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1902_5 | Tacitus states in Germania that the Teutons did not have idols depicting their gods, yet describes the annual parading of an image of the goddess Nerthus. Presumably Tacitus did not recognise the simpler cult images made by the Teutons as equivalent to the more fully developed images used by Romans, or was unaware of them.
The more complex figures made of carved forked sticks recall the "wooden people" or "tree-men" of the Eddic poem "Hávamál": |
1902_6 | Other more or less contemporary texts also attest to wooden cult figurines in Scandinavian paganism. Christian missionary writings refer disparagingly to wooden 'idols', such as the figure of the god Freyr in Gunnars þáttr helmings. The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok describes a god on Samsø in the form of a 40 feet wooden pole shaped to look like a man that tells that it was set up by the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok in order to perform sacrifices for victory. In Ibn Fadlan's early 10th-century account of the Volga Vikings, he writes that as soon as they come into harbour, they leave their ships with food and alcoholic drink and offer them at a tall piece of wood with the face of a man carved in it, which is surrounded by smaller similar figures. Such an arrangement has been found at sites such as the Oberdorla sacrificial bog. |
1902_7 | The mentions in Icelandic sagas of Öndvegissúlur carved with the images of gods, in particular Thor and Freyr, and of other idols, may be related but have been influenced by Christian concepts since the sagas were written down in the 12th to 14th centuries, centuries after the heathen period.
Forms and material
Günter Behm-Blancke classified the anthropomorphic figurines into four groups based on the finds at Oberdorla: |
1902_8 | Type 1. Poles or posts, sometimes equipped with a phallus, as at Oberdorla; a variant form from Possendorf, Weimar, (now lost) has a carved head and attached raised arms.
Type 2. Formed from a forked stick, with a head carved out at the top. Those found at Oberdorla are all female; in North Germany and Scandinavia, ithyphallic male figures are also found, such as the Broddenbjerg idol from near Viborg, Denmark and the more artistically developed male and female Braak Bog Figures from Schleswig-Holstein. Sizes range from approximately .
Type 3. Carved from a broad plank cut in silhouette with blank faces, males with rectangular bodies, females with breasts or shoulders indicated by a slanted cut, broad hips and vulva. Found at Oberdorla and at the Wittemoor timber trackway (corduroy road) in Berne, Lower Saxony, these are thought to have had an apotropaic (protective) purpose. |
1902_9 | Type 4. Carved from a squared piece of timber with an inclined head and a base, similar to a herm. One of this type was found at Oberdorla, in a late La Tène context. |
1902_10 | Most of the figures which have been preserved are of oak, which was probably preferred for its endurance in the mostly wet locations where they were deposited.
Interpretations |
1902_11 | It is impossible to determine the exact purpose of the figurines, or their relationship to the named Germanic gods and goddesses, with whose worship they overlap; examples are found dating to as late as the Viking Age. We cannot determine how typical those which have happened to survive and be found, or their locations, are; and our surviving written sources of information on Germanic paganism are likewise incomplete. They have been interpreted, in particular by Behm-Blancke, as the site of fertility sacrifices, based on the indications of male and female sexual characteristics and the frequent association with potsherds and the bones of animals and, at Oberdorla, of humans. They may originate in a phallus cult, although there are few indications of such a cult in Germanic paganism. Alternatively, since the veneration of pillars extends beyond the Germanic cultural area, they may originate in the belief in the world pillar (as seen in the Saxon Irminsul and the Old Norse Yggdrasill) |
1902_12 | and thus derive from an archaic tree cult. |
1902_13 | Heiko Steuer has suggested that in the case of the male and female Wittemoor figures, which stood on either side of a plank causeway through a marsh, there may have been a secular decorative motive in addition to the spiritual luck-bringing and warding (apotropaic) functions.
Celtic-speaking areas
Relatively few figurines have been found in areas of Celtic-speaking settlement, and because of overlap with Germanic-speaking settlement, particularly in the North Sea region, it is sometimes difficult to assign a figure to one or the other group of people.
A fragment of an anthropomorphic figurine made of oak dating to the 2nd century BCE was found in a possibly sacrificial shaft inside a Viereckschanze enclosure in the Schmiden section of Fellbach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It originally depicted a person, apparently seated, between two rams, with hands around their rumps; only the hands survive from the human figure. |
1902_14 | Lucan's Pharsalia refers to a sacred grove near Massilia (Marseille) which was a location of human sacrifice and had stone altars and rough-hewn wooden idols. |
1902_15 | In a stone replica of a xoanon found at Euffigneix in Haute-Marne, France, the sculptor has reproduced the knot-holes as eye-like openings on the sides. Two maple-wood columns with torcs found in the cultic enclosure of Libenice near Kolín, in Central Bohemia, date to the Roman period. A oak sculpture of a "guardian deity" wearing a cowl was found in the old harbour basin of Geneva, Switzerland. And primitively carved wooden stelae have been found at sites of worship of goddesses of water-sources, such as the so-called Pforzheim Sirona. An oak statue belonging to the La Tène culture was found at the mouth of the River Rhone in Lake Geneva, near Villeneuve, Vaud, Switzerland. It is tall and clothed in a tunic. It was dated by means of three Celtic silver coins of the 2nd century BCE which were in a fissure in the statue, and is thought to depict a late 2nd to mid-1st century Celtic deity, apparently associated with the river or the lake. |
1902_16 | A late Bronze Age wooden figure found at Ralaghan, County Cavan, Ireland, referred to as Ralaghan Man, has a genital opening containing a piece of white quartz, which may represent a vulva or have been the attachment point for a penis. In 1880, an almost lifesize female figure carved out of an oak log was found near Ballachulish in Scotland. The genitalia are emphasised and pieces of quartz have been inserted as eyes. The figure had been deposited in a ritual context with other objects, within an enclosure marked off with woven branches, similar to cultic finds on the continent. It has been carbon-dated to between 700 and 500 BCE. Finally, a wooden figure was found in Montbouy, west of Orléans in central France. It is presumed to be male and the location of the find, in the well of a Roman temple, suggests it served a devotional purpose; the style of the figure resembles that of pre-Roman figures from North Germany.
Slavic-speaking areas |
1902_17 | The several wooden anthropomorphic figures found in the West Slavic settlement areas around the Elbe, for example the temple finds from Groß Raden (now part of Sternberg) and Ralswiek and those from Neubrandenburg, all in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Altfriesack (now part of Fehrbellin, Brandenburg) possibly depict deities. Saxo Grammaticus describes the Temple at Arkona as containing a great four-headed idol, far taller than a man. However, Slavic anthropomorphic figures do not occur until the 10th century, presumably under the influence of neighbouring cultures. |
1902_18 | Sebastian Brather distinguishes between idols in plank and pole form. He regards the former as primarily votive in purpose, like those described by Saxo and by others including Thietmar of Merseburg, but their identification with specific deities can only be speculation. Also, as with Celtic and Germanic, Slavic paganism was not universally standardised but included decentralisaed, local cult centres and practices, of which the wooden images would have formed a part.
Leszek Słupecki considers the figure from Fischerinsel near Neubrandenburg one of the most significant Slavic idols. Dated to the 11th–12th century, it takes the form of a two-headed male bust mounted on a column of hewn oak, and is high. The beard, eyes, and nose are emphasised. It is the only multi-headed sculpture extant from a Slavic region, but the location of the find does not indicate any sort of temple or shrine. |
1902_19 | See also
Xoanon, ancient Greek wooden statues depicting deities
Cenote#Anthropology, use of sinkholes in the Yucatán for religious offerings which include wooden figures
Dagenham idol
References
Further reading
Hajo Hayen: "Hölzerne Kultfiguren am Bohlenweg XLII (IP) im Wittenmoor (Gemeinde Berne, Landkreis Wesermarsch)". Die Kunde NF 22 (1971), ISSN 0342-0736, 88–123.
Rudolf Simek. Religion und Mythologie der Germanen. Stuttgart: Theiss, 2003, .
External links
Photo gallery, Wer waren die Germanen?, Arte, 19 July 2007. Images 4 and 5.
Prehistoric sculpture
Medieval European sculptures
Germanic anthropomorphic cult images
Ancient Celtic religion
Germanic culture
Slavic culture
Figurines |
1903_0 | Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally referred to terrestrial environments, though growing attention is being placed on marine wilderness. Recent maps of wilderness suggest it covers roughly one quarter of Earth's terrestrial surface, but is being rapidly degraded by human activity. Even less wilderness remains in the ocean, with only 13.2% free from intense human activity. |
1903_1 | Some governments establish protection for wilderness areas by law to not only preserve what already exists, but also to promote and advance a natural expression and development. These can be set up in preserves, conservation preserves, national forests, national parks and even in urban areas along rivers, gulches or otherwise undeveloped areas. Often these areas are considered important for the survival of certain species, biodiversity, ecological studies, conservation, solitude and recreation. They may also preserve historic genetic traits and provide habitat for wild flora and fauna that may be difficult to recreate in zoos, arboretums or laboratories.
History |
1903_2 | Ancient times and Middle Ages
From a visual arts perspective, nature and wildness have been important subjects in various epochs of world history. An early tradition of landscape art occurred in the Tang Dynasty (618–907). The tradition of representing nature as it is became one of the aims of Chinese painting and was a significant influence in Asian art. Artists in the tradition of Shan shui (lit. mountain-water-picture), learned to depict mountains and rivers "from the perspective of nature as a whole and on the basis of their understanding of the laws of nature… as if seen through the eyes of a bird". In the 13th century, Shih Erh Chi recommended avoiding painting "scenes lacking any places made inaccessible by nature". |
1903_3 | For most of human history, the greater part of Earth's terrain was wilderness, and human attention was concentrated on settled areas. The first known laws to protect parts of nature date back to the Babylonian Empire and Chinese Empire. Ashoka, the Great Mauryan King, defined the first laws in the world to protect flora and fauna in Edicts of Ashoka around the 3rd century B.C. In the Middle Ages, the Kings of England initiated one of the world's first conscious efforts to protect natural areas. They were motivated by a desire to be able to hunt wild animals in private hunting preserves rather than a desire to protect wilderness. Nevertheless, in order to have animals to hunt they would have to protect wildlife from subsistence hunting and the land from villagers gathering firewood. Similar measures were introduced in other European countries. |
1903_4 | However, in European cultures, throughout the Middle Ages, wilderness generally was not regarded worth protecting but rather judged strongly negative as a dangerous place and as a moral counter-world to the realm of culture and godly life. "While archaic nature religions oriented themselves towards nature, in medieval Christendom this orientation was replaced by one towards divine law. The divine was no longer to be found in nature; instead, uncultivated nature became a site of the sinister and the demonic. It was considered corrupted by the Fall (natura lapsa), becoming a vale of tears in which humans were doomed to live out their existence. Thus, for example, mountains were interpreted [e.g, by Thomas Burnet] as ruins of a once flat earth destroyed by the Flood, with the seas as the remains of that Flood." "If paradise was early man's greatest good, wilderness, as its antipode, was his greatest evil." |
1903_5 | 15th to 19th century
Wilderness was viewed by colonists as being evil in its resistance to their control. The puritanical view of wilderness meant that in order for colonists to be able to live in North America, they had to destroy the wilderness in order to make way for their ‘civilized’ society. Wilderness was considered to be the root of the colonists' problems, so to make the problems go away, wilderness needed to be destroyed. One of the first steps in doing this, is to get rid of trees in order to clear the land. Military metaphors describing the wilderness as the “enemy” were used, and settler expansion was phrased as “[conquering] the wilderness.” |
1903_6 | In relation to the wilderness, Native Americans were viewed as savages. This dehumanization gave colonists an excuse to feel no mercy when attacking and killing Native Americans. The relationship between Native Americans and the land was something colonists didn’t understand and didn’t try to understand. This mutually beneficial relationship was different from how colonists viewed the land only in relation to how it could benefit themselves by waging a constant battle to beat the land and other living organisms into submission. The belief colonists had of the land being only something to be used was based in Christian ideas. If the earth and animals and plants were created by a Christian God for human use, then the cultivation by colonists was their God-given goal. |
1903_7 | However, the idea that what European colonists saw upon arriving in North America was pristine and devoid of humans is untrue due to the existence of Native Americans. The land was shaped by Native Americans through practices such as fires. Burning happened frequently and in a controlled manner. The landscapes seen in the US today are very different from the way things looked before colonists came. Fire could be used to maintain food, cords, and baskets. One of the main roles of frequent fires was to prevent the out of control fires which are becoming more and more common. |
1903_8 | The idea of wilderness having intrinsic value emerged in the Western world in the 19th century. British artists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner turned their attention to capturing the beauty of the natural world in their paintings. Prior to that, paintings had been primarily of religious scenes or of human beings. William Wordsworth's poetry described the wonder of the natural world, which had formerly been viewed as a threatening place. Increasingly the valuing of nature became an aspect of Western culture. |
1903_9 | By the mid-19th century, in Germany, "Scientific Conservation", as it was called, advocated "the efficient utilization of natural resources through the application of science and technology". Concepts of forest management based on the German approach were applied in other parts of the world, but with varying degrees of success. Over the course of the 19th century wilderness became viewed not as a place to fear but a place to enjoy and protect; hence came the conservation movement in the latter half of the 19th century. Rivers were rafted and mountains were climbed solely for the sake of recreation, not to determine their geographical context.
In 1861, following an intense lobbying by artists (painters), the French Waters and Forests Military Agency set an "artistic reserve" in Fontainebleau State Forest. With a total of 1,097 hectares, it is known to be the first World nature reserve. |
1903_10 | Modern conservation
Global conservation became an issue at the time of the dissolution of the British Empire in Africa in the late 1940s. The British established great wildlife preserves there. As before, this interest in conservation had an economic motive: in this case, big game hunting. Nevertheless, this led to growing recognition in the 1950s and the early 1960s of the need to protect large spaces for wildlife conservation worldwide. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), founded in 1961, grew to be one of the largest conservation organizations in the world. |
1903_11 | Early conservationists advocated the creation of a legal mechanism by which boundaries could be set on human activities in order to preserve natural and unique lands for the enjoyment and use of future generations. This profound shift in wilderness thought reached a pinnacle in the US with the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, which allowed for parts of U.S. National Forests to be designated as "wilderness preserves". Similar acts, such as the 1975 Eastern Wilderness Areas Act, followed. |
1903_12 | Nevertheless, initiatives for wilderness conservation continue to increase. There are a growing number of projects to protect tropical rainforests through conservation initiatives. There are also large-scale projects to conserve wilderness regions, such as Canada's Boreal Forest Conservation Framework. The Framework calls for conservation of 50 percent of the 6,000,000 square kilometres of boreal forest in Canada's north. In addition to the World Wildlife Fund, organizations such as the Wildlife Conservation Society, the WILD Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, The Wilderness Society (United States) and many others are active in such conservation efforts. |
1903_13 | The 21st century has seen another slight shift in wilderness thought and theory. It is now understood that simply drawing lines around a piece of land and declaring it a wilderness does not necessarily make it a wilderness. All landscapes are intricately connected and what happens outside a wilderness certainly affects what happens inside it. For example, air pollution from Los Angeles and the California Central Valley affects Kern Canyon and Sequoia National Park. The national park has miles of "wilderness" but the air is filled with pollution from the valley. This gives rise to the paradox of what a wilderness really is; a key issue in 21st century wilderness thought.
National parks |
1903_14 | The creation of national parks, beginning in the 19th century, preserved some especially attractive and notable areas, but the pursuits of commerce, lifestyle, and recreation combined with increases in human population have continued to result in human modification of relatively untouched areas. Such human activity often negatively impacts native flora and fauna. As such, to better protect critical habitats and preserve low-impact recreational opportunities, legal concepts of "wilderness" were established in many countries, beginning with the United States (see below).
The first National Park was Yellowstone, which was signed into law by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant on 1 March 1872. The Act of Dedication declared Yellowstone a land "hereby reserved and withdrawn from settlement, occupancy, or sale under the laws of the United States, and dedicated and set apart as a public park or pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." |
1903_15 | When national parks were established in an area, the Native Americans that had been living there were forcibly removed so visitors to the park could see nature without humans present. National parks are seen as areas untouched by humans, when in reality, humans existed in these spaces, until settler colonists came in and forced them off their lands in order to create the national parks. The concept glorifies the idea that before settlers came, the US was an uninhabited landscape. This erases the reality of Native Americans, and their relationship with the land and the role they had in shaping the landscape. Such erasure suggests there were areas of the US which were historically unoccupied, once again erasing the existence of Native Americans and their relationship to the land. In the case of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite, the ‘preservation’ of these lands by the US government was what caused the Native Americans who lived in the areas to be systematically removed. |
1903_16 | Historian Mark David Spence has shown that the case of Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet people who live there is a perfect example of such erasure. The Blackfeet people had specifically designated rights to the area, but the 1910 Glacier National Park act made void those rights. The act of ‘preserving’ the land was specifically linked to the exclusion of the Blackfeet people. The continued resistance of the Blackfeet people has provided documentation of the importance of the area to many different tribes. The area is home to the Blackfeet people.
The world's second national park, the Royal National Park, located just 32 km to the south of Sydney, Australia, was established in 1879. |
1903_17 | The U.S. concept of national parks soon caught on in Canada, which created Banff National Park in 1885, at the same time as the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway was being built. The creation of this and other parks showed a growing appreciation of wild nature, but also an economic reality. The railways wanted to entice people to travel west. Parks such as Banff and Yellowstone gained favor as the railroads advertised travel to "the great wild spaces" of North America. When outdoorsman Teddy Roosevelt became president of the United States, he began to enlarge the U.S. National Parks system, and established the National Forest system.
By the 1920s, travel across North America by train to experience the "wilderness" (often viewing it only through windows) had become very popular. This led to the commercialization of some of Canada's National Parks with the building of great hotels such as the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise. |
1903_18 | Despite their similar name, national parks in England and Wales are quite different from national parks in many other countries. Unlike most other countries, in England and Wales, designation as a national park may include substantial settlements and human land uses which are often integral parts of the landscape, and land within a national park remains largely in private ownership. Each park is operated by its own national park authority. |
1903_19 | The United States philosophy around wilderness preservation through National Parks has been attempted in other countries. However, people living in those countries have different ideas surrounding wilderness than people in the United States, thus, the US concept of wilderness can be damaging in other areas of the world. India is more densely populated and has been settled for a long time. There are complex relationships between agricultural communities and the wilderness. An example of this is the Project Tiger parks in India. By claiming areas as no longer used by humans, the land moves from the hands of poor people to rich people. Having designated tiger reserves is only possible by displacing poor people, who weren’t involved in the planning of the areas. This situation places the ideal of wilderness above the already existing relationships between people and the land they live on. By placing an imperialistic ideal of nature onto a different country, the desire to reestablish |
1903_20 | wilderness is being put above the lives of those who live by working the land. |
1903_21 | Conservation and preservation in 20th century United States
By the late 19th century, it had become clear that in many countries wild areas had either disappeared or were in danger of disappearing. This realization gave rise to the conservation movement in the United States, partly through the efforts of writers and activists such as John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir, and politicians such as U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt.
The idea of protecting nature for nature's sake began to gain more recognition in the 1930s with American writers like Aldo Leopold, calling for a "land ethic" and urging wilderness protection. It had become increasingly clear that wild spaces were disappearing rapidly and that decisive action was needed to save them. Wilderness preservation is central to deep ecology; a philosophy that believes in an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. |
1903_22 | Two different groups had emerged within the US environmental movement by the early 20th century: the conservationists and the preservationists. The initial consensus among conservationists was split into "utilitarian conservationists" later to be referred to as conservationists, and "aesthetic conservationists" or preservationists. The main representative for the former was Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the United States Forest Service, and they focused on the proper use of nature, whereas the preservationists sought the protection of nature from use. Put another way, conservation sought to regulate human use while preservation sought to eliminate human impact altogether. The management of US public lands during the years 1960s and 70s reflected these dual visions, with conservationists dominating the Forest Service, and preservationists the Park Service
Formal wilderness designations |
1903_23 | International
The World Conservation Union (IUCN) classifies wilderness at two levels, 1a (strict nature reserves) and 1b (Wilderness areas).
There have been recent calls for the World Heritage Convention to better protect wilderness and to include the word wilderness in their selection criteria for Natural Heritage Sites |
1903_24 | Forty-eight countries have wilderness areas established via legislative designation as IUCN protected area management Category 1b sites that do not overlap with any other IUCN designation. They are: Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Canada, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Finland, French Guyana, Greenland, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Northern Mariana Islands, Portugal, Seychelles, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tanzania, United States of America, and Zimbabwe. At publication, there are 2,992 marine and terrestrial wilderness areas registered with the IUCN as solely Category 1b sites. |
1903_25 | Twenty-two other countries have wilderness areas. These wilderness areas are established via administrative designation or wilderness zones within protected areas. Whereas the above listing contains countries with wilderness exclusively designated as Category 1b sites, some of the below-listed countries contain protected areas with multiple management categories including Category 1b. They are: Argentina, Bhutan, Brazil, Chile, Honduras, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Switzerland, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Venezuela, and Zambia. |
1903_26 | Germany |
1903_27 | The German National Strategy on Biological Diversity aims to establish wilderness areas on 2% of its terrestrial territory by 2020 (7,140 km2). However, protected wilderness areas in Germany currently only cover 0.6% of the total terrestrial area. In absence of pristine landscapes, Germany counts national parks (IUCN Category II) as wilderness areas. The government counts the whole area of the 16 national parks as wilderness. This means, also the managed parts are included in the "existing" 0,6%. There is no doubt, that Germany will miss its own time-dependent quantitative goals, but there are also some critics, that point a bad designation practice: Findings of disturbance ecology, according to which process-based nature conservation and the 2% target could be further qualified by more targeted area designation, pre-treatment and introduction of megaherbivores, are widely neglected. Since 2019 the government supports bargains of land that will then be designated as wilderness by 10 |
1903_28 | Mio. Euro annually. The German minimum size for wilderness candidate sites is normally 10 km2. In some cases (i.e. swamps) the minimum size is 5 km2. |
1903_29 | Finland
There are twelve wilderness areas in the Sami native region in northern Finnish Lapland. They are intended both to preserve the wilderness character of the areas and further the traditional livelihood of the Sami people. This means e.g. that reindeer husbandry, hunting and taking wood for use in the household is permitted. As population is very sparse, this is generally no big threat to the nature. Large scale reindeer husbandry has influence on the ecosystem, but no change is introduced by the act on wilderness areas. The World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA) classifies the areas as "VI Protected area with sustainable use of natural resources".
France
Since 1861, the French Waters and Forests Military Agency (Administration des Eaux et Forêts) put a strong protection on what was called the « artistic reserve » in Fontainebleau State Forest. With a total of 1,097 hectares, it is known to be the first World nature reserve. |
1903_30 | Then in the 1950s, Integral Biological Reserves (Réserves Biologiques Intégrales, RBI) are dedicated to man free ecosystem evolution, on the contrary of Managed Biological reserves (Réserves Biologiques Dirigées, RBD) where a specific management is applied to conserve vulnerable species or threatened habitats.
Integral Biological Reserves occurs in French State Forests or City Forests and are therefore managed by the National Forests Office. In such reserves, all harvests coupe are forbidden excepted exotic species elimination or track safety works to avoid fallen tree risk to visitors (already existing tracks in or on the edge of the reserve).
At the end of 2014, there were 60 Integral Biological Reserves in French State Forests for a total area of 111,082 hectares and 10 in City Forests for a total of 2,835 hectares.
Greece |
1903_31 | In Greece there are some parks called "ethniki drimoi" (εθνικοί δρυμοί, national forests) that are under protection of the Greek government. Such parks include Olympus, Parnassos and Parnitha National Parks.
New Zealand
There are seven wilderness areas in New Zealand as defined by the National Parks Act 1980 and the Conservation Act 1987 that fall well within the IUCN definition. Wilderness areas cannot have any human intervention and can only have indigenous species re-introduced into the area if it is compatible with conservation management strategies.
In New Zealand wilderness areas are remote blocks of land that have high natural character. The Conservation Act 1987 prevents any access by vehicles and livestock, the construction of tracks and buildings, and all indigenous natural resources are protected. They are generally over 400 km2 in size.
United States |
1903_32 | In the United States, a Wilderness Area is an area of federal land set aside by an act of Congress. It is typically at least 5,000 acres (about 8 mi2 or 20 km2) in size. Human activities in wilderness areas are restricted to scientific study and non-mechanized recreation; horses are permitted but mechanized vehicles and equipment, such as cars and bicycles, are not.
The United States was one of the first countries to officially designate land as "wilderness" through the Wilderness Act of 1964. The Wilderness Act is an important part of wilderness designation because it created the legal definition of wilderness and established the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Wilderness Act defines wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." |
1903_33 | Wilderness designation helps preserve the natural state of the land and protects flora and fauna by prohibiting development and providing for non-mechanized recreation only.
The first administratively protected wilderness area in the United States was the Gila National Forest. In 1922, Aldo Leopold, then a ranking member of the U.S. Forest Service, proposed a new management strategy for the Gila National Forest. His proposal was adopted in 1924, and 750,000 acres of the Gila National Forest became the Gila Wilderness. |
1903_34 | The Great Swamp in New Jersey was the first formally designated wilderness refuge in the United States. It was declared a wildlife refuge on 3 November 1960. In 1966 it was declared a National Natural Landmark and, in 1968, it was given wilderness status. Properties in the swamp had been acquired by a small group of residents of the area, who donated the assembled properties to the federal government as a park for perpetual protection. Today the refuge amounts to that are within thirty miles of Manhattan. |
1903_35 | While wilderness designations were originally granted by an Act of Congress for Federal land that retained a "primeval character", meaning that it had not suffered from human habitation or development, the Eastern Wilderness Act of 1975 extended the protection of the NWPS to areas in the eastern states that were not initially considered for inclusion in the Wilderness Act. This act allowed lands that did not meet the constraints of size, roadlessness, or human impact to be designated as wilderness areas under the belief that they could be returned to a "primeval" state through preservation. |
1903_36 | Approximately are designated as wilderness in the United States. This accounts for 4.82% of the country's total land area; however, 54% of that amount is found in Alaska (recreation and development in Alaskan wilderness is often less restrictive), while only 2.58% of the lower continental United States is designated as wilderness. As of 2019 there are 803 designated wilderness areas in the United States ranging in size from Florida's Pelican Island at to Alaska's Wrangell-Saint Elias at .
Western Australia
In Western Australia, a wilderness area is an area that has a wilderness quality rating of 12 or greater and meets a minimum size threshold of 80 km2 in temperate areas or 200 km2 in arid and tropical areas. A wilderness area is gazetted under section 62(1)(a) of the Conservation and Land Management Act 1984 by the Minister on any land that is vested in the Conservation Commission of Western Australia.
International movement |
1903_37 | At the forefront of the international wilderness movement has been The WILD Foundation, its founder Ian Player and its network of sister and partner organizations around the globe. The pioneer World Wilderness Congress in 1977 introduced the wilderness concept as an issue of international importance, and began the process of defining the term in biological and social contexts. Today, this work is continued by many international groups who still look to the World Wilderness Congress as the international venue for wilderness and to The WILD Foundation network for wilderness tools and action. The WILD Foundation also publishes the standard references for wilderness professionals and others involved in the issues: Wilderness Management: Stewardship and Protection of Resources and Values, the International Journal of Wilderness, A Handbook on International Wilderness Law and Policy and Protecting Wild Nature on Native Lands are the backbone of information and management tools for |
1903_38 | international wilderness issues. |
1903_39 | The Wilderness Specialist Group within the World Commission on Protected Areas (WTF/WCPA) of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) plays a critical role in defining legal and management guidelines for wilderness at the international level and is also a clearing-house for information on wilderness issues. The IUCN Protected Areas Classification System defines wilderness as "A large area of unmodified or slightly modified land, and/or sea retaining its natural character and influence, without permanent or significant habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural condition (Category 1b)." The WILD Foundation founded the WTF/WCPA in 2002 and remains co-chair.
Extent |
1903_40 | The most recent efforts to map wilderness show that less than one quarter (~23%) of the world's wilderness area now remains, and that there have been catastrophic declines in wilderness extent over the last two decades. Over 3 million square kilometers (10 percent) of wilderness was converted to human land-uses. The Amazon and Congo rain forests suffered the most loss. Human pressure is extending into almost every corner of the planet. The loss of wilderness could have serious implications for biodiversity conservation. |
1903_41 | According to a previous study, Wilderness: Earth's Last Wild Places, carried out by Conservation International, 46% of the world's land mass is wilderness. For purposes of this report, "wilderness" was defined as an area that "has 70% or more of its original vegetation intact, covers at least and must have fewer than five people per square kilometer." However, an IUCN/UNEP report published in 2003, found that only 10.9% of the world's land mass is currently a Category 1 Protected Area, that is, either a strict nature reserve (5.5%) or protected wilderness (5.4%). Such areas remain relatively untouched by humans. Of course, there are large tracts of lands in national parks and other protected areas that would also qualify as wilderness. However, many protected areas have some degree of human modification or activity, so a definitive estimate of true wilderness is difficult. |
1903_42 | The Wildlife Conservation Society generated a human footprint using a number of indicators, the absence of which indicate wildness: human population density, human access via roads and rivers, human infrastructure for agriculture and settlements and the presence of industrial power (lights visible from space). The society estimates that 26% of the Earth's land mass falls into the category of "Last of the wild." The wildest regions of the world include the Arctic Tundra, the Siberia Taiga, the Amazon rainforest, the Tibetan Plateau, the Australia Outback and deserts such as the Sahara, and the Gobi. However, from the 1970s, numerous geoglyphs have been discovered on deforested land in the Amazon rainforest, leading to claims about Pre-Columbian civilizations. The BBC's Unnatural Histories claimed that the Amazon rainforest, rather than being a pristine wilderness, has been shaped by man for at least 11,000 years through practices such as forest gardening and terra preta. |
1903_43 | The percentage of land area designated wilderness does not necessarily reflect a measure of its biodiversity. Of the last natural wilderness areas, the taiga—which is mostly wilderness—represents 11% of the total land mass in the Northern Hemisphere. Tropical rainforest represent a further 7% of the world's land base. Estimates of the Earth's remaining wilderness underscore the rate at which these lands are being developed, with dramatic declines in biodiversity as a consequence.
Critique |
1903_44 | The American concept of wilderness has been criticized by some nature writers. For example, William Cronon writes that what he calls a wilderness ethic or cult may "teach us to be dismissive or even contemptuous of such humble places and experiences", and that "wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others", using as an example "the mighty canyon more inspiring than the humble marsh." This is most clearly visible with the fact that nearly all U.S. National Parks preserve spectacular canyons and mountains, and it was not until the 1940s that a swamp became a national park—the Everglades. In the mid-20th century national parks started to protect biodiversity, not simply attractive scenery. |
1903_45 | Cronon also believes the passion to save wilderness "poses a serious threat to responsible environmentalism" and writes that it allows people to "give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead... to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness". |
1903_46 | Michael Pollan has argued that the wilderness ethic leads people to dismiss areas whose wildness is less than absolute. In his book Second Nature, Pollan writes that "once a landscape is no longer 'virgin' it is typically written off as fallen, lost to nature, irredeemable." Another challenge to the conventional notion of wilderness comes from Robert Winkler in his book, Going Wild: Adventures with Birds in the Suburban Wilderness. "On walks in the unpeopled parts of the suburbs," Winkler writes, "I’ve witnessed the same wild creatures, struggles for survival, and natural beauty that we associate with true wilderness." Attempts have been made, as in the Pennsylvania Scenic Rivers Act, to distinguish "wild" from various levels of human influence: in the Act, "wild rivers" are "not impounded", "usually not accessible except by trail", and their watersheds and shorelines are "essentially primitive". |
1903_47 | Another source of criticism is that the criteria for wilderness designation is vague and open to interpretation. For example, the Wilderness Act states that wilderness must be roadless. The definition given for roadless is "the absences of roads which have been improved and maintained by mechanical means to insure relatively regular and continuous use". However, there have been added sub-definitions that have, in essence, made this standard unclear and open to interpretation, and some are drawn to narrowly exclude existing roads. |
1903_48 | Coming from a different direction, some criticism from the Deep Ecology movement argues against conflating "wilderness" with "wilderness reservations", viewing the latter term as an oxymoron that, by allowing the law as a human construct to define nature, unavoidably voids the very freedom and independence of human control that defines wilderness. True wilderness requires the ability of life to undergo speciation with as little interference from humanity as possible. Anthropologist and scholar on wilderness Layla Abdel-Rahim argues that it is necessary to understand the principles that govern the economies of mutual aid and diversification in wilderness from a non-anthropocentric perspective. |
1903_49 | Others have criticized the American concept of wilderness as rooted in white supremacy, ignoring Native American perspectives on the natural environment and excluding people of color from narratives about human interactions with the environment. Many early conservationists, such as Madison Grant, were also heavily involved in the eugenics movement. Grant, who worked alongside President Theodore Roosevelt to create the Bronx Zoo, also wrote The Passing of the Great Race, a book on eugenics that was later praised by Adolf Hitler. Grant is also known to have featured Ota Benga, a Mbuti man from Central Africa, in the Bronx Zoo monkey house exhibit. John Muir, another important figure in the early conservation movement, referred to African-Americans as "making a great deal of noise and doing little work", and compared Native Americans to unclean animals who did not belong in the wilderness. Environmental history professor Miles A. Powell of Nanyang Technological University has argued that |
1903_50 | much of the early conservation movement was deeply tied to and inspired by a desire to preserve the Nordic race. Prakash Kashwan, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut who specializes in environmental policies and environmental justice, argues that the racist ideas of many early conservationists created a narrative of wilderness that has led to "fortress conservation" policies that have driven Native Americans off of their land. Kashwan has proposed conservation practices that would allow Indigenous people to continue using the land as a more just and more effective alternative to fortress conservation. The idea that the natural world is primarily made up of remote wilderness areas has also been criticized as classist, with environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor arguing that this leads to experiencing wilderness becoming a privilege, as working class people are often unable to afford transportation to wilderness areas. She further argues that, due to poverty |
1903_51 | and lack of access to transportation caused by systemic racism, this perception is also rooted in racism. |
1903_52 | Human–nature dichotomy
Another critique of wilderness is that it perpetuates the human-nature dichotomy. The idea that nature and humans are separate entities can be traced back to European colonial views. To European settlers, land was an inherited right and was to be used to profit. While native groups saw their relationship with the land in a more holistic view, they were eventually subjected to European property systems. Colonists from Europe saw the American landscape as wild, savage, dark, [etc] and thus needed to be tamed in order for it to be safe and habitable. Once cleared and settled, these areas were depicted as “Eden itself.” Yet the native peoples of those lands saw “wilderness” as that when the connection between humans and nature is broken. For native communities, human intervention was a part of their ecological practices. |
1903_53 | There is a historical belief that wilderness must not only be tamed to be protected but that humans also need to be outside of it. In order to clear certain areas for conservation, such as national parks, involved the removal of native communities from their land. Some authors have come to describe this type of conservation as conservation-far, where humans and nature are kept separate. The other end of the conservation spectrum then, would be conservation-near, which would mimic native ecological practices of humans integrated into the care of nature.
Most scientists and conservationists agree that no place on earth is completely untouched by humanity, either due to past occupation by indigenous people, or through global processes such as climate change or pollution. Activities on the margins of specific wilderness areas, such as fire suppression and the interruption of animal migration, also affect the interior of wildernesses.
See also |
1903_54 | Aldo Leopold
Adventure travel
Biomass
Biomass (ecology)
Bioproduct
Camping
Conservation movement
Deforestation
Ecological footprint
Environmental education
Forest
Geology
Global warming
Hiking
Intact forest landscape
John Muir Lifetime Achievement Award
Land use
Last of the Wild
Leave no trace
List of U.S. Wilderness Areas
List of conservationists
Bob Marshall
National Outdoor Leadership School
National Wilderness Preservation System
National Wildlife Magazine
Native American use of fire
Natural landscape
Old-growth forest
Outdoor education
Permaforestry
Planetary habitability
Protected area
Wild fisheries
Wildcrafting
Wilderness Act (1964)
Wilderness therapy
Wilderness Area (Protected Area Management Category)
World Wilderness Congress
References
Further reading |
1903_55 | Bryson, B. (1998). A Walk in the Woods.
Casson, S. et al. (Ed.s). (2016). Wilderness Protected Areas: Management Guidelines for IUCN Category 1b (wilderness) Protected Areas
Gutkind, L (Ed). (2002). On Nature: Great Writers on the Great Outdoors.
Kirchhoff, Thomas/ Vicenzotti, Vera 2014: A historical and systematic survey of European perceptions of wilderness. Environmental Values 23 (4): 443–464.
Nash, Roderick Frazier [1967] 2014: Wilderness and the American Mind. Fifth Edition. New Haven & London, Yale University Press / Yale Nota Bene.
Oelschlaeger, Max 1991: The Idea of Wilderness. From Prehistory to the Age of Ecology. New Haven & London, Yale University Press.
External links
IUCN Category 1a: Strict Nature Reserve
IUCN Category 1b: Wilderness Areas |
1903_56 | The Wilderness Society
Wilderness Information Network
Wilderness Articles, Survival Techniques, Edible Plants
Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute
Wilderness Task Force/World Commission on Protect Areas
Campaign for America's Wilderness
The WILD Foundation
Article: The Role of the Wilderness in Storytelling
Definitions
Detailed maps of United States wilderness designations
What is Wilderness? - Definition and discussion of wilderness as a human construction
Wilderness and the American Mind - by Roderick Nash
The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature by William Cronon.
Global natural environment
Wilderness areas
Protected areas |
1904_0 | The Blue Nile is a Scottish pop band from Glasgow. The group's early music was built heavily on synthesizers and electronic instrumentation and percussion, although later works featured guitar more prominently. Following early championing by established artists such as Rickie Lee Jones and Peter Gabriel (the band later worked with both acts), the Blue Nile gained critical acclaim, particularly for its first two albums A Walk Across the Rooftops and Hats, and some commercial success in both the UK and the US, which led to the band working with a wide range of musicians from the late 1980s onwards. |
1904_1 | The Blue Nile's highest chart placement came when "Tinseltown in the Rain" reached No. 28 in the Netherlands in 1984, their only Dutch charting song. The band has had four top 75 hits on the UK Singles Chart, the highest being "Saturday Night" which reached No. 50 in 1991. In the United States, "The Downtown Lights" was its only chart entry, peaking at No. 10 on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart.
The band members have also gained a reputation for their avoidance of publicity, their idiosyncratic dealings with the recording industry and their perfectionism and slow work rate, which has resulted in the release of just four albums since the group's formation in 1981. The group appears to have disbanded since the release of the fourth album High in 2004, although there has never been any official confirmation.
In 2006, Buchanan had a top 10 hit in the UK when he featured on Texas' song, "Sleep", which reached No. 6.
History |
1904_2 | Early years
Paul Buchanan (born 16 April 1956, Edinburgh, Scotland) and his childhood friend Robert Bell grew up together in Glasgow and both attended the University of Glasgow in the late 1970s, Buchanan gaining a degree in literature and medieval history, Bell in mathematics. Buchanan's civil servant father had been a semi-professional musician and had musical instruments in the house, but it was only after he and Bell had graduated that Buchanan began to think seriously about a career in music. |
1904_3 | Although Buchanan had grown up in the same neighbourhood as Paul Joseph "PJ" Moore, they only became well acquainted at university, where Moore was studying electronics, and the three friends became part of a band, first known as McIntyre (named after the John McIntyre Building, the university's administrative offices) and then Night by Night, although Buchanan later commented that Night by Night only played "twice, maybe three times" in it short existence. The band struggled to retain a settled line-up and, by 1981, Buchanan, Bell and Moore were the only remaining members. They decided not to recruit anybody else, trading in a guitar for an effect pedal and borrowing an old drum machine that only played Hispanic American music rhythms. Buchanan later recalled, "We went and gigged, because we needed the money, we'd do gigs where we'd do cover versions with the cassette of Latin American rhythms. And we were terrible. But we picked songs that were so completely durable and well known |
1904_4 | that people recognized them. No matter how badly we mangled them." |
1904_5 | Renaming themselves the Blue Nile (after the title of the 1962 book by Alan Moorehead), the group managed to raise enough money to record and release its first single, "I Love This Life", on their own Peppermint Records label. Only a limited number were produced, but one found its way to RSO Records via their friend and engineer Calum Malcolm. Malcolm had been a member of short-lived Edinburgh punk band The Headboys who had released their records on the RSO label, and he still had contacts with the company. RSO licensed the single for distribution, but almost as soon as the record was released RSO went bankrupt and was absorbed into the PolyGram recording company, and the single consequently disappeared. |
1904_6 | A Walk Across the Rooftops (1982–1984)
Undaunted by this setback, they continued to play gigs around Glasgow, starting to write their own songs alongside the cover versions they were playing. Having no drummer and with limited musical ability, particularly in Buchanan's guitar playing (he later admitted that "we could play a little, but I was the worst by a long way"), the newly formed Blue Nile adopted an atmospheric, electronic approach primarily out of pragmatism. The band also made the most of their imagination, thrift and mechanical ingenuity. Buchanan recalled, "PJ had bought a tray from a waiter. It was made of zinc and it made a good noise when you hit it. We sampled it and PJ made a pad to trigger it from for £3. It was all very primitive back then — you had to hit it about two seconds before you wanted the sound to appear in the song." |
1904_7 | The most commonly told story about the Blue Nile is that in 1983 they were approached by local a hi-fi manufacturer, Linn Products, and asked to produce a song that would showcase the Linn equipment to best effect. Linn was so pleased with the resulting record that it offered the Blue Nile a contract to make a whole album, and set up its own record label specifically to release it. |
1904_8 | In interviews, both Buchanan and Moore have categorically denied that Linn approached the band to make a record for them, or that the record company influenced the album's sound in any way at all, with Moore saying, "It was a myth that we were a 'hi-fi band signed to a hi-fi company'. We just got lucky that we'd found our way to an excellent engineer who knew the company." The engineer in question was Calum Malcolm, with whom the band had already recorded some demos in his Castlesound studio near Edinburgh. Since Malcolm was a friend of Linn's founder Ivor Tiefenbrun, and had ties with the company, his studio was fitted out with Linn equipment. When Linn representatives visited one day and asked to hear some music to test out their new speakers, Malcolm played them the demo of "Tinseltown in the Rain". Impressed, Linn offered the band a contract with the record label it was in the process of setting up. Despite the fact that the group took nine months to reply to Linn's offer, the |
1904_9 | contract was eventually signed and its first album, A Walk Across the Rooftops, was released as Linn Records' first album in May 1984. |
1904_10 | On its release, A Walk Across the Rooftops gained widespread acclaim from music critics for its mixture of sparse, detailed electronic sounds and Buchanan's soulful vocals, later described as a "fusion of chilly technology and a pitch of confessional, romantic soul". In 1984, the band gained greater exposure in Europe, with the videos for their two singles, "Stay" and "Tinseltown in the Rain", often shown on the video channel Music Box. The band's profile began to grow, although its existence remained precarious. Buchanan commented, "I've always found it strange that people missed the 'punk' aspect of A Walk Across the Rooftops. We were living in a flat in Glasgow with no hot water. We barely knew what we were doing and that was very liberating." |
1904_11 | Hats (1985–1990) |
1904_12 | Keen to capitalise on the positive critical reception awarded to A Walk Across the Rooftops, Linn sent the band back to Castlesound studio early in 1985 to produce a quick follow-up record. However, as the band later admitted, there was no new material ready to record, and they were not happy with the songs they were producing under pressure in the studio. The lack of progress led to stress and arguments among the band members, and matters were not helped when Virgin Records, to whom Linn had licensed the band's records, began legal proceedings against the group and the label for not producing the new material stipulated in the licensing agreement. After two years with almost nothing to show for its efforts, the band was forced to leave the studio to make way for another band, and had to return home to Glasgow. Away from the pressures of the studio, the group overcame the writer's block and, eventually returning to Castlesound in 1988, was able to rapidly complete a new album. |
1904_13 | Hats was released in October 1989 to rave reviews, including a rare five-star rating from Q magazine. Warmer and smoother sounding than the first album, and exploring the highs and lows of romantic love, Hats peaked at #12 on the UK Albums Chart. It was also the group's breakthrough record in the US, where it reached #108 on the US Billboard 200 album charts in May 1990. All three singles released in the UK from the album made the top 75 in the UK Singles Chart. |
1904_14 | The Blue Nile's first live public performance after making A Walk Across the Rooftops was in December 1989 on the television programme Halfway to Paradise, a Scottish-based arts magazine show broadcast on Channel 4. The band also composed and performed the theme tune for the programme, later released as a single B-side. The band played two songs with the American singer Rickie Lee Jones (who had recently befriended the band and had become one of its biggest supporters), performing her own "Flying Cowboys" and the Blue Nile's "Easter Parade". The duet version of "Easter Parade" was used as the B-side of both Jones's 1990 single, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying", and the 12" single of "Headlights on the Parade". During 1990, the Blue Nile supported Jones on her US tour (their experience in America was filmed by BBC Scotland for a documentary titled Flags and Fences), followed by a tour of the UK culminating in two homecoming gigs in September 1990 at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, |
1904_15 | becoming the first non-classical band to play at the newly opened venue. |
1904_16 | Peace at Last (1991–1996) |
1904_17 | The radio play gained by Hats in the US, in particular the single "The Downtown Lights", brought the Blue Nile to the attention of several well-known US-based musicians. In 1991, the band was invited to Los Angeles to work on songs by Julian Lennon, Robbie Robertson and Michael McDonald. As a result, Buchanan moved to Los Angeles and lived there for a while, and had a relationship with the actress Rosanna Arquette between 1991 and 1993. Speaking about that period of his life Buchanan said, "It really was interesting. I have to say it was lived in all earnest ... And there was much good there, I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it ... The great thing all the time was you were constantly wanting to phone friends and say, Guess who's in the shop? Guess who's in the supermarket? I'm not immune to all that. In the movies—celluloid's better than life isn't it? It makes everything glossy. I don't mean it's better, but it's so glamorous, I met lots of people—it was fascinating." The band also |
1904_18 | worked on Annie Lennox's first solo album, Diva, co-writing the track "The Gift". Lennox later covered "The Downtown Lights" (from Hats) for her second album, Medusa, released in 1995. |
1904_19 | Having been let go by Linn and Virgin Records, the group signed a deal with Warner Bros. Records in 1992, although it later transpired that Buchanan had made the deal by himself without informing his bandmates. His explanation was that "none of the others were in town at the time". The band decided that it wanted to find somewhere private to record its new album with its portable studio, and began travelling around Europe searching for suitable locations. Having spent two years looking at and dismissing locations in cities such as Venice, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, the record was finally recorded piecemeal over three locations in Paris, Dublin and Los Angeles. |
1904_20 | In June 1996, seven years after Hats, the Blue Nile released a third album, entitled Peace at Last. It displayed a marked difference in style to the first two albums, with Buchanan's acoustic guitar work more to the fore. Buchanan recalled that he had bought the guitar in a New York music shop, and by coincidence Robert Bell had seen the guitar earlier the same day and called Buchanan to tell him about it. A gospel choir made a brief appearance on the first single, "Happiness". Despite the release of Peace at Last on a major label, critical reaction to the album was more mixed than for the band's previous records, although sales were good, entering the UK album chart at #13. |
1904_21 | High (1997–2004)
In 1997, the Blue Nile appointed a full-time manager for the first time - the experienced ex-Dire Straits manager, Ed Bicknell - who extricated the group from the deal with Warner Bros. He also attempted to persuade the band to change its recording habits, but had little success. Bicknell parted ways with the band in 2004, later saying that "in terms of the modern recording world the history of the Blue Nile was the most screwed-up I had ever encountered". Following tour dates in 1996 and 1997, culminating in an appearance at the Glastonbury Festival in June 1997, the Blue Nile disappeared from public view for the next seven years, apart from an appearance at a 2001 tribute concert at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin for the Irish music presenter Uaneen Fitzsimons, following her death in a car crash. A remixed version of the single "Tinseltown in the Rain" was used as the theme song for the BBC Scotland TV series Tinsel Town, broadcast in 2000 and 2001. |
1904_22 | After the longest period yet between albums, the Blue Nile released High in August 2004. Part of the lengthy delay in making the record was due to Buchanan contracting a form of chronic fatigue syndrome which affected his health for two years, but as he explained on the album's release, it was mostly a result of the band's perfectionism taking hold once again, "We recorded an album and a half and ... we realised we weren't in love with it ... The vast majority of it we just dumped; we just put it to one side and didn't touch it any more." The album reached number 10 on the UK Albums Chart, the highest position to date for the band. Although acoustic guitar is still present on some tracks, the overall musical sound is more reminiscent of Hats. |
1904_23 | Rift and subsequent activity (2005–present)
It became apparent during the recording of High that old tensions among the band members had resurfaced. Buchanan's comments in a 2012 interview seemed to indicate that the album was finished out of a sense of duty and loyalty rather than any willingness to do so. "When we eventually finished High, I don't think it was bristling with the same joy and naivety we'd felt when we started. We'd gathered ourselves long enough to make it. It seemed to me a stoic record, to some extent a record about ourselves, though I didn't realise that 'til later. It was a collected and fairly stoic record which I was proud of and, in a sense, we just made ourselves focus. We showed up, we went into the room and worked, and whatever drift had set in we were loyal to each other and we knew we had to form the wagons into a circle." |
1904_24 | During preparations for the tour in February 2005 following the album's release, Buchanan and Bell realised that Moore had stopped contacting them and would not be showing up for the tour. Although in interviews around the time Buchanan brushed aside questions about Moore's absence and insisted that they remained friends, he acknowledged years later that in fact he and Bell have had virtually no contact with Moore since the recording of High. |
1904_25 | Buchanan and Bell toured England and Scotland in May and June 2006, followed by Scotland and Ireland in November 2006, billed as "Paul Buchanan sings the songs of the Blue Nile", refraining from simply calling themselves the Blue Nile as a mark of respect for Moore's absence. The band consisted of Buchanan on vocals and guitar, Bell on bass guitar and keyboards, Alan Cuthbertson and Brendan Smith on keyboards, Stuart McCredie on guitar, and Liam Bradley on drums. On 14 July 2007, Buchanan and Bell played at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester as part of the Manchester International Festival. In July 2008, the band played shows at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Somerset House in London and the Radisson Hotel in Galway. |
1904_26 | Although there has never been an official statement to clarify whether or not the Blue Nile still exists, the indications are that the band has split up. There appears to be disagreement among the band members themselves as to whether they will ever make another record together. Moore is emphatic that he will never rejoin the band, saying in communications sent in 2010 to the band's biographer that he was "finding it healthier to put all that behind me", and in a 2013 interview his terse reply to the question of a reunion was, "I think stuff happened that was simply beyond the pale. It's a shame, but if the feeling for sitting down together really isn't there, then continuing to do so even because you want to is pointless." On the other hand, Buchanan has not given up hope that the three members of the Blue Nile may make more music together in the future, saying, "I don't know where things stand with the other two guys ... In a way, I think it would be the right and proper thing to do |
1904_27 | but I'll just need to wait and see. If the others say let's do this ... Certainly, if I bump into them on a corner my hope would be that we could say: so what are you doing tomorrow?" He also lamented the estrangement with Moore, saying, "We're inhibited by the Scottish male thing where you have to give the other guy space, but I love PJ and there isn't a month goes by where I don't think about phoning him". |
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