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”A new form of musical upbringing”: Pretenses of reform pedagogy content in the Siljan schoolIn this article, I describe the Siljan school in Tällberg as a Swedish example of alternative pedagogy. The overall questions relate to the reform pedagogy content of the school and its ability to give Swedish music teaching a new form of musical upbringing. An important issue is how the Siljan school as a model for Swedish reform has been inspired by the reform pedagogy movements in USA and Germany. The analysis is thus based on the Alm couple’s ability to give the school an international character which shines light on Swedish reforms in the greater context of reform pedagogy. With its basis in discursive education of the 1930s, two main questions are discussed: what perspective on musical education can be identified in the personal development ethos of the Siljan school? How can the school’s relation to the reform pedagogy music movement during the start of the 1900s be understood? From a hermeneutic perspective, the article contributes by investigating how the Siljan school can have affected decisions in education politics, Swedish schooling, and Swedish musical life. In summary, the article contributes with new knowledge on a chapter in the history of Swedish music pedagogy.

Principal C.J.L. Almqvist and the principle of personalityThe Swedish author and visionary Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793–1866) was the principal for twelve years (1829–1841) of the government-initiated pilot school ”Nya Elementarskolan” (New Elementary School) in Stockholm. In this position, he argued that both the school and the state should be built on the same basic idea: the right of individual freedom. This argument is often referred to as ”personlighetsprincipen” (the principle of personality), a concept launched by another prominent figure of the liberal culture of the time, Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783–1847). This article explores how the principle of personality is expressed in the texts of Almqvist and is mainly built upon the concept’s allegorical resources. It examines the thesis that Almqvist’s use of the term is best understood if one distinguishes between the political, pedagogical, and existential dimension of the concept. The article ends with some thoughts about the context of the concept and a discussion on whether Almqvist had a greater interest in personalities than in principles.

Review of Owe Ronström, “Kulturarvspolitik. Visby från sliten småstad till medeltidsikon” (Stockholm 2008).

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Swedish gymnastics won a large following across the world. Employing the concepts of educationalisation and gender, I will explore how the physical education of girls was conceptualised and justified in the Swedish system during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Focusing on the publications of Anton Santesson (1825–1892), who was one of the main authors on girls’ gymnastics in Sweden, I will show how girls’ gymnastics was conceptualised as a response to a social, cultural and physical crisis, which was perceived as partly stemming from the detrimental effects of education on girls’ bodies and minds. Girls’ gymnastics was thus construed as vital to the future of the Swedish nation. While men and manliness remained fundamental to the strength of the nation, girls’ gymnastics was vital to women’s rearing of boys and thus instrumental to the development of masculinity in men.

A very critical review of Henrik Jacobsens dissertation in medieval archaeology, "Romanske vesttårne, deres indretning og funktion. Vesttårne før 1300 i det middelalderlige Danmark øst for Storebælt" (Stockholm 1993). Alternative explanations are proposed.

Romanesque round church towers - a Skandinavian perspective: The aim of the article is to discuss the interpretation of the Romanesque round church towers seen from a Scandinavian perspective. After a research history and a geographical outlook, which passes Ireland, England and Holstein, the article focusses on the 15-19 churches with round towers in medieaval Denmark, Sweden and Norway, with the main part in Southern Schleswig and Scania; none are known from Finland. The chronology and social context, function and meaning of the church towers are discussed. The Romanesque round church towers are also discussed in relation to the 33 known Romanesque round churches in the same area. Finally a catalogue of the round church towers in Scandinavia is presented. The theses of the article is, that the building material was not decisive for the choice of the round architecture, at least not in Scandinavia. The round church towers were unfortified burial memorials and bell towers, where the architecture, as was the case for the round churches, copied central church buildings in the West. In a period, where most churches were without a tower or had square towers, the round church towers were examples of a “conspicuous symbolism”. The initiative to build the round church towers must have been taken by an aristocracy, who participated or were inspired by the contemporary crusades at the Baltic Sea, and who used the towers in their mutual competition on status.Corrections in the pdf 2015.

In general, schooling and nation-building are associated with the unifying role of language and history education, since language and culture are perceived as fundamental pillars of the nation. Less discussed—at least regarding the curriculum—is the role of physical education, even if physical education was a highly political issue in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Based on a case study of Switzerland and textbooks for physical education by Adolf Spiess and the activities of Phokion Heinrich Clias for the Bernese school, this article discusses how physical education, distinct from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ care for the body, became a school subject of the nineteenth century compulsory schools and how it was related to the notion of nation and nation-building. It argues that physical education became first part of the “modern” philanthropic education and schooling, was soon taken for granted as an essential curricular component of nation-building and lost thereby the political threat.