Folkloristic Studies in Scandinavia Personal Research Experiences and Reflections Gustavsson - Gotland Ombrukket4.Qxp Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 2
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Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 1 Folkloristic studies in Scandinavia Personal research experiences and reflections Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 2 To my wife Kristina, our son Johan, his wife Rebecka, their sons Emrik and Lukas Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 3 Folkloristic studies in Scandinavia Personal research experiences and reflections Anders Gustavsson Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, IKOS, University of Oslo, Norway NOVUS PRESS OSLO 2017 Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 4 Printed with economic support from Hilding Pleijel’s fond, Lund; Kungl. Patrio- tiska Sällskapet, Stockholm; Kungliga och Hvidtfeldtska stiftelsen, Göteborg and Kungliga Gustav Adolfs Akademien, Uppsala. Language wash: Larisa Gustafsson Front cover: The merpeople living at the bottom of the sea were a threat to the men out fishing and to the women rowing home from the islands who are shown at the top of the picture. Painting by the folk-life artist Carl Gustaf Bernhardson. Bohuslän museum No. 009. Back cover: The parson Simson wearing the insignia of the royal Order of Vasa together with islanders of Käringön during the visit of King Oscar II on the island in 1889. Photo Aron Jonasson, Bernadotte archives in the Royal Palace, Stockholm. © Novus AS 2017. Cover: Geir Røsset ISBN: 978-82-7099-887-6 Print: Interface Media as, Oslo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo- copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Novus Press. Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 5 Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................... 7 1 Small narratives in a social context .................................................................... 9 1 Power-related contrasts in small narratives ........................................................ 9 1 Summer visitors and local population ............................................................... 9 2 On customs officials at the Swedish-Norwegian border ...................................... 13 3 Acceptance of technical novelties: social aspects of cycling in Norway and Sweden .... 17 2 Power relations and group norm setting in small narratives ............................... 21 1 Local revivalist clergymen and upholding of norms ........................................... 21 2 Norm related narratives in a Swedish Mission Congregation ................................ 23 3 Narratives and norms in Swedish temperance societies ....................................... 29 3 Narratives related to struggle for local power ................................................... 32 1 Narratives about a parson and his parishioners .................................................. 32 2 Evangelical National Missionary Society and Pentecostal movement in western Sweden ..................................................................................... 37 3 The Home Mission and the Free Friends in southern Norway ............................... 43 4 Contradictory narratives about a nineteenth century parson ............................... 46 1 The royal Order of Vasa ............................................................................... 46 2 Social Stratification and Latent Conflicts ......................................................... 51 5 Narratives about Deceased Pets on Swedish and Norwegian Memorial Websites ... 57 1 Retrospective descriptions of the cat’s life ....................................................... 58 2 Emotional expressions ................................................................................. 60 3 Concluding remarks .................................................................................... 64 6 Not telling in and after war situations .............................................................. 65 Second World War tensions at the Swedish-Norwegian national border .................... 65 2 Rituals ............................................................................................................... 71 1 Old rituals disappearing ................................................................................. 71 1 Churching of women after childbirth .............................................................. 71 2 Memorial drinking at funerals ....................................................................... 74 2 Revitalization of old culture through new rituals .............................................. 77 1 The Forest Finnish Settlers’ Days. Attempts to retain ethnic minority identity in Norway ............................................................................................. 77 2 Rediscovery and Transformation of Traditional Rituals within a New Religious Movement in Sweden: The Oasis Movement. ......................... 87 3 New collective rituals around sudden death in Norway and Sweden .................. 93 4 Rituals of national holidays in a Norwegian-Swedish border perspective .......... 102 Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 6 6FOLKLORISTIC STUDIES IN SCANDINAVIA 1 Celebrations of Norwegian national holidays in Bohuslän prior to 1990 ............... 103 2 Norwegians’ celebrations of 17 May in Bohuslän starting in the 1990s ................. 106 3 Bohuslän people and the Norwegian flag ....................................................... 108 4 Norwegian reactions to the new Swedish national holiday established on 6 June 2005 .. 110 5 The re-introduction of the Union flag during the observance of the Centenary Celebration in 2005 ............................................................ 112 6 Conclusions ............................................................................................ 114 3 Beliefs ............................................................................................................. 117 1 Beliefs related to oral narratives and rituals .................................................... 117 2 The encounter between revivalist ideology and traditional folk beliefs in Sweden...118 1 Hearing and seeing supernatural beings ......................................................... 119 2 The existence of evil ................................................................................. 121 3 The existence of good ................................................................................ 122 3 Swedish belief narratives on afterlife in preindustrial time compared with the 2000s on the Internet ........................................................................... 126 1 Beliefs in the Pre-Industrial Society .............................................................. 127 2 Beliefs on the Internet during the 2000s ......................................................... 133 3 Comparisons between Then and Now ........................................................... 137 4 Folklore and Materiality ................................................................................. 139 1 Folk-life art ................................................................................................. 139 2 Inscriptions and pictorial symbols on old grave memorials .............................. 145 3 Pictorial symbols on recent grave memorials in Norway and Sweden ............... 155 1 Norwegian bronze figurines ........................................................................ 158 2 Christian and secular motives ...................................................................... 159 3 Tradition and change at the choice of motives ................................................. 161 4 Visiting the grave memorials ....................................................................... 163 5 Use of occupational and leisure time symbols ................................................. 163 4 Cultural heritage and protection .................................................................... 165 Concluding remarks ........................................................................................... 173 References .......................................................................................................... 177 Unprinted sources ........................................................................................... 177 Printed sources and literature ........................................................................... 179 Internet 1 September 2015 .............................................................................. 185 Abbreviations ................................................................................................. 186 Gustavsson - Gotland ombrukket4.qxp_Gustavsson 23.08.2017 11.38 Side 7 Introduction I was inspired to write this book at an international conference in Visby on Gotland in 2015; the name of the conference was Why folkloristics? Participants from a great number of countries all over the world were gathered there. In the invitation for the conference, the organisers emphasised the importance of discussing, as a matter of principle, the future of Folklore Studies as an academic discipline. In later years, this subject has come under threat in the Scandinavian countries, at the same time as it has been facing new challenges on an international level. In Sweden, folklore