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Non peer reviewed

”Hembygdskunskap” [Heimatkunde] 1919–1980: Creation and career from a curriculum history perspective. Between 1919 and 1980 ”hembygdskunskap” [Heimatkunde] was a mandatory school subject in the first three years of schooling in Sweden. The subject was composed to comprise the introductory study of the natural and social environments, but also to train the children’s perceptional and expressional skills. This article follows the career of the subject through the Swedish curriculum history based on curriculum documents and official school investigations. The article shows how the creation of the subject was influenced by international progressive educational ideas about reality based teaching, curriculum concentration and student activity. Over time, the educational implications of the concept ”hembygd” changed. In the beginning of the period, the concept ”hembygd” offered a fruitful way to focus and delimit the primary study of the environments. In the end of the period, however, the concept was abandoned, as it no longer had the capacity of gathering the teaching content. Accordingly, the era of this school subject was over.

This chapter deals with contextualization when writing cross-border history, and the relation between contextualization and methodological nationalism. Grounded in the author’s own research on twentieth-century commemorations of Swedish settlement in North America, and the experience of rewriting a Swedish dissertation into a book published in the United States, the chapter addresses questions relating both to the researching and writing of history. The “transnational turn” has highlighted the need to consider contextualization as an integral aspect of historical interpretation. What contexts that are selected and given explanatory value is central to the history that researchers choose to convey. If we wish to move beyond national frameworks of interpretations—for example, by giving primacy to national contexts—it is important to be mindful of how we contextualize. The chapter argues for the benefit of an actor-centered approach to transnational history, and for the active use of contextualization as an analytical tool, where contexts are “weaved” in and out of the study. Beyond the empirical investigation and interpretative operation, the search for new empirical leads and new interpretative contexts is also associated with one's own intellectual and spatial mobility. The writing of transnational history does not only entail studying a research object that crosses borders; it can also mean that the researcher, on some level, likewise will have to act and work across borders. A further aspect of this is to consider what contexts that may be of relevance as you seek to make your results and narratives comprehensible to heterogenous audiences.

The following article seeks to analyze the biopolitical interconnections between cultural policy and the arts during the Swedish 1900s. Of special relevance is the concept of “aesthetic engineering”, denoting the attempt to vitalise and activate the population through manipulation of the sensuous environment. In this context, the significance of the individual artwork can only be understood in relation to the larger media ecology of which it forms a part. The study analyzes three heterogenous examples of aesthetic engineering, juxtaposing a Social-Democratic report on cultural policy, Människan och nutiden (1952), with the essays of painter and museum director Richard Bergh (1858–1919), and the utopian visions of neo-avant-gardist Öyvind Fahlström (1928–1976). The different examples all provide theories on the purported necessity of art's “ecologization”: i.e. of the integration of the artwork in the environment. By recognising this shared ground, we suggest that a novel context for the understanding of art and welfare politics in twentieth-century Sweden can be established.

This essay aims to investigate how the cultural heritage process and gentrification, that the Elsborg district in the city of Falun has gone through, is expressed in modern residents' reception of the architecture in the area, as well as to relate this to preceding ways of looking at the environment. In the study I examine two time periods; 1975 when Falun was appointed as pilot project for the European Architectural Heritage Year, and 2021 - the year in which this essay is written. The study is partly an analysis of texts produced in 1975 and partly an interview study with six current inhabitants of the Elsborg area. The analysis is based upon Wolfgang Kemp’s reception theory, which primarily argues for the focus being on the viewer instead of on the creator of the work or the work itself. The results of the study show that many of the thoughts that were formulated about the architecture in Elsborg during the European Architectural Heritage Year are repeated in the interviewees' experiences and uses of the environment today. Additionally, the observations of the respondents in the interview study highlight that the interviewees appreciate the old, traditional wooden architecture for its visual, historical and social values. Moreover, the participants view themselves as involved in preserving Elsborg and its cultural heritage. Keywords: Art history, architecture, Elsborg, Falun, reception theory, Wolfgang Kemp, cultural heritage, gentrification, wooden house

Viking Phenomenon

This thesis deals with the art created at Swedish mental institutions during the 20th century, a medium which generally is found synonymous with outsider art in previous scholarship. The overarching aim is to categorize visual art created under the circumstances of such institutions, exclusively based on its visual expression. Following Wölfflin’s five principles of objective classification, formal analysis is employed. To accomplish the thesis’ aim, differences between recognized outsider artists and institutionalized producers of art are investigated, which in turn sheds light on the definition of outsider art. Focus is put on the actual paintings, and not on the identities of the creators of the works, nor their history as patients at the different institutions. Primary data consist of photographed paintings from the archives of Säter Mental Health Care Museum in Dalarna, Sweden, while additional historical accounts describing 20th century art movements are implemented to justify each painting’s categorical belonging. The results support that a biographical difference, between the two strands of art, is explanative for the current misunderstanding of what outsider art actually is. This fosters further engagements with what variables ought to determine a work of art’s categorization. 

Hearths and cooking pits are common remains from the Bronze Age. It is a trace of human activity possibly over a short or sometimes a longer period of time. Settlement, cooking and crafts are what we associate them with, but these remains have an underestimated potential to tell us more about the people who used them. Being o pen to a broader perspective might provide a better understanding of the phenomena. By examining more closely new interpretations of hearths and cooking pits, we see new meaning and significance of these features which can be seen as a previously overlook ed cultural expression. Based on previous studies, the thesis will further explain and argue for the cultural significance of hearths and cooking pits from the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Denna masteruppsats studerar den tidiga svenska naturskyddsrörelsens historia utifrån ett känslohistoriskt perspektiv. År 1909 startades Naturskyddsföreningen vars syfte var att väcka och underhålla kärlek till den svenska naturen, samt kämpa för dess beskydd. Undersökningen studerar hur föreningen ansåg att kärleken skulle rädda naturen. Naturskyddsföreningen stred för ökat naturskydd i Sverige och den första paragrafen i deras föreningsstadga uppgav att föreningens syfte var att “väcka kärlek till naturen”. Naturskyddsföreningen strävade efter att väcka kärlek hos det svenska folket genom att använda känslor som ett politiskt verktyg och att engagera medborgarna att kämpa för bevarandet av deras lands natur. Föreningen ansåg att kärleken var det främsta verktyget för att förändra svenskarnas relation till naturen och att få dem att respektera och ära den. Naturskyddsföreningen fokuserade främst på att sprida sitt budskap och förändra denna natursyn genom sin årstidning, Sveriges Natur. Denna uppsats fokuserar på åren 1909–1919, men tidningen ges fortfarande ut år 2021. Årstidningen publicerades en gång om året och innehöll under avgränsningsperioden ett stort antal artiklar, bilder, dikter och uppdateringar över miljöarbetet i Sverige. Det var genom denna tidning, som Naturskyddsföreningen avsåg att väcka kärlek och inspirera sina läsare att kämpa för naturens beskydd. Publiceringen av tidningen sågs även av föreningen som ett verktyg att allmänbilda samtida och framtida svenskar om dess lands unika naturområden, samt även dokumentera det som riskerade att försvinna. Uppsatsen redogör för Naturskyddsföreningen kärleksbegrepp, vad föreningen trodde att kärleken kunde åstadkomma samt hur de väckte kärlek med hjälp av sin årstidning Sveriges Natur. 

This essay explores the magazine covers of Hemmets Journal between the years of 1921 and 1990. The first issue of the magazine was released one hundred years ago. The aim of the study is to examine how the motives have changed during the years in composition, color and text. The methods applied to this essay are formal analysis. Heinrich Wölfflin ́s set of five pairs of opposed visual concepts help distinguish when the clearest breakingpoints of the magazine covers occur. A style analysis is applied to the breakingpoints to examine if the contemporary structure of the society is depicted in the magazine covers. The results show for instance that you can spot the society in different ways in the magazine covers depending on what year it is and the most representative motive is women.