Basque ethnography at a glance

Entering church. José Arrue. Digitized postcard. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

In order to describe the culture of a people, besides observational or field research, a study of the farthest-distant past is likewise needed, as depicted in historical documents, engravings or paintings, as well as in the testimonies of geographers, historians or travellers.

The institution I work for, which not by chance takes the name of a renowned Basque historian, houses a library on Basque themes, featuring some remarkable works from, among others, an ethnohistorical standpoint. A glance through their pages indeed suffices to captivate the attention of not such a great expert on ethnography like myself. May the following lines serve as illustration.

Iberian Basque with dart and bident. Historia general del Señorío de Bizcaya [General history of the Lordship of Bizcaya]. Euskal Biblioteka. Labayru Fundazioa.

We know that primitive Basques armed themselves for attack with swords, throwing-darts, slings and stones, axes, bidents, pikes or mallets, as circumstances required. Spears, darts, swords, axes or hatchets would be the most common weapons during Romanization.

As Labayru gathers, the use of spears, in particular, was constant and general since time immemorial. Basques of old were never unarmed, not even to attend mass. And so they proceeded at the beginning of the Christianization process of our country, and throughout the subsequent hundreds of years, the habit failing to be eradicated but by prohibitions and penalties for their infringement, up to the 17th century, and beyond. Thus, they would leave their inseparable spears in the porch of the temple until worship concluded, and on that account, the place looked to be more of a guardhouse than a religious building.

Still in 16th-century Bizkaia most men carried a spear wherever they went, Poza claims, along with a hatchet and a short sword. According to Larramendi, 18th-century folks in Gipuzkoa headed out from their homes in the mountains to church bearing swords, some of them, if only for the displays and the dances, and long, heavy sticks, some others; and Iturriza sustains that also Bizkaia men would attend church functions with swords and spiked sticks, or porkerak, until the middle of the mentioned century, progressively substituting them by long and thick clubs, called astramakilak. As Bowles reports, both Bizkaians and Gipuzkoans walked with such sticks whenever they left their lands, which in addition to helping them cross ravines, creeks and muds, became a most effective weapon, for holding them with both hands at a certain distance, more towards the middle, “they knew how to handle them and were not afraid of even the best-skilled of swordsmen”.

Jaione Bilbao – Ethnography Department – Labayru Fundazioa

Here follow the references consulted: Andrés de Poza. De la antigua lengua, poblaciones y comarcas de las Españas [On the ancient language, peoples and regions of the Spains]. Bilbao, 1587 [ed. 1901]; William Bowles. Introducción a la historia natural y a la geografía física de España [An introduction to the natural history a physical geography of Spain]. Madrid, 1782; Manuel de Larramendi. Corografía o descripción general de la muy noble y muy leal provincia de Guipúzcoa [Chorography or general description of the most noble and most loyal province of Guipúzcoa]. Barcelona, 1882; Juan Ramón de Iturriza. Historia general de Vizcaya [General history of Vizcaya]. Bilbao, 1885; and Estanislao Jaime de Labayru. Historia general del Señorío de Bizcaya [General history of the Lordship of Bizcaya]. Bilbao, 1895.