Avhandlingen undersöker minnespraktiker kring andra världskriget i S:t Petersburg med omnejd, en stad som under namnet Leningrad 1941–44 var belägrad av tyskarna i över två år. På fronterna runt den omringade staden rasade under drygt två år hårda strider. Skogarna och myrarna där är fortfarande fulla av spår av kriget och marken gömmer kvarlevor av de soldater som fick sätta livet till under striderna. Avhandlingens empiriska fokus är den rörelse som arbetar för att dessa soldater till slut ska få en begravning och kunna identifieras. I avhandlingen speglas olika aspekter av verksamheten: vikten av ett namn, begravningarna, gemensamhetsskapandet, platsen och krigets spår i landskapet. Sökandet sätts också in i en större samhällelig kontext. Minnet av kriget är en viktig källa till stolthet i Ryssland, och segerdagen 9 maj har hög officiell status och stor folklig uppslutning. Det stora lidandet och uppoffringen bidrar till att göra kriget heligt, både då och nu. Det finns en föreställning om att de nu levande har skyldigheter mot det förflutna – en plikt att minnas. Sökarbetet är en komplex kamp mellan identifikation med och kritik av bärande nationella myter. Avhandlingen utforskar spänningsfältet minne och glömska och undersöker hur minnet av andra världskriget får bestående och ritualiserad mening, samt hur meningsskapandet förändras över tid och i olika sammanhang. / In this dissertation commemorative practices in St Petersburg and Leningrad oblast relating to the Second World War are investigated. The city of Leningrad was besieged by the Germans for more than two years 1941–44 and on the fronts around the city raged fierce battles. The woods and bogs here are still full of traces from the war, and the ground hides the remains of fallen soldiers. The empirical focus of the dissertation is the Russian voluntary movement working to find, bury, and if possible identify these soldiers. Different aspects of the activity are investigated: the importance of a name, the funerals, community building, the place, and the traces of war in the landscape. The search for fallen soldiers is related to a wider societal context. The war is an important source of national pride in Russia, and Victory Day May 9th is a holiday with high official status as well as popular enthusiasm. The suffering and sacrifice from the war contributes to making it sacred, both then and now. There is a widespread idea that the now living have obligations to the past – a duty to remember. The search activity is a complex struggle between identification with and critique of national myths. The dissertation explores the tension between memory and forgetting, and investigates how the memory of the Second World War is imbued with lasting and ritualised meaning, and how meaning is changed over time and in different contexts.

Kulturarvsplatser kan betraktas på olika sätt av olika människor. Samtidigt finns kol-lektiva föreställningar om hur en kulturarvsplats bör förstås. Mellan dessa utgångs-punkter sker förhandlingar om kulturarvsplatsens betydelse och värde. Syftet med studien är att förstå hur en plats, institutionellt utpekad som kulturarv, används och iscensätts genom mångsidiga och korsande praktiker, både via media och på plats. Två fall undersöks som har olika inriktningar men båda inom svensk kulturmiljö-vård: kulturreservatet komministerbostället Råshult i sydvästra Kronoberg i Småland som är botanikern Carl von Linnés födelseplats och den publika uppdragsarkeologiska verksamheten i Slättbygdsprojektet i västra Östergötland. Frågorna berör vilka arenor medieringen sker, dess tematik/innehåll, iscensättningen av kulturarvet samt hur besö-karna uppfattar sitt besök av platsen och de strategiska aktörernas visioner för platsen. Metodiskt följs en tänkt besökares väg till kulturarvsplatsen och faktiska besökare vid platsen. Både i slättbygdens undersökningsrum och vid Linnés Råshult synliggörs den kollektiva föreställningarna som huvudsakligen en vetenskaplig studieplats och en skattkammare för särskilt värdefulla ting. Besökarna lyfter dock fram de sociala aspekterna av besöket. Besökarens tolkning existerar och konkurrerar med andra bilder av platserna. Det saknas dock arenor som synliggör och sätter dessa i förbindelse med de strategiska aktörerna, trots mycket offentligt tal om demokratisering av kulturarvs-processerna under senare år. Olika materials bilder har på så sätt lagts jämte varandra för att synliggöra dynamik, förhandling, konkurrens och bristande dialog kring en plats. / Cultural heritage sites can be looked at differently by different people. These sites also carry collective understandings of how they should be understood. Between these two outsets there are negotiations of the sites’ meaning and value. The aim of this thesis is to understand how a place, institutionally pointed out as cultural heritage, is used and staged through diverse and intersecting practices, both through media and on the heri-tage site. Two differently oriented cases are researched within Swedish cultural heritage preservation: one the birthplace of Carolus Linnaeus, the botanist, which is a cultural reservation located at Råshult in the south of Sweden, and the other a commissioned archaeological project called Slättbygdsprojektet in Östergötland in mid Sweden. The questions concern on what arenas the mediation happens, its theme/content, the staging of the cultural heritage, as well as the visitors’ experiences and the strategic actors’ visions of the site. Methodically I follow both a fictive visitor’s way to the heritage site and actual visitors on site. Both in Slättbygdsprojektet and at Linnés Råshult the collective understandings of the sites are mainly viewed as a place for scientific study and a treasure chamber for especially valuable objects. The visitors especially highlight the social aspects of their visit. The visitors’ interpretation exists and competes with other images. However, there are no arenas that can make them visible, to put them in relation with the strategic actors, despite much public speech in recent years about democratizing cultural heri-tage processes. Images of different researched materials of the site have been juxta-posed to make visible the dynamic, negotiations, competition and lack of dialogue about cultural heritage sites.

Showing movies to pupils is hardly a new, innovative teaching method. However, knowledge about how film is used and why, as well as what kind of film is used is scarce. In the present licentiate thesis, eight active teachers have been interviewed on their experiences with and approached to using film as a pedagogic tool in high school history lessons. The purpose of the study is to analyze the respective teachers´ use and understanding of history, based on their opinion of film as a didactic alternative. Why do teachers to use film in class? How do they describe the way in which they work with it in concrete teaching situations? What films do they use and what makes them suitable for classroom viewing? The teachers emphasize five primary ways in which they use movies as teaching tools and the advantages in doing so: to present facts; as an example of multiperspectivism; to promote ethics and empathy; to discuss source criticism; and to arouse interest. The teachers see documentary film as an accurate, reliable form of presenting facts while considering drama more complicated and important to address in class. The study shows that the teachers feel they are left to their own devices to discover film´s potential as creators of meaning but that they rarely have the educational background or time to engage colleagues in didactic reasoning on the subject. The type of films they consider as having the most favorable effect in the classroom generally deal with war and other conflicts from a Western perspective. Most see film as an effective secondary source but a few also see it as a useful primary source. Analyzing their statements as a whole, the informants articulate that while film is widely used in high school history classes, it is done so for very different reasons.

The purpose of this study is to examine the historical consciousness and the use of history among pupils in 6th grade, in Swedish elementary school. To do this, the aim is to answer the following questions: Which types of history use are to be found among 6th graders, and how are these expressed? What historical consciousness/historical thinking do 6th graders display, and how is this expressed? What interest do 6th graders have in history? The method used in this study is a survey, which has been answered anonymously by 60 pupils in four different classes, from four different elementary schools, and in four different Swedish suburbs. The final analysis is based on theories on historical thinking/historical consciousness, uses of history, and history cultures, described by important historians, such as Rüsen, Ammert, and Karlsson. The study has led to the conclusion that, although a large majority of the pupils say that they are interested in history and think it is relevant, very few of them can mention uses of history outside the school context. The answers do not reveal a notably developed historical consciousness, even though there are signs expressing historical consciousness to a limited extent. One of the main characteristics of historical consciousness among the pupils is their use of concepts for historical change, such as development and consequence.

This study is a qualitative interview study that examines antagonism, identity and collective memory among second generation immigrants from Bosnia & Herzegovina. The study is based on an existential history use-perspective and social constructivist socialization theory. The study shows that the Bosniak identity is seldom defined by their history and the Yugoslavian wars but rather by language and traditions. In addition, the results indicate that the Bosniak identity has been assimilated to a large extent into the Swedish majority culture. The results also show that antagonism against other ethnic groups in the Balkans mainly occurs among first-generation immigrants while the descendants do not relate to a large extent to the war crimes and atrocities that occurred against Bosnian Muslims. Instead, they express empathy and sympathy for their parents’ experiences of these traumas. The respondents also experienced a nonchalance towards their background in Swedish history teaching where their history was neglected in favor of other wars and genocides. While the respondents suspected a fear of conflict among teachers to account for the area, they also told examples when teachers failed in the relational pedagogy and homogenized the individuals by letting them represent an entire conflict and ethnic group. Overall, the study shows that the use of history is not a recurring phenomenon among second-generation Bosniak immigrants, and their attitude focuses on individuals rather than groups. In the didactic part of the study, the results emphasize that history teachers might need to self-educate based on the students' background to create a meaningful education and create a history awareness among students.

The aim of this study is to compare the subject syllabuses for history education in uppersecondary school of Finland, Norway and Sweden. Three syllabuses from Norway, two from Finland and one from Sweden for courses that are compulsory for higher education preparatory programmes in the three countries have been analysed and compared. Qualitative content analysis has been used to find similarities and differences for what the countries find important with and in the history subject. A deductive analysis has been used for the part of the syllabus where the aim and the goals are written. An inductive analysis has been used for the part of the course content. By using a deductive content analysis with a coding scheme based on common historical didactic terms, the result of this study shows that every country finds that historical consciousness, narration, historical empathy, historical method and the uses of history are important parts of the history subject and education. However, the countries differ when it comes to if they see these parts as the aim or as a goal with the subject or the education. The inductive content analysis shows that all countries find sources and work with sources, uses of history, time periods, global historical events and processes and development of state and societies as important parts of the education. A difference between the countries is that Finland and Norway have more specific national history content in the syllabuses than Sweden has. Therewith does this result show that both Norway and Sweden find it important to problematize the time periods and to have different historical questions, aspects and explanations in the content of history education.

This essay explores how and why the memory of the Baltic extradition in 1946 has been shaped and used in relation to the social democratic Swedish identity, trough the theory of cultural history. The method utilized is a qualitative content analysis of the 71 articles in Aftonbladet that discuss the term “baltutlämningen” between 1947-2022. Here, a theoretical and methodical device is presented and applied. The device outlines the Swedish identity by examining how the articles negotiate guilt to avoid shame, thus preserving the self-image.       The findings show that the remembrance of the Baltic extradition serves to cement an image that upholds the identity of the social democratic group as rational, humanitarian, and anti-fascist. Consequently, when Aftonbladet brought the memory to life in 1966 it was shaped to avoid anything that would cause shame by contradicting those values. Thus, the narrative came to portray the political right as guilty for the extradition, and the Balts’ unnecessary suffering during it. Later, the memory was used to reinforce the progressive and humane self-image by being used as a cautionary example, legitimizing current social democratic stances regarding questions of asylum, international relations, and war crime policies.           In the 2000’s a new discussion emerged alongside the previous narrative, as historians started questioning the facts and reassessing the feelings of guilt and shame. With the admission that fascist sympathizers may also have infiltrated the social democratic group, the historian debate joined the European narrative: promoting the international cause for democracy, through national self-evaluation, to combat intolerance and fascism globally. Thus, the memory of extradition of the Balts has come to connect the Swedish cause to the European one, maintaining the rational, humanitarian, and anti-fascist self-image.      From an identity perspective the recurring guilt-shame complex shows that the humanitarian and democratic values are desired, but not innate, aspects of Swedish identity. Furthermore, the study shows that guilt and shame have consistently been used as educational tools to shape the Swedish people, inside and outside the classroom.

The purpose of this study is to explore how upper secondary school students relate to popularhistorical stories conveyed via Hollywood films, if they can identify and relate critically to the use of history used in feature films and how it affects their history film literacy. That students gain an understanding that history is used and in what ways it can be used is a fundamental factor within the subject of history. Previous studies show that many students have difficulty distinguishing between what is historical fact and what is fiction.To explore this, a qualitative study was carried out using observations and the participants’ writtentexts. The theoretical starting points are based on Klas-Göran Karlsson’s typology of use of history, Louise Rosenblatt’s efferent and aesthetic reading and Maria Deldéns historical film literacy. Kenneth Nordgren’s model of historical use was also included in the analysis of the results. The results show that the students were able to identify different uses of history in the feature film 300 with the help of Karlsson’s typology. However, it appeared somewhat problematic as they had difficulty distinguishing some of the uses. The results also showed that it is a good idea to combine efferent reading with aesthetic reading to strengthen the students’ historical film literacy. However, if may be beneficial to use a historical feature film that contains fewer fictional elements. The use of feature film in the education also showed that the students became more engaged in the teaching. / Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur gymnasieelever förhåller sig till populärhistoriskaberättelser som förmedlas via Hollywoodfilmer, om de kan identifiera och förhålla sig kritiskt till historiebruk som används i spelfilm samt hur det påverkar deras historiefilmslitteracitet. Attelever får en förståelse för att historia används och på vilka sätt den kan användas är engrundläggande faktor inom historieämnet. Tidigare studier visar att många elever har svårt att skiljapå vad som är historisk fakta och vad som är fiktion.För att undersöka detta genomfördes en kvalitativ studie med hjälp av observationer och deltagarnasskriftliga texter. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna tar avstamp i Klas-Göran Karlssonshistoriebrukstypologi, Louise Rosenblatts efferenta och estetiska läsning samt Maria Deldénshistoriefilmslitteracitet. I analysen av resultatet användes även Kenneth Nordgrenshistoriebruksmodell. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att eleverna kunde identifiera olika historiebruk i spelfilmen 300 med hjälp av Karlssons typologi. Dock förefall den något problematisk då de hade svårt att särskilja några av bruken. Resultatet visar även att det är en god idé att kombinera efferent läsning med estetisk läsning för att stärka elevers historiefilmslitteracitet. Dock kan det vara fördelaktigt att använda en historisk spelfilm som innehåller färre fiktiva faktorer. Användandet av spelfilm i undervisningen visade även att eleverna blev mer engagerade i undervisningen.

The purpose of this master thesis in history was to examine the use of history of an Indian queen, the Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi. The Rani Lakshmi Bai was born in Banaras and married a king – the Raja of Jhansi. The Rani Lakshmi Bai fought against the British during the first war of independence year 1857-58. Recently, a memorial has been built at her supposed birthplace in Banaras, more than 150 years after her death. This development has raised several questions about the use of history of the Rani Lakshmi Bai. How has the use of history of Rani Lakshmi Bai changed? Why has it become relevant to build a statue of the Rani now and not before? The purpose of this study has been answered with the help of oral history and text analysis. Firstly, this has been done, by examining the knowledge of people from Banaras and Jhansi as well as through their perceived image of the Rani Lakshmi Bai. Twenty people from Banaras and four people from Jhansi have been interviewed. Secondly, the institutional level information has been examined which is presented in educational textbooks and newspapers like the local newspaper Aaj and the national newspapers The Hindu as well as The Times of India. The results show that the level of historical knowledge about the Rani is low, though the love and affection for her are great. The use of history of the Rani Lakshmi Bai has been as a freedom fighter, a role model in different contexts and a symbol, as well as an inspirational source of women empowerment. There is also a political use of the Rani. All these uses of history in combination with the increased economic interest in the neighbourhood of Assi in the city of Banaras made it relevant and possible to build a monument of the Rani Lakshmi Bai in present time.

Uppsatsens syfte är att söka förklaring till varför den svenska regeringen valde att inte erkänna folkmordet på armenier/Seyfo samt undersöka på vilket sätt politiker använder sig av historia när de ska ta beslut i frågor som dels skett i en annan tid och som dels är obekväma att hantera. För att få svar på denna fråga har en kvalitativ metod använts. Argumentationsanalys samt kritisk diskursanalys har använts för att tolka de politiska argumentationerna och nyckelorden i den politiska debatten. Den utredning som regeringen beställde som underlag för sitt beslut har varit ett viktigt undersökningsmaterial. Vidare har intervjuer använts för att få en ökad förståelse av undersökningen. Syftet med uppsatsen har uppnåtts och förklaringen till varför den svenska regeringen valde att inte erkänna folkmordet på armenier/Seyfo är också en slutsats. Det fanns flera bakomliggande faktorer så som att inte stöta sig med en stor väljargrupp, inte riskera handelsrelationer dvs. ekonomiska intressen, dels flyktingfrågan mm. Dessa faktorer var dock inte de största utan den absolut största och även viktigaste orsaken var den som de inte tordes nämna. Denna faktor var att de var rädda för att ett erkännande skulle leda till påtryckningar och hot från Turkiet samt från olika intressenter i Sverige. / The purpose of the thesis is to seek an explanation as to why the Swedish government chose not to acknowledge the Armenian/Seyfo genocide and to investigate how politicians make use of history when making decisions on issues that have happened in another time and which are partly uncomfortable to manage. A qualitative method has been used to answer this question. Argumentation analysis and critical discourse analysis have been used to interpret the political arguments and keywords in the political debate. The investigation that the government ordered as a basis for its decision has been an important investigative material. Furthermore, interviews were used to gain a better understanding of the study. The purpose of the thesis has been achieved and the explanation as to why the Swedish government chose not to acknowledge the Armenian/Seyfo genocide is also a conclusion. There were several different underlying factors such as not clashing with a larger voter group, not risking trade relations i.e. financial interests, partly the refugee issue, etc. However, these factors were not the greatest, but the absolute greatest and also the most important reason was the one they did not dare mention. This factor was that they were afraid that recognition would lead to pressure and threats from Turkey as well as from various stakeholders in Sweden.