We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Ett svenskt Arkadien -- landskapet i svenska ortsbeskrivningar 1800-1860.
- Authors
Runefelt, Leif
- Abstract
This essay describes the view taken of the landscape in Swedish local descriptions during the first half of the i9th century, a genre in which a parish or a deanery and its economic activities, natural history and inhabitants were described mainly by agrarian persons of quality. Previous research has ascribed these local descriptions an informative function. They have been taken as civil servants' collections of local facts, passed on to an apparatus of national government which per se cannot command a full view of local particularities. This has resulted in ideological and rhetorical functions of the genre being left unexplored and in the question of its purpose not being problematised, especially as regards the early I9th century, the very period in which the production of local descriptions culminated. By analysing provincial descriptions in this genre, I show that the local descriptions cannot be viewed as texts for the impartial transmission of information but are instead ideological texts presenting an idealised, cosmeticised image of the landscape at the expense of other images. The present account is based on the argument underlying accounts of landscape history recently, namely that cultural and ideological factors impact on the perception and description of landscapes. There is no such thing as an objective description of a landscape. Instead every landscape description is informed by the writer's values. Local descriptions filter off many types of Swedish landscape, such as conifer forests and swamps, so as instead to highlight the picture of a verdant, undulating and variegated landscape conferring both practical benefits and relaxation. This landscape is clearly influenced by the "English park" landscape so popular at the time. It was above all agrarian persons of quality who embraced this ideal, and the values appearing in landscape descriptions are the very ones pertaining to the world of the squirearchy. It is a depiction which idyllises the landscape, stresses immutability and tones down the importance of non-agrarian activities, markets and roads - an upper-class utopia. It is a landscape which is useful and productive without, as it seems, any work being done. All in all, through this idyllisation, local descriptions tie in with an ancient European pastoral tradition far removed from the objective transmission of information.
- Subjects
SWEDEN; LANDSCAPES; CIVIL service; NATURAL history; ECONOMIC indicators; PARTICULARITY (Aesthetics)
- Publication
Bebyggelsehistorisk Tidskrift, 2010, Issue 59, p82
- ISSN
0349-2834
- Publication type
Article