Popular Culture in Norway and Sweden

Author(s): Peter Burke

Source: History Workshop, No. 3 (Spring, 1977), pp. 143-147
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4288103 .
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PopularCulturein NorwayandSweden'
byPeterBurke

If you are interestedin the historyof Europeanpopularculture,you wouldbe

well advised- financespermitting- to make an expeditionto Norway and
Sweden.The obviousthing to do is to visit the famousopen-airmuseumsat
Skansen(in Stockholm),Bygd$y(in Oslo), and De SanvigskeSamlinger(near
Lillehammer),not to mentionscoresof smallercollections.At eachof thesethree
placesyou will findyourselfcombininga museumvisit with a countrywalk,for
hundredsof farms, churches,mills, town houses and shops have been moved
thereandre-erectedin the open,by lakesandamongtrees.
The farmhousesare mainly unpaintedlog cabins with roofs of turf, often
small and usuallydark.Whatlight thereis comesfromsmallwindowsor from
the hole in the roof whichlet the smokeout. At Bygd4y,someof the housesare
providedwith chickens and cows so that they look, sound and even smell
authentic.A few are equippedwith furnitureof the seventeenth,eighteenthand
nineteenthcenturies,not only benches,tablesand beds but elaboratelycarved
and gaily painted chests, cupboards,grandfatherclocks, huge beer-bowls
('lbollar), and wooden 'irons' for pressingclothes (mangletraer),a reminder
that Scandinaviawas, like its neighbourRussia,a cultureof woodlanders.The
largerhousesin particularare richlydecorated,especiallythe bestrooms,which
were for use during festivitiesor for visitors, welcomeor unwelcome,from
weddinggueststo officialson theirroundswho might,in that sparselypopulated
region,be manymilesfromthe nearestinn.
In Norway,the specialityis 'rose-painting'(rosemalning).The walls of the
house, or the ceiling beams,or the chests and cupboardsare paintedin bright
colourswith floraldesigns,or with picturesof the DanishKingandQueen,or of
medieval warriorslike Ogier the Dane (remindersthat Norway was under
Danish rule till I8I4). There are also wovenbedspreadsfeaturingthe texts of
hymns or biblical scenes like the wise and foolish virgins. In Sweden, the
specialityis bonadmdleri,painted wall-hangingsof paper or cloth, the poor
man's tapestries, usually representingepisodesfrom the Bible such as the
MarriageFeast of Cana, the Queenof Sheba'svisit to Solomon,or the Three
Wise Men riding to Bethlehem:festive scenes to match the festive occasions
when the hangingswouldbe broughtout anddisplayed,with the Feastof Cana
representedlike a Swedishpeasantwedding,so that host andguests,as they ate
anddrank,couldgaze at theiridealisedreflectionson the wall.2
At Skansen and Bygd$y, whole streets of nineteenth-centurytown houses
havebeenre-erected,with curtainsat the now largerwindows,paintedweather-
boardingwherethe farmhouseshad plain logs, printsinsteadof hangingsand
crockeryreplacingthe woodenbowlsand plates.In the mainbuildingat Norsk
Folkemuseum,Oslo, there are reconstructionsof one-family rooms from
working-classdistricts of Christiania(as it was called then) in the I85Os,
completedown to the sockshangingon a line betweenthe rafters.In Nordiska
Museet,Stockholm,when I was there, one exhibitionwas concernedwith Nils

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144 HISTORY WORKSHOP

Mandelgren (I813-99), an artist who travelled in Sweden recording rural life;

while another illustrated the life of the statarna, the agricultural labourers, at
the end of the I gth century.

II
Other parts of Europe, from Cardiff to Bucharest, display transplanted
farmhouses in open-air museums; other places, from Quimper to Vienna, have
fine indoor collections of popular art. However, in the study of the material
culture of the peasantry the Scandinavians were pioneers. The Welsh Folk
Museum at St Fagan's goes back to I 946, the museum at Bucharest to 1936; but
similar collections had been opened at F6lis in Finland in I908, at Lillehammer
in 1904, at Bygd?y in 1902, at Copenhagen in I897, at Skansen in I89I.
Indeed, Nordiska Museet goes back to I 872, and a Norwegian had had some old
farm buildings re-erectedon a piece of land near BygdOyin I 867.3
If we go on to ask why folk-museums were founded so early at the northern
tip of Europe, the answer will take us back to the intellectuals' discovery of 'the
folk' in the late i8th and early i gth centuries. Skansen and Nordiska Museet
were built up by Artur Hazelius (i833-190I), a man who combined an ardent
patriotism with an enthusiasm for cultural history.4 The Swedish cultural past
was largely a past of peasant culture, so it is hardly surprising to find Hazelius
reconstructing the interiors of peasant houses for display at the World
Exhibition at Paris in I 878. His interests linked up with Mandelgren's and with
those of an older Norwegian contemporary,Eilert Sundt.
Eilert Sundt (I8I7-75) was the author of a book on domestic crafts in
Norway, published in i 867-8, in other words some six or seven years after
William Morris founded the Arts and Crafts movement in England by starting
what he called 'a sort of firm for producing decorative articles'. Sundt was, like
Morris, an intellectual with a social conscience, who not only studied Old Norse
but was involved in movements for popular education and social reform, a
writer for the journal Folkevennen ('The People's Friend') and a pioneer of
social research in Norway; research into the lives of gypsies, fishermen, and the
urban working class. The reconstructions of working-class housing in the
museum at Oslo are based on one of Sundt's studies.5
Before his time, the intellectuals' interest in the people had been focussed on
the peasants and their culture. In Norway, this interest was part of the rejection
of the cultural and political hegemony of Denmark, and it resulted in the
publication of books like Norsk Folk-Eventyr (I841), a volume of folktales
collected from oral tradition by P. C. AsbjOrnsenand J$rgen Moe. In I832, Erik
Geijer had published the first volume of his history of the Swedish people
(Svenska Folkets Historie), while in I 8 I4 he had contributed a long preface to
the Swedish ballads collected by his friend A. A. Afzelius. These two young men
and their friends had founded the 'Gothic Society' in I81 I; its members read
Gothic ballads to one another and took Gothic names. The Society had moral
and political as well as literary and antiquarian aims; it wanted to revive the
ancient Swedish or 'Gothic' virtues, and it had been founded in reaction to the
Swedish loss of Finland to Russia in I 809. One of its members, J. A. Hazelius,

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 MUSEUMS I45

later became a general; it was his son Artur who was the founder of Nordiska
Museet.6
It is impossible here to discuss the specific context of cultural nationalism in
early igth century Scandinavia, but these Norwegian and Swedish examples,
like many other possible instances from Scotland to Serbia, are a reminder that
the discovery of folksongs and folk art was not only an effect of the
intellectuals' discovery of the 'nation' which gathered rapid momentum in the
French Revolutionary period but also, in part at least, a movement of revolt
against the centre by the cultural periphery of Europe; part of a movement,
among intellectuals, towards self-definition and liberation in regional or national
terms, or even through the assertion of the shared cultural features of groups of
'nations' (as in the case of 'Nordic' or Scandinavian culture and the Nordic
Museum). Another stimulus to the study of traditional popular culture at this
time was the belief, exaggerated but not unfounded, that it was about to vanish.
Geijer, whose combination of gifts for poetry and history may remind us of
Macaulay or Scott, wrote one poem called Den Siste Skalden, 'The Last
Minstrel'. The Norwegian collector Magnus Landstad (I802-80) compared his
country to a 'burning house' from which there was only just time to snatch some
ballads before it was too late. These men were well aware that increasing
literacy and improving communications were undermining oral tradition.7
The material culture of the peasants was also changing, if somewhat more
slowly, which may perhaps explain why its discovery lagged behind the
discovery of the ballads. In Norway, traditional domestic crafts were threatened
by industrialisation at the time that Sundt was writing about them, the I 86os.
Hazelius became convinced that traditional Swedish culture was disappearing
after a trip to Dalarna in i 872.
The popular culture uncovered by Scandinavian intellectuals from the
beginning of the i gth century, were not the timeless traditional products of an
undisturbed 'folk'. Rosemalning and bonadmdleri had not always existed -
indeed, there are only a few traces of them before I700. The golden age of
Norwegian and Swedish popular art was the century or so before
industrialisation. It is the work of this period which makes Norway and Sweden
regions of special importance for the historian of traditional popular culture, an
importance which is due to the quality and quantity of the artifacts and to what
is known about them.
In the middle years of the I 8th century, new forms and genres were developed
by a number of gifted carvers and painters. Contrary to the common stereotype
of the 'folk artist', they were not anonymous and they were not opposed to
innovation. Carvers and painters, who were usually literate, often signed or
initialled their works, and it has proved possible to discover something about
their lives - their dates, their native parishes, and even the amount of furniture
in their houses. They varied in prosperity but were usually semi-specialists of
peasant origin and status. Dynasties of painters are not uncommon, including
women as well as men, and this suggests that the family worked as a team and
produced their paintings at home. Among the best known of these artists are
Lars Pinnerud of Heidmark (Norway), carver of pulpits and altarpieces, who
began work about 1730; Jakob Klukstad of Gudbrandsdal(Norway), who began
about twenty years later, and is perhaps best known for his candlesticks in the
form of soldiers; Corporal Gustaf Reuter (I699-1783) of HAlsingland(Sweden),

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146 HISTORY WORKSHOP

who had once served under Charles XII and liked to paint him on hangings and
walls; Clemet Hakansson (I729-95) painter of Smaland in South Sweden; and
MAlar('Painter') Erik Eliasson (I754-I8I I) of Dalarna. That these men worked
within a tradition is obvious to anyone who looks at different renderings of the
same subject, like the Marriage Feast of Cana; but they also developed
recognisable individual and family styles and allowed themselves to modify
tradition, introducing such innovations as MAlarErik Eliasson's 'lobster claw'
or 'tulip leaf' (a floral motif) and bringing into peasant art Renaissance and
Baroque motifs - cherubs, elephants, or rulers on horseback - which they had
seen in church or knew from engravings. Lars Pinnerud modelled his altarpieces
on an engraving of the altar in the church of Our Lady in Copenhagen.
Why should innovations and gifted individuals have clustered in the last
century before industrialisation began? It may be that earlier artists and their
innovations were simply less well recordedbefore the rise of rural literacy, but it
is unlikely that this is the whole story. I am no specialist in Scandinavian history
- or indeed in popular art - and have no definitive answer to give. All I shall do
is to throw out some (probably rash) ideas on the relation between social and
cultural change, generalising and linking points which have already been made
by economic historians and art historians in Norway and Sweden.
Carving, rosemalning and bonadmaleri were craft-industries; they were not
exempt from the laws of supply and demand, and it is likely that demand was
increasing in the first half of the I 8th century. Around I 700, chimneys began to
be introduced into farmhouses in Norway and Sweden, replacing the traditional
hole in the roof above the fireplace. The relatively smokeless rooms were now
worth decorating by those who could afford it. The introduction of chimneys
suggests increasing prosperity and there is evidence that some peasants were
indeed prospering. In East Norway, exports of timber were booming, notably in
Gudbrandsdal, where much fine carving and painting was produced. In Sweden,
where there is no evidence of a general rise in the standard of living (except,
perhaps, before I 7 I and after 1772), the rich peasants were becoming richer
and were able to redeem their dues to landlords. It is likely that it was this group
who furnished most of the customers for painted hangings and for grandfather
clocks (status symbols in eighteenth-century Sweden as in eighteenth-century
Wales). One is reminded of what W. G. Hoskins has written about the housing
revolution and the prosperity of the yeomanry in late sixteenth-century
England.8
The poorer peasants, such as the statarna, may well have become poorer; the
population was rising and so there was rural unemployment, especially in
mountainous districts like Gudbrandsdal and Dalarna. That brings us to the
supply side of the equation. If anyone had the inclination to turn full-time or
part-time carver or painter, he now had the opportunity and the incentive. In
Dalarna in the later i8th century there was an increase in the production of
furniture, especially clocks, which were sold in the market at Mora. The spread
of engraved reproductions of works of art made it possible for peasant painters
to discover motifs previously available only to urban craftsmen, and
compensated to some degree for their lack of professional training. Indeed, their
lack of professional training may have been an advantage (at least from our
point of view) in that it made innovation easier. In the later Igth century,
commercialisation and mass-production were to destroy the traditional popular

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 MUSEUMS 147

art of Norwayand Sweden,but thereis a sensein which these same economic

forceshad firstmadeits goldenagepossible.

I I should like to thank the British Academyfor an ExchangeGrant which made a visit to
Norwayand Swedenpossible,and also all the specialistsin folk art who toleratedmy incursion
and answeredmy questions,notably Maj Nodermannin Stockholm,Peter Ankerin Bergen,
MartaHoffmannin Oslo,andFarteinValen-Sendstad in Lillehammer.
2 For introductory booksin English,see R. Hauglidet al, NativeArt of Norway,Oslo I965, S.
Svardstr6m,Masterpieces of Dala Peasant Painting, Stockholm I95,, and M. Nodermann,
Nordisk Folkkunst, StockholmI 968.
3 K. Uldall,"Open-Air Museums"in Museum,10, 1957.
4G. Berg,A. Hazelius, Stockholm1933, esp.chs. 3, 4.
M. S. Allwood, E. Sundt: a Pioneer in Sociology and Social Anthropology, Oslo 1957.
6 0. Falnes, National Romanticism in Norway, New York 1933; J. Lundqvist, Geijer,
Stockholm 1954.
Landstadq. Falnes,p. 255.
8For introductionsin English,see E. Heckscher,An EconomicHistoryof Sweden,Cambridge,
Mass., I 954, andT. K. Derry,A Short History of Norway, seconded. LondonI 968.

East Kent History Workshop

The LabourMovement in Kent
Saturday and Sunday 26/27 November 1977
Keynes College, University of Kent, Canterbury
Programme will include:
Jack Dunn, Kent Area President of the N.U.M., on Miners in the Labour
Movement in Kent
Phil Dangerfield on Faversham Labour Party and the General Strike
George Hore on Labour Party Conferences at Margate
Reg Watts on Co-operative Movement since 1918
Bob Goffey on Aylesham Miners
Kit Ryan and Malcolm Pitt on Industrial Conflict in the early 1970s
Raphael Samuel on Workers' History
Also papers on Seamen, Fishermen, Women at Work, Women's
Movement, and Agriculture
Further details from Dave Sullivan, 1 12 Whitstable Road,
Canterbury, Kent.

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