Just saw Frozen II and the presence of a black military officer of Arrendell immediately took me out of the movie. And considering the themes of the evil white men terrorizing indigenous people, it felt very calculated to make one of the good guys black.
Which isn’t to say black characters are bad, but I would not expect white people in Moana, so... i know Arrendell is fictional, but Ftozen ostensibly is set in a fictitious Norway. We can deduce the time period from two data points (apart from clothing): a character mentions reading a new book by “a Danish author” with a mermaid on the cover. Clearly this is meant to be a nod to Hans Christian Andersen. Secondly, at the end of the film we see a photograph (and it’s considered new). Now, if we take it as actually Andersen’s book, that puts it in the 1830s. That’s a flashback, and present day is 34 years after the mist falls, so the movie is set some time in the 1860s or 1870s.
Given early photography, mid-1860s seems reasonable to me. If we go with this date, would there be black people in Norway at the time, and treated more or less as equals?
In the 1860s, Norway and Sweden had entered a union (United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway) and the common monarchy of this union was the Swedish royal house. Since Frozen is ostensibly about the Arendelle monarchy, we will take a look of the presence of individuals of African descent in that context.
In 1860, author and famous Norwegian journalist Aasmund Olavsson Vinje meets a man of African descent in the royal entourage at Dovre, Norway at the king's table during a royal party. From the description in Vinje's Ferdaminni fraa Sumaren 1860, it certainly left an impression with the author. Sitting there in the midst of painters and the royal valet, Vinje amused himself by the conversation with the man and those around them which was flourishing in not only Norwegian and Swedish but English, French, and German, too. Vinje unfortunately had no name to add to this recollection, calling him only the Morian.
Who was the man that Vinje met in Dovre? In the context of the royal court, what was a morian?
A morian was a term used for people with dark skin. The word is attested for as early as the 16th century in Swedish dictionaries. This is not surprising, considering the role that a morian could play in the Swedish court. People of African descent were present in royal courts throughout Europe between the 16th and 19th century, more often than not as enslaved persons. In the United Kingdom, for example, owning an enslaved person and displaying that person openly for other people to see was a form of a status symbol, a way of showing off your wealth and privilege as royalty or nobility. They were often dressed up in oriental and exotic costumes so as to emphasize their otherness. In the Swedish and Norwegian context, a morian was not only a word used for black persons but also for black persons as servants in the royal court (compare with the German kammermohr). These enslaved persons were therefore meant as an exotic inclusion in the royal court, although their "use" differed between different royal courts. How they came to be in the royal courts were often tied to the international slave trade, some being as previously mentioned explicitly enslaved while others had a past in slavery.
For the Swedish royal court, there are many named black individuals who even in their lifetime were well-known. Arguably the most famous example is that of Adolf Ludvig Gustav Fredrik Albert Couchi (c. 1747-1822), also known as Gustav Badin, who came of age in the Swedish court as a free servant first to queen Louisa Ulrika and then to princess Sofia Albertina. His royal upbringing and education made him into one of the foremost black intellectuals in Europe, his poetry, book collection, and his diary all being firm evidence of his education. Even today, his portrait can be found in the National Museum in Stockholm where Badin looks like he's about to checkmate you for underestimating him.
Yet, Badin passed away 1822. We need to jump to the 1860s and to that royal party in Dovre.
The man that Vinje met was most likely the free servant of king Charles XV, John Panzio Tockson/Toxon (1838-1888). We know considerably little of Tockson's background, knowing only that he originally came from Africa. How he came to the royal court is also disputed, with different versions telling equally remarkable stories (some where he escaped slavery and made his way to Sweden, others were he was given as a gift to Swedish royalty who then passed him on to the king). No matter what, Tockson became a visible part of the royal court during the 1860s. He didn't only serve as a personal servant, but also served in the royal stables as well as a royal "pipe tamper" as Vinje refers to him as. Like in the past centuries, the presence of Tockson as a royal servant was a status symbol for the king and Tockson would often be dressed in exotic clothing, as seen in this painting of him dancing in Midsummer 1868. His presence was noted in diaries, paintings, illustrations, and even in a book by the famed Swedish author August Strindberg. After the death of Charles XV in 1872, Tockson left the court with a small pension and became part of the considerably less known community of individuals of African descent in cities, town, and villages throughout Europe with no royal connections. That story is still being reconstructed by scholars today.
Oh, and you mentioned photography, right? Well, allow me to introduce you to John Panzio Tockson. Here's another one for good measure.
In conclusion, the answer is yes. There were black people in Norway in the 1860s. John Panzio Tockson lived in the the actual historical Scandinavia that was considerably more diverse than popular imagination gives it credit for. Questioning the inclusion of a black person in a movie with living trolls and ice magic seems wholly redundant.
Sources:
Aasmund Olavsson Vinje, Ferdaminni fraa Sumaren 1860 (1861).
Arvid Bergman, Född slav-död fri?: Richard Abrahamsson och tidigt anlända afrikaners öde (Stockholmia förlag, 2018).
Joachim Östlund, Playing the White Knight: Badin, Chess, and Black Self-Fashioning in Eighteen-Century Sweden, in Leigh Raiford (ed.) et al, Migrating the Black Body: The African Diaspora and Visual Culture (University of Washington Press, 2017). (Shout-out to Östlund who was my advisor a few years back!)
Imtiaz H. Habib, Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677 (Ashgate Publishing, 2008)
