This is a study of autobiographical letters written in the early 1950s by seven Swedish sailors. The letters were contributions to a project at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm aiming to collect and publicize workers' autobiographical narratives. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the sailors composed their narratives in dialogue not only with heroic epics and other oral and written literary traditions but also with folklore studies and with contemporary public conversations about Sweden. According to Bachtin, any given text must be understood as a dialogue with the entire history of literature and the analysis in this study shows that the sailors' narratives are composed according to the pattern of the returning Homeric hero: the hero by destiny, the hero by action, and the hero by tradition. In terms of contents the letters are centered on two major themes: the two world wars and the transformation of Sweden from a poor rural society into a modern well-fare state. These themes are dramatized in plots, test-conflicts, motifs, and motif-complexes (functions, motiphemes), well-known from oral traditions and classical drama. An experiment in which two of the letters are subjected to “ethnopoetic transcription” shows the nature and extent of the oral idiom used by the writers. Two other writers display their literary ambitions through an abundance of paraphrases and hidden quotations. For the museum staff, the sailors' contributions were problematic. The verbal artistry of the writers challenged assumptions that workers' life narratives should be “simple and ingenious descriptions” and transparent sources of ethnological data. Furthermore, the sailors' frankness about Sweden's and their own part in the world wars challenged the myth of the neutrality and peacefulness of the Swedish folkhem.

Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka om ett experimenterande med etnopoetisk transkribering av den i fältarbetet skapade etnografin kan ge fördjupade insikter i musikens funktion och betydelse inom demensvården. Det sju dagar långa fältarbetet på ett demensboende gav upphov till ljud- och videoupptagningar, intervjuer med personalen, samt fältanteckningar och -dagbok. Etnografin presenteras i två empirisk- analytiska kapitel, av vilka det första undersöker formellt organiserade musiksituationer, medan det andra undersöker informella musiksituationer på demensboendet. Den etnopoetiska transkriberingen eftersträvar att i text så noggrant som möjligt återge tal och sång, liksom även de minsta detaljer i mänsklig kommunikation, så som prosodi, gestik, koreografi och andra paralingvistiska element. Som svar på fem ställda frågor konkluderar undersökningen att den etnopoetiska transkriberingen tydliggör: 1) hur spegling, upprepning och turtagning strukturerar samspelet mellan vårdtagare och personal; 2) den sociala interaktionen mellan forskaren, personer med demenssjukdom och deras personal; 3) hur musik förekommer i situationer som inte vid första anblicken uppfattas som musik; 4) demenspatienter (som agerande subjekt); 5) den kommunikativa musikkompetensen hos personer med demenssjukdom, de anhöriga och personalen. / The aim of this paper is to investigate if an experiment with ethnopoetic transcription of the ethnography created in a field study can convey profound insights into the functions and meanings of music in dementia care. The seven days fieldwork, resulting in sound- and video recordings, interviews, field notes and diaries, was conducted in a nursing home. The ethnography is presented in two empirical-analytical chapters, the first of which investigates formally organized music situations, whereas the second scrutinizes informal music situations in the nursing home. The ethnopoetic transcript aspires to meticulously render speech and singing in text, as well as minute details of interaction, such as prosody, gestures, choreography and other paralinguistic elements of communication. In response to a set of five questions, the investigation concludes that the ethnopoetic transcription makes evident: 1) how mirroring, repetition and turn-taking structure the interaction between patients and nursing staff; 2) the social interaction between the researcher, the patients and the nursing staff; 3) how music actually happens in situations that at first sight may be considered non-music situations; 4) dementia patients (as acting subjects); 5) the communicative music-competence of dementia patients, their relatives and the nursing staff.