Royal weddings are magical moments. By stirring emotions and moving the public, they may redirect opinion and silence critical voices - at least for a while. This paper argues that a more long-term support for the monarchy will need an additional underpinning of respect for royal professionalism, and that studies of royal weddings, accordingly, should pay attention to how these ceremonies present their main characters as professional royal performers. The point is exemplified by a tentative comparison of the weddings of the Norwegian Crown Prince, in August, 2001 and a Norwegian princess, in May, 2002, and by some reflections on public reactions to these weddings.
Kongelige bryllup er magiske; de kan bevege sansene og snu en opinion. Men hvor lenge varer magien? Denne artikkelen hevder at en mer langsiktig oppslutning rundt monarkiet må hvile ikke bare på et folkelig engasjement i ritualer og fester, men også på en videre respekt for hvordan de kongelige hovedpersonene utøver sine profesjonelle roller. Derfor bør vi også komplettere vår faglige interesse for bryllupene med en fokusering på hvordan kongelige rolleutforminger blir artikulert i disse ritualene. Artikkelen eksemplifiserer en slik tilnærming ved å sammenligne de to norske kongebarnbryllupene som fant sted i 2001 og 2002, og ved å reflektere rundt noen trekk i de offentlige reaksjonene på disse begivenhetene.
Norwegian Constitution Day is at face value a nationalist manifestation, focused on the celebration of Norwegian freedom. In the 1990's, celebrations of Constitution Day are broadly attended and highly appreciated among participants. But how do they work? How do they give form to an abstract ideology, and how are the ritual forms lived through and made sense of by participants - and to what ideological ends? Drawing upon theories of ritual efficiency, the author examines the organisation of the celebrations as well as participant experience and constructions of meaning. The conclusions show that concepts of peace and freedom are crucial in participant understanding, but that they are differently interpreted by participants in various generations. For persons belonging to post-war generations, the country and its qualities are more central topics for reflection that peace and freedom. It is also noted that celebration practice has a great appeal in its own right, and that it might be enjoyed and reproduced even when national dimensions are not fully experienced, or when they are explicitly questioned.
A Proper Wedding
A proper wedding, according to popular expectations in contemporary Sweden, should be large and carefully planned, and take place in a church. This paper describes how such elaborate weddings can produce mixed feelings among clergy in the Church of Sweden, and how the organisation promotes the idea that a small and simple wedding is a good wedding. Furthermore, the paper shows how the wedding service has been discussed and reformed in the current process of revising the Book of Worship of the Church of Sweden, and finally reflects upon some alternatives when it comes to presenting, performing and perceiving the ritual. The paper can be read as an experiment in thinking about ritual form, but also as a window into current challenges and processes of change in the former state Church of Sweden.
Artikkelen drøfter 17. mai-feiring i 1990-årenes Norge med utgangspunkt i et par velkjente retoriske sannheter: at 17. mai er barnas dag og derfor utpreget hyggelig, og at den er inkluderende overfor innvandrere. Ved å skille mellom denne overgripende retorikk, et mellomledd av kommentarer og diskusjoner, og den faktiske feiring prøver jeg å vise hvordan barna er fundament for et videre budskap om norsk normalitet, som i seg ikke bare er hyggelig, og hvordan etnisk annerledeshet i 17. mai-sammenhenger fremstår både som fokus i en bevisst ideologisk posisjonering, og som en i praksis ambivalent kategori.
It is hard to deny that Swedish Ethnology retains a regional character, despite the fact that nowadays, many of its practicians transcend national borders in their projects and fieldwork. This paper argues that we could be more confident about the extent to, and the ways in which, Ethnology deals with regional matters. Important in this context is to make clear that our mission insofar is to investigate cultural processes in Sweden and not "a Swedish culture", and that this ought to be perceived as a comparative task. In addition though, the paper claims that our scholarly writing should transcend linguistic boundaries, and that we should embrace with enthusiasm the possibility of reaching out to an international community of colleagues by publishing more of our results in English.
NS-children are sons and daughters of members of a Norwegian nazi party, that collaborated during the Second World War German occupation of Norway with the foreign regime. In this paper, I discuss recent efforts to articulate in public the sufferings that children in this category had to endure in post-war Norway. Drawing on reflections on politics of identity, I dwell particularly upon how the experiences of the children are connected to recommendations that excuses should be produced, history rewritten, or wider political visions adopted. The conclusion points out a set of issues that I think ought to be considered in the study of processes where marginalised categories are transformed into groups and organisations.
This paper discusses contemporary ways of understanding and defining culture, on one hand, and the discipline of (European) Ethnology in Sweden, on the other hand. It argues that though many of us have abandoned the concept of culture as an analytical tool, we still sorely need the word when it comes to spelling out what kind of reality we are studying, and what the discipline of Ethnology is actually about. The paper gives a brief outline of a re-formatted minimalistic understanding of culture, suitable for posing open-ended questions about how culture is created, handled and altered in various settings. It also discusses the difficulties that stem from our habit of studying a wide variety of subject matters, and proposes that rethinking and sharpening the concept of "ordinary people" might contribute to solving some problems here. Likewise, the paper stresses that as long as we write our reports in Swedish and are eager to make our texts accessible to wide audiences, Swedish society stands out as the area for which we take on particular responsibility, whether we explicitly intend it or not. However motivated this may be, the paper also suggests that we should expand our writing strategies by contributing more to international scholarly discourse on various fields and issues.
Under det sena 1990-talet har det höjts många röster för en kritiskt ifrågasättande etnologi. Parallellt har en utvidgad förståelse av begreppet politik inspirerat till att problematisera politiska aspekter av de mest skiftande verksamheter, inklusive vår egen forskning. Artiklarna i denna antologi bidrar till diskussioner om båda dessa teman. Med utgångspunkt i egna forskningserfarenheter resonerar författarna om kulturarvspolitiska processer, om effekter och implikationer av forskning om det mångkulturella Sverige, respektive om möjliga sätt att förverkliga en feministisk etnologi. Boken vänder sig till en bred kategori av kultur- och samhällsvetenskapligt intresserade läsare, däribland också studenter i etnologi och besläktade ämnen. Den är tillägnad Åke Daun, professor i etnologi och ständig förespråkare för en samhällsengagerad forskning.
Författarna är Barbro Blehr (red.), Maria Bäckman och Simon Ekström, Barbro Klein, Owe Ronström, Ann Runfors samt Annick Sjögren.
Utdrag ur redaktören Martin Ginströms introduktion till tidskriftsnumret:
"Barbro Blehr 'tömmer' i sin artikel orden lokal och gemenskap på deras många betydeler och försöker finna en hållbar definition att bygga vidare på. I en värld där snart sagt alla människors liv påverkas av olika moderniserings- och globaliseringsprocesser - världen blir så att säga större och mindre på samma gång - förändras också uppfattningen om vad det lokala egentligen innebär. Gamla gränser och identiteter förlorar sin betydelse. Blehr tar fram några drag som karakeriserar det lokala och summerar med två minimiprinciper: icke-anonymitet i de mänskliga relationerna och en föreställning om att det existerar ett samband mellan en grupp människor och en viss plats. Sådana samband behöver inte vara exklusiva /.../"
In this commentary the idea of local culture is questioned. It is argued that localness is relative, and that this should be clearly recognized. On the other hand, local can also be used in a more basic sense. Phenomena can be local simply by virtue of existing in a specific geographical setting. The mere use of the word local does not therefore imply that the phenomena described represent a specific local culture.
The central question raised in this study is the sense of community in Keskijärvi, a mining village in the north of Sweden. What is the nature of the local community and in which activities is it expressed? This question is examined through an empirical study of two communicative practices which convey local knowledge in the village. The method used is participant observation, supplemented with interviews. Findings indicate that no single, overarching local community exists in the village, that the communities that do exist are of two kinds: concrete vs. imagined, and that acquaintance was a salient feature in the variation between the two communicating practices.
Norwegian Constitution Day parades are annual occasions for public demonstrations of belonging to the Norwegian community. Simultaneously they are events that mark social statuses and categories by including them in different ways or by excluding them from participation. This article discusses three kinds of contemporary Constitution Day parades, inviting participants in their capacities of schoolchildren, teenage students or citizens. Examining their composition and focussing particularly upon the citizens' parade, the article shows how parades, partly against their overtly stated intentions, come to support a narrowly defined Norwegian normality and ascribe to modern subcultural and ethnic minorities a controversial character.
Ethnology of the present: Revisiting a debate in 1967
According to a popular understanding among Swedish Ethnologists (not least in Stockholm), its practitioners turned to studies of contemporary society and culture in the 1960’s, with a young generation taking the lead. This paper examines how a little group of their elders, in the same decade, envisioned and assessed the prospect of ethnological studies of modern life. Based primarily on contributions to a symposium on the theme, the following key components of their vision are identified: an understanding of “the contemporary” as a period of considerable length; the adherence to a particular concept of tradition; and a dedication to the ideal of a broad coverage of modern life and collections of data large enough to secure that results would be representative, or typical. In combination, these components rendered the task of studying modern life overwhelming and in practice impossible to realize, for lack of personnel and resources. In the concluding remarks, various aspects of the transition to an Ethnology of the present are illuminated by comparing the paradigmatic work of Åke Daun (1969) to the vision presented by the elders and to some other publications issued at the same time.
This article deals with how primary school children experience Constitution Day celebrations. The source material is compositions and drawings made by the children immediately after these celebrations in 1995. An analysis of this material shows that the children are especially interested in those aspects of the celebration in which they themselves participate actively, or which are exciting or during which they enjoy treats for eating and drinking. In general they are very positively inclined towards the celebration of Constitution Day. On this basis, the point is made that these celebrations provide the young participants with a positive and physically grounded first impression of phenomena such as "country" and "national fellowship", and that this impression can to some extent have a lasting effect.
Artikkelen drøfter skolebarns erfaringer av 17. mai-feiring på basis av stiler og tegninger laget av annenklassinger rett etter feiringen i 1995. Analysen av disse dokumentene viser at barna er sterkt fokusert på de innslag i feiringen hvor de selv kan være aktive, hvor det foregår noe spennende, og hvor de spiser og drikker noe godt. Generelt fremstår de også som meget positivt innstilt til nasjonaldagsfeiringen. På dette grunnlag hevdes det at 17. mai-markeringen forsyner de små deltakerne med en positiv og kroppslig fundert inngangsforståelse av fenomener som land og nasjonalt fellesskap, og at denne forståelse i noen grad kan ha varige effekter.
A potential Classic: On Brita Egardt's Hästslakt och rackarskam
If ethnologists were to put together their own list of classic texts, what books should be included, and for what reasons? This question was posed as an invitation to a workshop at the 30th Nordic meeting of ethnologists and folklorists in June, 2006, and brought about, in the first place, a little handful of suggested books. This paper presents one of these: Brita Egardt's dissertation "Hästslakt och rackarskam" (app.: The slaughter of horses and the shame of the slaughterer), published in 1962. My suggestion is that this study can serve as a model for ethnologists because it is extremely cogently thought and argued, and because of its focus, at the end of the analysis, on general social phenomena and processes such as hierarchy, exclusion and stigmatisation. In addition, I reflect on the posthumous reputation of the author of the book, and suggest further reflection on two issues. The first is marginalisation in academic contexts. If such a fate should affect any of us, how can it be handled, and how can personal bitterness be avoided? The other issue is academic leadership, which I suggest is a composite phenomenon that ought to be thoroughly rethought.