between Danish and English languages written on the signs, Heaney
breaks down the dividing line between different kinds of imperialism
and extends his comparison of Ireland and Iceland as colonized
countries which is found in North. This takes identity away from pre-
occupations with the binary relation between Irish and British
identities, and resituates the experience of Irish history in a more
European context, providing the potential to break from the residues
of an oppositional self-identification that exists in the colonial
encounter between Ireland and England. As the dividing line between
different kinds of imperialism is expanded and broken, the poem
translates Irish subjugation and British tyranny into a Scandinavian
context, where the displaced poetic speakers break from
preoccupations with rootedness to become ëfootlooseí and perhaps
also fancy free.
In this way, Heaneyís work moves along the lines of recent post-
colonial theory rather than a specifically nationalist politics. That is, if
the post-colonial is understood in Colin Grahamís words as still
placing ëultimate importance on the nation as the cultural dynamic of
colonialism/post-colonialism; but it stops celebrating the nation and
seeks to demystify the ìpathos of authenticityî which the nation
demands.í^98 In his essay ëìLiminal Spacesî: Post-Colonial Theories
and Irish Cultureí (1994), Graham makes an important distinction
between post-colonial nationalism that celebrates the ëpathos of
authenticityí and post-colonial post-nationalism which seeks to de-
mystify such a celebration demanded by the nation. Comparably,
ëTollundí questions the dividing lines between insiders and outsiders,
those included and excluded by the ëpathos of authenticityí which
enables a circle of containment to be drawn around the nation. The
poem makes identifiable ëliminal spacesí where the opposition of
colonizer and colonized breaks down with the ëpotential to shatter the
self image of nationalismí.^99 Visiting Denmark, ëTollundí thinks the
cultural consequences of the colonizing process diasporically and in
non-originary ways. In the face of unproblematically digging the past
98 Colin Graham, ëRejoinder: The Irish ìPost-?î A Reply to Gerry Smythí, Irish
Studies Review, No.13, Winter 1995/6, p.35.
99 Graham, ëìLiminal Spacesî: Post-Colonial Theories and Irish Cultureí, The
Irish Review, No.16, Autumn/Winter 1994, p.35.