaves would have learned to do, and singing and poetry would have ranked much higher in the list of trained talents. In addition, if the Vikings had raided to such an extent that they were taking in that many female slaves, there would have been a due uproar in the Islamic community, one noted strongly in the histories of the times. Perhaps there was, and I've missed signs of it.


I hope all this helps; and everyone should feel free to ask me questions. A lot of this stuff, I'm looking to re-work into articles, and I could use honest feedback!

Sukran!