Sports,Politics and Ethnicity in the North. Workers’ Sport in Western Finnmark in the Late 1930s

Abstract

Internationally, ethnicity in sports has become an independent field of research amongst sports historians focusing on phenomena such as colonialism, immigration and indigenous populations. Studies demonstrate that sports have simultaneously been able to assimilate different groups, promoting majority concepts of identity and majority values, and enable groups to fashion their own singular ethnic identities in contrast to those of majority societies. In Norwegian historical research, sport and ethnicity has been given only scarce attention. Norwegian sports historians have mainly seen Norway as an ethnically homogenous society where sport has played an essential part in creating a unifying national identity. A major concern for Norwegian sports history research has been the political split in Norwegian sports in the 1930s. Research on this event has mainly been occupied with the relationship between the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) and the “bourgeois” National Sports Federation (NLI), and by AIF's significance as a political movement. Less attention, however, has been given to its cultural impact. This article investigates the establishment and function of AIF in the multi-ethnic area of West Finnmark, a geographically and politically peripheral region of Northern Norway, at the end of the 1930s. The town of Alta, the main focus of attention, was in the 1930s a small fiord community with an ethnically mixed population of indigenous Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians, sharp political divisions and a vibrant sporting milieu. Although the political division of Alta's sports establishment displays many of the traits that characterize similar events in the country at large, the ethnic factor brought another, important, dimension to it. This highly politicized period in Finnmark sports underlines the importance of sports as an arena for the construction and reinforcement of not only political identity, but also for the production of ethnic and local identities.     

Views on the development of settlement

Masonry buildings are subjected to much more strenuous conditions in the harsh Nordic climate than in milder environments. For this reason, in the past the climate‐dictated limitations of and prerequisites for the use of mortar as a binding medium demanded some knowledge of the materials employed in masonry buildings. Consequently, our understanding of the technical quality and physical chemical properties of mortars can provide valuable information about the technical level of work in the building and rebuilding phases of old masonry structures.     

Spatial Price Discrimination in Two-Dimensional Competitive Markets

Intuition suggests that firms that can apply price discrimination make higher profits than firms that are restricted in their pricing policy. In this paper, we show that, in general, this is not the case. In the framework of a two-dimensional spatial model with elastic demand à la Lösch, we further investigate the interplay of transport costs, competition, and price policy. One of our results is that under realistic specifications of parameters each firm gains a monopolistic area in the center of its market that has the same shape as the entire market, but with a convexly or concavely distorted separating line, depending on the extension of the market.     

Past and future for public participation in Norwegian physical planning

From around 1970 protests against many plans in Norway forced discussions about the role and results of planning. Protest came from people directly affected by plans and many others concerned about the environment. Planning was criticised for among other things, neglecting local interests and protection issues and for being authoritarian and directed from the top down. At the root of the criticism was a rejection of the prevailing politics and planning ideology. Demands for more democratic planning arose. Through experiments, partly initiated and encouraged by The Ministry of the Environment during the 1970s and 1980s, and extended process rules in the Planning and Building Act, the idea of public participation gradually emerged and became a commonly accepted part of plan preparation. The main picture is that planning in these years developed from an instrumental rationality into a more communicative approach, many plans were changed so that inhabitants could accept them, and public participation created innovative proposals. From the 1990s citizens' influence on planning became challenged by co-operation between developers and public agencies and by privately initiated local plans where great power lies in developers' hands. In this article the development of public participation in Norwegian physical planning is discussed. Some methods used and results achieved are analysed, illustrated with examples from practice. In the concluding part of the article some features of tomorrow's planning in Norway are discussed with regard to public participation and co-operation, and a proposal for stronger public control over the planning process is made.     

Tetraethylene glycol thermooxidation and the influence of certain compounds relevant to conserved archaeological wood

The degradation of tetraethylene glycol (TEG) was studied at 70 °C under dry air and nitrogen. Degradation products were detected using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). They were mono-, di- and tri-ethylene glycol, mono- and di-formates of mono-, di-, tri- and tetra-ethylene glycol and formic acid. The rate of TEG degradation was significantly decreased by approximately 10 mmol/l KI, FeCl₃, Cu(CH₃COO)₂, MnO₂ and CuSO₄, small amounts of fresh oak wood sawdust and gypsum-containing scrapings from the wood surface of the Vasa ship in Stockholm. Thus certain salts and natural components of archaeological wood are able to inhibit oxidative degradation of TEG. NaFe₃(SO₄)₂(OH)₆ (Natrojarosite), FeS₂ (pyrite), FeSO₄, Fe₂(SO₄)₃, NiCl₂, NiSO₄, Fe, Cu, Fe₂O₃, CuO, NaHSO₄ and natrojarosite-containing scrapings from the Vasa had no major effect on the rate of oxidation.