Tendencies in Gotland's History-Writing, 1850–2010
In the shadow of the Middle Ages? Tendencies in Gotland’s history-writing, 1850–2010 Samuel Edquist Previous research on history-writing and other forms of the use of history has so far to a large extent analysed national and ethnic identities and their formation through narratives of the past.1 Other territorial identity projects have been less studied, relatively speaking. Still, the importance of the past is just as obvious in local, regional, and supranational identity projects.2 The latter have largely used similar mechanisms as those used in the nationalist projects, at least on the discursive level. Not only do geographical and contemporary cultural aspects delineate the regional ‘us’, but, more than that, do so by telling and retelling a common narrative about the past. ‘We’ have always lived here, ‘we’ have shared a common destiny down the centuries. In this study, I will analyse regional identity construction on Gotland. Gotland is the largest of all the Baltic islands, with a population of some 57,000 and a land area of 3,000 km2. It is one of Sweden’s twenty-five historical provinces (landskap), and constitutes a separate county (län). The province of Gotland also includes some smaller islands. The only inhabited one is Fårö, a separate parish at Gotland’s north-eastern edge, with some 550 inhabitants and a land area of 114 km2. Some of the uninhabited islands—Gotska Sandön, Stora Karlsö, and Lilla Karlsö—have nevertheless played a role in regional topography and history-writing, thanks to their distinctive landscape and as somewhat exotic places where historical events of the more curious and thrilling kind have taken place.3 1 Among numerous examples, see, for example, T.
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