Performing Nordic Spaces

The performance of heritage takes place in prestigious institutions such as museums and archives, in officially sanctioned spaces such as jubilees and public monuments, but also in more mundane, ephemeral and banal cultural practices, such as naming of phenomena, viewing exhibitions or walking in the countryside. This volume examines the performance of Nordic heritage and the shaping of the very idea of Norden in diverse contexts in North America, the Baltic and the Nordic countries and examines the importance of these places as sites for creating and preserving cultural heritage. Offering rich perspectives on a part of Europe which has not been the centre of discussion in the Anglophone world, this volume will be of value to a wide readership, including cultural historians, museum practitioners, policy-makers and scholars of heritage, ethnology and folkloristics.

Dance has been connected to the practices and ideologies that have shaped notions of a Nordic region for more than a century and it is ingrained into the culture and society of the region. This book investigates different dance phenomena that have either engaged with or dismantled notions of Nordicness. Looking to the motion of dancers and dance forms between different locations, organizations and networks of individuals, its authors discuss social dancing, as well as historical processes associated with collaborations in folk dance and theatre dance. They consider how similarities and differences between the Nordic countries may be discerned, for instance in patterns of reception at the arrival of dance forms from outside the Nordic countries - and vice versa, how dance from the Nordic countries is received in other parts of the world, as seen for example in the Nordic Cool Festival at the Kennedy Centre in 2013. The book opens a rare window into Nordic culture seen through the prism of dance. While it grants the reader new insights into the critical role of dance in the formation and imagining of a region, it also raises questions about the interplay between dance practices and politics.

This interdisciplinary book addresses the highly relevant debates about authenticity in North America, providing a contemporary re-examination of American culture, tourism and commodification of place. Blending social sciences and humanities research skills, it formulates an examination of the geography of authenticity in North America, and brings together studies of both rurality and urbanity across the country, exposing the many commonalities of these different landscapes. Relph stated that nostalgic places are inauthentic, yet within this work several chapters explore how festivals and visitor attractions, which cultivate place heritage appeal, are authenticated by tourists and communities, creating a shared sense of belonging. In a world of hyperreal simulacra, post-truth and fake news, this book bucks the trend by demonstrating that authenticity can be found everywhere: in a mouthful of food, in a few bars of a Beach Boys song, in a statue of a troll, in a diffuse magical atmosphere, in the weirdness of the ungentrified streets. Written by a range of leading experts, this book offers a contemporary view of American authenticity, tourism, identity and culture. It will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers and academics in Tourism, Geography, History, Cultural Studies, American Studies and Film Studies.

The work folklorists do on the ground and in communities can make a concrete difference in quality of life. While the field is not immune to extractive, racist, colonial, heteronormative, and misogynistic practices, it can counter and combat these same forces in society. Culture Work presents case studies of public-oriented work that define the Wisconsin Idea of folklore in all its complexities, challenges, and potentialities. Thematically arranged chapters represent interconnected aspects of culture work, from amplifying local voices to galvanizing community from within to reflecting on how we might use folklore to build the world we want to live in.

In an innovative effort to situate Baltic testimonies to the Gulag in the broader international context of research on displacement and memory, scholars from the Baltic States, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States seek answers to the following questions: Do different groups of deportees experience deportation differently? How do the accounts of women, children and men differ in their representation? Do various ethnic groups remember the past differently: how do they use historical and cultural paradigms to structure their experience in unique ways? The scholars researched the archives, read testimonies, interviewed former deportees, and examined artifacts of memory produced since the late 1980s, applying crossdisciplinary approaches used at the study of the Holocaust testimonies; the testimonies of women have received a particular emphasis. The essays in the book also examine the issues of transmittance, commemoration and public uses of the memory of deportations in contemporary social, cultural and political contexts of Baltic societies, including the reflection of Gulag legacy in literature, the cinema and museums.

This book explores the ways in which representative democracy works in two neighbouring collections of European states: the Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) and the Baltic (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Starting from a Nordic vantage point, contributors explore the extent to which aspects of politics function similarly or dissimilarly across the two groups of democratic states, acknowledging the differences in models of democracy that occur within each group. Authors explore the possibility that some of the apparently successful institutional features of Nordic politics have somehow influenced politics in the Baltic states, despite the considerable contextual differences between the two groups. The Nordic-Baltic comparison is particularly worthy of study, given the comparative stability of the Nordic democracies and the half century of occupation by a totalitarian dictatorship that the Baltic states endured. The central, guiding questions are: how does political representation work in countries that have a lot in common, but also a few significant contextual dissimilarities; and what, if any, relationships between the respective styles of democracy can be identified? Using a variety of theories, perspectives and methods, the empirical studies that populate the book seek to offer reflections on these questions.