Volume 48, Issue 2

In the early twentieth century, historiography was used to further the cause of independence by profiling Iceland as a fully-fledged nation. The Icelandic historian Jón Jónsson Aðils was the man who would shape Iceland’s history, and the nation with it, in his work Icelandic Nationhood . His achievement was not self-evident; Iceland was part of the Danish realm and glorifying the past met with restrictions. This paper aims to illustrate how in this setting Aðils succeeded in constructing the Icelandic nation with the aid of existing Danish nationalist thought. I propose that using ideas of the famous Danish nationalist N.F.S. Grundtvig enabled Aðils to construct an Icelandic ’Golden Age’ specifically focused on culture and freedom that held future prospects. Finally, I will discuss the consequence of this focus as a decisive factor in the development of Icelandic self-awareness, aiming to contribute to the larger debate on the creation of national identities.

This article surveys the sublime in Danish romantic literature as well as its partly neglected reception by scholars of Danish Romanticism. Theoretically, it is argued that there has been a tendency to focus either on the sublime’s philosophical implications (citing Immanuel Kant) or on the rhetorical figures and tropes of the sublime (“Longinus”). In the article, it is claimed that a comprehensive understanding of the sublime needs to address both its rhetorical dimension (going back to “Longinus”) and Kant’s philosophy of the sublime in the 18th Century. It is suggested that one needs to address how the philosophical content interacts with figures and tropes, when analyzing literature of the sublime. An integrated reading strategy is then exemplified in a comparative interpretation of Jens Baggesen’s poem “Paa Spidsen af St. Gottard” and Schack von Staffeldt’s poem “Paa Toppen af Mont-Cenis”. This analysis challenges the received notion that Baggesen’s poem is superior to that of Staffeldt.

When Selma Lagerlöf became a Nobel laureate in 1909, her works were translated into new languages and introduced to countries, including Spain, where she had previously been unknown. This article traces the image of Sweden and Scandinavia reflected in Selma Lagerlöf’s reception in Spanish newspapers and periodicals around 1910. The idea of a distinctive Nordic or Scandinavian identity is discernible in the critics’ characterizations of Lagerlöf’s works; however, there is tension between their presentations of Lagerlöf as a representative of the region of Scandinavia or the North in general versus just one nation (Sweden) or province (Värmland). Building on research in imagology and literary transfer, this article investigates how and which regional, national, and provincial identities, geographies, and stereotypes of North and South were activated in support of a particular idea of the author.

This article examines the manifold relationship between vicinity, intrusion, and neighbour-love (agape) in August Strindberg’s short novel “The Roofing Ceremony” (“Taklagsöl”) from 1906. It throws new light on a series of topical issues such as the (Kierkegaardian) dichotomy of equality and dissimilarity, as well as various notions of intrusion and parasitism between neighbours and ‘near-dwellers’ (Heidegger). Strindberg’s novel offers a model for understanding the dynamics of spatial and spiritual aspects of vicinity and proves to be a key text as to the ongoing cultural construction of ‘the neighbour’ which, in a period of social and geographical mobility, is more topical than ever. By drawing analogies with other world literary texts (Kafka, Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, Philip Roth), this article seeks to foreground the contemporary force of the Swedish author’s highly timely text by focusing on the notion of ‘being neighbours’.

The global popularity of Nordic Noir, such as the Danish/Swedish production Broen , The Danish production Forbrydelsen , its U.S. and U.K. remakes, the Danish/Swedish production The Millennium Trilogy seems to depend on its insistent interest in a set of maladjusted female detectives. The by now seven seasons of the U.S production Homeland have a similar focus. In this essay, we argue that the struggle these female protagonists endure between extreme potency on the one hand and shameful psychic problems on the other is linked to how these female detectives represent the female position in film in general. Turning to traditional and ongoing discussions in feminist film theory, and combining queer studies and sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives with recognition theory (Felski/Coplan), we ask how we as spectators relate to these women in terms of recognition. In line with that, we ask whether these female detectives should be considered feminist icons who challenge traditional gendered poses on film, or whether, due to their dysfunctionalities, they came to represent some kind of otherness that we sympathize with but also fail to identify with.

In this paper I discuss the constructions with the group genitive and their use in today’s Swedish. The development of the s -genitive from a diachronic perspective, its degrammaticalization and the status of the s -genitive are discussed. The aim of the paper is to examine and analyse the use of the group genitive in the Swedish nominal phrases in three contexts, i. e. coordinated nominal phrases, nominal phrase with a prepositional phrase and nominal phrase with a relative clause. The group genitive’s domain is above all spoken, colloquial language. The analysed material consists of authentic examples of everyday use of language from the Swedish corpus Språkbanken and a questionnaire conducted among native speakers. The study shows that the group genitive is very productive with various types of nominal phrases in Swedish, even though it is still limited to colloquial and non-formal use of language.

The paper examines nominal expressions of genericity as found in generic texts (ornithological atlases) in Mainland Scandinavian languages. The material is subdivided into first mentions and subsequent mentions and these are reported separately. Subsequent mentions can be said to be subject to conflicting principles – on the one hand they are generic, on the other anaphoric. The results show that all three languages prefer singular definite NPs to express first mention genericity, however, significant differences are found in subsequent mentions.

This paper examines the work of Swedish comics creator Simon Gärdenfors, Simons 120 dagar , as an example of autobiographical comic art in which the concepts of performance and performativity, as developed by Erika Fischer-Lichte, are applied to explore aspects of self-construction. It discusses Gärdenfors’ performative action as a means of extracting experiences with the intention of making artistic work. Self-construction is shaped in relation to the participants in the art project. The work is the product of a social project, but also in relation to elements staged before the advent of the work. By exploring how Gärdenfors’ idea was enunciated and what it achieved, we can examine how he stretches compositional limits and how his graphic memoir becomes a part of a larger artistic event. By working as a performance artist during his production of the book, and by commenting and sometimes interacting with his readers in blog form before, during and after, Gärdenfors’ work attains a performative dimension.

A significant contribution to the social history of immigration in the Nordic countries, Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker trilogy (2014–2016) is also a resonant visual-verbal reflection on the relationship between the face and the mask and its impact on the formation of individual and cultural identity. Pisket’s depiction of the hardship and alienation of the struggling immigrant is marked by a striking symbolism, and the article addresses how the three books collectively can be said to outline “an anatomy of facelessness”. The analysis revolves around three central aspects of Pisket’s depiction of the trilogy’s central protagonist: the imaginative re-appropriation of the myth of the Minotaur, the ambiguous deployment of the hooded figure, and the use of the facial portrait as an ambivalent emblem of the reservoir of individual human experience.

This article addresses the transposition of H.C. Andersen’s literary production to comics and graphic novels; a vast, though little explored, field of research. It furnishes a brief overview of the work done by comic art creators in approaching the adaptation of Andersen, and proceeds to analyse Historien om en mor , Peter Madsen’s 2004 graphic novel adaptation of Andersen’s Historien om en Moder from 1848. As Madsen’s version is predominantly visual, employing images and sequences rather than words in the re-telling of the fairy tale, the investigation is presented as a semiotic analysis drawing on the tools provided by Thierry Groensteen’s The System of Comics (2007; ed. orig. Système de la bande dessinée , 1999). Categories scrutinised as meaning makers include gridding, braiding, page layout, and the handling of the dimension of time, with the ultimate aim of describing how the media affordances of comics, in the hands of a true craftsman, add depth and complexity to the re-narration of Andersen’s original.