The 21^st century has seen an increase in the publication of Gothic literature for children and young adults. The aim of this study is to explore this development and to discuss images of the child in Scandinavian Gothic fiction for children in relation to ideas about childhood in a contemporary context. What conceptions of childhood are depicted and elaborated on in Gothic literature for children and in what ways do these correspond to an understanding of childhood in contemporary Scandinavia?

The Gothic is a multifarious type of fiction that stages a double diegesis wherein a natural order is corrupted by a Gothic abyss. Chris Baldick’s Gothic chronotope, featuring a conflation of the past with the present within a closed setting, serves as an initial definition to examine a variety of possible scenarios where child protagonists prosper or founder in the confrontation with elements of the Gothic abyss. Utilizing the ideas of Michel Foucault, childhood is understood here as a discursive formation and images of the child are conceptualized through subjectification, a process consisting of technologies of power and technologies of the self. These technologies, alongside governmentality, serves as operative tools for analysis of child subjectification in both text and context. Drawing on the writings of Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Karen M. Smith and others, the contemporary context, referred to here as high modernity, signals a radicalization with earlier stages of modernity. Bauman describes the present world as a liquid modernity and stresses, as does Giddens, the necessity of flexibility as the individual is continuously made responsible for the creation of a meaningful life. Childhood is very much part of this contextual mutation, which inspires new conceptions of childhood, both reaffirming and challenging traditional concepts.

The studied Gothic texts originate from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and were published between 1997 and 2018. They consist of novels and short stories written by Ingelin Angerborn, Hilde Hagerup, Ingunn Aamodt, Dan Höjer, Katarina Genar, Mette Finderup, Magnus Nordin, Benni Bødker, Mårten Melin and Jesper Wung-Sung. The texts chosen include a variety of Gothic subgenres such as ghost stories, zombie literature, stories about animated objects and works alluding to werewolf and vampire fiction. The images of the child that emerge in Scandinavian Gothic fiction address issues such as child agency, the competent child, growth, government and the possibility of self-governing. Throughout the examined texts, the images of childhood are ambivalent and the competent child is frequently shadowed by its counterpart; a process of emancipation remains entangled with government through technologies of power, and the potential of growth is locked within the iterative pattern of the Gothic chronotope. This study shows that various, sometimes contradictory, images of childhood in children’s Gothic fiction constitute what can be referred to as the liquid childhood of high modernity.

Cultural representations of entrepreneurship frequently overshadow positive traits in favor of greed as a central motif, particularly in children’s culture. The Swedish Christmas calendar, broadcasted on national television, has been criticized for conveying a negative view of capitalism including a portrayal of entrepreneurs as villains. However, emphasis on profession fails to acknowledge its engagement with entrepreneurship in relation to the neoliberal version of homo economicus (the economic subject). Drawing on the writings of Michel Foucault and Gary S. Becker, the aim is to show that portrayals of entrepreneurship in the Christmas calendar evoke both positive and negative connotations. In the Dickens-inspired calendar Tjuvarnas jul (The thieves’ Christmas, 2011), the two main antagonists are the head of a department store and the captain of the thieves. Both are portrayed as void of moral judgment, aiming to accumulate capital, but unlike the captain of the thieves, the head of the department store reinvests hers. Re-investment emerges as the main dividing line between good and bad capitalist behavior. When the head of the department store stops re-investing, leaving a monetary deficit behind, the accumulated funds oft he captain of the thieves secure market balance and a flourishing of professional entrepreneurship. In the calendar Kaspar i Nudådalen (Kaspar in Nudå valley, 2001), the protagonist aims to receive a maximum amount of Christmas gifts. To ensure this, he creates a measuring tool whereby he can evaluate his actions and its outcome: good actions allow him to advance a step and bad actions force him to retreat. His everyday accounting emphasizes the construction of subjectivity as a distinct homo economicus as the measuring tool begins to shape his being, disciplining his thoughts and actions. Together, the two Christmas calendars emphasize entrepreneurship as an ambivalent discourse beyond a biased negative view of capitalism in children’s culture.

Between Allan Rune Pettersson’s novels Frankenstein’s Aunt (1978) and Frankenstein’s Aunt Returns (1989) there emerges a contradictory view on discipline. Whilst being a dominant motif in the first novel, discipline of the monstrous is dissuaded from in the second. This article aims to explain this contradiction through an analysis of the different meanings ascribed to the monstrous body in the two novels. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory and Michail Bachtin’s work on the chronotope is used whilst intermedia theory provides a framework to explain the relation between the novels in the light of a TV series based on the first novel. The first novel creates a gothic chronotope where the protagonist Hanna Frankenstein tries to atone for her nephew’s sins in the past (his creation of the Monster). Here, the monstrous body is assigned meaning through a correlation with the discourse on the child, which legitimizes disciplining the monsters. In the TV series, monstrosity is described as a result of loneliness and consequently, the function of discipline is altered. The Monster falls in love with a human girl and, thanks to aunt Hanna’s efforts, he eventually marries her. Thus, monstrosity is obliterated altogether. In the second novel, aunt Hanna accuses the Monster and his bride of betraying their individuality. However, as their bourgeois lifestyle is the result of her own acts of discipline in the first novel, she now has to atone for new sins in the past – this time her own. The second novel thus reinvents the gothic chronotope and re-interprets the first novel in the light of the TV series, providing a missing link between the novels. In the end, the second novel advocates the co-existence of the monstrous alongside the human.

The child in gothic fiction is often interpreted as a symbol of adult fears, and childhood in this context is therefore stripped of intentionality. This article discusses the representation of childhood as performed through acts of agency in children’s gothic fiction, with Angela Sommer­Bodenburg’s famous novel series Der kleine Vampir as a case study. Previous research into the novel series has focused primarily on the human protagonist, the boy Anton Bohnsack, and neglected childhood as performed by the vampire children Rüdiger and Anna. These two characters diverge from previous representations of vampires within the vampire sub­genre and challenge the very concept of childhood.

In terms of space made available for agency, the human sphere differs from the vampire sphere. Whilst the former emphasizes protective measures on behalf of the child the latter seems to emphasize agency. However, there is a dialectic relation between the two spheres. Neither protection nor agency is favoured, instead Der kleine Vampir offers the possi­ bility of a fusion between them through a number of different images of childhood, or rather, multiple childhoods.