Culture and Conflict

Nation-Building in Denmark and Scandinavia, 1800–1930

Sine Krogh, Karina L. Grand, Thor J. Mednick, Sine Krogh, Karina L. Grand, Thor J. Mednick

• Publisher: Aarhus University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9788772194349
• eBook ISBN: 9788772198903
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Cultural differences are often the trigger for conflict – whether politically motivated or arising from dissonant understandings of national culture. But what we regard as distinctive today in our cultural heritage or day-to-day cultural experience is deeply rooted in the rich diversity of the national currents of the nineteenth century. Culture and Conflict: Nation-Building in Denmark and Scandinavia, 1800–1930 explores the many strands of Danish and Scandinavian culture that helped to shape these cultural identities. The sixteen contributions in this volume analyse how competing national agendas influenced the development of political life as well as literature, the visual arts, and music. A central theme is the cultural conflicts that formed an essential part of nineteenth-century nation-building. Culturally as well as politically, boundaries were drawn up, ideologies were formulated and discussed, and determined attempts were made to suppress divergent cultural voices in the drive to forge strong national or Scandinavian narratives. The results of these conflicts were the enduring cultural struggles that form the subject of this volume. The contributions at hand, by scholars from Denmark, Britain, Norway, the United States, and Germany, bring a broad and interdisciplinary perspective to bear on these distinctively Nordic themes. Aimed both at students and at established scholars, the chapters discuss the many facets of nationalism, its cultures, and its countercultures, as well as revisiting the historiography of the 1800–1930 period with a more pluralistic approach.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Colophon
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Denmark as a Zone of Conflict
• 1 Changing Contours of a National Culture: The Society for the Proper Use of Freedom of Speech, 1835–48
• 2 Visual Republicanism in Copenhagen: Corsaren During the Early 1840s
• 3 The Challenge of Crossing Borders: Danish Art in Paris in 1855
• 4 Race and the Politics of Portraiture in Caribbean Copenhagen
• 5 International and National Currents on the Danish Music Scene, 1860–1930
• 6 The National Past as a Zone of Conflict in Danish History: Conflicting Histories of the Danish Defeat in 1864
• 7 The Shifting Contours of Danishness: Agnes Slott-Møller, Kunstnergaven, and the Duties of Nationalism
• 8 In Search of the Past: Norse Themes and the National Romantic Programme of Oscarshall
• 9 ‘Brought from the Orient, Jarred on the Journey’: Danish Orientalism from Aladdin to Tivoli
• 10 The Making of the Viking Horned Helmet: Uses of the Past in the Works of Lorenz Frølich, Michael Echter, and Carl Emil Doepler
• 11 Henrich Steffens and the Perception of Norway in Germany
• 12 The Pictorial Imaginary: Orientalism and Colonialism in Danish Visual Nation-Building of the Nineteenth Century
• 13 Literature as Auxiliary Forces: Scandinavianism, Pan-Scandinavian Associations, and the Transnational Dissemination of Literature
• 14 A Factious Monument: The Brave Militia Man After the Victory and the Commemoration of a Danish Civil War
• 15 Berlin as a Site of Danish Nation-Building: Encounters with The Victory Column after the Defeat of 1864
• Contributors
• Credits
• Index
• Backcover