The matter of placing Russia in a cultural and historical context has ever since Peter the Great´s reforms in the 17th century permeated the country´s philosophical and historiographical evolution. Nowhere has this been as clear cut and caustic as the question of Norse influence in Viking-age Russia. In tandem with every major historiographical and political transition in Russia, archaeologists, philosophers and politicians alike have been forced to reassess the role of the Norse seafarers, Varangians, in the wider cultural and political development of the Russian state. Previous research has in this regard predominantly focused on the archaeology of the Varangians without considering the consequences of Russia´s political upheavals and its direct impact on the archaeological research itself. Thus, rooted in the ambition to examine the reciprocity between archaeology and politics, this essay explores how Russia´s political history has influenced the archaeological research regarding the Varangians. What his essay has tried to demonstrate, by investigating Russia's political development from the late 17th century to the modern-day in conjunction with the politically entrenched archaeology, is thus the occurrence of an ever-shifting archaeological attitude towards the Varangians.

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Emotions are sometimes thought of as human universals, biological facts shared by everyone due to the place of emotions as a function of evolution. A competing theory of emotion has been developed in the field of the history of emotions, where emotions instead are thought of as less unstable historically variable categories. The field of history of emotions has contributed to a heightened interest in emotions in general, including in the places of emotions within museums and museum discourse. Emotions are not only thought of as instrumental in the service of a museum’s pedagogical or political goal but are also subjects of exhibitions in their own right. A first principle for the following work has been that museum exhibitions are discursive acts with narrative form. In this masters thesis, I have wanted to examine the ways in which museums exhibit emotions and their histories and to what extent exhibited emotion require certain curatorial considerations to function as meaningful narratives within the context of the history of emotions. Throughout, theoretical approaches are borrowed from the study of literature and from cultural studies to work toward this goal. Two case studies are carried out in which I consider the poetics of exhibition and the role this poetic plays for the interpretation of the two narratives as wholes. An exhibition about the role of the ultras type of football supporters in the uprisings of the Arab Spring was found to centrally place emotions as catalysts for ultras’ political action. The style of narrative was found to be contributing to the sharp division between implicit audience and the culture depicted that ultimately, it was argued, gave this exhibition a place within the discourse of Orientalism. The second case study was of an exhibition about the history of love, and analysis revealed a confusion of two theoretically competing meta-narratives of love within the narrative. A universal and ahistorical metanarrative of emotion was found to work against the foundation of the exhibition as historical narrative. From these two case studies, I draw the conclusion that curators wishing to exhibit emotions must carefully consider the structure of their narratives, both because of the role of emotion in self-understanding and because of the demands on a historical narrative of emotion. This is a two-year master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

The portrayal of women in history textbooks is a problem area that will always have a major impact on girls and their identity. The purpose of this study is to find out how women are portrayed in history textbooks for upper secondary school. The history textbooks that we have chosen to analyze are books that were published at various times during the 2000s. All relevant books for this study have been included in Swedish history education. The theoretical starting point of the study is gender theory, which is also the basis för the analytical tool used in the analysis of history teaching materials. The method used is a content analysis which made it possible to delve deeper into how women are portrayed in history textbooks. The result that we have come to is that the representation of women is based on appearance, sexuality and reflection of the men that are written about. When it is written about women, it is often written as additional history instead of being a given part of regular text. The idea of the study was not to include men in the analysis, that is, not to use men as a yardstick for what is normal. This is something that we realize is difficult to avoid. The results that emerged from the analysis reflects the patriarchal society that has dominated historically. In the last section, we discuss how this had an impact on the portrayal of women in history teaching materials. The results show that the use of history is strongly linked to the historiography that characterize the representation of women.

Denna studie är en brukstextanalys av tre samtida historieläroböcker för gymnasieelever. Studien ämnar att redogöra för hur kvinnan beskrivs i läroböcker för historia och vad det i sin tur har för betydelse för historia som obligatoriskt ämne på gymnasiet. Studien utgår från ett genusperspektiv och för ett resonemang kring hur kvinnohistoria presenteras i de olika läroböckerna och hur genusperspektivet används för att förklara historia. I studien presenteras begreppet (be)skrivning som redogör särskiljandet på mannens och kvinnans historieskrivning i läroböckerna och visar på vilken inverkan denna (be)skrivning kan ha för förståelse av historieskrivningen. / This essay is a text analysis regarding high school students study material. The starting point and the purpose of the essay is to analyze how history is written and what distinguishes the common history writing from the writing of women’s history.I will execute my essay by trying to answer how women are presented in the study material regarding the subject of history. I will embrace gender theories and discourse theories to fortify my analysis.My findings are linked to how history is presented in the criteria of the school subject in today’s school, to develop how this can be understood as a current discourse in what is seen as relevant history in a contemporary perception.

In this MA thesis I want to examine if it is possible to be writing a historical narrative with other tools than words. Rufina Bazlova is a Belarusian textile artist, currently based in Prague, who is telling us her narrative about the falsified elections in Belarus held in August 2020. She does it using embroidery, strongly connected with traditional Belarusian symbols used in the crafts that has been an important source of belief in everyday life for women in Belarus since the early 11th century. What kind of narrative is the artist telling us? In what way can her embroidery be seen as cultural memories? I am using the methods formal analysis by Heinrich Wölfflin and iconography and iconology by Erwin Panofsky to explore the hidden meanings in five of Bazlovas embroidery pieces, Female solidarity, Parliament House, Streets of Belarus, Solidarity with Soligorsk and Run from a gun. They are all a part of the work of art named Belarusian Vyzyvanka. I am placing Bazlovas embroidery in the context of cultural memories by looking at them with the eyes of different researchers in the field of cultural memory studies. The thesis has a range from descripting the meaning of traditional textile symbols to implementing the methods of art history. I am continuing with placing the embroidery into the field of cultural memory studies and asking questions about freedom of speach and the political situation in Belarus today. I am looking back in the Belarusian history to find some of my answers and I am adding a transnational perspective to my examination.

The history of Banu Umayya has since the collapse of the caliphate occupied a major part in Islamic historiography. The present thesis analyses the presentation of the Umayyads in Ibn Khaldun’s al-Muqaddima and its relation to previous historical traditions. The thesis examines the social and intellectual context in which Ibn Khaldun stood and how it is represented in his historiography, while also providing an overview of the various socio-political, intellectual and historiographical developments in Islam. The theoretical perspectives are based on the concept of agency, examining the intellectual room for manoeuvre that the historian disposed of while composing the works. The relation between the past-as-history and the historical past is emphasised and analysed by examination of narrative arrangements and content in relation to the historians’ contexts. Rather than viewing Ibn Khaldun as an exception, the study clarifies his contextual representativity by analysing his views on the Umayyads. The thesis also discusses the historiographical significance of the Umayyad history for the later development of Islam, while thereby attempting to open the field of research regarding the Umayyad history and its importance as self-definitions among later movements, historians and traditions of Islam.

Typografi finns överallt. Det är en del av grafisk formgivning som är ramverket som vi på olika plattformar i media och i stadsbilden blir tilltalade och därigenom förstår omvärlden. Typografi påverkar i stor utsträckning hur vi tolkar ett innehåll och hur vi värderar allt från människor till åsikter. I mitt examensarbete "Typografisk makt" undersöker jag relationen mellan samhällets värderingar och typografi. Varför tar vi vissa typsnitt på allvar och andra ses som oseriösa? Jag har skrivit en essä och presenterar texten i två publikationer där jag med formgivningen vill kommentera olika sätt att förhålla sig till idéer om hur typografi bör fungera och se ut. I essän tar jag upp historiska aspekter som påverkat hur typografi värderas. Jag försöker även bena ut vilken roll egenskaper kopplade till kön har för roll i hur typografi värderas. / Typography is everywhere. It speaks to us and makes us understand the world. Why do we regard some typefaces as serious/professional and some as less serious? My project is an investigation of the relation between the values of society and typography.

Under 2000-talet har det producerats och spridits mängder av betydande forskning som publicerats via databaser. En betydelsefull länk i kunskapsspridningen utgörs av akademin som i dag står för den största andelen av vetenskapliga publikationer. I denna historiografiskt inriktade undersökning kartläggs och undersöks en del av svensk historieforskning och historieskrivning som ägt rum under 2000-talet. Den vetenskapliga disciplin som undersöks inom det humanistiska fältet är historievetenskapen, avgränsat till de resultat av forskning som studenter gjort runtom på de svenska universiteten och högskolorna, i ämnet historia. Källmaterialet består av studentuppsatser som publicerats i databasen Digitala vetenskapliga arkivet, DiVA vilket i dag ses som det nationellt mest använda systemet för publikationsdata, med över 400 tusen publicerade fulltexter varav antal nedladdade uppgår över 53 miljoner gånger. Genom empiriska och teoretiska studier och bruket av både kvantitativa och kvalitativa metoder analyseras metadata, för att ge svar och resultat över frågan om vad studenter i det svenska utbildningssystemet, på universitet och högskolor skriver historia om under 2000-talet. För att få fram svar fungerade bibliometri som kunskapsområde och frågan om vilka nyckelord som dominerar och var de mest frekvent använda i taggningen (definitionerna) av forskningsresultaten ställdes. Delfrågan om hur bruket av nyckelord ser ut över tid användes för att få fram och se trend över resultat. Teoretiskt ramverk i undersökningen och läsning av de kvantitativa resultaten utgick från Kuhns teori om paradigm. Resultat visar att Genus, Historiebruk, Arkeologi, Historiemedvetande, Historiedidaktik, Identitet, Osteologi, Andra världskriget, Diskursanalys, Kalla kriget, Samer, Laborativ arkeologi och Utbildningshistoria utgör några ledande sakområden som studenterna skrivit historia om under 2000-talet. Resultat visar också att det nationella paradigmet är ledande för studenternas historieforskning, även om USA, Sovjetunionen, Jugoslavien, Japan, Finland, Sápmi och Israel förekommer frekvent. Avslutningsvis visade föreliggande undersökning att metadata kan användas som resurs i historieforskning samtidigt som det historiska perspektivet vidgas. / During the 2000s, numerous significant researches have been produced and disseminated through databases. An important link in the dissemination of knowledge consists of the academy, which today accounts for the largest proportion of scientific publications. In this historiographically oriented study, a part of Swedish history research and history writing that took place during the 2000s is mapped and examined. The scientific discipline that is investigated in the humanities field is the science of history, limited to the results of research that students have done around the Swedish universities and colleges, in the subject of history. The source material consists of student essays published in the database Digital Scientific Archive, DiVA, which today is seen as the nationally most used system for publication data, with over 400 thousand published full texts, of which the number downloaded is over 53 million times.  Through empirical and theoretical studies and the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods, metadata is analyzed, to provide answers and results on the question of what students in the Swedish education system, at universities and colleges write history about during the 2000s. To obtain answers, bibliometrics functioned as an area of ​​knowledge and the question of which keywords dominated and were the most frequently used in the tagging (definitions) of the research results was asked. The sub-question about how the use of keywords looks over time was used to bring out and see the trend over results. Theoretical framework in the study and reading of the quantitative results was based on Kuhn's theory of paradigm.  Results indicate that Gender, History Use, Archeology, History Consciousness, History Didactics, Identity, Osteology, World War II, Discourse Analysis, the Cold War, Sami, Laboratory Archeology and Educational History are some leading subject areas that students wrote history about during the 2000s. Results also point out that the national paradigm is leading for students' history research, although the United States, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Japan, Finland, Sápmi and Israel occur frequently. In conclusion, the present study showed that metadata can be used as a resource in history research while broadening the historical perspective.

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