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regndoft"The Borders of My Home Expanded"
A study of cultural Scandinavism in the nineteenth century
(Kari Haarder Ekman, Makadam Förlag 2010. Copied down here for quick references and perhaps for some people's viewing pleasure?)
A movement called Scandinavism arose in Scandinavia in the nineteenth century. It had two different orientations, one political and one cultural. The political orientation wanted Sweden, Norway and Denmark to form a union under a common king, united against external enemies such as Russia or Germany. The countries would come to each other's assistance in war situations, which was a completely new idea in Scandinavia, where Sweden and Denmark had warred against each other at regular intervals for many centuries.
Historians have studied political Scandinavism in great detail, and also the cultural collaboration that preceded the plans for a political union. Work to achieve a union was at its most intense between 1845 and 1850, and finally failed in 1864, when Denmark lost the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Germany. The historians' view has long prevailed unchallenged, that Scandinavism was a failed project.
The cultural side of Scandinavism, however, has not been the subject of much study, even though its work did not come to an end in 1864, but lasted a much longer time. This dissertation focuses on the cultural activities and the attitudes of different authors to Scandinavism, and it considers Scandinavism as chiefly a cultural movement which took a political turn for a few years. The main aim of the dissertation is to study cultural Scandinavism, its characteristic features, and the ideas in comprised, and thus to demonstrate the scope of this movement.
In the 1880s there was a form of literary collaboration known as "the modern breakthrough", when writers such as Bjørnson, Ibsen and Strindberg, along with Danish literary critic Georg Brandes, cooperated across the Scandinavian borders. This collaboration has been regarded as a unique era in Nordic literature, making Scandinavian literature a unit, with information flowing freely across the borders. This period has not previously been associated with Scandinavism. One thesis of the dissertation is that the cross-border character of the modern breakthrough has a great deal to do with Scandinavism; people had been working for several decades to ensure that Scandinavia would be perceived as a cultural unit, and had been engaged in intensive cultural exchange across the borders.
Cultural Scandinavism is described in the dissertation from an author's perspective. Amongst other things, this is done by investigating which Scandinavistic elements are included in different types of texts. These elements are called "markers of Scandinavism", which help to reveal what the Scandinavistic ideas meant and how stable they were throughout the nineteenth century. One example of a marker of Scandinavism is the use of the word "brother" in various texts; the three Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway and Denmark - are described as siblings belonging to the same family.
The New Historicism has been a source of inspiration in the selection of material. Although a large number of literary texts are analysed, I have also used letters, speeches, newspaper articles, and other documents. These texts help to give a good picture of Scandinavism as an important part of the nineteenth-century societal context. A knowledge of this context contributes to an increased understanding of the texts from the period.
Another important concept is "L'espace littéraire", the literary space, as the term is used by Pascale Casanova in La république mondiale des lettres (1999). Casanova describes world literature as a totality, independent of geographical boundaries, and factors such as the author's mother tongue are highly significant for the spread of a book. Languages such as English and French have high status, which makes certain authors decide to change language and thus gain entrance to a larger "literary space". Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are small languages on the fringe of the world, and they are relatively close. If one could arrive at a point where language comprehension became so good that translations were not needed, as was the goal of the Scandinavists, the audience for a Danish book for instance would immediately be trebled. One question that is studied is therefore how the authors viewed translations and language comprehensions.
The second chapter examines how the Scandinavistic ideas arose. This is done from three different angles. The first looks at Göticism in Sweden, a movement that searched for a national identity by going back to the Viking Age. The Scandinavists borrowed a great many Old Norse words and concepts, and they studied the same Old Norse texts in Sweden, Norway and Denmark; moreover, these texts were written in the same language.
Another angle is to study the attempts at contact that were made long before the student collaboration in the 1840s. A cultural association was founded in Copenhagen, and Swedes began importing Danish books, which was something new. From 1812 the Swedish author Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom had corresponded with the Danish scholar Christian Molbech, and later also with the author Bernhard Severin Ingemann. These three were supporters of a cultural and spiritual unity, and in their letters they expressed a hope for increased cooperation and improved language comprehension. They expected that the need for translations between the Scandinavian languages would gradually disappear. That attitude was not affected at all by the politicization around 1843-45.
Finally, I study how the Swedish author Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793 - 1866) worked pedagogically to educate young people in the Manhem Association. Here Old Norse mythology played a certain role. His aim, to educate true Swedes, was a parallel to the work simultaneously being done in Denmark. There too they used Norse mythology. The nationalist movement in Denmark, Norway and Sweden thus had the result that people took an interest in the same kinds of Old Norse texts. Almqvist's ideas in 1816 contained a great deal that was also included in a lecture he delivered in Copenhagen in 1846, but by then a great change had taken place: now his educational programme concerned the whole of Scandinavia.
Chapter three gives an account of political Scandinavism and its texts, with the author Carl Vilhelm August Strandberg (1818-1877) as an example. First, however, there is a description of student Scandinavism, more specifically the large student meetings that took place in Uppsala in 1843 and in Copenhagen in 1845, although they continued right up to 1875. At these meeting the students formulated demands for a political union and cooperation in defence.
The student meetings were a solidly masculine world; during this period up to 1850 the women's contribution was to throw flowers at the students. Fredrika Bremer was an exception, but many other women expressed an interest in Scandinavism through letters and memoirs. The most important result of the student meetings was that Scandinavism became known and popular in the rest of society, for example, through all the articles that were published in different periodicals with a Scandinavian content.
C.V.A Strandberg was one of the eager students who agitated for political Scandinavism. He wrote two collections of songs, Sånger i Pansar ("Songs in Armour, 1845) and Vilda Rosor ("Wild Roses", 1848). The first collection achieved great popularity in Copenhagen during the student meeting; it has the Finland issue at the centre and Russia is portrayed as the enemy. In Vilda Rosor the enemy is Germany, and Sweden must help her brother in need and defend Schleswig as Danish territory. This did not happen, and Strandberg's poems were soon outdated.
Another author who was engaged in Scandinavism was Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, who has already been mentioned. He gave a lecture in Copenhagen in February 1846 which has been regarded as solely cultural. It was printed several times and it is very practical and modern in its mode of thought, quite different from Strandberg's poems. The lecture, however, was influenced by the current situation in Copenhagen, where there was a strict censorship of political statements, and several cases happened to be in progress in the winter 1845-46, so Almqvist could not be entirely sure of what could be said. Out of caution he published a few supplementary articles in the Swedish newspaper Jönköpingsbladet, articles expressing support for political Scandinavism.
In chapter four the focus is on cultural Scandinavism. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) wrote several poems in the 1830s where he expressed great sympathy for Scandinavism. However, he did not like the political turn it took, and during these years he was very careful. What he expresses in letters and diaries is his profound gratitude for the positive reception he was given in Sweden at a time when he was being harshly criticised in Denmark. He also appreciated the linguistic community, the fact that he could speak his mother tongue in Sweden and be understood. In two of Andersen's stories there are very clear traces of Scandinavism, "Elverhøi" and "Laserne".
In Andersen's autobiographies, especially the one from 1855, Mit Livs Eventyr ("My Life's Adventure"), he expresses in retrospect his great enthusiasm for Scandinavism. Andersen did not need to fear being associated with a dangerous political movement, as Scandinavism had become acceptable. Andersen says in several places that he perceives Scandinavia as a common homeland, a home with expanded borders.
Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) wrote several texts with a Scandinavist content. Because she spent a lot of time in Norway, that country played an important part for her Scandinavistic views, but she was also interested in Norse mythology, just like Almqvist. In letters she expresses great enthusiasm and argues that Scandinavian texts should preferably be read in the original language. Bremer, like Andersen, was a keen traveller, which may be a reason why they both perceived the Scandinavian countries as "home", which they could compare with Europe and, in Bremer's case, with other parts of the world.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910) first wrote traditionally Scandinavistic texts about how the three brothers should defend their common homeland, but after 1864, in 1872 to be exact, he reformulated his Scandinavism, which triggered what was known as the "Signal Feud"; he wanted to send mixed signals to Germany and to work for a lasting peace with Germany as well. Bjørnson did not write many Scandinavistic poems during the period after 1872, but in speeched at various events he expressed Scandinavistic opinions, for example, in the years around the dissolution of the union of Norway with Sweden in 1905. Bjørnson was very popular in both Denmark and Sweden, and had no problems with language comprehension when it came to oral communication. Moreover he chose to write the bokmål variety of Norwegian so that he would be read in Denmark.
For all these three authors, Scandinavism took on a distinctly cosmopolitan colour, with the ultimate goal being global peace.
Chapter five shows how Georg Brandes (1842-1927) often used Scandinavistic argumentation in correspondence with authors all over Scandinavia and cites his memoirs where he tells of the influence that the student meeting in Copenhagen in 1862 exerted on him. He described in a lecture how his identity as Scandinavian was an intermediate position between his identity as a Dane and his identity as European, which would finally lead to a sense of being a "citizen of the world". In his book Det Moderne Gjennembruds Mænd ("Men of the Modern Breakthrough", 1883) he includes both Danish and Norwegian authors, and his ambition was that the next volume would include at least one Swede. Brandes thus viewed Scandinavian literature as a unit, and believed that people in Europe could see how far "we in Scandinavia" had come as a result of Ibsen's works.
The final chapter sums up the markers of Scandinavism that have been found, and how Scandinavia in the nineteenth century became a literary space, a cultural unit, which was in place when Georg Brandes began his work. One of those who were favoured was Strindberg, who received appreciation and support from Edvard Brandes in Denmark. Scandinavism was an important part of the societal context during the nineteenth century, with a great influence on literature, but it also left traces that survive today. Many forms of formalized Nordic collaboration have their roots in Scandinavist ideas of a cultural community, which is one of the reasons why it is possible, for example, to obtain support for Nordic co-productions in film and television.
Political Scandinavism had many nationalistic features, viewing Scandinavia as an expanded nation. The cultural part, on the other hand, gave an opening to Europe and the world, and that was a very succesful movement.
A study of cultural Scandinavism in the nineteenth century
(Kari Haarder Ekman, Makadam Förlag 2010. Copied down here for quick references and perhaps for some people's viewing pleasure?)
A movement called Scandinavism arose in Scandinavia in the nineteenth century. It had two different orientations, one political and one cultural. The political orientation wanted Sweden, Norway and Denmark to form a union under a common king, united against external enemies such as Russia or Germany. The countries would come to each other's assistance in war situations, which was a completely new idea in Scandinavia, where Sweden and Denmark had warred against each other at regular intervals for many centuries.
Historians have studied political Scandinavism in great detail, and also the cultural collaboration that preceded the plans for a political union. Work to achieve a union was at its most intense between 1845 and 1850, and finally failed in 1864, when Denmark lost the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to Germany. The historians' view has long prevailed unchallenged, that Scandinavism was a failed project.
The cultural side of Scandinavism, however, has not been the subject of much study, even though its work did not come to an end in 1864, but lasted a much longer time. This dissertation focuses on the cultural activities and the attitudes of different authors to Scandinavism, and it considers Scandinavism as chiefly a cultural movement which took a political turn for a few years. The main aim of the dissertation is to study cultural Scandinavism, its characteristic features, and the ideas in comprised, and thus to demonstrate the scope of this movement.
In the 1880s there was a form of literary collaboration known as "the modern breakthrough", when writers such as Bjørnson, Ibsen and Strindberg, along with Danish literary critic Georg Brandes, cooperated across the Scandinavian borders. This collaboration has been regarded as a unique era in Nordic literature, making Scandinavian literature a unit, with information flowing freely across the borders. This period has not previously been associated with Scandinavism. One thesis of the dissertation is that the cross-border character of the modern breakthrough has a great deal to do with Scandinavism; people had been working for several decades to ensure that Scandinavia would be perceived as a cultural unit, and had been engaged in intensive cultural exchange across the borders.
Cultural Scandinavism is described in the dissertation from an author's perspective. Amongst other things, this is done by investigating which Scandinavistic elements are included in different types of texts. These elements are called "markers of Scandinavism", which help to reveal what the Scandinavistic ideas meant and how stable they were throughout the nineteenth century. One example of a marker of Scandinavism is the use of the word "brother" in various texts; the three Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway and Denmark - are described as siblings belonging to the same family.
The New Historicism has been a source of inspiration in the selection of material. Although a large number of literary texts are analysed, I have also used letters, speeches, newspaper articles, and other documents. These texts help to give a good picture of Scandinavism as an important part of the nineteenth-century societal context. A knowledge of this context contributes to an increased understanding of the texts from the period.
Another important concept is "L'espace littéraire", the literary space, as the term is used by Pascale Casanova in La république mondiale des lettres (1999). Casanova describes world literature as a totality, independent of geographical boundaries, and factors such as the author's mother tongue are highly significant for the spread of a book. Languages such as English and French have high status, which makes certain authors decide to change language and thus gain entrance to a larger "literary space". Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are small languages on the fringe of the world, and they are relatively close. If one could arrive at a point where language comprehension became so good that translations were not needed, as was the goal of the Scandinavists, the audience for a Danish book for instance would immediately be trebled. One question that is studied is therefore how the authors viewed translations and language comprehensions.
The second chapter examines how the Scandinavistic ideas arose. This is done from three different angles. The first looks at Göticism in Sweden, a movement that searched for a national identity by going back to the Viking Age. The Scandinavists borrowed a great many Old Norse words and concepts, and they studied the same Old Norse texts in Sweden, Norway and Denmark; moreover, these texts were written in the same language.
Another angle is to study the attempts at contact that were made long before the student collaboration in the 1840s. A cultural association was founded in Copenhagen, and Swedes began importing Danish books, which was something new. From 1812 the Swedish author Per Daniel Amadeus Atterbom had corresponded with the Danish scholar Christian Molbech, and later also with the author Bernhard Severin Ingemann. These three were supporters of a cultural and spiritual unity, and in their letters they expressed a hope for increased cooperation and improved language comprehension. They expected that the need for translations between the Scandinavian languages would gradually disappear. That attitude was not affected at all by the politicization around 1843-45.
Finally, I study how the Swedish author Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793 - 1866) worked pedagogically to educate young people in the Manhem Association. Here Old Norse mythology played a certain role. His aim, to educate true Swedes, was a parallel to the work simultaneously being done in Denmark. There too they used Norse mythology. The nationalist movement in Denmark, Norway and Sweden thus had the result that people took an interest in the same kinds of Old Norse texts. Almqvist's ideas in 1816 contained a great deal that was also included in a lecture he delivered in Copenhagen in 1846, but by then a great change had taken place: now his educational programme concerned the whole of Scandinavia.
Chapter three gives an account of political Scandinavism and its texts, with the author Carl Vilhelm August Strandberg (1818-1877) as an example. First, however, there is a description of student Scandinavism, more specifically the large student meetings that took place in Uppsala in 1843 and in Copenhagen in 1845, although they continued right up to 1875. At these meeting the students formulated demands for a political union and cooperation in defence.
The student meetings were a solidly masculine world; during this period up to 1850 the women's contribution was to throw flowers at the students. Fredrika Bremer was an exception, but many other women expressed an interest in Scandinavism through letters and memoirs. The most important result of the student meetings was that Scandinavism became known and popular in the rest of society, for example, through all the articles that were published in different periodicals with a Scandinavian content.
C.V.A Strandberg was one of the eager students who agitated for political Scandinavism. He wrote two collections of songs, Sånger i Pansar ("Songs in Armour, 1845) and Vilda Rosor ("Wild Roses", 1848). The first collection achieved great popularity in Copenhagen during the student meeting; it has the Finland issue at the centre and Russia is portrayed as the enemy. In Vilda Rosor the enemy is Germany, and Sweden must help her brother in need and defend Schleswig as Danish territory. This did not happen, and Strandberg's poems were soon outdated.
Another author who was engaged in Scandinavism was Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, who has already been mentioned. He gave a lecture in Copenhagen in February 1846 which has been regarded as solely cultural. It was printed several times and it is very practical and modern in its mode of thought, quite different from Strandberg's poems. The lecture, however, was influenced by the current situation in Copenhagen, where there was a strict censorship of political statements, and several cases happened to be in progress in the winter 1845-46, so Almqvist could not be entirely sure of what could be said. Out of caution he published a few supplementary articles in the Swedish newspaper Jönköpingsbladet, articles expressing support for political Scandinavism.
In chapter four the focus is on cultural Scandinavism. Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) wrote several poems in the 1830s where he expressed great sympathy for Scandinavism. However, he did not like the political turn it took, and during these years he was very careful. What he expresses in letters and diaries is his profound gratitude for the positive reception he was given in Sweden at a time when he was being harshly criticised in Denmark. He also appreciated the linguistic community, the fact that he could speak his mother tongue in Sweden and be understood. In two of Andersen's stories there are very clear traces of Scandinavism, "Elverhøi" and "Laserne".
In Andersen's autobiographies, especially the one from 1855, Mit Livs Eventyr ("My Life's Adventure"), he expresses in retrospect his great enthusiasm for Scandinavism. Andersen did not need to fear being associated with a dangerous political movement, as Scandinavism had become acceptable. Andersen says in several places that he perceives Scandinavia as a common homeland, a home with expanded borders.
Fredrika Bremer (1801-1865) wrote several texts with a Scandinavist content. Because she spent a lot of time in Norway, that country played an important part for her Scandinavistic views, but she was also interested in Norse mythology, just like Almqvist. In letters she expresses great enthusiasm and argues that Scandinavian texts should preferably be read in the original language. Bremer, like Andersen, was a keen traveller, which may be a reason why they both perceived the Scandinavian countries as "home", which they could compare with Europe and, in Bremer's case, with other parts of the world.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1832-1910) first wrote traditionally Scandinavistic texts about how the three brothers should defend their common homeland, but after 1864, in 1872 to be exact, he reformulated his Scandinavism, which triggered what was known as the "Signal Feud"; he wanted to send mixed signals to Germany and to work for a lasting peace with Germany as well. Bjørnson did not write many Scandinavistic poems during the period after 1872, but in speeched at various events he expressed Scandinavistic opinions, for example, in the years around the dissolution of the union of Norway with Sweden in 1905. Bjørnson was very popular in both Denmark and Sweden, and had no problems with language comprehension when it came to oral communication. Moreover he chose to write the bokmål variety of Norwegian so that he would be read in Denmark.
For all these three authors, Scandinavism took on a distinctly cosmopolitan colour, with the ultimate goal being global peace.
Chapter five shows how Georg Brandes (1842-1927) often used Scandinavistic argumentation in correspondence with authors all over Scandinavia and cites his memoirs where he tells of the influence that the student meeting in Copenhagen in 1862 exerted on him. He described in a lecture how his identity as Scandinavian was an intermediate position between his identity as a Dane and his identity as European, which would finally lead to a sense of being a "citizen of the world". In his book Det Moderne Gjennembruds Mænd ("Men of the Modern Breakthrough", 1883) he includes both Danish and Norwegian authors, and his ambition was that the next volume would include at least one Swede. Brandes thus viewed Scandinavian literature as a unit, and believed that people in Europe could see how far "we in Scandinavia" had come as a result of Ibsen's works.
The final chapter sums up the markers of Scandinavism that have been found, and how Scandinavia in the nineteenth century became a literary space, a cultural unit, which was in place when Georg Brandes began his work. One of those who were favoured was Strindberg, who received appreciation and support from Edvard Brandes in Denmark. Scandinavism was an important part of the societal context during the nineteenth century, with a great influence on literature, but it also left traces that survive today. Many forms of formalized Nordic collaboration have their roots in Scandinavist ideas of a cultural community, which is one of the reasons why it is possible, for example, to obtain support for Nordic co-productions in film and television.
Political Scandinavism had many nationalistic features, viewing Scandinavia as an expanded nation. The cultural part, on the other hand, gave an opening to Europe and the world, and that was a very succesful movement.
