Most fantasy writers place their world within a pseudo-medieval time period or earlier, and often base their created people groups on historical examples. I certainly am one of those writers, and think that writing from analogy is a very effective method. That being said, trying to mimic the culture of ancient peoples is not as easy as it may seem. Even cultures within our own historical tradition have some traits that seem very foreign to us now.
Taboos are a cultural feature that generally don’t translate well. There are a few mostly universal “taboos”, which are really the grounds of a shared and inherent morality. Those aren’t what we’re discussing here. What I’d like to look at are two instances of taboos within my own ancestry (an ancestry at least partially shared by most people of European descent). This first instance of taboo is found in Celtic culture, primarily surviving in the Goidelic and Brythonic branches. One who is new to reading the old Irish legends will certainly be struck by an odd and recurrent theme: the geas. Nearly every Irish hero was under some kind of geas, a taboo which lent its bearer strength until it was violated. The geas was similar to the tale of Sampson; his hair was the source of his power until it was cut (a simplification, I know). The violation of a geas usually meant that the death of the hero was imminent, and would see him stripped of his strength in the final moment. The greater the hero, the more numerous his geasa. Geasa were specific to the hero and were most commonly put on a hero by a woman, often some sort of goddess or sorceress. The Irish geas finds its counterpart in the Welsh tynged, which was most used as conditions that must be met for a hero to die rather than being seen as a source of strength in themselves.
Taboos were also common in ancient Germanic culture, and were so influential that Germanic languages still bear their effects. A mild sort of taboo may be seen in the concept of a “kenning” which was a poetic device used by the skalds of old. When a poet wished to avoid saying a certain word, such as “warrior”, he might instead say a kenning, such as “feeder of ravens”. The kenning uses figurative language to obliquely point to a subject. The most influential taboo among Germanic people was the bear. The bear was so admired and feared by both Germanic and Uralic peoples that they refused to ever speak its name (we think the ancient word is something like “arkto”), and would use kennings to refer to it instead. The taboo was so widespread that our modern English word “bear” is actually a kenning itself. Our word, “bear”, means “brown”, as does “bruin”. The Old English hero, Beowulf, has a name which means “Bee-wolf”, another kenning for bear. The taboo of the bear is most obvious when reading the Kalevala, in which the bear is called by the most creative names (Honey-paw, Brown One, Destroyer, Shaggy Coat, Bachelor of the Woods).
Taboos played a large role in ancient societies, a role which is often lost in the fantasy genre’s casual restyling of history. We know that people in the past were as smart as we are today, but that does not mean that our cultures are analogous, a point that goes double for fantasy cultures. Diving into a fantasy novel should be like exploring a world that’s been long forgotten, where a modern reader should feel like an alien interloper. As a writer, I recognize that it’s very difficult to construct a culture that thinks differently than my own, but that’s exactly what would give my stories the feel of authenticity. I certainly need to reexamine the role of taboos in my writings, and I hope that my fellow writers will consider it as well.
The Sensiahd word of the day is “loitos”, meaning “oath”. Example sentence: Ser rho mrathom loitos’ol. He has betrayed his oath.