Budkavlen

I den svenska bubblan

2024-08-23T08:43:01+03:00

Around the world, John the Baptist's Day is celebrated, such as St. John in Ireland, St. Hans in Norway, and San Juan in Spain (Sant Joan in Catalan) and midsummer in Sweden. This article focuses on how people who identify as Swedish and live wholly or partially in Mallorca celebrate Midsummer and the local tradition of Sant Joan. Do they integrate the traditions, or do they keep them separate? Which elements do they consider important, and which are less significant? How are these linked to Sweden and Swedishness?

The article is based on material collected during fieldwork in Mallorca in June 2023, as well as on material from folklore archives and websites describing Midsummer and Sant Joan celebrations.

In the article, tradition is considered a process of interpretation, where meaning is assigned in the present by referencing the past. The concept of tradition is combined with the concept of social positioning, which draws attention to Swedishness as a position that can be assumed by (and assigned to) some and not others.

For Swedes living in Mallorca who celebrate Midsummer, the common denominator is the food they eat and the fact that they do so together with other Swedes. If children are involved in the Midsummer celebration, additional elements are often included, such as a maypole decorated with leaves and flowers, flower crowns, strawberries, and traditional dances.

Swedes living in Mallorca seem to rarely participate in the local Sant Joan celebrations, even though this tradition is one of the most important on the island. A comparison between Midsummer and Sant Joan reveals that the traditions share several similar elements, which could easily be combined into a single tradition. However, Midsummer and Sant Joan are kept separate, likely because they play a key role in the creation of national identity for Swedes and Catalans, respectively.

EN PUDEL ÄR INGEN HUND!!

2024-04-08T11:32:05+03:00

In 1992, the Swedish Postal Service launched OSA, a free paper aimed at tweens and teens. OSA was distributed in locations frequently attended by teens, such as high schools and youth clothing stores, and consisted almost exclusively of messages and letters written by the readers themselves. In these messages, the young readers would reflect on their everyday lives, their relationships, problems, and ideas. They could involve themselves in political debates and argue their points on topics such as power structures, school politics, sexual health, and pop culture. Furthermore, OSA became an instrument for challenging power structures, such as the unequal power dynamics between teacher and student. The messages were written anonymously which allowed the participants to experiment with boundaries from behind a fake or otherwise unknown identity. By creating stories of broken taboos or setting out to disclose the names of people they don’t like, the authors behind the messages take action against their own sense of submission.

Hence OSA was a media product aimed at and, to an almost full extent, created by tweens and teens. The participation and the paper itself were free of charge, and thousands of messages were submitted to the editors—a large amount of which is currently in the archives at Nordiska Museet, Stockholm. The young readers understood it as a force to be reckoned with, which alarmed an adult crowd. An employee at a school writes to OSA, asking them not to distribute the paper to his school anymore. The notion of youths speaking freely and anonymously on a public platform was unheard of, and a sense of impending chaos might have followed the school board.

Every issue of OSA exclaimed “Write to be heard!”. In the submissions provided by the readers they eagerly took the opportunity to produce something to be viewed by youths across the country and to challenge the boundaries and limitations that conditioned the life of a teen in the 1990s.

”Ja, var ska man börja?”

2024-05-07T14:57:36+03:00

950 women shared their experience of sexual harassment or assault within the Finland-Swedish #MeToo campaign Dammen brister. This study assumes the campaign as constituting a widened narrative space that allowed writers more freedom to choose what to share and how to share it, and, starting from genre and narration, it questions how this space was used by the writers. Thereby, it seeks to attain insight to the conditions and limitations of narrating rape. The study focuses on two different ways of narration roughly categorized as telling a little and telling a lot.

Nationell säkerhet som upplevelse och attraktion

2024-08-30T12:28:12+03:00

Recension av Mattias Frihammar, Fredrik Krohn Andersson, Maria Wendt och Cecilia Åse, I kalla krigets spår: hot, våld och beskydd som kulturarv. Makadam Förlag, Stockholm/Göteborg 2023. ISBN 9789170614293.

Nya tankar om magi och kvinnliga ritualspecialister i skandinavisk vikingatid

2024-06-06T13:08:13+03:00

Recension av Leszek Gardeła, Sophie Bønding och Peter Pentz (red.) 2023. The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 1402 sidor, illustrerad.

En djupdykning i vernakulär kultur som håller vad den lovar

2024-10-01T10:41:26+03:00

Recension av Koski, Kaarina & Hovi, Tuomas (red.) 2023. Kansanperinne 2.0 – Sukelluksia 2000-luvun vernakulaariin kulttuuriin. Helsinki: SKS.

Villaliv i Ekebäck

2024-10-16T14:30:24+03:00

Recension av Gunnemark, Kerstin 2022. Villaliv i Ekebäck. Om generationsskiften och gentrifiering. Göteborg; Stockholm: Makadam förlag.

Mirakelläkare i Finland

2024-10-16T14:34:01+03:00

Recension av Kananoja, Kalle 2021. Ihmelääkärit Suomessa 1850–1950. Kuhnekylpyjä, sähköä ja suggestiota. Helsinki: SKS.

Plats för tal, plats för tystnad

2024-09-16T17:36:39+03:00

Recension av Wanström, Sofia 2023. When The Dam Burst: Perspectives on Genre and Tellability in Testimonies of Rape. Åbo: Åbo Akademis förlag.

Tradition och förändring

2024-11-07T13:56:00+02:00

Budkavlen har under drygt 10 år belyst en rad olika teman, från
Krig och konflikt (2011) till (O)lyckans kulturella praktiker (2023).
Med föreliggande volym bryter vi denna tradition – åtminstone
till viss del. I motsats till tidigare fick hugade författare denna gång
själv välja ämne att skriva om. När vi granskade artikelförslagen
framträdde emellertid trots det ett tema, tradition och förändring.
Susanne Nylund Skog skriver om hur föreställningar om ett traditionellt
svenskt midsommarfirande förhandlas bland svenskar på
Mallorca; Kristina Öhman belyser hur ungdomar under 1990-talet
prövade nya kommunikativa uttrycksformer; Sofia Wanström visar
hur uppropet Dammen brister etablerade en arena där kvinnor
kunde berätta om sexuella övergrepp på sätt som delvis utmanade
traditionella berättargenrer.

Tradition och förändring

2024-12-04T17:31:09+02:00

Budkavlen har under drygt 10 år belyst en rad olika teman, från Krig och konflikt (2011) till (O)lyckans kulturella praktiker (2023). Med föreliggande volym bryter vi denna tradition – åtminstone till viss del. I motsats till tidigare fick hugade författare denna gång själv välja ämne att skriva om. När vi granskade artikelförslagen framträdde emellertid trots det ett tema, tradition och förändring. Susanne Nylund Skog skriver om hur föreställningar om ett traditionellt svenskt midsommarfirande förhandlas bland svenskar på Mallorca; Kristina Öhman belyser hur ungdomar under 1990-talet prövade nya kommunikativa uttrycksformer; Sofia Wanström visar hur uppropet Dammen brister etablerade en arena där kvinnor kunde berätta om sexuella övergrepp på sätt som delvis utmanade traditionella berättargenrer.

Healing Springs and Haunted Woods

2024-12-02T13:32:00+02:00

John Björkman disputerade för doktorsgraden vid ämnet nordisk folkloristik den 22 november 2024 vid Åbo Akademi med avhandlingen Healing springs and haunted woods: Sacred sites of folk belief and spatial order in Southwest Finnish village societies. Som opponent fungerade docent Sonja Hukantaival, Åbo universitet och som kustos professor Lena Marander-Eklund.