Reviews

Hans Christiansson &; Povl Simonsen: Stone Age Finds from Spitsbergen. Acta Borealia B. Humaniora No. 11. Troms?/Oslo/Bergen, Universitetsforlaget, 24 pp., 11 Figs.

Ellen Karine Hougen: Leirkarmaterialet fra Kaupang (The Pottery from Kaupang). Viking XXXIII (1969). 22 pp. 6 Figs. English summary     

Quality turns in Nordic food: a comparative analysis of specialty food in Denmark,Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACT

This article compares the development of specialty food in Denmark, Norway and Sweden using a number of quantitative indicators as well as a qualitative analysis of government policy. The analysis shows that specialty food has increased in importance in all three countries over the last twenty years, but there are important differences in the kind of specialty food that has developed and the nature of government intervention and governance structures. Overall, Sweden appears to have the largest production of specialty food and drink and is particularly strong in organic production and consumption, farm processing and farm shops. Norway has a large number of products with protected origin and also leads in the number of farmers’ markets. Denmark lags behind the other countries on most indicators, but has witnessed the fastest growth in microbreweries over the last five years. Theoretically, the article challenges the ‘negative’ definition of specialty food as ‘non-industrial’ or ‘alternative’, and suggests a more nuanced approach. Empirically, it points towards the possible existence of a ‘Scandinavian model’ of specialty food governance with extensive interaction between central government, local government and private firms to stimulate the growth of specialty food.     

Status,Estate, or Profession?

This article focuses on how social stratification was performed in everyday practice in 1730s Sweden. By studying the titles people were given in the court material of three communities – Uppsala town, Lagunda härad, and Sala town with its silver mine – three factors defining social categorization can be identified: status, estate, and profession. Only people who rose above the commoners were entitled, which means that all titles denoted status. Some titles were shared by different social groups that had little in common, and therefore cannot be said to mark anything other than status. Other titles were exclusive to definable groups. Among those, some were given to groups whose exclusivity was based on legal and fiscal privileges, rather than education or competence. They were simply feudal corporations, or estates. In other groups – all defined by occupations – the members had completed specialist education that included formal exams. In those, social stratification was the result of professionalism.     

The Role of Decision Support in the Implementation of “Sustainable Transport” Plans

Improved decision support is deemed essential for the planning and implementation of sustainable transport solutions, but limited evidence exists that decision-relevant information is effectively used for these purposes. This paper applies a framework inspired by research in “knowledge utilization” to examine to what extent various kinds of decision support are used and have become influential in three different planning situations—a local cycle plan in Copenhagen, the Stockholm congestion charging trial and the UK national transport strategy. The results reveal the extensive use of decision support but also the difficulty of unpicking its exact role in each case. Stockholm presented the most successful case, with a mix of academic and experience-based knowledge inputs facilitating understanding and acceptance. The cycle plan example revealed very limited influence of cycling design guidance. The UK national transport strategy fell somewhere in between with evidence of assessment and monitoring of the plans being well bedded in the culture of the organizations involved, but less supportive of sustainability objectives. While decision support and monitoring are clearly relevant, they provide no guarantee for the implementation of sustainable transport solutions.     

War Pessimism in Britain and an American Peace in Early 1916

By offering a reinterpretation of an Anglo-American pact known as the House-Grey Memorandum, this article challenges prevailing views about British decision-making in 1916 in the months leading up to the Battle of the Somme. It argues that serious doubts that the war could still be won without American assistance were the defining characteristic of their deliberations. Owing to deep scepticism about the proposed offensive and severe worries about their financial resources, a majority of the key British civilian leaders were prepared to accept a compromise peace mediated by the United States. Yet these efforts failed primarily because of intrigue at the highest levels of British politics, hard-line Conservative opposition and serious diplomatic missteps by American President Woodrow Wilson. In the end, although doubting it would produce any meaningful results, the British civilian leadership allowed the Somme offensive to go forward only because of their failure to unite on another course of action to prevent it. Finally, this study significantly revises existing thinking about American diplomacy during this period by challenging prevailing notions of the practicality and rigidity demonstrated by U.S. leaders in their foreign policy.     

Representations of the Chudes in Norwegian and Russian Folklore

Abstract

The objectives of this article are (1) to reveal the meaning (semantics) of the word “Chude” in Norwegian and Russian cultures; (2) to analyze Russian and Norwegian legends about the Chudes in order to define the main plot-constructing elements. When writing this article the authors used a synchronous and diachronous methods of analysis of material that was written down in a period that exceeds one and a half centuries. In etymological sense the word “Chude” (tsjude or Cud) can be derivative form from old Slavic form *tjudjo (strange, foreign) that can in its turn be borrowing from a Gothic or a German word that got the meaning “a nation” (folk). With the Sami the word “tshudde”/ “shutte” means an enemy, an adversary. The image of the Chudes has been preserved in Russian and Norwegian narrative traditions. Oral stories in Norway are called sagn. In Russian folkoristic narratives about the Chudes are traditionally called “predanie”.

The ethnonym “Chude” has a collective meaning in Russian and Norwegian folklore. In Norwegian culture it means plunderers of different ethnical belonging who came from the East to plunder the local population in the Northern Norway. As the undertaken research has shown, this name could have been applicable to Russian, Finns, Karelians, Kvens and peoples speaking Nordic languages (Swedes). In the Russian cultural tradition the name “Chude” was used to name different Finno-Ugric peoples living in the North-West Russia before the Russians came there and who later assimilated with the Russians. The Kola Sami called Swedes and Norwegians who came to them from the west to plunder the Chudes. The existence of a people in the same name in the old times is not excluded. The research carried out by place name scientists reveals that this people could be related to the Baltic-Finnish group of peoples.

The word Chude has historical and mythological aspects. Folk legends about the Chudes have “preserved” memories about the historical past of the northern region. Additionally this ethnonym contains conceptions of the world's binary character that are typical for archaic consciousness. Folk legends about the Chudes are widespread in the European North of Russia while plots about militant and plundering Chudes are localized in traditional Sami regions of Russia and Norway. In folk legends and sagn, the Russians and the Sami belong to one's “own” world, while the Chudes are associated with the concepts of the “strangers”. This nomination acquired the meaning “a stranger”, “a robber”.