The film adaption of the novel ”Paw. The adventure of a Danish Indian boy” written by the Danish author Torry Gredsted became a success in Denmark and internationally after its release in 1959.

In the novel the main character Paw´s mother is a Surinamese, from a native community. His father is a Danish sailor, who went up the Surinam river from the coast and reached the native community, where he is received harshly. The sadly loss of his parents brings the boy to his father’s home territory to meet the Danes. A Troublesome meeting too.

In the movie with the English title ”Boy of Two Worlds. The exiting adventure tale of a young Robinson Crusoe”, the focus is only on the meeting of Paw with the Danish rural community. The meeting does not work out well, and a robinsonade seems the only escape possible for Paw.

Now, the father is Danish, but had the mother been an Andean, the preconditions for Paw would probably change, and his encounter with his father’s kin could have been more harmonic. Because what is the site Paw is going to visit? An interpretation of the world of the Sedentariness nearby where the film was recorded on location could have led the story in another direction.

As it was commonly found in the countryside, the rural parish was divided into two parts. One part was the earth up towards the church building lying on its supernaturally designated place[1], where almost everything was “more” so to speak (the Upper Part). The other was the lower situated land encircling the Bush in its original place of growth, which protected against sickness, childlessness and crop failure, where almost everything was “less” so to speak (the Lower Part).

Perhaps in former times, the people from the Upper Part and the people from the Lower Part had their entrance into the church in each side of the building, as it is probably marked in the portal decorations´ dichotomy[2] [3].

Inside the church at confirmations and weddings the boys or the men and the girls or the women walk up or down the nave in their respective sides, that is the boys and the men in the right side of the nave (“starboard”) near the portal of the Allochthonous and the girls and the women in the left side of the nave (“port side”) near the portal of the Autochthonous.

These pairs of categories separated or assembled humans, other-than-humans, farms, site productivities, animals and plants in the parish.

Meeting the unfamiliar Paw can experimentally look for clues of context and try to attribute world-like characteristics to the scene of the social encounter[4]. And perhaps, the more he hears, the more he is certain of what he is confronting. He could have detected a dual society like his mothers, only different.

Due to the right type of ontology, the difference in geographical starting point of the meeting partners would not necessarily be inhibitory for pleasant company. And the reception of Paw could have been depicted as forthcoming, as it happened for other people in descriptions of comparable encounters[5].

Keld Anker Olsen 2022

Notes:

1) Fodby Kirke, p. 1100

2) Fodby Kirke, pp. 1001, 1003 figure 5 and 6

3) See Jürgensen 21-22

4) See Tsing pp. 47-48

5) See Descola pp. 220-221

Movie:

Boy of Two Worlds. The exciting adventure tale of a young Robinson Crusoe (Danish title: Paw – Drengen fra urskoven og hans møde med Danmark). Directed by Astrid Henning-Jensen, Laterna film 1959.

Literature

Descola, Philippe (2013 [2005]): Beyond Nature and Culture, translation Lloyd, Janet. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Fodby Kirke, in Danmarks Kirker (1938): V, tome 2, p. 1100-1111. http://danmarkskirker.natmus.dk/kirkesoegning/

Gredsted, Torry (1918): Paw: en dansk indianerdrengs Eventyr, København; Kristiania.

Jürgensen, Martin Wangsgaard (2009): Syddør, norddør og det kønsopdelte kirkerum (English title: South door, north door, and the gender separated church interior), Kirkearkæologi i Norden 9, Årgang 36, Nr. 36, Kalundborg, pp. 7- 28. https://tidsskrift.dk/Hikuin/article/view/109983

Tsing, Anna (2010): Worlding the Matsutake Diaspora. Or, Can Actor-Network Theory Experiment with Holism? Theory and Practice in Contemporary Anthropology. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 47-66.