The Stone Age of northern Scandinavia: A review

Throughout most of the Stone Age, which covers the time period between ca. 10,000 and ca. 3500 B.P., the majority of groups in northern Scandinavia was hunter-fishers with a strong orientation toward the coastal environments. Three areas, southwestern and northern Norway and northern Sweden, have been singled out for more detailed discussions of the social and cultural developments in different types of marine environments. Differences can be discerned between the societies in the southern and those in the northern regions, as the northern groups seem to have developed more complex social and cultural systems than in the south. These differences have been related partly to a greater emphasis on maritime sea hunting in the north. Agriculture was introduced twice. The first time, in the early Neolithic, agriculture was tried but apparently did not manage to compete with better-adapted local hunting-fishing practices. The second time, in the late middle Neolithic, agriculture resulted in drastic social, economic, and cultural changes.     

Genetic analysis of archaeological wood remains: first results and prospects

A total of 51 ancient oak wood samples originating from various European archaeological sites, dating from the Neolithic period to the 18th century, were assayed for the presence of reproducible chloroplast (cp) DNA sequences. Five polymorphic chloroplast fragments were targeted. Only five of the samples could be fully genetically characterised, revealing four different oak cpDNA haplotypes. In all cases, the haplotypes detected on ancient woods and the haplotypes characterised from fresh samples from the same localities matched. Overall, this congruence is consistent with a genetic continuity between ancient and modern European oaks, confirming the hypothesis that the mapped genetic patterns largely reflect the original structure that established during the post-glacial. This stability of the genetic structure implies that, in the future, the technique could be used to infer or confirm the transport of wood by man, providing interesting perspectives for the genetic analysis of ancient woods.     

Tomte Stories in Swedish Hälsingland: Place and Vernacular Religion

Although often discounted as ‘old lore’, stories about the tomte (hobgoblin) are not uncommon in Sweden. Contesting earlier ethnographical accounts, this article draws on qualitative interviews and fieldwork in Ovanåker to discuss some of the functions of these stories. The theoretical framework is provided by theorists on place and vernacular religion, particularly Tim Ingold and Leonard Primiano. Throughout, the article seeks to qualify two dichotomies: that between official religion and folk religion, and that between sacred and profane space. The article argues that belief in the tomte is very much alive in certain regions of Sweden, that this belief functions as an identity marker in a changing society, and that such stories provide evidence of an immanent and place-bound form of vernacular religion.     

Anti-Politics: modern politics and its critics in Denmark, 1830–1848

The rapid politicization of the public sphere in Denmark between the two European revolutionary waves of 1830 and 1848 created not only enthusiasm, but also sharp criticism of institutionalized and segmented politics as inherently alienating and inauthentic. Such anti-political criticism was expressed from a range of different positions: philosophical, poetical, religious and social. This article maps and analyses the conflicting subject positions from which anti-political criticism was articulated as well as the different spatio-temporal delimitations and modalities of politics within each position.     

Foreign direct investment and renewal of industries: framing the reciprocity between materiality and discourse

ABSTRACT

Informed by the evolutionary literature on economic geography, this paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing the complexity between foreign direct investment (FDI) and renewal of industries. Present contributions tend to explain the impact of FDI on regional industry evolution as a static, output-oriented phenomenon, that is, informed by an instrumental rationale in which the dynamism of FDI and regional industry development is linked to polarization of stagnation/decline vs. growth/development. Opposing this, we argue for an epistemological shift in approach to the reciprocity between FDI and renewal of industries as dynamism between material outcomes and discursive processes. To accomplish this, we build on key concepts and understandings from evolutionary economic geography; review the regional effects of FDI literature and build a framework sensitive to contextual dimensions of FDI. We focus on multinational companies’ practices and material outcomes in terms of regional spillovers and the discursive processes in terms of FDI narratives. This framework is exemplified by data from the salmon farming industry and the subsea industry in Hordaland and the oil and gas industry and the mining industry in Finnmark.     

Building from Scratch: The aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction(Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article looks at the visual character of post‐conflict and post‐disaster settings, and shows how states of physical ruin can help to produce an ‘aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction’. With examples primarily drawn from the author's field site in Timor‐Leste, the article shows how ruins, ashes and demolition may be perceived as enabling particular kinds of agency and opportunity. Thus, some of the most hopeful of international‐intervention dreams of recent decades have been produced out of sites of mass‐scale destruction.