Fic Updates 49

[Norgarth]

A Thing of Vikings
https://archiveofourown.org/works/104089.../115413583

It should be noted that the process of forming a national identity is a significant one in itself. Citizenship is only part of the answer, as most people will still identify with their immediate regional, ethnic, or religious group, allowing for social fault lines to form. Generally speaking, a central “pole” is needed to act as a unifying force of identification in any large-scale nation-state. This can be a national epic, a written constitution, a venerated royal dynasty, an ideology, a larger ethnicity, or a religious institution, but to help weld together more multitudinous groups, some unifying symbol of identification is needed to be able to create the social institutions that allow for members of the nation to identify as members of the nation, as opposed to seeing themselves as part of the nation only through their identity as members of a social group which is a constituent part of that nation.

This might seem like splitting semantics, but it is an important distinction. If a feudal count declares war on his neighboring count in the hope of taking some of the man’s territory, despite them being part of the same kingdom, which perspective is more useful for halting hostilities? That their levies owe them fealty and thus must follow their orders? Or that their levies are being ordered to attack and kill their fellow subjects of the kingdom? The latter is clearly the more effective means by which to bond the two disparate groups together under a single unifying identity, even though there is no structural legal difference between the two.

Of course, there is always the option of coercive power by a central government to forcibly keep the peace between disparate groups, but this is rarely a long-term solution…

—Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press