The Karschau Ship, Schleswig-Holstein: Dendrochronological Results and Timber Provenance

The felling of the oak trees used to build the Karschau ship took place in or around the AD 1140s. The tree-ring curves from the oak planks from the Karschau Ship match best with site-means from Odense, a medieval town on the island of Funen, Denmark. New research being carried out by the author is allowing the determination of the provenance of ancient oak to a more local level. Through this dendrochronological research, it is now possible to differentiate between small regions of timber sources for shipbuilding, allowing a more nuanced interpretation.
© 2006 The Author     

Public game funding in the Nordic region

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore the policies related to support structures surrounding national game industries, with focus on the three Nordic countries Finland, Norway and Sweden, and investigate what kind of context the Nordic welfare state model has provided for game development. The three cases illustrate how Nordic welfare state measures have interacted with the games industry over time. While the political ideals have been fairly similar, our study demonstrates how the objectives and practical means of state engagement have differed significantly. We argue that although the three countries all have support schemes of which game companies can take advantage, there are significant differences in the degree to which each individual country has organized government interventions and support. While the Finnish state has treated game development as an endeavour in business development, the regional Nordic game program and the Norwegian state has developed a cultural policy that primarily aims to protect the cultural heritage. The Swedish state has not established a tailormade policy directed towards game development but has a broad spectrum of general policies for supporting research and business development. We suggest that future research should investigate how the public funding is structured and how discourses are formulated around appeals for more public funding for the games industry.     

Picturing Austria–Hungary. The British Perception of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1865–1870

In the late 1960s a Joint Nordic Co-operative Assistance Project was established in Tanzania. Its objective was to promote co-operative development in Tanzania based on Nordic experiences in the field. The project's effort to export Nordic co-operative ideas and traditions to Tanzania soon encountered major problems as the Government of Tanzania (GoT) launched a villagization process in the beginning of the 1970s, which sought to move the entire peasant population into ujamaa villages. The resettlement effort was implemented with the use of force and coercion and implied a dismantling of the traditional co-operative structures in Tanzania. This article finds that the Nordic countries helped facilitate GoT's compulsory policy by adjusting and restructuring the project to GoT's villagization strategy, despite the fact that the primary objective of the project was no longer present. As the article will reveal, there was a clear concern in the Nordic aid administrations that the Nordic project could be linked with the politics of coercion ingrained in the ujamaa policy.     

The reinvention of terroir in Danish food place promotion

ABSTRACT

This paper conceptualizes place branding narratives that mobilize local food and contemporary gastronomic trends by revisiting the notion of terroir (taste of place) as a strategic marketing asset. In particular, it explores how rural tourism destinations with little or no gastronomic heritage exploit the discourses of New Nordic Food to create a distinct sense of place. An extensive review of the literature identifies two conservationist strategies by which terroir narratives are constructed (accreditation and patrimonialization), neither of which fully captures the particular rhetorical approaches shaping the Nordic terroir. Drawing on empirical illustrations from Danish rural destinations, the paper argues that terroir can be reproduced and invented through manipulative rhetorical approaches and identifies two novel, transformational strategies framing terroir narratives (exoticizing and enterprising). The paper contributes with a conceptual model conceived through a unique combination of place-specific (typicality) themes and market-specific ideologies, which has the explanatory power to distinguish Nordic terroir narratives from earlier articulations of taste of place.     

ROMANCE,PRACTICE AND SUBSTANTIVENESS: WHAT DO LANDSCAPES DO?

Although Torsten Hägerstrand is not known primarily as a landscape geographer, he made significant contributions to the understanding of landscape in Swedish geography. This paper argues that Hägerstrand examined the importance of representation for the understanding of landscape as place and territory, which is a key ingredient in current engagements with landscape within (Nordic) geography and the broader European political context. The current debate on landscape, however, reaches beyond Hägerstrand's rather “scientistic” approach and brings out a stronger sense of the cultural, social and political powers conveyed by landscape and representation. We show that this is made explicit in recent scholarly work on the so‐called substantive landscape. The paper also provides an introduction to the essays of this theme issue, which reflects a selection of the landscape research presented at the Inaugural Meeting of Nordic Geographers at Lund, Sweden, in May 2005.     

Castration of male sex offenders in the Nordic welfare state in the context of homosexuality and heteronormativity, 1930–1955

The eugenic legislation was a defining aspect in the development of the Nordic welfare state. While sterilization is a widely recognized method of restricting reproduction, another part of the legislation was the castration of male sex offenders for criminal-therapeutic purposes. This article discusses the conflicts arising from the castration of male criminals. Especially targeted were male criminals whose crimes could be traced back to a conflicted sexuality, including homosexuality and such vaguely termed conditions as hypersexuality and an abnormal sex drive. This article highlights the exclusive connection of sexual violence to male violence in the context of Nordic castration legislation. It is further argued that the decriminalization of homosexuality did not lead to sexual liberation but rather to much more harshly restricted sexuality through medicalization. The medicalization of homosexuality and the castration of men labelled as sexual offenders show how the conformity of the Nordic welfare state has tended to restrict sexuality with the help of the concept of heteronormativity.     

ADMINISTRATIVE DEFINITIONS OF ARTISTS IN THE NORDIC MODEL OF STATE SUPPORT FOR ARTISTS

This article considers the role of public arts policy in producing societal definitions for “art” and “artists”. It examines administrative definitions generated and used by the Nordic system of state support for artists and reflected in its administrative categories and structures of decision‐making. Using the concepts of “artistic field” and “artistic classification system” as starting points, the article focuses on the regulated and institutionalized interaction of the state and artistic fields in decision making, and on the administrative categories emerging from this interaction. Through this interaction, professional and administrative definitions of “art” and “artist” are closely intertwined in the four countries discussed. The administrative categories examined show considerable variation between the countries related to differences in the nature of this interaction. The definition power involved in state support for artists is related to the nature of this interaction, as well as to such factors as the legitimating arguments, objectives and criteria for the support.     

Biological values of the Nordic cultural landscape: Different perspectives

Intensified land use practices in the Nordic countries are increasing the need for more determined strategies in both natural and cultural conservation. The development of such management strategies requires an inter‐disciplinary approach to overcome the existing boundaries between research disciplines. The paper focuses on certain biological elements which should be taken into account in landscape management. These elements are discussed in different perspectives: temporal, spatial Nordic and European, and the close relationship between biological and historical landscape values is emphasised. Examples of changing evaluations over time and among different groups of people are given. In conclusion the paper stresses the need for a holistic approach to preserve the natural and cultural heritage and secure a long‐term utilisation of the landscape.