Annika Strandin Pers

In Sweden, common elementary schools (folkskolan) were introduced in the 1840s. As a consequence, children started walking to and from school several days per week. The school route, as both place and practice, impacted society and families; it created new ways and needs in everyday life. From a time-geographic perspective, the article investigates children's mobility in everyday life in order to understand what walking to school encompassed. Moreover, whereas the common narrative of school routes in the past emphasizes distances and challenges of the journeys it often omits the adult world's comprehension and involvement. The aim of the article is to increase understandings of the school route as a phenomenon and its meanings in everyday life from a historical perspective. Through qualitative analysis of memoirs and societal discussions, the authors focus on the difficulties (conceptualized as "weights") that the school routes could entail and how the adult world tried to manage them (conceptualized as "reliefs"). One conclusion is that society and families were aware of, and tried to deal with, those hardships, and a second is that the school route was more than a distance. In this regard, variations in families' geographical and socioeconomic positions and the physical landscape played crucial roles.

Utifrån tvärvetenskapliga perspektiv och metoder, hämtade från etnologin och kulturgeografin, och med en empirisk utgångspunkt i tre kulturmiljöer som förvaltas av Statens fastighetsverk (SFV) i Sverige, analyserar artikeln historiebruk i form av kulturarvsproduktion och föreslår ett applicerbart normkritiskt samt i förlängningen normkreativt angreppssätt för att möjliggöra alternativa, varierade och mer inkluderande historieskildringar kring kulturmiljöer. Genom att utveckla och integrera dessa synsätt och verktyg vill artikeln argumentera för att man får tillgång till nya berättelser om platsen; berättelser som går utöver den traditionella, „normala“ historien om staten, enskilda byggnaders materiella utformning och den sociokulturella och ekonomiska eliten. En långsiktig effekt blir att det möjliggör ökad mångfald och inkludering både i fråga om förmedling och representation av platser som komplexa rumsliga och sociokulturella helheter.

Ofta beskrivs torpens historia utifrån berättelser om 1800-talets torparfamiljer som slet på sina små jordbruk och att många av dessa torp sedan blivit idylliska sommarstugor. Vi vill stanna upp lite i perioden som var mellan tiden då torpen beboddes av jordbrukande torpare som gjorde dagsverken åt markägaren och tiden då sommartorparna vilar ut med en kaffe på trappen. För de två faserna är inte hela historien om dessa platser. Denna mellanfas har dock sällan studerats eller ens dokumenterats. Här gräver vi därför  djupare kring torpen under 1900-talet för att visa vilka som faktiskt använt torpen under den här mellanfasen under efterkrigstiden och framåt och för att förstå mer om den här dolda delen av torpens historia. I tidigare studier, litteratur och media har det ibland skymtat fram att torpen, förutom att vara torparnas eller sommartorparnas, också kan ha varit platser för de gamla, "tokiga" och skygga. Att de har varit, och fortfarande kan vara platser i marginalen där lite andra livsformer funnits eller finns. I förhållande till den huvudgård dit torpet hörde, låg torpen oftast på marginella platser i gårdens utkanter, längs med vägar eller i skogen på utmarken. Den här artikelns studieobjekt ligger således i marginalen såväl tidsmässigt och rumsligt som socialt.

Today, about 50 % of the population in Sweden has access to a second home through their family. We are now, and in the coming years, entering a time of changes in usage and ownership for many second homes. This could result in outcomes like fragmented ownership, conflicts between legal and perceived rights of use and issues around management, succession or sale that affect maintenance and usage of the second home. The reason for this is an assumed increase of generational changes and shared usage and ownership of second homes following the boom of second homes in the 1960s and 70s and the increased average age of the owners. The aim of this paper is to start to analyse second home users’ enactment, which includes their thinking, feeling and acting, of their second home in relation to existing or future shared usage/ownership and generational changes at the second home. In order to discuss this we ask: How is the situation with shared usage of second homes and the intersection of generations at second homes experienced and described in society and among second home users? Three different materials are used: a questionnaire survey of second home users, interviews with second home users and media texts. The motive for the research is the idea that the second home is a place for the family that provides a sense of place, home, identity and continuity. The emotional, social, functional and economic meanings given to these places make them potentially problematic to manage and share within a family and through generations. In order to develop our analytical framework for understanding this, we will build on geographical works on farm property, enactment, emotional relations, transgenerational family practices and a life course perspective. The three analysed materials show that second home usage within families and over generations is common and wanted but also filled with wishes and difficulties. This paper only scratches the surface of these issues and we see a need for further exploration and analysis of the emotional, social and material values and relations to second homes, and the users’ approaches regarding this. Our long-term approach in coming studies will provide insights into the complex situations where decisions are made regarding the future of second homes as well as increase our understanding of settlement and living patterns in Sweden in the coming years.