We are beginning to do research to inform a documentary about Germanic paganism (origin, practices and rituals, influence, etc), the Vikings (people who practiced such a religion, where they came from, what they did, and so on), and how these things translate into modern day art, music, literature, dance, culture etc. It’s a very broad question, but we’d love any insight! Thank you!

This is a topic I've been mulling over for some time. Please forgive me if my post is long and rambling. This is a wide-ranging and difficult question, for me at least, to wrap my head around.

Basically I'm asking about metahistory, and especially the role of aesthetics, psychology and shifting intellectual fashions in interpreting past events.

To flesh out my subject line with some anecdotes: I'm a bit of an amateur WWII buff. I particularly enjoy reading personal accounts of the war years (Eugene Sledge, Churchill, Orwell, Leo Marks, Studs Terkel, Norman Lewis). While horrified by the war itself, I nonetheless enjoy reading about the people involved, their experiences, their ideas and so forth. I absolutely despise reading about WWI. To me it seems like a brutal slog with no real purpose, as summed up in the poetry of Wilfred Owen. But even beyond this shallow impression of what the conflict was "about," the period just holds no appeal for me. Consequently my WWII bookshelf is probably ten times longer than my WWI bookshelf. I literally have a favorite world war, in much the same way that I have a favorite genre of movies or a favorite flavor of ice cream. The fact seems bizarre to me, but at the same time it has shaped my view & understanding of these events in significant ways. I'm fairly well informed about WWII, and fairly ignorant about WWI.

Similar example: I despise reading about the US Civil War. Much like with WWI, the civil war period fills me with a sense of gloom and an impression of moral horror and physical discomfort. I recently read McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and while the book is excellent and very elucidating, I basically forced myself to read it out of a sense of obligation to better understand an event that continues to shape and divide American culture. And yet I'm fascinated to read about the British Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, and neither of those historical moments bother me as being particularly unpleasant. In fact I'd say I have a general antipathy to the entire American long 19th century, and that antipathy affects my preferences & level of knowledge in various ways. For instance I vastly prefer reading the British, French & German Romantics to the American Transcendentalists. There's something weird and inexplicable about being drawn to periods of time and repulsed by others when I have no personal connection to either.

But I didn't come here to talk about my personal taste in books. Rather, I'm interested in the more general influence of aesthetics on history and its reception. I suspect that most people, like me, have somewhat inexplicable aesthetic preferences, affinities for certain time periods and antipathies for others. For instance, I would be willing to bet that many of the professional historians on this sub were drawn to their areas of specialty by a certain romance for the subject matter that they may or may not be able to fully explain.

And I think aesthetic affinity goes beyond simple personal preferences. One could argue that shifting tastes also shape larger trends that have significant impacts on public life. For example, back to the US Civil War one could argue that a certain romance for the "Lost Cause" of the old South shaped American attitudes toward slavery, race relations, industrialization and modernization. The influence of this romance can be seen for example in a number of the films of Golden Age Hollywood. It's easy enough to dismiss this entire question with a shrug and a de gustibus, but if gustus really does have an important influence on public beliefs and conclusions about history writ large, then it stands to reason that studying those shifting tastes may be worthwhile.

(I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit for this)

I found this old photo (year 1944) in my grandma's house - it's a photo of her cousin. What kind of uniform is he wearing? Which country is it from?