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In this essay I examine how childhood is represented in the novels Populärmusik från Vittula (2000) by Mikael Niemi and Häng City (2022) by Mikael Yvesand. Both of these works are intended for an adult audience, or at least not written with children and young adults in mind. Yet, they both focus almost exclusively on childhood and feature children as protagonists. In Niemi’s novel this is done by an adult narrator who narrates autobiographicaly about his childhood, while Yvesand’s novel is told in present tense by an autonarrating I. Although both books differ in major ways, they both offer an ambition to represent childhood as authentically as possible through different means. Childhood may be elusive, and perhaps even impossible, to represent in literature, but through fantasy, distance, closeness and other means these books offer different ways to depict childhood respectfully.

Minnet av minoritetspolitiken i Sverige under 1800-talet och en stor del av 1900-talet harpåverkat den tornedalska identiteten och lämnat efter sig en känsla av utanförskap ochtudelning hos befolkningen. Populärkulturen spelar en betydande roll i att förmedla minnenoch skildra den representerade gruppens identitet och i att påverka identitetsskapandet hosåskådaren. Detta sker i representationens gestaltning samt omfattning, och filmenPopulärmusik från Vittula (Reza Bagher, 2004) är en av få spelfilmer som utspelar sig iTornedalen. Den här studien undersöker representationen av befolkning, miljö och språk iTornedalen samt relationen mellan nationell och regional identitet i filmen och på vilka sättintern orientalism och postkolonialism framträder i materialet. Filmens bildspråk och handlinganalyseras utifrån kritisk diskursanalys, semiotisk bildanalys, filmpoetisk analys samt KristinaBoréus analysfrågor som formats efter denna studies syfte och frågeställningar. Utifrån teorierkring representation, stereotyper och normer, identitet och minne, postkolonialism, internorientalism samt konceptet sårbarhet studeras gestaltningen av identitet i filmen och hur ettkulturellt minne skapas och förmedlas. Analysen visar att filmens narrativ, stil, framställning av karaktärer, val av inspelningsplatsoch språkbruk bidrar till att förmedla en splittring i identiteten hos den tornedalskabefolkningen som kommit till av tvåspråkigheten, känslan av att vara både finsk och svenskoch en paradoxal inställning till den egna kulturen. Gestaltningen av utanförskap, skam ochtraumatiska sårbara minnen i filmen blir en tydlig identitetsskapande effekt. En mobiliseringav konceptet sårbarhet bidrar till identifikation med karaktärerna och därmed Tornedalenskollektiva minne och identitet. De tema som filmen berör, som exempelvis identitetsförlust,utanförskap, diskriminering, exploatering och våld, bidrar till en stärkt individuell ochkollektiv identitet och som genom att delas i filmen blir ett kulturellt minne som förmedlas tillgruppen som representeras, samt till övriga grupper.

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The aim of this paper is to analyze the didactic potential of Mikael Niemis novel Popularmusic from Vittula as it relates to working with the fundamental values of the Swedish schoolsystem from two perspectives. The first of these relates to how the novel portrays gender, witha particular focus on masculinity and how it interprets itself, femininity, and the world aroundit. The second of these perspectives relates to how it portrays the national minority grouptornedalingar and their situation in Sweden. This paper aims to illustrate not only how thesetwo perspectives are portrayed but motivate why they are useful in the work with fundamentalvalues. To answer these questions this paper utilizes the qualitative method of close reading in theanalysis of Niemis novel. The theoretical lense through which this is done includes researcherMalin Alkestrands definition of didactic potential as well as a repertoire of gender study andpostcolonial terminology, such as otherfication, masculinity and boyology. The study findsthat the didactic potential of Mikael Niemis text as it relates to gender lay in how it breakswith the traditional gender norms of rural masculinity. Another important factor is how thetext highlights the role of femininity and music in shaping the new male identity of thenovel’s protagonist, Matti. The study also finds that the didactic potential in Niemis portrayalof tornedalingar lay in its emphasizing of the political nature and origins of the historicotherfication of said ethnic minority.

This essay deals with recurring grotesque motifs in Mikael Niemi’s novels Kyrkdjävulen, Populärmusik från Vittula (Popular Music from Vittula), Fallvatten and Koka björn (To Cook a Bear). It aims to widen the academic understanding of Niemi’s works by focusing on their aesthetics in relation to previous studies, which have mostly been concerned with placing Niemi in a context of Tornedalian minority literature. With the grotesque defined as monstrous and boundary breaking imagery that challenges common rational, ideological or moral world views, this study shows that these motifs can both strengthen, nuance and undermine postcolonial interpretations of the novels.Through Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque, emphasis is placed on the subversive and utopian aspects of the grotesque motifs. With the use of Sigmund Freud’s term the uncanny (das unheimliche) and Julia Kristeva’s term the abject, psychological and emotional aspects of the selected motifs are drawn to the surface. And, by turning to Sara Ahmed’s thoughts on emotions and performativity, the function of disgust in said motifs is examined. The grotesque motifs in question are: the degradation of the mouth, the lower animals, the boy with the knife, the witch mother, and the androgyne. The first part of the analysis shows that in Niemi’sworks the mouth is associated with storytelling, power, agency and the subject’s ability to both knowand express himself, but also to take the world into himself and be changed by it. The mouth is often degraded, which in a carnivalesque manner results in a linguistic revival. The second part of the analysis argues that lower animals, such as rats, reptiles and bat-like devil spawn, are symbols of the abject – that which man must cast out in order to exist. The motifs of the rats and devils are associated with themes of language, identity and writing, but also allude to a threatening feminine principle. In the third part of the analysis, the motifs of the boy with the knife, the witch mother and the androgyne are found to be juxtaposed to and interwoven with each other in narratives concerning gender, sexuality and coming of age. The results of the study show that Mikael Niemi utilizes grotesque aesthetics to give shape toprocesses of growth and change, captivity and liberation, and a complicated sense of identity that eludes clear and rational definitions. The grotesque in these novels is not purely utopian in a Bakhtinian sense, but more emotionally ambivalent. A determining factor to whether the grotesque image brings true renewal or only a repetition of past pain is the will and choice of the individual. Thus, Mikael Niemi’s novels speak not so much of the power of a minority identity, as of the power and potential of the individual to reinvigorate that identity. They form an individualized, existential project in a Tornedalian context.