Myths, tales or history? On two storytelling traditions in Vanuatu

Abstract

Vanuatu has preserved a rich heritage of oral literature, in the form of narratives that have been passed on, up to this day, by word of mouth. While scholars have been collecting texts since the 1880s, these intangible treasures still remain to be inventorised and analysed in a systematic way. In doing so, we should pay justice to the important diversity internal to the archipelago, by meticulously describing individual traditions before comparing them.

Our study examines two distinct corpora: the Torres–Banks islands in the north, and the Shepherds in central Vanuatu – with respectively 300 and 100 recorded narratives. Not only do these two areas differ in the repertoire of their stories, but they even contrast in the very nature of their storytelling. Northern traditions are dominated by timeless folktales, and ahistorical myths referring to a distant time of origins. Conversely, the Shepherds show a strong preference for reality-anchored accounts, best described as history or “mythistory”.

This spectacular opposition can be explained, in our view, by differences in the social organisation of these two groups, and in what features of their world they pay attention to. Torres–Banks people build their storytelling traditions around the contrast between humans and non-humans – with a special place for the spiritual entities that play a key role in their social practices. By contrast, the narrative system of central Vanuatu revolves around the memory of historical events and human migrations. For social reasons, this area replaced the discourse of myths with a tradition dominated by oral history.