Journal articles on the topic 'Swedish novelists'

Swedish Literature as World Literature in the Nineteenth Century. Top Selling Novels by Women Writers So far, Swedish literary history has been the construction of a nation’s cultural heritage based on certain authorships. This most certainly was the case when the history of the Swedish nineteenth-century novel was written. In textbooks, the important writers before Strindberg and Lagerlöf are Carl Jonas Love Almqvist and Viktor Rydberg. Sometimes a couple of female novelists are included, such as Fredrika Bremer and Emilie Flygare-Carlén. The actual circulation of Swedish novels in translation shows another picture. While Bremer and Flygare-Carlén, together with Marie Sophie Schwartz, were very popular novelists in both Europe and the United States, Almqvist’s and Rydberg’s novels reached very few readers outside of Scandinavia. This article aims to examine the export of Swedish novels in the nineteenth century. Statistics based on the SWED database, constructed in connection to the research project Swedish Women Writers on Export in the Nineteenth Century, is used to describe the distribution of Swedish novels across borders and their translation into different target languages. Similarities and dissimilarities in distribution and reception will be discussed, as well as some of the reasons behind these differences. The number of translated titles, as well as the transcultural circulation of the three most translated and top-selling novelists, Bremer, Flygare-Carlén and Schwartz, are compared to the circulation of Almqvist’s and Rydberg’s translated works. Based on these comparisons, it becomes obvious that if the history of Swedish literature were written from a transcultural perspective based on the contemporary audience’s choice of literary works and writers, it would look very different from the nation-based literary history of today. For example, Almqvist and Rydberg would be edged out by female novelists such as Bremer,Flygare-Carlén, and Schwartz.

The article examines conceptual and artistic issues of the most seminal novels written by Eyvind Johnson (1900–1976), one of the most renowned Swedish writers of the 20th century. Johnson, born in the north of Sweden, was of low origin, and he started his career as an amateur proletarian writer, a typical representative of the Swedish “proletarian literature,” a movement that was largely instrumental in shaping the form and substance of prose fiction in Sweden in the first half of the last century. His obligatory education ended at the age of fourteen, but his insatiable yearning for self-education, books, foreign languages, as well as his broad and hard-earned experience, gradually made him one of the most erudite and intellectually intricate Swedish novelists of the last century. From the 1940s on, the writer had gone far beyond the borders of “proletarian literature” and created works that won him international acclaim and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1974. Yet, the works of this humanitarian writer, who kept condemning totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, are practically unknown in our country, in translations of his novels and research papers. This article analyzes the cycles on Ulof and Krilon, which are devoted to Sweden, and written after the Second World War: the novels The Surge of the Shores, Dreams of Roses and Fire, and The Days of His Grace are based on subjects of the classical literature and the events of the European history. The object of our study is protagonists in the above-mentioned works. The subject of the research is the evolution of the types and images of humanitarian intellectuals in their clashes with authoritarian power, dictatorship and war. The article focuses on characters who, when placed in such condition, have to make up their minds and choose a life strategy which would conform with Johnson’s ethical and philosophical position, and on the evolution of describing circumstances and results of these choices throughout the whole life of the writer.

The Scandinavian Emigration Novel From about 1850 onward to the early nineteen hundred and thirties, millions of Europeans have emigrated to North America. Over two million of these emigrants were Scandinavians who tried to realize their dreams of freedom and economic progress at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. They did not always realize that adapting to the American reality often implied sacrifices and hardship. The emigration from Norway and Sweden was far greater than the Danish exodus, and both Norwegian and Swedish historiographers and novelists have depicted the impressive adventures of their countrymen. Danish authors have been more reluctant to venture into the depiction of their countrymen's exodus. Emigration novels have been a distinct area of interest in Norwegian literary research. In Sweden, especially Vilhelm Moberg’s emigration tetralogy has been studied by scholars and compared with the historical facts. Notwithstanding the abundant secondary literature, with the exception of Sophus Keith Winter, in his essay on Moberg’s emigration novels (1962), Kjetil A. Flatin in the article ‘Historical novel – emigrant novel’ (1977), and Ingeborg Kongslien in her comparative approach Draumen om fridom og jord (1989), no researcher has attempted to define emigration literature as a genre. In this article, I will try to define the emigration novel as a Scandinavian genre by using a model which combines A. J. Greimar’s actantial model or narrative scheme with the American literary scholar W.Q. Boelhower's insights in American immigrant literature (Boelhover, 1981). A combination of the actantial model and copular clauses or taxonomic links helps to describe the history of the emigration novel. Furthermore, it makes it possible to link emigrant fiction to historiographic literature. In this way, the push and pull factors often mentioned in the historical emigrant literature can be compared with individual emigration experiences.

This research paper studies the wide use of the two verbs: “lç -” and “Ye-”. It studies those two verbs basing on the novel “Arafat ta ir Cocuk” by (Zulfu LIVAN ELI) and the novel “Hasret” by (Canan TAN) to identify the usages of the verb. The reason for choosing those two novels because the novelists are considered very famous writers in the present day. Their writings are read widely by readers. The novel “Arafat ta ir Cocuk”, that is considered the first literary work by (Zulfu LIVAN ELI), has been published in 1978. It received a wide interest in Turkey and all over the world. It has been published in Turkey for several times and translated into German and Persian as well. The novel has been turned to be a movie in the German and Swedish TV. They took in consideration that the text written in the novel represents daily conversation language with a simple style. As for (Canan TAN) and her novel “Hasret”, is considered one of the best-selling novels and this why we decide to choose it for this study. I want in this study to show the wide use of the two verbs “lç -” and “Ye-”. The research paper consists of main sections. The first one studies the verb “Ye-” and the second studies the verb “lç -”. The final section studies the two verbs together. The sections are divided within according to the features meaning and pattern and the formalistic and usage features. The classification has been indexed in sections according to alphabetical letters and in the end of any form I mentioned abbreviation of product and the form that is taken from. I identify these expressions that widely contain the two verbs “lç -” and “Ye-” with a bold style following the procedures of the book of (Zeynep Korkmaz) entitled (Turkish Language Grammar) and Turkish Language Grammar book by (Tahsin Banguoglu). In the conclusion I divided the classification as well as what have been identified in the usages of the two verbs, the subject of the study.

”Mankind Overflows at the Same Time as It Dries Up”: Modernity and Anthropocentrism in Works by Karl-Erik Forsslund and Helena Granström This article investigates the critique of modernity and anthropocentrism in works by Swedish authors Karl-Erik Forsslund (1872–1941), poet and novelist, and Helena Granström (b. 1983), poet, novelist and essayist. By comparing the ecological thinking of these two authors – highlighting important similarities, but also a number of significant differences – the article takes the form of an overview of the development of environmentalism. Special attention is given to the relations between man and animal in the 20th and 21st centuries, inspired by the works of ecocritics such as Greg Garrard and Timothy Morton.

Carl Gustaf Gilbert Hamilton is the best-known of Swedish fictional spies – in Scandinavia at least. The brain child of novelist Jan Guillou, Hamilton is Sweden’s James Bond or Dirty Harry. Five prominent Swedish actors – Stellan Skarsgård, Peter Haber, Stefan Sauk, Peter Stormare and Mikael Persbrandt – have played the spy on-screen, yet unlike Sean Connery and Daniel Craig as Bond or Clint Eastwood as Harry, their performances have been largely unnoticed, even in Sweden. This article studies their acting with two goals in mind: (1) to show how actors have shaped Sweden’s best-known secret agent on film and for TV, and (2) to elucidate how their acting decisions respond to genre customs and constraints. In conclusion I comment on why the screen Hamiltons have not found audiences outside Scandinavia and indicate ways that transnational action genres have helped reshape Swedish culture, transforming one of its national icons, Hamilton, in the process.

Media development has profoundly affected the literary public sphere. Authors as well as politicians may feel obliged to follow “the law of compulsory visibility” (John B. Thompson). All contemporary writers, be it bestselling authors or exclusive, high brow poets, must in one way or another reflect on their marketing and media strategies. Meeting and communicating with the audience, the potential readers, is of critical importance. In the article “The Author on Stage”, the authors consider how different literary performances by Swedish novelist Björn Ranelid (b. 1949) help establish his “brand name” on the literary market place.

Engaged in “soul-making,” novelist Jim Harrison experiments in his novel Dalva with developing his feminine side in the service of his art and life by utilizing psychologist James Hillman's post-Jungian ideas. Harrison tells the story in the first person voice of Dalva, a Nebraskan woman of Swedish and Sioux descent. To overcome depression and to thrive, Harrison had to acknowledge a masculinity of greater dimension than he had characterized earlier in his career, when his characters were often called “macho.” The new conception of masculinity is symbolized by locating his lost “twin sister.” Dalva is the outward sign that Harrison found her, thereby extending his understanding of masculinity and revitalizing his life and art.

Abstract Studying the translations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the most successful novels of all times, may reveal, even nowadays, several surprises. First published by Constable on 26 May 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has never been out of print, and it has been translated into about 30 languages (Light 2009). This article starts with an analysis of some keywords in Bram Stoker’s sources on Transylvania and their translations from Romanian into English, and points to some inaccurate translations which influenced the novelist to locate the action in Transylvania and change the name of the main vampire character. The following subchapters examine the recent research on the first translations of Dracula, discussing the Hungarian translation (1898), the Swedish variant (1899) and the Icelandic versions (1900, 1901), and the last section is dedicated to the translation into Romanian, published in 1990.

From a certain perspective, literature is always political. Literature in a broad sense has been a source of uprisings and protest at least since Martin Luther nailed his theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 – and probably much further back in history than that. Narratives are the most potent way to articulate both political praise and criticism within a given society. In his political satires, British author George Orwell reviled all kinds of totalitarianism and the idea of a socialist utopia. Swedish writer and journalist Stieg Larsson wrote explicitly dystopian crime stories targeting the Swedish welfare state. German novelist Heinrich Böll turned a critical eye on the development of the tabloid press and the use of state monitoring in German society. In the same tradition, Michel Houellebecq has been seen as a very provocative writer in his tone and in his use of political tools. He has articulated a nearly individual anarchist perspective combined with authoritarian and paternalistic views. In Soumission, Houellebecq uses the European idea of multiculturalism to explode our political frames from within. This article explores the perception of religion in Soumission, assesses the critique Houellebecq directs towards French society and European developments, and examines Houellebecq’s perception of democracy and politics. The following questions are addressed: does Houellebecq’s critique come from a classical ideological perspective? Does he describe any elements of an ideal society – even if only as the reverse of a presented dystopia? What kind of democracy does the text of Soumission support or oppose?

Several physicians have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature, but so far none of them have received it. Because physicians as women and men of letters have been a major topic of feuilletons, seminars and books for many years, questions arise to what extent medicine was a topic in the proposals for the Nobel Prize and in the Nobel jury evaluations: how were the nominees enacted (or not) as physicians, and why were none of them awarded? Drawing on nomination letters and evaluations by the Nobel committee for literature collected in the archive of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, this article offers a first overview of nominated physician-author candidates. The focus is on the Austrian historian of medicine Max Neuburger (1868–1955), the German novelist Hans Carossa (1878–1956), and the German poet Gottfried Benn (1886–1956), but it also briefly takes further physician-author nominees into account such as Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965). The article is part of an interdisciplinary medical humanities project that analyses nominations and committee reports for physicians and natural scientists nominated for the Nobel Prize from 1901 to 1970.

The point of departure of this paper is a lecture by Edward Said, in which he claimed it necessary for today’s intellectuals to respond to modern specialization by assuming an attitude of amateurism in public life. It can be argued that there is a historical connection between the public role of the learned amateur and the essay as a form of expression and communication. Among recent advocates of the essay, the decline of this genre in modernity has sometimes been explained by the increasing public confidence in experts and specialists. According to this view, the development of modern society has made it less legitimate for essayists to serve as generalist commentators on society and culture. However, the growing tension between amateurism and professionalism goes back at least to the nineteenth century, and it has marked the ambiguous relation of the essay and the essayist to academia and institutional discourse ever since. This paper discusses what has become of this public role of essayists in late modernity. Some examples of essayists and essayistic writing of later decades, chiefly from Sweden, serve as illustrations of a general line of argument, even though there are also comparisons between the essay in Sweden and in other countries. Among the examples of Swedish essayists put forward here are Kerstin Ekman and Peter Nilson. The reception of these writers suggests that the essayist, adopting the role as amateur, driven by devotion and interest for the larger picture, might still be a vital part of public culture today. However, it is also clear that writers like Ekman and Nilson have gained at least part of their authority from being acknowledged in other fields or genres – Ekman as a distinguished novelist and Nilson as a trained astronomer.

Umulige fiktioner i den romantiske roman »Ein Roman ist ein romantisches Buch«. Impossible Fictions in the Romantic NovelIn the Romantic period, the novel is regarded as a literary form that, by poetological necessity, makes experiments by means of literary representation possible. Seen in an European perspective this is almost solely a matter of early German Romanticism, Frühromantik, where Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis by formulating the novel as a specific, modern genre, try to state a new, revolutionary aesthetics. The article thus points at three characteristic features of the novel’s poetics within this context: 1) the novel contains a double poetics of formal heterogeneity and spiritual homogeneity; 2) the novel gets its value through its inherent epistemology of world views; 3) the novel of early German Romanticism understands itself in a productive split of an utopian vision that never can be fulfilled and an auto-reflexivity exactly because of the knowledge of permanent unfulfillment. Further,the article argues, an aesthetics of impossible fictions evolves as the potential and heritage of this kind of poetics. In the last part of the article, a novel of the Swedish (post-)Romantic author Carl Jonas Love Almqvist (1793-1866), Drottningens juvelsmycke (The Queen’s Tiara, 1834), is read as way of representing, through the constitution of the main character, Tintomara, a principle of the absolute that displays the borders of novelistic representation.

Divination and mantics play a decisive role in ancient as well as modern religiosity. Although the subjects are not an integral part of the current curriculums for theology and the study of religion, they are pivotal for understanding religion and religious practices, especially of the ancient world. In this paper, which is the first part of a larger research project on divination and mantics of early Christianity and ancient Judaism, I explore one particular form of mantics: rhapsodomantics, i.e. divination by means of Sacred Books that are either randomly opened or used in order to provide ‘slips’ upon which verses from the Books in question are written. The randomly chosen textual passage is secondarily interpreted and explained in terms of a divinely inspired guidance. In this manner the lot oracle provides access to the understanding of the divine world. The ritual consultance of lot oracles is simultaneously a way of domesticising the contingency and arbitrariness of life. By means of a ritually staged display of arbitrariness (the random drawing of lots), arbitrariness is mastered. First – based on recent insights from the field of cognitive science (primarily Whitehouse and Boyer), semiotics, the tradition of sociology of knowledge and ritual studies – I discuss imagistic thought in contrast to doctrinaire modes of religiosity. Second, I scrutinize the ritual raison d’être for divination and mantics.The second part of the paper presents an analysis of numerous texts exemplifying rhapsodomantics. In a recent book by the Swedish novelist P.O. Enquist Lewis Rejse, narrating the founding of the Pentecostal Church of Sweden, the ritual practice of using ‘Thumble verses’ and ‘Manna seeds’ plays a decisive role in the founding of the community. As a point of departure relevant excerpts from this book are discussed in order to travel back to the Märchenland of the ancient world. Numerous Greco-Roman, Jewish and Early Christian examples of rhapsodomantics are discussed and related to recent analyses by van der Horst and Potter.

The poetess Sophia Elisabeth Brenner (Stockholm, 1659-1730) is likely to be a household name with a readership familiar with the fictive universe of the contemporary Swedish literary scholar and novelist Carina Burman. At the centre of Burman’s second novel Den tionde Sånggudinnan (1996) stands in fact the fictionalised life of Brenner.

The Energy of Language – On the Translations of Moreeni by Lauri Viita and Their Reception During his short life, the Finnish poet and novelist Lauri Viita (1916–1965) published four collections of poems and two novels. His most famous work Moreeni (”Moraine”) published in 1950 belongs to the most central novels in Finnish realism. In the context of Finnish literature, Viita is known, for example, for his dynamic language and power of expression. However, Moreeni has been translated only into few languages: German in 1964, Swedish in 1965, Polish in 1970, Hungarian in 1977 and Russian in 1981. e aim of this article is to examine the translation history of Moreeni and the reception of the translations by focusing on the German translation Ein einzelner Weiser ist immer ein Narr by Carl-August von Willebrand (1923–1999) and the Swedish translation Morän by Nils-Börje Stormbom (1925–). e translators’ strategies are analysed by means of the concepts domestication and foreignization introduced by Lawrence Venuti in 1995. e reception is analysed with regard to the concept of paratext coined by Gérard Genette in 1987. e results indicate that it is problematic to place the translators unambiguously in regard to the domestication/foreignization dichotomy; they make use of both strategies. e reception of the German and Swedish translations has in general been positive, although the material is relatively scarce. Due to lack of translations, Viita is not as well-known abroad as, for example, his contemporaries Mika Waltari (1908–1979) and Väinö Linna (1920–1992).

How might the idea of recognition offer a fresh slant on contemporary women’s writing? In this essay, we bring theories of recognition into dialogue with two literary works: Chris Kraus’s widely reviewed memoir I Love Dick and The Other Woman by the well-regarded Swedish novelist Therese Bohman. Our analysis focuses on recognition within the texts as well as its relevance to relations between texts and readers. We seek to clarify how attitudes to heterosexual love, feminism and same-sex identification are entangled and the broader implications of such entanglements. We are interested in how the protagonists engage the world as readers and the role of literature in shaping their identifications and attachments. Yet, a comparative analysis can also bring to light how a feminist habitus is predicated on class and education, suggesting that these two texts may invite rather different experiences of recognition.

Introduction Greater resilience is associated with the ability to self-organise, and with social learning as part of a process of adaptation and transformation (Goldstein 341). This article deals with responses to a crisis in a Norwegian community in the late 1880s, and with some of the many internal conflicts it caused. The crisis and the subsequent conflicts in this particular community, Volda, were caused by a number of processes, driven mostly by external forces and closely linked to the expansion of the capitalist mode of production in rural Norway. But the crisis also reflects a growing nationalism in Norway. In the late 1880s, all these causes seemed to come together in Volda, a small community consisting mostly of independent small farmers and of fishers. The article employs the concept of ‘resilience’ and the theory of resilience in order better to understand how individuals and the community reacted to crisis and conflict in Volda in late 1880, experiences which will cast light on the history of the late 1880s in Volda, and on individuals and communities elsewhere which have also experienced such crises. Theoretical Perspectives Some understandings of social resilience inspired by systems theory and ecology focus on a society’s ability to maintain existing structures. Reducing conflict to promote greater collaboration and resilience, however, may become a reactionary strategy, perpetuating inequalities (Arthur, Friend and Marschke). Instead, the understanding of resilience could be enriched by drawing on ecological perspectives that see conflict as an integral aspect of a diverse ecology in continuous development. In the same vein, Grove has argued that some approaches to anticipatory politics fashion subjects to withstand ‘shocks and responding to adversity through modern institutions such as human rights and the social contract, rather than mobilising against the sources of insecurity’. As an alternative, radical politics of resilience ought to explore political alternatives to the existing order of things. Methodology According to Hall and Lamont, understanding “how individuals, communities, and societies secured their well-being” in the face of the challenges imposed by neoliberalism is a “problem of understanding the bases for social resilience”. This article takes a similarly broad approach to understanding resilience, focusing on a small group of people within a relatively small community to understand how they attempted to secure their well-being in the face of the challenges posed by capitalism and growing nationalism. The main interest, however, is not resilience understood as something that exists or is being produced within this small group, but, rather, how this group produced social imaginaries of the past and the future in cooperation and conflict with other groups in the same community. The research proceeds to analyse the contributions mainly of six members of this small group. It draws on existing literature on the history of the community in the late 1800s and, in particular, biographies of Synnøve Riste (Øyehaug) and Rasmus Steinsvik (Gausemel). In addition, the research builds on original empirical research of approximately 500 articles written by the members of the group in the period from 1887 to 1895 and published in the newspapers Vestmannen, Fedraheimen and 17de Mai; and will try to re-tell a history of key events, referring to a selection of these articles. A Story about Being a Woman in Volda in the Late 1880s This history begins with a letter from Synnøve Riste, a young peasant woman and daughter of a local member of parliament, to Anders Hovden, a friend and theology student. In the letter, Synnøve Riste told her friend about something she just had experienced and had found disturbing (more details in Øyehaug). She first sets her story in the context of an evangelical awakening that was gaining momentum in the community. There was one preacher in particular who seemed to have become very popular among the young women. He had few problems when it comes to women, she wrote, ironically. Curious about the whole thing, Synnøve decided to attend a meeting to see for herself what was going on. The preacher noticed her among the group of young women. He turned his attention towards her and scolded her for her apparent lack of religious fervour. In the letter she explained the feeling of shame that came over her when the preacher singled her out for public criticism. But the feeling of shame soon gave way to anger, she wrote, before adding that the worst part of it was ‘not being able to speak back’; as a woman at a religious meeting she had to hold her tongue. Synnøve Riste was worried about the consequences of the religious awakening. She asked her friend to do something. Could he perhaps write a poem for the weekly newspaper the group had begun to publish only a few months earlier? Anders Hovden duly complied. The poem was published, anonymously, on Wednesday 17 March 1888. Previously, the poem says, women enjoyed the freedom to roam the mountains and valleys. Now, however, a dark mood had come over the young women. ‘Use your mind! Let the madness end! Throw off the blood sucker! And let the world see that you are a woman!’ The puritans appreciated neither the poem nor the newspaper. The newspaper was published by the same group of young men and women who had already organised a private language school for those who wanted to learn to read and write New Norwegian, a ‘new’ language based on the old dialects stemming from the time before Norway lost its independence and became a part of Denmark and then, after 1814, Sweden. At the language school the students read and discussed translations of Karl Marx and the anarchist Peter Kropotkin. The newspaper quickly grew radical. It reported on the riots following the hanging of the Haymarket Anarchists in Chicago in 1886. It advocated women’s suffrage, agitated against capitalism, argued that peasants and small farmers must learn solidarity from the industrial workers defended a young woman in Oslo who was convicted of killing her newborn baby and published articles from international socialist and anarchist newspapers and magazines. Social Causes for Individual Resilience and Collaborative Resilience Recent literature on developmental psychology link resilience to ‘the availability of close attachments or a supportive and disciplined environment’ (Hall and Lamont 13). Some psychologists have studied how individuals feel empowered or constrained by their environment. Synnøve Riste clearly felt constrained by developments in her social world, but was also resourceful enough to find ways to resist and engage in transformational social action on many levels. According to contemporary testimonies, Synnøve Riste must have been an extraordinary woman (Steinsvik "Synnøve Riste"). She was born Synnøve Aarflot, but later married Per Riste and took his family name. The Aarflot family was relatively well-off and locally influential, although the farms were quite small by European standards. Both her father and her uncle served as members of parliament for the (‘left’) Liberal Party. From a young age she took responsibility for her younger siblings and for the family farm, as her father spent much time in the capital. Her grandfather had been granted the privilege of printing books and newspapers, which meant that she grew up with easy access to current news and debates. She married a man of her own choosing; a man substantially older than herself, but with a reputation for liberal ideas on language, education and social issues. Psychological approaches to resilience consider the influence of cognitive ability, self-perception and emotional regulation, in addition to social networks and community support, as important sources of resilience (Lamont, Welburn and Fleming). Synnøve Riste’s friend and lover, Rasmus Steinsvik, later described her as ‘a mainspring’ of social activity. She did not only rely on family, social networks and community support to resist stigmatisation from the puritans, but she was herself a driving force behind social activities that produced new knowledge and generated communities of support for others. Lamont, Welburn and Fleming underline the importance for social resilience of cultural repertoires and the availability of ‘alternative ways of understanding social reality’ (Lamont, Welburn and Fleming). Many of the social activities Synnøve Riste instigated served as arenas for debate and collaborative activity to develop alternative understandings of the social reality of the community. In 1887, Synnøve Riste had relied on support from her extended family to found the newspaper Vestmannen, but as the group around the language school and newspaper gradually produced more radical alternative understandings of the social reality they came increasingly into conflict with less radical members of the Liberal Party. Her uncle owned the printing press where Vestmannen was printed. He was also a member of parliament seeking re-election. And he was certainly not amused when Rasmus Steinsvik, editor of Vestmannen, published an article reprimanding him for his lacklustre performance in general and his unprincipled voting in support of a budget allocating the Swedish king a substantial amount of money. Steinsvik advised the readers to vote instead for Per Riste, Synnøve Riste’s liberal husband and director of the language school. The uncle stopped printing the newspaper. Social Resilience in Volda The growing social conflicts in Volda might be taken to indicate a lack of resilience. This, however, would be a mistake. Social connectedness is an important source of social resilience (Barnes and Hall 226). Strong ties to family and friends matter, as does membership in associations. Dense networks of social connectedness are related to well-being and social resilience. Inversely, high levels of inequality seem to be linked to low levels of resilience. Participation in democratic processes has also been found to be an important source of resilience (Barnes and Hall 229). Volda was a small community with relatively low levels of inequality and local cultural traditions underlining the importance of cooperation and the obligations of everyone to participate in various forms of communal work. Similarly, even though a couple of families dominated local politics, there was no significant socioeconomic division between the average and the more prosperous farmers. Traditionally, women on the small, independent farms participated actively in most aspects of social life. Volda would thus score high on most indicators predicting social resilience. Reading the local newspapers confirms this impression of high levels of social resilience. In fact, this small community of only a few hundred families produced two competing newspapers at the time. Vestmannen dedicated ample space to issues related to education and schools, including adult education, reflecting the fact that Volda was emerging as a local educational centre; local youths attending schools outside the community regularly wrote articles in the newspaper to share the new knowledge they had attained with other members of the community. The topics were in large part related to farming, earth sciences, meteorology and fisheries. Vestmannen also reported on other local associations and activities. The local newspapers reported on numerous political meetings and public debates. The Liberal Party was traditionally the strongest political party in Volda and pushed for greater independence from Sweden, but was divided between moderates and radicals. The radicals joined workers and socialists in demanding universal suffrage, including, as we have seen, women’s right to vote. The left libertarians in Volda organised a ‘radical left’ faction of the Liberal Party and in the run-up to the elections in 1888 numerous rallies were arranged. In some parts of the municipality the youth set up independent and often quite radical youth organisations, while others established a ‘book discussion’. The language issue developed into a particularly powerful source for social resilience. All members of the community shared the experience of having to write and speak a foreign language when communicating with authorities or during higher education. It was a shared experience of discrimination that contributed to producing a common identity. Hing has shown that those who value their in-group ‘can draw on this positive identity to provide a sense of self-worth that offers resilience’. The struggle for recognition stimulated locals to arrange independent activities, and it was in fact through the burgeoning movement for a New Norwegian language that the local radicals in Volda first encountered radical literature that helped them reframe the problems and issues of their social world. In his biography of Ivar Mortensson Egnund, editor of the newspaper Fedraheimen and a lifelong collaborator of Rasmus Steinsvik, Klaus Langen has argued that Mortensson Egnund saw the ideal type of community imagined by the anarchist Leo Tolstoy in the small Norwegian communities of independent small farmers, a potential model for cooperation, participation and freedom. It was not an uncritical perspective, however. The left libertarians were constantly involved in clashes with what they saw as repressive forces within the communities. It is probably more correct to say that they believed that the potential existed, within these communities, for freedom to flourish. Most importantly, however, reading Fedraheimen, and particularly the journalist, editor and novelist Arne Garborg, infused this group of local radicals with anti-capitalist perspectives to be used to make sense of the processes of change that affected the community. One of Garborg’s biographers, claims that no Norwegian has ever been more fundamentally anti-capitalist than Garborg (Thesen). This anti-capitalism helped the radicals in Volda to understand the local conflicts and the evangelical awakening as symptoms of a deeper and more fundamental development driven by capitalism. A series of article in Vestmannen called for solidarity and unity between small farmers and the growing urban class of industrial workers. Science and Modernity The left libertarians put their hope in science and modernity to improve the lives of people. They believed that education was the key to move forward and get rid of the old and bad ways of doing things. The newspaper was reporting the latest advances in natural sciences and life sciences. It reported enthusiastically about the marvels of electricity, and speculated about a future in which Norway could exploit the waterfalls to generate it on a large scale. Vestmannen printed articles in defence of Darwinism (Egnund), new insights from astronomy (Steinsvik "Kva Den Nye Astronomien"), health sciences, agronomy, new methods of fishing and farming – and much more. This was a time when such matters mattered. Reports on new advances in meteorology in the newspaper appeared next to harrowing reports about the devastating effects of a storm that surprised local fishermen at sea where many men regularly paid with their lives. Hunger was still a constant threat in the harsh winter months, so new knowledge that could improve the harvest was most welcome. Leprosy and other diseases continued to be serious problems in this region of Norway. Health could not be taken lightly, and the left libertarians believed that science and knowledge was the only way forward. ‘Knowledge is a sweet fruit,’ Vestmannen wrote. Reporting on Darwinism and astronomy again pitted Vestmannen against the puritans. On several occasions the newspaper reported on confrontations between those who promoted science and those who defended a fundamentalist view of the Bible. In November 1888 the signature ‘-t’ published an article on a meeting that had taken place a few days earlier in a small village not far from Volda (Unknown). The article described how local teachers and other participants were scolded for holding liberal views on science and religion. Anyone who expressed the view that the Bible should not be interpreted literally risked being stigmatised and ostracised. It is tempting to label the group of left libertarians ‘positivists’ or ‘modernists’, but that would be unfair. Arne Garborg, the group’s most important source of inspiration, was indeed inspired by Émile Zola and the French naturalists. Garborg had argued that nothing less than the uncompromising search for truth was acceptable. Nevertheless, he did not believe in objectivity; Garborg and his followers agreed that it was not possible or even desirable to be anything else than subjective. Adaptation or Transformation? PM Giærder, a friend of Rasmus Steinsvik’s, built a new printing press with the help of local blacksmiths, so the newspaper could keep afloat for a few more months. Finally, however, in 1888, the editor and the printer took the printing press with them and moved to Tynset, another small community to the east. There they joined forces with another dwindling left libertarian publication, Fedraheimen. Generations later, more details emerged about the hurried exit from Volda. Synnøve Riste had become pregnant, but not by her husband Per. She was pregnant by Rasmus Steinsvik, the editor of Vestmannen and co-founder of the language school. And then, after giving birth to a baby daughter she fell ill and died. The former friends Per and Rasmus were now enemies and the group of left libertarians in Volda fell apart. It would be too easy to conclude that the left libertarians failed to transform the community and a closer look would reveal a more nuanced picture. Key members of the radical group went on to play important roles on the local and national political scene. Locally, the remaining members of the group formed new alliances with former opponents to continue the language struggle. The local church gradually began to sympathise with those who agitated for a new language based on the Norwegian dialects. The radical faction of the Liberal Party grew in importance as the conflict with Sweden over the hated union intensified. The anarchists Garborg and Steinsvik became successful editors of a radical national newspaper, 17de Mai, while two other members of the small group of radicals went on to become mayors of Volda. One was later elected member of parliament for the Liberal Party. Many of the more radical anarchist and communist ideas failed to make an impact on society. However, on issues such as women’s rights, voting and science, the left libertarians left a lasting impression on the community. It is fair to say that they contributed to transforming their society in many and lasting ways. Conclusion This study of crisis and conflict in Volda indicate that conflict can play an important role in social learning and collective creativity in resilient communities. There is a tendency, in parts of resilience literature, to view resilient communities as harmonious wholes without rifts or clashes of interests (see for instance Goldstein; Arthur, Friend and Marschke). Instead, conflicts should rather be understood as a natural aspect of any society adapting and transforming itself to respond to crisis. Future research on social resilience could benefit from an ecological understanding of nature that accepts polarisation and conflict as a natural part of ecology and which helps us to reach deeper understandings of the social world, also fostering learning, creativity and the production of alternative political solutions. This research has indicated the importance of social imaginaries of the past. Collective memories of ‘what everybody knows that everybody else knows’ about ‘what has worked in the past’ form the basis for producing ideas about how to create collective action (Swidler 338, 39). Historical institutions are pivotal in producing schemas which are default options for collective action. In Volda, the left libertarians imagined a potential for freedom in the past of the community; this formed the basis for producing an alternative social imaginary of the future of the community. The social imaginary was not, however, based only on local experience and collective memory of the past. Theories played an important role in the process of trying to understand the past and the present in order to imagine future alternatives. The conflicts themselves stimulated the radicals to search more widely and probe more deeply for alternative explanations to the problems they experienced. This search led them to new insights which were sometimes adopted by the local community and, in some cases, helped to transform social life in the long-run. References Arthur, Robert, Richard Friend, and Melissa Marschke. "Fostering Collaborative Resilience through Adaptive Comanagement: Reconciling Theory and Practice in the Management of Fisheries in the Mekong Region." 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