Cultural Memory Disenchanted? Secularization and Re-sacralization in Carl Snoilsky’s Svenska bilder (1872-1897)

This article investigates the patterns of secularization and re-sacralization in Carl Snoilsky’s (1841–1903) collection of poems Svenska bilder (1872–1897, Swedish Pictures[KB1]  Images), ranked for a long time as a Swedish classic. The collection turns back to significant events in early modern Swedish history and has been conceived of as a compendium of national cultural memory. As a dedicated adherent of the century’s progressive liberal and democratic ideology, Snoilsky, the article shows, secularizes the historical material of the poems in accordance with four main patterns: autonomization, specialization, depotentiation, and differentiation. However, for the purpose of emphasizing Swedish patriotic values, Snoilsky simultaneously accomplishes a re-sacralization of the collection’s cultural memory by means of some recurrent patterns: ontologization, existentialization, mythization, actualization, etc.