• Open Access close
• Publications close
• Research data close
• Research software close
• Other research products close
• Article close
• SE close
• Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet - Ac... close
• Digital Humanities and Cultural Her... close
• GOTRIPLE - Social Sciences and Huma... close
• UArctic close

Iron ore mining in the Norrbotten region of Sweden began in the early years of the twentieth century as a commercially uncertain and even dangerous proposition. But even before it began to generate profits, public debate began over the appropriate role of the state and of private capital (including foreign investors). This included whether iron ore should be exported for profit or retained for future processing in Sweden—even though the technology and infrastructure for such domestic industry did not exist. Tracing the evolution of this debate in the Swedish news media through to the First World War, this paper argues that the revenue generated by exports became more attractive than the promise of future domestic industry because that revenue could underwrite pressing political objectives. Although domestic iron ore processing remained linked to visions of future industrial prosperity, uncertain visions of future prosperity lost appeal as the capacity for export revenues to generate prosperity in the present became more potent.

School in the shadow: Private education in Stockholm 1735. During the early eighteenth century, private education was a more significant sector of the educational market than was public education, regarding the number of students and teachers, the presence of female students and teachers, the social background of the students, and the introduction of a more diverse and modern curriculum. Hitherto, little has been known of the actual scope or general conditions of private education, which has been over-shadowed by studies of public education. The article maps private education through the Stockholm Church Consistory’s (Stockholms stads konsistorium) thorough inventory of private teachers in the capital of Sweden during 1734–36, providing information of both suppliers and consumers within the private sector of the educational market, as well as of the practice and functions of private education in early modern time.

This article considers colonial rhetoric manifested in representations of early settlement in the mining town of Kiruna in northernmost Sweden. Kiruna was founded more than 100 years ago by the LKAB Company with its centre the prosperous mine on Sami land. Continued iron ore mining has made it necessary to relocate the town centre a few kilometres north-east of its original location to ensure the safety of the people. The ongoing process of the town’s transformation due to industrial expansion has given rise to the creation of a memorial park between the town and the mine, in which two historical photographs have been erected on huge concrete blocks. For the Swedish Sami, the indigenous people, the transformation means further exploitation of their reindeer grazing lands and forced adaption to industrial expansion. The historical photographs in the memorial park fit into narratives of colonial expansion and exploration that represent the town’s colonial past. Both pictures are connected to colonial, racialised and gendered space during the early days of industrial colonialism. The context has been set by discussions about what Kiruna “is”, and how it originated. My aim is to study the role of collective memory in mediating a colonial past, by exploring the representations that are connected to and evoked by these pictures. In this progressive transformation of the town, what do these photographic memorials represent in relation to space? What are the values made visible in these photographs? I also discuss the ways in which Kiruna’s history becomes manifested in the town’s transformation and the use of history in urban planning. I argue that, in addressing the colonial history of Kiruna, it is timely to reconsider how memories of a town are communicated into the future by references to the past. I also claim that memory, history, and remembrance and forgetting are represented in this process of history-making and that they intersect gender, class and ethnicity.

This study shows that upper secondary students’ historical writing maybe influenced by their use of sources from traditional archives versus theiruse of digital sources in databases. A qualitative approach, theoreticalperspectives, and historical empathy seem to be stimulated primarily byusing traditional archives and print sources, while digital archives andsources, in contrast, stimulate the use of quantitative data and a moresocial scientific approach. The results indicate a historiographical shift instudents’ historical thinking, which researchers of history education needto consider in a digital era. The results of this study call for reflections inhistory teaching to make it possible for students to learn and experiencethe double nature of history as part of the humanities and social sciences Media Places

The elementary school has often been ascribed a decisive role in the modernization process that took place in Sweden from the middle of the nineteenth century. The school inspection that was instituted in 1861, and whose purpose was to improve and harmonize teaching, had an important role in this development. International research has pointed to a connection between school inspection and modernization of school teaching in many countries. In Sweden, however, the practice of inspection has not been explored at any length related to the educational changes. This article investigates the role of the school inspection in the modernization of the elementary school in Sweden during the period 1860–1910 through the inspection reports from the diocese of Uppsala. The investigation shows that school inspectors performed an important function in the development towards a broadened citizen education when the number of pupils taught in history and geography grew while religious catechism teaching was reduced in favour of biblical history. Another finding is that the inspectors contributed significantly to the professionalization and strengthening of the professionalization of elementary school teachers. This took place through regular evaluations of teaching and the encouragement of teachers to participate in elementary school teaching seminars. Mellan mitten av 1800-talet och början av 1900-talet förändrades och moderniserades folkskolan från en religiös utbildning mot en bredare medborgarutbildning. Forskare har i andra nordiska länder pekat på ett samband mellan folkskoleinspektionernas verksamhet och skolans modernisering. I denna uppsats undersöks den svenska folkskoleinspektionen och inspektörernas betydelse, både för utvecklingen av undervisningens innehåll och för stärkandet av folkskollärarna som yrkesgrupp.

”A new form of musical upbringing”: Pretenses of reform pedagogy content in the Siljan schoolIn this article, I describe the Siljan school in Tällberg as a Swedish example of alternative pedagogy. The overall questions relate to the reform pedagogy content of the school and its ability to give Swedish music teaching a new form of musical upbringing. An important issue is how the Siljan school as a model for Swedish reform has been inspired by the reform pedagogy movements in USA and Germany. The analysis is thus based on the Alm couple’s ability to give the school an international character which shines light on Swedish reforms in the greater context of reform pedagogy. With its basis in discursive education of the 1930s, two main questions are discussed: what perspective on musical education can be identified in the personal development ethos of the Siljan school? How can the school’s relation to the reform pedagogy music movement during the start of the 1900s be understood? From a hermeneutic perspective, the article contributes by investigating how the Siljan school can have affected decisions in education politics, Swedish schooling, and Swedish musical life. In summary, the article contributes with new knowledge on a chapter in the history of Swedish music pedagogy.

This study follows disabled individuals over their lifespan to examine their mortality risks in 19thcentury society, in comparison to non-disabled people. The aim is to detect whether people, due to their disability, had a higher probability of meeting a premature death. We use Sweden’s 19th-century parish registers to identify people the ministers defined as disabled, and employ theories on deviance and gender to grasp the statistical mortality findings. Disability significantly jeopardized the survival of individuals and particularly of men, probably because impairment limited their chances to match the breadwinner ideals associated with the male gender.