1

Arv Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 2009

2

3

ARV

4

© 2008 by The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, Uppsala ISSN 0066-8176 All rights reserved Printed with grants from Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council), Stockholm, Sweden Articles appearing in this yearbook are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life 1998– Editorial address: Prof. Arne Bugge Amundsen Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University of Oslo Box 1010 Blindern NO–0315 Oslo, Norway phone + 4722857629 fax + 4722854828 http:// www.hf.uio.no/ikos/forskning/arv/index.html Cover: Kirsten Berrum For index of earlier volumes, see http://www.kgaa.nu/tidskrift.php Distributor Swedish Science Press Box 118, SE–751 04 Uppsala, Sweden phone: +46(0)18365566 fax: +46(0)18365277 e-mail: [email protected]

Printed in Sweden Textgruppen i Uppsala AB, Uppsala 2009

5

Contents

Articles Lizette Gradén and Hanne Pico Larsen: Nordic Spaces in the North and North America. Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein: Collectivity by Culture Squared. Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11

Janet C. Gilmore: Mount Horeb’s Oljanna Venden Cunneen. A Norwegian-American Rosemaler “on the Edge” . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

Kristinn Schram: Performing the North. Folk Culture, Exoticism and Irony among Expatriates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

49

Lizette Gradén: Transatlantic Place Making. The Use of Swedish Bridal Crown as Heritage Performance in the United States . . . . . .

73

Hanne Pico Larsen: Danish Maids and Visual Matters. Celebrating Heritage in Solvang, California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93

James P. Leary: New Legends in Nordic America. The Case of Big Erick Erickson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

Survey Article Henning Laugerud: The Collection of Norwegian Witchcraft-trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives (Norsk Folkeminnesamling) at the University of Oslo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Book Reviews Mia-Marie Hammarlin: Att leva som utbränd (Georg Drakos) . . . . . . 143 Gunilla Byrman (ed.): En värld för sig själv (Anne Bergman) . . . . . . 148 Kjell Å. Modéer (ed.): Grændse som skiller ej! (Jesper Falkheimer) . . 150

6

Lina Midholm et al. (eds.): The Ritual Year and Ritual Diversity (Lena Marander-Eklund) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Fredrik Skott: Folkets minnen (Ulrika Wolf-Knuts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Bengt af Klintberg: Folkminnen (Blanka Henriksson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Bengt af Klintberg & Ulf Palmenfelt: Vår tids folkkultur (Carola Ekrem) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Niklas Nyqvist: Från bondson till folkmusikikon (Patrik Sandgren) . . 159 Palle Ove Christiansen & Jens Henrik Koudal (eds.): Det ombejlede folk (Fredrik Skott) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 Eva M. Karlsson: Livet nära döden (Anders Gustavsson) . . . . . . . . . . 164 Laura Stark: The Magical Self (Camilla Asplund Ingemark) . . . . . . . 167 Kyrre Kverndokk: Pilgrim, turist og elev (Anders Gustavsson) . . . . . . 169 Jonathan Roper (ed.): Charms, Charmers and Charming (Arne Bugge Amundsen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Ritwa Herjulfsdotter: Jungfru Maria möter ormen (Arne Bugge Amundsen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 Marie Steinrud: Den dolda offentligheten (Arne Bugge Amundsen) . 176 Lars-Eric Jönsson, Anna Wallette & Jes Wienberg (eds.): Kanon och kulturarv (Beate Feldmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen & Ida Tolgensbakk Vedeld (eds.): Mangfoldige minner (Ronald Grambo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Bente Gullveig Alver: Mellom mennesker og magter (Gunnar W. Knutsen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Ingrid Åkesson: Med rösten som instrument (Ingrid Gjertsen) . . . . . . 184 Anna-Maria Ånäs, Janina Lassila & Ann-Helen Sund (eds.): Extremt? Etnologiska analyser av kvinnorock, extremsport och Ultimate Fighting (Kristofer Hansson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Lena Marander-Eklund, Sofie Strandén, Nils G. Holm (eds.): Folkliga föreställningar och folklig religiositet (Ane Ohrvik) . . . . 191 Billy Ehn & Orvar Löfgren: När ingenting särskilt händer. Nya kulturanalyser (Olav Christensen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 Anja Petersen: På visit i verkligheten. Fotografi och kön i slutet av 1800-talet (Anna Dahlgren) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Erik Ottoson: Söka sitt. Om möten mellan människor och föremål (Bjarne Rogan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Books Received by the Editor 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Nordic Spaces in the North and North America

7

Nordic Spaces in the North and North America Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places Lizette Gradén & Hanne Pico Larsen

This issue of Arv marks the beginning of a four-year project entitled “Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places.” The project group consists of five post-doctoral scholars from the fields of ethnology/folklore/theatre. A chief strategy is to pool our experiences and networks to actively engage them as a resource in our work. Project participants include Chad Eric Bergman (North Park University, Chicago), Lizette Gradén (Konstfack, Stockholm), Valdimar Tr. Hafstein (University of Iceland, Reykjavik), Hanne Pico Larsen (Danish Folklore Archives, Copenhagen), Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch (Åbo Akademi, Åbo). The four-year project is funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation’s Nordic Spaces program (www.sh/nordicspaces.se), with additional co-funding being provided by North Park University, the University of Iceland, and the Danish Heritage Society, USA. In this first publication we welcome the following colleagues for collaboration; Professor Janet Gilmore (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Professor Jim Leary (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and director/Ph.D. candidate Kristinn Schram (Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore/University of Edinburgh). As a result of this issue, we hope to reach out to scholars in different fields who share our interests in culture marked by migration and heritage preservation. Given the scope of this project, we want to say a few words about the concepts Nordic and Space. However, before discussing these two concepts, it is important to note that both terms are complex, with each having its own vast body of scholarship and particular institutional usage. Whereas it would be well-nigh impossible to address all aspects of this scholarly output within the confines of the present issue of Arv, we have chosen to focus on how these concepts play out in the performance of heritage in official as well as domestic spheres. Our research shows that the concept of Nordic is less relevant to the makers and preservers of heritage in spaces outside the places they refer back to (i.e. the Nordic countries). In the hands of immigrants and their descendants, institutional usage breaks down into more specific cate-

8

Lizette Gradén & Hanne Pico Larsen

gories based on identification shaped by being located “in between” countries, or at an intersection of Europe and the USA, or “here and there”, and even complicating categories by identifying with at least two places. Identity politics and heritage making are performed in families, groups and communities relating to concepts such as Scandinavian, Swedish-Finnish, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and particular provinces. So we return to the question of defining the Nordic. In this issue of Arv, concept of the Nordic begins with the definition by Kenneth R. Olwig and Michael Jones (2008), namely that: “Norden, literally ‘the North’ comprises the states of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are the three nation-states of Scandinavia (although in the English-speaking world ‘Scandinavia’ sometimes refers to all the Nordic countries). Finland, to the east, was historically once part of Sweden and includes the internally autonomous, Swedishspeaking island territory of Åland. In the North Atlantic to the west are Iceland, once belonging to Norway and later to Denmark but now an independent state, and the Faroe Islands and Greenland, which are internally autonomous territories under Denmark. Historically, other territories once within the cultural and political sphere of the Scandinavian countries included Slesvig-Holsten (Schleswig-Holstein in Germany), Orkney and Shetland, and Estonia on the Baltic” (Jones & Olwig 2008:ix). Expanding on this definition however, we also posit that “the North” reaches beyond territorial boundaries to include numerous cultural and educational networks created mainly after the First and Second World War. Among these are Nordiska Rådet (Nordic Council) 1952, Nordiska ministerrådet (Nordic Council of Ministers) established in 1971 (DS 2008:80, p. 41) and Nordisk Kulturfond (Nordic Cultural Foundation) 1966. In the field of ethnology and folklore Nordic and international cooperation goes back to 1905, when Axel Olrik and his Nordic colleagues inaugurated the Folklore Fellows Communications to further intercollegiate research exchange. Nordic Folklorists had been meeting bi- or tri-annually since 1920 (KaivolaBregenhøj 1983). In 1963, at the 16th Nordic Folklife and Folklore Congress in Røros, Norway, NEFA-Norden was established (Jordan & Ramberg 1993:208, Kaivola-Bregenhøj 1983:204). NIF (1959–1997) was founded to coordinate endeavors in the field of type-indexing the stock of Nordic folktales and legends. (www.folklorefellows.fi/netw/ffn14/nif.html). The Norden Association was established in 1919 to stimulate cultural cooperation between the Nordic countries and has since established cultural houses in Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, Åland, and Finland.1 For a preliminary working definition of Space we turn to the seminal work by Yi-Fu Tuan (1977). According to him, place and space are basic components of the lived world, something most people take for granted (Tuan 1977). As we work with different Nordic spaces, it makes sense to use the broad and somewhat generalizing definition of space in the following

Nordic Spaces in the North and North America

9

way: “In experience, the meaning of space often merges with that of place. ‘Space’ is more abstract than ‘place.’ What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value” (Tuan 1977: 6). When we start thinking about them, however, they can assume new and maybe unexpected meanings (Feld & Basso 1996; Ryden 1993; Tuan 1977). Visible cultural expressions as we observe in our work are intended “to give sensible forms to moods, feelings and rhythms of functional life” (Tuan 1977: 165–66). Questions concerning the issue of how Nordic spaces are created and expressed in the Nordic countries and North America and how such spaces give shape to cultural heritage, delimit identities, and draw boundaries via recognition of difference are important in our work. Since the time of the great emigration to North America, ritual, narratives, architecture, museums, and theatre have defined the Nordic in the United States as well as in the Nordic countries themselves. Today, such Nordic spaces are subject to contestation, not least among the descendants of Nordic emigrants and the more recent immigrants to the Nordic countries. Through fieldwork, literature and archival studies, theory criticism and theatre projects we aim to explore how Nordic spaces are created in North America and in the Nordic countries. We want to know how these places gain importance as cultural heritage sites and how they become invested with meaning. Of particular concern to this project are our analytical efforts to discover which emotional and spatial means people make use of when considering space and place making. Through our research interests, we also strive to form an understanding of the role of folklore in the light of cultural politics in the twenty-first century. For further information about individual projects, please visit www.nordicspaces.org.

Lizette Gradén, fil. dr. Researcher/Director of Graduate Studies Konstfack/University College of Arts, Crafts and Design LM Ericssons väg 14 126 27 Hägersten, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] Hanne Pico Larsen, Ph.D Adjunct Professor Department of Germanic Languages and Literature Faculty of Arts and Science Columbia University 319 Hamilton Hall (MC 2812) 1130 Amsterdam Ave. New York, NY 10027 E-mail: [email protected]

10

Lizette Gradén & Hanne Pico Larsen

References Feld, Steven & Keith H. Basso 1996: Introduction. In Senses of Place, ed. Steven Feld & Keith H. Basso, 3–11. Santa Fe, NM.: School of American Research Press. Jordan, Hans & Klas Ramberg 1993: NEFA Stockholm 1969–1992. En ämnesförening för studenter vid Institutet för folklivsforskning. In: Lusthusporten. En forskningsinstitution och dess framväxt 1918–1993. Stockholm: Nordiska museet. Jones, Michael & Kenneth R. Olwig 2008: Nordic Landscapes. Region and Belonging on the Northern Edge of Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Annikki 1983: The Profile of Folkloristics at Past Congresses. In Trends in Nordic Tradition Research. Studia Fennica 27. Helsinki: SKS. Ryden, Kent C. 1993: Mapping the Invisible Landscape. Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Tuan, Yi-Fu 1977: Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

1 See the links at www.kknord.org/?pageID=57. Other institutions strengthening ties between different Nordic countries have been established, two examples being Voxenasen in Norway (www.voxenasen.no) and Hanaholmen in Finland (www.hanaholmen.fi). Thanks to Carsten Bregenhøj for valuable references and suggestions.

Collectivity by Culture Squared

11

Collectivity by Culture Squared Cultural Heritage in Nordic Spaces Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Cultural heritage is a particular kind of practice. Pointing beyond itself to a culture it claims to represent, heritage is a culture of culture – it is culture squared. As Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has argued, heritage involves a metacultural relationship to cultural practices (1998:149–151). Heritage practices also refer themselves to the social field: they invoke a collective subject such as family, community, ethnicity, or nation. Such heritage practices are performative: they bring into being what they enact. Thus, heritage practices perform both culture and collectives – they give them substance and reality. In so doing, they also configure particular spaces as privileged zones of contact between the past and the present and as metonyms of the collective – as heritage sites, that is, be they museum collections, festivals, dances, costumes, or foods. In brief, heritage is collectivity by culture squared. Thus conceived, heritage is transformative. It transforms people’s relationship with their own practices, the ways in which they perceive themselves and the things around them – it “squares” them. The conscious inheritor understands her practice differently than another who does not pause to consider, e.g., how her needle sutures the past to the present and, eventually, to the future, nor how her craftsmanship transmits culture from one generation to the next. This transformation is indicative of how the present relates to history. Indeed, heritage says more about us than it does about past generations or what they’ve left behind. In the last few decades a vast number of social actors have seized upon the concept of cultural heritage in hundreds of thousands of scattered places. The success of cultural heritage is almost unprecedented. It can only be compared to the environmental movement – organized around another powerful concept – which, in a similar manner, has set about reshaping the world in its image, reforming discourses, mobilizing people and resources, and transforming practices. Many explanations have been put forward to account for the rising tide of heritage. Some say it bears witness to an intensi-

12

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

fied historical awareness, others associate it with the development of the tourist industry, and others yet see it as part of a nostalgic Zeitgeist, associated with the so-called cultural logic of capitalism. Other explanations include the rise of localisms and patriotisms in the face of globalization, the dispersion of peoples in a deterritorialized world, the gradual commodification of culture, and the list goes on (see e.g. Bendix 2000; Huyssen 2000; Klein 2006:65–68; Löfgren 1997; Lowenthal 1998:1–30; Nora 1989; Poulot 2006; Smith 2006:11–43; Turtinen 2006; Yúdice 2004:9–39). No doubt, there is something to each of these explanations, though no one of them will account for all the various invocations of cultural heritage around the globe. Following Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, to recycle “sites, buildings, objects, technologies, or ways of life” as heritage is to give these things a new lease on life, not as what they once were, but as “representations of themselves” (1998:151). Take the heritage sport of glíma, an example from my own country. Glíma is a traditional form of wrestling brought to Iceland from Scandinavia some time before the fourteenth century. It has been continuously practiced from that time until today, and yet in the past couple of decades glíma has been transformed through its conversion into heritage – it is a sport you practice or watch not just because it is there, like tennis or football, but because it is marked as a heritage sport, because by doing glíma you are doing your bit to safeguard the national heritage – it is a metacultural practice. The same holds true of heritage foods. Most of us eat them not because we like the way they taste – at least not where I come from. Rather, in eating them, we partake of our heritage (or that of somebody else) in an act of communion, i.e., a performance of collectivity in which the word becomes flesh (Kristinn Schram – with whom I share heritage foods – has more to say on their consumption in this volume; for a literal example, involving lutefisk and coffee in a ritual reenactment of the Last Supper in Lindsborg, Kansas, see Gradén 2003:164–171). These are so many appeals to heritage in everyday life. In each case, these appeals mark the present as fundamentally different from the past. They create a distance between activities that are marked as heritage, on the one hand, and on the other hand everything else the same people do. Everything that is not heritage is therefore modern: typing, as opposed to embroidering; tennis, as opposed to glíma; fast food, as opposed to singed sheep heads, shark, and ram’s testicles. To have a heritage is to experience a distance from the things you consider to be your heritage. The self-conscious heir is alienated from her ancestors from whom she has inherited her heritage; the heir relates very differently to houses and sports, to handicrafts and foods that former generations took for granted. Hers is a metacultural relationship. The performance of cultural heritage has clearly observable effects, tangible for example in the physical world of construction work and urban

Collectivity by Culture Squared

13

development, as well as in the cultural, economic, and social fields. One of the more important actions that heritage accomplishes is to divide space and organize populations. In other words, cultural heritage is a practical instrument for constituting social collectives – ethnic, national, or local. Heritage organizes such collectives around cultural residue: old houses, timeworn objects, tattered manuscripts, traditional craftsmanship, and so on (Hafstein 2007). Although Nordic countries were never quite as homogeneous as our official histories used to claim, the populations and culture have never before been as diverse as they are now. In one or two generations, we have gone from the singular to the plural. It is no coincidence that it is under these circumstances of intensified migration and visible difference that cultural heritage is all at once everywhere and we have grown concerned about its protection (see Klein 1997; Ashworth, Graham & Tunbridge 2007; Littler & Naidoo 2005, especially Hall 2005 and Khan 2005). Cultural heritage creates a discursive space in which social changes may be discussed and it provides a particular language for discussing them (cf. Klein 2006:68–74; Rastrick 2007). It enables us to represent our own understandings of our histories and identities. Yet at the same time, the terminology of heritage is a mechanism of power: it curtails expression by defining the sort of things that it makes sense to say (Graham, Ashworth & Tunbridge 2000; Hafstein 2006). Historically, we know, the monuments, landscapes, and folklore, which later came to be organized under the common rubric of heritage, all played a significant role in the creation of modern nation-states (Anderson 1991; Giolláin 2000:63–93). Indeed, heritage continues to be an important instrument for representing the nation, focusing the political imagination on particular representations of the national community. Often, this is achieved by glossing over difference, demanding allegiance to a uniform national culture and history through selective oblivion, at the expense of alternative loyalties (Anttonen 2005:79–94, 155–177). Heritage is in many ways well suited to this task, for, as Regina Bendix has remarked, what distinguishes heritage from other ways of aligning the past with the present “is its capacity to hide the complexities of history and politics” (2000, 38). It has become increasingly difficult, however, to imagine such national monocultures, what with the multiplication of diasporic and cross-border communities, and with the resurgence of indigenous groups and regional identities. Under these circumstances, many governments have come to acknowledge and even promote “communities” as cultural and administrative units (Rose 1999:167–196; Bennett 2000:1420–1423; Hafstein 2004:132– 180). As nations of immigrants (with relatively small and marginalized indigenous populations), the United States and Canada represent special cases, with important differences in the ways in which social collectives are

14

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

constituted. Strong ethnic identities have long coexisted in rather well integrated societies on the North American continent, at the local as well as the national level. Nevertheless, the ways in which this multiplicity is conceptualized have changed in the last couple of decades. So has the political vision for its future: the metaphor of the American melting pot has gradually given way to that of the multicultural mosaic (Gans 1979; cf. Peach 2005). Actually, the mosaic metaphor invokes a slightly misleading image of a grid of tiles neatly separated by grout. In fact, the idea of communities as it is performed in North America is far messier, with overlapping and superimposed identifications, allegiances, and solidarities. These are not mutually exclusive, and they include invocations of the local, the indigenous, the diasporic, the ethnic, the regional, national, transnational, and universal. In the context of communities, heritage is a strong but flexible language for staking claims to culture and claims based on culture. In each case, representations of cultural heritage held in common make a claim on the loyalties of individuals and families. Such representations trace shared trajectories (“routes”/“roots”) through time and space. But the time and space of heritage do not precede it. In fact, they emerge from its enunciations – from heritage practices. As we learn from Michel de Certeau, urban spaces emerge from the practices of their inhabitants – the city only takes on spatial extension when people walk in it; its spaces are born from their footsteps, from their tactile and sensory engagement with the facades and sidewalks, streets and parks, sights and sounds and smells (2002:91–130). Similarly, the trajectories traced by invocations of a common heritage map out connections and they configure spaces. Such spaces, in turn, materialize in heritage performances – in objects, collections, architecture, costumes, and in the bodies of performers. To be sure, architects and urban planners have structured the city as place, or as a collection of places, but ultimately it is the practice of social actors moving through the urban landscape, turning it to their own ends, that performs the city, gives it meaningful materiality. The same may be said of Nordic places. Particular Nordic structures have been defined by state apparatuses and official institutions, by administrators and cultural engineers, whose task it is to reproduce national culture and promote the identification of citizens with that culture. But that is only half the story. The ways in which social actors practice the structures and the institutions is what gives Nordicness extension in space. And that practice extends across national borders – across, even, the Atlantic Ocean (cf. Klein 2001; Gradén 2003; Österlund-Pötzch 2003; Larsen 2006). The articles in this volume analyze Nordic space making on the North American continent and elsewhere, outside what is usually designated as the Nordic region. Some of the sites that the authors examine include festivals,

Collectivity by Culture Squared

15

customs, costumes, dances, foodways, jokes, pageants, collections, and exhibits. At each site, we witness practices that perform Nordicness, practices which constitute both space and collectivity by invoking heritage relationships. Generally, these practices take the body as its central object – the body is a site of performance, it traces the trajectories out of which Nordic spaces emerge, and these spaces in turn are embodied by those who perform them (Kapchan 2003). As Hanne Pico Larsen notes in this volume, “kinship and cultural heritage together make up a system of belonging.” Indeed, a central problematic in heritage is the relation between these two terms – between social practices, on the one hand, and kinship or heredity, on the other (Bendix 2000). Heritage is very much concerned with the ways in which culture is embodied and the ways in which bodies are cultured. This is particularly true of immigrant heritage, which is predicated on displacement, i.e. the disembedding of ethnic spaces through a transatlantic trajectory and the disembodying of ethnicity through hybrid reproductions of genes and customs. One can hardly speak of embodiment without speaking of gender, and indeed heritage practices are highly gendered. This is apparent in several articles in this volume, in particular those of Lizette Gradén, Janet Gilmore, and Hanne Pico Larsen. While men in many cases play a leading role in safeguarding heritage, protecting its authenticity and integrity, embodying heritage is the work of women. Thus, for example, Gradén traces in her article on the Värmland gift the biography of a bridal crown sent from Värmland to Swedish America where it was used at weddings all over the continent. In its travels, the bridal crown maps out connections through space and illustrates the transformative capacity of objects as agents of heritage; it shows the ways in which an object can help to constitute collectivities and create spaces. A powerful symbol of virginity, the silver crown is always worn by a bride, but as Gradén demonstrates, the bride in many cases wears it not on her own initiative but at the bidding of her father, for whom Swedish identity may play a more central role than it does for his daughter. The young woman thus embodies the heritage; wearing the crown on her head, her body performs blood relations, familial bonds, ethnicity, and transatlantic space. She makes these real by giving substance to them. This performance, however, though its locus is the body of a woman, takes place at the behest of the father; it performs a patriarchal relationship. As object, the crown enables the word of the Father to become flesh – incarnate in the chaste Swedish-American daughter. The Danish Days Maid in Solvang, discussed by Hanne Pico Larsen, offers a parallel yet contrasting case. Appointed each year during the Danish Days festival in Solvang, California, the Danish Days Maid puts a face – and body – on the social collective. Larsen analyzes the maid’s body as a site of performance, her iconicity and the elusive conditions on which her selection

16

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

is premised. The Danish Days Maid, she argues, represents the community; the maid is a human icon. In order to perform community and DanishAmerican space in the symbolically overdetermined landscape of Solvang, the maid must satisfy three criteria: she must have Danish blood, she must have a Solvang family history, and she must be a maid, i.e. of the right and ripe young age. Like the women who wore the bridal crown, Larsen shows that Danish Days Maids are selected based on their families and, moreover, they take on this role for the sake of their families. In addition, Larsen notes, “physical attractiveness [is] more important than anyone will admit.” To sum up, the body of the maid must give substance to hereditary and social networks, and it must be the fertile body of a young woman (a maid). The Danish Days Maid thus points to a crucial element in how heritage is embodied through its performance – an aspect also discernable in the story of the bridal crown. Heritage practices inscribe a coherent transatlantic space on the body that traces a trajectory through that space, a body that incarnates complex local and transnational networks of ethnicity and community. But – and this is critical – it is not just any body; it is the fertile body of a chaste bride entering into marriage, in the case of the bridal crown, or that of a young maid entering childbearing age, in the case of the Danish Days Maid. At stake here is the continuity of the community, its reproduction – social, cultural, and sexual. The maid and the bride as heritage incarnate give symbolic expression to the reproduction of ethnic identity. From their wombs, Danish-America and Swedish-America will be born again. In spite of all the rhetoric of safeguarding, conservation, and continuity, heritage involves change. It is a change in relations (Hafstein 2006). Heritage practices are a new way of relating to objects in one’s surroundings and to one’s own body. Heritage is innovative, in so far as it represents a new way of constituting social collectivity around representations of culture and pedigree. The extent to which culture and pedigree – social and hereditary networks – may conflict is apparent in how Solvang locals critique the selection of the Danish Days Maid by citing the case of Kristine. Kristine was adopted from the Philippines and raised in a local Danish-American family of some prominence in Solvang, but she never took on the role of the maid. The local critics believe that she was excluded from consideration because of the color of her skin. Kristine herself offers a different explanation, but she is nonetheless quick to agree about the importance of looks in all things heritage – including putting a Danish face on her parents’ Danish chocolate store. In Solvang, heritage is externalized in visual markers like windmills, flags, pastries, and girls in costumes – Danishness is on display (see also Larsen 2006). As Larsen makes clear, externalizing culture in human bodies invites racist distinctions. In Nordic spaces in North America, it is difficult to get away from the whiteness of heritage. The narratives of the Swedish bridal crown and the Danish Days Maid

Collectivity by Culture Squared

17

thus help to shed light on one another, but they also complement each other through contrast. The bride who wears the Värmland crown and the girl who dons the maid’s costume embody different relationships. The body of the bride traces a transatlantic trajectory, articulating in her wedding ceremony (and, by extension, her kin and its continuity) her family’s history in the old world and its emigration to the new world. The body of the maid is primarily a site for signifying local community, albeit a community that figures itself as a superlative Nordic space and celebrates its ties to the old world in its annual festival. True, the maid embodies Danish Days, but Danish Days are a distinctively new world festival (and pageants are a good, old American invention; cf. Stoeltje 1996). Danish Days perform the local Danish-American community for locals and for tourists. In brief, from the bridal crown to the Danish Days maid, we witness a shift of emphasis from the former to the latter term in the hyphenated “Nordic-American”. Solvang’s festival thus exhibits more fully than the case of the bridal crown the characteristics of what Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch terms “American-Plus attitude” (2003). Her coinage points to the differences in the ways in which social collectives are constituted in immigrant nations like the USA, as compared to nation states like the Nordic countries. As noted above, identification tends to be rather more multiple, intersecting, and loosely organized in the former than the latter. Hybridity, therefore, tends to be more pronounced in American heritage practices. By the same token, the spaces that these practices constitute also tend to be less clearly distinguished from one another. In this volume, Österlund-Pötzsch explores the varieties of Nordic space-making in North America. From the imagined and the virtual to the domestic and the culinary, these Nordic spaces are made in heritage practices that trace transatlantic trajectories and perform social networks linking communities on two continents. Her study focuses on the descendants of Finland-Swedish immigrants in the United States. This group provides particularly fertile ground for studying the plasticity of heritage practices and ethnic identification for, as Österlund-Pötzsch demonstrates, Finland-Swedish identity in North-America is trapped in “a position of permanent in-betweenness”. Neither exactly Swedish nor Finnish, it is, in her words, a “stellar example of the elusiveness and diversity of ethnicity.” One thing that appears clear from her account is that while individuals easily identify with more than one ethnic identity – and can thus for example be both Swedish-American and Finnish-American (as well as, say, Anglo-American and Native American) – the “American-Plus” attitude does not easily accommodate double-hyphenation: “Finland-Swedish-American”, or “AmericanPlus-Plus”. Janet Gilmore’s article on Norwegian-American folk artist Oljanna Venden Cunneen and her practice of “rosemaling” illustrates the way in

18

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

which particular objects and practices gain iconic status within a community as a means of externalizing identity and literally tracing the networks relating immigrants and their offspring to the old country. Rosemaling, as a signifier, accumulated signifieds within the Norwegian-American community and became an emblem in part, Gilmore argues, because it lends itself so well to commercialization; it enables the making of Norwegian-American spaces not only through artistry but also, and just as importantly, by means of consumption – visible in decorative wall plaques, business signs, room friezes, dinner placemats, cookbook covers, gift cards, and clothing, to mention just a few examples of rosemaling merchandise. Oljanna Cunneen was a “natural” working within a tradition in which, as Gilmore describes, women “practiced careful, flat, two-dimensional designs, using patterns, narrow repertoires of motifs and colors” and “collectively self-taught” painting technique. Men, on the other hand, came to claim authority over rosemaling tradition through official institutions of art and heritage, wielding an “old country stamp of authenticity”, and eventually divided American rosemalers into specialists and amateurs – or “Gold Medalist virtuosos” and so-called “local rosemalers” – to a great extent along gender lines. This gendering of heritage work rhymes well with the division of labor apparent in Gradén’s brides and Larsen’s maids. Once again women seem to be the ones reproducing heritage – through embodiment or other means of externalization – while men guarantee the authenticity and integrity of that heritage. The distinction introduced into the ranks of rosemalers echoes the debates in Sweden about the Värmland collection. The collection was assembled by the people of Värmland as a gift to the Swedish-American community in Minnesota and, by extension, in North America. Pulled together in a collective effort by laymen, it flew in the face of professional conventions for representative collections. As Gradén makes plain, curators and scholars objected to the collection because it was “un-Swedish”, “motley” and “unaesthetic”, and they put great pressure on the Värmland governor and collection committee to “weed” the collection to bring it into line with professional standards. These distinctions bring into relief the politics of representation and beg the question of who speaks for heritage. They bring us back, in fact, to communities – the social collectivities invoked by heritage practices. Communities are not monoliths. Whether they are local or diasporic, indigenous or national, communities are tentative attempts to organize social networks and draw boundaries around them (Noyes 2003). As indicated above, heritage practices are metacultural; they are cultural representations of cultural representations. It is at the meta-level of representation that these conflicts take place, where individuals and factions jockey for power over who can speak for the community and who decides how it

Collectivity by Culture Squared

19

is to represent itself. The stakes are not inconsequential; they involve how the collective subject is invoked and how its boundaries are drawn, for as noted heritage practices are performative, they give substance and reality to the collectives and cultures they represent (Noyes 2006). Authority over heritage and political power within the community are thus to some extent mutually translatable. For that very reason, however, heritage practices are also ideal sites for challenging authority by contesting collective legacies, tracing different trajectories that map out alternative networks and configure alternative spaces. Thus, cultural heritage is not just a site for establishing and renewing hegemony by winning consent, structuring allegiance, and orchestrating social networks around official metacultural representations. Cultural heritage is also a site of contestation, where individuals and groups can undermine hegemony, display dissent, question structures of allegiance, and blur social boundaries. This is accomplished either by offering alternative representations or else by suggesting alternative metacultural relations to officially sanctioned representations. The former is a form of protest, the latter subversion. Because heritage is a metacultural relationship – a reflexive relation to one’s own practices – it sets the stage for its own subversion. The heritage relation is a dialogic process, one that creates a sense of distance by imagining a vista outside one’s own self from where one may observe one’s own customs and expressions with, as it were, an outsider’s gaze – according to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, the hallmark of heritage is “precisely the foreignness of the ‘tradition’ to its context of presentation” (1998:157). The distance thus introduced between the subject and itself enables the recognition of the collective subject of cultural heritage. At the same time, however, this distance allows for detachment; it opens up the prospect that we might imagine ourselves differently, that we might disrupt the official representation of who and what we are and what it is we do. As a reflexive, metacultural relationship to one’s own practices, heritage sets the stage for the ironic subject – the self-conscious actor whose ironic stance measures her distance from the culture and collective identity that official representations of heritage attribute to her. Irony in self-representation is the topic of Kristinn Schram’s article in this volume. Analyzing the ways in which Icelandic expatriates actively perform themselves as eccentric and exotic northern nature-folk, Schram argues that the performances re-appropriate “orientalizing” stereotypes through playful exaggeration, embracing and subverting stereotypes in “gleeful resignation”. In other words, they are founded on a deliberate misrecognition of the self, as seen through the eyes of an outsider – a carefully measured ironic distantiation, which plays on the metacultural relationship of heritage to the practices thus designated but also disrupts it with hyperbole and humor. Ul-

20

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

timately, Schram claims that these performances bring into being “new ironic post-national identities”. James P. Leary’s article on “New Legends in Nordic America: The Case of Big Erick Ericksson” closes this special issue of Arv. Unlike the papers that precede it, Leary’s analysis of the cycle of Michigan legends about Big Erick does not expressly treat cultural heritage – the legends do not display the self-reflexive, metacultural relationship that defines it (though the author notes the emergence of such a relationship in the promotion of supersized Big Erick burgers). Through its contrasting approach, however, this article helps to complete the picture drawn by the articles appearing in this volume of the ways in which Nordic spaces are created in North America. A Swedish immigrant who ran large lumber camps employing mostly Finnish newcomers, Erick Ericksson is the protagonist of some fifty different stories which, Leary argues, “offer a striking instance of new legends in Nordic America”. Indeed, the article makes a convincing case that narratives about Big Erick can be understood only “through the consideration of several legend traditions transformed”. Thus the legends themselves – their texts and subtexts, motifs, plots, and characters – actually trace transatlantic trajectories, not only that of Erick Ericksson, the man of whom the legends speak, but more importantly of legend cycles and narrative patterns. In these trajectories, we glimpse the early creation of Nordic spaces in the New World, spaces that would later be criss-crossed and endlessly recreated by new stories, objects, bodies, and practices whose trajectories map social networks and give substance to Nordic-American communities. Another dimension of heritage practices that the articles in this volume collectively open up to scrutiny is their sensory spectrum. Although the discourse of heritage reflects the ocularcentrism of Western culture in general (Brett 1996), the heritage practices described in this volume are by no means limited to the visual. In particular, the articles of Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch and Kristinn Schram appeal to the senses in their analysis of ethnic identities and the ways in which these identities are reproduced, rehearsed, and exploited in everyday life. The ubiquity of foodways – Danish pastries, lutefisk, lefse, rotten shark – in the making of Nordic spaces in North America only begins to suggest the crucial importance of gustatory, olfactory, tactile, and aural experience in mapping trajectories and constituting collectivities. Sensory aspects of metacultural relations warrant further research, and it is exciting to see here the beginnings of a dialog between recent scholarship on the senses and scholarship on cultural heritage. Besides ocularcentrism, the articles collected here also challenge an overly intellectualized understanding of cultural heritage. Practices that create ethnic spaces, express solidarities, and invoke collective subjects involve emotions, passions, and instincts no less than they involve the intellect. Hanne Pico Larsen’s concept of “heritage envy”, introduced in this volume,

Collectivity by Culture Squared

21

makes this clear. Referring to intra-community conflicts over the selection of the Danish Days maid, as well as to inter-community squabbles between different Danish towns in the US, Larsen explains that “heritage envy is an irrational and emotional construct, which often leads to emotive, quasirational questions”; questions such as who is more Danish (or Swedish or Finnish) than another. While it is not hard to imagine such questions arising within the Nordic countries themselves, it would seem nonetheless that immigrant communities – such as the “American-Plus” descendants of Nordic emigrants to North America – are particularly prone to heritage envy. One might even ask whether heritage envy is a structural condition of “migration heritage”, yet another analytical concept introduced in this volume, in Lizette Gradén’s article on the Värmland gift. Because heritage performs collectivity and because migration invites comparison, migration heritage would seem predisposed to heritage envy. In addition to “migration heritage”, “heritage envy”, and “AmericanPlus”, some conceptual conjunctures explored in this volume include embodiment and ethnicity (especially Gradén and Larsen); spatialization and identity (Österlund-Pötzsch); iconicity and commercialization (Gilmore and Larsen); irony and self-representation (Schram); and narrative trajectories in local legends (Leary). Each conjuncture imagines new perspectives on Nordic spaces and cultural heritage and opens up avenues for empirical investigation. Interpretation in the fields of folklore and ethnology tends more toward complexity than simplicity, and relies on richness of detail over economy of explanation. This is one of the great strengths of our fields and our particular contribution to the analysis of cultural practices and social life. Firmly grounded in extensive fieldwork and in-depth archival research, the following pages exemplify this strength. Rich in empirical detail, their thick descriptions breathe life into the theoretical reflection on cultural heritage and Nordic spaces that is sustained throughout the volume and will continue in the collective project that this special issue heralds.

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, Ph.D. Lektor/Assistant Professor Department of Folkloristics and Ethnology Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Gimli University of Iceland IS-101 Reykjavik, Iceland e-mail: [email protected]

22

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

References Anderson, Benedict 1991: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. London. Anttonen, Pertti J. 2005: Tradition through Modernity. Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folklore Scholarship. Studia Fennica Folkloristica 15. Helsinki. Ashworth, Gregory J., Brian Graham, and John E. Tunbridge 2007: Pluralising Pasts. Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies. London. Bendix, Regina 2000: Heredity, Hybridity and Heritage from one Fin-de-Siècle to the Next. In Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity. Botkyrka. Bennett, Tony 2000: Acting on the Social. Art, Culture and Government. American Behavioral Scientist 43. Brett, David 1996: The Construction of Heritage. Cork. de Certeau, Michel 2002: The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley. Gans, Herbert J. 1979: Symbolic Ethnicity. Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies 2. Gradén, Lizette 2003: On Parade. Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas. (Studia Multiethnica Upsaliensia 15.) Uppsala. Graham, Brian, Gregory J. Ashworth, and John E. Tunbridge 2000: A Geography of Heritage. Power, Culture and Economy. London. Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. 2004: The Making of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Tradition and Authenticity, Community and Humanity. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. 2006: Menningararfur: Sagan í neytendaumbúðum. In Frá endurskoðun til upplausnar. Tvær prófritgerðir, einn formáli, þrjú viðtöl, sjö fræðigreinar, fimm ljósmyndir, einn eftirmáli og nokkrar minningargreinar af vettvangi hugvísinda. Reykjavík. Hafstein, Valdimar Tr. 2007: Claiming Culture: Intangible Heritage Inc., Folklore©, Traditional Knowledge™. In Prädikat “Heritage”. Wertschöpfungen aus Kulturellen Ressourcen. Münster. Hall, Stuart 2005: Whose Heritage? Un-Settling “the Heritage”, Re-Imagining the Post- Nation. The Politics of Heritage. The Legacies of “Race”. London. Huyssen, Andreas 2000: Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia. Public Culture 12. Kapchan, Deborah A. 2003: Performance. In Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture. Urbana. Khan, Naseem 2005: Taking Root in Britain. The Process of Shaping Heritage. In The Politics of Heritage. The Legacies of “Race”. London. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara 1998: Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley. Klein, Barbro 1997: Tillhörighet och utanförskap. Om kulturarvspolitik och folklivsforskning i en multietnisk värld. Rig 1–2. Klein, Barbro 2001: More Swedish than in Sweden, More Iranian than in Iran. Folk Culture and World Migrations. In Upholders of Culture. Past and Present. Stockholm. Klein, Barbro 2006: Cultural Heritage, the Swedish Folklife Sphere, and the Others. Cultural Analysis 5. Larsen, Hanne Pico 2006: Solvang, the “Danish Capital of America.” A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, Or Something Else? Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Littler, Jo, and Roshi Naidoo 2005: The Politics of Heritage. The Legacies of “Race”. London.

Collectivity by Culture Squared

23

Löfgren, Orvar 1997: Kulturarvets renässans. Landskapsupplevelse mellan marknad och politik. Rig 1–2. Lowenthal, David 1998: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge. Nora, Pierre 1989: Between Memory and History. Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations 26. Noyes, Dorothy 2003: Group. In Eight Words for the Study of Expressive Culture. Urbana. Noyes, Dorothy 2006: The Judgement of Solomon. Cultural Analysis 5. Ó Giolláin, Diarmuid 2000: Locating Irish Folklore. Tradition, Modernity, Identity. Cork. Österlund-Pötzch, Susanne 2003: American plus. Etnisk identitet hos finlandssvenska ättlingar i Nordamerika. Helsingfors. Peach, Ceri 2005: The Mosaic Versus the Melting Pot. Canada and the USA. Scottish Geographical Journal 121. Poulot, Dominique 2006: Une histoire du patrimoine en Occident. Paris. Rastrick, Ólafur 2007: Menningararfur í fjölmenningarsamfélagi. Einsleitni, fjölhyggja, tvíbendni. Þriðja íslenska söguþingið 18.–21. maí 2006: Ráðstefnurit. Reykjavík. Rose, Nikolas 1999: Powers of Freedom. Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge. Smith, Laurajane 2006: The Uses of Heritage. London. Stoeltje, Beverly 1996: The Snake Charmer Queen. Ritual, Competition, and Signification in American Festival. In Beauty Queens on the Global Stage. Gender, Contests, and Power. London. Turtinen, Jan 2006: Världsarvets villkor. Intressen, förhandlingar och bruk i internationell politik. (Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Ethnology 1.) Stockholm. Yúdice, George 2004: The Expediency of Culture. Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham.

24

Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

25

Mount Horeb’s Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler “on the Edge” Janet C. Gilmore

South central Wisconsin features the American Midwest’s classic sense of wide open spaces and vistas, with its gently rolling topography and cleared rural farming landscapes expanding predictably into the distance. (e.g. C.W. Martin 2007: 82, 84) Swiss immigrant Karl Bruni’s first experience with the terrain in 1902 led him to walk miles beyond the “great big hill” that locals had specified as an important landmark on the way to his destination. As “he’d just come from Switzerland and that was a hump in the road” to him, he had missed his turn. (Bruni Interview 1985) Today municipal water towers, labelled with the respective place name, make the “stranger’s path” easier, as motorists speed on four-lane highways through the vast open plains or sprawling, low, and flat urban conglomerations like Minnesota’s Twin Cities.1 (Jackson 1957) Communities have used these vertical landmarks for decades to proclaim their civic incorporation and match a name to space, identifying a place.2 As Boris Pushkarev suggests, as “large, simple industrial shapes,” water towers “give us articulation along the axis of travel. They are a source of surprise to the stranger and a source of anticipation and identification to one familiar with the road.” (1960–61: 14–15) Today, Karl Bruni would not have any trouble locating Mount Horeb, a village at the western edge of Dane County, Wisconsin. From miles away, the traveler can see the name of the place designated on its water towers. For decades, Mount Horeb had but one water tower, situated downtown in 1908, then replaced by a modern globe in 1967. (Mt. Horeb: 53) With the new tower, local activists unsuccessfully proposed adding a symbol of community identity to the village name. (Lee Vogel Interview 1994) But in 2007, when a second tower arose, “Mount Horeb” was prominently underscored with decorative rosemaling. Positioned more visibly than the first tower, the new tower rises at Mount Horeb’s eastern border alongside the major northeast–southwest freeway,

26

Janet C. Gilmore

alerting travelers that they are entering a territory with a heightened sense of Norwegian–American heritage, and denser Norwegian–American settlement. It reveals emphatically that specific design motifs have been adopted as badges of Norwegian–American identity in the greater Upper Midwestern region. More esoterically, and perhaps more significantly, the water tower’s decorative pattern and underlying intent are tributes to the late local rosemaler Oljanna Venden Cunneen, whose “edgy” artistic flair, productivity, and Norwegian–American immigrant heritage influenced Mount Horeb’s present public face. (Sievers Communication 2007) *** This article focuses on Oljanna Venden Cunneen as an inspirational Norwegian–American artistic force in the western Dane County area. Her extraordinarily diverse and talented performances of interwoven traditional artistic skills tapped mythic immigrant realms of dazzling, celebratory versions of 18th and 19th century Old Country folk artistic forms and conveyed personal history and expressions into public and shared community mythologies of immigrant pasts and origins. Cunneen’s creative realizations captivated a broad local rural and village audience at a time when residents were eagerly re-discovering their varied immigrant pasts—and the Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce was seeking a distinctive identity for the area as it moved from a farm economy to a bedroom community for nearby Madison, Wisconsin’s sprawling capital city.3 With a persuasive other-directed personality4 perpetually “on edge”—witty, outspoken, tireless, and wellpracticed at sizing up an audience—Cunneen provides an excellent example of how a Norwegian–American ethnic folk artist could wield influence in a community as it moved into yet another era.5 Although she was a highly competent practitioner of many Norwegian– American artistic expressions, Cunneen’s rosemaling has had a persuasively enduring public effect in the Mount Horeb area, and it thus demands central consideration.6 A form of decorative folk painting that thrived in Norway during the 18th and 19th centuries, rosemaling became preeminent in expressing Norwegian–American identity in the United States during the last half of the 20th century. Its use in America rivals that of the Norwegian flag, whose red and deep blue often dominate Telemark style C-scrolls and tendrils. Marion Nelson, the late former director of the Vesterheim Norwegian–American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, confirms that, “Other Norwegian–American folk arts—such as wood-carving, metal work, weaving, and embroidery—have not enjoyed the same degree of recent development of public interest as has rosemaling.” (1980:131) Its two-dimensional flourishes have lent themselves well to application on numerous surfaces, from small farm and household implements, to decorative wall plaques, to farm, home, and business signs, to room friezes and building exteriors, to print

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

27

media in Ideals magazines, on lutefisk dinner placemats, community cookbook covers, gift cards, and clothing.7 In Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, an area of Norwegian immigrant settlement, public community display incorporating rosemaling took off in the 1960s, chiefly on the façade of the Open House Imports gift shop, first painted by Oljanna Venden Cunneen. By the 1990s, rosemaling decorated the interiors of new buildings that housed the chief grocery store, Kalscheur’s (now Miller’s), and the local branch of the State Bank of Cross Plains. By the first decade of the 21st century, in addition to the rosemaling that decorated the new water tower, banners with rosemaling lined the village’s Main Street, and a rosemaled “Velkommen” frieze stretched above the entrance to the Chamber of Commerce’s new Welcome Center. The contemplation of Cunneen’s rosemaling—or more particularly, her enthusiastic embrace of it as a source of emblematic designs—suggests how this artist may have influenced, in part, by fitting in between classifications. Neither a “local” nor a “virtuoso” rosemaler, the two classic categories of Norwegian–American rosemalers that Marion Nelson and Phil Martin have identified (Nelson 1980: 129–131; Martin 1989), Cunneen was instead, as we shall see, a “rosemaler on the edge,” transcending both of the camps discerned by scholars and achieving much of the spirit and excitement of the tradition during its heyday in Norway. I can think of no better way to demonstrate Cunneen’s overall effect than to present Mount Horeb area resident Marlyn Grinde’s testimony about the first time she witnessed Cunneen wearing a Norwegian bunad of her own manufacture, embroidered prominently in common rosemaling motifs: It was in the middle ‘70s, where I went into the restaurant and I saw her … having lunch, and she had this beautiful Norwegian bunad on …. at that time I didn’t even know they were called bunads…. but I knew it was a Norwegian dress. It was just, the colors in it, and the work, … my eyes just became so glued on it that I could hardly eat what I was eating. I thought, ‘Oh, I’d give anything if I could have a … Norwegian dress like that made,’ because I thought it was so beautiful. (Interview 1994)

When Grinde finally summoned the courage to ask Cunneen to help Sons of Norway women fashion individual bunads, Cunneen bargained: In exchange for the contribution of her expertise, the group would donate proceeds from a food sale to her chief community project, “Song of Norway,” an outdoor play based on the life of composer Edvard Grieg.

A Western Dane County Rural Immigrant Pedigree Folk artist Oljanna Venden Cunneen (1923–1988) was of Norwegian descent and lived in the Blue Mounds-Mount Horeb area of western Dane County, Wisconsin, one of the county’s chief Norwegian immigrant settlements since the mid-1800s. The south central Wisconsin county remains

28

Janet C. Gilmore

home to the largest concentration of Norwegian–Americans in this Upper Midwestern state, where ethnic identification is commonplace. The 1990 Census counted over 35,000 residents of Norwegian descent, about 14% of Wisconsin’s Norwegian–American population, and 10% of the county’s population (Zaniewski & Rosen 1998: 134, 208–214). With Madison at its center, the county has attracted Norwegian immigrants to its rural areas, small villages, and university town since the first significant migrations in the mid-1800s, mingling populations from different Norwegian regions and periods of emigration. Through Lutheran churches, fraternal organizations like Sons of Norway lodges, and shared interests in Norwegian heritage, pageantry, and folk arts, the county’s Norwegian–Americans have continued to associate across the county and beyond its borders. Equally, in a familiar Upper Midwestern pattern, Norwegian–American ethnics have also mingled with residents of other ethnic backgrounds and immigrant histories—in western Dane County, Cunneen’s home turf, Norwegians with Germans, Swiss, and Irish in particular.8 Oljanna Venden Cunneen’s personal history fits right into Dane County’s immigrant pattern. Born in Vermont Township, north of Mount Horeb, in 1923, Cunneen came from an “edgy” “mixed marriage.”9 While both Norwegian in heritage, her parents uneasily combined different generations of immigrants, different periods of immigration, distinctive regional backgrounds in Norway, varying religious persuasions, and perhaps most importantly, opposing personalities. Oljanna’s “dreamy farmer” father, Henry Venden, was a second-generation Norwegian, descended from Valdres immigrants from Norway’s southeastern inland valleys. Inclined to shape wood into musical instruments, he made a modest living from farming in Vermont Township, close to the Vermont Lutheran Church, where the extended Venden family still holds a family reunion each summer. In contrast, Oljanna’s mother, “Gerharda” (Forshaug) as the family calls her today, was a first generation immigrant from Kjeldebotn on Ofotfjorden, west of Narvik, in Nordland, northern Norway, who had followed a brother to Dane County in c.1908 and worked as a domestic in exchange for her passage to America. Tireless, resourceful, and stern, she followed Laestadian Lutheranism in distinction to her husband’s family’s community-based Lutheran faith and church membership.10 In a mix of Norwegian and English, she told cautionary nisse stories to her children, and counseled them to keep busy in productive handwork. As is common among Wisconsin’s ethnics, Oljanna was quick to establish her ethnic pedigree as completely Norwegian, especially when she “performed her heritage” in public settings as a becostumed Little Norway tour guide or Norwegian–American joke teller. Beyond its rhetorical strength, her history brought together many contrasts that gave her a complex understanding of Old Country heritage and connected her to a wide community of

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

29

Norwegian–Americans. Her pedigree afforded her a broad community appeal—as well as the license to claim it—that she cultivated especially in her adult life (from roughly the 1950s until her untimely death at 64 in February 1988). Besides the claim of thorough Norwegian-ness, however, she could also show she had bridged an ethnic divide of greater contrast, when she married Vernon “Jiggs” Cunneen, of Irish background, in the late 1940s. Fellow community activist Lee Vogel reasoned that Cunneen’s community knowledge, sensibility, and authority came about: … because her family is all over. It included Black Earth, Vermont Township, … the whole hillside of Blue Mounds, and Jiggs’ family fills in with the rest of the Cunneens, and Ray, Jiggs’ brother, was in the post office. So everything fit together you know. Between us we had our thumb on the main artery of the town. We knew what could be done, who had what to do it with, who we could talk to to convince to donate or whatever. (Interview, 1994; cf. Dégh 1966: 554)

Besides integrating community heritage, and positioning herself between edges, Cunneen also pulled from her parents’ combined repertoires of verbal and handwork traditions to become extraordinary skilled in a spectrum of artistic expressions, from Norwegian–American joke and story telling to sewing, embroidering, knitting, painting, rosemaling, and the creation of miniature troll figures that integrated all of these skills, caricatured local community members, and emphasized the area’s construction of its continuing Norwegian–American ethnic identity.11 Notably, into her adulthood, she continued an impressive range of hand skills whose utility in everyday life was diminishing, yet this perseverance, capability, and her impressive productivity exuded confidence, mastery, and relevance. Lee Vogel characterized her as a “can do” type person, “You could … ask her to do something, and she would do it. You didn’t have to draw a plan for her.” (Interview 1994) Besides her talent in a range of mostly traditional arts, she was also a master at reinventing old immigrant expressions, skills, habits, and patterns into popular contemporary guises, including an Ole and Lena, from birth to death, joke cycle that she presented to tour groups during her later years, and a wardrobe of Norwegian bunads adapted for community events and her work as a tour guide at the Little Norway outdoor Norwegian–American immigrant pioneer museum located between Blue Mounds and Mount Horeb. (see Leary 2001: 98–109 & 239–241; Teske 1987: 29, 56, & 93). By linking verbal and material arts, and localizing them to community needs and times, she again bridged categories, appealed to her audience, and created a niche for herself. (cf. Klymasz 1973: 134, 138) Cunneen’s humorous and artistic bent, matched with industry and resourcefulness, again joined apparent oppositions. It not only unified parental personality contrasts, but lent her an edgy and infectious persuasiveness. Since she was quick to read her audience effectively, and work it, she knew how to serve friends, neighbors, and community members, while snaring them in enterprise. As “Song of Norway” associate Jack Holzhueter has sug-

30

Janet C. Gilmore

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, displaying a pair of her troll sculptures, wears her celebratory everyday garb that she sewed and embroidered: a matching dark blue wool set of vest and trousers, with a white cotton blouse. Adorned with Norwegian pewter clasps, the vest shows the wool crewel rosesaum in her characteristic Telemark–Hallingdal mix of floral scrollwork in muted reds, yellows, and blues. Photo by John Newhouse, Blue Mounds, 1987, courtesy of Fran Newhouse.

gested, Cunneen engaged in “self-promotion to her own benefit,” which in turn “benefited the community.” (Interview 1994) She became one of Mount Horeb’s community activists during the last two decades of her life, cultivated a reputation as its “Norwegian ambassador,” and applied her engaging artistic talents to numerous community causes with colleagues like the Vogels. Of all her artistic expressions, Cunneen’s rosemaling has had a persuasively enduring public effect in the Mount Horeb area. In rosemaling, Oljanna found key motifs and design flourishes that she used convincingly in dozens of ways, and in varied media, to express Norwegian–American ethnic identity for friends, family, community, and self. Her rosemaling also reveals old-time subsistence patterns, and philosophies of women’s work and artistic expression, that were once common among most residents in this rural community, regardless of ethnic background—and these qualities undoubtedly contributed to the broad demand for her work and its resulting visibility.

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

31

From Rural Enterprise to Community Promotion On the rebound from a World War II stint as a photographer and a first marriage that had taken her to California, Oljanna had married Jiggs Cunneen, a western Dane County farmer, and began raising a family on their farm just west of Mount Horeb in the late 1940s. Through the 1950s, she brought up her daughters there and dominated the tractor work on their 120-acre dairy farm, where they raised Holsteins, pigs, corn, and oats. Energetic and resourceful like her Norwegian-immigrant mother, Oljanna was always looking to make a buck to supplement the farm income in a rural community where well-paying jobs are still scarce. Like many farm women of the times, she tended the chickens and distributed 30 crates of eggs weekly to local grocers. (Neth 1995: 32, Pederson 1992: 183–184, Smoot 2004: 37–38) She adhered to a farming model sometimes found among Norwegian–American immigrant farmers, where farm woman and man were equal yet complementary partners, cooperating to accomplish whatever needed to be done. (Neth 1995: 22–23 ff.; Pederson 1992: esp. 159–166, 176–177, 184–185) Because of her mother’s northern Norwegian background, she may have followed a pattern common among Norwegian fishing families, where strong women, with legal and economic clout, maintained the land-base, while men left seasonally to pursue cash income through offshore trip-fishing. (Bjørkvik 1995: 119–120, for example) As farming provided the Cunneens with less and less income, by the 1960s Oljanna and Jiggs began working a variety of seasonal local jobs, including Oljanna’s tour-guiding at Little Norway starting in 1961. Besides the part-time work, she began painting and rosemaling for pay, on artifacts small and large, including rural scenes on farm signs and murals on walls in her kitchen and at Norway Basin, a nearby ski hill now called Tyrol Basin. A major early job included the exterior of the Open House Imports gift store in downtown Mount Horeb, where she began selling embroidery kits for tablecloths and small rosemaled pieces including Velkommen signs, plates, and children’s furniture. Local farmer and legislator Rick Skindrud commissioned her to apply rosemaling to a pair of old skis, while the local fire chief, Chuck Himsel, had her rosemal his fire helmet. Neighbors and friends kept her churning out custom-tailored variations of the rosemaled plates and Velkommen signs, no two of which could be identical, according to Mount Horeb rosemaler Olga Edseth. (Personal Communication, 1994). In her own home, she rosemaled kitchen cabinets, doll wardrobes, a guitar, and clothing. Besides private adornment and public work for pay, she donated her work for ads—placemats and handbills—for the local “Song of Norway” pageant, and painted rosemaling designs on some of the early costumes for this event. (Lee Vogel Interview, 1994)12 Joining a crop of fresh local community leaders, including the Vogels of Open House Imports, in producing and promoting com-

32

Janet C. Gilmore

munity events with a Norwegian–American flair (like “Song of Norway”), she and fellow enthusiasts successfully linked community identity to the mischievous character of the troll. She then began creating small troll sculptures to sell, caricaturing locals through occupational or recreational pursuits, including rosemaling. In a stroke that foretold her own influence in the community, she undertook a campaign with the Vogels to decorate Mount Horeb’s first water tower with mushrooms, symbols of troll habitat (Lee Vogel Interview, 1994)—an idea before its time.13

A Setting for Rosemaling’s Appeal It is not surprising that the American revival of Norwegian rosemaling emerged most robustly in the United States by the 1930s in Dane County’s ferment of urban, village, and rural Norwegian immigrant communities. (Nelson 1980: 129; Martin 1989: 20–25 ff.) Rosemaling’s flamboyant, intensely colorful, decorative, floral painting flourished especially in Norway’s east central and southern districts from the 18th through the mid-19th centuries. (Ellingsgard 1993: 12, 1995: 190–193; Nelson 1995: 64–72). A visual celebration, it partook of the decorative renaissance that swept northern and western Europe after the Protestant Reformation (Ellingsgard 1995: 190; cf. Hellspong & Klein 1994: 33–35, Hellspong 1994: 83–88, and Jacobsen 1994: 55–59) and played with fanciful Baroque and Rococo plant motifs from southern Europe. It centered on the home—in contrast to the church—and new construction technology that featured chimneys, windows, and the flat surfaces of planks and beams (Martin 1989: 15; Nelson 1986: 4). We could say that Oljanna Cunneen’s playful and prolific application of key rosemaling motifs on dozens of items and materials shared in this celebratory re-dressing of old designs in new, free-flowing shapes, colors, and two-dimensional application. Per Lysne, credited as “the father of American rosemaling,” had come to Stoughton in southeastern Dane County from Sogn during the big wave of migration in the early 1900s. (Martin 1989: 20–25 ff.; Ellingsgard 1993: 11; Nelson 1995: 93) He had learned rosemaling from his father in Norway during the late 19th century revival of the tradition. By then, it had transformed from a differential patron-craftsman enterprise to a cottage craft industry characterized by mass production of small goods and driven by romantic nostalgia compared to the earlier tradition of itinerant painting (Nelson 1995: 71; cf. Glassie 1994: 252). In Stoughton as in Norway, Lysne worked in a shop setting, as a worker for a business, painting decorative trim on farm implements and wagons at a local factory, for a living. As the economically challenging Great Depression hit in the 1930s, as well as the transition from horse-drawn to motor-powered vehicles, he became inspired by American interest nationwide in decorative folk painting. He began producing rose-

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

33

maled plates like hotcakes, in the cottage craft Os style, eventually selling thousands through Marshall Field’s Chicago store. As his fame spread, he began painting home interiors, following a craftsman model more familiar to the early Norwegian itinerants. Cunneen, a prodigious high school doodler in the late 1930s, was old enough to take notice of the painting, its popularity, and Lysne’s assemblyline type business success. Her rosemaling clearly emerged from Lysne’s influence, which at first focused on small decorative items for home interiors and featured fairly simple, two-dimensional floral designs in a range of primary colors and pastels enhanced with detailing, outlining, and underscoring in black. Floral motifs centered on dominant white or pale-colored backgrounds, leaving a lot of open space around the solid designs. Up through Lysne’s early success, in Norway and the United States, typically men had rosemaled, and they had practiced it to earn a living. Lysne’s example in America, however, inspired mostly women, working in homes and on farms, to learn the skill and practice it as a pastime (Martin 1989: 30–31; Nelson 1986: 5). Nationwide, interests in decorative folk painting of varied traditions at first drew women of all backgrounds who liked to paint. But the trend fueled interest specifically in rosemaling among women of Norwegian descent—often second- and third-generation Norwegian–Americans who were beginning to explore their ethnic heritage. (cf. Klymasz, Kivisto) Women like Ethel Kvalheim of Stoughton, and Elma and Thelma Olsen—twins from Walworth County, southeast of Dane, who sometimes painted the same object together—were dazzled by Lysne’s productivity, curious about old decorative painting found on the immigrant legacy of material objects, and inspired to paint (Kvalheim Interview 1986; Martin 1989: 28–40; Siporin 1992: 55–58). They sought models, teachers, patterns, tools, and paints, locally, nationally, and on trips to Norway. They found each other, shared resources, and some began to teach, conveying hard-earned resources to friends and neighbors. For this first generation of American-born rosemalers in the Upper Midwest, rosemaling was mostly self-taught, with the more experienced painters teaching the less so; it became an artistic and social hobby that connected friends and neighbors. The activity promoted a community identity that acknowledged a strong Norwegian–American component while honoring the region’s tradition of ethnic pluralism (Mueller Interview, 1995; cf. Dégh: 554). Soon husbands and sons were involved, often producing the woodenware on which their wives, mothers, and sisters would paint. Less handy types, like Phil Dybdahl of Madison and Dave Nelson of Stoughton, also known as “Ole and Sven,” lamented their wives’ obsession with the art form in song compositions like “Rosemaling Fever.” 14 Oljanna Cunneen’s involvement with rosemaling fits squarely within this movement. A natural at drawing and painting from an early age, she was in-

34

Janet C. Gilmore

spired by the work of Aaron Bohrod, University of Wisconsin-Madison’s second Artist in Residence (1948–1973), and entered still lifes and rural scenes in annual Rural Arts Association shows during the 1950s and early 1960s, after her daughters were both in school. (Mathiak & Fox 1985 esp. 1–5 and 10–13.) During that time she also rapidly absorbed and adapted the “rosemaling design vocabulary” of the 1950s and ‘60s through her social networks, local rosemaling classes, and work as a tour guide at Little Norway, where hundreds of artifacts featured the decoration. Her husband even furnished her with paintable objects during the height of her rosemaling years. (Woods Interviews, 1994)

Vesterheim’s Hand Renowned American rosemalers like Dane County’s Ethel Kvalheim and Vi Thode, the ones Martin calls virtuosos, also emerged from this period and became its vanguard. For them the art form became “… no routine hobby activity. Many of the painters create their compositions freely within the basic techniques and principles of design characteristic of the art, and many reveal a creative ability which gives them a special place among artists of the common people in America.” (Nelson 1980: 130) Impressed with some rosemalers’ “serious interest in cultural origins and artistic quality,” Marion Nelson, Director of the Vesterheim Norwegian–American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, instituted an annual American rosemaling exhibition in 1967, and regular rosemaling workshops with Norwegian painters (Nelson 1980: 129–131; Martin 1989: 44–54 ff.). Through a point system, exhibitors could work toward Gold Medals that were selectively and competitively awarded. Vesterheim ushered in an era of formal training by Old Country “masters,” the formal codification of the art form into distinctive regional styles, and a different kind of artistic self-consciousness and connoisseurship from the early revival period. The Norwegian “masters” had the Old Country stamp of authenticity and authority, yet leading models, like Sigmund Aarseth and Nils Ellingsgard, generally were young men with professional art training who had not learned directly from an elder or peer rosemaler.15 Their practice did not represent a continuous, unbroken folk tradition, but instead, inspiration from study of rosemaling’s historical record in Norway. Nelson appreciated their confident, freehand representation of the old rosemaling design heritage— motifs, colors, and techniques—in big, bold, flowing, and almost threedimensional expressions, and felt later that their influence had “not stultified or academicized the movement; rather it has given it new impetus and breadth.” (1980: 131) He aimed to energize the American scene—where mostly women practiced careful, flat, two-dimensional designs, using patterns, narrow repertoires of motifs and colors, and “collectively self-taught”

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

35

painting technique, on small items. American rosemalers would divide into specialists and amateurs, into Gold Medalist virtuosos and “local rosemalers.” (Martin 1989)16

Cunneen Between As a rosemaler, Cunneen stayed true to older rosemaling legacies, yet “on the edge” in the new. For her, like Nelson’s characterization of artists who became virtuosos, rosemaling was “no routine hobby activity” either, but while she composed freely “within the basic techniques and principles of design characteristic of the art,” and revealed a distinctive artistic style, she restricted her compositions to a narrower repertoire of popular patterns and colors, more like “local rosemalers” did at the time. While Cunneen could have specialized in developing design complexity, refining her technique as virtuosos do, and experimenting with varied motifs and regional styles, she adopted a small number of favorite rosemaling motifs from the late post-Lysne and early Vesterheim period, especially a trademark Telemark style C-scroll and Hallingdal type florettes, and she played with them in endless variations, often in strong primary colors with black outlines, and open, light backgrounds that no longer predominate among Gold Medalists of today. (cf. Martin 1989: 70) She also tended to work from hand-drawn patterns that she penciled first on tracing paper before she began applying the designs in paint, a technique fostered during the immediate post-Lysne period but discouraged in Vesterheim workshops. (Martin 1989: 72) Nevertheless, Cunneen’s work achieved a big, bold, rhythmical, and open effect like the young Norwegian “old master” pioneers of the Gold Medalist trend tried to infuse into the fine, careful, densely and petitely rendered achievements of their workshop students. By remaining dedicated to designs, colors, and techniques that were more typical of local, say amateur, rosemalers, Cunneen could maintain speed and productivity that generally trounced the local rosemaler’s output and range of applications. Like Lysne and the old itinerant Norwegian rosemalers, she dispatched the work rapidly to make it economically viable. By contrast, many local rosemalers might apply rosemaling to rechristen a small selection of everyday items, or produce a few symbolic pieces to grace a kitchen wall and display Norwegian–American heritage (Martin 1989: 63–65; cf. Magliocco 1998: 154–156), remaining modest in output and speed. But Cunneen’s productivity often bested that of the typical Gold Medalist as well, who might work up deliberately and carefully from simpler to more complex surfaces and designs according to a personal clock instead of an external demand or market. Cunneen’s example in fact foreshadowed the commercial productivity of latter day Gold Medalist trained rosemalers who produce a different kind of work to sell in public settings (Martin 1989: 70),

36

Janet C. Gilmore

One of Cunneen’s decorative rosemaled plates (wall medallion) featuring her classic floral C-scrollwork combination in deep reds, blues, and olive greens, with white and black detailing. Note open background and the saying in Norwegian, “hvor der er hjerzerum, er der ogsaa husrum,” “where there is heart room, there is hearth room,” one of Oljanna’s favorite mottos. Some of her rosemaling patterns also appear in the picture. Photo by Janet C. Gilmore, “Art to Enjoy, Art to Use” Exhibit, Wisconsin Folk Museum, Mount Horeb, 1995.

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

37

or like entrepreneur rosemaler Suzanne Toftey (Vesterheim 2004: 17), who industrialize the manufacture of stock pieces in standardized versions of their designs.

An Old-Time Immigrant Ethic of Work and Play Cunneen chose not to attend Vesterheim workshops, like some of her peers did, to deepen her design complexity and painting technique. Some answers for Cunneen’s choice can be found in the way she practiced rosemaling. Mainly, Cunneen was not committed, and probably could not be committed, to one art form, like virtuoso rosemalers generally are. This lack of commitment to one artistic skill appears to stem from three key arenas: First, Cunneen practiced her artistic skills in a manner reflective of women’s work that Kay Turner claims informs “femmage,” quoting writer Terry Wolverton: … Our attention is often scattered over a lot of things, and in short time periods … we pull from a lot of places. This gives us more than one source. We understand how to make use, and make do, with all of what we have. This has to do with being fragmented, and with having to be resourceful, drawing what we need from many sources, not one. (K. Turner 1999: 98–100)

Just as Cunneen’s generation of mothers and farm women performed and balanced all of their life skills (cf. Neth 1995: 26–31, Pederson 1992: 161– 162, 175–176, & 183–184), her artistic attention was scattered over numerous expressive forms, allowed to rest on one for only short periods of time. Constantly on call on the farm, in mothering, or varied part-time work, jobs that incorporate a span of diverse activities, she was a champion at practicing many skills, individually in short bursts, or by multi-tasking, accomplishing many activities at once. Her daughter Jo Ann attests that she took along her bread to rise in the car while she visited with her sister, and her friend Olga Edseth recounts that even while talking on the phone, her hands were busy: I called Oljanna about something one evening. When she answered the sewing machine was going, kept going as long as we talked. I said what are you making, 20 aprons she says (that’s for her troll dolls). When we were done talking, the sewing machine was still going. She said one time, if I have six hours of sleep a night, that’s enough. (Personal Communication, 1994).

She mimicked her mother who, as legend has it, kept her hands busy crocheting, turning to knitting when it got dark, as she walked the three and a half miles between Black Earth’s train depot to the family farm on journeys from domestic work for university luminaries in Madison during the Depression (1930s). Second, besides the avoidance of the “idle hands” of “the Devil’s play-

38

Janet C. Gilmore

ground” that her mother sternly advised, the constant busy-ness and multitasking clearly had potential economic benefit.17 If one task or skill was not making some money for you, then another one might. Cunneen practiced this old-time survival strategy like many of Wisconsin’s immigrants, but also like a gambler—or a fisherman—experimenting with different products that relied on varied combinations of her skills and resources, hoping that one might be the big one that strikes gold. Cunneen enhanced the effectiveness of these skills by acquiring a penchant for assembly-line techniques, and she favored tasks like the troll sculptures and the “Cathedral Window” quilt pattern that lent themselves particularly well to the production style. With the trolls, for example, she would first make several copper wire “stick men” at once. Next she placed a wooden knob inside each form’s head, over and over again. Then she went to work fashioning one full head of Sculpey clay around each knob, for each body. She next baked the assemblages in the oven in batches, before wrapping each body in batting, posing the forms, decorating the heads, and adding clothing. “I can get about 3 men in the oven at once, so when the phone rings and someone says what are you doing? And I say I got 3 men in the oven, I’m not kidding,” she joked to student Emily Brynildson (1984). Cunneen wanted to produce her artistic work quickly, efficiently, and in steps, while accomplishing something else on the side, if possible. She wanted to maximize her potential profit. In productivity involving sewing in particular, her chief hand work skill, she additionally minimized costs through another family-instilled value: the routine re-use of cast-offs and scraps that could be incorporated in quilts, doll and troll clothes, and personal clothing. A benefit of her mother’s Depression era work as a domestic in Madison had been a regular, generous supply of excellent quality second-hand clothing. Oljanna and her sister Annie had dressed up in these rich and interesting garments as they played alone at home: “Annie and I would drag out some of these clothes and put on performances, so to speak, in these fancy clothes,” she relates, adding earlier in her story sequence that “We’d stand on the front porch and give speeches to cows in the meadow.” (Cunneen n.d.) Oljanna, who claimed she “was born under a sewing machine,” learned to cut and shape these clothes into the family’s wardrobe, and small leftover pieces into doll and kitten clothing: If a suit was worn out, they gave it to Gerharda. She packed it home, remade it into clothes, remodeled it. Even I would take some of these things, for instance, I could take a man’s pants, rip it apart, turn the material, press it, and make a skirt out of it, and that’s what I wore. Well, needless to say, we wound up with a house full of things that had been given to her. There were beautiful dresses, and we girls learned to sew, simply by cutting them up, remaking them. I remember when it first became popular to wear slacks, I had a fancy Georgette dress that somebody in Madison had worn. I slit it up the middle, sewed the two sides together, and I had a jumpsuit as

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

39

they call it today. I must have been quite something wandering around the countryside in this thing, but nonetheless I learned to sew. (Cunneen n.d.)

Later in life, when Oljanna was the chief costume maker for the “Song of Norway” pageant, she used ballgown scraps to make Barbie doll gowns. She produced them in assembly line fashion and sold them at Manchester’s Department Store in Madison. While she owned and managed a small fabric store in her home during the height of her bunad-making period and acquired much new and as “authentic” cloth from Norway as she could get, she still did not turn down gifts or windfalls of cloth from friends, neighbors, and serendipity. These she used for personal family clothing, if not pageant and ethnic costumes. As her mother had advised, “‘Never turn down a thing, because if you refuse to take it, they will quit giving to you,’ so she would say, ‘Don’t refuse even a half cup of bacon grease.’ Well, we could use a half a cup of bacon grease, believe me we could.’” (Cunneen n.d.) Third, as Nelson claimed of the virtuosos, Cunneen showed “serious interest in cultural origins,” but less through rosemaling per se than through observing, and incorporating in the Dane County setting, the contemporary Norwegian uses of a range of related traditional art forms for district identity and festive community events. Even as Cunneen would not commit to one art form, she consistently applied her favorite Telemark style rosemaling C scroll motif, offset with small Hallingdal type florettes, to varied skills and media. The acanthus leaf tendrils, sometimes combined with small flowers, became the enduring emblem of her Norwegian–American heritage. As she had explored her heritage in Norway in the 1960s and worked with area Norwegian–Americans to recreate the “Song of Norway” pageant, she had also expanded her awareness of Norway’s regional costume styles, and in these she encountered again the Rococo and Baroque decorative flourishes. Unlike most of the descendants of Norwegian immigrants in Dane County, Cunneen actually had first-hand experience with a Norwegian bunad that her mother claimed to have brought with her from Norway during the first decade of the 20th century, a time of the “bunad movement” in Norway. (Colburn 1995: 158) Cunneen’s version of her mother’s story elaborates the bunad’s design origins: Well at that time, when my mother was making her costume in the north of Norway, they didn’t have a costume up there, so she chose the Hardanger and changed it, just simply changed it to suit the needs of the north. And instead of the bands of flowers that you find on the Hardanger costume, she used the black and the gold to signify six months of night and six months of day. (Cunneen 1987)

Gerharda had edged the red vest with black and gold trim to represent the north’s extremes of daylight and darkness, fashioning the skirt in black to match. Black, gold, red, and white beading in an eight-point star pattern on the vest placket unified the black skirt, white blouse and apron (both featuring Hardanger lace cutwork), red vest, and black and gold trim. Her practice

40

Janet C. Gilmore

followed the preeminence and codification of a Hardanger style that became emblematic of Norway, and the geometric beadwork harkened back to older and northern Norwegian design traditions. (Colburn 1995: 157) Gerharda wore the bunad at the reception following her wedding to Oljanna’s father, and as their daughters grew older, they donned the special garment, in play and for community show. This costume became the foundation for Oljanna’s chief work garb at Little Norway and for public presentations in other settings; it was particularly influential in raising the standard for Little Norway guide work clothing (Woods Interview 1994). In contrast to the geometric beadwork on her mother’s adapted bunad bodice, the costume decorations in Norway’s southern districts often incorporated wool embroidery in flowers and scrolls familiar to rosemaling. Janice Stewart refers to this type of work as rosesaum. (Stewart 1999: 183– 187) Besides Cunneen’s father’s large extended western Dane County family, many of her Norwegian–American friends and neighbors were descendants from these florally marked southern districts. Intrigued by bunad kits available in Norway for these districts, she was eager to experiment with several in the late 1960s. (Nancy Vogel Interview 1994) Soon, with the help of books like Yngve Woxholth’s Våre vakre bunader, she had adapted the kit idea for local distribution, working up dress patterns, designing the floral crewel embroidery patterns to mark on them, and helping members of the newly-formed western Dane County Sons of Norway lodge research, design, and make their own bunads with imported woolen cloth and thread. (Grinde Interview 1994; cf. Mt. Horeb 1968: 85) With her mother’s prior bunad experience, her curiosity and quick study habits regarding Norwegian folk arts, and her efficient, assembly-line productivity, Oljanna became a pioneering Dane County resource for Norwegian–Americans to learn about district costume styles. For many of the county’s Norwegian–American residents, the creation of a bunad that symbolically reflected a Norwegian district of family origins was a one-time event, much like rosemaling a few personal items for home decoration. But Oljanna, as usual, had speedily experimented with numerous regional ensemble designs and decorative motifs—for others as well as herself—and she did not stop there. Soon for herself, her family, friends, and local enthusiasts, she was using crewel embroidery techniques, the satin stitch of rosesaum, to place Telemark scrolls, tendrils, and Hallingdal florettes on contemporary personal clothing, mainly in wools that might be left over from bunad-making or might make good stand-ins for the expensive wool cloth imported from Norway. And she routinely wore this contemporary garb, promoting her community heritage in everyday settings beyond work and community celebration. By decades she anticipated a trend that has become commonplace. (See Colburn 1995: 168) Oljanna’s embrace of revived and cultivated Norwegian artistic traditions

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

41

that included rosemaling was as much a strategy for making a living as it was an affection for the totality of celebration (Stoeltje: 239–240; cf. V. Turner 1982: 16), and the desire to recreate the celebratory feeling she had experienced in contemporary heritage events in Norway. (Lee Vogel Interview 1994) As colleague Lee Vogel put it, hers was “art to enjoy, art to use.” (Interview 1994) On edge and on the edge, Oljanna Venden Cunneen indelibly stamped western Dane County’s community heritage through an emblematic rosemaling design in particular, strident “femmage,” and clever adaptations of old yet fast immigrant practices of productivity, economy, and sustainability. Her energy, enthusiasm, inventiveness, resourcefulness, efficiency and productivity in reinventing family and community artistic heritage were inspirational and infectious. They struck the right chord with thrifty descendants of impoverished forebears who wanted to participate in the construction of new expressions of ethnic and community heritage that relied on Old Country artistic legacies. Through her quick and efficient productivity, she could provide them with artifacts and embellishments at an affordable cost, or could help them do the work themselves in more of a one-time effort. With the appeal of old immigrant practices and expressions transformed into the contemporary, Oljanna Venden Cunneen caught a wave of community renewal and creative identity that swept through south central Wisconsin in the mid-20th century and continues to inform present-day sensibilities beneath and beyond the rosemaled water tower that looms above Mount Horeb.

Janet C. Gilmore Assistant Professor Department of Landscape Architecture and the Folklore Program Agricultural Hall, 1450 Linden Drive University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA [email protected]

References Aarseth, Nils 2004: Rooms, Rosemaling, & All That Jazz. Vesterheim 2:1. Bjørkvik, Halvard 1995: The Social and Economic Background of Folk Art in Norway. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press. Brandt, Tova 2004: The Art of Rosemaling: Tradition Meets the Creative Mind. Vesterheim 2:1.

42

Janet C. Gilmore

Colburn, Carol Huset 1995: Norwegian Folk Dress in America. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press. Dégh, Linda 1966: Approaches to Folklore Research among Immigrant Groups. Journal of American Folklore 79. Ellingsgard, Nils 2004: American Flowering: Norwegian Tradition Meets Contemporary Self-Expression in Rosemaling. Vesterheim 2:1. Ellingsgard, Nils 1995: Rosemaling: A Folk Art in Migration. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press. Ellingsgard, Nils 1993: Norwegian Rose Painting in America. Decorah: Vesterheim. Gilmore, Janet C. 2004: Rosemaling. Encyclopedia of American Folk Art. New York: Routledge. Glassie, Henry 1994: Epilogue: The Spirit of Swedish Folk Art. Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition is Change. Stockholm: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Hellspong, Mats 1994: Folk Arts from a Local Perspective: Some Regional Masters. Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition is Change. Stockholm: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Hellspong, Mats and Klein, Barbro 1994: Folk Art and Folklife Studies in Sweden. Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition is Change. Stockholm: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Hoelscher, Steven D. 1998: Heritage on Stage: The Invention of Ethnic Place in America’s Little Switzerland. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoelscher, Steven D. and Ostergren, Robert C. 1993: Old European Homelands in the Middle West. Journal of Geography 13. Holzhueter, Jack, Hefty, Sherri J. and Christofferson, Andrea, comps. 1991: Song of Norway 25th Anniversary Season. Mt. Horeb: Song of Norway Festival, Ltd. Jackson, John Brinckerhoff 1957: The Stranger’s Path. Landscape: Magazine of Human Geography 7: 1. Jackson, John Brinckerhoff 1956–1957: Other-Directed Houses. Landscape: Magazine of Human Geography 6: 2. Jacobsen, Bengt 1994: The Arts of the Swedish Peasant World. Swedish Folk Art: All Tradition is Change. Stockholm: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Kivisto, Peter 1990: Ethnicity and the Problem of Generations in American History. American Immigrants and Their Generations: Studies and Commentaries on the Hansen Thesis after Fifty Years. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Klymasz, Robert B. 1973: From Immigrant to Ethnic Folklore: A Canadian View of Process and Transition. Journal of the Folklore Institute 10: 3:131–139. Leary, James P. 2001: So Ole Says to Lena: Folk Humor of the Upper Midwest. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Magliocco, Sabina 1998: Playing with Food: The Negotiation of Identity in the Ethnic Display Event by Italian Americans in Clinton, Indiana. Taste of American Place. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Mathiak, Lucy and Fox, Jan Marshall (eds.) 1985: The Art of Rural Wisconsin— 1936–60. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Martin, Charles W. 2007: Vastness. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Martin, Philip N. 1989: Rosemaling in the Upper Midwest: A Story of Region & Revival. Mt. Horeb: Wisconsin Folk Museum. Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce Centennial Committee: 1961. The Mount Horeb Centennial Book, 1861–1961. Mt. Horeb Chamber of Commerce. Mount Horeb Quasquicentennial Committee: 1986. Mount Horeb—Presettlement to 1986: A History Celebrating Mount Horeb’s Quasquicentennial. Mt. Horeb Area Historical Society, Inc. Neff, Deborah and Zarrilli, Phillip B. 1987: Wilhelm Tell in America’s “Little Switzerland,”New Glarus, Wisconsin. Onalaska, WI: Crescent Printing Co., Inc.

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

43

Nelson, Marion John 1995: Folk Art in Norway and Norwegian Folk Art in America. Norwegian Folk Art: The Migration of a Tradition. New York: Abbeville Press. Nelson, Marion John 1986: Preface. A Collection of Norwegian Rosemaling in America. Minneapolis: Pamela Publications. Nelson, Marion John 1980: The Material Culture and Folk Arts of the Norwegians in America. Perspectives on American Folk Art. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Neth, Mary 1995: Preserving the Family Farm: Women, Community, and the Foundations of Agribusiness in the Midwest, 1900–1940. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Pederson, Jane Marie 1992: Between Memory and Reality: Family and Community in Rural Wisconsin, 1870–1970. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Pushkarev, Boris 1960–1961: The Esthetics of Freeway Design, Landscape: Magazine of Human Geography 10: 2. Siporin, Steve (ed.) 1992: American Folk Masters: The National Heritage Fellows. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Smoot, Frank 2004: Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and their Neighbors. Eau Claire, WI: Chippewa Valley Museum. Stewart, Janice 1999: The Folk Arts of Norway. 3rd Edition. Rhinelander, WI: Nordhus Publishing. Stoeltje, Beverly 1983: Festival in America. Handbook of American Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Teske, Robert T. (ed.) 1987: From Hardanger to Harleys: A Survey of Wisconsin Folk Art. Sheboygan, WI: John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Turner, Kay 1999: Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women’s Altars. London: Thames & Hudson. Turner, Victor 1982: Introduction. Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Vesterheim 2004: Rosemaling Letter 35: 2. Woxholth, Yngve 1969: Våre vakre bunader. Oslo: Hjemmenes Forlag. Zaniewski, Kazimierz J. and Rosen, Carol J. 1998: The Atlas of Ethnic Diversity in Wisconsin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Interviews and Personal Communications Cited Bruni, Milt: 1985. Tape-recorded Interview by James P. Leary (German–American Music Project Collection, University of Wisconsin-Madison Mills Music Library). Iron Ridge, WI. Brynildson, Emily: 1984. Paper for James P. Leary’s “Folklore of Wisconsin” class,University of Wisconsin-Madison. Cunneen, Oljanna: 1986. Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Art Survey Collection, John Michael Kohler Arts Center). Blue Mounds. Cunneen, Oljanna: 1987. Tape-recorded Ole and Lena joke cycle, by James P. Leary with technical assistance from Reid Miller. Madison. Cunneen, Oljanna: n.d. Self-tape-recorded biography and stories. Blue Mounds. Edseth, Olga: 1994. Personal Communication. Mt. Horeb. Grinde, Marlyn, and Gilbertson, Irene: 1994. Tape-recorded Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Mt. Horeb. Holzhueter, Jack: 1994. Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Mt. Horeb. Kvalheim, Ethel: 1986. Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Art Survey Collection, John Michael Kohler Arts Center). Stoughton.

44

Janet C. Gilmore

Mueller, Lois: 1995. Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Mt. Horeb. Sievers, Janice: 2007. Personal Communication. Mt. Horeb. Vogel, Lee and Nancy: 1994. Tape-recorded Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Mt. Horeb. Winner, Scott: 1994. Tape-recorded Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Blue Mounds. Woods, Jo Ann: 1994. Tape-recorded Interview by Janet C. Gilmore (Wisconsin Folk Museum). Mt. Horeb.

1

In his well-known “Stranger’s Path” essay, J. B. Jackson proposes that an outsider visiting a new place can begin to understand it “once a few of its landmarks are known.” 2 Several websites now celebrate the most striking of these water tower landmarks of place, for example: http://www.yorklib.org/local/artistic-water-towers. One of the most infamous water tower icons is the Swedish coffee pot shape emulated on the Stanton, Iowa, water tower that dates from 1971 and provided a backdrop for advertising featuring “Mrs. Olson’s” promotion of Folgers Coffee. See, for example: http://www.worldslargestthings.com/iowa/coffee.htm and http://www.fmtcnet.com/our-community-stanton.html. Lindstrom, Minnesota’s “Swedish teapot” water tower rivals Stanton’s. See http: //www.cityoflindstrom.us/gallery/views.html but also see “A Look at Water Towers: Water Towers Serve as Identifiers, Reminders, Landmarks,” Waterline, the quarterly newsletter of the Minnesota Department of Health Public Water Supply Unit, Summer 1997, Waterline, MN, at: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/water/com/waterline/featurestories/watertowers.html. There’s another Swedish coffee pot water tower in Kingsburg, California. See: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/165 and www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM5QM. All websites current as of December 11, 2008. 3 In the 1961 Mount Horeb centennial history, “Portal to Wonderland” is the stated motto for the area, linking Little Norway, Cave of the Mounds, the Blue Mounds, and Stewart Lake as the cluster of attractions. The volume mentions some of the earliest Norwegian immigrant settlers and the Little Norway attraction but clearly shows no coherent Norwegian– American community identity. By the late 1960s, Lee Vogel claimed that he and others were searching for an expression that would provide a greater sense of the area’s cultural and natural ambience than “Portal to Wonderland” (Interview 1994). The 1986 Mount Horeb quasquicentennial history shows the emergence of both the “Song of Norway” in 1966 and Sons of Norway in 1971 as evidence of wide support for public heritage-making drawing from Norwegian and Norwegian–American themes (85 & 108–109). By the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, many of Dane County’s second- and third-generation immigrant residents were reaching middle life, and a level of leisure time and affluence, that afforded renewed interest in an increasingly distant immigrant past. (Cf. Klymasz and Kivisto) 4 Hoelscher and Ostergren (1993: 92) use J. B. Jackson’s sense of “other-directed” placemaking–which inspired new ways to look at the highway strip, sprawl, and the epitome of Las Vegas, New Mexico–to examine New Glarus, Wisconsin’s Swiss–American ethnic public face. The concept applies well here to Cunneen’s physical presentation of self in varied public settings as well as in the majority of the interior of her home during the last decades of her life. Jackson’s idea, as originally expressed, appears in “Other-Directed Houses,” Landscape: Magazine of Human Geography 6: 2 (Winter 1965–1957), especially 31–33. 5 While Oljanna Cunneen’s local influence and productivity were vast, and her agency in community heritage-making deep and dynamic, adequate treatment of her community influence must remain somewhat elusive and speculative. Much of the documentation that

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

6

7

8

9

45

exists on Cunneen was carefully constructed by Cunneen herself. If she spoke directly of her ambitions and motivations in generating forms to enhance the western Dane County sense of Norwegian heritage and place, there is little evidence of it left. By the time I inquired of a small selection of her community-oriented conspirators, colleagues, friends, and family in 1994, Cunneen had passed on, like her mother and older sister, too soon. It was clear, however, that Cunneen’s community influence was stimulated by collaboration and collective efforts. My interest in Oljanna Venden Cunneen over the years has focused mainly on her folk artistic handiwork in the context of her life story. For a lengthy slide talk, “An Inspirational Force: Oljanna Venden Cunneen,” that was presented at the Vesterheim Norwegian– American Museum’s 2004 “The Art of Rosemaling: Tradition Meets the Creative Mind” symposium in Decorah, Iowa, I first attempted the concentration on Cunneen’s rosemaling in her life context. (See Jan Etnier’s summary of the talk in Vesterheim 2004: 16). This article draws in part from that presentation and a shorter, more academic version, “Oljanna Venden Cunneen: Rosemaler on the Edge,” presented at the 2007 Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies meeting in Davenport, Iowa. Editors and other contributors to the present volume, and outside readers, have enhanced the coherence of the article and provided much inspiration for future efforts that could draw out many of the latent issues in a more comprehensive work. The title of this paper was inspired by the name, “Rosemaling on the Edge,” for a juried exhibit of non-traditional treatments of rosemaling that was on display during the Vesterheim 2004 symposium. Just a few examples: Mike’s Fish & Seafood in Glenwood, MN, distributes lutefisk dinner placemats with shipments of lutefisk for Lutheran church and Sons of Norway lodge lutefisk dinners in south central Wisconsin; a Burke Lutheran Church version of it from c. 1992 placed a pronounced rosemaling design in the lower right corner. Oljanna Cunneen’s rosemaling appears decoratively in Ideals Publishing Company’s Mother’s Day Greetings volume (Milwaukee, 1968). Rosemaling designs decorate the covers of Volunteers of the Norwegian–American Museum’s Pioneer Cook Book (Decorah, Iowa, 1969), Bethany Lutheran Bazaar Centennial Cookbook (Rice Lake, WI, 1984), and Vermont Lutheran Church’s Nisse Book of Recipes (Black Earth, WI, 1993); the latter two cookbooks incorporate rosemaling flourishes between chapters. Skandisk Heritage of Minneapolis distributes “Heritage Stationery” and “Rosemaling Cards” packets for sale that showcase Ethel Kvalheim’s designs. Besides immigrants from Norway, those from Ireland, Switzerland, and other Germanspeaking areas of Northern Europe, as well as Pennsylvania Germans and English, are common in the early immigrant mix of Mount Horeb’s rural environs in western Dane County. Of these groups, the Norwegian- and Swiss-Americans have most notably cultivated their ethnic images, and Mount Horeb’s proximity to New Glarus and its large, rural Swiss– American settlement has been instrumental in Mount Horeb’s adoption of a Norwegian ethnic identity. (Cf. Hoelscher 1998 and Hoelscher and Ostergren 1993). In the county overall, Norwegian–Americans represent the second largest ethnic group, competing with residents of Irish background; German–Americans make up the largest group, outnumbering Norwegian–Americans four to one. While these immigrants settled originally in a largely rural patchwork of farmsteads and small villages instead of denser urban settings, Linda Dégh’s assertion applies, that “The most significant and probably unique feature of the American groups lies in the fact that their culture was formed by mutual interaction with not one or several but a greater number of alien cultures.” (1966: 554) Oljanna Venden Cunneen was one of the first folk artists I interviewed for the John Michael Kohler Art Center’s Wisconsin Folk Art Survey in 1986. Her bunad work was featured in the resulting “From Hardanger to Harleys: A Survey of Wisconsin Folk Art” exhibit and catalog of the same name (Teske 1987). Oljanna passed away at 64 in February 1988, just before my family and I settled in the Mount Horeb area, but my relationship with Oljanna

46

10

11

12

13

Janet C. Gilmore and her family continued as we exhibited her considerable artistic productivity at the Wisconsin Folk Museum in Mount Horeb, especially in a popular major 1994–1995 exhibit of her work, “Art to Enjoy, Art to Use: Norwegian–American Folk Artist Oljanna Venden Cunneen (1923–1988).” In preparation for the exhibit, which was funded with grants from the Dane County Cultural Affairs Commission and the Mount Horeb Community Foundation, and significant private contributions from the Mount Horeb area, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cunneen’s daughter, Jo Ann Woods; community movers-and-shakers Nancy and Lee Vogel of Open House Imports; fellow community and Sons of Norway members Marlyn Grinde and Irene Gilbertson; “Song of Norway” colleague Jack Holzhueter; and Little Norway Director Scott Winner. Much of the information about Cunneen in this essay comes from these interviews, repeated communications with Cunneen’s family, visits to Woods’ home, then in Mount Horeb, to review primary materials including artifacts, review of archival and artifact collections at the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society, and the exhibit’s installation and special events. Conversations with Lee Vogel, Janice Sievers, and Bill Kalscheur in 2007 have helped confirm several details in this essay. The smaller Laestadian group met in members’ homes, visited by a circuit-rider preacher from some distance away, while Vermont Lutheran Church was an established rural Evangelical Lutheran church well-attended by Vermont Township’s rural Norwegian–American families. Vermont Lutheran Church is currently affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, E.L.C.A. “A Brief History of the Vermont Lutheran Congregation,” written by Grace Skalet and updated by Betty Rosenbaum can be found in the church’s Nisse Book of Recipes (1993), v–vi. Cunneen provides an interesting case of an “ethnic” who appears to connect both the “first stage” of retention and the “third stage” of reconstruction as immigrants become ethnics, according to Klymasz’s hypothesis (1973: esp. 134–138). The operetta “Song of Norway,” created by Robert Wright and George Forrest and opening in Los Angeles, California, in 1944, “drew upon the life and music of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg” as well as Norwegian nationalism “when that country’s resistance movement against the occupying Nazi forces had attracted international sympathy,” says the Mount Horeb production’s 25th anniversary season program book (Holzhueter, Hefty, & Christofferson 1991: ii; see also Mt. Horeb 1986: 108–109). The program book provides a short history of the Mount Horeb production’s run and attributes its beginnings in 1966 to community arts leader Lee Vogel, adding “The time was right … for Mount Horeb to honor its own Norwegian roots.” (ii). Mount Horeb’s neighboring community, New Glarus, just 17 miles to the south, no doubt inspired Vogel, with its longstanding tradition of community plays such as Wilhelm Tell and Heidi that united community members in celebrating the area’s Swiss heritage and energizing local commerce. (see Hoelscher 1998). Vogel, his wife Nancy, Oljanna Cunneen, and a number of other energetic and community-minded area residents, infused the Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce with new ideas in the 1960s that resulted in the village’s public identification with Norwegian immigrant heritage and a seasonal sequence of annual festivities in which residents and businesses still collaborate. Within a few years of the 25th anniversary celebration, however, the “Song of Norway” run ended in the Mount Horeb area. The New Glarus Tell production is fast approaching its 70th year. (Neff & Zarrilli 1987) The troll as a symbol for the Blue Mounds-Mount Horeb area also emerged from the ferment of community discussions among the Vogels, Cunneen, and cohorts during the 1960s, often at boiled dinner socials held at the Cunneens. Cave of the Mounds had become a local tourist attraction adjacent to the distinctive high ground of the Blue Mounds; in a valley close by lay Little Norway, a small outdoor museum featuring Norwegian–American immigrant buildings, a stavekirke replica built in Norway for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, additional small Norwegian-style buildings, and artifacts from Norway. (See Mt. Horeb 1961: 63) Between Oljanna’s storytelling heritage of Norwegian nisse, huldre,

Oljanna Venden Cunneen, A Norwegian–American Rosemaler

14

15

16

17

47

and trolls and the group’s fertile imagination, it was not long before the troll, a creature associated with “undermountain” locations, became an ideal “mascot of the local.” Since that time, the old highway that leads between Mount Horeb and Blue Mounds has become “The Trollway,” Mount Horeb artists besides Cunneen have depicted trolls in public paintings, print, and sculptures, certain community leaders dress festively as trolls during community events, and the village calls itself “The Troll Capital of the World.” Mike Feeney’s troll-configured tree stumps that line numerous old highway businesses and homes today are a major tourist attraction, and the sculptor disseminates the imagery through postcards and stationery available for sale at local businesses. They performed to great applause at the 36th annual Nordic Fest in Decorah, Iowa, July 26, 2002, for example. Dave Nelson wrote the lyrics to “Rosemaling Fever,” and “The Rosemaler’s Husband’s Lament or A Psychiatric Analysis of the Rosemaling Wife or There’ll Be No Supper, Kids, Tonight, She’s in Her Paints Again,” dated 1982. These latter lyrics appeared in the “W.S.P.A. Newsletter [Wisconsin State Physician’s Association?], June 1983, Page 9.” The Aarseth and Ellingsgard articles in Vesterheim 2:1 (2004) allude to this background, and it was confirmed during their presentations at Vesterheim’s 2004 “The Art of Rosemaling” symposium. Vesterheim has continued to offer workshops and the annual exhibition, expanding to include a growing array of mostly revived woodcarving, weaving, and knife-making traditions. Despite greater mastery of technique and knowledge of historic rosemaling styles, Gold Medalists tend to practice a conservative perfectionism that the Vesterheim still tries to loosen by bringing together professionally trained painters with regular workshop participants and commercial rosemalers in symposia such as “The Art of Rosemaling: Tradition Creates the Creative Mind.” A summary of the symposium’s proceedings appears in Vesterheim’s Rosemaling Letter 35: 2 (2004): 10–17. A foretaste, including richly illustrated articles by curator Tova Brandt, and featured keynote speakers Sigmund Aarseth and Nils Ellingsgard, was published in the museum’s magazine Vesterheim 2: 1 (2004): 4–36. A videotape captured key portions of the event, that may be available from the museum. Just as knitting while walking had for Yorkshire Dales piece-work knitters during the 18th and 19th centuries in England’s Midlands (cf. Hartley, Marie, and Ingilby, Joan: 1978 [1951]. The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales. Clapham: Dalesman Publishing Company Ltd.: 45, 53–55, 74–76, 80). Among its permanent exhibits in 1997, when I visited, the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes, North Yorkshire, covered the importance of hand-knitting to the local economy during the 1700s through the early 1900s. Exhibits included representative knitted garments and the distinctive hand-knitting needles and sheaths that developed to improve speed and productivity. The http://www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/index/enjoying/dales_countryside_museum.htm as of December 2008 leads to the museum’s website, while http://www.daelnet.co.uk/features/knitting/history1.htm provides “A Brief History” in 5 pages of the phenomenon. The “Brief History” as well as the museum’s knitting exhibits have drawn from the Hartley and Ingilby work, which benefited from interviews with the last of the knitters from this once important Dales cottage industry.

48

Janet C. Gilmore

Performing the North

49

Performing the North Folk Culture, Exoticism and Irony among Expatriates Kristinn Schram

“I did actually get the question: a good friend of mine from Taiwan asked me if we lived in snow-houses. I thought that was absolutely astounding. Of course I had heard that people had been asked this question. But I just thanked him for asking, it would make for a great story.” Haraldur – an Icelander abroad

I begin this article in the liminal space in which the speaker, a participant in my fieldwork, finds himself. Faced with an exoticizing representation, multiple responses are possible. As is revealed in the closing comments, the course he takes is not that of indignant correction of the misunderstanding but of gleeful resignation to its narrative potential. Being an Icelander abroad myself, I am no stranger to the question my informant received with such good humour, nor am I innocent of appropriating it to various narrative contexts. Firstly, from those few years that I spent as a young child in California, I remember somewhat hesitantly accepting the air of northern exoticism my peers had attached to me.1 Later in life, as a postgraduate in Scotland, I often found myself as cultural commentator, mediating exotic images of Iceland with my own experiences and identity. On one such occasion, I had been invited to a film club dinner party and was placed, aperitif in hand, beside the screen. The film of the evening was, by no suggestion of mine, the iconic and exotic Icelandic film Börn náttúrunnar or Children of Nature.2 Still rather unsure if this was in fact a set-up, I was somehow compelled to answer questions at great length. I would comment on cultural situations and sometimes mutter self-parodies such as “been there, done that” as the film protagonist enjoys a hotdog at the bus station or violates a traffic law before disappearing into a mountain. As in my informant’s experience, I was positioned in a liminal, transcultural encounter, with a heightened sense of difference, prompted and reinforced by the media images. The dynamics of reflexive identity-negotiations such as these within everyday life are a compelling research topic in today’s globalized world.

50

Kristinn Schram

Increasingly, representations in the global media make their mark on the transnational and transcultural encounters practiced in the liminal space of “foreignness” and being “abroad”. Folklorists have effectively turned their attention to the problems of such encounters and the role expressive culture plays in them. Diverting from the discipline’s prior emphases on the artistic beauty and skill of folklore, great strides have been taken in examining the processes with which boundaries are drawn and differential identities solidified through traditional and expressive culture. Folklorists have also gone further in illustrating the negotiable processes rendering people and symbols foreign as well as the latent and overt strategies involved in the manipulation of identity symbols.3 In order to contribute to this work, I will bring into focus how expressive culture may in turn corrode such strategies and tactically re-appropriate them. Embedded in the everyday life of migrants and pitted against a backdrop of historical imagery and media representations, folklore is also used to gain access and integration into host cultures. With reference to stereotypical images of the North in both historical and modern literature, art and media, I will explore those representational images performed in the expressive culture of everyday life playing on an emergent image of northern exoticism and eccentricity. I will exhibit such reconfigurations through contemporary case studies of how modern-day Icelanders in Northern Europe and North America have re-appropriated exoticizing representations of their perceived northern eccentricity through narrative performances of tradition, a close relationship with nature and archaic foodways.4 Turning these representations to their own ends, these individuals have appropriated vernacular practices as tactics to gain access and influence within the strategies of new localities. Furthermore I will demonstrate how their self-representation and identities have acquired a built-in irony as a result of their opting for playful exaggeration and eccentricity over authenticity.

A Brief History of Exotic Iceland While the production of literary texts and media images is not the focus of this article, their relation to vernacular culture warrants some illustration. The exotic hetero-images (images of the other as opposed to self-images) of Iceland and its inhabitants are in themselves anything but new. Commonly referenced in contemporary times, for example in the Icelandic Thule beer, this exotic image can be traced far back and is in fact much older than the country’s recorded settlement in the ninth century. While it was first depicted in 140 BC in Polybius’s Histories as Ultima Thule, the strange island of the far North has long been associated with Iceland, as well as many other North Atlantic islands. This is only the first known example in a plethora of, often obscure, geographies of the north, an iconography that can be traced

Performing the North

51

back to the ancient inhabitants of the Mediterranean, the antiquity of Homeric poems, ancient Greek tragedy and Greco-Roman geography (see e.g. Sumarliði Ísleifsson 2003; Sherrill Grace 2002). It is in many cases difficult to discern the images of Iceland from images of the North in general. The concept of the north is full of extremes and ambiguities. As revealed in Peter Davidson’s exploration of the concept in art, legend and literature, two opposing ideas of north repeat and contradict each other from antiquity until well into the nineteenth century. First of all “a place of darkness and dearth, the seat of evil. Or, conversely, […] a place of austere felicity where virtuous peoples live behind the north wind and are happy” (Davidson 2005:21). From savage dystopia to enlightened utopia, the pendulum has swung back and forth between the civilized and the wild. Researchers have nonetheless discerned patterns in this dynamic construct, claiming for example that the ancient Greeks, Romans and Christian church associated the north with barbarism while the south was considered the cradle of civilization. Slowly during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the West European north came to be seen as progressive, educated, technologically advanced and strong compared to what was increasingly seen as a reactionary, uneducated and inconsistent south. Race typologies within the late nineteenth and early twentieth century only solidified these ideas of superiority. While Iceland’s nationalistic movement rode the waves of these more empowering images, it is nonetheless clear that the hetero-images of the primitive north persisted, even among Iceland’s Nordic neighbours. A largely successful nationalistic movement, nationhood was claimed on the basis of an ancient literary culture, language and historical identity (see Guðmundur Hálfdánarson 2001; Gunnar Karlsson 1995). The interconnectedness of the nation to the land and the supposed “purity” of its language were also regularly stressed and later encapsulated in a sonnet beginning: “Land, nation and language, a trinity pure and true” (Snorri Hjartarson 1952; see also Gísli Sigurðsson 1999:42–48). While this process was well under way on the eve of the twentieth century, the Copenhagen-based Icelandic intelligentsia nonetheless found itself grossly offended. The offence had come in an announcement in 1904 that Icelanders, hitherto enjoying a status they considered somewhat higher than that of Danish colonial subjects, were to be exhibited alongside them in the “Dansk Koloniudstilling”, a Danish Colonial Exhibition to he held in the Tivoli amusement park in Copenhagen a year later. Tivoli exhibitions such as these were a Nordic offshoot of a long tradition of “world fairs”, involving the gross objectification and detrimental treatment of “the other”, usually colonial subjects or indigenous populations of the “new world”, represented with artefacts and animals. Each race was placed on the scale from the wild to the most civilized, underlining where they seemed to fit on the scale of

52

Kristinn Schram

evolution. The Caucasian was furthermore the standard against which other races were to be measured. The hegemonic character of these fairs is evident in the way they naturalized colonial dominance by separating the civilized “us” from the exotic and primitive “other” (see Said 1978; Greenblatt 1991 on aspects of Nordic Orientalism see e.g. Oxfeldt 2005). Judging from the flurry of angry protest, this hegemony was not lost on the Icelanders. The ensuing debate on the prospect was published in the Danish press. While they themselves evidently had no protests against the treatment of “the others” on exhibition, they were furious at the prospect of being seen as on par with “negro ladies and Eskimos”, as one Icelandic commentator put it (quoted from Finsen 1958:12). In a special statement, the Icelandic Student Association made a clear distinction between the category of cultural nations (Kulturnationer) to which Iceland belonged and the primitive nature folk (Naturfolk). In his thorough analysis of this debate Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson points out that the Icelanders had no problem with the objectification of these alleged “nature folk”. Furthermore: “they never expressed any doubt as to there being a defining line between culture and savagery, between us and them. The debate revolved around which side Iceland belonged on, how developed Icelandic nationality was” (Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson 2003:140, my translation). The overt use of this dichotomy reveals with unsettling clarity a facet of the Icelandic self-image at the time of rising Icelandic nationalism. It is also reveals an image within Denmark, of Iceland as an exotic colony on the northern periphery. But being well acquainted with the discourses of nationalism and colonialism, these Icelanders (not quite “abroad” being subjects to the Danish king) had caught on and were not about to be “othered”.

Emergent Ironic Exoticism It is interesting to compare these representations, and the reactions to them, with the emergent exoticism in contemporary media a century later. National representations within Iceland have through most of the 20th century focused on modernization and deep-rooted literary culture and saga-cultivated landscape. To take a few examples, photo subtexts often underline the connections between a given landscape and “history of the much romanticized Commonwealth or Saga Age, the period in which most of the Icelandic Sagas take place. So-called “pearls of nature” are a reoccurring theme on postcards, art and tourist literature, also featuring söguslóðir: the places of the Sagas. The pearls are alternatively the vast “untouched” wilderness of the highland interior considered, by many Icelanders, as their common land and responsibility (Hafsteinsson 1994). Indeed Sunday television broadcasts always ended with a showcase of the most “national” of Icelandic landscapes, to the soundtrack of the national anthem. Some people even regarded it as

Performing the North

53

improper to turn off the television before the anthem had played out. This Herderian emphasis on the inter-dependency of nature and culture is an increasingly dominant feature in the representation of Icelanders, whether we come across it in a presidential address to the nation or in a magazine interview with the musical artist Björk. Images of the primitive survival of the Icelandic nation in a harsh and barren land, simultaneously preserving an ancient culture of language and literature, are commonly conjured up as a means of getting to the heart of what being an Icelander is. Nature, and those who are seen as living in close contact with it, have nonetheless been increasingly presented in a more primal and even ironic light. Examples of this abound in visual images, especially in advertisements, film and art, centring on and manipulating an iconography of rugged northernness. Representations, such as two recent books/exhibitions, Icelanders (Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson & Unnur Þóra Jökulsdóttir 2004) and Faces of the North (Ragnar Axelsson 2004), directly evoke images of a characteristically sub-arctic culture, concentrating on those who allegedly have not fully crossed the threshold of modernity. In the latter a leading Icelandic photographer, Ragnar Axelsson, does just what so infuriated the Copenhagenbased Icelanders a century before, by juxtaposing Iceland with Greenland as well as the Faroe Islands.5 A common trend in these images is the emphasis on people in the midst of a challenging and cold climate silhouetted against a rugged and barren Icelandic wilderness. This is a contrast to the more subtle aesthetics and sublime representations of landscapes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nonetheless we also find, interestingly enough, an emerging ironic accent on eccentricity in rural culture. Recent examples may be found in an advertisement campaign for fleece clothing depicting Icelanders against the backdrop of desolate landscapes and small towns across the country. Their interchangeable Icelandic and English texts, rather than referring to sagas, often contain ironic messages such as the following, which refers to a remote airport: ‘Welcome to Kaldárbotnsflugvöllur, only one of many airports in Iceland. Expect delays’6. A statement from the advertising agency declares that these advertisements are meant to create the company’s unique profile as part of Icelandic history and the national spirit or þjóðarsál – a common concept in everyday speech. Their slogan “Dress well” is said to have “obvious references to the past and is above all very Icelandic. The advertisements show Icelanders in a cold almost hostile environment. And there is much drama in the facial expressions as well as in the landscape.”7 The irony, drama and stylish posturing could perhaps be related to the modern “cool” image of Icelanders spearheaded by business ventures abroad (such as Icelandair’s promotion of Reykjavík nightlife or the Laundromat café in Copenhagen) and film directors (see for example Baltasar Kormákur’s depiction of downtown life in 101 Reykjavík).

54

Kristinn Schram

The 66° North campaign, started 2004.

Icelandic films, such as those of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, have long depicted rural Iceland essentially as a wonderland of colourful characters, archaic customs and mannerisms, traditional ghosts and magic.8 Friðrik had early on in his career ironically depicted a rural “country-western” festival in north Iceland, complete with drunken, wild and silly behaviour (Kúrekar norðursins or Cowboys of the North). Often these eccentricities are expressed through traditional Icelandic food. For example, in Dagur Kári’s critically acclaimed Nói Albínói or Nói the Albino, the hapless protagonist fumbles while preparing blood-pudding, spilling the blood from a huge pot all over his family. In another recent Icelandic film, Mýrin or Jar City by Baltasar Kormákur, an adaptation of the novel by popular crime writer Arnaldur Indriðason, there is a scene where the protagonist is seen digging into a particularly gelatinous dish of singed sheep’s head or svið (pronounced “svith”, meaning something singed). Indeed, in light of the emphasis put on the protagonist’s consumption of svið, one would be justified in suspecting that its sole purpose was to catch the othering eye of foreign audiences.9 While this traditional dish consisting of a split, singed and boiled sheep’s head is still commercially available in Iceland and displayed in the food stores, the dish’s everyday status and banality has somewhat diminished in recent decades. It has been steadily gaining a place among other traditional dishes such as sour ram’s testicles and cured skate, which are rarely seen except at the time of their designated festivities for which they may add a sense of folksy patriotism. Nonetheless the proprietor of the drive-through restaurant fea-

Performing the North

55

tured in the film claimed a huge boost in sales of this handy and fast food of the ages after its screening began.10 Yet, the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, not one to recoil in the face of traditional produce, seems disturbed in his personal blog: We know well that many do not like whaling, have reservations about the invasion of Icelandic companies, do not appreciate our dams. And perhaps detective Erlendur feasting on svið in Arnaldur’s and Baltasar Kormákur’s film, Jar City, gives a worse image than before; this is, at least, not the image of “gourmet” Iceland – the modern Iceland (Einar K. Guðfinnson 2006).

The minister seems to be suggesting here that this alleged antithesis of gourmet Iceland has little basis in contemporary reality, or at least that if it did then it is not an image to be heralded. But the apparent lack of forcefulness in the minister’s concerns for the “image” of modern Iceland comes to the heart of matter. Despite the potentially deprecating effect on the nation’s image, depicting it rather as eccentric and peripheral, little protest about these representations has been voiced in Iceland. On the contrary, even high political figures openly embrace these eccentricities as a national asset.11 This fact also highlights that, though these are to some extent local and artistic self-representations, they are also potentially lucrative transcultural commodities, reflexively aimed at both foreign and domestic consumers. In comparison with the explosion of protest a century before the current, and in part ironic, exposition of Icelanders as primitive and exotic nature-folk, this seems to have been received with open arms both by Icelanders and the foreign target audience. Whether this is in fact the case (or inversely that the voices of dissent do not reach the public ear) will not be answered here. It nonetheless seems to be the case that in an age of international markets and mass communication, “foreign” commodities are often received and integrated without much political or social turmoil (Bendix & Klein 1993:5). When it comes to the integration of “foreign” people and culture into local society the reverse is often the case (for such comparisons see Spooner 1986; Appadurai 1986). However, what I wish to bring into focus here, through the ethnography, is that against a backdrop of media exoticisms, many Icelanders living abroad actually seem to embody projected images of eccentricity, basing them on differentiating folklore, but performing them to the point of exaggeration in their everyday lives.

Expressive Culture and Performance in Transnational Contexts Íslendingar erlendis or Icelanders abroad is a term that perhaps connotes a strangely static condition of “Icelandicness” and the idea that their presence outside of Iceland is merely tentative. Somehow a term such as Icelandic Americans or Icelandic Canadians has never caught on in the Icelandic language: the descendants of Icelanders that emigrated to North-America over

56

Kristinn Schram

a century ago are still referred to as West-Icelanders. Icelanders abroad are also often considered to be excessively Icelandic, a reflexivity Barbro Klein has frequently come across among Swedes when referring to Swedish Americans (Klein 2001:78). Nevertheless, Icelandic expatriates in any given area rarely form a cohesive community and are usually few and far between.12 Reaching its zenith on festive holidays, in-group congregations are often focused on occasional calendar customs that serve meaningful cohesive purposes. In cities where Icelanders are numerous they may for example meet at the jólaboð or Christmas parties (which often are centred on children) the þorrablót (pronounced “thorra-blote”) a quasi-traditional midwinter feast involving what used to be the last reserves of cured meat and fish products in the old winter month called Þorri, or they may congregate on the 17 June National Holiday celebrating independence from the Denmark since 1944. While performance has proved an integral part of these in-group congregations of Icelanders abroad, the role of folklore in group cohesion is not the topic at hand. Instead I will be concentrating on the reflexive liminality of foreigner-native encounters in which exoticizing performances are generated. Approaches to expressive culture in transnational encounters are plentiful within the discipline of folkloristics. Since work such as Richard Bauman’s “Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore” (1971), the role of folklore as an arena for contesting territories and drawing boundaries has been firmly established. Twenty years later, scholarly efforts to examine the process were multiplied, resulting in a number of innovative case studies. Many of them adapted the performance-centred approach to illustrate the negotiable processes rendering people and symbols foreign as well as well as to analyse the latent and overt strategies in the manipulation of identity symbols (see for example Bendix & Klein 1993; Kirschenblatt-Gimblett 1994; Abrahams 2000). As one of the pioneers of the performance-oriented approach, Bauman emphasized the significance of the narrator’s performance in the interpretation of narratives, defining performance as a way of speaking and communicating, “the essence of which resides in the assumption of responsibility to an audience for a display of communicative skill, highlighting the way in which communication is carried out, above and beyond its referential content” (Bauman 1984:193). To the participants of the narration, performance is open to evaluation, not only of the performer’s skill and effectiveness of display (form) but also of the enhancement of experience (function). In turn, the evaluation of the form, meaning and function of oral narrative is situated in culturally defined scenes or events where behaviour and experience constitute meaningful contexts. The reflective nature of performance lies in its ability to create, store, and transmit identity and cultures. Through it people not only present behaviour, but also reflexively comment on it and the values and cultural situations

Performing the North

57

(Fine & Speer 1992:8). Bauman has also argued that all natural sociable interactions are fundamentally about the construction and negotiation of identity and in interaction narrative performances are vehicles “for the encoding and presentation of information about oneself in order to construct a personal and social image” (Bauman 1984:21). Within the dialectic between individual and society, the stories of self and other, which have been repeated often enough to become artfully shaped performances, are indices of a person’s sense of self. Such performances enable us to understand the Other, even across cultures, “since we universally express our lives in verbal performances, most often story performances” (Fine & Speer 1992:9). But cross-cultural communication does not take place in a vacuum and nativeforeign encounters are not always on an equal footing. The crisis of the foreigner often lies in the ineffectiveness of his corpus of thought processes and behaviours in the new cultural context (Alfred Schutz 1972). As Bendix and Klein have pointed out, “members of the host culture only rarely perceive any advantage to themselves in adjusting their own habits to accommodate the foreigner” (Barbro and Klein 1993:6). To fully comprehend transcultural performances of this kind, the imbalance of power must be confronted in the analysis and research models. A prolific model of the force relationships in vernacular practices can be found in Michel de Certeau’s monumental work The Practice of Everyday Life (1988). Combining the often isolated research of representation on the one hand and the study of modes of behaviour on the other, de Certeau focuses on the subtle processes of people conducting their lives in the midst of cultural consumption and innovation; or what de Certeau refers to as the art of living. This work of scholarship also includes the study of narration that he describes as being inseparable “from the theory of practices, as its condition as well as its production” (de Certeau 1988:78). The problem of studying these processes lay, according to de Certeau, in their “tactical” position: cultural practices he perceives as reactions countering or evading a strategy of authority. He distinguishes these force relationships into strategy and tactics. The former is defined as the calculus of force relationships possible when a subject of will and power can be separated in a given environment. The later, tactics, is the calculus that does not work on a spatial or institutional localization and therefore fragmentarily insinuates itself into “the other’s” place (for an excellent example of these force relationships see Timothy Tangherlini’s exploration of the storytelling of paramedics (Tangherlini 2000). Ever reaching towards a theory of the relationship that links everyday pursuits to particular circumstances, these tactics can only be understood in the local networks of labour and recreation. These pursuits unfailingly establish relational tactics: “a struggle for life, artistic creations and autonomous initiatives” (de Certeau 1988:9). Applying these models to autonomous initiatives of transcultural narrative performances is helpful in un-

58

Kristinn Schram

derstanding the processes and relationships of power embedded in the various contexts of foreign-native encounters.

Peeping Through Windows: Culture Transfer and Yulelad Blunders The impact of force relationships in transcultural performances is evident in the following story of a cultural transfer gone wrong. At Christmas, Icelandic families often arrange to have smoked lamb sent or brought from Iceland and adhere to other Christmas customs that may not always fit well with local tradition. Such was the predicament of an Icelandic family with two children living in North Carolina. Their live-in aunt and babysitter, Björk Þorleifsdóttir, interjected the following narratives into a conversation over dinner with four other thirty-something Icelandic dinner guests (including Katla and myself), touching on various amusing misunderstandings involving immigrants. She was encouraged to repeat the tale of “the Yulelads and the children”. This refers to her previously recounted story of an aborted attempt at introducing, to an American environment, the Icelandic custom of shoe-gifts in which parents, in lieu of the Yulelads, lay treats in children’s shoes, placed overnight in windowsills. Björk: The siblings were very excited about all the Christmas fuss and had never been exposed to any American Santas. So they were off their heads with excitement to tell all their American friends on the block there in North Carolina about the Icelandic Santas. After which the kids on the block were much more enthusiastic about the Icelandic Christmas customs in which you put your shoe in window on the thirteen nights before Christmas and not some sock over the fireplace on Christmas night. Some nonsense like that. (group chuckles) Líney: (mocking disdain) For crying out load. Katla: All thirteen. Björk: Right. Thirteen dudes sko13 Líney: Get a lot more stuff sko. Björk: Yes, indeed. So when the first Yulelad, Stekkjastaur came, all the children in the street knew just who he was and had all (laughs) stuffed their shoes in the window. And some of the parents got wind of this new interest and began to wonder what all these shoes were doing in the windows. And the children explained that the Icelandic Yulelads were coming through and they were giving the children in their shoe. So some of the parents gave in to the pressure and gave the children in their shoe. But other parents said “we won’t participate in this nonsense”. So this created some sort of fiasco in the neighbourhood, some kind of committee of parents contacted my sister and kindly requested a meeting with my sister to discuss this Yulelad business with the American children and explain to them Katla: The big case of the Yulelads Björk: The big case of the Yulelads yes (laughs) and explain to them that there has been some sort of misunderstanding, these Yulelads being rather senile old wags they had wandered too far over the ocean by mistake after delivering sweets to the Icelandic children. So my sister somehow had to explain that if any American chil-

Performing the North

59

dren were given something in their shoe this was in fact a Yulelad blunder and that uh, it would not happen again because the Icelandic Yulelads were that nationalistic that they only gave to Icelandic children. And so ended the Yulelad-shoegiving to the native children of America. And so endeth that tale. So we’re very dutiful, the family, in spreading this nonsense (laughter). Expanding our borders (laughter builds up). The ambassadors of the Yulelads and the elves. (in deep self-mocking tone:) I’m quite a storyteller.

While the story focuses on humorous children’s folklore, it is nonetheless structured around tensions in adult force relationships and cultural homogeny. Into the tranquil street life of American children a tension is introduced in the form of eccentric male supernatural figures encroaching on the children’s windows. These over-the-top Yulelads, like hybrids of peepingtoms and pied-pipers, collude with the children and exceed even the American Santa Claus in their exotic extravagancy. This outrage is furthermore framed in the reflexive storytelling situation by mock-patriotism and cheering expressed by the storyteller through reflexive wordplay and intonation. But the dramatic imbalance of this tactical resistance must also be set right by the “host” culture. A force operation is accentuated by the committee’s swift summoning of the subordinate Icelandic mother. She in turn must rely on her own storytelling by which she mediates the “foreign” and inappropriate folk custom in an ingeniously absurd marriage of the supernatural and nationalism – a supernationalism of sorts. Whatever remaining tension there is left is deflated in the coda, the closing comment that frames the story (Labov 1972) in Björk’s self-parody of her family as tradition bearers in a foreign outpost, and of herself as a storyteller, pre-empting any critique of personal patriotic sentiment or artistic pretensions. Björk’s reference to the elves alludes to another conversation-embedded narrative, which exhibits a more successful cultural transmission. It centres on her own recital and performance of another Christmas custom to a group of her friends in Alabama: Björk: Well, we exported the custom out to Alabama and our friends there thought it was just so cute, and exciting and crazy that they picked it up. Kristinn: The custom of? Björk: turning out all the lights in the house on the thirteenth [the thirteenth day of Christmas counting from 25 December] walking with one lit candle, all in a group, into each room and reciting the verse: Come those who come will, stay those that stay will, depart those that depart will, harmlessly to me and mine.14 And so the verse was written down and given to the gay community in Alabama (laughs) where we heard it had lived on in its written form and was considered really kooky and fun. But I don’t know. It’s been years since, they might have stopped but for a certain time in a certain group it continued. Kristinn: And how was all this received? Björk: They thought it was really exciting. They thought it was so crazy that people believed such nonsense. They were all “oh it’s so cute.” They thought it was lovable. Kristinn: (laughs) How did you get the idea, how did this come up?

60

Kristinn Schram

Björk: Its just a tradition in my family. You can do it on New Year’s Eve but it works better on the thirteenth. Its an absolute that if you don’t do it on Twelfth Night, then you had better have invited the whole gang on New Year’s Eve or Day. It’s the most effective and you get good spirits in my family’s house if it’s the thirteenth. But you can’t mess it up or you get really bad karma. (laughs). You don’t invite danger into your home.15 Kristinn: No no. But when you do this, and your family, is there some seriousness in this. Björk: Oh yes, no question. It’s all rather creepy. You turn off the lights. It has to be turned off. Then someone gets the shakes, and we start to tense up. And everyday walks and mutters this verse. After that there is some giggling. And you’ve walked everywhere, into the food storage area and each cranny of the house. And everybody in my family is very conservative about this, even though they pretend to be great scientists. But this never fails. So.

In this story Björk ironically portrays the transmission of an Icelandic folk rite to the unusual recipients: a group of friends “gay community” of Americans in Alabama. The verse and custom is a variation of a protection rite in traditional Icelandic folklore practised on either Christmas night, New Year’s Eve or Twelfth Night and is meant to appease the elves and hidden people believed to wander at these times and is common in folktales (see for example Gunnell 2002). Björk stresses the irony of this and the othering reception of the custom but paradoxically underpins the rite’s importance as social binder and folk belief among her otherwise scientifically-minded family members. What is significant, though, is how she constitutes its practice in a contextualized sensory experience, walking as a group in the darkness, bringing a dim light into every nook and cranny of the home. In so doing, she juxtaposes this dislocated performance of culture with her family’s ritual exploration of the home’s space – claiming and defining the inner from the outer; the us from the them. While this re-contextualization of the custom within the host culture is to some extent based on its perceived “cuteness”, as she herself states, this sensory impact of the narrative context should not be overlooked. What is also significant from the perspective of native-foreigner relations is that within the host culture – her native friends in Alabama – it is the othered – Björk – that is in control of the performance, setting the stage and directing the action.

Knocking on Doors: Integration Through Exoticism As an interesting example of successful integration into a host culture, the following narratives show how the “distressing” and exaggerated performances of formerly banal food customs can serve as stepping stone in the integration process. Áslaug Hersteinsdóttir is in her mid-thirties and has spent much of her adult life in Finland and Russia. When we interview her, she is expecting a child with her Finnish partner and has no direct plans to move to Iceland.16 From her first consecutive years in St. Petersburg and Helsinki,

Performing the North

61

This photo is taken during Björk’s ironic narration of her experiences in the south of the USA. To her left sits one of the dinner guests, Davíð Ólafsson. Both deserve my warmest thanks for their participation. Photo by Kristinn Schram. June 2007.

she remembers herself and other Icelanders as being very preoccupied with national characteristics. Conversation often focused on analysing cultural differences and similarities in Finns and Russians in comparison with other Icelanders. After settling down in Finland, she quickly found herself in the dual role of representing Iceland to Finns and vice versa. She gave presentations and wrote articles on Iceland in local Finnish papers and for a period of time served as foreign correspondent every other Saturday for the Icelandic Broadcasting Company. In day-to-day conversations, Áslaug would also self-effacingly answer questions about Icelanders: Áslaug: Generally when I meet people then I say Iceland is full of know-it-alls, that Icelanders are eccentric and very entertaining and, of course, always that Icelanders are unpunctual. I mean (laughs) it’s a national characteristic how late we are all the time.

In addition to lack of punctuality17 she also attributed the dubious talent of exaggeration and storytelling to her fellow-countrymen, something she contrasted with the straight-forwardness she had experienced with Finns: “Icelanders are really good at exaggerating. It’s also entertaining to listen to people who exaggerate (laughs). That’s why they are also good at telling stories. Its interesting to listen to. But the Finns aren’t much like that.” As a case in point, Áslaug mentions that unlike the Finns, Icelanders tend to “exaggerate as much as they can” when it comes to Icelandic food but asserts that the same doesn’t apply to her. Nevertheless, her conversationally embedded personal experience narratives about the food she was brought up on and how she later presented it shed light on how banal food customs “at home” become exotic performances abroad. Having initially taken tradition food with her, she later sent for shark, and also smoked lamb which she pre-

62

Kristinn Schram

pared for her flatmates in the traditional sweet white sauce. Her explanation as to why she did this is quite interesting, as is her regret at losing touch with the tradition: Áslaug: I did it most likely…, I just decided to distress people. And since then, what’s happened to me is that I see this food so rarely now. I have been to þorrablóts, but I’ve really stopped liking þorri-food like I did before. One has become so unused to it. I ate svið [singed sheep’s head] as a kid – I’ve often told this story – and the eyes were my favourite part. Katla: Did you live in the country? Áslaug: No, just in Kópavogur [a town next to the capital Reykjavík]. It was dad’s favourite food. Just svið, it was always every other Saturday, chicken the other Saturday. Kristinn: We had svið at my home too. Almost weekly. Áslaug: Yes. Most liked the tongue best. Of course, people don’t eat svið that much any more. Kristinn: Perhaps. I don’t know. But you’ve lost your appetite for it through the years? Áslaug: Yes, regretfully. I used to go to the corner stores at home in Iceland and bought canned shark (Katla grimaces – Áslaug laughs) and ate it while watching television. I just really enjoyed shark.

Áslaug would later come to participate in organized midwinter feasts or þorrablót, both in Helsinki and St. Petersburg, affairs that were often arranged by Icelandic associations in collusion with temporarily stationed Icelandic businessmen.18 Áslaug claims that the businessmen were eager to socialize with Icelandic students and through them gain access to the local culture they felt isolated from. Often feasts such as these would take on the form of national representations aimed at the host culture. The guest lists would include affluent locals who were presented with hired entertainment or presentations dealing with differences and similarities between the respective nations. The costly importation of cured and pungent meat, fish and dairy products would, of course, be a central part of this representation, and comparable to the exotic fashion in which Áslaug herself presented the food to friends in private life. This presentation of the traditional food as curiosa is nonetheless a far cry from its banal consumption in Iceland (see above). But what is also interesting is the acute reflexive awareness of how foreigners receive the food and how Björk herself has begun to marginalize these traditional food practices in her own life: Áslaug: I think it [traditional Icelandic food] is very uncommon. That it’s not normal. And moreover from an island like this; way out in the ocean (lift ups her hand, pointing, looking up) where the natives eat shark and sheep heads (hearty laugh).

In this clarification of how she effectively and quite deliberately “distressed” her dinner guests, she elaborates on the archaic and primitive image projected, something further illustrated by her self-effacing laughter and

Performing the North

63

hand gestures as if pointing to the North on a wall-based map. Iceland’s position on the global northern fringe of habitation only further exoticizes her visualized role and position in these transcultural exchanges. The fact that Áslaug willingly and ironically took on the role of the exotic native from the obscure northern island “way out in the ocean” in her encounter must also be in put into context with her successful integration into Finnish society. The ironic performance can thus in fact be considered a stepping stone in her integration process. Through the bewildering sensory experience and symbolic primitivism she presented, Áslaug upset the strategies within her host locality, creating a new liminal space in which to operate and perform. The tactic was further mediated by the jocularity of her dinner guests’ strong responses to the exotic narratives of food consumption in her folk culture. Having used this exotic representation as an entry point, she then slowly, and with some regret, went on to abandon the food custom on which her performance was based and so widen even further the distance between the performance and banality; eccentricity and authenticity.

Walking Up Hills – Entering Societies The re-appropriation of exoticism in conjunction with Icelandic food customs was indeed common among my informants. Another case in point can be found in the narrative accounts of an Icelandic expatriate in Scotland and his relationship with his flatmates and friends; his American partner and in-laws; and also with an exclusive society of mountaineers. Haraldur Guðmundsson is a postgraduate in mathematics and has been researching artificial intelligence for a few years.19 Although I quote him at the beginning of this article on his run-in with “the question”, a common misconception of Icelandic architecture, Haraldur initially stated that his national origin had little bearing on his everyday life. He socializes with very few Icelanders in Scotland and does not seek out Icelandic cultural events unless they are especially to his liking. He claims that whatever need he has of speaking Icelandic he fulfils by occasionally speaking to his family on the phone or during visits. To some extent Haraldur also maintains a link to his native country through the media. He follows Icelandic news and is particularly interested in British press reactions to Icelandic business ventures. He asserts that he is not filled with any sense of pride by reports of Icelanders taking over foreign business, which are frequently historicized with references and allusions to Viking raids (see for example Griffiths 2006). His interest stems more from when he worked earlier for an Icelandic bank and having since been asked about the Icelandic economy by the likes of a Lloyds banker. Other references to media can be seen as equally reflexive and representational. For example, he describes the above-mentioned Icelanders, which he gave to his partner’s parents, as being representational for an important part

64

Kristinn Schram

of Icelanders, albeit not the whole of the nation. Asked if he followed Icelandic films, he replied that he would have liked to see a television broadcast of Dagur Kári’s Nói Albínói again, having seen it earlier in a local arthouse cinema: “I would have wanted my girlfriend to see it. To see how difficult (he chuckles) how difficult life is in the Westfjords.”20 Although Haraldur does not regularly seek out Icelanders, he stated that he wanted to attend the last þorrablót on account of his American partner but was away. “It was really unfortunate,” he says and adds with a chuckle “because my girlfriend really wanted to see, to get to know this incredible food, or rather to see other people eat it.” This sardonic pun becomes even more significant as we learn more about Haraldur’s own practice of (that is his attitudes to and experiences with) traditional foodways. Indeed a cluster of his narratives set him as the subject as well the agent of subtle banter and self-parody revolving around his own food habits. Haraldur has in fact managed to maintain such fundamentals of the traditional Icelandic diet as fish, adapting them to his life abroad. For example, Haraldur and his otherwise vegetarian fiancé meet halfway over fish suppers. This enables him to continue on a diet of fish three to four times a week, similar to that he was raised on. He says that he feels weak and dull-minded without it. He is satisfied with the Edinburgh fishmongers and even claims to get an outlet for his national sentiment by shopping in a particular Japanese fish shop where he is still greeted with respect after a discussion on shark preparation. In addition to this diet, he supplements his Omega 3 intake with dry fish brought from home and stocks up on bottles of Lýsi, a popular Icelandic fish liver oil. He halfjokingly complains about running out and going on the Lýsi tablets, expressing severe doubt as to the compatibility of non-Icelandic fish oil and Omega 3 products. His unwavering faith in the product has become a standing joke with his flatmates, something he answers by “preaching and pointing to studies in its support”: Haraldur: This is made into a joke. My flatmates are quick to point out the reason, that the contents of the bottles are the cause of the contamination – or that the fridge smells. Which is, of course, complete nonsense.

Despite the strict adherence to his relatively traditional diet in his daily life, Haraldur is quite aware of its transcultural significance. He has, in fact, appropriated it into the daily routines within his host culture. Exoticism as a tactic of gaining access and inclusion is quite apparent in Haraldur’s initiation into an exclusive and traditional British folkgroup. An important part of his circle of friends consists of a group of British mountaineers or hillwalkers. An avid outdoorsmen himself he got to know the group from a professor who eventually wrote the letter of recommendation needed to join the club. Early on in our interview when we asked if in general he thought that being an Icelander had any bearing on his communication with British people, he

Performing the North

65

answered: “I think it was easier for me to get in. I was really well received in the mountaineering club because I was an Icelander.” This positive reception lies to some extent in the reflexive cultural framework of the folkgroup, and its recurrent appreciation of wilderness and the exotic. Scottish hill walking was established as an honourable pastime and code of practice among circles of gentlemen in the mid-nineteenth century, alongside an emerging romantic notion of nature “forged through the contrast with nineteenth century industrial cities and their sense-scapes” (Macnaghten & Urry 2001:5). From these practices it has been argued that the culture arose that would instil or enhance tendencies of exploration and admiration of “untouched” nature in addition to the redemptive values attributed to healthy and picturesque walks in the British countryside in the eighteenth century (see Solnit 2000 and a modification of this argument in Lund 2005:27–42). The implications of being an Icelander within this cultural framework, which came later to Iceland and in different form (see for example Sumarliði Ísleifsson 1996), were certainly not lost on Haraldur: Haraldur: I think Iceland is a little exotic in mountaineering. There is so much untouched there, while here every hill has been walked from every side and been searched for a steeper way up. But at home, some shepherd might have run up and down but nobody saw the point until the twentieth century in walking on mountains just walking on them. Usually the sheep are the reason you’re there.

A recent ethnography of hillwalkers in Scotland provides some illuminating and contextual annotations for Haraldur’s narrative. From her fieldwork in Scotland in 2001 and 2002, anthropologist Katrín Lund learned that when mountaineers scale the hills they express what the eye catches through actual descriptions. They look around and name mountains, glens and lochs in a process of ordering the scenery. Moreover, she learned that walking in the Scottish mountains is about “getting to know the country”, and this was what most mountaineers agreed on. Working with the notion of reflexive awareness, Lund goes on to illustrate that what the mountaineer sees needs to be examined in relation to the sensual dialogue between the surroundings and the self She found that in the course of one’s eyes moving over the Scottish Highlands (established as spectacular landscape) modes of movement change at different inclinations and over the duration of the climb and that “the eye not only observes, it also reflects” (Lund 2005:28–29). This correlated with the views the mountaineers frequently pointed out to her, that when walking the Scottish hills you learn as much about yourself as you learn about Scotland and that “getting to know the country and getting to know yourself is the same thing’ (Lund 2005:29). It is into this sensory dialogue, reflexive awareness and exclusive social context that Haraldur brings his own sense of self and place. On joining the society he presented a pamphlet he had put together entitled An Introduction

66

Kristinn Schram

to Mountaineering in Iceland and provided networks and contacts in Icelandic mountaineering. He has recently gone as far as to bring two of his Scottish friends to Iceland. As he says, “we climbed a new mountain route and that’s always considered remarkable. It’s something that will live on for the next decades.” Self-effacingly, he declares having for long been planning to seek funding from Icelandic airlines for British mountaineers, by so doing bolstering tourism over the wintertime. Haraldur is frequently asked about the country, its geology, climate and history. Overall, he explains, the mountaineers seek to gain from each other’s experiences, practical knowledge and significantly from each stories. These storytelling sessions often begin by trading practical information, how to get to the wilds and what to do there and who to ask for logistical information. Often this will entail personal experience narratives that are often characterized by what he calls healthy exaggerations – a common Icelandic term: Haraldur: Yes, what really matters in this is indeed the natural conditions, how the snow lies, the ice. It matters greatly in terms of safety. People ask me. There’s news of someone, somewhere and what the conditions where like. That’s when the stories follow. Then of course when men have had a few drinks, than it’s like in fishing, the salmon gets bigger and bigger with every story. It always gets steeper and steeper.

As an example of integrating into the group Haraldur mentions how after he started to understand the in-crowd, and sometimes jocular, use of Gaelic place-names he began to relate to his fellow-mountaineers how place-names in the Iceland often correspond with the Scottish. In the light of his experiences it can also be argued that cultural exchange during, or more frequently, after the act of mountaineering, adds significantly to an already reflexive construction of place and self. In addition to the reflexive awareness of self and country already present in the mountaineering experience, Haraldur brings a sense of place from outside of the immediate locality. Indeed he also literally brings the “other” to his own locality by facilitating mountaineering trips to Iceland. But he also does this symbolically in the context of the Scottish hillwalking through the process of both narration and, as illustrated below, symbolic food display as well as ironic narration of his foodways as being incongruous, exotic and northern. This becomes clear when he explains the reason why he has acquired brennivín (literally “burnt wine”), the signature Icelandic schnapps, and harðfiskur (dried fish) from his family: Haraldur: That’s mainly for, and has become an old tradition of mine, when I go to the mountains. Its really great once you come back, because harðfiskur is packed with proteins (gesture: presses hands together tightly) when you’re back in your tent or your hut and are recharging for the next day. And also exhibits one’s custom (gesture: hands reaching out, palms upward). The Scots, of course, drink whisky like it was water. It’s a big part, at the end of their day, to have a little whisky and go over the day’s events. And then I have presented a little brennivín and have tried to… (starts smiling) to turn them. The reception has been mixed.

Performing the North

67

The hint of irony in the last utterance and the grin that followed suggests that this attempt at dietary conversion did not receive en entirely positive reaction. Indeed, an initiation into Icelandic tradition was not necessarily intended. In what he refers to as an “old tradition” of his, we may certainly see the expression of nutritional values deeply rooted in Haraldur’s upbringing and characteristic of a traditional Icelandic diet. But it is no less his performance (and the olfactory effects of the food), rather than merely his consumption, that has most significance in cultural context of those evenings recapping the day’s events in tents and huts. He further elaborates on this in what he calls tröllasögur (literally “troll-tales”) or tall tales: Haraldur: Yes, I of course tell them troll-tales of how one should eat shark with the brennivín and then completely exaggerate the shark’s production process. That’s a real fountain and I’ve done that for the men, yes. I would just really like to be able to bring over some shark (laughs) to show the men that it isn’t just some fairy tale.

The exotic and masculine symbolism seen, evoking a northern counterpart to the already exotic Scottish Highlands, offers this Icelander abroad a distinctive voice in the sensory dialogue and reflexive identity negotiation. The construction of the spectacular Highlands is admittedly perhaps akin to the heterotopias of Icelandic nature. But considering Haraldur’s narratives, I would argue that the image of Icelandic nature he performs, and in fact practises, is not a mere internalized component based on ethereal stereotypes. It is on the contrary a major component of his identity, daily life and foodways, and provides cultural capital both “at home” but more significantly abroad, within the exclusive groups he most effectively interacts with. It is an essential part of his phenomenological reality that is experienced with all his senses, explored with acquired skill and folklore and importantly constructed and narrated with agency. However it is also a performed, exaggerated re-appropriation of an emerging exotic image of a wild and “untouched” north. Through this performance, “staged” within the narrative context of an enclosed tent or hut, Haraldur deliberately embodies this exotic image and takes full advantage of the visual, olfactory and savoury effects of the traditional food he offers as well as its symbolic meanings. While distancing himself from the notion of authenticity (of the folklore or his national identity) Haraldur chooses eccentricity as a tactic to acquire voice and authority within the strategies of the host culture.

Conclusions When writing back in the face of othering representations created about them abroad, Icelanders in early twentieth-century Copenhagen rejected an exotic image of themselves, stressing their modern Europeanness, political

68

Kristinn Schram

sophistication and developed – albeit deep-rooted – culture. In turn, they expressed abhorrence to the allegedly primitive nature-folk they saw on the other side of the culture-nature dichotomy. In contemporary times marked by international market forces, tourism and global media, Icelanders are not simply reluctant receivers of exotic representations but have actually become their active performers. However, unlike the disembodied media images of “the other”, these performances can in fact be seen as a step in the intricate communal processes of identity negotiation embedded in culturally specific contexts and sensory experiences. Turning the representations of northern eccentric nature-folk to their own ends, these individuals have re-appropriated exoticized vernacular practices abroad as a tactic to gain access and influence within the strategies of new localities. Yet through their playful exaggerations, they have also distanced themselves from any sense of authenticity that might be associated with these practices. In effect, they have negotiated new, ironic post-national identities, applying differentiation not to build walls, but to open doors.

Postscript In light of recent economic developments it seems almost impossible to conclude this article without a note on how, for many Icelanders abroad, the liminal space of foreignness has now been charged with a new dynamic. With a media backdrop of overgrown Icelandic banks collapsing both at home and abroad; debilitating state guarantees of foreign deposits; and the involvement of the International Monetary Fund, everyday transnational encounters and performances may be transformed. While Iceland may still be relatively obscure in the minds of many Europeans and North Americans, the coverage of the country’s woes and its effects on foreign depositors has been considerable. The high profile that Icelandic businessmen have had in countries of Northern Europe often referred to as Viking raiders, has done little to quell negativity. Indeed many Icelanders report negative encounters, and even altercations, abroad while others receive sympathy, condescension and even offers of financial assistance. Future research would do well in taking notice of these ever shifting dynamics of identities and the spaces in which they are negotiated. Not only is the media backdrop altered but the composition of Icelanders abroad (fewer financial professionals for one thing) and their economic and cultural conditions are likely to change as well. In what ways people may continue to “perform the North” remains to be seen. While the borealism of exotic and eccentric images, to appropriate Edward Said’s term orientalism, may persist its active re-appropriation might not continue in the same way. Tactics may change with the strategies of culturally specific contexts. But what is clear is that in the study of cultural identity and its performance in everyday

Performing the North

69

life and media, this albeit horrific economic crisis offers unique opportunities.

Kristinn Schram Icelandic Centre for Ethnology and Folklore/University of Edinburgh www.icef.is e-mail: [email protected]

References Abrahams, Roger D. 2000: Narratives of Location and Dislocation. In Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity. A Festschrift for Barbro Klein. Botkyrka. Appadurai, Ardjun 1986: The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge. Appadurai, Ardjun 1996: The Production of Locality. In Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis. Bauman, Richard 1971: Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 84. Bauman, Richard 1984: Story, Performance and Event. Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative. Cambridge. Bendix, Regina & Klein, Barbro 1993: Foreigners and Foreignness in Europe: Expressive Culture in Transcultural Encounters. Journal of Folklore 30. Billig, Michael 1995: Banal Nationalism. London. Davidson, Peter 2005: The Idea of North. London. de Certeau, Michel 1988: The Practice of Everyday Life. London. Edensor, Tim 2001: Walking in the British Countryside: Reflexivity, Embodied Practices and Ways of Escape. Bodies of Nature. London. Einar K. Guðfinnson 9 December 2006. http://www.ekg.is/blogg/nr/669. Fine, Elizabeth C. and Speer, Jean Haskell 1992: Performance, Culture, and Identity. Westport. Gísli Sigurðsson 1996: Icelandic National Identity: From Romanticism to Tourism. Making Europe in Nordic Contexts. (NIF Publications 35.) Turku. Grace, Sherrill 2002: Canada and the Idea of North. Montreal & Kingston. Greenblatt, Stephen 1991: Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World. Chicago. Griffiths, Ian 2006: Viking raiders return undefeated to Britain’s financial territory. The Guardian. 13 October. London. Guðmundur Hálfdánarson 2001: Íslenska þjóðríkið: uppruni og endimörk. Reykjavík. Gunnar Karlsson 1995: The Emergence of Nationalism in Iceland. Ethnicity and Nation Building in the Nordic World. London. Gunnell, Terry 2002: Komi þeir sem koma vilja … Úr manna minnum: Greinar um íslenskar þjóðsögur. Reykjavík. Jón Yngvi Jóhannesson 2003: Af reiðum Íslendingum. Deilur um Nýlendusýninguna 1905. Þjóðerni í þúsund ár? Reykjavík. Klein, Barbro 2001: More Swedish than in Sweden, More Iranian than in Iran? Folk Culture and World Migrations. In Upholders of Culture Past and Present. Stockholm.

70

Kristinn Schram

Labov, William 1972: The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax. Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia. Lund, Katrín 2005: Seeing in Motion and the Touching Eye: Walking over Scotland’s Mountains. Etnofoor 17. Macnaghten, Phil and Urry, John 2001: Bodies of Nature. London. Oxfeldt, Elisabeth 2005: Nordic Orientalism: Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800–1900. Copenhagen. Ragnar Axelsson 2004: Faces of the North. Reykjavík. Said, Edward W. 1978: Orientalism. London. Schutz, Alfred 1972: Der Fremde. Gesammelte Aufsätze Vol. II. The Hague. Sigurgeir Sigurjónsson & Unnur Þóra Jökulsdóttir 2004: Íslendingar. Reykjavík. Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson 1994: Fjallmyndin – sjónarhorn íslenskra landsagsljósmynda. Ímynd Ísland: Reykjavík. Snorri Hjartarson 1952: Á Gnitaheiði. Reykjavík. Spooner, Brian 1986: Weavers and Dealers: The Authenticity of an Oriental Carpet. The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge. Sumarliði Ísleifsson 1996: Ísland framandi land. Reykjavík. Sumarliði Ísleifsson 2003: Iceland: Descriptions of Iceland and Icelanders Written by Foreign Writers of Previous Centuries. Reykjavík. Tangherlini, Timothy R. 2000: Heroes and Lies: Storytelling Tactics among Paramedics. Folklore 111. Vilhjálmur Finsen 1958: Hvað landinn sagði erlendis. Norðri. Akureyri.

1 As an example I distinctly remember appropriating a Disneyland-bought leather belt in Native American style. Having had my name engraved on the belt, I claimed it was a gift from the Icelandic Eskimos and that my name in the mother tongue actually translates as “The Heroic One” (as opposed to the much duller “Christian”). 2 This feature film debut of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson was Oscar-nominated and received much acclaim both at home and abroad. 3 This work, which will be discussed further in this article, includes Bendix & Klein (1993), Kirschenblatt-Gimblett (1994) and Abrahams (2000). 4 The ethnography on which I base this article began in 2005 as part of my ongoing doctoral research in the University of Edinburgh and the research project “Iceland and Images of the North” (www.inor.is). Much of the fieldwork was carried out in collaboration with fellow ethnologist and partner Katla Kjartansdóttir, centring on reflexive participant observation, qualitative inquiry and audiovisual documentation of how Icelanders abroad conceptualize, perform and negotiate their identities. Proceeding from this common ground, we attended gatherings and visited private homes in cities such as London, Glasgow, Berlin, Edinburgh and Copenhagen as well as interviewing participants who live or have lived in various other locations in Europe and North America. 5 As another example, the Icelandic Photopress Society has in recent years rewarded the most “national” photo. This year the motif was Icelanders bathing in the freezing sea and last year Axelsson won a prize for his depiction of the last farmer of a valley in Westfjords, as his last sheep are taken to slaughter. The jury’s appraisal was as follows: “The Icelandic sheep, a farm, steep slopes, rough landscape, dark clouds and farmers who have lived in close communion with harsh natural forces. Can it be more Icelandic?” (www.vikari.is/index.php?tree=6&page=61&ad=gr&id=925, last viewed in February 2006). Photograph by Ragnar Axelsson. 6 The 66º North campaign of 2004 and 2005 by Jónsson & Le’macks. Photography by Ari Magnússon.

Performing the North 7 8 9

10 11

12 13

14 15 16 17

18

19

20

71

/www.jl.is/verkefni/nr/8 (last viewed in February 2006). See e.g. Börn náttúrunnar/Children of Nature (1991), Bíodagar/Movie Days (1994) and Á köldum klaka/Cold Fever (1995). Conversely, cases can be made that the scene ties in with the film’s gory style, as well as fitting well into the traditional contemporary dichotomy drawn up between the protagonist, a middle-aged detective, and his younger counterpart. Fréttablaðið (a major Icelandic newspaper), 5 November 2006. In an attempt to illustrate and trumpet Icelandic business successes abroad the president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, stated in a speech that “because of how small the Icelandic nation is, we do not travel the world with an extra baggage of ulterior motives or big power interests rooted in military, financial or political strength. No one is afraid to work with us; people even see us as fascinating eccentrics who can do no harm and therefore all doors are thrown wide open when we arrive” (Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson 2005:5). One of the few possible exceptions to this is Denmark, where the Icelandic embassy reports around 8,000 expatriates. I retain the Icelandic interjection sko because it is idiomatic and intoned with mock forcefulness, its obscure meaning being something to the effect of “see here!”; “let me tell you”! or “no less” depending on the context. This is my translation of the variant Björk recited: Komi þeir sem koma vilja, veri þeir sem vera vilja, fari þeir sem fara vilja, mér og mínum að meinalausu. Icelandic proverb: Þú býður ekki hættunni heim. This interview was conducted in June 2006. I wish to thank Áslaug, now living with her husband and two children in Helsinki, for her contribution to the research. This was actually among the most common things our participants mentioned when asked to “describe Icelanders”. General responses to the question were surprisingly consistent from one participant to another suggesting some uniformity within banal national identities (on banal nationalism see Michael Billig, 1995). Other common responses described Icelanders as disorganized, discourteous nature-lovers who have an omnipresent can-do attitude which is characterized by the idiom “þetta reddast”; meaning roughly that the things will work themselves out. Indeed Áslaug referred to this alleged characteristic even before the interview formally began. Katla Kjartansdóttir and I have also conducted participant observations of ironic performances given at the Icelandic þorrablót in Scotland and the þorrablót of the London branch of the Icelandic Glitnir bank. While still in the UK, Haraldur went south of the border to England not long after this much-appreciated contribution to the research in the summer of 2006. He has recently communicated that he still misses Scotland. While I do not pretend to understand my informant’s hilarity at this point, a certain and perhaps apparent irony presents itself in that Nói Albínói does not go far in representing the Westfjords towns. In fact, in my interview with Dagur Kári (2005), he claims that the scripted location was modelled on Springfield, the cartoon town from TV series The Simpsons.

72

Kristinn Schram

Transatlantic Place Making

73

Transatlantic Space Making The Use of Swedish Bridal Crown as Heritage Performance in the United States Lizette Gradén

Värmlandsgåvan, The Värmland Gift, which is a donation from people of the province of Värmland in Sweden to Värmlanders in the United States, was presented to the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1952.1 The Värmland Gift is an assemblage of almost 3,000 greetings gathered in a book, 200 volumes of literature and 300 objects which constitutes the largest donation ever made to the American Swedish Institute’s collection. Most symbolic value has been ascribed to a replica of a bridal crown from Karlstad Cathedral. The questions are: How does a centerpiece of a collection come about? What is the relationship between such heritage performance and the making of place? This study forms part of a wider study of layman collections produced in the wake of migration and found in cultural history museums. Here, my main focus is the performative use of a Swedish bridal crown and how the use of this piece in the United States contributes to the reshaping of emigrant and immigrant place into a malleable, coherent transatlantic space.2 The letter of intent that accompanied the gift explained that the collection was created by over 1,000 private individuals in collaboration with Värmlands hembygdsförbund, the regional folklife association, and was meant to provide the 140,000 people who emigrated from Värmland between 1850 and 1930, and their descendants, with “an in-depth material history that they lack in America.”3 The idea of the Värmland Gift dates from 1948. On the occasion of the first celebration of the Sweden-America Day in Karlstad, Swedish Consul General Carl Fredrik Hellström from Minneapolis suggested, as an addition to rituals such as the Sweden-America Day, a substantial material gift articulating the good relationship between Värmland and the US, created over the years by emigrants and returnees and their friends and family who had remained at home.4 The idea of such a gift captivated Värmland’s governor

74

Lizette Gradén

Axel Westling. In October 1951 he sent an appeal to every parish in the province.5 Through the efforts of a committee with representatives from the parishes, the entire gift was assembled in six months. In addition to the parish gifts, the committee decided on a bridal crown as the common gift from the province. In June 1952, when a delegation from Värmland presented the Värmland Gift to the American Swedish Institute, it was received with great interest.6 Upon arrival, the collection was inaugurated by Värmlandsförbundet, a social organization founded in 1927, and made the highlight of Svenskarnas Dag, one of the major Swedish festivals in the Midwest. Since it was installed, the American Swedish Institute has displayed the collection in various constellations, or new versions of the collection, over a period of 50 years. In addition to the centerpiece bridal crown, which was commissioned expressly for the collection, the Värmland Gift includes art, handcrafts, textiles, utensils, inventions, furniture, religious objects, miniature houses, photographs, publications, and more. The donors described some objects as functional and everyday, others as extravagant and highly unique.7 In a Swedish-American setting, these objects are transformed into symbols of identity. For emigrants from Värmland and their descendants, the collection makes visible the ties to their old homeland. To visitors from Sweden, the objects are reminders of the Swedishness of their American cousins. To visitors in general, the Värmland Gift displays analogies of their own migration story.8 The first time I learned about the Värmland Gift was in 1990 when I worked at the American Swedish Institute. Because I grew up in Värmland, the curator was eager to show me the Värmland Gift. I returned to the Värmland Gift in 2006. This article is based on archival material from Sweden and the USA, and on fieldwork and interviews in the United States. During fieldwork I have worked with curators, volunteers and staff who care for and preserve the Värmland Gift Collection at the American Swedish Institute, as well as with individuals who have used the bridal crown.

The Transfers and Transformations of a Swedish Bridal Crown According to the curator, volunteers, and individuals who had used the crown, the bridal crown was the most important object of the Värmland Gift Collection. When I asked why the bridal crown was particularly important, they highlighted the crown’s artists, craftsmanship and precious materials. Most, however, described the crown’s origin in Värmland and its significance as a gift symbolizing an eternal relationship between people from Värmland on both continents and commented on how important it was to Swedish-American wedding celebrations. When handled and represented in various ways, the bridal crown draws

Transatlantic Place Making

75

The American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota was founded as a museum in 1929. Photo by Lizette Gradén.

new connections between individuals, family, and institutions. Through these written, verbal, and visual representations the bridal crown creates transatlantic bridges between places in the province of Värmland and places in the United States – places marked by emigration and immigration. In the official gift letter that accompanied the Värmland Gift collection to the United States, people in Värmland described the crown as follows:

76

Lizette Gradén

When the bridal crown arrived it was entered into the collection, a rite of passage which separates a museum object from objects outside the museum sphere. Unlike many museum objects, however, the bridal crown is also circulated outside the museum sphere. Photo by Lizette Gradén.

Transatlantic Place Making

77

Folk of kinship in the province of Värmland send to the citizens of Värmland heritage in the United States a greeting with a gift from the old ancestral home. The gift is a reproduction of the bridal crown from Karlstad Cathedral. It is an emblem of a desire that the ties between American and Swedish citizens of the same tribe shall be joined generation after generation.”9

The bridal crown illuminates both how people concretize their perceptions of reality and ideals by making objects material and how these perceptions are passed on and rematerialized in writing. In the accompanying letter, the bridal crown is presented as a materialization of relationships between people in emigrant and immigrant communities, between family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic. The use of the bridal crown is a distinctively Scandinavian or Nordic custom, one that is still practiced in Swedish (Knuts 2006) and also in Swedish-American weddings. The Scandinavian ritual of using a crown in the wedding ceremony may have been derived from the practice of adorning the statue of the Madonna with a crown in churches in the Catholic period in Scandinavia (Resare 1988:78; Knuts 2006). As an object, writes AnnaMaja Nylén, the silver bridal crown is regarded as the strongest symbol of virginity. Of all the ornaments for the body the silver bridal crown was worn only during weddings, as a badge of honor for chaste brides. Nylén points out that churches in Sweden in the early twentieth century increasingly loaned out their bridal crowns made of precious materials. Unchaste brides wore flower-wreaths or crowns made of materials such as steel wire, cloth, lace, and glazed paper (Nylén 1962) – thus less durable materials than silver. The bridal crown in the Karlstad Cathedral was inaugurated in 1931. A silver bridal crown plays a key role when author Vilhelm Moberg in his novel Sista brevet till Sverige published in 1959, resurrects the honor of the prostitute Ulrika of Västergöhl, who was regarded a whore in her home parish in Sweden. First, Moberg transforms Ulrika into a crown bride in America and thereafter to donor of a “gift from North America to Ljuder church”, a bridal crown of silver and precious stones to be loaned to “those brides who are known for their virtue, honor and good manners” (1959:242– 249). In the same way as previous ethnological studies demonstrate the silver crown’s transformative force, the stories about the bridal crown can transform women’s view of themselves. Keeping in mind that many emigrants from Värmland after 1890 were single women (Måwe 1971; cf. Lintelman 2005), it is likely that the women in the province were familiar with the impact of the tradition and possibly considered the social consequences for women whose families did not have access to their own silver crown. The custom of reserving the silver crown for a chaste bride seems to have been common also in Norway (Noss 1991), and some of the women I met via the American Swedish Institute, whose families had emigrated before

78

Lizette Gradén

the Sweden-Norway separation in 1905, made connections between the Värmland Gift bridal crown and family crowns from Norway. A couple shared with me how they used their family crown from Norway at their wedding in 1994, although the bride’s roots in Värmland would have entitled her to wear the Värmland Gift crown. When worn in the American context, the bridal crown performs the bride’s heritage in Scandinavia.

A Contested Object The Värmland Gift was not without controversy at the outset. People involved in making and collecting the objects, of course, appreciated the gift. Museum representatives in Sweden, however, reacted strongly to the initiative of the Värmlanders to provide their relatives and friends in the United States with the collection of artifacts from the province. Albin Widén, Swedish author, curator, and scholar of Swedish-America, wrote: It has been mentioned that a bridal crown is the main item in the Värmland Gift. In recent years, several bridal crowns have been donated to Swedish-America and one of the donors is a female member of the Institute’s Board. Should girls of Swedish ancestry in Minneapolis wish to borrow a Swedish bridal crown, they already have access to one. […] Export art and handicrafts, but leave Swedish peasant culture at home! (DN 6 April 1952; VF 7 April 1952).

Carl A. Boberg, a Värmlander and returnee from Chicago, replied: According to Dr. Widén there is already a bridal crown in Minneapolis, to be used by Swedish descendants who want to marry. Who cares? It is not from Värmland! The crown to be sent is meant for the girls from Värmland. That is the great difference. Värmland is the crown among Svearikes länder! Bryntesson from Svaneholm, who has donated the crown, is a Swedish-American and he knows what he is doing (NWT 8 April 1952).

The Governor of Värmland responded: Our goal with the Värmland Gift to the US has been to provide expression of a personal connection through traditions and community history. […] Doctor Widén is seething over the fact that they are sending an expensive bridal crown, when Swedish-America is already in disposition of several such crowns. He seems not to have understood that what is intended here is to convey an idealistic connection with Värmland, to provide a breath of their native home. It is none other than the bridal crown from Karlstad Cathedral that they wish to send over. (NWT 10 April 1952)

The fuss over the Värmland Gift reflects different perceptions of heritage. Albin Widén considered the Värmland Gift to be unfit for export to America. In the mid-twentieth century, Nordic museums often presented their collections from a nineteenth-century view of “peasant” and upper-class cultures.10 For example, provincial costumes, everyday pottery, and religious objects were classified by region and unattributed by maker or donor

Transatlantic Place Making

79

(“man’s folk costume, Norra Ny Parish, Värmland province”), whereas objects from the upper class were classified chronologically and always identified with owner and donor (“Bridal crown, silver with gold filigree, artist Oscar Jonsson, goldsmith Thure Ahlgren, Karlstad, bequest 1952 of John Bryntesson, Svaneholms herrgård). The Värmland Gift includes objects from both spheres, and the controversy arises from the Gift including both kinds of objects.

Objects as Heritage Performance People who had stayed in Värmland and who created the Värmland Gift collection presented the American Swedish Institute with a context for understanding how this particular province wanted to be understood in the United States. By mixing heirlooms, mundane things, and new items such as the bridal crown into a collection, the people of Värmland imagine, alter, and rebuild their worlds. The bridal crown and the ways in which it has been used can be understood as forms of performances through which participants articulate belonging in time and space. Richard Bauman (1992) characterizes performances as displays of expressive competence, in which people take responsibility for their action before an audience. This sense of performance focuses on form and composition, on how the act is carried out and how it relates to life outside of the event itself. It shows how meaning is created and expressed by individuals, groups, and communities, but also how collaborative activity, such as the use of the bridal crown, over time creates shared experience that makes shared understanding possible. My interest here lies in analyzing how the relationship between heritage and place is created when people collaboratively and voluntarily produce performances involving the bridal crown. Performance is thus understood in this context to mean both verbal and non-verbal stylized communication that takes place front stage, following Goffman (1959), i.e. in rooms that are accessible to the public to a greater or lesser extent. Museum exhibitions are obviously part of the front stage. In this study, however, I attend to performances that take place in storage rooms and other areas where the objects are handled – rooms considered backstage for the museum visitor. In addition to human actors, and following Bruno Latour, I also perceive objects as actants – that is, objects with the capacity to make us humans perform in particular ways. The actants connect and engage us in the making of sustainable networks (Latour 1998) that span time and geographical distance. In focus are thus performances emerging in interactions between the curator, the researcher, the museum object, and its users outside the museum.

80

Lizette Gradén

Performed and Embodied Heritage In the 1970s, the ASI struck a balance between the museum’s task of caring for and displaying the crown and the intention of the donors to provide women from Värmland in the US with their own bridal headpiece. Keeping the crown in storage became a way to balance between caring for and providing access to the crown, without marketing the object. Storing it in a locker outside of public view but accessible for those who know about its existence, the object appears more precious than when put on display for the public at the museum. In this sense the museum transfers the bridal crown from an object of display to an object of exclusivity. Following Goffman, the showcasing of the bridal crown in the storage area transforms this part of the museum from backstage to front stage (Goffman 1995), from storage to a semi-public space, where museum staff and researchers can act. Judging from the object’s careful placement in relation to other objects on adjacent shelves, the bridal crown still played a key role in the Värmland Gift collection. Although away from public view, the crown becomes a display for selected view. In this area, the curator carefully pulled down the container, opened it and lifted out the crown in a manner that demonstrated familiarity – and great respect. The curator said: As you know [referring both to his taking me through the archival photos, as well as to my learning to know the storage areas at the ASI from text describing and photos depicting the crown to getting to know the actual object] this beautiful headpiece is very different from other bridal crowns in our collections. It is unique! It is a gift from the people of Värmland, ordinary people to the people from Värmland living over here. The crown stands 3½ inches high and measures 3 inches in diameter. It is made of gold filigree over silver and is inset with rubies and rhinestones. It was designed by artist Oscar Jonsson and made by goldsmith Thure Ahlgren, both from Värmland.

While setting and performance are crafted to attract an audience, the back stage belongs to those working to prepare the performance (Goffman 1995: 107–112), hence exhibits. Places such as the storage area that are back stage in daily life at the museum become transformed into front stage when curator and researcher venture into the Värmland Gift collection. This shift appears only in performance. The curator’s verbal presentation of the bridal crown reinforces the crown’s preeminent status. As a researcher I listen. The curator hands the crown over to me. The silver feels cold as the crown rests heavy in the palm of my hand, and because of its weight I spontaneously exclaimed: “It’s so heavy – how could a bride keep it on her head?” One of the volunteers who knew the Värmland Gift well replied that, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the crown was frequently used, the American Swedish Institute referred brides-to-be to the beauty salon at Dayton’s department store, whose hairdressers had learned how to use “doughnuts”, rings padded with flax or horse hair to fasten the crown. In this case, the

Transatlantic Place Making

81

bridal crown becomes an actant (Latour 1998) which influences the hairdresser’s performance, i.e. how bride’s body is dressed. It also connects the American Swedish Institute with Dayton’s department store. Like a costume in a play, the bridal crown and the details about it seem to add authenticity to the story. Along with its careful placing in metal storage, away from public view, the curator’s biography of the object (Kopytoff 1986) contributes to making it unique. The Värmland bridal crown is presented as “different” from other bridal crowns in ASI’s collections and described as “unique”. By stating the exact measurements of the crown, its spatial dimensions are meticulously communicated. The crown is also put forth as a work of art, whose quality, surface and luster, the proportions and specific workmanship, conjure up its aesthetics as a value that transcends space, connecting people within the United States and across the Atlantic. Besides materializing culture through verbal communication, the crown materializes culture in visual representations.

Doubled Object, Increased Value The ways in which the bridal crown performs heritage is also apparent in wedding announcements. The following example is found in Minneapolis paper The Tribune. In this particular announcement, the crown is carefully combined with another transatlantic object, namely one half of a table cloth made in Norway and brought to the United States. While the crown materializes culture it is also an important instance of its embodiment. The crown as instrument allows heritage to be embodied, the word to become flesh. A Swedish crown from the province of Värmland and one half of a table cloth woven almost 200 years ago, by a former Bishop of Norway, lent a Scandinavian touch to the wedding Friday evening of Mary Kirsten Towley of Hopkins and David Robert Swanson of Cokato, Minnesota. The bride, daughter of Mrs Carl Kahrs Towley, 246 N. 6th Av., Hopkins, and the late Mr Towley, wore a crown presented to the American Swedish Institute by the Swedish province. (The bride’s maternal grandfather, Dr. P. A. Mattson, came from this province, entitling her to wear the crown). (Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, 30 July 1961)

Like a press release or written review for a theatre production, the wedding announcement communicates and legitimizes that the production actually took place. The wedding announcement articulates exclusivity tied to the crown, as the museum applies particular rules for its usage. As stated in the quotation, the bride is “entitled” to wear the crown because of her maternal grandfather’s coming from Värmland, a concept of heritage that brings to mind inheritance of reigns among royalty in Sweden. But mostly the description offers insights into how doubling of objects,

82

Lizette Gradén

The joining of Värmland and the USA in matrimony. Photo: The Sweden America Center.

through pairing or replication, increases symbolic value. The meaning invested here in the bridal crown challenges a common perception of museum objects as unique and intact, while it also challenges the logic of collections, where each piece ought to be unique (Stewart 1993:161). I would like to suggest, using the bridal crown, that the doubling of the object through replication is crucial to how people value it. The doubled object, of which one remains in the homeland, creates a particular pre-eminent connection between the individuals that come into contact with it. The replica increases rather than decreases the value of the earlier versions, because both are created by the same artists, touched by the same hands. The replica moves across space more freely than the previous version and thus touches more people emotionally while literally allowing it to be touched by a larger number of people. While the bridal crown from Karlstad Cathedral becomes an instrument for embodying gender and kin, the replica becomes an instrument for embodying lineage overseas, an act that puts heritage into place. The ways in which the bridal crown materializes culture also echo in photographs. In the visual documentation of the 1952 Värmland Gift exhibition at the ASI, the bridal crown appears time and again. In one of the photographs from the event, the bridal crown is literally elevated when handed over from the county governor to the president of the Värmland association. Thus the bridal crown was granted a special position, even photographically. Just as a wedding photograph plays a crucial part in the wedding ceremo-

Transatlantic Place Making

83

ny in the western world (Eicher 2006; cf. Kjerström 1993:145–167), the photograph with the governor handing over of the bridal crown to the president of the Värmlandsförbundet plays an important role in confirming to future generations that the official marriage ceremony took place; that the Värmland descendants and receivers of the crown said, “I do!”

Embodying Patriarchal Heritage and Performing Transatlantic Place In the early 2000s, several young women showed an interest in wearing the Värmland bridal crown for their weddings. According to ASI staff, these requests (phone calls) came from women whose mothers or grandmothers had worn the crown at their weddings. Besides pointing out family relations, the bridal crown seemed attractive for future brides who wished to have what they described as “all-Swedish weddings”, or to make their weddings “totally Swedish”. These young women seemed to follow the trend in the Midwest for large, costly weddings and an interest, dating back a couple of decades, in theme weddings (Winge & Eicher 2003:207–218) where clothing, table settings and choice of party facility all articulate relationships to fairytales, music and specific eras,11 or in the case of the bridal crown, that something Swedish is taking place. In a similar manner, old-fashioned Finnish-Swedish weddings were popular among couples of Finnish-Swedish background living in Sweden in the late 1990s (Larsen 1998). The bridal crown from Värmland becomes attractive to young women because a theme wedding offers a playful, creative and carnivalesque alternative to a traditional wedding that is often perceived as serious, conformist, and ritualized. However, just as a traditional wedding communicates who the bride and groom wish to be, the Swedish theme wedding in the United States communicates the wedding couple’s values and ideals. Although the term theme wedding may be new, weddings have long been a site for women’s heritage performances. Among women living in the United States, the desire to wear the Värmland bridal crown is not new. It has been popular in the past, also during times when bridal crowns were considered out of fashion. In the summer of 2006, I interviewed women who had worn the crown, whereupon new stories and meanings invested in the crown emerged. Marie Ylinen (nee Olsson), aged 82, was the first woman to wear the bridal crown. While the story she shared with me is rich in narratives and dramatic turns and deserves an analysis in itself, what is important for this study is how crucial it was to her and her father that she be the first. Marie reflected: In 1952, when the Värmland Gift was on its way to Minnesota, my father was the director of Värmlandsförbundet and I was about to get married. As it was

84

Lizette Gradén

John Bryntesson, who had enabled my father to emigrate from Värmland, who also had paid for having the crown replicated, the crown meant a lot to my father. To him, it was a direct connection to the man whom my father throughout his life credited his courage to leave Sweden and success in America. I met him, a very nice man, when I spent the summer in Värmland, at 19. My wedding took place right here (she makes a large, sweeping gesture towards the floor before the fireplace where Marie had chosen we’d sit during the interview), that is in the ASI Grand Hall.12

Unlike the curator’s performance, where the bridal crown is presented as unique and a one of a kind, Marie emphasizes that the crown she wore was indeed the replica of the crown from Karlstad Cathedral. Marie Ylinen’s use makes the connection between the two crowns. The value she grants the replica is inextricably linked to the fact that its twin is located in Karlstad Cathedral and used by women in Värmland. Because of Ragnar Olsson being a founding member of Värmlandsförbundet and thus his status in the Swedish-American community, his daughter was able to be the first bride in America to wear the crown for the wedding and reception in the museum’s Grand Hall. In her story about the wedding she emphasized that she had musicians play “Finlandia” by Sibelius to honor Arthur Ylinen, her husband-to-be, who identified himself as a “Finn from the Iron Range”. Apart from that, she explained, the entire wedding was “Swedish-to-the-max”, including a color scheme of blue and yellow. According to Marie, she said yes to her future husband and to her Swedish background. The spatial framing of Marie’s wedding was a performance of Swedishness, the crown expressed the secondgeneration immigrant bride’s regional connection and gave her heritage a definite place of origin.

Heritage Renewed In 2002, the current governor of Värmland, Ingemar Eliasson, again crowned Marie Ylinen as “the Värmland Gift Bride” at the Värmlandsjubileet, the American Swedish Institute’s fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Värmland Gift. When remembering and commenting upon the event in the interview in 2006, Marie Ylinen said: I was honored and it was very festive with a nice dinner, toasts and the whole bit. Being re-crowned was like being confirmed – like I have lived the Swedish-American life I was expected to live…that my father expected me to live (laughs). For this rich life, my heart is overflowing with thankfulness for God’s protection, His provision and the promise of His love.13

A recrowning, a confirmation, a renewal of heritage – the bridal crown continues to be a force for revitalized connection between Värmland and the United States. In her recollection of the crowning ceremony in 2002, Marie Ylinen describes the event as a confirmation. On another level, the recrown-

Transatlantic Place Making

85

ing demonstrates similar features to the election of the festival queen in Lindsborg, Kansas, a senior citizen who reconfirms heritage by blood/lineage as well as long-term commitment to and involvement in activities perceived as Swedish (Gradén 2003; cf. Larsen this volume). The celebration of the Värmland Gift anniversary in 2002 and the subsequent crowning ceremony of Marie Ylinen may be interpreted as a return gift (Mauss 2002) and as a continuation of the symbolic matrimony between Värmlanders in Sweden and US that the bridal crown of the Värmland Gift came to materialize in the 1950s. The re-crowning of Marie may therefore be understood as a renewal of vows – a revitalized connection between Värmland and the United States, performing a transatlantic place. Other women have followed in the footsteps of Marie Ylinen’s heritage performance. Marcia Linnér Swanson, who wore the crown in the late 1950s, emphasized that the choice to wear the crown at her wedding was important to her father more than anything. Her father, with a prominent position in the Swedish-American business community in the Midwest, insisted she should wear the Värmland bridal crown. She felt, however, wearing a crown was out of fashion, and that the crown in particular did not fit with her wedding dress. She said: The privilege [of wearing the crown] was extended to me because my father’s grandparents were born in Sweden. When requesting the crown we presented my father’s family tree. We brought in all the papers we had, and I don’t know for sure that all my relatives came from Värmland. We were kindly granted the loan of the crown and I wore the crown to honor my father and his family background – it was much more important to him than it was to me.14

According to Goffman (1995), we always prepare ourselves for the stages we are to act on and Marcia’s dress and body ornaments can be seen as strategies for performance to ensure success. This is not unique. Like people of all times, places, and social milieus, Marcia Linnér Swanson and her fellow women of Swedish descent dress for the stage in the United States on which they are to act, modifying or supplementing the body in specific ways. The combing of the hair, and the selecting of clothing and accessories are ways of creating a cultured body. As an ornament supplementing young women’s bodies, the Swedish bridal crown articulates a wedding celebration and a new stage of life. Marcia makes a particular decision on what to wear – a white long-sleeved dress with a narrow waist and wide skirt – a dress seemingly inspired by the New Look, launched in 1947 by Dior. Marcia Linnér Swanson had to dress for two stages. While she describes the crown as being out of fashion, she also speaks of the wearing of the crown as a privilege, extended to her by her father’s family, whose family tree they had brought to the museum to get access to the crown. Although the Värmland heritage here is embodied by Marcia Linnér Swanson wearing

86

Lizette Gradén

the crown, the wearing takes place by the agency of her father and his grandfather’s parents. A father’s actions and values are prevalent also in a man’s story about the bridal crown. Nils Hasselmo, who was born in Sweden and emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, describes to me how he and his wife selected the crown for their 1950s wedding in the Midwest in the following manner: As I remember this selection it was the memory of my father’s work to assemble the Värmland Gift which made us think about using it. A friend of ours who traveled from Minneapolis brought it along for the wedding. To borrow the crown was an easy procedure at the time! I also believe the crown had received a lot of publicity. For me, the crown provided an interesting link to Värmland, now when I was to marry in Diaspora. As you know, my wife was interested in her Swedish background too.15

The stories illuminate that, although the bridal crown is worn by women, there is also a strong patriarchal connection, where the words of the fathers are materialized and embodied in the bride’s wearing of the crown. Like Marie Ylinen’s, Marcia Linnér Swanson’s recollections of the crown articulate how they as brides in their respective weddings acceded to their fathers’ wishes and to his sense of heritage in Värmland. In Nils Hasselmo’s recollection, however, the father of the groom is at the center of the request for the crown, and it is because of Nils Hasselmo’s background and not hers that he and his wife are granted the crown. The regional connection is emphasized when Nils Hasselmo describes his marriage to a spouse of Swedish background as one in the Diaspora, implicitly suggesting that the bridal crown has the power to transform her into an honorable woman of Värmland heritage. The bridal crown can be seen as materializing or invoking the Swedish woman as embodied transatlantic life. The women’s similar relationship to the crown is closely connected to their relationship to their father, as an authority, and in turn to their fathers’ relationship to the native country. Wearing the bridal crown, the woman becomes the bearer of an imagined heritage that includes heritage by blood. When the ASI require documented blood relations to Värmland as a premise for lending the crown, heritage blood is made a powerful force in defining and making a transatlantic relationship. Approved loans from the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate this relationship. The bridal crown has been lent to daughters of men who have sat on the Board of ASI, been ASI sponsors, and held prominent positions in Swedish-American cultural and business life. In cases where loans have not been approved, families have failed to demonstrate their relationship to Värmland. The bridal crown and people’s handling of it thus link older and younger generations of women of Värmland descent, families with Swedish backgrounds, with the museum and its interested parties and donors. Evident in the wearing of the bridal crown is a sense of care and pride and a

Transatlantic Place Making

87

sense of understanding family as unit that bridges the living and the dead and spans several places. The ways in which the women and men choose the bridal crown make it possible for us to observe strands of social and aesthetic forces in Swedish-American society because the crown has the capacity to create groups. The transformative capacity makes body ornamentation perhaps the richest category of material culture (Baumgarten 2002; Miller & Küchler 2005). The Värmland bridal crown not only connects women of Värmland background with women of future generations through a patriarchal relationship; the crown also has an impact on how these women (and men) view themselves. The crown may thus be perceived as what Bruno Latour refers to as an actant (Latour 1998), an object that makes us as humans act in a particular way – a way that creates connections. In the case of the crown, as an object that actively contributes to transforming unmarried girls into women, it connects people not only to a country of heritage but to a very specific place in that country.

Performing Migration Heritage Many folklorists have shown how migrants and their descendants select and combine objects from the homeland into meaningful cultural displays to be experienced in museums and events (Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1998; Klein 2001:67–80, Gradén 2003) and in individual homes (Gradén 2004: 276–291; Gunnell 2003:89–108).16 These assemblages, often created from heirlooms with dense biographies (Kopytoff 1986:64–94) from their history of use and ownership, have the capacity to bridge mental and physical worlds and give shape to migration experiences and fantasies about the country once left (Gradén 2003:168ff). These folkloristic studies, having been developed in close relationship with performance theory, emphasize not only the work of institutions and groups but also the individual in the social moment of creativity. Similarly, in this article I have shown how the uses of a Swedish bridal crown become a force in individuals’ and groups’ performance of heritage, anchoring their migration story in Sweden and the United States, and linking them in a coherent transatlantic place. This analysis has been possible by following the transfer of a bridal crown from Sweden to the United States and by understanding performance to mean both non-verbal and verbal communication and to include all participants as well as myself and the object itself as collaborating actors performing on stages. Dress and ornaments are objects that make the body visible, especially in the wake of migration (cf. Hol Haugen 2006; Gradén & McIntyre 2009). The transfer of the bridal crown from Sweden to the United States, from the exhibit to storage and further to private homes, demonstrates how the bridal

88

Lizette Gradén

crown continues to be a force in the performance of gender and ethnicity. These connections form a transatlantic space in which crucial meanings related to migration are embodied, acted out, integrated with the present, and made accessible for interpretation by members of the community and others (cf. Bauman 1992). This heritage performance enables men and women to put their heritage into place. By being used at weddings across the United States, the bridal crown ties together generations of women, ethnic identification, and spaces in the United States in transatlantic place – all in the body of a woman but through the agency of a father. The crown, thereby, makes what at first seems to be a migration heritage carried forth by women. On closer look, however, it proves to be ensured by a patriarchal relationship, and articulating a relationship between embodiment and space making. Based on this study I would suggest on one hand that embodiment, here of migration heritage, can be seen as a form of spatialization. Embodiment creates a trajectory through space, thus making a coherent transatlantic space. On the other hand, one may say that the Värmland Gift collection spaces a context for embodiment. Without the Värmland Gift and without the bridal crown, perhaps there would be no such performances allowing such embodiment of gendered ethnic migration heritage. Lizette Gradén, fil. dr Researcher/Director of Graduate Studies Konstfack/University College of Arts, Crafts and Design LM Ericssons väg 14 126 27 Hägersten, Sweden e-mail: [email protected]

References Fieldnotes July–August 2006, the American Swedish Institute, Minneapolis, MN. Archives The American Swedish Institute Emigrantregistret, Karlstad Interviews Marie Ylinen, 2–3 August 2006 Marcia Linnér Swanson, 19 August 2006 Nils Hasselmo, 23 August 2006 Newspapers Dagens Nyheter, 6, 10 April 1952 Nya Wermlands Tidningen, 9 April 1952 Värmlands Folkblad, 7, 9 April 1952 Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, 30 July 1961

Transatlantic Place Making

89

Literature Appadurai, Arjun 1996: Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bauman, Richard 1992: Performance. In Bauman, Richard (ed.). Folklore, Cultural Performances and Popular Entertainments. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baumgarten, Linda 2002: What clothes reveal. The language of clothing in colonial and federal America. The Colonial Williamsburg Collection. Williamsburg, VA: The Williamsburg Foundation. Eicher, Joanne 1995: Dress and Ethnicity. Change across Space and Time. Oxford: Berg. Eicher, Joanne & Ling, Lisa 2006: Mother Daughter Sister Bride. Rituals of Womanhood. Washington D.C.: National Geographic Society. Goffman, Erving 1995 (1959): Jaget och maskerna. En studie i vardagslivets dramatik. 3rd ed. Trans. S. Bergström. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma. Gradén, Lizette 2003: On Parade. Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas. ACTA Universitatis Upsaliensis. Centre for Multiethnic Studies. Uppsala. Gradén, Lizette 2004: Christmas in Lindsborg: About the Miniature Collection, Place and Time. Creating Diversities: Folklore, Religion and the Politics of Heritage. Helsinki: Studia Fennica. Gradén, Lizette and Peterson McIntyre, Magdalena 2009 (ed.): Modets metamorfoser. Stockholm: Carlssons. Gunnell, Terry 2003: Vatnið og uppsprettan. Þjóðtrú og þjóðsiðir innflytjenda í Reykjavík. Skírnir 177. Hol Haugen, Björn Sverre 2006 (ed.): Norsk bunadleksikon: Alle norske bunader og samiske folkedrakter. Oslo: Damm. Hyltén-Cavallius, Charlotte 2007: Traditionens estetik. Spelet mellan inhemsk och utländsk hemslöjd. Stockholm: Carlssons. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1989. Objects of Memory. Material Culture as Life Review. In Folk Groups and Folklore Genres. A Reader, ed. Elliott Oring, pp. 329–338. Logan: Utah State University Press. Kjerström, Eva 1993: Minnet av bröllopet. Om bröllopsfotografiet förr och nu. Kulturen Lund: Kulturens årsbok. Klein, Barbro 2001: More Swedish than Sweden, More Iranian than Iran. Folk Culture and World Migrations. In Upholders of Culture, Past and Present, ed. Bo Sundin. Göteborg: Chalmers Medialab. Kopytoff, Igor 1986: The Biography of Things. In The Social Life of Things. Commodities in a Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knuts, Eva 2006: Något gammalt, något nytt. Skapande av bröllopsföreställningar. Göteborg: Mara. Diss. Larsen Pico, Hanne 1999: Midsommarbröllup i Vörå 1998. In Rågens Rike. Folkkulturella yttringar förr och nu, pp. 64–69. Vörå (Finland. Årspublikation). Latour, Bruno 1998: Artefaktens återkomst. Ett möte mellan organisationsteori och tingens sociologi. Stockholm: Nerenius och Santérus förlag. Lintelman, Joy K. 2005: Between the Mundane and the Memorable. The Letters of Single and Married Swedish Immigrant Women. The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly. 2005 (56):2/3. Lowenthal, David 1989: Pioneer Museums. In History Museums in the United States, ed. Warren Leon & Roy Rosenzweig, pp. 115–128. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

90

Lizette Gradén

Mauss, Marcel 2002 (1972): The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. Måwe, Carl-Erik 1971: Värmlänningar i Amerika. Sociologiska studier i en anpassningsprocess. Säffle: Säffletidningens tryckeri. Miller, Daniel and Susan Küchler 2005: Clothing as Material Culture. Oxford: Berg. Noss, Aagot 1991: Lad og Krone, frå jente til brur. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Nylén, Anna-Maja 1962: Varför klär vi oss. Kring dräktens roll förr och nu. Västerås: ICA. Resare, Ann 1988: Brudklädsel. Fataburen. Stockholm: Nordiska museet. Winge, Theresa and Joanne Eicher 2003: The Groom Wore a Kilt. Carnivalesque and Theme Weddings. In Wedding Dress across Cultures, ed. Helen Bradley Foster & Donald Clay Johnson. Oxford: Berg.

1

The American Swedish Institute is a private museum founded in 1929 by Swan J. Turnblad, founder of the newspaper Svensk Amerikanska Posten. 2 Fieldwork in Minneapolis in July–August 2006 was made possible by the Malmberg Fellowship for Studies of Swedish American culture and granted by the American Swedish Institute. Further analysis has been made possible within the project “Nordic Spaces in the North and North America: Heritage Preservation in Real and Imagined Nordic Places” funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation 2008–2011. I would like to thank fellow members of this project for comments on a paper version of this article. I am especially grateful to Chad Eric Bergman, North Park University in Chicago, for constructive comments on this version. 3 Värmlandsgåvan. Letter of intent. The American Swedish Institute archives. Unless noted, all translations are made by the author. 4 ASI bulletin 1952. Letters from Swedish Consul General Carl Fredrik Hellström to Värmland Governor Axel Westling, The Kinship Center in Karlstad, dossier Värmlandsgåvan no. 1. 5 At the time, Värmland was divided into 100 parishes, a number that was reduced in 1971. 6 Without looking at the Nordic countries specifically, David Lowenthal (1989) has portrayed so-called immigrant museums in the United States of which also institutions that identify themselves as Swedish-American or American Swedish institutions were a part. 7 According to the donor’s description of each object. Dossier Värmlandsgåvan. The American Swedish Institute archives. 8 The participants whose performances I focus on identify as being first, second, and third generation immigrants to the United States. A group which has migrated, been rooted in a new locale but identifies their origin elsewhere, is often referred to as a Diaspora (Appadurai 1996). Although the term Diaspora is seldom used when speaking of migrants from Sweden to the United States, some participants in this study do. They see themselves as part of the Diasporic space that Minnesota represents. This Diasporic space includes but is not limited to ongoing negotiations about Somalianness, Hmongness, Norwegianness, Finnishness, and Swedishness; negotiations in which heritage symbols play an important part. In this space, the participants of this study are viewed as both similar and different, in part due how they materialize and embody a sense of belonging and how they choose to dress for example at life-rituals such as weddings.. 9 The description appears in both English and Swedish. The Swedish version reads as follows: “Fränder i landskapet Värmland i Sverige sända medborgare av värmländsk ätt i Nordamerikas Förenta Stater en hälsning med en gåva från den gamla fädernebygden. Gåvan är en replik av den brudkrona, som finnes i Karlstad domkyrka. Den är sinnebild av en

Transatlantic Place Making

10

11 12 13 14 15 16

91

önskan, att banden mellan amerikanska och svenska medborgare av samma stam måtte förbliva fasta släktled efter släktled.” Widén, who worked at the Nordic Museum under the leadership of Sigurd Erixson, was considered specialist in Nordisk allmogekultur, Nordic peasant culture. In the 1930s, Widén conducted fieldwork in the Midwest (see Gradén 2003) and in 1942–1947 he served as director of the Swedish information bureau in Minneapolis. In the 1990s enactments of old-fashioned Finnish-Swedish weddings in Finland were popular among young couples living in Sweden. See Larsen 1999. Interview with Marie Ylinen, August 2006. Interview with Marie Ylinen, August 2006. Interview with Marcia Linnér Swanson in her home in Minneapolis, August 2006. Conversation with Nils Hasselmo in Sweden, August 23, 2006. See Gunnell 2003 on Vietnamese immigrants, their objects, home shrines, etc. I am grateful to Valdimar T. Hafstein for bringing this article to my attention and providing an interpretation into English.

92

Lizette Gradén

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

93

Danish Maids and Visual Matters Celebrating Heritage in Solvang, California1 Hanne Pico Larsen

In “The Danish Capital of America”, Solvang, California, the heritage festival Danish Days is celebrated every year on the third weekend of September. It is one of many heritage festivals staged in America annually, where ethnic groups celebrate and express their culture. It is a time for the members of this Danish settlement to reflect on their heritage, individual and common, and to work together on reinforcing their heritage as well as strengthening the tourist revenue. The festival is a colorful show of music, dance, foods, national costumes, handicrafts, flags, torchlight processions, parades, and Hans Christian Andersen impersonation. Both Danes and non-Danes come from afar to be Danes for the weekend (Larsen 2004). The event calls for an icon: The Danish Days Maid. The selection of a Miss Something-or-other is a typical American tradition. Many towns have one, and almost every small festival does too. The selection of a symbolic figurehead is about deciding what qualities are most important and representative for the community. Usually, physical attractiveness is more important than anyone will admit, and in the example of the Danish Days Maid the ethnic dimension is added as well. It is a well-known fact that conflict is endemic to heritage and that, in the words of David Lowenthal: “Victors and victims proclaim disparate and divisive versions of common pasts. Claims of ownership, uniqueness, and priority engender strife over every facet of collective legacies” (Lowenthal 1996:234–235). Even though Lowenthal discusses the grand conflicts in the context of the notion that all politics are local – and by extension all conflicts are local – it is productive to consider this approach in the context of this local, deeply rooted, and surprisingly political conflict. In Solvang, cultural heritage is generally shared and generously sold to the tourists, but the collective legacy is contested once a year when picking the Danish Days Maid. By selecting the most Danish (Days) girl in town, others are ostracized and heritage made the object of heritage envy and competition. What are the premises for being the most Danish (Days)? What does the maid have to

94

Hanne Pico Larsen

represent and how is she chosen? Over the years, various organizational entities have been in charge both of the festival and of finding the right girls. Hence the rules have changed over the years. Today the Danish Days Foundation is in charge of planning the festival and picking the girl. In Solvang, the change of committees in charge and the lack of official criteria and rules in the selection process underline the puzzle: Who decides, and who decides who decides? In this empirical study I will look at some of the processes involved in selecting a young girl to serve as the Solvang Danish Days Maid. Kinship and cultural heritage make up a system of belonging, and the issues cannot be described succinctly. Often obvious traits, such as looks, are put to use, or just silently assumed, in order to visualize the culture in question. If Solvang refers back to Denmark, should the Danish Days Maid be/look Danish as well? And what makes up this particular Danish (Days) look? The event is a low-budget hybrid of Danish Solvang and the all-American community beauty pageant. Whereas it is neither my intent to contribute to the study of heritage festivals, nor to the study of pageants in general, I use the festival and the Danish Days Maid as a vehicle to comment on heritage envy and the inherent importance of visuality in culture heritage – “The Danish Looks”. In Solvang, the lack of a formal selection process is problematic for some. The uncertainty about what criteria are applied leaves people wondering; therefore they easily come to feel that the outcome is unfair. The selection of the Danish Days Maid brings into question who is the most Danish and who has the (ethnic) authority to decide. The process then triggers the imagination of an invisible heritage hegemony applied and contested and often fuels Heritage Envy. Danish heritage as well as Solvang history become important for the selection of the right girl. In this article a main informant and key figure, Kristine, a young Solvang adult, was asked to comment on the importance of looks in the case of the Danish Days Maid. Probing the Solvang society about the selection of the Danish Days Maid, I sensed the tension surrounding the issue. I could grasp some of the semantics, but most informants were carefully parsing their words. Kristine’s case often came up. In spite of her popularity and Danish heritage, Kristine was never chosen as the Danish Days Maid. Many people mentioned Kristine’s not being chosen as their favorite example of how unfair the whole selection is. Kristine is adopted from the Philippines, and she does not conform physically to the stereotypical looks of a Dane: blonde hair and blue eyes.

Heritage Envy and Visual Culture When I refer to the term Heritage Envy, I allude to the ethnic hierarchies that often exist within immigrant groups or between individual immigrants.

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

95

Heritage Envy is an irrational and emotional construct, which often leads to emotive, quasi-rational questions: Who is more Danish/Swedish/Finnish than others? It has often been described how heritage is both nature and nurture (Lowenthal 1996; Bendix 2000). Whereas it is important to practice heritage, it is also important that heritage be innate and that one be able to trace back history and genes to “the first” (Lowenthal 1996). In the case of Solvang, that means the families must be able to trace their ancestry to Denmark or maybe to the early settlers of Solvang. Heritage can provoke rivalry on all levels, and in Solvang such a rivalry can be seen on a local scale. This rivalry is often caused by Heritage Envy and such “Clashes ensue when rivals press entitlement to being first, being distinctive, or being sublimely endowed” (Lowenthal 1996:235). Heritage Envy thus refers to this conflict or rivalry characteristic of the question of heritage. However, the aspect of Heritage Envy that I wish to foreground is rooted in the aspect of visuality: Must heritage “show” in order to be “real”? The answer is yes. Much attention has been directed towards the externalization of heritage in landscape, especially as it is pursued in cultural geography and folklore. In Solvang visual markers of Denmark are everywhere. Danish flags fluttering in the wind, cute girls in costumes behind every counter, and fake Danish architecture. It is of course a display constructed for the tourist gaze, but it is my opinion that the visualization of everything Danish also reinforces the Danish feel for the Danish immigrants who live there (Larsen 2006). Geographer Michael P. Conzen called this phenomenon Ersatz Ethnicity (Conzen 1990), and describes it as ethnicity paraded, exaggerated and made synthetic for tourist consumption. Based on my work in Solvang, I will stress that even if the overtly visualized heritage aims to cash in on tourists, the visually expressed ethnic background also becomes another component of the different forms of Symbolic Ethnicity as described by Gans (1979). In his seminal article Gans shows how third, fourth and even later generations of immigrants resort to the use of ethnic symbols when celebrating their cultural heritage. Symbolic Ethnicity is often visible, easily felt and expressed and it never conflicts with other aspects of life. Two obvious examples are food and festivals (Gans 1979). It is my conviction that whereas it becomes less and less important and also more and more difficult for American immigrants to maintain a 100% ethnic background, it is more frequently observed that American immigrants display an American Plus attitude (Österlund-Pötzsch 2003; see also Österlund-Pötzsch in this volume). American Plus, as described by Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch, refers to the additional benefit to the American heritage: one can be American plus Danish (Österlund-Pötzsch 2003). The importance of making cultural heritage visible is becoming more and more important in the whole issue of superlative national origin. It is important for the American Plus immigrants to show off their heritage for

96

Hanne Pico Larsen

themselves and others, and it often results in heritage theming for the entire community. Such theming has occurred in the tourist towns of Swiss New Glarus (Wisconsin), Danish Solvang (California), and Bavarian Leavenworth (Washington) (Hoelscher 1998; Larsen 2006; Price & Miller 1997). When it comes to people, however, visualization of culture becomes more problematic, and often overdetermined. In Solvang the assumed “whiteness” of Nordic descendants is never mentioned, but it does lurk beneath the surface; it can be decoded by looking at the group of tourists visiting, and it comes up on different occasions, for example when choosing the Danish Days Maid.

American Pageants The literature concerning young girls recruited to represent communities in festivals, fairs, and similar public celebrations is extensive. The common assumption is that whereas these young, fair women put gender norms on stage in presenting an idealized version of femininity, the competition itself showcases values, behavior, and concepts within a group (Cohen, Wilk & Stoeltje 1996). Beauty contests, queen pageants, cotillions, and debutante balls are all similar events formally presenting young ladies to society. By choosing a young girl and honoring her with a fictive royal status for a short period of time, the society projects its shared values and goals (Cohen, Wilk & Stoeltje 1996). Queens and maids bring together local populations and sometimes strengthen the ties to other communities and hierarchies (Stoeltje & Bauman 1989; Stoeltje 1996). It is both fascinating entertainment as well as serious play, and pageants are often a subject of local dispute (Cohen, Wilk & Stoeltje 1996). In the introduction to the seminal work on beauty queens, these pageants are defined as “places where cultural meanings are produced, consumed, and rejected, where local and global, ethnic and national, national and international cultures and structures of power are engaged in their most trivial but vital aspects” (Cohen, Wilk & Stoeltje 1996:8). Most approaches to pageants focus on feminine allegory and symbolism, on performance and semiotics, and on nationalism and sexuality. R. H. Lavenda underlines the fact that in small communities, like Solvang, the term beauty in beauty pageants is considered inappropriate for the local people involved. To them it is rather a matter of selecting a queen who can serve as a representative of the community and who embodies: “What local people believe to be the best of themselves: talent, friendliness, commitment to the community and its values, upward mobility” (Lavenda 1996:31). The queen was molded by the community, and by extension, her deeds are those of the community (Gradén 2003b; see also Yano 2006). Beauty and looks are supposedly not part of the selection criteria in Solvang either. However, looks, or the visualization of heritage – in this

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

97

case the face of the Danish Days Maid – is rather problematic. The celebration of Danish Days and the selection and adoration of the Danish Days Maid are obviously emotional articulations rather than intellectual ones. The Danish Days Maid is a girl known to the entire community, a human icon associated with everybody in the Solvang hierarchy – a maid, not a queen. The maid embodies the heritage of the community, and with her family traits she can take everybody back to a nostalgic past and provide people with a sense of belonging to both Solvang and Denmark (Fig. 1). The family of the girl chosen is recognized as an old Solvang family as well as a family with Danish heritage, but an embedded message is implicit in the recognition: The family has succeeded in American society at large (Klein 1988), insofar as ethnic pageants “seek to capture and celebrate an everevolving combination of old-world continuity and American progress” (Rodrigez 2006:M5). As an illustration one need just take a look at the short presentation of the Danish Days Maid, written by the maid herself and published in the festival magazine (see appendix 1). It is a rather formulaic narrative. It confirms what insiders already know about her, and it justifies the Danish heritage – her own and that of Solvang – to the festival visitor from afar. Most often pictures accompanying the essay show a nice-looking girl, blonde, dressed in her new costume, while another picture might show the same girl as little, but still dressed up for Danish Days (Fig. 2). Childhood pictures like these serve as proof of her life-long dedication and reveal the message that being a Danish Days Maid is a childhood dream come true (see also Gradén 2003a:189). As the Solvang informant Kristine suggests: “If you read the introductions written by the maids every year they too are the same. They go something like: my grandfather came to Solvang… I have made æbleskiver since I was a little girl… I always dreamed about being the Danish Days Maid… I’m proud of my heritage.”2 (See appendix 1.) Future queens are usually active participants in sports, school activities, church and/or youth groups, they play music and are capable of doing some kind of craft – all achievements valued by the small, middle-class community (Lavenda 1996). It is therefore not outstanding-ness but rather well-roundedness and appropriate achievements that demonstrate the competence of the candidates. It is my assertion that in small communities with an ethnic reference, the common rules and regulations for most pageants – such as poise, sincerity, intelligence, and commitment – are the most important assets for the candidate to have, while beauty seemingly is rejected as a criterion. However, the ethnic reference is as strong, if not stronger, than any other requirement. But how is ethnicity measured? In the looks, in the family ties back to the old country, ability to speak the language, or just loyalty to the ethnic background clung to by the community – or loyalty to the commercialization of

98

Hanne Pico Larsen

Solvang and the tourist economy? Or is it all of the above requirements combined? The aspect of ethnicity within the context of the pageant is only sporadically touched upon in the literature. In Lavenda’s writing, however, we find a case study from a small Czech community in Minnesota. During their annual community festival a girl is selected. In 1983, the girls wore ethnic costumes, no evening dresses, or other paraphernalia indicative of royalty. The winner was a “heavy-set” girl, talented, blonde, and 100% Czech (Lavenda 1996). Even if she stood out in the crowd of slender candidates, her physical appearance was never mentioned. A losing candidate, on the other hand, lamented the fact that it was always the daughters of the business community and the families with important names who won the honors (Lavenda 1996). In this example, as in the example of the Danish Days Maid, the ethnic fronting is clear even if it is hardly verbalized. It is okay to be chubby as long as the candidate comes from an important family with roots back to the country from where they immigrated, who show a local as well as an ethnic sense of belonging. Another salient example can be found in old ethnic Los Angeles pageants such as Miss Chinatown and Miss Nisei Week in Little Tokyo. Here it is no longer required that the contestants be 100% Chinese or Japanese – a recognition of the impact of interethnic and interracial marriage (Rodrigez 2006: M5). The debate about mixed-race queens has in fact been going on there since the 1970s because of a growing number of white-Japanese contestants. Some Japanese-Americans thought that the mixed-race queens were not representative of Japanese-American culture. Furthermore, the candidates had moved closer to a more mainstream ideal of Caucasian beauty, subsequently giving the mixed race queens an advantage over participants of 100% ethnic background (Tanner 1998). In 1982 the crowning of a mixedrace queen heated up the debate and a very angry letter was printed in a community paper. The writer contested the “disproportional selection and seeming infatuation with the Eurasian looks” of the queen and asked that the beauty representatives should at least be representative (Linden Nishinaga quoted in Tanner 1998). Responses were many, some agreeing and others qualifying the statement as racist. A former Nisei Queen offered her contribution and a different perspective. She wrote: “Who’s to say that I’m not as ‘Japanese’ as any other Nisei, Sansei, or Yonsei?” (second, third, and fourth-generation Japanese Americans). “What is the definition of Japanese American anyway?” She went on: I grew up in a Japanese neighborhood of Los Angeles, with Japanese food, culture, and language in my home and attended Japanese school for 11 years … It breaks my heart to think that the very people that I have been so proud to represent aren’t proud that I’m representing them. (Hedy Posey quoted in Tanner 1998).3

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

99

The former Nisei queen elucidates the rather complex cultural dynamics around the selection process and question the resistance towards cultural changes happening in the Japanese-American community. Who decides what comprises ethnicity and who is most ethnic? And again, who decides who decides? Competition regarding ethnicity was also discussed by Lizette Gradén, who worked with Swedish Americans (Gradén 2003a, 2003b). Analyzing ethnic hierarchies in the selection of the Hyllningsfest royalty among the Swedish-Americans in Lindsborg, one of her conclusions is that whereas Swedish lineage is very important in the selection process, loyalty to Swedish heritage and activities at large are important as well (Gradén 2003a, 2003b). In this example physical appearance is also passed over in silence. The Danish Days Foundation in Solvang seems to rank belonging to the community and loyalty to the festival higher than Danish heritage per se. However, it is hard to disentangle these factors, and the confusion in Solvang about which outweighs the other – heritage or the practice and loyalty to heritage – was obvious in many interviews. Kristine notes with irony: Since there is such consistency from year to year [in Danish Days], it seems obvious who the candidates for Danish Days Maids will be for the next 5–10 years. It is almost always a high school senior whose family has been involved with Danish Days ever since forever. It makes sense because the “most” Danish people do Danish Days right?

The most Danish, the most loyal Solvang citizens, are in this case the ones who are most active in Danish Days. They are considered the ones who most belong, and they are the ones who have daughters who can become Danish Days Maids.

The Selection of the Danish Days Maid The process of naming the Danish Days Maid every year for Danish Days festival can be described as a simplified version of a community pageant prototype as extrapolated from the vast body of literature on pageants. The Danish Days Maid differs, however, in that she does not need a sponsor, she is not one of many contestants, and she does not go through formal training in public appearance. She does not have to sing or dance in order to persuade any audience that she is the one to be chosen. She is not required to wear either swimsuit or evening gown. Once selected, there are no material winnings, trips to Denmark, or scholarships, nor is she busy undertaking time-consuming tasks, as are other community queens. In fact, she is not even a queen, she is a maid. Beauty is not part of the criteria for picking her, as long as her physical standards conform to that of a healthy, happy, open-minded high school girl, the all-Danish-American “girl next door”.

100

Hanne Pico Larsen

In spite of these differences from other community pageants, the annual selection of the Danish Days Maid shows the contours of a similar structure to other community pageants, and indeed the potential social impact is clear. In spite of the seemingly more relaxed form of the pageant there is no reason to believe that the outcome is less important for the families involved. Many informants found it easier to describe what the process is not like, for there are no sets of written rules to which to refer. The murkiness of the affair is, in part, due to the fact that the selection has been done differently and by different entities and committees over the years. The selection is commonly perceived to be highly subjective and by definition unfair. However, even if the selection seems to lack rules, there may exist an informal selection process that is obvious to members of the Danish Days Foundation, the body that picks the girl. The first Danish Days Maid was selected in 1967. There are no records or living memories about how the tradition was initiated. Presumably, she was just another festive element added to the festival. When the second Danish Days Maid, Marianne, was asked how she was selected she laughed: Yes, but I was selected back then, it was very easy because they wanted a girl from Denmark, and there were not a lot of us. So I was chosen in 1968. 4

Literally, a Danish Maid was desired, and Marianne was one of the few in town. But the rules changed quickly: There was one more Danish girl chosen after me, but then it was changed so that it had to be someone from the valley. At first they were just picked from the different Danish families and later it changed to become a girl from either the second to last or last year in high school, and then she writes an essay where she describes herself and her experiences during Danish Days. 5

The Danish Days Maid thus was a Danish girl from Denmark for the first three years during which the tradition was established, and then rules were adjusted and the maid had to be a girl from the valley with some connection to the Danish community. Marianne also describes what she thinks the process is like today. She recalls the maid responsibilities as a wonderful experience and relates how she even traveled to Los Angeles to be on a TV show. However, there were no formal tasks: Back then it was not as much an official task, one mainly had to walk around and talk to people [during Danish Days]. Of course, when I was interviewed on TV I had to talk … nowadays the Danish Days Maids have different tasks where they sell tickets … those tickets6… and they go around to the different societies and stuff like that.7

When Marianne was asked if there is great competition to become the Danish Days Maid she laughed again and shook her head: No there is not, there are not too many options. They take someone who comes from families active in Danish Days – it is a bit unfair sometimes.8

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

101

Marianne was not able to elaborate on the unfairness, but the same concerns about unfairness in the selection process were voiced in other conversations. Esther is another well-known citizen of Solvang, who proudly describes her long-standing Solvang background and direct Danish heritage on both parents’ sides, as well as her husband’s Solvang and Denmark lineage. Esther finds the Danish Days Foundation committee rather exclusive. Although her criticism is barely expressed, she does not give the committee members much credit for the way in which they handle the selection of the Danish Days Maid. When asked if she was ever the Danish Days Maid she replied: “NO, I was not a Danish Days Maid.”9 Inquiring further if she knows why she was not selected: “I have NO idea… I would probably not have appreciated the honor at the time. My daughter was interested in being a Danish Days Maid but she was not selected, so it is… it is interesting.”10 The tone in her voice and her careful choice of the word “interesting” belies her critique of the way in which the selection is done. It is clear that she finds her family entitled to the honor. They are Danish, they are from Solvang, and they have always worked hard on Danish Days. Evidently they do belong. The first Danish Days Maid in this family was Lauren Jacobsen, Danish Days Maid 2006 (see appendix 1). Lauren Jacobsen presented herself as the all-round active American high school girl: She was seventeen, a junior in high school, on the varsity tennis team, an award winner, and, in her spare time, she enjoyed tutoring as well as different church activities. She showed involvement and engagement in her surroundings. Her Danish heritage goes back and entails a war story and happy love between grandparents. Lauren had participated in Danish Days with her family since she was little (see appendix 1). What was left out, and covered up in 2006, was the fact that Lauren does not live in Solvang. Her dad does, and so does his family. Lauren lives with her mother. The environment in which she is active and the high school for which she plays tennis are somewhere in Orange County. However, she has participated in Danish Days every year, and as she ends the essay: “The festival is still largely about family as my dad, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents still participate yearly” (Jacobsen 2006:3 or see appendix 1). In this example we see how family values are highlighted. Max, another committee member, a bold, outspoken person, suddenly became rather quiet when the recording device was turned on and he was asked about the Danish Days Maid. There was a smile in his voice, but it is clearly a serious matter: The Danish Maid … is … picked on how she is going to represent the committee and herself, there is a lot of PR involved, she has to go around in parades and events and present herself well, and Danish Days in a nice manner. Generally, there is an essay she has to write … if there is a group of applicants… It has changed significantly

102

Hanne Pico Larsen

over the years (laughs), I have never been a real significant part in picking the Danish Maid. And she has been picked in a number of different ways. There is not really a straightforward answer to that question. 11

When asked who is currently in charge of the selection: “I don’t know, the committee is in charge of getting names… (laughs) there is no straightforward answer, I don’t know what to tell you on that one. There is always controversy.”12 I try to tease out some criteria such as speaking Danish, being Danish or even looking Danish. As for the looks, the informant cautiously changes his rhetorical strategy, twists my question, and sends it back to me: No, you don’t have to speak Danish, but yes, they have to have some Danish blood in them, heritage, some part, some minute quantity of Danish blood in them somewhere. And what does a Dane look like? They all look like Danes don’t they, so we can’t, they do not have to look like a Dane, Danes look like everybody else…13

I ask if a Danish Days Maid could look Hispanic and the informant clears his throat: “…absolutely, why not? They could be colored, they could look anyway … if you go to Denmark you see a ‘hodgepodge’ of people…”14 I point out that many Danish Days Maids have had long blonde hair, but he reminds me that some have also had dark hair and slightly darker skin. Then he starts to talk about his Danish cousin in Denmark with Indian roots. Max points to blood and heritage as criteria but it is interesting to note that he shies away from the debate about looks. In the past there have been Danish Days Maids coming from mixed marriages, dark-haired and with darker complexion then the usual fair Scandinavian skin. Looking at the photo gallery of former Danish Days Maids, however, we see that they are usually blonde. Max’s daughter, Kristine, became the Danish Days Maid in 2007. Kristine has Danish blood, a family actively participating in the festival and she has long blonde hair. I ask Max about the controversy that he had pointed to earlier: There is always a bit of uh … controversy in it, there is always going to be a loser that did not get it, who thought they should have been, or someone upset because their daughter did not get it. There is always a winner and a loser in everything when there is more than one person involved, it is hard to please everyone … it is a tough deal.15

Finally, getting nowhere, I ask if I could apply to become the Danish Days Maid and we both get an outlet for our laughter and a conclusion for our talk: Hmm … there is an age thing, you know what, why don’t you? I am sure we would love to have you as the Danish Maid … I don’t think there is anything set in stone in the age, I think it is … although, they generally are a bit younger than yourself. I have not been involved in this, I do not know.16

This conversation illustrates that not even one of the committee members from the Danish Days Foundation is sure about the process for choosing a

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

103

Danish Days Maid. He knows that it has changed over the years, and he knows that this is a controversial matter, but “nothing is set in stone”. My spontaneous query about applying to become the Danish Days Maid myself was revealing, but an actual application would have made it easier for me to detect a set of rules. Max is saying that I might be Danish, but I am not from the valley. I have no Solvang history, and I am too old. Reversing these three statements reveals, yet again, that the maid needs to have Danish blood, she needs a Solvang history, and she must be a young high school girl, a maid. A similar example can be found in the work of Barbro Klein. In the 1970s Barbro Klein participated in “Swedish Days” on Long Island. She reported on the “Miss Sweden Day Beauty Contest” (note that here the word beauty is used), one of the highlights of the festival. Again, Swedish blood was required for the contestants. Ten women were presented, eight of whom came from Swedish American families around New York. When the girls were introduced, their family history and deeds were mentioned and applauded as part of the contestant’s virtues. The remaining two women had just come from Sweden, and regardless of how beautiful and Swedish they were, they lost (Klein 1988). Unlike the rest of the participant, the two Swedish girls wore contemporary Swedish fashion. They were perhaps too Swedish, as I might have been too Danish for Solvang. Neither the two Swedish ladies nor I had any history or sense of belonging in the American plus community. We had no successful families in America to fall back on, and besides being Danish/Swedish, we had nothing to do in the context of American ethnic pageants. Some of the qualities sought for in such ethnic pageants seem very much to be American values rather than modern Danish values. Not surprisingly, Danish-ness in Solvang is very different from Danish Danish-ness and can be characterized as a static phenomenon, which refuses the infusion of contemporary Danish culture (Larsen 2006). Rick, yet another member of the Danish Days Foundation and unofficial Danish Days historian, has studied the history of the pageant. He has made paper cuttings of the first 30 of the Danish Days Maids and he is not afraid of talking about how the looks of the girls loom large in the consciousness of the people involved: “There was a time during the 70s where girls were being chosen just because they had blonde hair and a Scandinavian last name and had no connection to the town.”17 He also gives an example of a girl who was not chosen because her father was Hispanic and she did not “look Danish.” That of course, had stirred things up. “There are people here now, who might have different last name now, but their family has been here for three generations now, they have been a part of this party, they have the same right.”18 Rick underscores the importance of being from the valley, having a Danish immigrant history and not really wanting to be the maid but doing it

104

Hanne Pico Larsen

for the sake of putting it on one’s resume, and/or because her parents want her to. He stressed that some girls are simply raised to be the Danish Days Maids. Again it confirmed how girls might be selected because of the status of parents and grandparents. In small communities the girls probably also participate because it is expected of them, by their parents as well as the wider community. Their reward is the pride of their immediate families (Lavenda 1996). When I ask Rick to list the criteria he is quick to list some obvious rules: being Danish, family and child participation in Danish Days (throughout 60 years), school, school clubs, community spirit. He underlines: ‘There are no rules, and when [there are] no rules it leaves it open.”19 Asking two other members of the Danish Days Foundation, Bernice and Hans Birkholm, about the selection process and the bickering, I finally get a straight answer: We just sit around and talk. Actually, up until last year since the foundation … the ladies, Rose and I and Brenda would kind of just pick. And then last year [2004], there was a hue and a cry from the year before, that it was not democratic enough. So we invited people to apply. Well, only one applied (laughs). So, this year two were represented and they both would be real good, so we’ll do one this year [2005] and one the next year, and then I think we already have one for the next year.20

Bernice is not afraid to explain the former informal character of the selection process. She even laughs a bit when explaining how little interest there had been when the process had been formalized – two girls applied and they were both accepted. I ask the reason why the girl, the center of the hubbub, was not chosen. Both committee members admit that she could have been perfect, she and her family work hard for Danish Days but … “The girl which was complained about … her cousins has been already … we try to spread it out.”21 It is not only about the individual girl and her immediate family, but about the larger family as well. The last inquiry concerns Kristine, the popular Solvang girl who never became the Danish Days Maid. When I talked to people of Solvang about the Danish Days Maid, people speculated a lot about this girl and why she had never been chosen. They often used her as the perfect example of how unfair the selection was. This was a salient example because the girl in question is deeply rooted in Solvang. But her skin is not fair and her facial features not Caucasian. Everybody seemed to assume that the reason why she was never picked was connected to the fact that she was adopted and did not look Danish. Kristine herself, contrary to everybody else, gave another explanation. For Kristine her inadmissibility as a Danish Days Maid was more about her not fulfilling another criterion, namely that of former engagement in Danish Days.

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

105

Kristine as the Danish Days Maid was not something that ever came up. I never participated in Danish Days like the maids did. I never hung out in the æbleskiver tent (though I go there frequently for drinks now) and would have rather run around in my soccer uniform than in my custom-made costume. Growing up, I think I just looked at Danish Days as a carnival thing with booths, food, and parades, not a Danish thing. Maybe that has to do with my family and our own traditions.22

Kristine is not nostalgic about her Danish roots and family background. She is fluent in Danish, visits Denmark frequently, and has two Danish parents. To her being Danish is natural, not a heritage to cling to in fear of losing it. Maybe that is one of the reasons why she never dreamed of becoming the Danish Days Maid. However, Kristine is not naïve, and when I asked her about the importance of the “Danish look”, she has an answer as well, and treats the issue with sensitivity. This Danish, non-Danish looking girl is the one to put words to an issue about which other people feel so uncomfortable speaking: Danish Days is a celebration of culture and old-time traditions, but over the years it has also been a major part of tourism in Solvang. To that extent, Danish Days is a production that needs to look the part. The Danish Days Maid doesn’t necessarily get to talk to everyone that see her and talk about her heritage so it would make sense to make sure she looks “Danish”. Looking Danish, to clarify, is … you know … Caucasian-ish. To relate it more to my personal experiences I will use the chocolate shop. Whenever it comes up that my parents own Ingeborg’s [a Solvang store selling Danish homemade chocolate], I slip it in that they are Danish or that I was adopted into a Danish family. I want people to know that Ingeborg’s is still really “Danish”. I think it gives the business its credibility and/or authenticity. I think the face of Danish Days does the same thing for Solvang. Whether people want to admit it or not, physical appearance does make a difference for Danish Days and the physical attribute I am referring to is more color than anything else.23

Although on the surface, this selection may seem motivated largely by nepotism, this analysis makes little sense. Kristine’s family is among the central families in the business community. Both in social and commercial life, Kristine and her family stand for a profound identification with Solvang Danishness. Kristine is, by any measure, one of the most “Danish” kids in the community. Her only “failing” in the Danish Days Maid competition is her dark brown eyes, long black hair, and pronounced Asian features.

Conclusion Danish Days is a festival celebration of the hometown of Solvang rather than Denmark or Danish heritage. The selection of the maid is controversial and can fuel heritage envy, and it puts into question the community’s boundaries and criteria for belonging. Danish Days and the selection of the Danish Days Maid are manifestations and reaffirmations of the constructed Danish heritage. It functions as the annual maintenance of Danish heritage as it is interpreted and perceived in Solvang. It is Solvang keeping

106

Hanne Pico Larsen

up with its own history and even getting a chance to continue and strengthen it. The content of the annual Solvang festival, Danish Days, is rather repetitive. The same procedure is followed, and the same costumes are worn year after year. At the core of the event is the Danish Days Maid. She is a young girl who is given the honor of representing Solvang and the festival, not a major task, but the significance of the task looms large in the Solvang consciousness. The event is controversial within the small community. Changes in the selection process have taken place during the last years. However, the character of these changes seems more dialogic and the lack of rules for selecting the Danish Days Maid, the lack of competition, and the elusiveness of the process allow people in town to contest the choice of the maid almost every year. According to the Danish Days Foundation, whose members choose the maid, she has to fulfill certain basic criteria. She has to have been active in the festival as long as she can remember, to be of Danish background, well known to Solvang citizens, and to be an active and involved young girl. However, people in Solvang often project other criteria into the process, and it becomes a sensitive affair. Does she have to look Danish? Does she have to live in town? Why are some families favored over others in the selection? These are some of the main issues in the annual discussion of the Danish Days Maid. But in part it is a question of semantics. The Danish Days Maid is to represent the festival, not the Danish as such. These two levels of the discussion are often hard for Solvang people to connect; and the maid is often taken to be a Danish Maid and the confusion gives rise to heritage-based envy. Who is more Danish than others? The Danish Days Maid was actually only Danish for the first three years after the inauguration of the tradition in Solvang in 1967. Thereafter the girl needed to be from the valley and in that way most Danish girls from Denmark were excluded. But if Solvang refers back to Denmark, should the Danish Days Maid be/look Danish as well? And what constitutes this particular Danish (Days) look? The Danish looks have only been defined by one stereotypical feature, long blonde hair and blue eyes. Some Danish Days Maids have lacked those features, but many of them certainly have it. The elusiveness of the process together with the Heritage Envy manifest themselves in the importance of the appearance of the maid, at least in the minds of the townspeople in Solvang. The Danish Days Maid is not considered a beauty queen and hence appearance is not something to be discussed. Still, questions about ethnicity and visuality lurk below the surface though they are not easily addressed. Ethnicity is an important element in the pageant, but ethnicity becomes even more important in the minds of the people of Solvang who project ethnicity, Danish looks, family history, and certain nostalgia for the past into the process.

Danish Maids and Visual Matters

107

Hanne Pico Larsen, Ph.D. Adjunct Professor Department of Germanic Languages and Literature Faculty of Arts and Science Columbia University 319 Hamilton Hall (MC 2812) 1130 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027 E-mail: [email protected]

References Bendix, R. 2000: Heredity, Hybridity and Heritage from One Fin de Siècle to the Next. In Folklore, Heritage Politics and Ethnic Diversity. Sweden: Botkyrka. Cohen, C. B., Richard Wilk & Beverly Stoeltje (eds.) 1996: Beauty Queens on the Global Stage. Gender, Contests, and Power. London & New York. Conzen, M. P. 1990: Ethnicity on the Land. In The Making of the American Landscape. London & New York. Gans, J. 1979: Symbolic Ethnicity. The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America. Ethnic and Racial Studies (2). Gradén, L. 2003a: On Parade. Making Heritage in Lindsborg, Kansas. Uppsala. Gradén, L. 2003b: Royal Symbolism and Swedish-American Heritage Making. The Swedish-American Historical Quarterly LIV. Hoelscher, S. D. 1998a: Heritage on Stage. The Invention of Ethnic Place in America’s Little Switzerland. Madison. Jacobsen, L 2006: Hello and Welcome to Solvang Danish Days 2006! Velkommen. Danish Days in Solvang. Solvang. Klein, B. 1988: Den gamla hembygden eller vad har hänt med de svenska folktraditionerna i USA? Blandsverige. Om kulturskillnader och kulturmöten. Stockholm. Kurashige, L. 2002. Japanese American Celebration and Conflict. A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Los Angeles, 1934–1990. Berkeley. Larsen, H. P. 2004: “We Are All Danes for the Weekend”. Danish Days in Solvang, California. Center for Tourism and Cultural Change. Sheffield. Larsen, H. P. 2006: Solvang, the “Danish Capital of America”. A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else? (Ph.D. Dissertation, UC Berkeley). Lavenda R. H. 1996: “It’s Not a Beauty Pageant!” Hybrid Ideology in Minnesota Community Queen Pageants. In Beauty Queens on the Global Stage. Gender, Contests, and Power. London & New York. Lowenthal, D. 1996: Possessed by the Past. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. New York. Österlund-Pötzsch, Susanne 2003: American Plus. Etnisk identitet hos finlandssvenska ättlingar i Nordamerika. Helsingfors. Price, T. & J. Miller. 1997: Miracle Town. Creating America’s Bavarian Village in Leavenworth, Washington. Vancouver. Rodrigez, G. (Jan. 29th) 2006: There She Is, Miss Chinatown. Celebrating Heritage and Assimilation, Pageant-Style. Los Angeles Times. M5 Stoeltje, B. & R. Bauman. 1989: Community Festival and the Enactment of Modernity. The Old Traditional Way of Life. Bloomington. Stoeltje, B. 1996: The Snake Charmer Queen. Ritual, Competition, and Signification

108

Hanne Pico Larsen

in American Festival. In Beauty Queens on the Global Stage. Gender, Contests, and Power. London & New York. Tanner, M. 1998. Pageants: Pride or Puffery? AsianWeek. Yano, Christine R. 2006. Crowning the Nice Girl. Gender, Ethnicity, and Culture in Hawai’i’s Cherry Blossom Festival. Honolulu.

Appendix 1 Hello and Welcome to Solvang Danish Days 2006! My name is Lauren Jacobsen and I am proud to serve as this year’s Danish Days Maid. I am thrilled to represent my family, our Danish heritage, and the city of Solvang in its yearly celebration. I am a 17 years old junior in high school and a member of the varsity tennis team as well as a United States National award winner. In my spare time I enjoy tutoring as well as various church activities. For me, being the Danish Maid is like fulfilling a childhood fantasy. Ever since I was young I have dreamt of one day being that girl, and I remember my dad telling me that one day I just could be. I have always cherished the Danish community of Solvang, and have enjoyed every minute of my childhood spent here. I love the heritage and people of this community and am so excited to represent them in the 2006 Danish Days celebration. My Danish heritage stems from my father, Glen Jacobsen’s, side of the family. My Grandfather, Knud Jacobsen, was born in Denmark on the island of Årø in Sønder Jutland. He grew up during World War II and even faced the Nazi occupation. At the age of 18 he enlisted in the Danish army and soon after moved to the United States, where he joined his Uncle’s farm on the Bull Flats outside of Solvang. It did not take long for him to enlist in the U.S. army, and was promptly sent back to Europe, Germany to be exact, for his tour of duty. Upon returning home he met my Grandmother, Elisabeth Simonsen, and was soon married. My Grandmother’s parents, Jens and Marie Simonsen, were both Danish immigrants. Jens was a Danish merchant marine and came to the United States in the early 1900s working on a boat owned by him and his brothers. After meeting Marie the two moved to Iowa where my Grandmother was born. She later moved to Solvang in 1940s. My Grandparents have long associated our family with the Danish Days Celebration, and my dad as well as his sisters were always involved in the festival. As for me, participating in the festival started at a very young age. As a little girl my sisters, Lexi and Laini, and I especially enjoyed walking around town in our costumes taking pictures with visitors, not forgetting to put on that big smile. Over the years, I have taken on bigger tasks. Helping out in the breakfast area, serving coffee, and cooking æbleskiver, as well as delivering breakfast at the Lutheran Home, working the linguisa booth, and participating in the parades are many of the tasks that I enjoy doing each and every year. The festival is still largely about family as my dad, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents still participate yearly. For me, the city of Solvang is filled with loving family and friends and is an amazing community. I am proud to represent them as the 2006 Solvang Danish Maid. I hope that you are able to experience the communities amazing culture and traditions, HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND ENJOY THIS YEAR’S CELEBRATION (Jacobsen 2006:3).

Danish Maids and Visual Matters 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

109

This article is an abbreviated and revised version of a chapter from my Ph.D. dissertation: Solvang, the “Danish Capital of America”: A Little Bit of Denmark, Disney, or Something Else? (Larsen 2006). Kristine Pedersen 3 September 2006. On Japanese-American ethnic identity as played out during the Nisei Week, see Kurashige 2002. Marianne Larsen, 2 March 2005. Author’s translation from Danish. Ibid. Danish Days raffle tickets sold before and during Danish Days. The prize is a trip to Denmark and the money raised is used to sponsor the following Danish Days. Marianne Larsen, 2 March 2005. Author’s translation from Danish. Ibid. Esther Jacobsen Bates, 9 January 2005. Ibid. Max Hanberg, 19 February 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Rick Marzullo, 26 February 2005. Ibid. Ibid. Bernice Birkholm, 6 March 2005. Ibid. Kristine Pedersen, 22 September 2006. Ibid.

110

Hanne Pico Larsen

New Legends in Nordic America

111

New Legends in Nordic America The Case of Big Erick Erickson James P. Leary

Nordic immigrants to North America and their descendants, like other immigrants and their offspring, have remembered, transplanted, altered, and created numerous legends. Yet we have examined such legends less fully than we might. Extant studies have been concerned overwhelmingly with the survival and revival of mostly supernatural old country legends as counters to the assimilating forces of America’s mainstream.1 Hence scholars have keyed on numerous instances wherein Nordic Americans have nostalgically invoked hidden people, trolls, sorcerers, and household spirits from across the Atlantic so as to: 1) maintain imaginative connections to distant old world homelands; 2) establish familiar old world legendary figures within somewhat similar new world settings; and 3) transform new world sites into romantic and highly selective representations of the old world. This article, in contrast, asserts through a case study of Big Erick Erickson that new legends–neither exclusively Nordic nor American but thoroughly Nordic American–have also been fashioned; legends that draw in subtle ways upon old world experiences yet are chiefly concerned with constituting and commenting on emerging, culturally plural new world milieus. Before discussing Big Erick’s legendry and its significance, however, permit me to sketch the historical context of sketch Nordic American legend scholarship.

Survival and Revival In the early twentieth century Thor Helgeson, a Norwegian-born sexton and schoolteacher in Waupaca County, Wisconsin, vividly chronicled a legend-telling session amongst fellow immigrants that mixed accounts of supernatural occurrences in the old country with those about ghosts, the devil, and even trolls in rural Wisconsin (Helgeson 1917). When Helgeson published Folksagn og folketro (1923), concerning the old world legendry of immigrants from various parts of Norway, he was hailed by the Norwegian

112

James P. Leary

American journalist Waldemar Ager as “the P.C. Asbjörnsen of the Norwegians in America” (Haugen 1970). Ella Valborg Rølvaag’s subsequent overview essay, “Norwegian Folk Narrative in America” (1941), revealed that many other Norwegian Americans contributed similar accounts to magazines published by immigrants from such districts as Telemark and Valders. Louise P. Olson (1950, 1954) and Einar Haugen (1953:487,541,550) offered further testimony to Norwegian supernatural legendry set mostly in the old country but sometimes in America’s Upper Midwest and Pacific Northwest, prompting an extended commentary in Reidar Christiansen’s European Folklore in America (1962:43–46,52–53). Meanwhile Richard Dorson (1952:131–134) and Aili Kolehmainen Johnson (1955) reported on stories of Finnish wizards or noitas circulating in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The eventual presence of Dorson and folk narrative scholar Linda Dégh at Indiana University in the 1960s helped foster a trio of dissertations by Elli Kaija Köngäs-Maranda (1963), Frank Paulsen (1967), and Barbro Sklute Klein (1970) that examined, respectively, Finnish, Danish, and Swedish American folklore, with a considerable emphasis on legends. In keeping with the paradigm prevailing throughout much of the twentieth century, they concentrated on the extent to which old world forms of folklore survived in the new world. With particular regard to legends, each demonstrated that, although many stories set across the Atlantic were remembered by the first generation, only a few took root in America. And most of these faded from the active repertoires of the second and subsequent generations, especially as language competence diminished and the legends of long ago and far away were no longer relevant to the increasingly modernized, Americanized lives of younger folks (see also Stern 1977:10–12,15–16). By the early 1970s, however, a new way of looking at immigrant and ethnic folklore was emerging, especially at Indiana University. Robert Klymasz, a Canadian graduate student of Ukrainian descent, argued forcefully that the “Old Immigrant Folklore Complex” was succeeded by a “New Ethnic Folklore Complex.” This latter phenomenon, aligned with the third legendary pattern introduced above, has subsequently thrived as a major component of the multi-cultural movement now well-established throughout North America. It is distinguished by the highly conscious, simplified, modified, occasional, organizationally based, entertainment-oriented, thoroughly romantic, and publicly accessible revitalization of a few selectively chosen and symbolically charged folklore forms, including legends that are transmitted more through visual representations and print than oral tradition (Klymasz 1973). Hence in Mount Horeb, the Wisconsin village where I have lived since 1988, members of the Sons of Norway Lodge, many of whom were also merchants involved with the local Chamber of Commerce, decided in the early 1980s to make their community “The Troll Capital of

New Legends in Nordic America

113

the World.” Murals, carved statues, signs, books and pamphlets, dolls, and troll impersonators in parades now provide villagers and tourists with a contemporary, safe and cuddly rendering of an ancient, fierce and prickly Nordic being. In 1995 Barbro Sklute Klein, whose observations of Nordic legendry in the new world have been the most continuous and astute, returned to Maine’s New Sweden where she had done field research thirty years before. In addition to encountering and reassessing the legendary patterns sketched above, she discerned a fourth phenomenon wherein the new world behavioral modes and folklore forms she had originally regarded as shaped solely by Swedish acculturation to an Anglo-American mainstream had also been affected significantly from the outset by interactions with Micmac Indians and French Canadian immigrants: “I came to recognize that understanding the history of relationships with Yankees, Native Americans, and French speakers is of critical importance to understanding New Sweden” (Klein 2004:254). In other words, Klein realized that some of the most vital, everyday aspects of new world Nordic American folklore were the creolized expressions of participants in a diverse, polyglot, relatively egalitarian, and emergent regional culture. Just such a creolized cultural milieu developed and persists in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where, in the late 19th century, Cornish, French Canadian, Italian, Slavic, Finnish, and Swedish immigrants came to farm mine, fish, and work in the woods alongside indigenous Ojibwe and Potawatomi peoples. Legends aplenty sprung from their collective and divergent experiences, exhibiting patterns that, while still connected to older motifs and structures, are nonetheless new. This article offers and ponders one such cycle of new legends in Nordic America, concerning a Swedish immigrant logger who came be known as Big Erick Erickson.

Erick Julius Bryngelson Becomes “Big Erick” In 1871 Walfred Been, an ocean-going and Great Lakes captain, guided an immigrant party of fellow Swedes to the shores of Lake Superior’s Huron Bay. Perhaps inspired by the coastal setting and dreams of agrarian prosperity, they named their community after Skåne, Sweden’s southernmost province and breadbasket, an old world place favored with a moderate climate and situated just a few sea miles from the major market and shipping port of Copenhagen, Denmark (Monette 1975:45). Old and new worlds, dreams and reality, however, seldom align entirely. This Swedish American maritime settlement was in a remote northern region with long snowy winters and frozen lakes. Its nearby metropolis was the rough sawmill town of L’Anse. Its neighbors were Ojibwes, French Canadians, and especially Finns. Its chief crop was timber. And it was soon called Skanee. In keeping

114

James P. Leary

with the topsy-turvy nature of Skåne’s transformation into Skanee, the prosperous Captain Walfred Been is nowadays nearly forgotten, while Erick Erickson, once a lowly hired man on Been’s farm, lives on in a cycle of legends sustained through print, oral tradition, commemorative products, and local landmarks. Erick Julius Bryngelson was born in Fröskog, Dalsland, Sweden, in 1882, the son of Bryngel Magnus Eriksson and Stina Lisa Petersdotter. On June 17, 1901, thirteen days before his nineteenth birthday, young Erick departed from Stockholm, bound for Baraga, Michigan, where his saloon-keeping uncle, Axel Johnson, had offered a place to stay. Soon after arrival, in conformity with American style surnames, he exchanged Bryngelson for his father’s patronymic, Eriksson, but altered the spelling to Erickson.2 Like many male Swedish immigrants, he roamed for a few years, harvesting grain in the Dakotas, then homesteading briefly in Oregon before returning to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where he worked in the woods, bought a small farm near Skanee from “Whisky Pete” Olson, and married a fellow Swede, Elin Sophia Newman (whose surname was originally Nyland). The couple raised nine children and, to support his growing family, Erickson began working as a jobber or logging contractor for local mills, while continuing to farm. From 1934 until shortly before his death in 1954, Erickson ran several large camps, employing as many as 250 lumberjacks at a time, that supplied the Ford Motor Company Mill in L’Anse with timber for wooden automobile parts. In his heyday, Erickson also hired farm laborers for such seasonal practices as haymaking (Anonymous 1948, 1954; Klenner 2005; Ravits 2005). Erick Erickson’s contemporary status as a legendary local character emerged during these two decades. Through research undertaken sporadically between 1993 and the present, I have encountered nearly 50 Big Erick stories, along with an additional 17 variants, from four published sources, a broadcast on Hancock’s WMPL radio, and contact through interviews and letters with ten people who knew and/or told stories about him. I have learned about but have not yet eaten a Big Erick Burger. And I have traveled Big Erick Road to Big Erick’s Bridge State Forest Campground, crossed the eponymous bridge, and gazed at Big Erick’s Falls. From a strict textual and generic perspective, the oral narratives that constitute what I am calling the cycle of Big Erick legends range from true stories based on occurrences experienced and witnessed by several parties, to legendary accounts that are supposed to be true but are second hand and not fully verifiable, to widespread jokes or humorous fictitious narratives that are “told on” an actual person with whose real life escapades they somehow fit. In addition, the many Big Erick stories emphasizing his sing-song Swenglish speech and mock inadvertent malapropisms–whether regarded as true, possibly true, or outright fictions–share structural and stylistic features

New Legends in Nordic America

115

with the dialect joke, a form of folk narrative that flourishes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (Dorson 1948). Meanwhile at least one widely circulating story, involving the loan and repayment of an uncounted roll of money, has achieved the status of an exemplum or parable, a moral tale illustrative of an ideal response to a recurring human situation. With regard to content, the most widespread folk legendry surrounding Big Erick focuses on his physical appearance and on his distinctive verbal style, witticisms, and related actions in two separate but interrelated spheres. The first is the lumber camp, populated by his workers: cooks, sawyers, and truckers, including a plethora of Finns from the nearby settlement of Aura. The second is the town, usually L’Anse but sometimes more cosmopolitan Hancock, wherein Erick meets beggars, bartenders, bankers, merchants, and agents of the state and federal governments. Sometimes the latter also venture into the woods; whereas fellow timber jobbers and working lumberjacks are regular accomplices or witnesses to Erick’s in-town interactions. In addition to Big Erick stories and memories that persist in the public sphere, there are more private family stories, the content, style, and intent of which, as we shall see, both coincide and contrast with narratives in wider circulation. A strapping albeit occasionally shambling, hunched over 6'4", the Erick Erickson of legend was mostly dubbed “Big Erick,” although some called him “Long Erick” and others favored the Finnglish “Lonkka Eerikki” (Collins 1975:86). In 1946, amidst a storytelling session at the Liberty boardinghouse in L’Anse, a fellow named Norm Thompson told folklorist Richard Dorson that, despite his height, Erickson was “all humped over.” Thompson continued: If you meet him in the woods where he’s boss, he’s dressed up in oxfords, dress pants and a silk shirt. In town he dresses like a lumberjack, very ragged. He cut off the pants legs of a new eighty dollar suit in a saloon, to show he was one of the boys. “Sesus Rist, none of my friends know me,’ he said (Dorson 1952:201–202).

Local historian Elsie Collins offered similar comments amidst a string of stories learned from former Erickson employees Andrew Keranen and Hugo Lehto: “‘Long Eric’ fancied himself as a neat dresser on the work scene. When he went to town, however, his garb was like that of most lumberjacks” (Collins 1975:86). [See Figure 1] A tall man who sometimes affected shorter stature, a logger who occasionally wore town clothes in the woods and woods clothes in town, the Erick Erickson of stories periodically used facial and vocal expressions inversely. As Norm Thompson told Richard Dorson: “He’s happy when losing money and grumbling when making it” (Dorson 1952:201). Swanny Goodell recalled Erickson’s frequent lament, “I’m going to the poor farm.” Consequently, Charlie Laurich, a fellow logging contractor, and others knew Erickson by yet another name.

116

James P. Leary

Figure 1: Big Erick, in lumberjack garb, assumes a characteristic stance at his camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, late 1940s. Courtesy: Trish Klenner Ravits.

He was also called “Crying’ Eric, because he had a high, whining voice when upset. “Vell, if ve don’t get more logs out, dere vill be no money for Christmas!” . . . It was when things were going well that he whined the most (Waring 1986:59).

Like the foregoing example, Big Erick stories sometimes demanded a distinctive performance style. Besides assuming a distraught tone, Laurich’s rendering of Erick’s speech assumes the broken-English of a Swedish immigrant. Dorson likewise reported “queer whines and sobbing noises” when Erick was evoked, adding that the “imitation of Big Eric’s own Swedish singsong has become a standard second voice around L’Anse for describing the eccentric acts and sayings of the celebrated boss” (1952:201). Even so, Dorson’s use of “Sesus Rist,” a dialect rendering of “Jesus Christ,” in two of the five stories he published suggests that some of his informants were likely first-generation Finnish Americans whose emulations of a Swede’s botched English were colored by their own Finnglish peculiarities.3 Indeed the Big Erick stories I have found were told mostly by Finns. Among them: Norm Hiltunen, Hugo Lehto, Andrew Keranen, Roy Koski, Siiri Toyras Ollila, Wesley Ollila, Ken Salo, Oren Tikkanen, Helmer Toyras, and Fred Waisanen. The crying tone frequently adopted yet variously employed in Big Erick stories prompts several interpretive possibilities. A marked departure from the deep, gruff, stoic voicing commonly used in oral tradition to signify participants in such proverbially “rough and tough” occupations as logging, Big Erick’s higher, heartfelt register–coming, in contrast, from an experienced, extremely competent woods boss—bespoke a greater-than-usual degree of self-reflection, vulnerability and humanity: the genuine anxiety of an immigrant with very little education, of a self-made man who was supporting a large family, and of a boss who was responsible for the well-being of several hundred workers in a region mightily affected by the economic de-

New Legends in Nordic America

117

pression of the 1930s. Similarly, Norm Thompson’s aforementioned notion that Erickson was “grumbling” in good times and “happy” when times were hard, despite the apparent contradiction, aligns with age-old peasant fatalism: calamity and prosperity come in cycles; one endures the former and recognizes that the latter cannot last. At the same time, however, there is little doubt that the crying tone of some Big Erick stories connotes a canny entrepreneur. Indeed Helmer Toyras, whose brother-in-law Wesley Ollila worked for Erickson “from the 1930s to the 1950s off and on,” referred to Big Erick stories as centered around “his sly remarks” (Toyras 2002). Swanny Goodell, a mill operator, fondly recalled the legendary Swede as a “hard bargainer” who was nevertheless fair and scrupulously honest. To some, he may have been “Crying Erick,” but as Goodell put it, “he was no crybaby as far as I’m concerned.” Once a price was agreed on, a handshake sealed the deal and there was no more quibbling (Olson 1970). The fact that Erickson was indisputably admired rather than ridiculed suggests that legend-tellers like Goodell regarded him as shrewdly putting on the poor mouth to gain an edge, a rather common, artful, and even expected traditional negotiating strategy within old time economic networks eschewing the small print and unfathomable language of lawyers. In the mid-1970s, for example, I recorded several bargaining sessions between cattle brokers in the Omaha stockyards that, in keeping with longstanding conventions, were fraught with the hard-luck stories and pleading tones of both parties (e.g. Leary 1978). Accordingly in one Big Erick story, tears rolled down his cheeks as he bargained for a new truck (Waring 1986:60). In another, he lamented to a sluggish Monday morning crew that, at the rate they were going, it would soon be Friday, “and ve ain’t got no vork done yet” (Koski 2005). As in these two instances, anecdotes regarding Big Erick in town frequently addressed themes associated with money, property, and legal matters, while those set in the woods involved his efforts to maintain authority over and get work out of a large crew of independently inclined employees that included adversaries, agitators, shirkers, and petty thieves. When a businessman from Houghton-Hancock, twin cities divided by a canal, commented enviously on all the property Erick owned, he whimpered that his holdings extended “only as far as the bridge” (Erickson 2005). When a salesman for City Service pressed Erick to purchase his brand of gasoline, the big camp boss wondered what good city service would be in the woods (Dorson 1952:202). After auditing Big Erick’s books, a man from the Internal Revenue Service asked if he had any other resources. Apparently mishearing, Erick deflected the query immediately to a sporting fellow timber contractor: “Sirard has the race horses, not me” (Toyras 2002). Several of the five versions I’ve encountered add, “But I got eight damn good teams” (Dorson 1952:202; Anonymous, 1971; Collins 1975:87; Waring 1986:60).

118

James P. Leary

On another occasion a government official cautioned Erick not to exceed his assigned logging quota. Playing slyly on the homophony between his Swenglish rendering of “the quota” (“da quota”) and the mostly tree-less states of North and South Dakota, Erickson supposedly responded, “I never logged in Dakota” (Collins 1975:87; Waisanen 1993). A master of affected ignorance and effective indirection, the Erick of legend controlled and cajoled his workers similarly. When a new cook obsessed with efficiency proposed completely rearranging the camp kitchen, Erick reckoned it would be more efficient to get a new cook (Collins 1975: 85; Waisanen 1993). When a log truck driver, disgusted with the old rig he had to use, told Erick, “You can stick this truck up your ass,” the big Swede meekly protested, “I got a team of horses and a bulldozer up there already” (Toyras 2002; see also Collins 1975:86; Waisanen 1993; Koski 2005). Another time: In the spring when the jacks were ready to leave camp because of spring break-up, he knew that a certain employee had already filled his gas tank from the available gas pumps . . . He told the man, “You have been such a good worker, go and fill up your gas tank at the pump over there, on your way out.” The pump was visible to all the others who were present, so it was an embarrassment to the fellow because he had already stolen gas and Big Erick knew this, so the fellow’s face got pretty red (Toyras 1992; see also Waisanen 1993).

Erick subtly shamed one of his truckers as well. The fellow had taken off with a company vehicle for a two day spree. Arriving late for work on the third day, he saw his boss coming and slouched guiltily in the cab. Instead of ranting, Big Erick simply said, “You can get out of this whorehouse now. In the daytime it is my truck” (Collins 1975:86). Several Big Erick stories key on his compassionate treatment of workers and the respect they offered in return. Although he sometimes fired employees, or was forced by economic circumstances to dismiss them temporarily, he invariably hired them back, even raising their pay. He often gave men time off for emergencies and lent them money. In an oft-told story, one lumberjack asked for a loan to tide his family through hard times. Without a word, without asking how much, and without counting his money, Erick simply reached in his pocket, withdrew a large roll of bills, and handed them to the fellow. Months later, the man gave Erick a wad of cash and, again, with only a nod and without counting, he put the money in his pocket (Olson 1970, Waisanen 1993). Besides paying his men fairly, Erickson was known for feeding them well, and for offering a meal to any who might turn up at the camp. When asked how many worked for him, he responded mournfully: “I don’t know . . . but eighty-five eat here” (Collins 1975:85). Big Erick stories, circulating in oral tradition and through local publications, have been of special interest to his children and grandchildren. As might be expected, the content, style, and meaning of the family’s repertoire

New Legends in Nordic America

119

largely echo but occasionally are at odds with the larger complex of legends. Erick’s daughter and grandson, Helen Erickson Klenner and her son, Mike Klenner, told me several favorite family stories (Klenner 2005). From 1983–1989, Mike Klenner, served as pastor of the Lutheran church in Pelkie, a hamlet in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula not far from several of his grandfather’s camps. Some of the men in the church had worked for him. I remember Elmo Heikkanen, a real humble man. He worked for grandpa in the logging camps. Way back in the thirties. He told me in his home once, we were visiting, “You had a very nice grandpa.” And he talked about him. Then there was another man named Wilho Wanatalo. He worked for grandpa. And he was probably 17, 18. He went to the camp, and grandpa gave him a job. He told him, “You’re kind of skinny.” You go to the cook and ask for two lunch buckets.” So this is one of my parishoners who told me this. Neither men are living anymore. “You go to the cook, get two lunch buckets. You’re kind of skinny.”

Helen Klenner’s accounts came from her own experiences. She was a young girl in this instance from the 1930s. We lived about fifteen miles from the hospital. And it was in the winter. And this young woman, she was ready to have her baby delivered. So he had one of his men that worked for him–he took a tractor and took her in to L’Anse, Michigan, to the hospital so she could have her baby delivered. He did things like that whenever somebody needed something, or even needed money–he was always loaning them money.

Helen also recalled her father’s justifiable dismay, and eventual vindication, when audited by the Internal Revenue Service. When they went through his books–they took his books and went over them. Then they sent him a check from the government. They said he had overpaid. And that’s a true story. ‘Cause I remember him coming home. He was all upset, why they were after him, ‘cause he was honest.

Still another story, from late in Big Erick’s life, emphasizes honesty. Helen Erickson Klenner was newly married when her father came to visit with a dual purpose in mind. Nearly four decades earlier, while on his way to Skanee from a stint in Oregon, Erick Erickson fell ill and was treated in a hospital in Crookston, Minnesota, despite the fact that he lacked money to pay his bill. I don’t know what year that was. It was evidently before he was even married. Oh goodness, about a year before he passed away, in 1953 it must’ve been, the spring of the year, he came to visit us in Brainerd, Minnesota. And he wanted my husband, who worked for Amoco Oil Company at the time–he traveled a lot, that was in his territory–[to take him to Crookston]. He wanted to pay the bill, after all those years . . . They went and checked for the hospital. The hospital had been torn down. It was a hospital run by the Catholics. And he went and talked to the administrator. He said, “I owe a bill.” He said, “Well we don’t have anything on it, because we destroyed everything.” So he gave ‘em some money. How much I do not know.

120

James P. Leary

After a moment’s reflection, she added: “He was very honest. He taught us to be as well.” Emphasizing a concern for his workers’ well-being, kindness to neighbors, and honesty, the Klenners’ stories resonate thematically with many of the more widely circulating Big Erick stories. Yet they also depart in significant ways from narratives swapped outside the family circle. None is a comic story turning on some clever or inadvertent word play, and none feature Swenglish dialect and a crying tone. The Erickson extended family has heard or read and appreciates many of the comic stories attributed to their ancestor, and they have vivid, fond recollections of his Swedish-inflected English, but they dispute representations of him as “Crying Erick.” Regarding her father’s supposed high-pitched voice, Helen Erickson Klenner told me unequivocally, “That isn’t true” (Klenner 2005). Trish Klenner Ravits elaborated on her mother’s point of view: “Granted, he got excited, but in his struggle to speak the English language, perhaps his frustration was colored by raising his voice” (Ravits 2007). What are we to make of such opposing characterizations within the larger complex of Big Erick legendry, both of which are offered by those who knew the man more than fifty years ago and continue to revere him? We cannot hear Big Erick banter with workers and townsfolk, nor do we have recordings of his speech in even one situation, let alone many. Thanks to the pioneering work of several folklorists, however, we do know that people living in what, on one level, is unarguably the same community are nonetheless quite often participants in several different, even mutually exclusive, social networks (Bauman 1972). Moreover those networks, typically formed around such commonalities as kinship, ethnicity, gender and occupation, may on certain occasions favor one set of behavioral modes (e.g. serious or playful) and narrative genres (e.g. comic dialect anecdotes or sentimental true stories) over another. Thus two people who know each other well in one setting may not be fully aware of the actions and storytelling of their close acquaintance in another context (Degh and Vázsonyi 1975). And to the extent that people excluded from one network are aware of its existence, they often form speculative notions about how participants in that network might regard them (Jansen 1959). Since Big Erick stories infused with a crying tone abound within the male, occupational, and commercial networks of lumberjacks and townsfolk, might Erick Erickson have indeed made clever and comic use of his broken-English and economic burdens to address managerial and entrepreneurial challenges? Likewise, although “Crying Erick” stories were regarded within such networks as celebrations of an unusual yet thoroughly admirable fellow, might Erickson’s family members, as outsiders, quite understandably misinterpret and resent the very same stories as attacks on their beloved Erick’s foreign birth, compassionate personality, and lack of edu-

New Legends in Nordic America

121

cation? Alternatively, might some non-family members who told the stories also have been non-members of Big Erick’s occupational community who indulged in the stories to assert their supposed ethnic and class superiority? Commenting on her own experiences in relation to her father, Helen Erickson Klenner told me, “I think some were jealous of him, because he did so well. Some even made fun of us kids. Some thought they were better than other people.” We do not know the answers to all of these questions, but we do know Helen Klenner recollected that her father “got along very well with Finns.” And they got along very well with him. As mentioned above, Elmo Heikkanen, who had worked in the woods for Erickson, assured Mike Klenner, “you had a very nice grandpa.” Besides Heikkanen, Big Erick employed large numbers of Finnish Americans, both as farm hands and in the lumber camps. In prefacing roughly a score of stories, all of them gleaned from Finns who had worked for Big Erick, Elsie Collins reckoned “Mr. Erickson became known to many men of Aura as an essentially kindly man and a shrewd judge of men” (Collins 1975:85). Apart from the legendary Swede’s extended family, Finnish Americans have been the chief purveyors of Big Erick stories over the past 70 years. Indeed it is through them that many stories remain current in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan’s oral tradition.

Betwixt and Between So what can the Big Erick cycle tell us about new legends in Nordic America? To begin with, although classifying legends is a perilous enterprise, Big Erick stories function most fundamentally as legends of local characters. Characters like Erick Erickson are sustained in folk tradition by the sometimes contending generic shape-shifting of a local community. Through the speech and action of a familiar character in familiar settings, the stories make it possible to ponder collectively, to agree upon or debate, just what constitutes and confounds a given community’s social categories and aspirations. Compassionate, honest, hard-working, self-reliant, responsible, and successful, Big Erick might, upon first consideration, be pronounced a quintessentially “American” local character. Frederick Jackson Turner’s provocative “frontier thesis,” after all, argued that the American character, distinctive from the character of Europeans, was forged when immigrants from many nations developed individualistic self-reliance and democratic values by acquiring free land and commingling with fellow independent newcomers at society’s edge (Turner 1929). An intellectual heir of Turner, folklorist Richard Dorson did not look beyond an American context when including Big Erick in his discussion of legendary lumber camp bosses (1952:

122

James P. Leary

196–204). Dorson subsequently drew on Turner in America in Legend: Folklore from the Colonial Period to the Present, a book contending that particular cycles of legends circulating during particular historical periods expressed the nation’s zeitgeist (1973: 58–59,66–67). Notably, in that publication Dorson regarded legends concerning two other Nordic immigrant loggers, Otto Walta and Ola Värmlänning, as exemplifying the “Economic Impulse” characterizing nation-building in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1973:170–174). Following Dorson, we might be content simply to regard new world Nordic legends as dramatizations of assimilation, as narrative expressions of patterns through which people of Nordic heritage melted into the great pot of America’s cultural mainstream: Big Erick Erickson, a newcomer arriving with nothing in a relative wilderness, casts off the class-bound constraints of Europe and, by dint of hard and honest toil, rises “from rags-to-riches” to achieve the proverbial “American dream.” We might also mention, in keeping with Dorson’s homogenizing Americanist assertions, that Big Erick’s occupation and association with a road, a bridge, and a park render him another larger-than-life cousin of Paul Bunyan, especially since that legendary logger relied on guile, humor, a dedicated crew and technology to alter and exploit the natural world (Hoffman 1952). The Erickson-Bunyan connection might be strengthened by suggesting that the commercial promotion of super-sized Big Erick Burgers are a hamburger joint equivalent of the all-you-can-eat Paul Bunyan restaurants that attract tourists throughout the timbered Upper Midwest. And yet, as Simon Bronner has shown in his recent critical overview, proponents of putatively American traditions have almost invariably made use of folklore selectively (2002). If we wish to consider Big Erick fully, we cannot disregard contradictions that seethe through his life and legend, paradoxes that defy elegant claims of conventional Americanism. A tall man who hunched over, a well-to-do person who appeared poor, a shrewd fellow affecting foolishness, an indisputable manly man with an occasional womanish voice, the Erick Erickson of folk narrative was also a a family man who was one of the boys, a boss who was nonetheless a worker, a respectable citizen who sometimes played the rascal, and both a settled farmer and an itinerant logger. As a trickster-like coincidence of opposites, Big Erick embraced and thereby called into question notions of both the mainstream and the margins of American society. Perhaps most tellingly with regard to our concern with the nature of new Nordic American legends, the paradoxical components of Big Erick’s legendry also reveal him as both a less-than-completely-assimilated immigrant who was nonetheless a thoroughgoing American, and as a Swede who was and continues to be beloved by Finns. Such linked yet opposing aspects of Big Erick stories accordingly sharpen our understanding of the similarly

New Legends in Nordic America

123

overlapping yet contrasting relationship between legends in Nordic realms and North America. Although Big Erick’s life and legend span and conjoin old and new worlds, the old world is turned upside down in the new. Just as Skanee invokes yet inverts Skåne, so also does Big Erick resemble yet dramatically reverse the nature of folk figures revered by Nordic workers, especially Finnish workers. The Finns who worked for Big Erick were not, quite obviously, bosses, nor had they, with possibly a few exceptions, come from well-to-do families back in Finland. As new world woods workers employed by an immigrant Swede, they were also well aware that ethnic Finns had, for centuries, been second-class citizens to Finland’s predominantly Swedish ruling class, and that the Finnish forests had been industrialized and controlled for centuries by the Swedish ship-building and tar trade (Mattila 1973:19–47). Not surprisingly, neither they nor their Finnish ancestors were accustomed to telling laudatory legends about Swedish bosses. Rather when it came to stories associated with work, Finns in old and new worlds alike sustained an oral tradition peopled with egalitarian trickster figures. A schwank cycle entrenched in Nordic realms and also widespread in peasant Europe featured the clever hireling who used his wits to win rest, good food, and decent pay from a stingy, hard-driving farmer (Ranke 1972:115–119; Uther 2004:297– 315). Shifting from agrarian to industrial contexts, such kindred working class tricksters as Jussi the Workman and Lapatossu or “Shoe Pack” emerged in late nineteenth century Finland. The subject of stories told in America but set in Finland, the fictive hired farm worker, Jussi, and Laptossu each crossed over imaginatively with fellow immigrants and were well known. Elli Köngäs-Maranda (1962) recorded old world farmer-servant stories in Illinois, while in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan Richard Dorson set down numerous oral narratives about Jussi and Lapatossu at the same time he was gathering Big Erick stories (Dorson 1952:129–131, 148–149, 291; see also Hoglund 1985:164–166). The historian A. William Hoglund also referred briefly to tales set in America concerning how Jussi “outwitted the pesky lice or the arrogant boss in the lumber camp” (1960:25–26). Celebrated through joke books, films, and a radio program in Finland, Lapatossu was likewise the name of a left-wing Finnish workers’ magazine published in Hancock, Michigan (Ross 1994:79). Images of Lapatossu–with hunched shoulders and a shambling gait—appeared on the masthead and throughout each issue of Lapatossu during a bi-weekly tenure that extended from 1911–1921. [See Figure 2] The magazine’s successor, Punikki (The Red), also included frequent images and stories of Lapatossu during its existence from 1921–1936 (Ross 1994:80). Both raggedly dressed itinerant laborers, Lapatossu and Jussi the Workman were similarly wise fools who used their wiles to puncture the pretensions of those who acted “high-toned,” as well as to con better conditions, fair pay, and plenti-

124

James P. Leary

Figure 2: In this typical caricature, Lapatossu wanders along a railroad track. From the masthead of the Finnish American newspaper, Lapatossu, June 15, 1916. Courtesy: Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota.

ful food from grudging but gullible land owners, capitalists, and government officials. The Finns who worked for Big Erick, and who socialized in places like Aura’s worker’s hall, clearly realized that their boss was nothing like the bosses rightly scorned and bedeviled by Jussi and Lapatossu. In marked contrast, he actually shared the tricksters’ humble origins, slumped and tattered appearances, clever tactics, and deep sympathy with the common worker. Although Big Erick used guile to keep his employees in line, he also tolerated their trickiness with good nature, while sharpening his wits–in the manner of Jussi and Lapatossu—to fend off government officials and to best competing bosses and businessmen. What’s more Big Erick freely gave men what Jussi and Lapatossu sought to gain through trickery: steady work, good and plentiful food, fair pay, and decent treatment. And unlike some patronizing blue blood, he did it all without putting on airs. Summarizing the attitudes of her Finnish neighbors, Elsie Collins put it best: “Big Eric was a sympathetic character to his subordinates because he was never too big for his britches. He practiced humility without losing the respect of his associates” (Collins 1975:85). This was not an easy task during the turbulent 1930s when Big Erick established his camps and his reputation. Tensions between workers and bosses were rife in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In the spring of 1937, for example, woods workers throughout the region organized an industry-wide strike. Although the main targets were a handful of large corporate logging operations that demanded long hours and dangerous work in return for poor pay and miserable camp conditions, small independent loggers like Big Erick were, as historian Theodore Karamanski put it, “trapped in this crossfire” (1980:240). There was violence on both sides, although the workers and small loggers suffered the most.

New Legends in Nordic America

125

On June 4, in Newberry to the east of Big Erick’s operation, a pro-company mob enraged in part by the presence of avowed Communist Finns in the ranks of striking lumberjacks attacked them with baseball bats and iron bars, killing one striker and destroying the Worker’s Hall (Karamanski 1989: 237–241). A year later, when folklorist Alan Lomax visited Newberry in search of songs for the Archive of American Folk Song, he met a gang of Swedes at Larsen’s Luce Hotel who held Finnish loggers in contempt. He described them in his field journal as: young loafers, football players, fighters around the dreary bar, potential fascists, boasting about how the strikers had been beaten up and the Finn Workers Hall smashed.–We showed them reds–radio stations all over the country congratulated the little town of Newberry–whistles blowing at 6AM–chased strikers for five miles out of town—beating them. “Hey boys here’s a Roosevelt man.” – Dude Larsen, the youngest, talks stupid, a boaster, soft, golden hair falling in forelock over high sloping Swede forehead–brother John the brightest complexion I’ve ever seen–reputed a terrible fighter–always drunk–dangerous–very handsome (Lomax 1938).

The response of Big Erick, a Swede, to his mostly Finnish crew was quite different. Although distressed when they agreed to strike in solidarity with fellow workers, he took them back “when the strike fizzled out” and, a few months later “granted the eight-hour day and . . . . increased contract pay for sawyers” (Collins 1975:86). He was especially magnanimous in his dealings with Hugo Lehto, the strike leader and a source for many of the Big Erick stories gathered by Elsie Collins. She recounts Lehto’s experience: “With his first check he was given a bonus, but better still was this compliment, ‘You done a real good job. If all the other fellas was like you, Lehto, we’d get a lot of logs out of here’” (Collins 1975:86). As an immigrant laborer of humble origins who became a boss, Big Erick clearly shrugged off old world economic and class constraints in ways that folklorists like Richard Dorson might conclude were unarguably American. Yet he just as clearly spurned the high-toned new world role of a rags-to-riches plutocrat to keep faith with the noble ideals and mischievous sensibilities of Nordic working class heroes. What’s more, although a boss of Swedish origins, Erick was hailed by Finnish-born workers who recognized his kinship with Jussi the Workman and Lapatossu. Randall, an otherwise anonymous caller to WMPL radio, and a man who once worked for Big Erick, said about his former boss, in a FinnishAmerican dialect suffused with affection, “He was the only man I ever met in my life like him” (Olson 1970). Fred Waisanen, raised in the Aura settlement, was more succinct but equally affectionate: “He was a legend” (Waisanen 1993). For our purposes, Big Erick’s life and associated stories cannot be understood with exclusive recourse to either Nordic or American legendry; nor can they be used to illustrate a discrete Swedish or Finnish American pattern. Betwixt and between, arising in an egalitarian and

126

James P. Leary

creolized community, understandable only through the consideration of several traditions transformed, Big Erick’s stories offer a striking instance of new legends in Nordic America.

James P. Leary Professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies 306 Ingraham Hall University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA [email protected]

This article could not have been written without the kind assistance of many people, most of whom are cited below: Ansel Erickson, Helen Erickson Klenner, Mike Klenner, Kjerstin Moody, Marty Nelson, Marilyn and Ray Prill, Oren Tikkanen, Helmer Toyras, Fred Waisanen, and especially Trish Klenner Ravits. My thanks goes as well to the staff of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota for access to the Finnish American worker’s periodicals Lapatossu and Punikki. Portions of the research undertaken for this article were funded by the Michigan Traditional Arts Program at Michigan State University, by Vilas and Kellett research awards from the University of Wisconsin, and by the Finlandia Foundation. Finally, I am grateful to Hanne Pico Larson, Lizette Graden, Valdimar Hafstein, and Susanne Österlund-Pötzsch for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References Unpublished Erickson, Ansel May 21, 2005: Tape recorded interview conducted by James P. Leary via a telephone call to the Erickson home, Skanee, Michigan Klenner, Helen Erickson and Mike Klenner June 9, 2005: Tape recorded interview conducted by James P. Leary via a telephone call to the Helen Erickson Klenner home, Rochester, Minnesota. Koski, Ray May 23, 2005: Tape recorded interview conducted by James P. Leary via a telephone call to the Koski home, Aura, Michigan. Lomax, Alan 1938: Michigan Field Notebooks. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture. Nelson, Marty May 21, 2005: Notes from telephone call by James P. Leary to the Copper Country State Forest office. Olson, Bob ca. 1970: Tape recording of a call-in show devoted to Big Erick. WMPL radio station, Hancock/Houghton, Michigan, with callers Norm Hiltunen, Swanny Goodell, and someone identified only as Randall. Prill, Marilyn Peterson May 21, 2005: Tape recorded interview conducted by James P. Leary via a telephone call to the Prill home, rural L’Anse, Michigan. Ravits, Trish Klenner 2005: Email correspondence. Ravits, Trish Klenner 2007: Email correspondence.

New Legends in Nordic America

127

Waisanen, Fred and Oren Tikkanen 1993: U.P. Storytelling. Tape recording of a narrative session at the Michigan Folklife Festival, Michigan State University.

Published Anonymous 1948: The Lumberjack of 1948. The Hiawathan: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Magazine, vol. 1. Anonymous 1954: Retires from Logging. L’Anse Sentinel. Anonymous 1971: Skanee Centennial Booklet 1871–1971. Bauman, Richard 1972: Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore. Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. Americo Paredes and Richard Bauman. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bronner, Simon J. 2002: Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources. Christiansen, Reidar 1962: European Folklore in America. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Collins, Elsie M. 1975: From Keeweenaw to Abbaye: Biographical Sketches of a Community. Ishpeming, Michigan: Globe Printing Company. Cumming, John 1971: The Timber Era. 100 Years of History: L’Anse/Skanee Centennial. Baraga, Michigan: Baraga County Historical Society. Dégh, Linda and Andrew Vázsonyi 1975: The Hypothesis of Multi-Conduit Transmission in Folklore. Folklore, Performance and Communication, ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein. The Hague: Mouton. Dégh, Linda 2001: Legend and Belief: Dialectics of a Folklore Genre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dorson, Richard M. 1948: Dialect Stories of the Upper Peninsula: A New Form of American Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 61:240. Dorson, Richard M. 1952: Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of the Upper Peninsula. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Dorson, Richard M. 1973: America in Legend: Folklore from the Colonial Period to the Present. New York City: Pantheon Books. Hanson, Marvin C. 1971: Skanee: Its Early Days. 100 Years of History: L’Anse/ Skanee Centennial. Baraga, Michigan: Baraga County Historical Society. Haugen, Einar 1953: The Norwegian Language in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Haugen, Einar 1970: Thor Helgeson: Schoolmaster and Raconteur. Norwegian– American Studies and Records 24. Helgeson, Thor 1917: Fra Indianernes Lande. Minneapolis. Helgeson, Thor 1923: Folksagn og folketro. Eau Claire, Wisconsin: Fremad Publishing Co. Hoffman, Daniel G. 1952: Paul Bunyan: Last of the Frontier Demigods. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Hoglund, A. William 1960: Finnish Immigrants to America, 1880–1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoglund, A. William 1985: Finnish–American Humor and Satire: A Cultural Self Portrait, 1890–1930's. Scandinavians in America: Literary Life, ed. J.R. Christianson. Decorah, Iowa: Symra Literary Society. Jansen, William Hugh 1959: The Esoteric-Exoteric Factor in Folklore. Fabula 2. Johnson, Aili Kolehmainen 1955: The Eyeturner: A Cycle of Finnish Wizard Tales from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Midwestern Folklore 5. Karamanski, Theodore J. 1989: Deep Woods Frontier: A History of Logging In Northern Michigan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

128

James P. Leary

Karni, Michael G. 1967: Otto Walta: Finnish Folk Hero of the Iron Range. Minnesota History 40. Klein, Barbro Sklute 1970: Legends and Folk Beliefs in a Swedish American Coummunity: A Study in Folklore and Acculturation. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. Reprinted as Legends and Folk Beliefs in a Swedish American Community. New York City: Arno Press, 1980. Klein, Barbro Sklute 2004: Old Maps and New Worlds: 125 Years of Place-Names, Stories, and Material Culture in New Sweden, Maine. Scandinavians in Old and New Lands: Essays in Honor of H. Arnold Barton, ed. Philip J. Anderson, Dag Blanck, and Byron J. Nordstrom. Chicago: The Swedish–American Historical Society. Köngäs-Maranda, Elli 1962: A Finnish Schwank Pattern: The Farmer–Servant Cycle of the Kuusisto Family. Midwest Folklore 11. Köngäs-Maranda, Elli 1963: Finnish–American Folklore: Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. Reprinted as Finnish– American Folklore. New York City: Arno Press, 1980. Klymasz, Robert B. 1973: From Immigrant to Ethnic Folklore: A Canadian View of Process and Transition. Journal of the Folklore Institute 10:3. Leary, James P. 1978: Stories and Strategies of the Omaha Stockyards. Workers’ Folklore and the Folklore of Workers, ed. Philip Nusbaum and Catherine Swanson. Bloomington, Indiana: Folklore Forum. Mataczynski, David May 4, 1988: Big Erick Was Too Busy to Go Fishing. L’Anse Sentinel. Mattilla, Walter 1973: The Finnish Paul Bunyans. Portland, Oregon: Finnish American Historical Society of the West. Monette, Clarence J. 1975: Some Copper Country Names and Places. Lake Linden, Michigan: Welden H. Curtin. Munch, Peter 1960: Ten Thousand Swedes: Reflections on a Folklore Motif. Midwest Folklore 10. Olson, Louise P. 1950: Four Scandinavian Ghost Stories. Hoosier Folklore 9. Olson, Louise P. 1954: Norwegian Tales from Minnesota. Midwest Folklore 4. Paulsen, Frank M. 1967: Danish–American Folk Traditions: A Study in Fading Survivals. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. Ranke, Kurt 1972: European Anecdotes and Jests. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Rølvaag, Ella Valborg 1941: Norwegian Folk Narrative in America. Norwegian– American Studies and Records 1. Ross, Carl 1994: Radicalism in Minnesota, 1900–1960: A Survey of Selected Sources. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press. Swanson, Roy 1948: A Swedish Immigrant Folk Figure: Ola Värmlänning. Minnesota History 29. Turner, Frederick Jackson 1920: The Frontier in American History. NYC: H. Holt and Company. Uther, Hans-Jörg 2004: The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. Helsinki: Folklore Fellows Communications. Waring, Betty A. 1986: Yellow Dog Tales and Logging Trails to Big Bay, Michigan. Marquette, Michigan: Lake Superior Press.

New Legends in Nordic America

129

1 In pointing out that the old world legends told by Nordic peoples in North America have been “mostly supernatural,” I do not wish to discount the less frequent yet evident persistence of historical legends. For an excellent discussion of one such legend complex–involving oral narratives, a ballad, and a rhyme–see Munch (1960). 2 Big Erick and his family used “Erick Erickson.” Hence I have used this spelling, except when quoting several sources that render the name as “Eric Ericson” or “Eric Erickson.” 3 Dorson mentions “Sesus ‘Rist” as one of several “conventional expletives and expressions” used in Finnish dialect stories in his genre-defining article, Dialect Stories of the Upper Peninsula: A New Form of American Folklore (1948:116). The use of ‘Rist for Christ is standard Finnglish, as immigrant Finns typically dropped the first consonant (in this case the hard “c” sound of “ch”) whenever two consonant sounds began a word, e.g. drink becomes ‘rink, sleep becomes ‘leep, chrome becomes ‘rome. Dorson’s use of Sesus, not Yesus, for Jesus is puzzling, however, since first and second generation Finnish Americans typically rendered the English “j” sound as “y.” My suspicion is that Dorson did not hear this expression correctly and, because he wrote down stories instead of making sound recordings amidst his 1940s fieldwork, he was unable to discover errors by playing back performances.

130

James P. Leary

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

131

The Collection of Norwegian Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives (Norsk Folkeminnesamling) at the University of Oslo Henning Laugerud

A part of the collections of the Norwegian Folklore Archives at the University of Oslo is the collection of Norwegian witchcraft or sorcery trials from the end of the sixteenth century to the first decades of the eighteenth century, known as “Trolldomsarkivet”.1 The collection consists of transcriptions of a broad spectrum of legal documents, police department accounting records, bailiff, diocese and county governor accounting records, records of legal proceedings and other documents. The collection of transcriptions consists of some 780 of the roughly 930 witchcraft cases from this period that is known today. This collection has recently been rearranged, supplemented and digitized and is made publicly accessible on the Internet. In this article I will take a brief look at the background and history of this collection, and present the newly executed digitization project on the Norwegian sorcery and witchcraft trials with related material.

The Transcription Project, 1927–1949 The collection and transcription of documents relating to Norwegian sorcery and witchcraft trials was carried out under the auspices of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture (Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning), in the period 1927–1949. This institute was founded in 1922, as an independent research institution sponsoring research in the areas of comparative linguistics, folklore, religion, ethnology, archaeology and ethnography. In the period between the two world wars the institute was a central and renowned research institution, both internationally and nationally, and financed several large research projects and international symposia, as well as publishing the results of these activities.2 The Institute was fi-

132

Henning Laugerud

nanced by the Norwegian authorities through the establishment of a fund and grants from the City of Oslo. It was also sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in the years 1929 to 1934.3 In a letter dated 10 November 1927 to the steering committee of the Institute, the head of “The Folklore Committee” (Folkeminneutvalget), Knut Liestøl (1881–1952), together with the other signatories Reidar Th. Christiansen (1886–1971) and Nils Lid (1890–1958),4 applied for a sum of 1200 Norwegian kroner to start up a project for transcribing and collecting documents relating to the sorcery and witchcraft trials of Norway.5 The main argument for the necessity of such an undertaking was that in this material there was hidden rich information of great folkloristic and more general cultural historical interest.6 This was source material of the greatest importance and it was seen as necessary to collect this material in connection with the systematic research on Norwegian popular belief and traditions that had started at this time in the same scholarly milieu. The project activities started the following year, under the leadership of Nils Lid. The work on the transcription and collection of judicial documents continued until 1949, as one of the major activities of the Folklore Committee. The work continued during the first years of the Second World War, with a pause in the years 1943 to 1945 when the holdings of the National Archives were evacuated to more secure keeping in the old silver mines of Kongsberg. But the work started again in 1946. Svale Solheim (1903– 1971), Lid’s assistant from 1935, later took over the responsibility for the project in 1940 and up until its finalization in 1949.7 During the more than twenty years from 1927/1928 up until 1949 this was one of the top-priority scholarly projects financed by the Folklore Committee. Both Nils Lid and Svale Solheim did research and published on topics related to witchcraft, sorcery and magic.8 During the course of the project a systematic review of judicial protocols and other source materials was completed, primarily from the seventeenth century, but also documents and material from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. All documents that had to do with criminal cases regarding accusations of witchcraft and sorcery were transcribed with excruciating precision, with references to original sources. The review of archival materials, and the transcription itself, were completed by Thora Laache, the archives in Oslo, the National Archivist Leif Midthaug at the National Archive at Hamar, and Ebba Jansen in Bergen. The transcriptions of a selection of cases from Finnmark were completed by a fourth person whom it has not yet been possible to identify. In 1949 the transcription and collection of documents was concluded. But in addition to this project, the Folklore Committee of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture financed another related research project during the same period. This was the huge undertaking of Dr. med.

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

133

Ingjald Reichborn-Kjennerud of research into popular medicine, subsequently published in five volumes in the period 1927–1947 titled: Vår gamle trolldomsmedisin (“Our Old Sorcery Medicine).9 In the documents related to the dealings of the Folklore Committee, Reichborn-Kjennerud’s project is always mentioned in relation to the “Sorcery Project”, as it was commonly called in the documents. In a new application in 1949 from Svale Solheim to the Norwegian Research Council, this was clearly stated as being a part of a larger undertaking in the years preceding his new application.10 And as this application states, this has been a large and important undertaking and the time has now come to do the final part, the completion of the collection and research into the material and a subsequent publication of a large history of witchcraft and sorcery in Norway. Svale Solheim received his money from the national research council and started in 1950 with the final collecting of material, which meant the popular tradition and folklore material related to beliefs in sorcery and popular magic. During a period of four years, from 1950 to 1954, Sigrid Liestøl worked as Solheim’s assistant on the project. She collected and typed the material, in addition to collecting and systematizing published material. Solheim himself travelled round the country to register and photograph all kinds of objects related to popular belief on sorcery. The final outcome was 1,581 neatly typed manuscript pages and 450 photographs according to the final report dated 8 December 1954, addressed to the research council.11 The letter concludes that the only thing that is left now is the final research and the writing of the book about the Norwegian witchcraft and sorcery trials. It subsequently came to nothing, and this is the last time this “all-important” collection and research project is mentioned. The transcribed and collected material seems not to have been used until the 1970s, by Bente Alver and by Hans Eyvind Næss in his seminal and important historical study of the Norwegian witchcraft and sorcery trials from 1981/1982.12

The Present Collection in the Norwegian Folklore Archives The result of the transcription process was a comprehensive archive that was integrated into the Norwegian Folklore Archives, which was a part of the Department of Folklore. After various institute mergers and reorganizations, it has since become a part of the research archive at today’s Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. The archive, and its transcriptions, maintains an unusually high level of accuracy, as later research has documented. This is in other words a source archive of uncommonly high quality and research value, which is also evident in that everyone who has worked with witchcraft and sorcery trials in Norway during that last fifty years has based their work on material in this

134

Henning Laugerud

This is an example of the transcriptions in The Norwegian Folklore Archives, showing the front page and the transcribed documents. The front page states the archival provenience, the name of the accused, the year and the outcome of the case. This particular case concerns “Soede Marj” (“Sweet Mary”), her real name being Gunhild, who was triad and executed in Mandal, in the southern part of Norway, in 1650. The sources transcribed are the county accounts from

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

135

the County of Nedenes, in to days Vest-Agder, and gives the figures for the cost of her uphold in prison for 4 months and the payment for the executioner. She was beheaded by sword. Her number in the process-register is no. 189. Her confession is recorded in the documents of another case, no. 203, against Gunhild Nedrebø from Kristiansand.

136

Henning Laugerud

archive. The collection has been a vital resource for research and has also been used by foreign scholars. The collected transcriptions cover approximately 780 of the known sorcery or witchcraft trials – of a total of about 930 cases. This means that roughly two-thirds of the total cases are contained in this collection. The transcription project did not include material that was already published in historical document publications from the nineteenth and early twentieth century. With these published sources we can include material for about 150 other cases, which means that the historical documentation of this complex phenomenon, or phenomena, in Norway has been in a unique situation for a very long time. Despite this, the research interest has not been as great as should be expected. It is the aim of the newly finished supplementation and digitization project to remedy this. The archive is not complete, however, and later researchers – such as Hans Eyvind Næss, Rune Blix Hagen and Gunnar Knutsen – have found additional legal proceedings and other material that were not included in the transcription project. But even these new findings must be defined as supplements, and have now been included into the new digitized archive together with material from source publications. As far as I am aware there is no similar project of such a scope regarding witchcraft and sorcery trials in Europe of the early modern period. This archive is in this sense completely unique in an international context.

The Digitization Project and the Present Register and Database of Norwegian Witchcraft Trials from the Sixteenth to the Early Eighteenth Centuries During the spring of 2006 a major digitization and organization project began in order to make this collection and supplemental material regarding Norwegian sorcery and witchcraft trials from early modern times available on the Internet.13 The digitization project is a cooperative effort between the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages and the Unit for Digital Documentation at the University of Oslo. All documents and transcriptions from the witchcraft archive have been scanned, and in addition to this all other documents from already published sources have also been scanned. This extension is intended to create a database that is as complete as possible of all known Norwegian witchcraft cases/allegations and their most central source documentation. The database consists of a register with an overview over all known witchcraft cases in Norway as of today. In addition it contains a few other cases related to witchcraft, in all 924 cases. These cases are registered under individual personal names with a case number, and organized by province

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

137

and county. The register contains complete source references, of all known documents today, for all registered cases. In addition it includes some supplementary information. The register is sequential and based on the serial number principle, in other words; the numbering starts with 1 and continues sequentially case by case.14 The basis for the register is Hans Eyvind Næss’s register from Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500- 1600-tallet. En retts- og sosialhistorisk undersøkelse (Witchcraft Trials in Norway during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. A Judicial and Sociohistorical Study, Oslo 1982), which is a revised edition of his doctoral thesis from 1980. This thereby represents a national standard register, and all “new” cases have been and will be numbered sequentially in relation to Næss’s register. The database is also built up according to Næss’s principles of order in this register. In addition to the cases from Næss, the register is supplied with a number of newly discovered cases from studies done after Næss. The numbering of these cases is done sequentially after the last number in Næss’s register. An important question in relation to such a register is how to define a sorcery or witchcraft case. The principle followed by Næss, and adapted in this register, is perhaps a very simple one: a witchcraft case is simply a case where people stand trial for sorcery or witchcraft, i.e. that someone is charged with breaking laws against sorcery or witchcraft. In Næss’s overview from 1982 also libel cases (slander cases) are included where someone is charged with defamation for having accused someone of being a sorcerer, witch or the like. Some other cases that are not strictly cases where someone has been accused of breaking sorcery or witchcraft laws are also included.15 The reason for this is that they are a part of the collection of transcribed material that has been the basis for the database. We have therefore been of the opinion that it is correct to include them, since the material is in the Norwegian Folklore Archives. The cases are related to the broader “sorcery or witchcraft complex” and are therefore interesting and relevant. What a witchcraft case was or is will always be a question of definition, and every user of the database must make his or her own evaluation of the material. The main part of the database, and obviously the most important content, is the facsimiles of source texts. These are the transcribed documents from the Norwegian Folklore Archives. They make up the bulk of the material, in all 785 cases. This is supplemented with printed source editions for the majority of cases for which there are no transcriptions in the Archive, or where the transcriptions are lacking and/or unclear (this applies particularly to cases from Finnmark), in all 182 cases. There are, however, some cases in the register that do not have any material in the database. The reason for this is that these documents have not been transcribed, nor published, and are still in various archives in Norway. It has been outside the scope of the

138

Henning Laugerud

present project to collect this material. The register, however, contains source references for these few cases as well.

The Black Books of Norway The new database also includes additional material related to sorcery and “magical” beliefs and traditions. Based on documents in the Folklore Archive, a digital archive of the so-called “black books” from Norway has been built. This digital archive contains facsimiles of a selection of originals, transcriptions and copies in the Folklore Archive. Also included is Svarteboken fra Borge (The Black-book of Borge) transcribed and commented by Professor Arne Bugge Amundsen.16 In addition to the facsimiles it contains a preliminary register of the known black books in public collections. This register is to be expanded and contains today the collections in the following institutions: Norsk folkeminnesamling – Universitetet i Oslo, Nasjonalbiblioteket – Håndskriftsamlingen, De Heibergske Samlinger – Sogn folkemuseum, Norsk Folkemuseum og Gunnerusbiblioteket – Universitetsbiblioteket i Trondhjem.

Why This Project? When this database is finished we in Norway will be in a unique situation internationally, in that practically all known witchcraft cases of Norwegian courts will be available not just in a register, but also with most legal documents digitally accessible. In order for it to be complete a few supplements are necessary, but this does not actually constitute very many. The database will also be easy to maintain, in other words, update and correct. Therefore we will be able to present an important and much sought-after research material in an international context, in a simple and easily accessible way. The collection also makes it possible to conduct investigations that have previously been impossible, or at least very difficult to complete. The collection enables a body of material to be systematized in an entirely different way. The database has a dynamic structure that makes it easy to maintain and update, with new source material, cases and additional information. The register can be regarded as a kind of “national standard” for witchcraft cases. The same principle has been adopted for the register of the “black books”. The database is intended for use in teaching situations, but will probably have its most important function as a research database. Through this collection we have now access to affairs connected to witchcraft trials and their justification on a unique scale. The database is also unique on a European level, being the most complete register and collection of this kind. This is also an important collection of sources for mentalities and world views in

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

139

Norway in the early modern period in more general terms, giving information about a variety of cultural phenomena, ideologies and mentalities.

Henning Laugerud Førsteamanuensis/Associate professor, dr. art. University of Bergen e-mail: [email protected]

References Unpublished sources The National Archives (Riksarkivet) in Oslo: Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning. PA 424. Hovedserie 1: Årsberetninger m.m.

Published Amundsen, Arne Bugge 1987: Svarteboken fra Borge. Sarpsborg: Borgarsyssel Museum. Amundsen, Leiv 1972: Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning 1922–1972. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Alver, Bente G. 1971: Heksetro og trolldom. En studie i norsk heksevæsen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Bø, Olav 1973: Professor dr. philos. Svale Solheim. Norveg 16. Christiansen, Inger 1995: Norsk Folkeminnesamling som serviceinstitusjon. Norveg 1995:1. Eriksen, Anne & Amundsen, Arne Bugge (eds.) 1999: Folkloristiske klassikere 1800–1930. Oslo: Norsk Folkeminnelag/Aschehoug forlag. Knutsen, Gunnar W. 1998: Trolldomsprosessene på Østlandet. En kulturhistorisk undersøkelse. Tingbokprosjektet 17. Oslo. Kyllingstad, Jon Røyne 2008: “Menneskeåndens universalitet” – Institutt for sammenliknende kulturforskning 1917–1940. Ideene, institusjonen og forskningen. Oslo: Unipub. Lid, Nils 1950: Trolldom. Nordiske studier. Oslo: Cammermeyer. “Lid, Nils.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I, vol. VIII. 1938. Oslo: Aschehoug. “Lid, Nils.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon II, vol. 6. 2003. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. “Liestøl, Knut.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I, vol. VIII. 1938. Oslo: Aschehoug. “Liestøl, Knut.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon II, vol. 6. 2003. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Næss, Hans Eyvind 1982: Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500– 1600-tallet. En retts- og sosialhistorisk undersøkelse. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. “Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ingjald.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I, vol. VIII. 1952. Oslo: Aschehoug. “Reichborn-Kjennerud, Ingjald.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon II, vol. 7. 2003. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Sogner, Sølvi 1982: Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500–1600-tallet. Norveg 25. Solheim, Svale 1952: Norsk sætertradisjon. Oslo: Aschehoug. “Solheim, Svale.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I, vol. XIV. 1957. Oslo: Aschehoug.

140

Henning Laugerud

“Solheim, Svale.” In Norsk Biografisk Leksikon II, vol. 8. 2004. Oslo: Kunnskapsforlaget. Stang, Fredrik 1928: Report on the Activities of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in the Years 1923–1926. Oslo: Aschehoug. Stang, Fredrik 1930: Report on the Activities of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in the Years 1927–July 1930. Oslo: Aschehoug. Stang, Fredrik 1931: Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning. Beretning om dets virksomhet inntil sommeren 1931. Oslo: Aschehoug. Stang, Fredrik 1934: Report on the Activities of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture in the Years July 1930–July 1934. Oslo: Aschehoug.

1

2

3

4

5 6

7 8

9

10 11 12

These archival collections are today part of the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo. The Norwegian Folklore Archives was established in 1914. For a short historical survey of the history of the archives, see Christiansen 1995, pp. 59–69. Among the institute’s members we count scholars like Marc Bloch, Gordon Childe, Alfons Dopsch, Kaarle Krohn, H. P. L’Orange, Antoine Meillet to mention some of the most renowned ones. The reports on the activities of the first twelve years are reported in three subsequent published reports by the Institute’s leader, Fredrik Stang, in English. See the bibliography of this article. See also Stang 1931 and Amundsen 1972. For a more general history of the institute and its establishment, see the newly published doctoral dissertation Kyllingstad 2008. After the Second World War the Norwegian government reorganized all state funding of research into public national research funds etc., and the financial situation of the institute – which was a private foundation – somewhat crumbled away. However, the Institute is still in existence, financing research into a broad spectrum of cultural research and publishing, though on a smaller scale than in the years before 1950. All three of them were leading academics in the field of folklore studies in Norway in the first half of the twentieth century. For detailed biographies see for instance articles in Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I and II. See also the short biographies in Eriksen & Amundsen 1999: 173–230, and the references there. The letter is in the National Archives (Riksarkivet) in Oslo, Norway. See: RA: Institutt for sammenlignende kulturforskning. PA 424. Hovedserie 1. D 0030. “I dei gamle forhøyrs- og domsaktene som vedkjem trolldomssaker, er det gjømt eit rikt tilfang, som både hev folkloristisk og ålmenn kulturhistorisk interesse,” p. 1 of the letter. See also Stang 1931:110; Amundsen 1972:96. On Solheim see Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I and II, and Bø 1973:1–10. See for instance the collection of Nils Lid’s articles on these topics Lid 1950, edited as a festschrift for his 60th birthday and Svale Solheim’s chapter on sorcery in his seminal work on Norwegian summer dairying in the mountains, Solheim 1952, chapter VI. This book was published in the series of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, series B. Reichborn-Kjennerud, in Vår gamle trolldomsmedisin (Oslo 1927–1947). On Reichborn-Kjennerud see Norsk Biografisk Leksikon I and II, and Eriksen & Amundsen 1999: 157–172 and the references in this article. The letter is dated 1 November 1949. The letter has the journal number 101/54. See Alver 1971 and Næss 1982. The typed manuscript collection of popular belief about sorcery is still in the archives but needs to be sorted and organized; this is a work that has

Witchcraft Trials in the Norwegian Folklore Archives

13 14 15 16

141

yet to be done. The photographs that were collected by Solheim, on the other hand, unfortunately seem to have been lost. The work has been done by the author of the present article, with assistance from AnnaMarie Wiersholm. When particular cases are given a number and an alphabetical classification, it is because of people who were accused during the same trial. See moreover Sølvi Sogner’s criticism and discussion of Næss’s definitions in Sogner 1982. On this see also Knutsen 1998:16ff. This book contains a transcription of the so called “Black Book of Borge” with an introduction and comments; see Amundsen 1987.

142

Henning Laugerud

Reviews

143

Book Reviews

Living with Burnout Mia-Marie Hammarlin: Att leva som utbränd: En etnologisk studie av långtidssjukskrivna. Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, Stockholm/Stehag 2008. 255 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. No one in Sweden could have missed the crucial public debate about longterm sick-listing and the many attempts that have been made to explain once and for all the reasons for this major social problem. This study is part of an interdisciplinary research programme with the task of examining the administration and implementation of social insurance in Sweden. The dissertation is therefore a form of commissioned research, but it does not seek to be just another project explaining the reasons for the largescale sick-listing. In the dissertation the focus is instead on what people do with their experiences of being afflicted with ill health and being sick-listed. The dissertation shows that the forms of mental suffering that have been given the name “burnout”, and are often associated with very long periods of sick-listing, can also trigger people’s creativity. The individuals who are the subject of this study have started to engage in interests which they never got round to pursuing earlier in life. One result is that these people, at least during the hours they spend on their more or less newly acquired interests, feel more authentic, more “real” and satisfied with themselves than before, when they were healthy and able to work. Hammarlin’s subjects are not people who have only recently had their diag-

nosis confirmed, but those who have become established in their role as sick and who have formed partly new relations with themselves and the people close to them. It is in this later phase of being sick-listed that it becomes clear that burnout and sick-listing do not just close doors but can also open doors to new opportunities for action. But even if these opportunities often concern nature’s healing power and the pleasure of being able to enjoy the scent of one’s own flowerbed, the diagnosis and the sicklisting are not a bed of roses. Hammarlin, however, opposes the view that people with long-term sick-listing for burnout are embodied examples of processes by which society breaks people; she suggests instead that these people’s insights and competences should be noticed and utilized. One of the conditions for this is the dissertation’s phenomenological premises, with its focus on people’s lifeworlds as an analytical object and a central concept. This is not to say that a theoretical framework generates specific stances, but rather a type of knowledge that in this case reflects a specific outlook on humanity. For the discussion of burnout this means that people’s perceived and described experiences of their illness are the centre of interest, not biomedical and scientific explanations of these states. The knowledge yielded is not measurable and scarcely generalizable. But there is a clear will not to reduce these people, who are referred to in the dissertation as “collaborators” (medverkande), not “informants”. The analytical approach of the disser-

144

Reviews

tation follows the perspectives of phenomenology and cultural analysis presented in the book Being There: New Perspectives on Phenomenology and the Analysis of Culture (Frykman & Gilje eds., 2003). But Hammarlin also goes to the original sources and grapples with texts by Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty, and a number of other great thinkers. In her reading of Simone de Beauvoir there is some friction. The long-term sick-listed women in the study who find new opportunities in life through baking and gardening receive no support from de Beauvoir; in her eyes their actions lack a proper direction and purpose. On this point I find Hammarlin a little ambivalent. Whether burnout is, as Beauvoir says, “a negative liberation project, a way to renounce the world, instead of vociferously opposing it and then conquering”, cannot be clearly stated, according to Hammarlin. But in the next breath she agrees with a rather ironic statement by the sociologist Johan Asplund, in which he says that many former rebels have been passivized by learning how to breathe with their stomach (pp. 228). An explicit ambition of the reading of theoretical texts has been to find forms for translating ideas into methods and a way to pursue fieldwork. Hammarlin’s method has been to follow a small number (nine) of long-term sick-listed people in their everyday doings for two or three days each. Media reports about burnout are another important empirical basis for the study. It is through the media that she found the nine people for the study. All nine had the same experience of appearing in the media and then reading about themselves. This circumstance interests Hammarlin, who also works professionally as a journalist. Her method has been to try to think along with the collaborators rather than about them; to be a participant herself rather than an observer. Words like empathy are stressed in the description of the method. One may ask whether the method

could be described more clearly, or if we are obliged to “learn by doing”, with the implication that methodical awareness is a kind of tacit knowledge that verges on artistic ability. A method that Hammarlin uses and that verges on literary writing is to construct one’s own narratives based on both fact and fiction. This way of creating ethnography may be appealing, but it can also provoke objections. One argument for the method can be that it is a way to transform observations from the field into a more insightful and meaningful text than would be the case if one tried too strictly to render the sometimes fragmentary and incoherent empirical material in one’s own text. As Hammarlin says with reference to Clifford Geertz, it could be claimed that all scientific text has fictitious elements, and that this neither can nor should be avoided (p. 46). One justification for this genre, which Geertz calls faction, is that it can clearly convey the researcher’s analytical premises. But one can also argue against Hammarlin’s way of writing, as I am partly inclined to do. When she constructs narratives and mixes fact and fiction, I have no way of knowing how her insights have come about, however insightful she might be. Nor can I see that these passages clarify her analytical premises more than others. The intention has obviously been to capture how events, objects, and other things emerge in the eyes of both the researcher and the collaborators in the study. But the long, elaborate quotations from the field diaries nevertheless have the tendency to refer ultimately back to the author herself. Hammarlin’s express ambition to heed George Marcus’s exhortation to observe mobility and openness about the field being studied, and to follow where the topic leads, is much more convincing and seems to have had an effect on the structure of the dissertation. The book is arranged in five chapters following the introduction. All the chapters have titles with spatial metaphors:

Reviews the press room, the group room, the hobby room, the outdoor room, and the waiting room. These are settings, places, contexts, and encounters which, according to Hammarlin, become accessible for people who suffer from mental ill health and long-term sick-listing. In the concluding chapter, however, she points out that the home could also have served as the scene for yet another chapter in view of the fact that many sick-listed people live at home more than in the past, and the fact that so much of the creativity she has tried to capture also takes place in the home. The press room differs from the other “rooms” in the dissertation in that it is not the actions of the people with burnout who are studied there but what is written in the newspapers about burnout. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part discusses what the rhetoric does with the readers, not on the basis of a study of the actual reading, but of the newspaper language. Here Hammarlin uses the method of constructing her own, partly fictitious narrative based on conversations with her collaborators. She asked them how they first acquired knowledge about burnout via media narratives and how they then actively searched for information about the illness. From their answers she creates a narrative that is similar in form to an ordinary type of newspaper report. It is built up of detailed descriptions of certain individuals and incorporates quotations from interviewees, not always accompanied by the interviewer’s questions. The second part of the chapter discusses the newspaper texts. The press, according to Hammarlin, gives plenty of space to narratives of personal experience, or more exactly the arranged retelling by the journalists of the interviewees’ accounts of their personal experiences. Yet it is not the genre and narrative form she analyses, but chiefly the use of metaphors in newspaper language. The metaphors show that the press narratives about burnout are dis-

145

tinctly gendered. In the third part of the chapter Hammarlin turns to long-term sick-listed people who have been interviewed by journalists. Their experiences of speaking out about their own situation and then reading about themselves are described as part of a healing process, a way to make oneself public which can strengthen self-esteem. But it is not until the next chapter, “The group room”, that the dissertation clarifies what the long-term sick-listed people do with their experiences of illness. First there is the question of what they do with all the spare time they have after being sick-listed. A common activity among the category to which the collaborators belong is to network with other people in the same situation; this turns out to be a women’s world. Hammarlin describes some club meetings in different parts of Sweden by quoting evocative descriptions from her field diary. With the aid of scholars such as Gaston Bachelard and Erving Goffman, she reflects on the dialectic between exclusion and inclusion in the sick-listed clubs. Hammarlin observes that the different local networks are geared to different topics and points out three overall themes: equality, politics, and therapy. She is not primarily interested in these themes per se, but in the actual thematization as an expression of the symbolic capacity of burnout. This becomes a multipurpose tool which can be used symbolically for virtually anything. Here Hammarlin refers to Bruno Latour and action network theory to show how burnout has been ascribed meanings by long chains of actants. At certain times she thinks that the symbol has been so dominant that it can be ascribed the power of Sherry Ortner’s key symbols and become active in “key scenarios”. But the point Hammarlin wants to make with this analysis is that the changing symbolic meanings of burnout also have the result that the diagnosis opens and closes people’s scope for action. With the symbolic polyvalence of burnout,

146

Reviews

Hammarlin wants to give an explanation of how people can find a refuge in the illness and simultaneously be excluded from other contexts. The next chapter, “The hobby room”, deals with more concrete creativity. Yet this is only half the truth. The concrete aspect is that many of the sick-listed people engage in various forms of creative activity: they paint, write poetry, or portray life in other forms. In this chapter a number of graphic artworks and photographs are reproduced, adding to the sense of presence in the reading. But the artworks are not analysed as such. Somewhat less concrete is the discussion here of what makes so many sick people feel a need to express themselves artistically. The reason is of course that the question is difficult to answer. Hammarlin brings in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre to arrive at the conclusion that all three have pointed out that it is the road away from the self that leads to the self, an idea that is not easy to explain (p. 160). Hammarlin seizes on what philosophers have written about weariness of life as a form of “nothingness” which, if I have understood her correctly, is the painful feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness that can be felt by a person afflicted by illness. But she believes that this feeling is also the seed of the ability to regain one’s selfesteem. With reference to Sartre, Hammarlin notes that several of her collaborators have testified to how they let themselves be swallowed up by their artistic creativity and temporarily forgot themselves, how they “stopped relating to the world and instead started to think and feel with it” (p. 150). Heidegger is also the guide in the next chapter, “The outdoor room”. The empirical object is “the space that nature offers”, which many sick people, according to Hammarlin, seek as a matter of course. A great deal of this chapter is devoted to a discussion of why nature seems to be a resource for people’s recovery. The chapter is, in her own

words, an attempt to use Heidegger’s terms habitat and mood to “liberate nature from its cultural and historical heritage and open for the possibility of seeing its elements as they are, through lived experience” (pp. 167 f). On first thought it seems hardly necessary to me to waste too much energy on this attempt, since the cultural and historical heritage of nature’s healing power turns out to be apparent throughout the work. But then I realize that she is referring to something different, rather how Heidegger’s existential concepts of habitat and mood seem to say something more fundamental about the inclination of the sick-listed people to turn to nature. Here she tells, for instance, of a man who has spent hours by himself, day after day, in the forest during a long period of sicklisting. He himself confesses that the forest meant everything to him, how he figuratively felt the roots of life while standing on a stone, doing nothing more than just being. Hammarlin draws the conclusion that what is so rewarding about being in the forest or the garden seems to be the profound experience that everything is connected. Through time the man who spent his days in the forest has become increasingly at home there and has left behind the “homeless existence” of the illness, to use Heidegger’s words. His concept of habitat, according to Hammarlin, is also close to this being in nature that she has documented. But she also points out that her attempt to combine Heidegger’s “sometimes grandiose thought experiments” with the more down-to-earth ethnology has occasionally met resistance (p. 197). In the concluding chapter, “The waiting room”, which is both a free-standing chapter and a concluding discussion, burnout is considered from a gender perspective. The title is a little more enigmatic than the title of the previous chapters. Perhaps it is a general metaphor for what Hammarlin also calls “cultural free space”, that is, all the places and contexts that people with a long period of

Reviews sick-listing behind them can choose in order to forget their worries temporarily. Hammarlin observes that these waiting rooms differ as regards gender. For women, she writes, there seem to be much bigger, better, and nicer waiting rooms during a long sick-listing. She points out that women bring along the skills they have acquired from looking after a home, and that they create cosy, homelike network meetings and other forms of community. The men, in contrast, turn into themselves, with old mottoes such as “a good man sorts things out by himself” and “every man for himself”. But there can hardly be any doubt that there has been a gender shift through time in relation to the illness. Whereas it used to be mostly career men who suffered, it is now women in low-status jobs that predominate. Hammarlin claims that this change has affected the image of the syndrome, and that the stress that is assumed to provoke the illness no longer seems as honourable as the male stress appeared to be. Now stress is associated with something emotional, mystical, difficult to interpret, or it is even dismissed as imagined stress. But the most crucial finding of the dissertation is that burnout is not just a mental state and a body that does not work as it is supposed to. Burnout, as Hammarlin puts it, can also function as a kind of door opener to new rooms waiting to be explored, where the sick person makes a form of journey to a more authentic way of being in the world. It is entertaining to read about how the author has thought and connected ideas from her reading with her own observations and experiences in the field. She reasons in a way that makes her own reflections bear up a great deal of the text. Hammarlin is grappling with really difficult texts and seems to want to find something larger and more general in each individual’s actions. In the final chapter she also reveals that the emo-

147

tional fieldwork was sometimes far from the exalted goal of possessing “the necessary capacity for empathy” that helps the researcher to understand the world as it seems in someone else’s eyes. I feel every respect for Hammarlin’s work, but cannot rid myself of the impression that it could have been done in a more manageable way. One impression is that Hammarlin handles the phenomenological approach as if it were a new paradigm that she must convince the scholarly community about, that her main aim has been to show the world through Heidegger’s eyes and her secondary aim to understand sick people’s experiences and creation of meaning. But to place so much emphasis on discussing the theoretical approach can also be said to be part of the task of writing a doctoral dissertation. I nevertheless think that an unnecessary limitation of the empirical analysis has arisen as a consequence of an artificial opposition between people’s narratives and their other actions. Hammarlin gives the impression of regarding her own method with its phenomenological approach as a critical alternative to “the obsession in the human and social sciences with the narrative and discursive from the late 1980s until today”. She says she wants to get at what people do but rarely talk about. She simultaneously emphasizes that narratives are not always the same as what people do (p. 28). But we tell stories, particularly when we incur a serious illness that forces us to navigate towards new goals in life. There are many ways to get close to what people do with their experiences of illness, and studying their narratives is not a universal medicine. But it would be misguided to ignore narrative, as a consequence of a phenomenological approach geared to what people do. In the dissertation the author comments on narratives, but neither the narratives as such, nor the paintings, photographs, and other products that have come about as a result of the creating activities of the

148

Reviews

collaborators, are central objects of analysis. Here I think there is a partly unused source of insight into what the people in the study do with their experiences of mental ill health and long-term sick-listing. As my comments show, the dissertation is a highly ambitious attempt to tackle an urgent topic which has long been at the centre of the public debate in Sweden. In a time when evidence-based medicine dominates the idea of what is legitimate research in the field, Hammarlin’s dissertation stands out as an unconventional alternative that contributes important knowledge. Although the study covers a very limited number of people, it is not closed in a way that reduces the image of what it can mean to suffer mental ill health and long-term sick-listing. The dissertation is generously open in its reasoning tone and raises important issues. I am convinced that many people who are involved in various ways with the work of rehabilitation after this illness will, like me, derive important ideas and thoughts from reading this dissertation. Georg Drakos Stockholm, Sweden

New Ballad Studies Gunilla Byrman (ed.): En värld för sig själv. Nya studier i medeltida ballader. Växjö University Press, Växjö 2008. 445 pp. Ill. This collection of new studies in medieval ballads, entitled “A world of its own”, is the result of an interdisciplinary project at Växjö University. The project was started after the discovery in 2004 of a manuscript collection in Växjö, comprising over 900 pages of songs, tales, and other folk tradition. The material was collected by the Englishman George Stephens, who moved to Stockholm in 1834. Stephens was an academ-

ic “multihumanist” in the nineteenthcentury spirit. He was a poet, an author, a scholar of literature, language, and history, with a keen interest in social development and politics. Stephens’s interest in history also entailed an interest in folk tradition, which he cultivated by collaborating for decades with Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius. Stephens himself became an active collector of folkloristic material, mainly songs. He acquired transcripts of original records by other scholars, he copied songs from archive collections, and he may have recorded folk songs himself. The boxes of manuscripts ended up in Växjö City Library, where they were packed away and forgotten in the early twentieth century, until their recent rediscovery. The greater part of Stephens’s collection consists of folksongs, among them about 400 ballads. It is the ballads in the collection that this book is about. The more modern songs, stories, and other folk tradition have not been analysed. It is not every day one finds such a quantity of ballads previously unknown to scholars. This book is full of enthusiasm, and delight over the find. A considerable amount of work has been expended by the researchers at Växjö University to explore the papers discovered in the cardboard boxes. George Stephens’s life, his work, and his collecting activities are expertly described in Karin Eriksson’s detailed study of how the collection came about, and also Stephens’s academic and political ideas. Sigurd Kværndrup had drawn up a list of all the ballads in the collection. His extremely knowledgeable commentary is an excellent introduction to the ballads. Kværndrup’s article about HylténCavallius at the end of the book is also highly interesting reading. Here we learn about how Hyltén-Cavallius viewed the relationship between history, belief, and poetry. Kværndrup conducts a thorough examination of Hyltén-Cavallius’s almost mythical perception of

Reviews history, and his interpretation of the past lays the foundation for his outlook on the present. This interpretation of Hyltén-Cavallius’s universe of nature myths is well supplemented by Magnus Gustafsson in his analysis of the tunes. This topic is examined in greater depth in another article by Magnus Gustafsson, where he discusses our present-day view of folk tradition, which does not proceed from the tradition itself but is shaped by the way scholars and authorities have viewed the country, the provinces, geography, and people. I am a little more sceptical about some other articles. Stephens’s manuscript collection includes the ballad Osteknoppen, which was previously unknown. The linguist Gunilla Byrman interprets the ballad from the perspective of discourse analysis. She concludes, no doubt quite correctly, that the ballad moves in the border zone between the absurd and the familiar, between dream and realism. The ballad describes a paradise where everything one wishes for appears by magic and is distributed, in this case by the king himself. Byrman seems to overinterpret the ballad somewhat, examining virtually every word and assigning it a meaning. She ignores the character of the ballad; it is not unique, but a cumulative song that is typical of the folk tradition, with witty turns of phrase and amusing rhymes. The ballad consists of common themes and stereotyped formulas that are found in folktales and in verse. Osteknoppen, the meaning of which Byrman examines at length, is one such word, which to me seems to involve no real problem. The word knopp means something that is round like a “knob”, a cheese (ost) can be round, and an amusing word has been created to fit the rhythm of the ballad. I can pick a similar example from Sveriges medeltida ballader: in the ballad Och bonden han körde till furuskog we find the line “av huvudet gjordes en kyrkoknopp och satte den högt uppå taket opp” (from the head they made a

149

church knob and put it high up on the church roof). The word kyrkoknopp also occurs in variants such as kyrkeknapp, kyrketornstopp, kyrkotupp, or käppeknapp. The word huvudknopp as an everyday term for “head, noddle” is even listed in Svenska Akademiens ordlista. A typical feature of folktales and ballads is that they do not describe time, place, setting, and they do not provide any psychological explanations. It is probably not a Christmas feast that is described in the ballad, as Byrman speculates. For those who once composed the ballad, the act of dipping bread was not a Christmas custom but an everyday way to soften hard bread and enjoy the tasty broth left after meat had been boiled. The starting point for Eva Kjellander’s article about the Näck or waterhorse in ballads and legends of folk belief seems odd to me. Ballads and belief legends are totally different folkloristic genres which lived quite different lives. Ballads are better compared with folktales and the entertainment tradition than with legends, beliefs, and religion. The Näck in the ballads is not the same figure as in the legends, that is to say, in folk belief. The supernatural helpers in folktales, or the trolls and giants, likewise have little more than the name in common with the beings in folk belief. The article by the literary scholar Tommy Olofsson shows that folk tradition cannot be fitted into any absolute categorization. He seeks to show deficiencies in the ballad definitions of previous scholars. In defining folkloristic tradition, just one criterion cannot be applied. The result can always be questioned and compromises can be debated, but scholars must nevertheless make decisions in order to proceed with their work. The book ends with a detailed list of the ballads in George Stephens’s newfound collection. To my knowledge, no such large col-

150

Reviews

lection has ever been analysed so thoroughly in such a short time as this. The scholars at Växjö University have done an enormous job with both registration and research. Let us hope that the interest in songs and folk music will continue to thrive at Växjö University. Anne Bergman Helsingfors (Helsinki), Finland

Cross-Border Contacts Kjell Å. Modéer (ed.): Grændse som skiller ej! Kontakter över Öresund under 1900-talet. Museum Tusculanums Forlag, Copenhagen 2007. 137 pp. On 13 November 2002 a symposium was held at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen. The symposium was to mark the centenary of the birth (the following day) of Einar Hansen, a Danish-Swedish entrepreneur and patron of the arts. Six scholars in the humanities from Denmark and Sweden took part, lecturing on the theme of the Öresund as a unifying and dividing strait during the lifetime of Einar Hansen, 1902–1994. The papers have been edited by the professor of legal history, Kjell Å. Modéer, who was then chairman of the Einar Hansen Research Fund, and they are now published in this volume. The collection brings together an impressive group of researchers with long experience. Only one of them was born after 1950, the historian Ulf Zander, who seems like a mere youth in this context. What is slightly more remarkable is that only one of the authors is a woman, the linguist Else Bojsen. The general impression of edited volumes like this tends to be mixed. An overall theme is rarely enough to keep a group of academic soloists together. This is also the case here. Despite that, several more important factors make this a fascinating book. First of all, the quality of the pa-

pers is even, which gives a good rhythm. Secondly, the essays deal with relevant issues in a way that arouses interest. The book is, quite simply, informative. The modest format is mostly an advantage: several of the chapters serve to whet the appetite. The introductory chapter by Kjell Å. Modéer consists of a summary of his biography of Einar Hansen, entitled “Patriot in a Borderland”. Hansen, who is no doubt well known to many people in southern Sweden, was one of the most important businessmen in the Öresund region in the twentieth century. His significance for humanistic research can scarcely be overestimated. Einar Hansen’s Research Fund, with its seat in Lund, and Director Einar Hansen and Mrs Vera Hansen’s Fund in Copenhagen are two important examples of his contributions. Hansen was born in Horsens, Denmark, in 1902, and died in Malmö, Sweden, in 1994. He spent most of his life in Malmö, where he became a prominent publisher of magazines and books and ran a shipping line. The Allhem publishing house and the Clipper line were well known to the people of Malmö at the time. A total of 750 unique books were published, about 150 of them by donation, chiefly in order to contribute to projects concerned with research and defence The Second World War was a major theme of Hansen’s donation projects (Hyllning till Einar Hansen, Allhemiana, 2002). Modéer describes Hansen as an entrepreneur, patron, and patriot – three titles with varying undertones in our time. Entrepreneurship could be characterized as the most politically correct in today’s discourse, while the other two titles are probably often reckoned as belonging to the past. In its historical context, however, with an occupied Denmark on the other side of the Sound, the patriotism has other connotations. It is the same thing with patronage. In our days there is talk of sponsoring as a form of crass marketing, and

Reviews culture is far down on the list of donations from the big anonymous companies. Public actors such as municipal councils and regions, I imagine, have taken over the role played by patrons in the past. Einar Hansen’s efforts became anachronistic during his life. “Alms and grandiose donations did not belong to the spirit of the time and the Social Democratic redistribution policy in a modern Sweden” (p. 18). Modéer starts his chapter by discussing what makes a creative meeting place, with examples such as Manhattan, Silicon Valley, or Weimar, and finds that three factors are required: capital, heterogeneous cultures – and idealists. “In the growth of creative centres, mercantile actors are allied to culture workers” (p. 9). Cultural life in the Öresund region has been highly dependent on patriarchal entrepreneurs. In Malmö there was R.-F. Bergh, founder of a cement factory. In Helsingborg there was the director Henry Dunker, whose rubber company Tretorn established the foundation for the vigorous cultural life of the city today. In Denmark there was the brewing family of Jacobsen and ship owners such as A. P. Møller and his son Mærsk. In the same group, with a clear Danish-Swedish orientation, was Einar Hansen. With his Danish-Swedish identity he was a pioneer of the vision of a new Öresund identity that emerged with the construction of the bridge linking the two countries. The German occupation of Denmark was totally unacceptable to Hansen, of course, as a boundary-crossing entrepreneur. His contributions to air defence, coastal defence, and the Danish Jews during the occupation were significant. Apart from the interesting introductory chapter, the other papers have no direct link to Einar Hansen. The literary scholar Per-Erik Ljung presents a great many literary contacts across the Sound in a rather compressed chapter that requires a considerable pre-understanding. Most attention is devoted to the Swedish authors, such as

151

Fritiof Nilsson Piraten and Lars Forssell, who have crossed the Sound. Like other Swedes, most Swedish authors seem to have had happy experiences in Denmark. Copenhagen symbolizes the continent and freedom. A radical exception can be found in a poem by Stig Carlsson (1962), who thinks that it should all be demolished: “Tear it all down – make a supermarket of this ridiculous town.” The Danish authors, as expected, have often made ironic remarks about how stiff and boring everything is in Sweden with all its supposed prohibitions. All in all, literature reflects only too well the national stereotypes that still dominate the symbolic universe of the Öresund region. The historian Ulf Zander discusses regional and national identities in the Öresund around 1900. The migration of Swedish labour which has increased in the last decade, filling Danish shops, restaurants, and nursing homes with Swedish commuters, is far from being a recent phenomenon. From the second half of the nineteenth century many Swedes emigrated to Denmark. These were men from the agrarian proletariat and young women in domestic service. The latter group, who often came from a rural background, were especially controversial. It was feared that these young women would go astray in sinful Copenhagen. There was evidence that some of the Swedish emigrants would end up in prostitution and crime. Zander also discusses conflicts about national monuments and shows how the contemporary identity process across the Öresund has old roots. The ethnologist Orvar Löfgren’s essay is the best-written chapter, full of poetic similes and metaphors. Löfgren starts with the sense of discomfort that he and many others felt about crossing the Öresund border not so long ago. This was a time when drug-sniffer dogs, methodical customs officers, and suspicious passport police filled the transit halls in Malmö and other places. He then

152

Reviews

considers historical border crossings over the Öresund and observes that employment cycles have influenced the travel statistics, but that during the second half of the twentieth century Copenhagen and Helsingør increased in popularity for excursions. That is how I remember my own first crossings of the Sound: the “tours” on the ferry between Helsingborg and Helsingør. For Swedes, Denmark became synonymous with freedom from responsibility, a nearby Majorca, full of opportunity. “Since 1838, when the steam ferry started, we have eaten our way over to Denmark. Millions of spongy shrimp sandwiches, lemonade, gold lager, gold toffee” (p. 83). Löfgren describes it as an “oral border crossing”. The Swedish fascination clashes with the Danes’ image of Sweden as a Scandinavian East Germany: grey, cold, and forbidding. The stereotypes of damned Danes (danskdjävlar) and sodding Swedes (satans svenskere) persist. Löfgren believes, no doubt correctly, that the building of the bridge, paradoxically, has increased the need for national stereotyping of people on the other side of the water. National identities are not easy to shake. The historian Hans Kirchhoff and the former Keeper of National Antiquities, the archaeology professor Olaf Olsen, tell in the next two chapters about how the Danish Jews were saved in October 1943. Kirchhoff declares that the most important factor in the rescue of 7,000 Jews across the Öresund, “even though it is seldom heard” (p. 95), was the passivity of the Germans. He gives a realistic and interesting description of the diplomatic manoeuvres, public opinion, and refugee aid. Olsen provides a brief autobiography of his time as a Danish refugee in Lund. His account is fascinating, painting a picture of a town and a time full of life and movement. Olsen notes that life as a Dane was good in Lund. In the final chapter the reader is given a quick lesson in the differences between Danish and Swedish. Else Boj-

sen sums up linguistic research concisely. There is no doubt that language actually is an obstacle even for today’s integration. Danes find it easier to understand the people of Stockholm than the inhabitants of nearby Skåne, while Swedes find it hard to understand Danish, despite the fact that 90 per cent of the thousand most frequent Danish words are common Scandinavian. The other ten per cent is sufficient to cause problems in conversations between us. It is not clear to me why it took almost five years to publish this small collection (137 pages), but this is not so important when the texts, with few exceptions, apply a historical perspective to the Öresund region. At the same time, there is no doubt that some of the chapters would have been even more interesting if the authors had made links to the Öresund region that we are now living in. In any case, this edited volume is well suited to the increased interest recently shown in perspectives and narratives about the history of the Öresund. Grændse som skiller ej! (“Boundaries that do not separate!”) is a small and easily-read collection of pearls from the Öresund. Jesper Falkheimer Lund, Sweden

Papers on the Ritual Year Lina Midholm et al. (eds.): The Ritual Year and Ritual Diversity. Proceedings of the Second International Conference of the SIEF Working Group on The Ritual Year. Gothenburg 7–11.6.2006. Institutet för språk och folkminnesarkiven, Dialekt, ortnamns och folkminnesarkivet i Göteborg, Göteborg 2007. 377 pp. Ill. The publication The Ritual Year and Ritual Diversity is a collection of lectures from a conference with the same title that SIEF’s working group The Ritual

Reviews Year held in the summer of 2006 in Gothenburg. Comparable conferences were held in Malta in 2005 and in the Czech Republic in 2007. The editors of the book are Lina Midholm and Annika Nordström. The book consists of 41 lectures from this conference. As documentation of a conference it fills its function in many ways. Those who attended the conference have the opportunity to explore a given topic in depth by reacquainting themselves with the paper and following up the references. They also have the chance to see what the papers they missed were about. Future scholars who are interested in ritual studies will also benefit from the book, which examines rites from numerous angles that show great variation as regards geography, chronology, and subject matter. It is obvious that rites are a central research theme for ethnologists and folklorists all over Europe, and this in itself is gratifying. As conference documentation, then, this volume works very well, but as a publication aimed at a wider audience it is not as successful. This has to do with the disconnected impression that the near-400-page book gives. The articles, understandably, are short and highly varied in character and content. As a publication about rites and ritual, it could have done with more filtering; a selection of the papers might have been presented in longer versions. The editors could thus have been more critical as regards the conference material. Some of the contributions, regrettably, manage to say very little because they are so short. Many articles fail to problematize the phenomenon under study and remain at a descriptive level. In most cases the reader is told nothing about the material on which the study is based. Nor is there any problematization of the researcher’s relationship to what is being studied. This becomes especially clear in an article about cultural perspectives on alcohol – about how alcohol is used in connection with annual festivals. Here the

153

author presents the use of alcohol in Swedish festive customs – in principle an interesting theme – in a highly superficial way with no connection to any source material. The aim of the article is not to provide knowledge about the significance of alcohol in ritual contexts, but rather to point out the dubious morality of serving alcohol at parties. A more exhaustive presentation would have given a greater understanding of the topic, but that is not possible here. On the other hand, I find it more difficult to accept certain things about the texts. Firstly, the researcher makes no distinction between beliefs about a phenomenon and the phenomenon itself. For example, there are articles which state that Midsummer is a time when witches and other creatures are abroad. This could give the reader the impression, perhaps wrongly, that the researcher believes in witches. This is of course perfectly possible, but in that case the authors ought to have reflected on their own position about what is being studied. During the SIEF conference in Derry in summer 2008 I witnessed the same tendency, that researchers did not always see the difference between the beliefs they were studying and their own involvement in the movement. This can be seen as a way for the researcher to try to convince readers about the positive character of the studied phenomenon rather than trying to problematize his or her own position in relation to it. The other phenomenon that I find difficult to accept is when the researcher expresses emotionally coloured opinions about the decay of folklore. This is evident in studies about ritual contexts which have commercial expressions, about rites which have a market value and can be sold. Another example is a study of a Midsummer festival which the author views as an expression of amateurishness and thinks that the ritual has been misinterpreted and distorted by

154

Reviews

what she calls “pseudo-folklorists”. Other example are when rituals that have changed are regarded as an expression of folklorism. Change is thus a bad thing, and it is the folklorist’s task to ensure that rituals are kept intact and authentic. Words like untrue and inauthentic occur in many articles, which implies – in the spirit of devolutionistism – that there is a true and authentic tradition which has decayed. One theme of the conference was in fact rituals in a changing world, but many researchers seem to think that rites and rituals should not change. In connection with this critique, I would like to reflect on the folklorist’s relation to what is being studied. When I myself studied for my first degree in folkloristics at the start of the 1980s, we spoke a great deal about folklorism and we were horrified at traditions that were being reused in new contexts. Today we teach our students very early on that folklorists should not act as tradition police, but should study the traditions as they are, precisely because they are changing, and the focus can be on the change itself. In the world as it is today, this research tradition can be regarded as a viable approach. The third thing that disturbs me is an ironic attitude to the people who perform the rites being studied. Here researchers set themselves above people who seemingly know no better than to perform or participate in rites which are not correct in the researcher’s opinion. These critical comments can of course be discussed in terms of ideas about what should be published, how much the editors ought to interfere with the authors’ intentions, different research traditions in different countries and different times, and what characterizes good research. There is no absolute answer to this question. For one researcher it may be interesting to find out something about a specific rite, while for another it is the theoretical reasoning that is most rewarding. Not all the articles in the volume are

weak by any means. There are in fact many interesting gems to be found. The reader learns how and why roundnumber birthdays are advertised in newspapers, either inviting people to a party or stating that the person does not wish to celebrate the occasion; about how christening presents materialize emotions; about how neopaganism affects rites today; and how wedding traditions are changing. Ane Ohrvik shows in her article how new traditions are created, doing so with the focus on the process. Britt-Marie Näsström writes about the syncretism surrounding Lucia and how she was made saint for a day, a feminist icon. These articles, which are almost all Nordic, are easier for me to assimilate since they are written in a scholarly tradition that I am accustomed to. But I have also learned a great deal about rites that I had never heard of, and I have seen many similarities, for example, concerning Midsummer celebrations in different parts of Europe. In this way the volume gives new knowledge about rites and ritual processes. The publication is built up around central themes. These were rituals concerning Midsummer, theories about rituals, ritual life, who owns the rituals, rituals in a religious context, rituals in a changing world, and hosts and sites for the theme of the conference. On the last theme, Malta, Sweden, and the Czech Republic, i.e., the places that have arranged the conference hitherto, presented their views on the topic. The book ends with closing comments by Terry Gunnell, Emily Lyle, George MifsudChircop, and Irina Sedakova. From these we learn that the conference in Gothenburg was well arranged and that SIEF’s working group has succeeded in knitting together a group of researchers from all over Europe on this theme in a short time. Rites and ritual studies are a central part of folkloristics, ethnology, and comparative religion, and will hopefully remain so. The diversity in the way of viewing rites and rituals is something

Reviews I hope will persist. The editors have done a good job in putting this thick book together. Lena Marander-Eklund Åbo, Finland

In Defence of a Generation of Folklorists Fredrik Skott: Folkets minnen. Traditionsinsamling i idé och praktik 1919– 1964. Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Göteborgs universitet, Göteborg 2008. 386 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. It was at the beginning of the 1990s. I was attending an international folklore conference in Stockholm. On the way to a restaurant I walked through the Humlegården park accompanying one of the persons in charge of the meeting. This was an elderly person, and we spoke about shared memories of folklorists and folklore studies. My colleague was obviously annoyed. Some younger colleague had maintained that the older generation was completely unaware of anything to do with theory. Now this declaration became the crucial point of debate in our conversation. My colleague was deeply offended. This conversation puzzled me until recently. Could it really be possible that the previous generation of Swedish scholars was theoretically inexperienced? When I read Fredrik Skott’s dissertation Folkets minnen, my curiosity about the context behind my colleague’s perturbation was partly satisfied. The book is about the history of folklore archives in Sweden, particularly Västsvenska Folkminnesarkivet in Göteborg. Certainly, this topic also touches upon the history of folklore scholarship in Sweden. The time span is from the 1910s to the mid 1960s, a decade that ended with the Student Revolt in 1968 and visions of a more democratic university than before.

155

Skott starts his study by mentioning the seriously unfavourable comments on tradition archives uttered by quite a few folklore and ethnology scholars, all of the same age, and all placed in more or less influential positions within academia. The archives were said to be bourgeois, nostalgic, falsely embellished and concealing important parts of life in Swedish society. So it was maintained that they did not democratically represent the Swedish population, they omitted the culture connected with the dark side of human life, and such like. The archivists were simply accused of being naïve and starry-eyed. Regarding the fact that archive material once was central in folklore and ethnology research, the scholars came in for their share, too. That seemed to have happened to my colleague in the Humlegården park. In the 1970s, according to Skott, this attitude had a fateful effect on the tradition archives, and consequently also on research: folklore studies at the universities changed completely from a historical discipline to a study of contemporary culture, and the archives were abandoned. In his dissertation Skott starts with this perspective, and returns step by step to the sources. Who were the people making decisions on the tradition archives in Sweden during the period of interest? What was their political affiliation? By studying these matters in minutes and official documents of different kinds, he tries to find out whether the argument about the lack of democracy in archive matters is plausible. He succeeds well in demonstrating that tradition archives were a political issue among liberals/radicals and conservatives alike. Their common perspective was that of rescuing folk culture in the growing process of modernization and industrialization in Sweden. The politicians’ affiliation was not important when they decided how to work for the tradition archives. Skott also shows that the people inter-

156

Reviews

viewed belonged to almost any kind of social grouping. This also tells us that the archives contain a broad spectrum of material that, at least in some sense, is representative of the Swedish population of that time. In another chapter Skott scrutinizes the argument that the tradition archives mirror the collectors’ ideal of folk culture and that the collectors only wanted to present idealized records. The 1970s generation of scholars made the accusation that the collectors were recommended to omit certain indecent and inappropriate material. However, Skott finds counter-evidence for this. It turns out that the collectors were asked repeatedly to record everything; they were urged time and again to record things exactly as the informant formulated them. The guides for fieldwork were meticulous and exact, and moreover, the collections were controlled and very little was refused by the archive authorities. In this way Skott draws the conclusion that the archived material is much more plentiful and varied than its critics maintained. Many of the collectors also had their own agendas in their work. Certainly, in a way they belonged to the elite among the local people, although they were, and were strictly recommended to be, part of the community in which they acted. They did not only collect for research, but also in order to create identity, either in their own region or for a greater part of their country. It turns out that they also used their own material for papers presented at regional history meetings, in books they wrote, or for other purposes where they needed to profile their place of birth and belonging. The collectors were definitely not naïve or yielding to the demands of the archive. They were independent, reflecting individuals, proud of their region and their work but also aware of problems and deficiencies. They did not hide the shortcomings in human life, and they did not underline

the positive traits. The extant correspondence between the collectors and the staff of the archives turns out to be an excellent source for analysing these matters. In the last chapter of his analysis Skott turns to the informants. Were they backward, romanticizing people? No, he states. They were just as critical, open-minded and honest as the collectors were. The critical perspective of the 1970s scholars made them point out the lack of workers’ tradition in the archives. Skott concentrates on this argument and analyses it against the background of Swedish cultural and political history. He partly contradicts it, yet he explains why it may be true to some extent. At the end of the book is a summary in which he strictly demonstrates that the 1970s scholars were wrong. The book is well structured in three obvious analytical sections. Some annoying repetitions could have been deleted, but on the other hand they help the reader to remember the starting points and follow the thread. I found it interesting to see parallels between the methods of gathering folklore in Swedish and in Finland-Swedish folklore archives. I very much enjoyed reading Skott’s well-mannered formulations, although he must be aware of the risk he takes with this book. Hopefully he will start a polemic about trendsetting within academia. For he also demonstrates that the scholars and archivists of the 1920s had rejected their forerunners’ work in a corresponding way. Is it really necessary in scholarship to commit an Oedipean murder of the father(s) every now and then? Now Skott in his turn has certainly reinstated the folklorists from the 1920s to the 1960s, but in a way he has also “murdered” his forerunners. Maybe it was quite smart of him to write this highly interesting, well-formulated dissertation, filled with skilfully used evidence and conclusive argumentation, not within eth-

Reviews nology or folklore studies but within the discipline of history. Ulrika Wolf-Knuts Åbo, Finland

Radio Listeners’ Folklore Bengt af Klintberg: Folkminnen. Atlantis, Stockholm 2007. 368 pp. For fifteen years the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation had a radio programme Folkminnen, to which listeners could send in questions and examples about folklore, in the hope of getting an answer or a comment from the expert Bengt af Klintberg and his assistant Christina Mattsson. Now Bengt af Klintberg has put together a book containing some of the material received from listeners, 350 letters, a mere fraction of the roughly 20,000 letters sent in over the years. In short texts the author comments on questions posed by listeners, and examples of various folk beliefs and narratives are put into a historical and geographical context. The book contains everything from children’s games to words for different kinds of ice, legend motifs and festive traditions, and much besides. Above all one is struck by the fantastic material to which the radio programme gave rise. All the letters are preserved in the archives of the Nordiska Museet, a collection that seems to be a veritable gold mine. We have here a very interesting collection of traditional material which differs in part from other types of collections. Instead of being wholly steered by the researcher’s interests, as in the older use of regular local informants and modern questionnaires, informants are given greater power to choose what they want to say. It is the tradition bearers who write about their own folklore, what they think is special or important, what they want to find out more about, or

157

what they think deserves to be known to other people. The approach has evidently been rewarding, and the radio programme managed to achieve interactivity between listeners and radio hosts. It happened often that a listener’s question led to a response from other listeners who had their own examples and explanations. Folklore seems to be something that arouses a response from the man in the street. The interest exists, and it was put to good use here in people’s questions about everyday or special phenomena: why do we say this, why do people do that, does anyone recognize this? Folkminnen is not a book you read from cover to cover, but one to come back and dip into. It can be used for reference, or to read alongside other books. It is a fine example of how everyday life is filled with meaning. People try all the time to create order and meaning in their lives. Bengt af Klintberg is a seasoned writer and a popular educator, and it is a pleasure to read his well-founded thoughts. He has read widely and is thoroughly familiar with folklore, with the result that the book is well substantiated and even seemingly trivial things are taken seriously. The author also shows humility vis-à-vis the experts, that is to say, the people, without compromising his own expertise. He lets the folklore user be a specialist in his or her own use of folklore, and he does not hesitate to admit error when his own statements have been corrected by listeners. Perhaps af Klintberg’s answers are not always wholly convincing, and of course it is often the case that there is no definitive answer. But the reader’s imagination has been stimulated and thoughts start to flow. When I read about how children in the 1950s counted wine-red Volvos in order to influence their fate, I immediately began to think of “platespotting”, when adults in the twenty-first century read car number plates and try to get from 001 to 999. The numbers must be seen in order, and

158

Reviews

when you reach the target you start from the beginning again. On the Internet you can share your results with others who have the same hobby. The book definitely fills a gap, one that we may not always be aware of, and perhaps for many people it is not the most essential gap to fill. But who is the scholar to judge what needs to be investigated? Radio listeners have clearly felt a great need to get answers to their questions, and now the reader too has a chance to learn more about everyday thoughts and stories that have occupied people through the ages. Here we get the answer, or perhaps rather the questions. For often the queries or the original observations are at least as interesting as Bengt af Klintberg’s explications. Blanka Henriksson Åbo, Finland

Contemporary Folklore Bengt af Klintberg & Ulf Palmenfelt: Vår tids folkkultur. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2008. 254 pp. Ill. In the 1960s the folkloristic field of research suddenly grew. New publications such as The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren by the British folklorist couple Iona and Peter Opie introduced a thriving contemporary tradition: children’s folklore. Nordic researchers were not slow to follow. With the article “Why does the elephant have red eyes?” Bengt af Klintberg started his career as an introducer of contemporary traditions. Bengt af Klintberg and his colleague Ulf Palmenfelt, another innovative collector, have now published the best bits of their by now imposing range of contemporary tradition studies in the volume Vår tids folkkultur (Folk culture of today). Here we meet some texts which have achieved cult status in Nordic tradition research, many of which were

originally published in specialist journals that are not easy to come by today. In his foreword Palmenfelt notes that the interest in children’s lore became a gateway to studies in other modern genres. Within the frames of children’s lore we find a wide spectrum of tradition products characterized by an indefinite boundary with adult folk traditions. Bellman jokes, sly riddles, stories of sexual deviants and erotic jokes are examples of some of the themes presented in the articles in this book. The articles range over four decades and Bengt af Klintberg’s study “Folksägner i dag” (Folktales of today) published in Fataburen 1976 is the oldest text. The article introduces a genre of classic calibre featuring an innovative content, the contemporary legends, a genre af Klintberg has since continued to follow and has introduced in rich, commented publications of material. Likewise, Ulf Palmenfelt’s studies of chain letters and traditional photocopies, originally published in the innovative journal Tradisjon, still provide insightful reading experiences. The last, newly written chapter introduces the new arena for this rich “folk culture of today”, the Internet. In his article about the forms of net lore Ulf Palmenfelt outlines the folkloristic elements on the Internet and states that they are characterized by the old criteria for folklore: they are anonymous, they are varied and they are actively transmitted. The forms of tradition products are increasing, and on the net we find recycled material, previously spread in the form of chain letters and traditional copies. However, there is also a lot of net lore that uses the special requirements of computer technology and works only in Internet form. A special feature of net lore is that the process of transmission can be studied by the researcher online. It is possible in a unique way for the folklorist to observe an arena for collective tradition where not only changes in tradition can

Reviews be studied, but also the acting and creativity of the bearers of tradition. The Internet offers folklorists boundless possibilities, but also enormous challenges. Folklore is a social barometer and a commentator on mental changes and discussion climates. Folklore means engagement and is a tool for communicating values. Bengt af Klintberg’s and Ulf Palmenfelt’s collected articles present us with a fascinating retrospective view of an epoch when the identification of folklore changed for ever. The authors also urge folklorists of today to show awareness when it comes to identifying new folklore – and not to lose heart when confronting the wide selection of tradition products in the virtual world of today. Carola Ekrem Helsingfors, Finland

Forming a Folk Music Canon Niklas Nyqvist: Från bondson till folkmusikikon. Otto Andersson och formandet av “finlandssvensk folkmusik”. Åbo Akademis förlag, Åbo 2007. 310 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. This dissertation by musicologist Niklas Nyqvist is about Otto Andersson (1879– 1969), professor of musicology and folk poetry in Åbo, Finland. Andersson was not only a scholar but also a composer and a violin player. He was born in the village of Lövö, parish of Vårdö, in the Åland Islands. He grew up in a musical environment in a Swedish-speaking farmer’s family. Nyqvist’s thesis is based on the idea that Otto Andersson had a prominent role in the process that developed what can be regarded as canonical Swedish folk music in Finland. Andersson was collecting folklore, such as folk tunes, in the Swedish-speaking province of Ostrobothnia between 1902 and 1907. These collections became the founda-

159

tion for both his scholarly work and his view of Finland’s Swedish folk music and its characteristics. Thus, one of Nyqvist’s main purposes is to explain what this folk music stands for today. The book also has a biographical approach and illustrates Andersson’s personal conditions, cultural engagement, and political views besides his more concrete professional work. The author’s thesis has a hermeneutical perspective, in this case an interpretation of history based on analyses of the social and cultural context of the current period. In the early nineteenth century Finland was detached from its union with Sweden and instead became a part of the Russian empire. As a result of this the Finnish people had to search for their own culture. This was manifested, for example, in the Kalevala epic, which was compiled by Emil Lönnrot in 1835. Because Finland was bilingual, folklife research turned in two different directions; a more eastern-oriented Finnish one, and a more western-oriented Swedish-speaking one, where Andersson mainly represented the latter. The book is divided into three main chapters with sub-chapters, in addition to the preface and the initial and final discussion. There is also a list of sources, an index of persons, English summary and appendices with an extract, a list of Andersson’s compositions and a distribution map of the Swedish settlements in Finland during Andersson’s active collection period. The first chapter depicts the history of Swedish folk poetry in Finland, the early work on folklore, the collection of folklore and its importance. It describes Andersson’s early collection efforts and the role this had for establishing the canon of Swedish folk music in Finland. It also describes his path from music studies to work in the field. The author also considers Andersson’s early publications and looks at his collected material as it has been published by the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland. Nyqvist

160

Reviews

also makes comparisons with both recent and contemporary collectors’ material. The chapter also discusses the partly controversial entry of the phonograph, different methods to collect and record and the importance of approaches, and something about social developments of folk music. The second chapter focuses on the revitalization of Finland’s Swedish folk music. Nyqvist describes the impulses for this process and compares similar revivals of folk traditions in other Nordic countries and Germany. In this connection, it came to light that Otto Andersson was impressed by the German folk song society and their habit of singing “genuine German folk songs.” Andersson was the initiator of the association Brage, which was formed in 1906. Its main task was to collect and popularize musical and literary folk poetry, folk games and folk dance. In this work the phonograph was an important tool. The second chapter also describes the way new popular texts were added to old folk songs. This was one of the moments of nostalgia, and the Brage association encouraged poets to write new lyrics to the recorded tunes. Andersson himself took an active part in arranging old melodies for choirs in an accessible and romantically coloured style. In this context, Nyqvist has a discussion about the Rosan dance which he would see as a symbol of the canonization of Finland’s Swedish folk music. This dance was basically a polonaise and existed around 1900 as a feature of wedding celebrations at places in the Swedish-speaking part of Ostrobothnia. The melody that was used was either a polska or a march. Rosan was published with a dance description in a recorded and fixed form and developed into an entity with lyrics by Alexander Slotte and arrangement by Otto Andersson. The melody was a polska which Andersson recorded in 1905 from the fiddler Erik Wilhelm Eriksson, Eckerö, Åland. Nyqvist therefore argues that Rosan went through a process and design

that suited a purpose that was in line with the work of Andersson and others at this time. In the third, and in my opinion the most interesting chapter, the author digs deeper into Andersson’s scholarly work. Otto Andersson had not passed the upper-secondary final examination but had to apply for exemption in 1913 when he was to begin his higher studies. In this process, he obtained the help of Kaarle and Ilmari Krohn. Kaarle was a professor of Finnish folk poetry at the University of Helsinki and Ilmari associate professor of music research at the same university. Kaarle had been impressed by the manuscript of Andersson’s article Ur den svenska folkdiktningens historia, published in 1909. Nyqvist suggests that Kaarle’s and Ilmari’s continued encouragement of Andersson’s career is somewhat vague, and refers to John Rosas (1983). At the beginning of his academic career Andersson was critical of the fact that there were too few seats of learning in Swedish folklife research in Finland. He mentioned this problem in an article, “Brage och vårt kulturarbete”, he wrote in 1924. This was after he had received his doctoral degree. At this time there was only one Swedish-speaking professorship in folklife research, the Kiseleff chair at Åbo Academy. In the article Andersson went so far as to propose that the Brage association could found an institute for Swedish folklife research including the study of folk poetry and folk music. Nyqvist argues that Andersson here predicted his own future career and later chair, and that linguistic, ideological and personal motives were behind his move. Even before his academic career Andersson had lectured and had written articles with scholarly ambitions. Several of these were about folk music and resulted from his previous collection work. Nyqvist argues that many of Andersson’s recommendations had a critical view of the early folklife research. Andersson is said to have stated that the first folklife re-

Reviews search was too dominated by mythology, but it had become a more independent academic discipline in the late 1800s. Andersson tried early on to define the task of folklife research, and Nyqvist mentions in this context the article, “Brage, en vetenskaplig och kulturell uppgift”, written in 1906. In the article the meaning of the term “the people” was discussed by Andersson. He broke down the concept into two categories, “political-national” and “social-civilizational”, with reference to Eduard Hoffman-Krayer’s definition in the journal Die Volkskunde als Wissenschaft (1902). The first is known as “populus” and the latter as “vulgus.” Andersson thought that it essentially is the latter that is the starting point for scholarly folklife studies. Andersson links “vulgus” with “primitive thinking”, from which he said that popular traditions are created. Such a derogatory expression could hardly be used in today’s scholarship, but Nyqvist forgives Andersson to a certain extent and argues that we must put this opinion in a cultural context in which certain words, at least in part, could have different meanings than they have today. Nyqvist suggests, however, that Andersson was relatively modern in his scholarly approach, as shown in his studies describing the music in a specific socio-cultural context. On the other hand, it is known that Andersson had a nationalist approach at that time, which he certainly not was alone in having. He had notably been inspired by the Austrian folk music researcher Josef Pommer, who saw the possibilities of exploiting and popularizing the collected material. Nyqvist also discusses the volumes of Finlands svenska folkdiktning which were published by Andersson 1934–1964. These volumes include most of the material collected in Swedish-speaking Finland until 1940 in edited form. These also summarize Andersson’s research findings and Nyqvist sees them as a manifestation of the

161

canon of Finland’s Swedish folk music. The volumes which contain dance tunes are known in Swedish-speaking fiddler circles in Finland as “the fiddler’s bible” just to underline their importance. Nyqvist argues that the canonization was possible because Anderson anchored folk music material in a scholarly context, and thus credibility was achieved. At the end of the book Nyqvist discusses objectivity versus subjectivity, that is, what his position has meant for the thesis. He is certainly a music researcher at Åbo Academy, where the scholarly legacy of Otto Andersson is most evident. Niklas Nyqvist dissertation breathes accuracy and detail. Its strength lies in the author’s observations of the social and political circumstances surrounding the canonization of Swedish folk music in Finland. I am somewhat critical of the outline of the thesis and the flow of the text. The book is somewhat fragmented and deviates somewhat from a chronological structure. History should not be presented in a way in which events succeeded each other linearly, as the author certainly is aware. However, an overly strict approach to this problem entails the risk that the presentation will be too mosaic-like, especially in combination with a hermeneutic method. The book would also have benefited from a general index. Theses which describe standardized processes of folk music in terms of musical canon are not very common. This is because the term is usually employed in discussions of classical music. It is even rarer that the term “musical canon” is used in a folk music context in combination with the highlighting of a single person’s role in this process. Nykvist’s thesis is special in this respect. Patrik Sandgren Lund, Sweden

162

Reviews

The Sought-after People Palle Ove Christiansen & Jens Henrik Koudal (eds.): Det ombejlede folk. Nation, følelse og social bevægelse. C.A. Reitzels forlag & Dansk Folkemindesamling, København 2007. Folkemindesamlingens kulturstudier 12. 163 pp., Ill. The people as a concept is the theme of this collection of articles, Det ombejlede folk (The sought-after people). Most of the six articles consist of well-edited presentations held at a theme day in 2006 at Dansk Folkemindesamling (The Danish Folklore Archives). The articles span different areas and together give a good overall picture, although of course not complete, of how the concept of “the people” was understood and used, from the French Revolution until the second half of the twentieth century. Palle Ove Christiansen and Jens Henrik Koudal, both researchers at the above-mentioned archives, are the editors. With his article Palle Ove Christiansen provides a good input to the study of nationalism as well as different views and uses of “the people” in the Western world, from the eighteenth century on. His empirical examples mainly come from Denmark. Christiansen focuses on the perceptions of the concept of the people as invented or discovered. He starts from those who historically created the national motivations through struggles about attitudes, politics and cultural symbols. The focus is on how the people was created by intellectuals and politicians but also, in a way, formed itself using linguistic and historical elements. Particularly interesting is Christiansen’s account of the German philosopher Johann G. Herder’s thinking, the basis for a new descriptive and broad concept of culture, and its consequences. Christiansen points out how intellectuals began to show an interest in oral peasant culture, which was seen as older and more connected to the tradition than their own culture. Extensive collecting and publication activity re-

garding folk culture was started and became of great importance for the legitimacy of nations. Christiansen also gives a concise overview of various Danish collecting projects, from N. F. S. Grundtvig to Dansk Folkemindesamling. After being a part of the Danish kingdom for four hundred years, Norway became independent in 1814. Although Norway was soon forced into a union with Sweden, a national romantic mood swept over the country. Who were the sovereign Norwegian people, whose symbols were included in their self-understanding, and how did they define themselves in relation to others? Rasmus Glenthøj asks these questions in his very interesting article about the nation-building blocks of the new Norwegian self-understanding in 1814. Above all, conceptions of a specific Norwegian people existed among the elite – officials and citizens. The landscape, the peasants and not least the history were highlighted. On the basis of Norwegian as a language and national symbols such as the flag and the national anthem, Glenthøj shows how the young Norwegian nation was legitimated, both inwards and outwards. In his article Glenthøj further clarifies how a struggle about defining the Norwegian took place within the elite, regarding how the time together with Denmark should be interpreted and not least who was the enemy – Denmark or Sweden. According to Glenthøj, the creation and maintenance of these enemy images was central in the Norwegian nation-building process. Søren Frost discusses conscripts’ patriotism during the Schleswig-Holstein war in 1848–1851. It is often claimed that the war led to a patriotic revival among the peasants, who are said to have fought for Denmark as a nation. By proceeding from and frequently quoting rarely used material, 800 uncensored letters written by peasant conscripts, Frost gives us another picture. He compares letters written by these

Reviews conscripts with letters written by volunteer soldiers, often students, artists and others from the upper bourgeoisie. There were striking differences between the groups. The peasants did not write about the nation in the same way as the volunteers did, Frost shows, but instead about God’s providence, the trust in the King, and matters at home. The romantic view of war that the volunteers often expressed is, on the other hand, rare in the conscripts’ letters. Nor do they seem to have the same ideas about the nation, for example they usually do not appear to have shared the common idea within the bourgeoisie about the nation as a language-based community. Further, Frost points out that the peasant soldiers only to a limited extent identified themselves with national community; rather they emphasized regional areas. For them the war was about defending the borders, showing loyalty to the King and defending his rights. It is doubtful, Frost emphasizes, whether there was a sense of national solidarity between the different regions of Denmark. In his article Jens Henrik Koudal focuses on national anthems. Like other symbols, the songs are ascribed special attributes and thereby the national anthems can be used to illuminate the relationship between nation, state and people. Koudal describes three different types of national themes and their different characters: the royal anthem (for example “God Save the Queen”), the revolutionary march (for example “La Marseillaise”) and the folk song (for example “Du gamla, du fria”). With Denmark as the main example, Koudal gives a detailed explanation of how national anthems could be created, while Germany and Russia provide examples of how the anthems can be quickly replaced after changes of system, wars or revolutions. In order to function as national symbols the anthems, Koudal emphasizes, must not only be written but also reach out and be accepted by the population.

163

Two of the articles in the volume directly concern the twentieth century and the political left. Nils Finn Christiansen creditably deals with social democracy, its relationship to and use of the concept of the people up to the 1930s. He notes that the early labour movement had an ambivalent attitude to the concept. Leading social democrats proceeded from classes – the working class and its relation to other classes – although there were exceptions, such as the editor and parliamentarian Fredrik Borgbjerg. Borgbjerg argued instead that the labour movement was the genuine heir of Grundtvig’s project of popular freedom. The people, according to Borgbjerg’s definition, also covered both the working class and other “small people”, but excluded the upper classes. Around the First World War the party accepted the nation state as the primary framework for its political strategy. Based on the Social Democrat Thorvald Stauning’s program Danmark for folket (“Denmark for the People”) Christiansen elegantly shows how the workers over time also were made a part of the people. In Stauning’s programme the working class, the people, the nation and the state were depicted as one whole, which was to work in harmony for the common good under the management of the Social Democrats. While Christiansen focuses on social democracy, Morten Thing concentrates on more radical parties and movements, primarily on Danmarks Kommunistiske Parti (Danish Communist Party, 1917–), Socialistiskt Folkeparti (The Socialist People’s Party, 1959–) and Venstresocialisterne (The Left-wing Socialists, 1967–). He gives a good overview of their approach to and use of the concept of “people”. With great clarity, he shows how national symbols and the “people”, albeit with varying degrees of success, were also used by parties on the extreme left wing from the 1930s onwards. Both Christiansen’s and Thing’s conclusions agree with similar investigations regard-

164

Reviews

ing conditions in Sweden, where social democracy’s equally ambivalent and changing relation to the “people” and nationalism have been discussed, among others by Christer Strahl (Nationalism och socialism, 1983), Lars Christian Trägårdh (The Concept of the People and the Construction of Popular Culture in Germany and Sweden 1848–1944, 1993), Åsa Linderborg (Socialdemokraterna skriver historia, 2001) and also by myself (Folkets minnen, 2008). Det ombejlede folk is an exceptionally interesting volume. Its articles are wellwritten and without exception give good insight into the concept of the people, its different meanings and in particular the constant struggle about its definitions. “As a concept ‘the people’ is elastic to such degree that almost any political significance can be attached to it”, Morten Thing concludes his article. His words are well chosen and summarize in many respects the whole anthology. Det ombejlede folk adds new knowledge to the general understanding of the concept people and thus is an excellent complement to an already extensive area of research. The book can be warmly recommended for specially interested researchers but also, I believe, to a broader audience with an interest in history. Fredrik Skott Gothenburg, Sweden

Nursing care in the presence of death Eva M. Karlsson: Livet nära döden. Situationer, status och social solidaritet vid vård i livets slutskede. Mångkulturellt centrum, Tumba 2008. 268 pp. Diss. Eva M. Karlsson has presented a doctoral dissertation in ethnology at the University of Stockholm. Her subject lies within the framework of the extensive amount of research on death that has been carried out in Scandinavia in recent years. A symposium on “Death as a top-

ic in Scandinavian cultural research during the 2000s”, where she presented a paper, was held in Oslo in 2008. In her dissertation, Karlsson focuses on a description and analysis of the public nursing care provided to patients in their own homes who have been diagnosed as suffering from terminal cancer. Such activity is termed palliative home nursing in the final stages of life, and “Life near death” has therefore been chosen as an appropriate main title of the dissertation. The book has been published by the Mångkulturellt centrum in Botkyrka, Sweden, the author’s place of employment. This palliative form of nursing first began being applied in Sweden in the 1980s and in England as early as the 1960s. It consists of a close cooperation between nursing personnel and patients with their closest relatives. The aim of such nursing is to alleviate the symptoms of the illness, thus increasing the quality of life for extremely ill patients so that they are able to experience as lenient a death as is possible. The nursing personnel are to concern themselves with the needs of the total person and not merely monitor and deal with his or her medical needs. The patient’s social, psychological and existential condition must also be taken into consideration. This is what constitutes the greatest difference from the acute healthcare given in hospitals. Despite these clearly expressed ideological intentions, nursing personnel often feel that they give most attention to the patients’ physical condition. It is that which is most obviously apparent when observed in the context of their specialized skills and is thus easiest to deal with. Information as to the disease’s degree of difficulty and the fact that no hope of recovery remains must always be readily available to both patients and their relatives. Their participation in this form of nursing care constitutes a mainstay in its philosophy. Such participation is to be expressed in the care recipients’ experience of the

Reviews care providers’ attention to them and their comments, and by the providers’ consideration of their expressed wishes. Interviews that the author has conducted with patients show that their experience of such consideration has been positive. The dissertation is based on Karlsson’s own fieldwork at selected palliative units in or near large Swedish cities. This fieldwork has been conducted in the form of observations both during meetings of nursing personnel, who were primarily trained nurses, and during their visits in the homes. In addition, the author has conducted interviews with persons from all the categories involved, namely 22 interviews with nurses, 12 with patients and three with relatives. Except for three instances, these interviews have all been conducted with the help of a tape-recorder. Surprisingly few people declined to be interviewed despite the fact that the topic concerned is exceedingly sensitive. The author discloses that she met outspokenness in conversations about death. This is in contrast to results shown in previous research during the 1900s which indicated a tabooing against speaking about death. The pendulum has obviously swung towards greater openness in recent years, something that I have also been able to observe in my own research. A scrupulous anonymization has been carried out concerning the assembled material. This has also been done with the names of the palliative units in which the study has been conducted. The dissertation has a clearly empirical foundation on the whole, while the presentation is characterized by what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz expressed as being “thick description”. The reader feels a positive nearness to both nursing personnel and patients who receive nursing services. It is easy to imagine being involved in and affected by this tragic situation. Palliative home-nursing involves both younger and older people. It does

165

not last for a very lengthy period of time in the individual cases since the illness has reached an extremely advanced stage when the patient is provided with this form of nursing. After death has occurred, nursing personnel meet together in order to speak about what has happened and are thus aided in the closure of the process of mourning. This actually becomes a personal matter for the personnel because contacts with the patient have been so frequent and so deeply personal both in the duration of treatment and during conversations. The daily performance of nursing care is the centre of attention in this dissertation. The author analyses the interaction of the nursing personnel, the patients and the closest relatives with one another both in those cases in which good contact is maintained and those in which difficulties occur and communication lessens. These encounters between individuals and actors are given the term situations by the author, thus referring to the terminology used by the sociologists Erving Goffman and Randar Collins. Nursing personnel speak of both “good” and “difficult” patients with regard to cooperative willingness during treatment visits and trustworthiness in the intervals between visits. Those who are categorized as being “difficult” were those with whom the nursing personnel experienced as having had poor contact, leading to a feeling of having lost some of the control over the situations. This seems especially to have been the case with male patients and to have been reinforced by the fact that the nursing personnel consisted for the most part of women. Female patients were often experienced as being more compliant. Male patients could thus be seen as a somewhat bothersome element in the cultural contacts in early phases of the nursing care. Gender divergence disappears in a later phase when the patients have become increasingly enfeebled. Then a dehumanization process occurs instead, and the

166

Reviews

patient goes from functioning as something like an active subject to becoming a passive object, not only for nursing personnel but also in relation to the relatives. The concept of the good home occupies a prominent position in the ideology of palliative nursing. This is the motivation for having nursing care take place in the patient’s home with its expectations of providing security and warmth in the final stages of life. The public and the private sphere then meet on the latter’s home ground. This can be an obvious advantage for the patients as the course of their serious illness leads to their becoming more weakened. The meetings in the home counteract the possibility of the patient becoming a mere object for the nursing personnel, but instead allow him or her some semblance of functioning as a subject. The choice of nursing in the home is, however, coupled to a nursing-care ideology rather than to the patients and their relatives. A doctor writes a letter of referral concerning palliative nursing care without the patient’s own preferences necessarily having been considered. In a social context, Karlsson has taken both ethnicity and social hierarchy into account in her analysis. She has chosen immigrants as one category and the socio-economic elite as another. The relevant palliative unit’s catchment area has had importance in this respect. Certain districts contained many immigrants while persons having an obviously high socio-economic background lived in other areas. The location of the residential area could be of importance for the nursing personnel’s understanding of the patients’ social situation. At the same time, according to nursing-care ideology, neither the relationship to nursing care nor its form was to differentiate according to ethnicity or socioeconomic position. The nursing personnel were expected to live up to this ideal. This could, however, lead to certain difficulties when patients and their rela-

tives with the highest socio-economic background proved to be more articulate and more demanding than others. On the other hand, such patients could also come into conflict with the nursing personnel if they acted too haughty or too snobbish. One problem that could arise with immigrant patients from non-Western countries was that their relatives did not want the patient to receive detailed information about the situation of his or her illness and its fatal significance. Then the nursing personnel were caught in a dilemma between the family’s wishes and the intentions of Swedish laws on health and nursing stating that all patients have the right to be informed of their diagnoses and prognoses. However, constructive meetings also occurred between the nursing personnel and this category of immigrant patients. The personnel especially noticed immigrant families’ solidarity which was expressed in a special way in crisis situations, compared to what was observed in ethnic Swedish families. In closing, I wish to emphasize that this contemporarily concentrated dissertation provides very factual glimpses of the life behind the scenes in connection with a form of nursing care that is not as well known for the public as that which is carried out in hospitals or in other types of public care institutions in Sweden. The study is an excellent example of a meeting between separate individuals and the collective in the form of society’s outstretched hand. This meeting can be expressed as mutual cooperation, but can also easily lead to some cultural collisions. These must, however, be resolved so that nursing-care activities can function in a satisfactory manner. Eva M. Karlsson gives an impression of being a good fieldworker who has gained admission in the sensitive settings arising from the care of a terminally ill person in his or her home during the last period of that person’s life. She has succeeded in combining proximity to the

Reviews field of study with a necessary analytical distance. This is shown in the critical comments which in certain instances have emerged concerning the practical application of this form of nursing care. The accumulated evidence is linked in the analysis to the theoretical discussions which have been conducted not only in international sociology, but also in contemporary Swedish ethnology in recent years. Anders Gustavsson Oslo, Norway

Magic as Empowerment Laura Stark: The Magical Self. Body, Society and the Supernatural in Early Modern Rural Finland. FF Communications 290. Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Helsinki 2006. 521 pp. Ill. What can narratives about magic in 19th and early 20th century Finland tell us about older Finnish notions of the self and individual agency? A great deal, to judge by this book. Its basic premise is that the early modern sense of self was not the same as the modern one, and that stories about magic afford a glimpse of this conception of the self because magic was employed as a strategy to bolster the individual’s self-esteem; the use of magic presupposed, on the one hand, a notion of the individual as an active agent (magic is a form of agency), and on the other, it was utilised as a tool to defend or enhance this sense of agency. Protecting one’s ability to act as an autonomous agent was of prime importance in early modern Finnish culture for a number of reasons: firstly, it was the primary cultural expression of a sense of individuality, since a person was otherwise chiefly identified with the larger social unit of the farm household. Secondly, agency was paramount to retaining one’s position in the social hierarchy: lack or loss of agency undermined this position.

167

The threats to agency and autonomy in early modern Finnish culture were, according to Stark, manifold, and she distinguishes between three major types of arenas in which people were said to use magic to defend their individuality and status as agents, and these provide the structure of the book, which is divided into four parts, with the introductory chapters forming the first. The first type of situation in which magic was seen as a viable means of defending one’s agency, discussed in Part Two, was conflicts with neighbours and other members of the community. This included sorcery performed by the landless poor – or the threat of such sorcery – to maintain existing relations of exchange which were vital to their survival, dependent as they were on the charity of social superiors, as well as sorcery performed by neighbours to ‘break’ the members of other households or the luck of the household as a whole. The former kind of magic was considered more legitimate, something we can divine from the fact that the objects of this type of sorcery were never said to resort to counter sorcery, which was the normal response to the latter kind. Stark contends that magic might have been the only way for beggars and itinerant labourers to assert their autonomy and dignity as individuals, while social peers presumably had other methods for self-promotion at their disposal, and were not supposed to resort to magic. When they were nevertheless reported to do so, it was often to rectify what was perceived as a skewed balance of fortune – invoking notions of the limited good – or to handle a dispute for which no proper form of arbitration was available. Conflicts could seldom be settled in court as sessions were sparse, and the difficulty to avoid personal enemies in social life discouraged direct confrontation and encouraged attack or revenge by clandestine means, i.e. through magic. The corollary of this state of affairs

168

Reviews

was the conception of the ideal personality as an aggressive defender of his individual agency, and this ideal personality was pre-eminently, though not exclusively, male, and belonged to the landowning class. Achieving the ideal of the autonomous individual was obviously easier for those who were independent to begin with, such as farm masters, and correspondingly more difficult for dependents. The epitome of this active individual, however, was the sage, the tietäjä, who invariably was the master of his own household, and possessed secret knowledge as well. Narratives about sages are highly interesting as they exemplify an important strategy for aggressive self-defence, namely anger, which Stark describes as more of a cultural performance than an emotional response in the modern sense. Anger mobilised the psychological, cultural and social resources of the individual and heightened his sense of agency, which was crucial in the banishment of supernatural illness agents, for instance. In these cases anger was a requisite part of the healing ritual, and empowered the sage in his battle against the illness agents. A second context in which magic was used to defend the individual’s agency, treated in Part Three, was illness; illness restricts the individual’s autonomy as s/he is no longer capable of performing daily tasks, and thus loses one avenue to building a social reputation, namely through hard work. Illness was thought to result from the intrusion of supernatural forces into the human body, either through wounds on the skin or through penetration of the human body’s own supernatural boundary and force, the luonto. The luonto could be hard or soft, and a soft luonto meant a greater vulnerability to illness as it was easier for supernatural illness agents to infect a person with this characteristic. Part and parcel of this greater susceptibility was the tendency of persons with a soft luonto to take fright easily, and

thereby open themselves to infection by these supernatural illness agents. Fright and fear, in addition to falling down on the ground and even thinking of the possibility of infection, were viewed as a loss of agency, and eventually as a collapse, or rupture, in the important distinction between self and other, or the proper relationship between them. Anger, on the other hand, was believed to make people’s luonto harder, and the sage consequently worked himself into a rage in order to release his clients from curses and illnesses, both to protect himself and to make the healing more effective. But “anger” was also ascribed to the supernatural illness agent, and Stark suggests that “anger” in this context should be understood as a form of agency rather than as an emotion, an agency that caused harm or injury to others. In concert with her earlier work, Stark attributes the early modern Finnish conceptions of illness to what she calls “the open body schema”, the unconscious experience of the body as opening up to the external environment in dangerous ways. Illness as a result of shock (säikähdys) is an instructive example here. Shock allowed alien forces to enter the body, and it could be cured by “re-shocking” the patient, which was thought to release the foreign element from the body. But the body could also be vulnerable to the intrusive energies of other people: since anger made a person’s luonto hard or sharp, the projection of this energy onto another individual as the object of anger was believed to have potentially serious consequences. This was especially the case if the angry person was of higher social rank than the individual with whom he was angry, and hence was considered to possess a higher degree of social agency as it was. Farm masters rebuking servants, or adults cursing at children could, according to this mode of thought, inflict harm and illness on them, or cause them to be “taken by the forest”, a state in which

Reviews they were detached from human society and suffered the dissolution of their very identities. Stark argues that these experiences of the invasion of the body by alien forces resulted in trauma, and that the task of the folk healer was to produce a narrative explaining the origin of the trauma (through fright, falling down, etc.) – thereby verbalising the existence of the trauma and the patient’s concomitant sense of psychological injury – and to perform a ritual in which the patient’s bodily boundaries were sealed and restored. Thus, the diagnoses and aetiologies offered by the healer should be interpreted as healing fictions that had a real effect on the patient’s body, according to the author, for the narratives state that people were actually cured from their complaints. Stark attributes this effect to the fact that the healer and the patient shared the same body schema, and understood illness and healing in the same ways. The third type of context for magic, dealt with in Part Four, was what Stark labels testing situations: court proceedings, catechism exams, and dances. The common denominator of all of these is that they affected the social standing of the individual in the eyes of the community, and therefore the leverage for autonomous agency. In order to protect their autonomy, individuals could perform magic to try to ensure success in these contexts, and as the author points out, the narratives preserved in folk tradition are only concerned with those who enjoyed success in these arenas. There are no stories narrated from the point of view of a parishioner condemned to the stocks, or of girls failing to attract suitors at a village dance; they remain voiceless, and may even have lacked narrative models for verbalising their experiences. Physical insubordination or verbal assaults on spectators appear to have been the major forms of resistance to public shaming, and represented an assertion of agency in situations designed to constrain it.

169

This book lucidly illustrates the import of magic as a resource in highly competitive contexts – what scholars of Ancient magic have so elegantly called its “agonistic” context – in which the social status, and perhaps even the very life of the individual, was at stake. All contexts for magic covered here share a sense of intense vulnerability, and magic functioned as a form of empowerment. The Magical Self furnishes an intriguing peek at the early modern Finnish self, and addresses a wide array of folkloristic issues, of which I have mentioned just a few. The book has bearing on the study of magic, the history of early modern society, the history of emotions, the study of folk medicine, ethnopsychology and narrative analysis. Interpreting the experiences of early modern individuals on their own terms is never allowed to slip out of focus, and the differences between early modern and modern culture are regularly highlighted by explicit comparisons between them. These comparisons make early modern conceptions more intelligible to the contemporary reader, and serve as a stepping stone for the analysis. Personally, I particularly appreciated the extensive discussion of anger in early modern Finnish culture, as it clearly demonstrates that emotions are not mere emotions, but also cultural performances and concepts that are “good to think with”. The Magical Self is, in short, an impressive achievement by a dedicated scholar.

Camilla Asplund Ingemark Lund, Sweden

Norwegian School Tours to Nazi Concentration Camps Kyrre Kverndokk: Pilgrim, turist og elev. Norske skoleturer til døds- og konsentrasjonsleirer. Linköping. University of Linköping 2007. Linköping Studies in

170

Reviews

Arts and Science no. 403. 294 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. The Norwegian cultural historian Kyrre Kverndokk has presented his doctoral dissertation at the University of Linköping in Sweden. Its theme concerns contemporary Norwegian school tours to former Nazi concentration camps in Poland and Germany. The author’s intention is to study how the past can be made meaningful for the school pupils involved. The tours are organized by the trust “Hvite busser til Auschwitz” (“White busses to Auschwitz”) which began such activities in 1992. The intention was to combat neo-Nazism which had then begun to make itself felt both in Norway and elsewhere in Europe. The pupils who have participated in the tours have been fifteen years of age. Prior to their departure, they have met with a so-called time-witness. This witness is Norwegian, a former prisoner of war who was interned in a concentration camp and who can talk about his or her experiences and impressions. In 2003 approximately 16 000 Norwegian pupils, or about one-fourth of the form, participated in such tours. These tours can primarily be considered as having the character of pilgrimages to the death camps. In addition, they are a form of tourist excursion, in that the pupils visit a number of attractive tourist sites in addition to the death camps. That is why the author has used the two terms “pilgrim” and “tourist” in the title of his publication. Theoretically speaking, the author utilizes ritual theories to a great extent. This relates both to Paul Connerton’s theory of memorial rites and Victor Turner’s model for rites of passage. Kverndokk considers the school tours to be memorial rites. In their aspect of rites of passage, they can be divided into three parts. The first is the preparation or separation phase, followed by an intensive journey which makes up a liminal or border phase, and finally, a phase of

supplementary work. This latter task includes a presentation of the pupils’ impressions from their tour for their teachers, parents and siblings. An analysis of the content of the time-witness’s narratives is also marked by a division into three. Its structure consists first of a description of the invasion, then the occupation and, finally, the liberation. The fieldwork on which the dissertation is based was carried out by the author in 2004 in the form of observations and interviews. 45 interviews have been conducted with 40 people. Ten interviews have been conducted with former concentration camp prisoners. The author also participated in and documented all phases of one school tour, from the preparations for the tour itself, to the supplementary work. Each of the three phases has been given a separate chapter in the publication. The study concentrates on a school in Oslo where such tours have been organized since 1997. Ten pupils chosen as key informants were studied in detail. Five sets of parents were interviewed. The names of both the school and the informants have been anonymized. This means that the author has not been able to make actual use of the plentiful photographic material assembled during the tour. During interviews with the pupils after they had arrived back home, however, these photographs had an important function in assisting the pupils to verbalize their experiences of the tour. The chapter on the preparation or separation phase informs the reader that the pupils themselves had earned the money for their tour. This was done, for example, by selling cookies and waffles while the pupils told purchasers about their proposed tour as well. They also met a time-witness ahead of time, a man who had been imprisoned in various concentration camps between 1942 and 1945. They also listened to the experiences of other pupils, among them elder siblings, who had previously participated on a tour of this kind. Moreover, they

Reviews watched a documentary film made by a former pupil during his tour. Just before departure, the teacher distributed notebooks that the pupils were to use as their private travel diaries in which experiences and impressions were to be continually recorded. A subsequent chapter examines the tour itself as ritual praxis in the field of tension between pilgrimage and tourist excursion. The tour by bus is interpreted by the author as the first portion of a liminal space extraneous to ordinary daily life. Sprits and other stimulants were strictly forbidden in this phase; sprits constituted an absolute ritual boundary. The next portion of the liminal space begins with the arrival at the concentration camp chosen as the goal of the pilgrimage. This develops into a horror-filled journey through history in which the pupils’ expectations are confronted with a tangible reality on a foreign site. Many pupils began to cry although they still used their cameras to take many photographs. This would lead to reality being even more evident after they arrived home. The pupils were involved in a memorial ceremony in the camp by laying down flowers, lighting a torch and reading a text. Photographs were forbidden during this ceremony. After the visit to the death camps, a more exhilarated feeling arose during which the pupils were to experience Kraków as tourists. As is clearly shown in the diary notations, the most important element here was shopping. A third main chapter presents and discusses the tour’s third phase which consisted of developing and presenting the impressions of the tour after having arrived back home in Oslo. The pupils wrote long reports on their experiences and recollections. The author has been allowed to read and analyse these written contributions which include the assembled photographic material. In this context, Paul Connerton’s theory of memorial rites proves especially valuable. The last step in the ritual process con-

171

sisted of the presentation at the parents’ meeting. Then the pupils assumed the ritual role of new witnesses with personal testimony about the concentration camps. The obligation for a continual creation of new witnesses is really the ultimate goal of these tours. My main impression is that this dissertation adds important aspects to current research in several fields. These include issues about enlivening history, not least the more horrible portions of it. For people of our day and age, this can be experienced as diffuse, even if many now find this to be of increasing interest. Research on pilgrims, which is very prominent in Catholic countries, can also have secular alternatives, as has been shown in this dissertation. Tourism does not have to be a mere entertainment and consumption industry, but can also be combined with experiences of the more serious and traumatic events experienced by other persons in the past. The author has, in addition, made a contribution to the cultural research on death which in international terms has shown immense growth in later years and which was the subject of a Scandinavian symposium in Oslo in October of 2008. Anders Gustavsson Oslo, Norway

Charms, Charmers, Charming Jonathan Roper (ed.): Charms, Charmers and Charming. International Research on Verbal Magic. (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic). Palgrave Macmillan. Basingstoke, Hampshire & New York, 2009. xxvii + 294 pp. Jonathan Roper, who is at present Teaching Fellow in English Language at the University of Leeds, has distinguished himself in recent years as one of the most active international network builders among specialists on charms.

172

Reviews

Within the framework of the International Society for Narrative Research (ISFNR) he has helped to build up a special committee on charms, charmers, and charming. He has also played a central part in arranging international conferences on this theme in London in 2003 and 2005 and in Pécs in Hungary in 2007. In 2004 he published a collection of articles based on the first conference, while the present book is in some measure the publication of lectures from the last two conferences. Besides Roper’s introduction the book consists of nineteen papers by researchers from eleven countries. The book is part of the publisher’s established and respected series about Witchcraft and Magic. The series is being expanded into a broader spectrum of themes of significance for the understanding of witchcraft and magic in Europe. The articles are named here in the order in which they come in the book. The first is by Laura Stark (Finland), who analyses parts of the Finnish tietäjä tradition from the old peasant society, with special emphasis on the nineteenth century. A tietäjä was a person who was a specialist in magic, including healing, sorcery, and divination. Stark focuses on charms and charming with the intention of making such a person “hard”. With this hardness the expert in magic enjoyed special protection. Stark associates this special form of charming with the understanding of the individual in pre-modern society, when people had to draw their own boundaries and establish respect for themselves and their resources. Paul Cowdell (England) writes about charms performed in order to get rid of rats. He follows these charms over a long period, and observes that they display some formal similarities – even in our own days. Éva Pócs (Hungary) writes about a classical rhetorical device in charms, namely, the reference to the impossible. She uses a number of examples to demonstrate something more

general, namely, that charms, besides being text-oriented and faithful to a text, are also functional and elastic. In addition, they show traces of cultural encounters and of “grand narratives” of a mythological kind. Ritwa Herjulfsdotter (Sweden) analyses a specific type of charms from Swedish-speaking areas, namely, those which tell of the Virgin Mary’s encounter with snakes. In her analysis she follows up a study published by the historian Linda Oja in 1994 about gender perspectives on folk magic, and claims that these snake charms represent a special female experience and practice in pre-modern peasant society. This perspective was the foundation for Herjulfsdotter’s recently published doctoral dissertation in ethnology (see the review on pp. 174–176). Ulrika Wolf-Knuts (Finland) considers quite a different perspective in her article, namely, that of psychology. Based on a concrete charm recorded in Sweden in 1674, she performs a detailed and insightful analysis of what can be called the “the actualization situation” for a text of this kind. She shows how the use of the charm actually helps the individual to handle a dangerous situation where he or she feels threatened by evil forces. Vladimir Klyaus (Russia) has worked for many years indexing the themes in Slavic verbal charms, and in his article he analyses some examples from the material with which he has worked. Through the examples he seeks to show how a structuralist approach – particularly inspired by Claude Lévi-Strauss and Vladimir Propp – can illuminate shared features in all verbal charms, features that have a great deal in common with the folktale. T. M. Smallwood (Ulster) proceeds from late medieval European manuscripts and demonstrates how charms were handed down and distributed through channels that were legitimate in the eyes of the church. Jacqueline Simp-

Reviews son (England) discusses a passage in William Shakespeare’s King Lear, showing how it simulates a charm text. She also reveals how this special literary charm text has models both in earlier literature and in folk tradition. Natalia Glukhova and Vladimir Glukhov (Russia) presents charms from the Mari people, a Volga-Finnic group living in the centre of Russia. The article gives a brief survey of various types of Mari charms and then undertakes a deeper analysis of two central motifs – impossibility and inevitability – in some of the charms. The work of developing an international typology for verbal charms has occupied many scholars. One of those who has been most active in this endeavour in recent years has been Andrei Toporkov (Russia). His article seeks to show how an international typology could help to illuminate connections and lines of tradition across cultures and historical periods. Monika Kropej (Slovenia) analyses how Slovenian charms have parallels and similarities in both South Slavic and Central European popular traditions. She proceeds from material that she herself has collected in a border zone between Slovenia and Austria. Henni Ilomäki (Finland) interprets Finnish snake charms from the nineteenth century, using them as material for understanding the relationship between Christian and pre-Christian traditions in pre-modern Finnish peasant culture, a relationship that she explains as a bricolage of world-view. Jonathan Roper (England) presents charms from Estonia, showing the many parallels to the German charm tradition. Daiva Vaitkeviciene (Lithuania) discusses charms from both Latvia and Lithuania, revealing that the two countries have rather different traditions in this field. She points out in particular that there are many similarities between the Lithuanian traditions and those from Russia and Belarus.

173

Lea Olsan (USA) performs a concrete study of charms in some medieval manuscripts. The texts are in both English and Latin. Olsan makes a detailed analysis of the form and function of these texts. Not least interesting is her attempt to determine when and in what circumstances the texts were perceived as either meditative or healing. Based on her fieldwork in Serbia, Maria Vivod (France) analyses a concrete female magical healer, her activity and her repertoire of charms. Vivod also draws attention to the external circumstances that seem to have led to a certain renaissance for this practice in modern society. Lee Haring (USA) presents charm traditions in Madagascar. He takes his material from collections of folk tales. Meri Tsiklauri (Georgia) and David Hunt (England) have together written an article discussing a special type of charm from Georgia, and the parallel English translations of the texts make this material more accessible to international researchers. The final essay in the book is by Low Kok On (Malaysia), analysing magical practice in today’s Malaysia. Jonathan Roper, in his relatively short introduction to the book, has explained the idea behind it. He first gives an account of the earlier research traditions on charms, with special emphasis on the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, which he views as the golden age of charm studies in Europe. This account is very brief and does not entirely manage to convey that there was in this period a well-functioning international network of scholars in this field. His great hero is obviously the Danish folklorist Ferdinand Ohrt. After Ohrt, charms were for a long time a neglected field among scholars, according to Roper. His intention with this book is to show that new life has been blown into this research field in recent decades, a silver age of research on charms. When

174

Reviews

Roper tries to sum up what this revitalized research is actually about, it is not entirely easy to follow him. He is of course right that this is an important research field, but why is it? To put it simply, one can perhaps distinguish between two answers to that question: For some people it is a goal in itself to have scholarly competence on charms as texts, especially because they can shed light on cultural contacts, cultural relations, and the handing down of cultural elements. For others – and this is perhaps what Roper is aiming at when he includes charmers and charming in the title of the book – this is just part of a larger field where scholars study, for example, magic and medicinal tradition, the relationship between learned and folk tradition, gender issues, cultural change and regression, mentalities, verbal and oral cultures, textuality – to name just some of the themes that may arise. Behind the two answers there are a series of different and perhaps incommensurate research traditions, but Roper seems to place too little emphasis on this particular problem. Several of the essays in the book clearly point beyond themselves or communicate indirectly with each other, and this can hopefully inspire further international research collaboration in this field. As a whole, the book seems to lack focus. It gives some impression of the research traditions in individual countries, but it does not wholly succeed in tying this together into something more general, suitable for further discussion. One question that can be asked is how much more insight it gives than the previous collection of articles edited by Roper (see the review in Arv 2008, pp. 226–228). One is also tempted to ask whether it really is a shared research field that this book documents. If it is difficult to give an unambiguously positive answer to this, one explanation is that the authors come from very different academic backgrounds – from anthropology and

folkloristics to comparative literature and philology. Another explanation is that the research traditions in countries as different as Finland, Russia, and Malaysia seem so divergent that they can hardly be assembled into a uniform platform for further collaboration. Perhaps it would have been better to concentrate a book like this on a few concrete themes and invite a smaller number of researchers to write longer articles that communicate more explicitly with each other. Arne Bugge Amundsen Oslo, Norway

Marian Charms against Snake Bites Ritwa Herjulfsdotter: Jungfru Maria möter ormen – om formlers tolkningar. Ask & Embla hb, Göteborg 2008. 292 pp. English summary. Diss. This dissertation in ethnology from Gothenburg University is a contribution to a classical field of ethnology and folklore, namely, the study of folk medicine in pre-modern society. The author’s main thesis is that old folk verbal charms are ambiguous and can be used in many different contexts. The author seeks to investigate this by examining how charms used against snakes and snake bites can also have been part of a larger repertoire, where the female cultural sphere and fertility may have been important. Charms as source material represent a critical challenge because there is little contextual information. This applies to the uses, the users, and the passing on of the tradition. The focus of the study, however, is on records of charms from the period 1880–1930 in Sweden and in Swedish-speaking Finland. Separate chapters are devoted to snakes and snake bites in early folk tradition and the Virgin Mary in popular and ecclesiastical tradition. Great emphasis is placed on

Reviews the way in which the folk image of Mary could be used in different cultural contexts. The main chapter consists of the analysis of the Marian charms. Symbolic language is central to these, especially what is associated with Mary’s role when she meets the snake in the charms: she binds it. The author argues that many of the designations used in the charms may also have had connotations of a female world of experience and use. It is not entirely clear which research tradition the dissertation is inscribed in. It is clear that it is folkloristic, and also that it draws on research in the history of religion. It is also surprising that the dissertation does not apply a gender-theoretical or feminist perspective. If there is anything the author really discusses and brings into her own discussions, it is precisely authors who have worked more or less explicitly with that research approach. When it comes to issues of theory and method, the dissertation is likewise not always explicit about its positions. It completely lacks an overall theoretical discussion, for example, but it seems as if a great deal of inspiration derives from Claude Lévi-Strauss and his structuralist approach to “the savage mind”, since what is called “associative thinking” is important for understanding how the content and effect of the charms were defined and understood in pre-modern society. However, these theoretical references are very sparse and not taken all the way, yet they seem to determine the entire horizon of interpretation. If one were to suggest an equally fruitful theoretical approach to material of this type it could be in the direction of, say, one or other form of text theory, that is, a theory that says something about how texts – and hence also “oral texts” – have a cultural and social effect by being used, performed, and applied in concrete situations. What bears up the project in terms of method and has extensive – albeit problematic – implications is what

175

the author describes as source pluralism, the method of indications or circumstantial evidence, and “the demands of “rare attestations”. Source pluralism is not problematic, but the other methods are tricky. Building an academic argument on indications and scattered attestations is risky. It is hard to decide when a number of separate references develops into a convincing series of indications. The author emphasizes that she is chiefly concerned with her primary source material, and that she subjects it to a “close reading”. A “close reading” of the Marian charms has the result that none of them is said to have been used for anything but curing snake bites. In practice, little importance is attached to what the charms say about themselves, the internal statements of the texts, whereas the context – which turns out to be more or less cohesive series of indications – virtually invades the texts of the charms and gives them a different meaning from what can be read from them expressis verbis. An important aim of the dissertation is to look closely at the relationship between folk culture and ecclesiastical culture. The Virgin Mary is a figure that occupied priests and church doctrine, but she was also very important in folk religious culture. It seems as if the dissertation in practice makes the differences between the people and the church greater than necessary. In her description of the figure of Mary, for instance, she makes a point of the fact that several of the ideas about the mother of Jesus have no biblical basis. As the same time, she makes a clear distinction between what “the official church” or “theology” believed about Mary and what is found in folk beliefs. What characterizes the folk ideas, of course, is the rich ecclesiastical tradition of the Virgin Mary which developed during the first fifteen hundred years in the history of the Christian church. Although this perspective is included in the description of the heterogeneous figure

176

Reviews

of Mary, it does not stand alone. It was Protestantism that introduced the sharp distinction between “The Bible” and the ecclesiastical tradition, and it was probably not until after the Protestant culture had been firmly established in Scandinavia, especially from the eighteenth century on, that popular religiosity was judged as something qualitatively different from what theology and church doctrine could accept – it became “superstition”. The focus of the analysis is, as we have seen, the content and meaning of the snake charms in the period when they were collected, that is, in Swedishspeaking areas in the period 1880–1930. An important principle in all historical research is thus maintained, that of the unity of time and space. In practice, however, the principle is not consistently upheld. This could perhaps be an objection at the level of detail, but if one looks more closely, it seems as if it is the records and indications from other places that make it possible for the author to arrive at new and alternative interpretations of her source material. Especially important are the many references to the situation in the Finnishspeaking part of Finland. This provides substantial arguments for alternative interpretations of the Swedish material. When this is based on other scholars’ interpretations of material that is after all rather alien in relation to Swedish cultural reality, it becomes problematic. The dissertation perhaps reveals the strength and weakness of the “close reading”: the details may become too big and the big things too small. This should not however be allowed to obscure all the positive and especially inspiring aspects of this dissertation. It contributes to a much-needed renewal of a classical field in folkloristics and ethnology, namely, the study of charms and folk medicine in pre-modern society. The dissertation simultaneously opens the field to much broader perspectives than it had in the past. The study of the

Marian charms contributes to (ethno)medicine, anthropology, cultural history, text studies, church history, and – not least of all – to women’s history. Arne Bugge Amundsen Oslo, Norway

A Hidden Public Sphere Marie Steinrud: Den dolda offentligheten. Kvinnlighetens sfärer i 1800-talets svenska högreståndskultur. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2008. 309 pp. Ill. Diss. This is the author’s doctoral dissertation in ethnology at Uppsala University. Research on the culture of the nobility and the upper classes has perhaps not been the most dominant theme in Swedish ethnology in the last few decades. But there are important exceptions, not least Angela Rundquist’s dissertation from 1989, which was a study of Swedish aristocratic female culture in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850– 1900). Steinrud’s dissertation can perhaps be viewed against the background of the research interest developed over several years by Rundquist in collaboration with scholars like Mats Hellspong. Likewise, historical studies have not been the main focus of Swedish ethnology, but here too there are a few important exceptions. Steinrud’s dissertation also belongs to this series of interesting exceptions. Steinrud’s main interest is in highlighting a historical female culture that she says has attracted little attention. To do so, she has chosen a good point of departure, namely, a family-conscious, archivally documented noble family with many women who wrote letters. They are from the relatively recently ennobled Tersmeden family with its many links to the nineteenth-century Swedish elite. A

Reviews total of 1,500 letters are the main source material for the study, and the manor of Hessle outside Uppsala is its most important locus geographicus. Four sisters from the Tersmeden family, who were born and died between 1791 and 1881, are the central actors. A major perspective in the dissertation is the difference between the public and the private sphere, a distinction that has been central in several general studies of bourgeois culture and of women’s culture in the nineteenth century. Here Steinrud brings into her discussion scholars such as Jürgen Habermas, Seyla Benhabib, and Karen V. Hansen. She follows Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall and their understanding of the public/private distinct as socially and ideologically constructed “spaces”. To test this model, Steinrud follows her female actors and their letter writing through four selected themes: social life and social network, friendship, work and charity, home, manor, and church. These seem to be well-chosen variables, not least because, in the noble and aristocratic culture they were by definition broad fields where both men and women, younger and older people, family and fellow aristocrats interacted all the time. Steinrud performs a close reading, in the best sense, of her material. She picks good quotations and brings out fascinating nuances in the material. She looks in detail at topics such as the intricate rules of etiquette, letter writing as a form of communication, child rearing, the handling of money, interior, and intimacy. An underlying theme is how cultural and social rules, freedom of action and scope for negotiation are communicated in and through the letter writing and through concrete actions reflected in the letters. It is clear from Steinrud’s analysis that the aristocratic culture – including the female culture – was a very complex entity. To study it only as the framework for individual or gendered staging is of-

177

ten a far too limited perspective. Of course there were different conditions for men and women and boundaries between the sexes in this culture. Yet at the same time the potential for negotiation was perhaps greater than in many other social groups. The private/public distinction becomes pressing because the actors in a manor-house family lived highly visible lives – for each other and for people in close or distant social surroundings. Yet this distinction is less clear because the manor-house family as a cultural entity, precisely through its individual members, acted as mediators or messengers between a number of other groups and individuals who related either to the manor house as a farming unit or to the aristocratic family as a local or regional elite. This was an inheritance from the older aristocratic culture: in a manor house the owners could not isolate themselves or withdraw, they had to be visible and serve as exemplary models. This was the duty that nobility and aristocratic elite status brought with it. The alterity that this old elite ideal entailed is perhaps given too little attention in Steinrud’s account. An important explanation for this is possibly the weakness of close reading as a method: that one focuses so much on one’s primary material that part of the historical context and the longer lines of cultural history receive less emphasis. Using a contemporary letter collection as the main source means that this particular genre, with its limitations, dictates the perspective to a large extent. At the same time, there is an important strength in this limitation, and Steinrud uses it to the full: the letters show how noble women in the nineteenth century could negotiate about their positions, participate in and influence fields and spaces that were gendered in the contemporary bourgeois ideology. Nobility and aristocratic status made the main female actors more visible, but also more flexible. It must be said that Marie Steinrud

178

Reviews

has written an exciting, consistent, and competent scholarly study. There is just as much reason to state that her historical-ethnological contribution will be of great significance for other research on aristocratic culture and the North European manor-house culture. In recent years we have seen a renaissance in all the Scandinavian countries for interdisciplinary studies of this culture, not least its metamorphoses in the nineteenth century, when the pressure of bourgeois culture and the politicization of society and culture made themselves increasingly felt. Steinrud’s study shows both how resistant and how adaptable the aristocratic culture was. New ideals were seized on, modern perspectives were brought in – but at the same time the manor houses and the aristocratic elite retained the self-assurance that only a belief in their historical obligations could give them. Arne Bugge Amundsen Oslo, Norway

Heritage and Canon Lars-Eric Jönsson, Anna Wallette & Jes Wienberg (eds.): Kanon och kulturarv. Historia och samtid i Danmark och Sverige. Centrum för Danmarksstudier 19. Makadam, Göteborg/Stockholm 2008. 327 pp. Ill. Conferences were arranged by the Centre for the Study of Denmark in 2006 and 2007 to discuss the question “Cultural heritage today – why and for whom?” The general intention of the Centre is to encourage comparisons between Sweden and Denmark, and the two conferences brought together scholars from different academic disciplines and cultural institutions. Archaeologists, historians, ethnologists, and others debated research in the two countries in terms of historic monuments, culture and nature, cultural heritage and canon.

This volume, entitled “Canon and Heritage: Past and Present in Denmark and Sweden”, presents the results in eighteen articles, divided into three themes. Several of the authors act not solely as researchers but also put forward their own arguments about cultural policy. Some draw interesting political conclusions about the concepts of canon and heritage and how they are used in ideas about the past. In the introduction the editors, Lars-Eric Jönsson, Anna Wallette, and Jes Wienberg, describe and compare the two concepts, their history and ambiguity. Since the reader has to relate to both Swedish and Danish contexts, this account is welcome for an understanding of the debates on cultural policy in which the concepts of canon and heritage have been used. Differences emerge in that the term heritage has not provoked such heated discussions in Sweden as the term canon has done in Denmark. It caused a huge controversy when the Danish government took the initiative a few years ago to compile a literary canon, a cultural canon, and a historical canon, with a selection of works and events to be used in school tuition. Although the cultural heritage has an important position in the Swedish school curriculum, the debate in Sweden has not been as politically combustible. Here the heritage sector – archives, museums, and antiquarian authorities – was strengthened by a concerted government action in the 1990s. What the Swedish and Danish debates have in common, however, is the problematization of how and for what purpose the past is used when aspects of democracy and quality are considered. Under the theme of “Memory” the curator Inge Adriansen write about three of the almost twenty memorial parks in Denmark. The canonization of these places reflects how patriotism, nationalism, and heroism have been shaped and used materially in different times. Adriansen applies an interesting processual

Reviews perspective, showing how a place of memory can become a place of oblivion. An example of this is the memorial grove at Jægerspris, where the royal family in the 1780s established a memorial to honour prominent Nordic burghers and nobles from the sixteenth century to 1750. The site testifies to a time when Denmark was part of the Oldenburg monarchy, which ruled from the North Cape to Hamburg, a multicultural and multilingual conglomerate state, with the Swedes as the main enemy. This canon does not fit today’s Danish self-understanding, and the site is not used for any memorial ceremonies or events. According to Adriansen, it is now a forgotten Danish historical canon. The archaeologist Håkan Karlsson also writes about the process parallel to remembering: oblivion, here in terms of the neglect of the people’s heritage. Karlsson sees a problem in the fact that sites connected with sport are given low priority in official heritage management. The issue of whose heritage should be preserved, and where decisions about this should be made, is highlighted through the example of Carlsrofältet, a hundred-year-old football pitch which has been used as a car park since 2002. In the article Karlsson stresses the importance of dialogue with the citizens in the assessment of what should be given the status of heritage. But despite the author’s ambition to adopt a popular perspective on heritage, surprisingly few citizens are allowed to speak in the article. Who are the people who agree with Karlsson that the site should be preserved? The article does apply an important class perspective to heritage policy, but it would have gained from admitting the users’ experiences and opinions as well. The great significance of music as heritage and canon is the theme of the article by the ethnologist Stefan Bohman. For him, research on music as heritage is a keyhole for understanding society as a whole. The changed status

179

of jazz in the elite, for example, can describe the important role that music plays for the shift in attitudes to non-national cultures in the second half of the twentieth century. In different times and situations people ascribe different symbolic values to music, and analysing this as heritage can illuminate how ideologies in society (re)charge works of music with new values and symbolism. Bohman discusses perhaps one of the most famous examples of this, Beethoven’s ninth symphony. For the labour movement at the last turn of the century, Beethoven was a revolutionary, but for right-wing forces in Germany the work came to symbolize the genuineness and superiority of German culture. After the Second World War the work was classified in East Germany as proletarian and revolutionary, reinterpreted by Walter Ulbricht as fraternity and freedom from “the chains of imperialistic profiteers” (p. 124). In the last decade of the twentieth century the work acquired the symbolic value that makes present-day listeners think of the EU and a united Europe. With this thought-provoking example Bohman shows how a heritage perspective on a work of music can sum up twentieth-century European history. What do cows do in and with nature? This question is posed by the ethnologist Katarina Saltzman in a discussion of how boundaries are drawn between nature and culture and how values are expressed in the landscape. Starting with the imported breed of Highland Cattle, Saltzman shows how questions about origin and authenticity come to a head in texts by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency about “Protection and Management of Valuable Nature”. Analysing landscape as heritage reveals how taken-for-granted assumptions about the division between nature and culture govern preservation efforts. Compared with Australian landscape management, it is clear how the concept of origin is charged with a great many

180

Reviews

different values, depending on national context. Saltzman’s analyses of the dialectic between nature and culture are an important foundation for my own research, so it is very interesting for me to follow her discussion of post-colonial nature. When she shows how the work of nature conservation in Australia in practice involves combating species brought by Western colonization, and she also draws parallels to the Aboriginal population and the integration of people in a multicultural society, the discussion gets hot. But here, unfortunately, Saltzman does not really follow through her comparison of origins in Sweden and Australia, other than to observe that even Sweden has landscapes that show the effects of unequal power relations. Issues concerning the indigenous population in a Swedish context are of course fraught. It would therefore be valuable to read more about Saltzman’s research on the dialectic between nature and culture from a post-colonial perspective. I can only hope that, with her knowledge of the usefulness of the landscape in critical analyses of society, she will continue this important discussion in future publications. “School” as an arena for the use of heritage and canon is the second theme in the volume. Educational policy as regards the concepts is considered in different times. The historian Carsten Tage Nielsen focuses on the subject of history and the limited amount of time it has always had in school. He is critical of the Danish selection of canonical works as a motivation for learning. He argues that the canon cannot be viewed in isolation from the context of cultural and educational policy to which it belongs. The canon represents no one’s history, it is a collection of abstract items compiled by politically nominated experts who state no reasons for their choices. In his critique Nielsen stresses that the canon mentality implicitly means an understanding of the pupils as lacking history and culture, and in need of a selected

canon. The subject of history is thus removed even further from the basic democratic idea, to become an expression of an authoritarian mode of thought. The dialogue-based tuition that Nielsen advocates, which takes the pupils’ own history and historical awareness seriously, thus finds it difficult to fit into a subject based on a canon selected by experts. The third theme of the volume is “Politics”. Like some of the other authors here, the historian Niels Kayser Nielsen stresses that heritage concerns both remembering and forgetting. In his article he highlights the spatial perspective by studying how different scales of boundaries relate to heritage. When a monument that united the German population of Aabenraa in Denmark was blown up in August 1945, it can be explained as a protest against Nazi Germany, against Germany as a whole, or against Germans living in Denmark. But when the German heritage in Denmark is neglected in the twenty-first century, it is a different situation from the summer of liberation in 1945. One of the minority groups in Denmark is the German-speaking population in the border zone, a minority with its own history in the multinationality of the conglomerate state. This German dimension of the Danish heritage needs to be illuminated from both present-day and historical perspectives in the shaping of a Danish cultural and historical canon. Nielsen argues that, for a nation like Denmark, which has a heavy centralistic heritage generated by despotism, it can be difficult to relate to “deviations from the main line” (p. 243) and tends to ignore the parts of history that do not belong to the language and culture of the capital. The ethnologist Lars-Eric Jönsson discusses whether the expression “Heritage for everyone” should be viewed as political risk or loss. What is the relationship between “everyone” and “heritage”, and how, does heritage acquire meaning at a collective and individual

Reviews level? Jönsson brings out the conflicting meanings of the concept in terms of both distinctiveness and community, and the simultaneous rhetoric of diversity and unity. He proceeds from two Swedish heritage bills put forward in the second half of the 1990s. One of these sought to highlight environmental policy and metropolitan policy as two possible fields outside the heritage sector where the concept of heritage was useful. The second concerned instrumentalizing heritage in terms of democracy, tolerance, and equality. Jönsson then moves this analysis from a Swedish to an EU context, and it is here, through comparisons with debates in the Council of Europe, that I think his arguments gain weight. The convention on “The Value of Heritage for Society” stresses the usefulness of heritage in the endeavour for unity and solidarity between the member states. In the convention, respect for human rights, democracy, and legal security leads to a central position for human value in the concept of heritage. All citizens are to be involved in defining and caring for the cultural heritage; the concept is viewed as a resource giving quality of life and a sustainable society. In this discourse about a heritage community Jönsson finds an implicit risk assessment. He stresses that the talk about everyone’s right to heritage and the demand for mutual respect for each other’s heritage basically concerns experiences of the opposite. If it is through respect for difference that community is to be built, how then should difference be defined to be able to be incorporated in a heterogeneous homogenization? What is the interaction between collective and individual productions of heritage, and what do people do in practice when they exercise their own and everyone’s right to a public heritage? These are difficult questions without easy answers, and I agree with Jönsson’s call for more research. The editors of the volume have thus elected to arrange the articles in three

181

themes. Yet this division is not without problems. A theme like “Memory” permeates all the texts, and given the ambition of the volume to contribute to cultural policy, the selection of articles on the theme of “Politics” is not self-evident. At the same time, the division is necessary since the overall content of the many articles reflects the diversity of aspects in the concepts of heritage and canon. But do we really need another book about the politics of memory? Yes, this volume is a useful summary of how the terms canon and heritage are defined regionally within the EU and nationally in Denmark and Sweden, and the function these concepts have had and can have for political decisions in society. Selected parts of the volume could thus serve well as material for training in heritage management, community planning, and education. For everyone else with an interest in the politics of memory I recommend the pleasure principle. Many of the articles present important arguments and results that contribute to the continued debate about how the past is highlighted or repressed in our collective and individual memory. Beate Feldmann Stockholm, Sweden

Voices of Immigrants Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen & Ida Tolgensbakk Vedeld (eds.): Mangfoldige minner. Veier til Norge. Norsk folkeminnelags skrifter 159. Aschehoug, Oslo 2008. 144 pp. This book aims to present some anonymous immigrants telling about their often long, difficult and desperate journey to Norway to seek a new future, a new hope. Many have encountered great tribulations and obstacles. Sometimes they had to rely on unscrupulous, brutal people to help them. Often the price they paid for this service was exorbitant. The

182

Reviews

journey could sometimes take several months in atrocious circumstances. It is indeed very seldom that we obtain any relevant and reliable information about these people’s life stories, their social, economic, cultural and religious background. This book therefore represents a real boon. Certain immigrants do not want to reveal anything at all about how they were able to leave their country and seek a permanent residence permit and citizenship in Norway. People from Pakistan, India, Iraq and Iran are often reluctant to disclose anything about themselves. There is one aspect to be remembered, however: There are also people that have settled down in Norway from European countries, such as Denmark, Britain, Italy, France and Hungary. These immigrants have likewise had their experiences with the Norwegian authorities, for instance. They too have had their encounters with Norwegian norms, values, attitudes and conceptions. Sometimes they have difficulties in grasping the essentials of the Norwegians’ way of life and their world view. Mutual misunderstandings often arise. Without a knowledge of Norwegian, many doors are closed to them. It is evident that many foreigners have brought with them bitter, indelible memories of humiliation, torture and persecution by political and religious authorities in their homelands. This is specifically the case with people from the third world. Many immigrants have been astonished by the stillness brooding depressingly over the Norwegian countryside and small towns. A lady from Hungary has made her own phonetic observations. She had listened attentively to the intonation and the rhythm of the Norwegian language. It sounded to her like small children talking to each other! The funniest word in Norwegian, in her opinion, is hurtigruta (the passenger ship sailing from Bergen to Kirkenes). Every time she

says this particular word with the correct intonation, her Hungarian friends and acquaintances are apt to burst out laughing. Norms, values, attitudes and conceptions inoculated and internalized from childhood in the homelands of the immigrants often differ greatly from those met with amongst the Norwegians. It has been a long process for many to become initiated into the Norwegian way of life and to get to know the esoteric intricacies of the Norwegian red tape. It is very instructive, and sometimes as well depressing, to read about the various difficulties and troubles experienced by the immigrants both in their homelands and in Norway. One must remember that behind the impersonal, demographic data of statistics established by the authorities there are human beings with their own hopes, yearnings and wishes. The editors have tried to preserve the narrative style of each informant, even if this decision has sometimes resulted in somewhat clumsy sentences. In this way, the informants emerge as distinct individuals with their own modes of expression and with their own personality. The biographies contained in the book are indeed human documents, to use the expression coined by Émile Zola. Ronald Grambo Oslo, Norway

Magic in Witchcraft Trials Bente Gullveig Alver: Mellom mennesker og magter. Magi i hekseforfølgelsernes tid. Oslo. Scandinavian Academic Press, Oslo 2008. 305 pp. This is a truly wonderful work. Every now and then we get to read a study that stands out from the rest, and Bente Gullveig Alver has produced just such a book. Returning to the subject that launched her career, she has written

Reviews what will surely be a classic study of popular magic in early modern Norway. Separating Alver’s first book on Norwegian witchcraft trials and this one are nearly forty years. This allows her to draw on a lifetime’s experience as a folklorist and on three decades of historical research by a dozen Norwegian scholars when she revisits the subject. These two factors give her writing an extraordinary depth, and this reviewer felt he learnt a great deal from this book. Folklorists initially dominated the study of witchcraft trials in Norway, and during the 1920s and 1930s Svale Solheim organized the collection and transcription of the sources for Norwegian trials in court books and fiscal records from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This source collection, which is kept in Norsk folkeminnesamling and now has been digitized, has been the basis of later research, which has been dominated by historians since the early 1980s. But a decade before Hans Eyvind Næss launched the current wave of historical research on Norwegian witch trials in 1982 (Trolldomsprosessene i Norge på 1500–1600-tallet, 1982), Bente Alver published her folkloristic study which has been the core text on the subject for folklorists up to this day. As Alver re-enters the field today, she draws heavily on work done by historians, which in turn was based on sources gathered by folklorists. The research on Norwegian witchcraft trials is thus marked by a long and profitable interplay between the disciplines of history and folklore. One important difference between her first effort and this one is that the emphasis has shifted from the trials themselves to the perceptions and beliefs about magic that informed the trials. In shifting thus from the historical facts of the trials to the cultural interpretation of magical actions and words and the study of the magical universe that enveloped the participants in witchcraft trials, she has also given us a study which is clearly

183

and fruitfully different from the historical studies of the last three decades. The book opens with two well-written background chapters, the first of which sets the background in terms of subject matter, previous research and her own interest in this study. This is followed by a more theoretical chapter asking (and answering) the question of “what magic is – or can be”. These are followed by excellent chapters on diseases and popular healing, and on evil reputations. Then comes a series of chapters dealing in different ways with the influence of the church, before three case studies and a conclusion round the book off. Occasionally Alver reflects on what has changed since she published Heksetro og trolldom in 1971, as when she reappraises the influence of the church (p. 145) in what is perhaps the book’s best chapter. She was expecting to find a clear influence in the form of trials for demonological witchcraft, and the relative absence in Norwegian trials of accusations of devil worship and participation at the witches’ sabbath made her overlook the role that the priests had taken in the trials and the run-up to them. This is an oversight that she certainly is not the only one guilty of, and which she now corrects with the best treatment anyone has given to the role of both the priest and his wife in Norwegian witchcraft trials. Here we meet the clergy as parish priests, neighbours, local nobility and tied up in power struggles and local webs of influence and meaning. Having learnt her lesson, Alver now teaches us all one, and we shall never again be able to consider the priests solely in their capacity as shepherds of their flocks or carriers of church doctrine. It is difficult to give this book adequate praise, since it is hard to do justice to how effectively she manages to convey her message. The clarity of her analyses, the various sources she uses to illuminate much more than trials, and the wealth of reading and personal field-

184

Reviews

work experience that informs her work are presented in such well-crafted prose that it is a pleasure to read. This will be one of those books that all students actually read when it is on their syllabus. But even so there are some minor points and quibbles. Throughout we are presented with text boxes, which are separate from the main text. This is a well-known practice from textbooks, where the aim is partly to present more in-depth information without breaking up the main narrative, and partly to adapt to the expected five-minute attention span of American college students. Here it does not work very well, in part because the narrative flows so nicely and the text boxes only serve to break the reader’s attention, and in part because much of the information presented in the boxes could well have been integrated into the main text. Furthermore, the layout is unfortunate, as several of the boxes span pages even though they would fit in a single page. Having said that, some of them do contain fascinating information and insights that would not fit easily within the general narrative. A case in point is the story she tells of how a Danish couple in 1972 found a dead rat dressed as a human and put in a coffin with folded hands. The rat in its coffin was passed on to Alver, who thus gained a personal experience of maleficent magic (p. 52). Another minor quibble is that we are not told until page 32 of the geographical limitations to the sources used: Trials from Hordaland and Rogaland form the basis of this study, while she stresses her familiarity with trials from the rest of the country from earlier studies. This choice itself is unproblematic, but it should be stated earlier, and it could fruitfully have been discussed instead of simply presented, since the trials from these areas are implicitly taken as representative of all of Norway, while Alver herself argues in favour of more regional studies because the differences between trials in various regions within Norway are so great (p. 31).

It is rare for a book to make this reviewer as enthusiastic as this one did. Alver’s command of her subject is absolute, and her narrative flows with the precision and grace of an experienced writer. She draws on a lifetime of reading and reflecting on culture. This book is as wise as it is learned. Throughout we sense the presence of an author who genuinely feels for the people she writes about, both the alleged witches and their claimed victims. She successfully weaves together insights from historians, folklorists, anthropologists and ethnologists, and couples these with her own fieldwork to interpret the historical sources. In doing so she makes an implicit but convincing defence of folklore as an academic discipline, retaking a field dominated by historians for three decades and showcasing folklore’s unique strengths in analysing popular culture from written sources. This is important at a time when folklore is under threat as a discipline, both by being marginalized as too small to exist on its own, and by losing its own identity in mergers with other disciplines. In short, this is an important book because of the significant contributions it makes to our understanding of early modern Norwegian popular culture and witchcraft trials, because of its contribution to folklore as an academic discipline, and because of its usefulness in teaching witchcraft and magic in folklore courses which now are completely dominated by history books. But above all, it is a pure pleasure to read. An English translation of this book would be highly welcome. Gunnar W. Knutsen Oslo, Norway

The Voice as an Instrument Ingrid Åkesson: Med rösten som instrument. Perspektiv på nutida svensk vokal folkmusik. Institutionen för musikveten-

Reviews skap, Uppsala universitet. Svenskt Visarkiv, Stockholm 2007. 354 pp. Ill. CD. English summary. Diss. This book deals with an important era in vocal folk music, the years from around 1970 up to the start of the twenty-first century, from the “folk music wave” and what happened afterwards. Interest in vocal music experienced a vigorous upswing, new groups of users and places arose, and so on. Concepts such as “the vocal vogue,” whether singular or plural, are known not only from Sweden, but also from Norway and several other countries at the same time. It is of great value that the author has tackled this era up to the present day and studied it so thoroughly, and the study is relevant outside Sweden too. The author investigates fourteen still living singers in interviews and performances, mostly on record. The practitioners have different roles and positions in Swedish musical environments. Ingrid Åkesson gives a good account of her selection criteria. She has sought to achieve a wide spread as regards the type of musical activity, arena, the singers’ relationship to the folk music tradition, and geographical distribution. The selection comprises two generations, both the “pioneers”, before what she calls the revitalization of vocal folk music in the 1970s, and the generation after it. All the sings are well known from recordings and concerts, and all of them influence or have influenced vocal folk music in different ways. They make a living in whole or part as musicians, and several of them have a musical education. The performers also represent a broad range of musical expression, from traditional and unarranged folk music to arranged and composed music. A CD with the musical examples that she specifically studies comes with the book. By “present-day folk singers” she means those who are active in the vocal wave and in folk music settings in gen-

185

eral, and who often call themselves folk singers. Vernacular singing by nonprofessionals is not included in this category. Nor does the author consider traditional singing as everyday musicmaking. Yet this does not mean that she thinks this is absent from the period she studies. Everyday singing is brought in where it is relevant for the problem, and it is there as important background knowledge in the analysis, in that the singers in this study are also dependent on everyday practice as source material. As the author also points out, it is this practice that best represents continuity. The book discusses how present-day singers relate to what is called folk music tradition. The main emphasis in the actual study is on the music and the music-making, although she also brings in historical background material, the social framework, and other matters of relevance for the main topic of the book. The first part of the book contains several important chapters preparing the way for the actual analyses. For instance, there is a presentation and discussion of concepts and definitions. She makes no attempt to define “folk music” or “folk song”, stating that an unambiguous definition is problematic, that there is more than one definition but none that covers everything. Instead she singles out distinctive stylistic features that she finds central, such as “oral/aural transmission” and the “folk music idiom.” She supports the view of “folk music” as an open and controversial term that has to be defined in its practical context. This also applies to the concept of vocal folk music, where she lets the practice of the singers determine. An important observation in connection with the term folk music is the concept of genre; she states that the term has several meanings today, not just referring to different types of songs and the like in folk music. Folk music as such is

186

Reviews

one musical genre among others, and the term “the folk music genre” is common among today’s practitioners. The author is aware of both meanings, but today’s use of the term is important to include for a better understanding of musical practice in our time. She also discusses the concepts of tradition and folk vocal tradition. In this book tradition stands for both object and process. The complexity of the term tradition is considered. She shows that it is problematic and can result in confusion. She therefore chooses to avoid terms like “traditional music” and “traditional song”, preferring to talk of “folk song” and “folk ballad”. She then goes on to look at the concept of authenticity, which is also changing, and terms such as revitalization, time, cultural heritage, and canon. She examines these in detail, with reference to crucial literature, both Swedish and international, with authors such as Owe Ronström, Dan Lundberg, Tamara Livingstone, Henry Glassie, Anthony Giddens, and David Atkinson, to name just a few. The positive thing is that she arrives at her own standpoints from this and finds definitions that serve her material and the context she is studying. A good example is the concept of time, where she sees overlapping layers of time. She focuses on continuity rather than change, on the dialogic character of history rather than division into eras, and she avoids theories associated with “post-modern”, “post-traditional”, “de-traditionalization”, and “de-construction”. She uses the term “late modern” instead of “post-modern”. The focus in her study is on the singers’ own music-making and creativity, the way they think, and their educational work, not on discourse and external images of folk music. I see this as a great advantage, bringing the analysis close to what the singers do; she has also discussed the results with them. The insider perspective does not view tradition as a product or as concluded fragments. It is

the same with the concept of revitalization, which in this book is more processoriented that product-oriented. As a participant one can ask different questions and obtain different answers than if everything is viewed from the outside. This is a strength of Åkesson’s dissertation. Ingrid Åkesson approaches the material as both a practitioner and a scholar. This is a distinct strength in her investigation and presentation. There is no overemphasis on theories at the expense of empirical material, which has been a weakness of some dissertations in the last 10–15 years. This book is not a result of desk research alone. We see a clear desire to combine the perspectives of practitioner and researcher. There is a participant perspective, but it is both close up and from a distance. She has also done fieldwork as both participant and observer in the context, a setting to which she herself belongs. In the book she examines how present-day folk singers, in practice and in ideas, relate to their “predecessors” (I understand this as the role models, the pioneers from the time before the 1970s), stylistic features, repertoire, etc. in Swedish folk music tradition. In this connection she also describes some important phenomena in folk music settings after the folk wave of the 1960s and 1970s. The main question of her inquiry is: how do the singers choose, shape, and perform their musical material, and what significance do their own generation and musical background have for the way they relate to the phenomenon of “folk music tradition” in its different senses and for the way they shape the music? In addition, to a more limited extent she wants to answer general questions about the relationship between stability and change today compared with the past, and how to describe the link between present-day versions of vocal folk music on the one hand and the establishment of folk music as a genre/type of music, its increasing formalization, institutionalization, profession-

Reviews alization, and medialization on the other hand. These questions are closely connected to the empirical study, but will also be relevant for the performance of folk music in general and for other oral/aural music. The main conceptual model that she uses in the analysis is interesting. She has devised a model based both on that of Margareta Jersild and Märta Ramsten and on her own ideas in previous works. The model seizes on the idea of shifts in the centre of gravity, and how different periods and perceptions overlap. By empirically investigating how the singers go about the “recreation”, “reshaping/ transformation”, and “renewal/innovation” (återskapande, omskapande, nyskapande) of traditional musical material and stylistic features, she seeks to illuminate the relationship between tradition and revitalization, between stability and change. I view this model as a direct consequence of the discussion she has previously conducted, and it seems very suitable for application to her material. She observes that both the musical performance and the thoughts about it can be described as an overlapping layer of recreation, transformation, and innovation, from simple, pure solo performances to genre-crossing arrangements and compositions. The title meaning “With the Voice as an Instrument” is more apt than might appear at first sight. The study shows how the voice has acquired a more central place in the last few decades. The singing voice is perfected to an increasing mastery of distinctive stylistic features, often those which are reckoned as archaic, and particularly challenging, such as melismatic ornamentation and the blue notes of non-major/minor tonality, and the use of a voice that functions well in more official contexts such as concerts and CD recordings. Herding calls and mouth music and other wordless songs where the voice is used more as an instrument have attracted renewed interest.

187

In addition to past models, the study also shows how today’s practitioners select what to sing, and what influences their choice. We also see the performers’ present-day models, and how the emphasis on individuality, on personal expression, is important for today’s singers. In this connection the concept of authenticity is interesting, and the fact that being authentic does not mean, as it used to, being faithful to a model or to the person you learned from, but that the practitioner is as true as possible to his or her own person and individual style of performing. The book discusses many topics, and the analysis presents many interesting results. It would take too long to review everything in this perhaps too comprehensive and detailed study, where little is omitted. In general I would say that this is highly relevant and interesting reading, and I would describe the book as pioneering and indispensable for all those working with vocal folk music today. The author avoids being categorical and opinionated, balances pros and cons, and prefers to ask new questions rather than draw hasty conclusions. This can also be the reason why some sentences are slightly too long and packed with content, which can make the reading more difficult. The author shows great scholarly maturity and uncommonly keen insight into the setting and the material she studies. In keeping with what Ingrid Åkesson herself writes about her target group, I would say that both researchers and practitioners, both readers with extensive knowledge of folk music and readers with a more general interest in traditional music, anyone concerned with creativity on different levels, or conceptual models of tradition and renewal, will derive pleasure and benefit from this book. Ingrid Gjertsen Bergen, Norway

188

Reviews

Expanding Leisure Activities Anna-Maria Ånäs, Janina Lassila & Ann-Helen Sund (eds.): Extremt? Etnologiska analyser av kvinnorock, extremsport och Ultimate Fighting. Etnologi vid Åbo Akademi, Rapport 12, Åbo 2007. 208 pp. Ill. Seeking the extreme has become an ordinary phenomenon in our modern society. People climb mountains, dive and paraglide in their spare time – activities that are risky in one way or another. Together with like-minded individuals, people seek out risk and test identities and their bodies’ boundaries. In what ways can we understand and study this cultural phenomenon? In this volume, “Extreme? Ethnological analyses of women’s rock, extreme sport and Ultimate Fighting”, three ethnologists from Åbo University examine the present-day phenomenon of extreme spare-time occupations. In the short foreword Anna-Maria Ånäs and AnnaMaria Åström point out that in our late modern time people seek contexts where a test of body and identity can take place. In extreme settings people try to achieve strong bodily experiences and unique identity feelings. Ånäs and Åström use what the sociologists Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman say about the characteristics of contemporary society. This introductory discussion returns in the three articles in the book. The first article, “Women’s bands in rock music in Åbo: A study in gender, identity and cultural conditions”, is by Anna-Maria Ånäs. The purpose is to study how young women who play rock music in Åbo establish themselves on the rock scene and how femininity is created in a rock band. Ånäs writes: “The aim of the study is to investigate how active women in women’s rock bands orient themselves in a traditionally male sector” (p. 7). The study proceeds from an assumption that rock music and rock culture are built on male

conventions. In the text the focus is on which strategies the women can use to legitimate themselves on the rock scene. The material for the study is interviews with eight women who play in four different rock bands in Åbo. After the presentation of the aim of the study and material there are three chapters that present the background to the study. Ånäs describes the history of rock culture and its influence on our times. She uses other scholarly studies and describes the beginning of rock music in the USA and how it has acquired a male image. Then she describes what characterizes contemporary society. She argues that it is crucial to analyse the concepts of identity and lifestyle in order to understand why women get involved in rock bands. Chapter 5 presents previous studies on women and men in rock culture. Ånäs points out: “It is the culture around the rock music that makes it difficult for women to attain an acceptable position in the music industry” (p. 27). The following three chapters present the research. In the chapter “Music above everything” Ånäs describes how the women see the rock music as something central in their lives. None of the women has music as a profession, but still music is something that is constantly with them in their everyday life. It is essential for the women to gain a rock image. In this way they are trying to withstand the discourse which says that women only create music that is nice and tame. In the chapter “Female solidarity and sex neutrality” the discussion focuses on the strategies the women use in order to integrate with the rock music discourse. Ånäs says that the male discourse in rock culture constrains women. At the same time rock culture is central for women’s possibilities to stand out as serious musicians. Ånäs’s conclusion in this chapter is that the women wish to stand beside the male discourse in the rock culture but that is not possible. In the next chapter Ånäs

Reviews studies the women’s choice of clothes and their performance on stage. The women in the study try to dress in a neutral and fashion-free way, instead they try to have a rock image. This image strategy is central when they perform on stage. They try to gain credibility as rock musicians and they don’t want to be described as playing in girl bands. In the concluding chapter, “Self-reflection and representation”, Ånäs discusses how lifestyle has become an important project for the individual in order to create an identity. Rock culture is important for the young women in this study, but at the same time problematic because of its male discourse. Creating authentic rock music with female symbols is problematic for the women. The women struggle with a dilemma when in one way they use the rock culture to create identity, in another way are placed on the margin of the rock culture. The next article, “The boundary stretching of our time and our culture: A study of the self-formation of practitioners of extreme sport”, is by Janina Lassila. She is interested in extreme sports, which she defines as risk sports that require special gear. Extreme sports can be, for example, diving, paragliding, free climbing and so forth. These are sports that focus more on experience and playfulness and less on rules. Her approach involves studying how the practitioners create and express themselves through extreme sport. Lassila is interested in how they acquire skilfulness, create identity through the sport and so forth. The material for the study consists of interviews with eight men and one woman. They all practise different extreme sports, represented by power kiting, kayak paddling, road racing, climbing, flying, parachuting and diving. The informants are divided into three different groups, which also structure the text: “Conscious and reflecting extreme sport”, “Aesthetic extreme sport” and “Extreme extreme sport”. The study begins with two theoretical

189

chapters. In the first of these Lassila discusses why extreme sports have become so popular in today’s society. She brings in Zygmunt Bauman’s discussion about the dream of eternity as a part of our search for fame. She asks whether the practitioners of extreme sports have this wish to be seen. In the next chapter Lassila presents the theories and conceptions used in the study. The concepts are: lifestyle, group, identity, body, flow, edgework and script. The four first theories are well represented in ethnology and need not be presented here. Instead I want to question the use of the concept of flow in ethnology. Flow has its background in a psychological theory and is used to study how individuals gain an optimal experience. How this experience is a part of a social and cultural pattern is of less interest. It would have been good if Lassila had discussed the possibilities and limitations there are in using the term flow in ethnology. Edgework is a more useful concept in this perspective because it considers the social and cultural patterns that explain why people voluntarily take risks. Script is used to analyse the rituals the practitioners have when they perform their sport. After the presentation of theory and method we meet the informants in the part “Extreme sport in practice”. In chapter 5 the informants give their story of how they began with extreme sport. What Lassila finds out from the interviews is that the informants were active in different sports before they started with extreme sport. They also know the components of the extreme sport before they start. In the beginning the sport takes more and more time and becomes an essential part of their everyday life. An important discussion in this chapter is the relationship between extreme sport and economic interests in selling new products. In the chapter “Conscious and reflecting extreme sport” the discussion of how the individual uses the extreme sport to

190

Reviews

create a lifestyle continues. In this chapter we meet informants who dive, climb and compete in road racing. Lassila discusses how these persons use their sport to intensify their identities. Much time is spent on having relations with likeminded people. In this way the extreme sport affects how their everyday life is organized. In the chapter Lassila also discusses the order of the extreme sport practise, how the persons have different phases of preparation, realization and satisfactory. In the realization phase the person can stretch the borders of what he or she can do and in this way reach a state of flow. One of the informants says that if you don’t stretch the borders you can “miss this experience” (p. 121). In the chapter “Aesthetic extreme sport” Lassila presents extreme sports where practitioners have an experience of nature. Nature is discussed as something important for the person’s identity and lifestyle. One of the informants says: “It is freedom and then there is this powerful beauty and experiencing nature’s rage and feeling one’s own smallness” (p. 135). In this chapter Lassila discusses how the Internet is used as a meeting place and a space where the persons can create group identification. It would be interesting to read more about how the informants use the Internet when they are at home and not outdoors. The chapter “Extreme extreme sport” focuses on an explorer, a flier and a parachutist. They all do extreme sports that are very risky. The chapter has an interesting discussion about competence and skill and what it means when the informants stretch borders. Physical skill is central for those informants who use the body to overcome borders and in this way experience certain bodily feelings. These feelings become central for the informants’ identity. In the chapter Lassila discusses how the extreme sport can be a way to escape a tedious everyday life. In the concluding chapter Lassila summarizes the central themes. Here she discusses the dilemma of extreme sports

and she asks whether these sports are a way to gain meaning for individuals in a fragmented postmodern life. In this way she tries to say something about what it means to create strong body experiences and unique identity feelings in our late modern times. She also returns to the discussion about the relationship between extreme sport and economic interests. This is a very important discussion and it is interesting to relate to the discussion about fragmented postmodern life. In what way are the economic interests a part of people’s efforts to gain unique identity feelings? And how unique are these feelings if they are a part of a globalized economic discourse? The book ends with a shorter article, “Sport, club, body: A study of Ultimate Fighting”, written by Ann-Helen Sund. Ultimate Fighting is a new fighting sport that started in the USA in 1993 and it is counted as one of the toughest fighting sports. The competitors are free to use different techniques such as boxing, wrestling and kicking. In the Nordic countries it is only permitted in Finland. Very little research has been done on Ultimate Fighting. The fieldwork was done in a gym in Finland. Six persons training Ultimate Fighting were interviewed. Women are not allowed in the club so there are only men in the study. Sund has also done observations in the gym. The aim of the study has similarities to the other two studies in the book, focusing on how Ultimate Fighting can be used to create identity. Sund is interested in how the informants create masculine identities. In chapter 3 Sund describes the gym as a masculine place. It is a place where men can expose themselves to risks and in this way create identities. The atmosphere in the gym is “macho”. At the same time there is a closeness between the men in, for example, wrestling. Sund analyses how the men can be intimate and at the same time not be homoerotic. Violence plays a central part in separat-

Reviews ing the intimate from the homoerotic, and it is important for how masculine identities are created. Sund points out that violence is normalized in Finnish culture, something that men can strive to attain. In chapter 4 she discusses this discourse of normalized violence in Finland. In the concluding chapter, “A simulated fight”, Sund presents her informants. She is interested in the informants’ separation of what is fighting from what is violence. The informants think that Ultimate Fighting is fighting and not violence. They also say that they try to create a real fight in the ring. Sund points out that we can see it as a simulated fight. Extreme? is, I think, a misleading title for this interesting book. My suggestion for a title is instead: “The expansion of leisure activities”. What happens when the possibilities of our spare time expand and make it possible for men and women to engage in sports and leisure activities that they couldn’t do before? Today we can use our spare time to experiment with identities and different lifestyles, for example, in many new sports. We can experiment with the boundaries of our bodies or expose ourselves to risky activities. Is this extreme? Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. The book is important because the three studies continue an ethnological tradition of investigating the cultural phenomenon of spare time. The book also expands the possibilities for ethnology to study new leisure activities such as women’s rock, extreme sport and Ultimate Fighting. Kristofer Hansson Stockholm, Sweden

Folk Conceptions and Folk Religiosity Lena Marander-Eklund, Sofie Strandén, Nils G. Holm (eds.): Folkliga föreställ-

191

ningar och folklig religiositet. Festskrift till Professor Ulrika Wolf-Knuts. Åbo Akademi förlag, Åbo 2007. 235 pp. On 6 December 2007 Ulrika WolfKnuts turned sixty. To mark the occasion a festschrift was published to honour her important contribution to Finnish and Nordic folkloristics over several decades. The title of the book sums up Wolf-Knuts’s main interests throughout her folkloristic career, but her published works also comprise a great many other themes, including research history, nostalgia, and Finland-Swedish identity. The book is structured around the two main ideas of “Folk Conceptions” and “Folk Religiosity”, both of which have two subheadings. “Folk Conceptions” starts with the subheading “Creatures in Folk Belief and Popular Conceptions”, where Sven-Erik Klinkmann begins with an article on beliefs about the devil. In “The Devil in Some Country Songs” he looks at commercial American country music, more specifically the words of some songs from the period 1950– 1980 where the devil is the theme in one way or another. Klinkmann identifies four different types of devil in these lyrics: the metaphysical devil, the psychologizing devil, the devil associated with violence, and the devil as a trickster figure. The main point of the article is to show how country music, which is mostly a secular form of cultural expression, can reflect the world-view of folk religiosity. “Elf Mill, Elf Dance, and Elf Blast” is the topic of the second article, by Per-Anders Östling, who considers beliefs about elves in Swedish folk tradition. He has studied how elves are described in both printed works and archival material, and shows the names given to elves, where they live, what they get up to, and how humans can protect themselves from elves. The next article takes the reader on a ghost tour of Löfstad Castle in Östergötland. In “An Invisible Presence – Stories

192

Reviews

of the Supernatural in a Castle Setting” Birgitta Meurling retells some narratives about the supernatural associated with this castle, showing how these stories are used today. Several motifs in the tales are well known in folk tradition, and according to Meurling they show how the “Löfstad lore” assimilates and adapts shared narrative matter of contemporary relevance. In her article “Premonitory Dreams and the Diversity of Interpretations” Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj shows how two well-known dream symbols are expressed in Finnish material. These examples – “losing teeth” and “horses” – which are among the oldest dream symbols known in Finland, are respectively a good and a bad omen of future events. The last article in this section is by Arne Bugge Amundsen, entitled “Black Books and the Awfulness of Folk Culture – Anton Christian Bang and His Traces in the History of Norwegian Folkloristics”. Here he discusses how scholars of folk culture used this material politically in the nineteenth century. At that time people were mainly interested in historical and aesthetic traces of the distinctive national character. One consequence of this for Bang’s research was that some aspects of the folk tradition of magic and medicine acquired a low status, partly for reasons of morality. Bang’s theological background made him blind to the value of this material in constructing a picture of the development of folk culture. The subheading “Remarkable People in Folklore” opens with Anne Bergman’s article “The Remarkable in Belief and Custom”. Using material from a questionnaire asking informants to tell of remarkable people and places, Bergman shows that people primarily tell stories of marginalized individuals with tragic lives, and to a lesser extent about the classical “local characters”. She also points out that, whereas in the past people told such stories for entertainment, the themes of equal value and dig-

nity are now central for today’s storytellers. Bengt af Klintberg continues the same thread as Bergman, describing the tradition of rumours about a tramp. In the article “The Bearer of the Burden of Sin – Traditions of a Tramp in Västerbotten” he shows how this particular man has been depicted in newspapers, works of local history, and fiction, and – like other tramps – made his own significant contribution to the rumours that were spread about him. The last article under this heading is by Camilla Asplund Ingemark, entitled “‘Worse than a Murderer’ – Folk Belief as an Interpretative Pattern in Fritiof Nilsson Piraten’s Historier från Färs”. Based on two different characters in a short story, she shows how the ambiguous role of folk belief has an important place in the construction of the characters and the interpretation of reality. Through the characters one can read how folk belief, through its social norms and moral rules, is pivotal for their understanding of reality. The second main section of the book, “Folk Religiosity”, has the subsections “Folk Piety” and “Expressions of Folk Religion”. The theme of folk piety begins with an article by Anne Eriksen, who considers “Images of Mary and Folk Religiosity”. She points out that the Protestant-based conceptual hegemony attached to folk religiosity has led to a deficit of knowledge and a distorted image of Roman folk culture. The reason for this is the emphasis on relations at the expense of content. Eriksen proceeds from narratives of miraculous images of the Virgin Mary in Rome, showing that the legendary tradition attached to these images cannot be understood in terms of the “traditional” dividing lines between folk and elite, and between official and popular religiosity. “Human Senses and Their Forms of Expression in Folk Belief and Religiosity” is the topic of Anders Gustavsson’s article. He examines how sight, hearing,

Reviews touch, taste, and smell have been used in religious contexts from the nineteenth century until the present day. He concludes that sight and hearing have been the most important senses in Protestant circles in Scandinavia. The last article in this part is in Finnish. Pekka Hakamies writes about folk religiosity and folk belief in the parts of Karelia that were ceded to the USSR after the Second World War. Hakamies looks at religious customs such as baptism and shows that the degree of religiosity is determined by the generation to which a person belongs. “‘To God’: Prayer Cards in Norwegian Churches”, by Ann Helen Bolstad Skjelbred, begins the last part in this section. The article examines the twelveyear-old practice of prayer cards, which is heavily inspired by this tradition in the Catholic church. Through the prayer cards, which she has studied through samples from three specific years, she observes that the prayers primarily express what people in different age groups emphasize here and now. Carola Ekrem writes about the history of wall embroidery in Sweden and what it is intended to teach us. The title of the article is “‘God in High Protect Us, Keep Our Peaceful Home Safe’ – Folk Piety in the Texts of Wall Hangings”, which is a good indication of the function these textiles had. In visual terms they had a decorative function, while the embroidered inscriptions of biblical quotations, verses from hymns, and prayers conveyed moral and religious attitudes. In the article “How the Christmas Crib Came to Sweden” Nils-Arvid Bringéus describes the introduction of this custom from Germany. As a result of contacts between representatives of the nobility in the two countries, the manor of Tagel in Mistelås Parish was the first place where a crib was set up as part of the Christmas decorations. From here the custom spread as a fixed element in the celebration of Christmas,

193

and it has more recently become an important feature in Swedish churches during the festive season. How we should understand the interest in collective singing is the question asked in the last article in the book. Here Nils G. Holm proceeds from the growing popularity of community singing in Sweden in recent years, and goes on to examine the popularity of hymn singing, which he discusses from the perspective of the psychology of music. The positive emotional experiences that the participants derive from singing together is linked by Holm to what he calls “peak experience” or mysticism, and he thus identifies community singing as an expression of folk religion. Writing a review of a festschrift can sometimes be a thankless task. Festschrifts are often structured according to other principles than ordinary collections of articles. Instead of tackling a specific topic, dealing with empirical material from a particular region, or conducting discussions of a theory or method that is the shared focus of the book, the aim of a festschrift is to reflect the research of the recipient. This often results in a great diversity of themes and discussions because it comments on the many works written by a person during a long career. This problem is not as visible in this book. Although the main themes are very broad and could potentially invite the contributors to write highly divergent papers, the articles here work well in their context. The editors of this book have obviously striven to publish an empirically based book. Here it is the examples and the narratives that are central, not so much the concepts, theories, and methods. The result is readable and entertaining articles about a wide range of topics, but all connected by implicit or explicit references to the main theme of the book. In that way the majority of the articles also serve as comments on or further examples of topics that have been central for Ulrika Wolf-Knuts.

194

Reviews

Each section and subsection has its own introduction in which the articles are summed up for the reader. These summaries seem somewhat superfluous, especially since some of the articles are rather short and the book has fifteen of them. It might have been more interesting for the reader if these introductions had discussed and problematized the research field to which the articles belong, thus enhancing the theoretical and methodological profile of the book. Ane Ohrvik Oslo, Norway

Consequential Inconsequentialities Billy Ehn & Orvar Löfgren: När ingenting särskilt händer. Nya kulturanalyser. Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, Stockholm/Stehag 2007. 265 pp. The affinity of the media for everything that is sensational, radical, and out of the ordinary has reshaped our experience of the world we live in. Some people would even claim that the media have totally changed our way of life. At any rate, development in recent decades has had the consequence that spectacular things set their stamp on much of everyday life: clothes and looks during the 1980s, sport and leisure during the 1990s, while the first decade of the twenty-first century has given us a children’s culture in which extreme forms of expression and themes target younger and younger age groups. Sensations and upheavals have naturally attracted the interest of researchers, resulting in many studies about the new cultural forms of everyday life, while more trivial and less conspicuous aspects have not received much attention. There is therefore good reason for high expectations when two of the leading Nordic scholars of culture assume the task of highlighting and analysing sides of everyday culture that mostly fall

outside our field of vision. With this book entitled “When Nothing Special Happens: New Cultural Analyses”, the ethnologists Billy Ehn and Orvar Löfgren tackle some of the “spaces” of life that lack flashy signs. But what Ehn and Löfgren invite us to examine with them is far from colourless or trivial, for on the way through the four main chapters of the book – about waiting, routine, daydreams and disappearance – we are constantly reminded of people’s ability to create life and meaning – even when it comes to these seemingly insignificant and perhaps drab components of everyday existence. Waiting is an aspect of life that we rarely reflect on, but a category of time that we try to shrink or fill, sometimes by subtle methods. But Ehn and Löfgren emphasize this part of our existence, showing how our understanding of the meaning of waiting changes in different cultural and social conditions. As they write, waiting consists of hope and longing, power and powerlessness. Waiting charges a landscape with meaning, it redefines places, it colours moods. At the same time, people do something with waiting, for instance by transforming it into a moral arena, a tool for power struggle, and a means to explore boredom and to allow daydreams. Like waiting, routine is about what happens when nothing special is expected to happen. As part of our actions, routine seems obvious and instinctive, but it simultaneously has a paradoxical weight by virtue of its relative invisibility. Ehn and Löfgren point out that, even if routines can be regarded as highly personal, they organize significant parts of our everyday life and make it manageable, and are consequently also cultural phenomena. That is how routines are analysed in the book, with a rich array of examples from the daily rhythm, the home, and working life. It is particularly interesting to view these routine parts of life in the light of radical changes in circumstances, for example as a consequence

Reviews of war or siege. Routines also serve as the foundation for our ability to do more than one thing at the same time, our simultaneous capacity, and the authors illustrate, with reference to different states of debilitation and illness, what happens when this competence breaks down. That daydreams are also a cultural practice is emphasized by Ehn and Löfgren, who point out that secret wishes, obsessions, intellectual experiments, and escape routes are affected by social and material circumstances. The authors show what the conditions for daydreams are like in different historical settings. Daydreams and fantasies are charged with values, but they are not regarded as unproductive in the way they were a few decades ago. Daydreams can be of great significance for how we view ourselves, they can clarify wishes and help us to approach what can be realized. Since daydreams open for different scenarios, they can assist in coping with problems. To analyse the significance of daydreams and fantasy, Ehn and Löfgren use a lot of literature with examples of the place of daydreams in human life. It is especially fascinating to read their demonstration of how different material conditions provide contexts for fantasy and daydreams, such as the sofa, the railway station, the hotel room, and the car. The last category of what Ehn and Löfgren call “everyday microdramas” is disappearance. Here they examine the conflicts between purposeful action and seeming lack of initiative. Different types of disappearance are analysed here, such as things we lose, a love affair that ends when one of the parties breaks it off, tension that vanishes, or simply time that disappears. The paradox that Henrik Ibsen formulated so elegantly, “Eternally owned is but what’s lost”, is placed in different cultural contexts. Perhaps this chapter is particularly interesting for its different perspectives on the consumer society, which tried as ear-

195

ly as the 1920s to create products built to age faster than they were physically worn out, “with a dream of being able to control the cultural wear-and-tear of objects” (p. 204). Ehn and Löfgren do not disappoint in their highly demanding task of analysing things that are otherwise ignored. The book is abundant in perspectives and insights. It is based on a wealth of sources, with a breadth that calls to mind the epithet kaleidoscopic. Yet the book is kept coherent through the authors’ strict arrangement of the material and their firm literary grasp. As a text the book reaches its zenith in the chapter “Daydreams”, where the prose at times reaches a high level. Also, the book never weakens in its basically positive attitude to humanity, even when people lack all originality or heroism. This is of great significance for the future life of the book, for I have rarely read an academic book that can widen the reader’s horizons as this one can. Let us hope that the book will reach the many people who can benefit from it. Olav Christensen Oslo, Norway

Photographs as Visits to Reality Anja Petersen: På visit i verkligheten. Fotografi och kön i slutet av 1800-talet. Symposion förlag, Stockholm/Stehag, 2007. 184 pp. Ill. English summary. Diss. This is the ethnologist Anja Petersen’s doctoral dissertation, the title of which means “Visiting Reality: Photography and Gender at the End of the Nineteenth Century”. The book is about how women in different contexts and for different purposes were represented in photographic images in Sweden and Norway between 1850 and 1910. The dissertation is divided into four main chapters, dealing with different types of

196

Reviews

portrait photography, with the overall aim of showing “how photographic portraits in different social and cultural relations helped in formulating different images of what a woman was.” The first chapter is about studio portraits. As examples the author has selected visiting-card portraits of bourgeois women and men taken in Oscar Olsson’s studio in Östersund from the 1890s until 1905. The photographs were commissioned by the women themselves. The visiting-card portraits from the studio are therefore based on an agreement in which both parties were keen that the subject should look her best. The women wore their very best clothes, and the photographer carefully selected the pose and the angle in order to highlight the most favourable aspects and conceal any flaws. The portraits typically have a horizontal angle which symbolically places the viewer and the woman at the same height, and thus as equals. The second chapter is based on photographs of female patients at Gothenburg Mental Hospital from 1891 until the early years of the twentieth century. Photographs of the patients were entered in the records together with descriptions of their illness. The material includes pictures of the same patient taken on admission and discharge, which could serve as visual evidence of the efficacy of the treatment and the recovery of the patient. The photographs were not primarily pictures of individuals but rather displayed different stages in the course of the illness. At this time it was generally believed that mental symptoms revealed themselves in physical expressions, and photography was one of several tools used to record people’s external appearance for this purpose. The pictures from Gothenburg Mental Hospital reveal several interesting aspects. The biggest difference is between different groups of patients. The pictures of the first-class patients, who were photographed in their private clothes, hardly differ at all from the private portraits

taken in the studios. We see similar clothes and poses. By contrast, the pictures of the less well-off mental patients differ dramatically from the visiting cards. Many of them were taken against the background of the hospital’s brick wall, which would have been inconceivable on a visiting card. Here we also find examples of pictures with strong expressions, both distinct emotional expressions and grimaces (instead of controlled, restrained gravity), short or dishevelled hair (instead of being wellcombed, long, put up), wrinkled and disorderly clothes (instead of the finest dress, well-ironed and arranged). The patients are often portrayed from the front, another rare feature in visitingcard portraits. The third chapter is about prison and police photographs of criminal women from the period 1859–1910. The prisons had to submit photographs of specially selected and particularly dangerous prisoners to the National Prisons Board, which in turn distributed these pictures to police authorities all over Sweden. Besides these examples there are some from the Malmö prison’s own documentation of its inmates and the from the police archives. Pictures of female criminals were very uncommon. In the material presented here there are example that resemble those from the mental hospitals, with a close-up frontal view against a brick wall, and also photographs which can be difficult to distinguish from visiting cards. In some cases, however, the civilian clothes and settings are combined with specially made mirrors whose function was to show the person from the front and in profile on the same picture. In other words, clear signs of the instrumental police function of the photograph were mixed with the characteristics of the civilian portrait. The fourth and last chapter deals with portraits of women in men’s clothes. Here the author analyses a picture from a hen party in Sala in 1903, where four women pose in men’s clothes and false

Reviews moustaches, and pictures taken by the photographer Marie Høeg of herself and her colleague Bolette Berg in their studio in Horten, Norway, 1895–1903. Alongside their ordinary portrait commissions, Høeg and Berg produced a series of pictures in which they staged themselves as men, as mixtures of men and women, or as androgynous beings. The reason this theme is exemplified to such an extent by the pictures of the Norwegian photographer Høeg is that there are no comparable examples in Sweden, according to Petersen. Yet this selection can be questioned. In portraits of actors, of which there are many in Swedish collections of visiting cards, we see women dressed up as men, albeit in acting roles. At the same time, a crucial category of portraits is missing from the dissertation: pictures of the others, or people who deviate in terms of race or ethnicity. Portraits taken by anthropologists in the second half of the nineteenth century show many similarities to the portraits from hospitals and prisons presented in the dissertation. There are also Swedish examples of these. The amateur photographer Lotta von Düben’s portraits of Sami women from her travels in Lapland in 1868–1971 are an early example. In view of the fact that Sweden, a few decades later, opened the world’s first Institute of Racial Biology in Uppsala, this category of portrait is even more relevant in a Swedish context. In the pictures of both patients and criminals, class is a decisive factor. The image of women in the nineteenth century is so closely associated with bourgeois portraits that the feminine ideal is equated with the bourgeois feminine ideal. The pictures of working-class women therefore stand out because of their plain, worn-out clothes, their unkempt hair, haggard hands, and hollow faces. It is in the light of the bourgeois feminine ideal that the picture of the prostitute can be perceived as vain, with her excessively showy clothes or too lavish accessories. The most radical

197

thing about the pictures in this book is that they expose a different class, a class that was not visualized in any other way than as deviating from the (bourgeois) norm. These pictures, although they depict human physiognomies, are rather images of symptoms and types, as Petersen also states. Pictures were taken with a heavy imbalance of power between the photographer and the subject, whether this was done with a supposed social commitment or formulated as scientific recording. It is clear that it is not just what these pictures show but also how they present the motifs that is important, and this could have been emphasized more in the dissertation. The practice and aesthetics of photography are significant. By this I mean that the actual physical and practical circumstances of photography are interesting, along with the aesthetic expressions this takes. It is striking, for example, that many of the pictures of female mental patients were taken from close range. The actual framing of the scene therefore reveals the imbalance of power between photographer and subject. The short distance shows that the institutionalized women did not have a right to the same physical integrity as bourgeois women. Another example is the presence and absence of retouch. The bourgeois portraits were retouched afterwards, as is evident, for example, in the women’s light, smooth skin, while the pictures of the institutionalized women are not. The same applies to the occurrence of sharp focus (in the visiting cards) and blur (in the pictures from the mental hospital). The former were taken by a professional photographer and the latter presumably by an amateur, the hospital’s supervisor. Sharp focus also required the subject to accept the procedure and sit as still as possible during the exposure. Perhaps the hospital inmates were unwilling or did not understood that they were supposed to sit still. A sympathetic feature of the dissertation is that there are many pictures with

198

Reviews

long captions containing information and analyses not found in the body text. In many other respects, however, the pictures are poorly treated considering the fact that they are the main material of the study. It is not clear, for example, how many pictures the study is based on or where they originated. This applies in particular to the portraits from the hospitals, prisons, and the police. In a note we are told that the analysis is based on “over 10,000 portraits from prisons and the police” and “over 4,000 photographs from the hospitals”; in addition to this there are almost 20,000 visiting cards and “a great many glass plates” – a total of over 30,000 pictures. The question is whether all this constitutes the author’s research material. In other words, are all these portraits of women? In the chapter about the hospital portraits, thirty photographs from the Gothenburg hospital are reproduced. It is unclear whether these make up the whole corpus of pictures or are a small selection of 4,000 possible photographs of women. It is the same with the prison portraits, but here the reader gets a hint of the size of the corpus. Between 1877 and 1929 a total of 10,000 photographs were submitted to the National Prisons Board. During part of that time, 1878–1905, a total of 16 pictures of women were sent, which is a tiny proportion and also a very small number. I am not saying that this makes the pictures uninteresting to study – on the contrary – but the author would have gained by stating more clearly the scope and origin of the pictorial material and discussing the problem that there are – I guess – relatively few photographs of female criminals. In many cases there is no information about the institution or person that took the photograph, or the year. Clearer dating would have given the reader an idea of what comes before and after and what happened in parallel. That some pictures perhaps are not dated or attributed to any photographer is in itself also interesting information that could be stated, in rela-

tion to the fact that there are different genres of portraits and different archive practices. It is actually paradoxical that it became the height of fashion in the second half of the nineteenth century for the bourgeoisie to have their photographs taken, when social deviants were being controlled using exactly the same technique. The fact that “the others” were being photographically registered as early as 1860, that is, before the great breakthrough for visiting-card photography, makes it even more paradoxical. There were thus two different conventions for portraits, with certain parallels but with clearly marked differences. In this book, however, the pictures of female mental patients are described in terms of defects, and Petersen makes comparisons throughout with the visiting-card portraits, which are allowed to represent the norm. The female subjects are said to “lack” posture and their facial expressions are “without direction”. It might not have been envisaged this way, but this suggests an idea of, on the one hand, carefully staged, formalized photography and on the other hand straightforward, undirected photography – in other words regarding the camera as a tool for objective, mechanical recording. I think it is more fruitful to regard all photographic images as being staged. The pictures from Gothenburg Mental Hospital are directed too, following certain conventions. These are contrary to the conventions of bourgeois portraiture, and therefore they functioned as a powerful visual testimony to the differences between people. This dissertation considers an interesting spectrum of female portrait practices in the late nineteenth century. The pictures are the great strength of the study and thus answer the author’s questions of how photographic portraits were used to represent women in the period. However, the author does not describe the context in the history of ideas where these different portrait conventions

Reviews arose and interacted, which would have been interesting. One can read about this in the book The Beautiful and the Damned: Creation of Identity in Nineteenth Century Photography, which was published in connection with an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2001. That book deals with the relations between different portrait practices, from royals and celebrities to criminals and sick people, putting them in relation to the contemporary passion for taxonomy and typology against the larger background of societal and economic processes. Anna Dahlgren Stockholm, Sweden

A Phenomenological Approach to Encounters between Individuals and Things Erik Ottoson: Söka sitt. Om möten mellan människor och föremål. Etnolore 32. Skrifter från Etnologiska avdelningen, Uppsala universitet 2008. 194 pp. English summary. Diss. When reading the summary and the blurb on the book cover, I learnt that the subject matter of the book was the relationship between people and objects, the looking for, the searching, the corresponding movements in space and the creation of place, the anticipating and the finding of miscellaneous objects – and not least the serendipitous finding, that is, the anticipated finding of unexpected, pleasure-giving objects. What immediately came to my mind was a glimpse from some early fieldwork of mine: my walks and talks with an informant from a coastal community, a lighthouse keeper. We had several long walks in his childhood surroundings, the islands of an archipelago on the southern coast of Norway, calmly chatting and reflecting upon his childhood and youth experiences and the daily way

199

of life on these islands. But the atmosphere invariably changed when we approached a bay or a beach. He became less attentive to my presence, his answers became shorter, his bodily movements more tense, and he always speeded up and – without exception – arrived at the waterfront 20 metres or so ahead of me. I soon learnt to give him the time to comb the waterfront, to search and to let him confront his expectations with what the beach might reveal of objects that had drifted ashore – wood, litter, and sometimes some kind of serendipitous objects. My informant had been brought up and had lived most of his adult life in a setting where the sea took and the sea gave. He had always risen early in the morning after storms, to be the first one to search for expected and unexpected gifts from the sea. For his grandfather, and even for his father, beachcombing had been part of their economic base. For him, there was no longer any economic gain in it (except securing his winter supply of wood). But these strolls in a terrain without roads, often combined with raids from a boat, were filled with an undefined anticipation of what strange objects might have drifted ashore. And he excelled in telling stories – of what his father and grandfather had found during the war, and he himself after the war, and not least in the oil platform construction period in the North Sea. All this is to say that I has a sense of déjà-vu – and a deep sympathy – with this research topic: searching and finding (un)expected material objects. After having read the book, however, I feel left with more questions than answers, and with more critical remarks than with unreserved hoorays. The reason is perhaps the combination of the very disparate and heterogeneous source material that Ottoson has used, and an interpretative (and I might add quite subjective) approach, based on phenomenological theory.

200

Reviews

As for the source material, it consists of a couple of photographs (the main one from an advertising campaign), observations in Swedish shopping centres and flea markets, a few interviews (11 in total, over the years 2003–2007), an SMS campaign and some Internet searching, and finally observations of a young girl’s shopping tour to London, of a “skip diver” (rummaging refuse skips) and of a person searching for and fishing bikes thrown into the river. In total perhaps not “thin” material in itself, but so disparate and so heterogeneous that a convincing analysis depends very much upon questions of methodology. One may ask what an interpretation of an advertising photograph from a shopping mall (which already represents an act of interpretation by the photographer as well as by the advertising company which has selected it) has in common with a lost-bike-rescuer’s concern for the environment … or window-shopping with garbage rummaging. I do not deny that there may be links – in the serendipitous finding, in the eurekamoments, in the dialectics of anticipation and pleasure, and above all this – in the way individuals establish meaning in relation to their material surroundings. But do Ottoson’s rather free interpretative discussions provide a convincing analysis? The text (which does not lack stylistic qualities) consists to a large part of his own observations, blended with explanations, interpretations and references to other authors and theorists. These discussions, with flea markets etc. as the backdrop, contain many interesting comments and observations. As a reader, however, I often find them too unfocused, gliding from one subtopic to another, like a flow that ends up in a patchwork. Or perhaps a more respectful expression in a modernist setting is a bricolage. The theoretical platform is that of phenomenology. To this reviewer, Ottoson seems to be well versed and well read in the theoretical literature of this

philosophical tradition. He leans upon philosophers like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as well as upon later researchers who have been heavily influenced by these, like Michel de Certeau with his “life world” and “space” versus “place”, and Tim Ingold with his landscape and “taskscape” analyses, to mention only two among several sources of inspiration. Central aspects and concepts in the discussions are movement, intention, body and embodiment, experience and horizon, the hap-tic and the tactile, to point and to grasp, etc. – all of which may be linked to a phenomenological tradition. Phenomenology should probably be a highly relevant point of departure for investigations of material culture issues. As has often been pointed out, phenomenology is predominantly concerned with the human encounter, experience and interpretation of things, in a broad acceptation of “things”. Its main impact has been within architecture and archaeology, i.e. in studies of material structures of “everyday life”, such as the built environment and landscapes, rather than of single objects. For this reason, Erik Ottoson’s attempt to cultivate another sector of the field should be welcomed. However, it has also been noted that phenomenology, conceived as a method – and not only as a philosophical backdrop and source of inspiration – is seldom called upon in analyses of material culture. Furthermore, some of its critics have claimed that as a methodology, phenomenology should imply more than simply interpretation of things based on subjective experience, which it not infrequently has been reduced to. An important question then is whether Ottoson transcends this limitation. Ottoson is obviously aware of this potential criticism (as well as of the potential criticism of his very heterogeneous research material) and tries to counter it in his discussion of methodology, where he defends hermeneutic interpretation and the use of “himself as a tool”, as well as what he

Reviews calls “the deep shopping method”, i.e. simulating being a customer, or simulating looking for special items at flea markets etc. – items that do not really, or not initially, interest him – in order to share the horizon of his studied agents, or to “attune” to their mental universe. I am not certain that I am willing to follow Ottoson here, and I feel that he is dangerously near the trap of subjectivism, which has been a tripwire for phenomenological methodology. This of course does not mean that I adhere to old illusions of objectivity in humanistic research. But as a researcher fearing the pitfalls of both positivism and hermeneutics, I am at a loss to say what should have been the best course to choose for an investigation like this. I started out above with some reflections on a fieldwork episode I once experienced – my informant’s search for a serendipitous find – but I am not convinced that Ottoson’s investigation has taught me more about the phenomenon than a thorough talk with my informant might have done (and preferably supplemented with a handful of other informants too, from the same milieu). And I am fairly certain that if I had not myself had a weakness for, and found a thrill in, an activity like beachcombing, a simulation effort – after Ottoson’s recipe – would not have brought me any closer to an understanding. Be that as it may. In spite of my critical remarks about his methodology and research material, I find Ottoson’s in-

201

vestigation not only a little provocative (which is not necessarily a negative attribute), but also challenging and innovative to consumption and material culture studies. Material culture studies have developed into a field of research transcending established disciplines, and to some extent also their methodological constraints and disciplinary restrictions. It has become an unbounded field, characterized as an academic manifestation of postmodernity, where heterodoxy and pluralism, ambiguity and indeterminacy are constituent ingredients. In this respect, Ottoson’s essay is unquestionably modern in its postmodern approaches. As such, it deserves attention as well as respect, but also opposition – from those who want to combine the best of two worlds. The main topic of Ottoson’s investigation is neither consumption nor material culture in itself; it is about objects, it is about consumption habits, but the focus is (most of the time) on the act of searching, and the goal a better understanding of man’s relationship to his material surroundings, to the surrounding world. As the author himself states: “When you are looking for something, the world takes on a special appearance”. He is undeniably right in this assertion. But perhaps the optimal tools to reach this understanding have not yet been developed. Bjarne Rogan Oslo, Norway

202

Reviews

Reviews

203

Books Received by the Editor 2009

Alver, Bente Gullveig: Mellem mennesker og magter. Magi i hekseforfølgelsernes tid, Scandinavian Academic Press, Oslo 2008. 305 pp. Ill. Bringéus, Nils-Arvid: Åke Campbell som etnolog. Acta Academie Regiae Gustavi Adolphi 103, Uppsala 2088. 218 pp. Ill. Dorson, Richard: Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers. Folk traditions of Michigan’s upper peninsula. Third edition with additional tales. Edited with and introduction by James P. Leary. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WISC, 2008. Fjell, Tove Ingebjørg: Å si nei til meningen med livet? En kulturvitenskapelig analyse av barnfrihet. Tapir akademisk forlag, Trondheim 2008. 110 pp. Ill. Hammarlin, Mia-Marie: Att leva som utbränd. Symposion, Stockholm/ Stehag 2008. 255 pp. Ill. Herjulfsdotter, Ritwa: Jungfru Maria möter ormen – om formlers tolkningar. Ask & Embla hb, Göteborg 2008. 292 pp. Ill. Hodne, Ørnulf: Trolldom i Norge. Hekser og trollmenn i folketro og lokaltradisjon. Cappelen/Damm forlag, Oslo 2008. 304 pp. Ill. Jakobsson, Sverrir (ed.): Images of the North. Histories – Identitites – Ideas. (Studia Imagologica. Amsterdam Studies on Cultural Identity 14).

Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam–New York 2009. 292 pp. Ill. Johannsen, Dirk; Das Numinose als kulturwissenschaftliche Kategorie. Norwegische Sagenwelt in religionswissenschaftlicher Deutung. (Religionswissenschaft Band 6). Verlag W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2008. 286 pp. Karlsson, Eva. M. Livet nära döden. Mångkulturellt centrum, Botkyrka 2008. 268 pp. Klintberg, Bengt af & Ulf Palmenfelt: Vår tids folkkultur. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2008. 254 pp. Ill. Kverndokk, Kyrre: Pilegrim, turist og elev. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science. No. 403. Linköpings universitet 2007. 294 pp. Marander-Eklund, Lena, Sofe Strandén & Nils G. Holm (ed.): Folkliga föreställningar och folklig religiositet. Festskrift till professor Ulrikas Wolf-Knuts, Åbo Akademis förlag, Åbo 2007. 236 pp. Ill. Ottoson, Erik: Söka sitt. Om möten mellan människor och föremål. (Etnolore 32). Uppsala Universitet 2008.192 pp. Ill. Ronström Owe: Kulturarvspolitik. Visby. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2008. 318 pp. Ill. Roper, Jonathan (ed.): Charms, Charmers and Charming. International

204

Reviews

Research on Verbal Magic. (Palgrave historical studies in witchcraft and magic). Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2008. 294 pp. Schön, Ebbe: Häxkonster och kärleksknep. Carlsson Bokförlag, Stockholm 2008. 333 pp. Ill. Skott, Fredrik: Folkets minnen. Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Göteborgs universitet 2008. 386 pp. Ill. Stark, Laura: The Magical Self. Body, Society and the Supernatural in Early Modern Rural Finland. (FF Communications 290). Helsinki 2006. 521 pp. Ill.

Åhrén, Christina: Är jag en riktig same? En etnologisk studie av unga samers identitetsarbete. (Etnologiska skrifter 47). Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper/etnologi, Umeå universitet. Umeå 2008. 202 pp. Åkesson, Ingrid: Med rösten som instrument. Svenskt visarkiv, Stockholm 2007. 354 pp. Ill. CD. Ånäs, Anna-Maria et al.: Extremt? Etnologiska analyser av kvinnorock, extremsport och Ultimate Fighting. Åbo Akademi, Åbo 2007. 207 pp.