About the Blog

Historically, we’ve been described as the handmaidens of historians. The properly feminine little ladies organize everything. The archive is a feminized entity, with the head of the archives of the Second French Empire describing archives as things to be mutilated by war. Historians describe archives and their keepers as seducers. Other times, the virtues of housewives express themselves in the field as neatness, obedience and passivity.

In reality, we’re more like Valkyrja than anything. Less buxom and blonde, and more like the original terrifying winged demons in female form who flocked to the battlefields like carrion to carry away the choicest bits of mankind. We are individuals, usually women, who are charged with the incredibly outsized role of deciding whose voices the future may hear. Choosers of the slain. As an individual, acquisition archivists choose what to add to the archive in my charge. We have policies, guidelines, and feedback, but no matter how much support and consultation is given, the position has a lot of power, so our ethics are incredibly important. Our education in sociology is as important as our education in history. The Valkyries chose the bravest, the bloodiest, to feast in Valhǫll. Our parameters are much different but no less rooted in death.

As archivists, our duty to our communities is to hear them, take their advice, and respect their memory and death. When our job is done properly, our chosen slain represents a fair cross-section of the society that produces them and does its best to compensate for the biases of our predecessors. But it almost always comes when people have passed and their children seek us out to judge the importance of their papers.

For me, Þögn from the Nafnaþulur section of the Poetic Edda is my favourite of the Valkyrja. Her name means silence, but my understanding is that it’s almost a verb, so maybe it’s more like silence-taker. A concept called ‘archival silences’ is one in which the words we find are less important than those we don’t. That’s overwhelmingly white men of the upper classes and, to a lesser extent, upper-class white women. So, for the acquisition archivist I work with, that means searching for and accepting as much material as possible from the working class, labour organizations, enlisted ranks, women, and minorities. That material can be books and papers, but it can also be art or clothing. Any piece of material can be archival material.

But we are also nothing of the valkyrja. We each feast upon death, but their violence brings their selection; care brings ours. Gathering that material means listening, participating, being a part of our community and doing our duty. It means approaching everyone who comes to us with a full heart and open ears. Tell us, speak to us. What needs to be preserved? What’s in danger of being lost? What does our community want to remember? Archivists largely decide what we keep, but it is the community that decides our pool of slain.

My job as a research archivist is less about choosing the slain than caring for their remains. I mostly answer the questions of the curious, but I also maintain the collection. Selection and protection is part of why our ethics can sound so fucking medieval. Defend the voiceless, protect the defenceless, seek justice, and do nothing without truth and integrity. I may not lie, I may not hide, I may not do anything without a heart and head full of empathy for the seeking living and the dead being sought. I don’t get to leave these words at the door of my job, but they have to follow me into every part of my life. Once, the archivist would have sat upon its hoard like a dragon; now, I am Charon on the river sticks. I ferry the living to speak to the dead. I answer their questions, find the information, and find and grant any who come to me either with what they need or where they can find it. But neither you nor the dead need coin to cross.

I was accepted into a master’s program in Archival Studies! I’ve been working in the field for a while but can’t move up without a master’s. So off I pop! Shitting myself emotionally, but in a good way.

Oh fuck shit sorry this got buried. Tldr version is blood loss and a fuck load of Ativan shoved into my leg because sometimes my brain just chooses violence. I got a bit agitated once and kicked a nurse so hard I shattered his occipital, nose and cheekbone. He had to have surgery. So they give me a lot of meds and a lot of blood and I take like a 2 day nap so I don’t take a chunk out of someone when I’m over stimulated and feeling ✨feisty✨. Not entirely sure what happened with the server but it went poof. Discord could only tell me it wasn’t them. I’m good now but I’m not replacing the server any time soon.

LMAO, 2 for 1. 3 for 1, really.