The volume you hold in your hands (or have opened on your screen) is a result of the editors’ observations and perhaps initially also only of the assumption of a current shift in societal understandings of majorities and minorities. Groups we had so far thought of as part of the majority, as part of what in German is labelled the Mehrheitsgesellschaft, have recently positioned themselves as threatened mi-norities to claim rights. We are well aware that the we of the observer’s position is of special importance in such a statement and that such statements are funda-mentally bound to one’s own affiliations. This is certainly also true for William Davies, whom we cite here as an example, because he makes similar observations quite accurately and rightly refers to debates about recognition: “The struggle for recognition has turned into an arms race, in which majority cultural identities deploy the language of minority rights in their defence. In contexts such as Brexit, liberals have also engaged in demands for identity recognition, with street pro-tests, flags and claims of cultural marginalization.” (Davies 2021: 85) 

The editors of this volume have combined their expertise in discourse, contradiction, minority and diversity studies to suggest a change of perspective from categorisations into societal minorities and majorities towards an analysis of marginalising and centralising discourses. For this purpose, we have gathered interdisciplinary-minded authors from linguistics, literary and religious studies, political and historical sciences. Their contributions focus on contradictions of religious and national belonging as well as intersections of religion and nation in many different regions of the world from the 18th century until today. While illustrating the diversity and contradictions of religious and national belonging across time and space, the chapters of the book contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of questions of belonging and the associated constant renegotiations of power within these discursive processes.

Who were the non-Western women delegates who took part in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) from 1945-1948? Which member states did these women represent, and in what ways did they push for a more inclusive language than "the rights of Man" in the texts? This book provides a gendered historical narrative of human rights from the San Francisco Conference in 1945 to the final vote of the UDHR in the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948. It highlights the contributions by Latin American feminist delegates, and the prominent non-Western female representatives from new member states of the UN.

This article studies the historical shift in societal understandings of gender and security in Finland that led to the introduction of women's voluntary military service and the opening of the military professions to women in 1995. With a focus on how the gendered division of defence and military labour was conceptualized at various stages, the study analyses what caused Finland to lag behind its Scandinavian neighbours in this respect, and what caused a sweeping reform process to come about in the early 1990s. Drawing on press materials, parliamentary records and policymaking documents, it traces public debates and policymaking over two decades. It shows that women's defence work was a controversial issue, for both historical and political reasons. This caused an emphasis being placed on women's non-military tasks within a broad understanding of societal security during the 1980s. Around the end of the Cold War, a surge of neo-patriotism coincided with the normalization of formal gender equality to effect a significant shift in notions of female citizenship towards military participation. Positive Scandinavian examples of women's military integration were decisive at this point, as was the political impact of Finland acquiring its first female minister of defence.

Anti-Fascism and Ethnic Minorities explores how, and to what extent, fascist ultranationalism elicited an anti-fascist response among ethnic minority communities in Eastern and Central Europe.The edited volume analyses how identities related to class, ethnicity, gender and political ideologies were negotiated within and between minorities through confrontations with domestic and international fascism. By developing and expanding the study of Jewish anti-fascism and resistance to other minority responses, the book opens the field of anti-fascism studies for a broader comparative approach. The volume is thematically located in Central and Eastern Europe, cutting right across the continent from Finland in the North to Albania in the Southeast. The case studies in the 14 research chapters are divided into five thematic sections, dealing with the issues of (1) minorities in borderlands and cross-border anti-fascism, (2) minorities navigating the ideological squeeze between communism and fascism, (3) the role of intellectuals in the defence of minority rights, (4) the anti-fascist resistance against fascist and Nazi occupation during World War II, and (5) the conflictual role ascribed to ethnicity in post-war memory politics and com-memorations. The editors describe their intersectional approach to the analysis ofethnicity as a crucial category of analysis with regard to anti-fascist histories andmemories.The book offers scholars and students valuable historical and comparative per-spectives on minority studies, Jewish studies, borderland studies, and memory studies. It will appeal to those with an interest in the history of race and racism, fascism and anti-fascism, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Completed military service as a condition for suffrage – a matter of course that was reversed?

As a condition for male suffrage in Sweden between 1909 and 1922 citizens were required to have completed military service. This article investigates how this restriction on voting rights, introduced more orless unanimously, was abolished equally unanimously and with little debate only 13 years later. Two main reasons are pointed out. Firstly, since women were given suffrage in 1921, this restriction affected men only and was therefore suddenly perceived to be an unjust discrimination against the latter. Secondly, this restriction was closely linked to the particular political situation in Sweden around the turn of the twentieth century. For decades the twin issues of military and suffrage reform had been interlinked and thus blocked each other until they were resolved in 1901 and 1909 respectively. Once they had been resolved, the political connection between them rapidly became redundant, as did the symbolic and practical expression of this connection, namely completed military service as a condition for suffrage.

This article traces the political process towards full formal integration of women in the military professions in Scandinavia and Finland, investigating the shifting roles played by military labour demands and politics of gender equality. It provides the first comparative overview of these developments in the Nordic region. The analysis demonstrates the importance of historical continuity in women’s military participation. Due to military labour demands, women were throughout the post-war decades recruited into a range of auxiliary, voluntary and hybrid capacities in the Scandinavian armed forces. The reforms opening the military professions to women in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the 1970s were the outcome of a double crisis, as military needs for the regulation of these women’s organisational status coincided with new political demands for gender equality in the labour market. Corresponding reforms in Finland were delayed by the country’s lack of continuity in women’s military participation as well as its sufficient supply of male military personnel. A common Nordic model of gender and military work nonetheless emerged in the 1990s, marked by equal rights to military participation for women on a voluntary basis, combined with mandatory military conscription for men.

The island of Gotland houses a number of terrestrial mammalian species even though it was covered with ice during the last glacial period. The purpose of this study is to genetically analyse the mountain hare (Lepus timidus) to deduce its origin and genetic structure during different time periods, and also to discuss how it reached the island. A 130 base pair sequence of mitochondrial DNA from 38 prehistoric hares was analysed and compared to modern hares from different locations in Europe. The result shows a discrepancy among the samples creating two populations with different origin.

This thesis aims to study the interactions of pre-agricultural societies in Scandinavia with wild mammals, for example in terms of hunting and translocation. More specifically, the aim is to investigate the possibility of identifying examples of overexploitation, targeted hunting or translocation of wild mammals in prehistoric Scandinavia, and to discuss the implications this could have had for both the wild animals and the humans. The thesis also studies translocation to evaluate the feasibility of using it as a proxy for prehistoric human mobility, and to understand the motivation for this action. 

Although the focus is on the animals in this thesis, the ultimate purpose is to study humans and their interactions with animals in prehistory. The thesis applies genetic analyses to zooarchaeological material of various mammalian species from different Scandinavian sites, in order to study whether the genetic structures have changed in these species over time, and to assess whether these changes were induced by different human actions. The species studied in this thesis were selected on the basis of the importance they are considered to have had for prehistoric people.

The dissertation comprises five studies. The first study investigates the occurrence of mountain hares on the island of Gotland, and discusses how they got there and where they came from. The second study explores the temporal genetic structure of the grey seal in the Baltic Sea, and discusses whether humans and/or climate were the drivers for the sudden disappearance of grey seals from the island of Stora Karlsö. The third study concerns a shift where moose apparently became less important as prey in northern Sweden at the end of the Neolithic period, and discusses whether humans targeted female moose in hunting. The fourth study analyses and discusses the history of the harp seal in the Baltic Sea. The fifth study is a methodological paper which involves identifying seals according to sex, using the dog genome.

The overall result of the different case studies shows that there were major population fluctuations over time in all the species studied, and that in some cases, humans are likely to have contributed to this, e.g. through overhunting and translocation. The study also shows that the population fluctuations often occurred in connection with certain climatic events, though it was not possible to separate climatic effects from human impact in terms of the cause.

The grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) has been part of the Baltic Sea fauna for more than 9000 years and has ever since been subjected to extensive human hunting, particularly during the early phases of its presence in the Baltic Sea, but also in the early 20th century. In order to study their temporal genetic structure and to investigate whether there has been a genetically continuous grey seal population in the Baltic, we generated mitochondrial control region data from skeletal remains from ancient grey seals from the archaeological sites Stora Förvar (Sweden) and Neustadt (Germany) and compared these with modern grey seal data. We found that the majority of the Mesolithic grey seals represent haplotypes that is not found in contemporary grey seals, indicating that the Baltic Sea population went extinct, likely due to human overexploitation and environmental change. We hypothesize that grey seals recolonised the Baltic Sea from the North Sea. during the Bronze Age or Iron Age, and that the contemporary Baltic grey seal population is direct descendants of this recolonisation. Our study highlights the power of biomolecular archaeology to understand the factors that shape contemporary marine diversity. 

Aim: The majority of the non-volant mammals now present on the island of Gotland, Sweden, have been introduced in modern times. One exception is the mountain hare (Lepus timidus), which was present on the island more than 9000 years ago. This paper investigates the origins of the Gotland hares and temporal changes in their genetic structure, and considers how they may have reached the island.

Location: The island of Gotland, Sweden (57°30′ N, 18°20′ E).

Methods: Two fragments of the mitochondrial D-loop 130 + 164 base pairs in length from skeletal remains from 40 ancient mountain hares from Gotland, 38 from the Swedish mainland and five from Lithuania were analysed and compared with 90 modern L. timidus haplotypes from different locations in Eurasia and five haplotypes of the Don-hare (Lepus tanaiticus) morphotype.

Results: The Mesolithic hares from Gotland (7304 bc–5989 bc) cluster with modern hares from Russia, Scotland, the Alps and Fennoscandia whereas the Gotland hares from the Neolithic and onwards (2848 bc–1641 ad) cluster with Neolithic hares from the Swedish mainland and modern hares from Fennoscandia. The Neolithic haplotypes from Lithuania and the Don-hare haplotypes were dispersed within the network. The level of differentiation (F_ST) between the Mesolithic and Neolithic hares on Gotland was twice as great as that observed on the mainland.

Main conclusions: The ancient hares on Gotland fall into two haplogroups separated in time, indicating that the mountain hare became extinct at one point, with subsequent re-colonization events. In view of the isolated location of Gotland, it is probable that the hares were brought there by human means of transport.

Previous research has shown that physical violence had a normative presence in medieval Nordic societies. In this study, weapon-related trauma (WRT) was examined in human skeletal assemblages from two religious houses, Skriouklaustur in Iceland, and Vasteras in Sweden. The aims were to identify patterns of WRT and to relate these to the masculinities of different groups of men. Violence was a prominent component of identity among lay men, especially for men with warrior experience. The use of violence was more problematic among clerics. The hypothesis that these notions of ideal masculine behaviour would affect the ways in which masculinities were enacted and would be reflected in the patterns of WRT was borne out by the results of this study. No WRT was identified among the canons and lay brothers in Skriouklaustur, but it was present in about thirty per cent of the males interpreted as belonging to the lay elite buried in the northern part of the church at Vasteras.

The influence and possible negative impact on sinus health of living conditions in rural and urban environments in Viking Age (AD 800–1050) and Early Medieval Sweden (AD 1050–1200) is investigated. Skeletal samples from 32 rural settlements in the Mälaren Valley (AD 750–1200) and burials in the nearby proto-urban port of trade Birka (AD 750–960) are examined. Based on the diagnostic criteria for maxillary sinusitis used in earlier studies, the results show that there is no significant difference in the prevalence of signs of sinusitis between the two materials (i.e. the Mälaren Valley versus Birka). Consequently, this provides no evidence that living in a proto-urban environment had a negative impact on sinus health. However, when compared with previously studied samples from the early medieval town Sigtuna, dated to AD 970–1100, the populations of the Mälaren Valley and Birka show significantly lower frequencies of bone changes interpreted as chronic maxillary sinusitis (95%, 70% and 82% respectively). This implies that the urban environment of Sigtuna could have led to impaired sinus health. There is also a significant difference between males and females in the Birka material, in which more females (100%) than males (68%) were affected. A gender based differentiation in work tasks is suggested by this, or exposure to environmental risk factors that affect sinus health. No difference between males and females could be detected in the samples from the Mälaren Valley and Sigtuna.

There is growing interest in uncovering genetic kinship patterns in past societies using low-coverage palaeogenomes. Here, we benchmark four tools for kinship estimation with such data: lcMLkin, NgsRelate, KIN, and READ, which differ in their input, IBD estimation methods, and statistical approaches. We used pedigree and ancient genome sequence simulations to evaluate these tools when only a limited number (1 to 50 K, with minor allele frequency ≥0.01) of shared SNPs are available. The performance of all four tools was comparable using ≥20 K SNPs. We found that first-degree related pairs can be accurately classified even with 1 K SNPs, with 85% F₁ scores using READ and 96% using NgsRelate or lcMLkin. Distinguishing third-degree relatives from unrelated pairs or second-degree relatives was also possible with high accuracy (F₁ > 90%) with 5 K SNPs using NgsRelate and lcMLkin, while READ and KIN showed lower success (69 and 79% respectively). Meanwhile, noise in population allele frequencies and inbreeding (first-cousin mating) led to deviations in kinship coefficients, with different sensitivities across tools. We conclude that using multiple tools in parallel might be an effective approach to achieve robust estimates on ultra-low-coverage genomes. 

Hedeby Hochburg, borgen i Hedeby, har fått förhållandevis lite uppmärksamhet, jämfört med själva samhället i Hedeby. Utgrävningen från 2012 har dock väckt ett intresse, med ett antal frågor som behöver besvaras. I denna uppsats analyseras jordprover som samlats under utgrävningen, för att se om de kan visa något om den kronologiska relationen mellan borgvallen och gravarna i borgen. Tre metoder användes, FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy), röntgendiffraktion (XRD) och röntgenfluorescens (XRF). Resultaten från XRF och XRD visar på en rumslig relation mellan minst en av vallens konstruktionsfaser och nedsänkningen i ett lager innanför vallen. Relationen med gravarna är inte tydlig än, och analysen gav inga kronologiska ledtrådar. Resultatet kan användas som hypotes för vidare prövning i framti

The City of the Dead is a large area on the periphery of Cairo where people live in house-like tombs. This study focuses on two Egyptian novels Sakawa 1-misri l-fasih (1981-1985) by Yusuf al-Qaid and Madad (2014) by Mahmud al-Wirwari, in which living in the cemeteries is portrayed as a paradoxical reality where life and death overlap. Limits between the two are blurred, and this creates a confusing situation where kind marks are lost and moral values are subverted. Tins situation echoes the characters' personal dilemmas and the uncertain historical context in winch they live. Tins article sheds light on the representation of life in the cemeteries and the concrete and symbolic function of tins space. It also discusses tins representation within the portrayal of peripheries and marginal spaces in contemporary Egyptian fiction, and explores the way the two novels published several decades apart use tins ambivalent: space to relate their respective historical realities.

This entry presents a brief history of the emergence of feminism, gender, and queer in North American archaeology, which, along with the United Kingdom and Scandinavia to a lesser degree, represents the geographic origin and center of such work. The key concepts as used by archaeologists are defined; the relationship among them is explored and shown to be both problematic and productive. The place of feminism, gender, and queer within North American archaeology today is characterized and, finally, likely avenues of future research are suggested. The greatest impact of feminist, gender, and queer archaeologies has been on the authority of positivist approaches, the objectivity of interpretation, equity issues within the profession, collaborative knowledge making, and the understanding of key archaeological interpretive concepts.

I denna uppsats kommer jag att behandla Karl XII och hur denne har framställts i läroböcker från 1884-2003. I min uppsats har jag valt att behandla 14 läroböcker, som i sin tur jag delat upp i tre stycken epoker: Epok I, Epok II och Epok III. Analysen i sin tur har utgått i från tre teman. Vilket jag med hjälp av ett diskursanalytiskt förhållningssätt försökt redogöra kring hur författarna framställt Karl XII, hans personlighet, centrala skeenden samt värdeladdade ord kring Karl. Analysen kommer fokusera på uttalanden från författarna som kan anses vara värderande, samt koppla författarens ställningstagande och sedan se om det stämmer överens med den rådande historieforskning som gällde när läroboken skrevs. Genom att behandla mina epoker i en kronologisk ordning är tanken att ett förändringsmönster i diskursen ska uppstå. Samt att se huruvida läroboksförfattarna faller ifrån opartiskhet och visar sina personliga värderingar i texterna. Tanken med denna uppsats är alltså att se ett utvecklingsmönster, tillika skåda hur pass mycket en författare låter sina egna tankar belysa en lärobok.

During excavations of the Iron Age ringfort of Sandby borg (ad 400–550), the remains of twenty-six unburied bodies were encountered inside and outside the buildings. The skeletons and the archaeological record indicate that after the individuals had died the ringfort was deserted. An osteological investigation and trauma analysis were conducted according to standard anthropological protocols. The osteological analysis identified only men, but individuals of all ages were represented. Eight individuals (31 per cent) showed evidence of perimortem trauma that was sharp, blunt, and penetrating, consistent with interpersonal violence. The location of the bodies and the trauma pattern appear to indicate a massacre rather than a battle. The ‘efficient trauma’ distribution (i.e. minimal but effective violence), the fact that the bodies were not manipulated, combined with the archaeological context, suggest that the perpetrators were numerous and that the assault was carried out effectively. The contemporary sociopolitical situation was seemingly turbulent and the suggested motive behind the massacre was to gain power and control.

I explore the process of changes in the observability of entities and objects in science and how such changes impact two key issues in the scientific realism debate: the claim that predictively successful elements of past science are retained in current scientific theories, and the inductive defense of a specific version of inference to the best explanation with respect to unobservables. I provide a case-study of the discovery of radium by Marie Curie in order to show that the observability of some entities can change and that such changes are relevant for arguments seeking to establish the reliability of success-to-truth inferences with respect to unobservables.

Viking-age boat grave burials are a less common but still repeatedly used way to bury the dead during the late Iron Age. Boat burials are exceptional in many aspects, not only due to placing the individual in a boat with numerous burial gifts including animals, but also by burying the individual without prior cremation, a common practice during the Iron Age. The aim of this thesis is to genetically analyse inhumation boat graves and compare the genetic composition of the ancient individuals with modern populations through population genetic analyses. This will highlight these particular human remains in a mobility context. A total of 11 individuals was analysed, but only one yielded enough DNA for further statistical analyses. This one individual proved genetically exceptionally well preserved. The results clearly show that the individual (a female) has a genetic affinity to populations in northern Europe. However, the results do not discriminate between modern Baltic/Scandinavian populations, depending on the statistical test.

This study deals with the contribution of the genetic variant lactase persistence among Neolithic people from the Baltic Island Öland. Skeletal remains from twelve individuals went through DNA sequencing in order to find the mutation that allows adult individuals to digest milk sugar. The twelve individuals were chosen from two different Neolithic sites, where the archaeological and isotopic data suggest that the individuals from Köpingsvik were hunters and gatherers and the individuals from Resmo were early farmers. The individuals with the genetic variant lactase persistence can be described with selection and genetic flow.  Only five individuals produced results and the mutation was found in two of the subjects. All the individuals who were successfully sequenced came from Resmo, whereasno individuals from Köpingsvik yielded any results.  

Upper Mesopotamia played a key role in the Neolithic Transition in Southwest Asia through marked innovations in symbolism, technology, and diet. We present 13 ancient genomes (c. 8500 to 7500 cal BCE) from Pre-Pottery Neolithic Çayönü in the Tigris basin together with bioarchaeological and material culture data. Our findings reveal that Çayönü was a genetically diverse population, carrying mixed ancestry from western and eastern Fertile Crescent, and that the community received immigrants. Our results further suggest that the community was organized along biological family lines. We document bodily interventions such as head shaping and cauterization among the individuals examined, reflecting Çayönü’s cultural ingenuity. Last, we identify Upper Mesopotamia as the likely source of eastern gene flow into Neolithic Anatolia, in line with material culture evidence. We hypothesize that Upper Mesopotamia’s cultural dynamism during the Neolithic Transition was the product not only of its fertile lands but also of its interregional demographic connections. 

The collection covers topics of interest to both the historical and linguistic study of the contacts between speakers of African and Iberian languages in the constitution of Latin American societies. Supported by historical and demographic data, the twelve chapters cover topics of interest to the discussion on the formation of Latin American varieties of Portuguese and Spanish. Moreover, the book draws attention to the need to articulate the fields of Linguistics and History and contributes to the discussion on the formation of varieties of Latin American Portuguese and Spanish.

In 1964, the Swedish parliament decided on a reformed student finance system with a combination of student grants and student loans. In this paper, the creation of two specific parts of the student finance system are analyzed using the gender contract model of Yvonne Hirdman. The regulations for the payment and repayment of student loans were first formulated in line with the gender equality contract, but were later adapted to the housewife contract. After another turnaround, the committee Studiesociala utredningen favored the gender equality contract in principle, but not fully in practice. The committee proposed and the parliament approved a system based on “Women’s Two Roles”: married women with academic degrees were expected to be housewives during the children’s upbringing, but should thereafter be encouraged to return to professional work.