In Pompei, there are museums throughout the excavation site where they display things that archaeologists have found in the ash. You might see hair pins, plates, knives, mixing bowls, a toy dog, sandals, or the shape of a loaf of nearly-fossilized bread. It’s amazing to see how well these things have been preserved over nearly 2,000 years, but the real value is realizing how little has changed: ancient Pompeiians arranged their combed hair with curved pins, ate food that might be served in a corner diner, played with toys barely different than the ones we give our children, and wore sandals that (literally) might be stylish next year.
Of course, you can tell a lot about a culture by the things that they acquire, have, use, consume, and then leave behind. By looking at the artifacts of a culture, we can see the habits and rituals that made up their lives, and how similar they were to modern people, to you and me. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that these things are souvenirs of lives long past, which is a big reason why we find them so fascinating. In looking around the world, in the past or today, it’s amazing to see how similar people are and how they are different in extraordinarily subtle ways - ways that are the building blocks of unique cultures.
I was thinking about those cultural souvenirs of Pompei because I was looking in the window of a tourist shop with Nick on Monday in Edinburgh. I have been trying to understand how these shops make enough money to not only survive but thrive. Tourists presumably go to them to get reminders of Scotland and its beautiful and unique culture. These shops, though, are full of kitsch that has virtually nothing to do with Scottish culture, and the things that seem to sell well are things that are completely unrelated to how modern Scottish people live. A shop chosen at random on the Royal Mile will likely have ten different sizes of Highland Cow stuffed animals, stacks of pens with crowns on them, tweed purses, tweed backpacks, tweed-covered flasks, tweed phone cases, tweed keychains, tweed gloves, tweed earmuffs, and an assortment of tweed sporrans.
Now, there are highland cows in Scotland. There are pens, and crowns. People sometimes have tweed bags or jackets, and drink alcohol. At weddings, you might see people - usually men - in kilts. However, highland cows are grown for meat, or are vanity pets at distilleries to draw tour groups in; you don’t see them anywhere else, even in Cowgate. Only museum curators see crowns every day. And as for cloth, it’s not 1831 anymore - people are far more likely to wear and use any other material than tweed.
In other words, the things that are sold as symbols and reminders of Scottish culture are things that real people in Scotland will very rarely encounter.
I was watching some tourists in a shop, weighing the pros and cons of different “SCOTLAND” tee-shirts, and realized something: the reason I find it so hard to understand their shopping urges is that they are not looking for souvenirs that involve personal stories (which I still think is the highest level one can aspire to with any tangible possession), nor are they looking for “cultural souvenirs” that show how people in a place actually live in a unique manner, or have adapted tools to their special cultural needs. Instead, they are looking for stereotypes of people that are different than their own lives, things that allow them to tell fictional stories to themselves about the world. Imagine Americans going to Scotland, then returning to Alabama or Iowa or Washington with things that Scottish people might actually have: a North Face backpack, or Patagonia jacket, or Levi’s jeans, or a New York Yankees baseball hat. While these are far more common in current Scottish culture than tweed sporrans or socks, they bring no variety to a tourist’s normal life, so don’t trigger any unique associations with Scottish culture. In addition, they don’t display to others that one has been anywhere different and, in modern days (and probably throughout history), showing other people that one has travelled somewhere else can seem just as important as actually travelling.
I’ve come to the conclusion that people who blow money in tourist shops on kitsch are mostly looking for symbols of a different culture, or what can be called a symbolic souvenir. For many, this means the souvenir must be somehow fundamentally different from their own lives, and they are willing to ignore the actual reality of the culture itself in favor of the imaginary one.
It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I wanted to say to all of the tourists buying tweed condoms on the Royal Mile: look! Literally look around you! The people of Edinburgh are not so different from you. They shop at Ikea for furniture, Amazon for books, and they signal their status with Levi’s denim and Converse canvas and Patagonia plastic. While tourists are combing the racks for a Campbell tartan jock strap, a stuffed Loch Ness monster, or a pen that blares a tinny rendition of “Flower of Scotland” from a built-in speaker, actual Scottish people are watching the Patriots play the Browns, eating at Five Guys, drinking bubble tea, and watching TikTok on their iPhones.
BUT.
That’s not to say that Scottish culture is exactly the same as American culture; differences do exist, if you are willing to do some work to find them. However, to really get into these cultural differences requires understanding, attention, and the ability to make distinctions. In other words, it requires thinking - and “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”
My friend Cassidy provided a perfect example of this. He is a chef, and he has an absurdly keen eye for tools and products. I mean this in both an awe-struck and occasionally frustrated way - he has extraordinarily high standards, which means that he is extremely exacting, and second-best will never do. The thing is, his skill excuses his perfectionism - nobody is going to object if the pasta is cooked perfectly for six minutes and 32 seconds in a 5.7% brine, but, with Cassidy, to get that pasta may have taken four hours across ten miles of back streets and a lot of flattering of a particular grandmother who possesses the extraordinary ability, developed over decades, to fold 24 egg yolks into 216 grams of flour, and that sort of quest, while admirable, is not something that you necessarily want to go through regularly.
Anyway: I wanted a rolling pin from Italy. I didn’t have a good rolling pin at home, and I figured that it would be a good reminder of our trip - particularly since we usually use them for pizzas. I mentioned this to Cassidy at the beginning of the trip, because I knew that he would have an informed opinion on just this very subject. He first said that American rolling pins are often squared-off, while the French ones are usually tapered; he prefers the tapered ones because they are more ergonomical. He then did some research and noted that Italian rolling pins are not tapered, probably because Italians often make pasta with their rolling pins, so they need to have a consistently flat surface area. In addition, Italian rolling pins are generally wood, in order to give pasta a slightly rougher surface so that sauce adheres to it, whereas if you are using a rolling pin for other purposes, other materials (marble, plastic, tempered glass) may be more appropriate. His recommendation: if you are making pasta, get a wooden Italian rolling pin; if making pastries, get French. If you make pasta AND pastries, get a bigger kitchen.
I mean…I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate, but the reasoning is impeccable.
And that’s the level one should aspire to when purchasing cultural souvenirs. Ignore the “Scottish” tartan flasks, or the “Valencia” orange-print tea towels, or the “Florentine” plastic statues of David, all of which will be made in China anyway. Learn about the small things that make a culture unique, and which matter for one of their cultural rituals - pasta in Italy, bread in France, goulash in Hungary.
I think this is the main reason I object to tourism shops: they sell the idea, the symbol, of a people, but not the reality that makes the people unique. This isn’t culture; it’s a pale shadow, a fiction that masks the parts of a culture that make it truly different and interesting. While these things may be tangentially symbolic of the history of a people, they are not actual artifacts OF that culture. They are not things that people necessarily use, or offer any particular insight into how people of a culture live.
And when you learn how people are both similar and different, it’s like going from black and white to colour.
Great observations, my latest souvenir from Switzerland was a rock I found under a bridge 🤣.