In this thesis we analyse the impact of uncertainty shocks in the Scandinavian banking sector. We apply the spillover approach developed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009; 2012; 2014), followed by network analysis. Furthermore, the dynamics of uncertainty shocks are examined by applying a quantile regression approach. We study the effects of financial uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk and housing market uncertainty on the seven banks Swedbank, Nordea, SEB, Svenska Handelsbanken, DNB, Danske Bank and Jyske Bank. We study these uncertainties on global, regional and local level between 2005 and 2018. We find that the Swedish banks are greater emitters of contagion, compared to the Norwegian and Danish banks, where SEB and Nordea are the banks emitting and receiving the most spillovers. Moreover, the connectedness within the banking sector tend to increase in times of heightened uncertainty, such as during the Global Financial Crisis and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. Global financial uncertainty is shown to affect the Scandinavian banks the most, followed by regional and local financial uncertainty. The same pattern can be seen for economic policy uncertainty, although at lower levels of spillovers. Reversely, housing market uncertainty is seen to increase going from global, regional to local, where the impact of local housing market uncertainty has a considerable amount of spillovers to the Scandinavian banks. Geopolitical risk is shown to have limited spillovers to the Scandinavian banks. The result of the quantile regressions suggests that financial uncertainty is affecting the banks’ returns negatively during bearish market conditions, whilst the relationship is positive during bullish market conditions. Moreover, we find that financial uncertainty is a quicker transmitter of spillovers than housing market uncertainty. Finally, we conclude that uncertainty shocks affecting the Scandinavian banks negatively tend to take effect instantaneously, while the effects of positive shocks are delayed.

This is a study of the Old Norse (hereafter abbreviated to ON) setr/sætr and ærgi place-names in areas of Scandinavian settlement in Scotland. The elements setr/sætr and ærgi all have a general meaning of a place for summer grazing in the hills, referred to in Scotland as a shieling. However, the related terms setr and sætr, are employed as shielings names in Norway and are indistinguishable from each other in Britain. It is only in areas of Scandinavian settlement in Britain and the Faroes that ærgi is found to signify a shieling site. The element ærgi was adopted as a loanword from either, the Scottish Gaelic àirigh or Irish áirge, both of which can also have the meaning of a shieling. What is unusual about this adoption is it is rare for a more prestigious speech community (ON in this instance) to adopt a word from, what is believed to have been, a less prestigious language at the time (Gaelic). Various scholars have looked at this question, but none have adequately explained the reason for the adoption. Much of the previous research has relied on comparisons of local farming systems that were recorded many centuries after the Viking Age. Farming techniques from the fifteenth to twentieth century are unlikely to adequately represent the agricultural situation in the Viking Age due to different social imperatives. The overall question I want to answer in this thesis, is why Scandinavian settlers in Scotland adopted ærgi, when they already had corresponding ON terms for a shieling. The distribution of ON settlement names is one of the main pieces of evidence to prove Scandinavian settlement in Scotland during this period. This is especially true of secondary settlements, such as shielings, which rarely feature in early documentation. The language shift to either Gaelic or Scots-English is likely to have led to the loss of many ON place-names, but will also have fossilised some names in the landscape. The location of these settlement names can give an understanding of how Scandinavian settlers utilised the landscape and highlight differences in the use of different shieling names. This thesis is interdisciplinary in nature, but one based on cultural and historical geography. The first element of the study is to understand why shielings developed in Scandinavian society and if there are identifiable environmental factors behind their location. Studies in Norway suggest shielings developed as a response to environmental constraints to agriculture and social pressures to produce a surplus. A locational study of shielings in areas that were the likely origin of Viking settlers in Norway, highlighted seven key locations for shielings. These locational factors were then compared to setr/sætr-names in Scotland. The locations were broadly similar to Norwegian shielings, however, Scottish setr/sætr-names were more likely to be situated in slightly more fertile locations than Norwegian examples studied. A comparison of Scottish setr/sætr-names with ærgi-names also revealed the latter to be more likely found on even richer grazing land. The conclusion being, setr/sætr had a more general meaning of a place for summer grazing, whereas, ærgi was specifically linked to richer soils and richer grazing land. This link may relate to an intensive dairy economy, something which is known from contemporary documentary sources from the Gaelic world, but has not been proven in pre-Viking Age Norway.

<p>Syftet med vårt arbete var att utvärdera om Scandinavian Airlines Sverige har förankrat de pågående förändringarna i organisationen hos sina medarbetare. Vi har analyserat hur Scandinavian Airlines Sverige arbetar med att motivera medarbetarna och förändra värderingar och normer bland dem. Vi har utgått ifrån Strategi 2011 och belyst den del som berör medarbetarperspektivet av den kulturella turnaround som sker inom SAS koncernen. I vår undersökning har vi avgränsat oss till Scandinavian Airlines Sverige och utgår ifrån deras tolkning av strategin som de benämner ”Framtidsresan”.</p><p>Den teoretiska modellen som utarbetats har givit oss möjlighet att analysera förändringsarbetet för Scandinavian Airlines Sverige och utvärdera hur förändringarna påverkar organisationens medarbetare. Den utgår ifrån variablerna Kommunikation, Förändringsarbetet, Medarbetarnas förhållningssätt och Medarbetarnas förutsättningar.</p><p>De slutsatser som vi kommit fram till är att Scandinavian Airlines Sveriges interna kommunikation till stor del har varit en ensidig och formell kommunikation från företagets sida. Medarbetarna har inte i någon större utsträckning fått vara aktiva i en dialog.</p><p>Förankringen av förändringsarbetet har påverkats av att informationen inte fullt ut behandlat vad som ska ske med medarbetaren eller på arbetsplatsen. Vi anser att förankringen av förändringen förbättras om Scandinavian Airlines Sverige kunde ha involverat fler personer från organisationen än de 40 underchefer som skedde när de utvecklade ”Framtidsresan” med dess vision och strategier. Det skulle öka möjligheten till dialog med medarbetarna och utjämna kulturella skillnader samt generera ett bättre framtida resultat med förändringsarbetet. Ett annat sätt är att arbeta med förändring i mindre grupper där medarbetarna kan känna sig mer delaktiga och bättre föra en dialog. Genom att öppna för dialog och delaktighet i mindre grupper, ge feedback och samverka mer är flera sätt att förbättra motivationen. Det anser vi vara en nödvändighet för att lyckas med den stora kulturella förändringen.</p> / <p>The purpose with this thesis was to evaluate if Scandinavian Airlines Sweden has anchored the current organizational change towards the employees. We have analyzed how Scandinavian Airlines Sweden is working with motivation of the employees and change their values and norms. The starting point was Strategy 2011 and we have evaluated the part that touch the employees’ perspective and the cultural turnaround that takes place within the SAS group. In our own research we have made a delimitation to only investigate Scandinavian Airlines Sweden and their interpretation of the strategy, which they name”Framtidsresan (future trip)”.</p><p>The theoretical model that has been prepared gives us the possibility to analyze the organizational change for Scandinavian Airlines Sweden and evaluate how the changes affect the employees in the organization. The model uses the variables Communication, Organizational change, Employees behavior and Employees conditions.</p><p>Conclusion from the research is that the internal communication within Scandinavian Airlines Sweden mostly has been biased and formal from the company’s side. In most of the cases the employees have not been able to have an active dialogue. Support of the organizational change has been affected by the fact that information not fully have considered what will happen to the employees and their workplace. We strongly feel that anchorage of the organizational change can be improved if Scandinavian Airlines Sweden involves more managerial staff from the organization than the 40 middle level managers that were involved during introduction of ”Framtidsresan (future trip)” with its vision and strategies. That would improve the possibility for a dialogue with the employees and compensate for cultural differences as well as generate a better future result with the organizational change. Another way is to work on the changes in smaller groups where the employees can feel more involved and have a better dialogue. By open up for dialogue and involvement in smaller groups as well as give feedback and cooperate more are some ways to increase motivation. We feel that these steps are necessary to take to be successful with the big cultural change that takes place right now.</p>

<p>In this paper I discuss the theory of altered states of consciousness. Some of the rock art of the san-people in southern Africa and the lakota people in South Dakota, USA have been inspired by experiences during trance. The question is if some of the rock art in southern Scandinavia also have been inspired by trance experiences, and if archaeological scientists by investigating this theoretical view might find a better understanding as far as the Bronze Age in Southern Scandinavia is concerned.</p>

<p>During the early 1990´s, the Swedish commercial air traffic was de-regulated and the new market-condition made it possible for low-budget airlines to enter the Swedish market. The former monopolistic airline company, Scandinavian Airline Systems (SAS), was facing a new type of competition which had the advantage of offering much cheaper air trips than SAS. Adding the decrease of profitability that struck SAS as well as other airline companies after the terrorist attacks on the 11th of September, forced them to carry out a mayor reorganization programme. The programme, called “Turn Around 2005”, was a direct economical measure that begun in 2002 and lasted until 2005 and resulted in a cost saving of 14,5 billion SEK as well as a notice or a transfer of 6000 employees.</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate if the opinion of the consumer, the image, corresponds with the profile that SAS wishes to mediate today. Our intentions are also to see if the changes during the reorganization have reached the consumers. This essay is a case study based on both a quantitative and a qualitative method. The quantitative study included questionnaires handed out to 143 persons and a former costumer satisfaction study made by “Svenskt Kvalitetsindex”. The qualitative study included deep interviews with employees on SAS. The results of the questionnaires, interviews and theories about image, profile, identity and GAP-analysis, clearly shows that SAS’s profile of being a low- cost airline and being the most price worthy alternative doesn’t correspond with the opinion of the consumers. The result also shows that the consumers have not detected any of the changes, apart from the price reduction, that was made during the reorganization. However SAS have succeeded to be known by the business-passengers as a bit better regarding the ground services and departures, and that part of their image are therefore close to their profile. Our conclusion states that there is an indistinctness regarding SAS profile since the costumers cannot decide if SAS is a low-cost or a traditional airline company.</p>

<p>Syftet med min uppsats är att studera attityder till svenska språket i Finland. Jag har intervjuat sju finskspråkiga gymnasieelever i södra Finland. Syftet med intervjuerna är primärt kvalitativt. Jag har velat bilda mig en uppfattning om vilka faktorer som påverkar de intervjuades attityder och även försöka förstå varför man har de attityder man har och vari de bottnar. Jag har även velat se hur ålder vid studiestarten i svenska påverkarattityderna. Därför har jag valt att intervjua både dem som har börjat studera svenska i lågstadiet och dem som börjat sina studier i högstadiet.</p><p>Resultatet visar att det finns flera faktorer som påverkar de intervjuades attityder. En faktor är kontakter med de svenskspråkiga och den vardagliga närvaron (eller frånvaron) av svenska språket. Undervisningens kvalitet och hurdan lärare man har i svenskämnet påverkar också. Även omgivningens attityder kan ha en viss påverkan. Bland mina informanter framstår den instrumentella funktionen som mest central i formandet av attityderna: informanterna läser svenska för att de tror sig ha nytta av det nu och i framtiden. Även den affektiva funktionen påverkar i vissa fall informanterna: en positiv attityd till svenska språket samt en stor vilja och motivation att lära sig det uttrycker en lust att känna tillhörighet till den andra gruppen (svenskspråkiga) utöver den egna (finskspråkiga). Flera informanter har åsikter om ålder vid studiestart i svenska och hur det kan påverka attityderna. Alla mina informanter har en positiv eller mer neutral attityd till svenska språket i sig och även de svenskspråkiga. Gällande åsikter om den obligatoriska undervisningen i svenska i Finland är åsikterna delade.</p>

The aim of this study is to examine the semantic architecture of the motif complex the four elements, i.e. fire, air, water and earth, in the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf’s poem A Mölna Elegy (1960). The poem belongs to the same polyphonic and quotative-allusive tradition as T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Ezra Pound’s Cantos. The four elements may be regarded both as four separate motifs and as constituting one semantically coherent motif complex. The latter reading has to do with the fact that the phrase the four elements is not itself present in the text. Thus, the thesis includes the assumption that this motif complex, heavily suggested by items in the text but still omitted, might function as a text matrix, from which a number of themes emerge such as life–death and time. The thesis has a theoretical anchoring in ideas about semantic frames (Barsalou) when discussing semantic relations between the different element-related words in the poem, and how these words may be linked to the concepts ‘fire’, ‘air’, water’ and ‘earth’ respectively. Traditional lexical relations such as hyponymy, antonymy and meronymy only catch the more obvious relations such as fire–glow, warm–cold and tree–branch, but are unable to explain pragmatically based relations between words linked to the same conceptual domain, such as sea–jetty, water–sink, fly–air and the like. To some extent, the thesis also draws upon Riffaterre’s theories about a poem’s matrix and how meaning arises in such texts. A major finding of the study is the heavy lexical presence of the four elements in the poem, expressed and suggested by a great number of semantically heterogeneous words. This semantic pattern is analysed in detail with the aid of semantic frame theory. A further discovery is that most of the element words imply dichotomies such as motion–repose, warmth–cold, light–dark or soft–hard. The elements have most of the dichotomies in common, which strongly suggests a union of all the four elements. Such a union is also suggested by several conspicuous compounds never earlier recorded in Swedish, such as glödstänk (‘glowspray’), vindstänk (‘windspray’), eldsus (‘fire sough’) and vågsus (‘wave sough’). The meetings of element are also described at the syntactic level as an explicit amalgamation of all four elements, which suggests a theme not earlier noticed. This theme may tentatively be called the cyclical amalgamation.

The subject of this study is perspective in police reports. The overall aim is to introduce new tools for analysing perspective in written narratives. The material consists of reports based on different accounts of the same conflict from a number of people (the suspect, the injured part and witnesses), that is, different versions of the same sequence of events. The study begins with a theoretical discussion of perspective in literary texts and of some characteristics of the police reports examined. Two tools are developed to analyse linguistic means for identifying perspective. The first analytical tool can be placed within the framework of cognitive semantics. Analysis here concerns seeing space differently and having different limits in one’s way of experiencing the sequence of events. This conceptualisation of the focaliser (the person whose perspective is reported) is realised in the text through certain spatial expressions associated with the concept of centre. To analyse the centres chosen, the image schema centre–periphery is used in examining instances of the adverbs fram and bort and their derivations. The second analytical tool can be placed within the theoretical framework of dramaturgy. Analysis here concerns perceiving the dramatic development of events differently, that is, dramatic patterns in the different versions of the conflict and which character is given the most active role in it. The differences can be seen in the focaliser’s choice of events and how aggression is consciously or unconsciously described in terms of how different characters cause the conflict to escalate. The hypothesis being tested is whether the suspect’s perspective is discernible in the report of the suspect’s account. The hypothesis is confirmed. The study shows that the tools introduced work successfully in the analysis of perspective. Both analyses yield results, which in both cases can be validated.

Scandinavia comprises Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Twenty years ago, the concept of Scandinavian management was created (Grennes, 2003). Earlier research is referring to culture as the reason for different management styles around the world. It is also found that human resources are highly valued in Scandinavian manage-ment (Eriksen et al., 2006). This study aims at understanding what Scandinavian management is and see if this matches with the style of management actually practised in Sweden. The purpose of the thesis is to, through empirical examples, study what Scandinavian management is and if it is practised on the Swed-ish market. Included in the purpose is also to investigate how Scan-dinavian management is addressed in prior research. This study uses a qualitative method. Two earlier done case studies about Manpower and IKEA are used. Using a qualitative method, we have conducted five interviews to get accurate data to help us answer our purpose. Two of the interviews were conducted with representatives from both Manpower and IKEA. One interview was done with Schramm-Nielsen who is an expert in the field of Scandi-navian management. The last interviews were carried out with two persons with a wide range of experience in the field of management in Sweden. The study concludes that the main focus of Scandinavian manage-ment lies within human resources. Equality, communication, coop-eration, trust and consensual decision making are vital elements in the concept of Scandinavian management. Managers in Sweden are focused on their employees and feel that they need to satisfy them in order to motivate them. This motivation has proven to lead to better productivity and performance of the organization. Swedish managers are indeed focused on human resources and are practising Scandinavian management. Scandinavian management is necessary on the Swedish market as it increases the chances for having a pro-ductive company with satisfied employees and customers.

This study examines the implementation of Balanced Scorecard (BSC) in health care organisations. BSC, a management control model based on measurements in different perspectives, has become one of the most popular performance measurement models during the last two decades and widely adopted in practice. However, studies have noticed that models are rarely used in the same way in different settings. From the perspective of Scandinavian institutionalism, a model that is moved from one place to another has been "translated." Translation is a process in which an abstract idea is transferred into an object, developed into practical use, and stabilised into an institution. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how a management control model influences and is influenced by the medical professional context. The ambition is to investigate how BSC has been translated in the Swedish and the Canadian health care contexts. Furthermore the purpose is to develop our understanding of measurements in professional organisations and to develop our understanding of the translation process. The study shows that the main purpose of implementing BSC in the health care organisations is to support improvements in the quality of care. Whereas a free translation process in the Swedish case allowed actors to interpret and reinterpret the model and to create specific performance measurements for reporting professional performance, a controlled translation process in the Canadian case resulted in medical professionals being unable to reinterpret the model. Instead, BSC came to represent the private company's way of acting, declaring disciplinary accountability and shifting interest from public administration and towards the business firm. Based on the findings, this study stresses that a model can materialize both in the forms of practical use and talk, and that different translations can result in disputes and negotiations among actors with different interests. This study also analyses and develops the concept of transparency, and suggests that actors will use different performance measurements depending on what type of transparency (openness, visibility or hyaline) is requested. Finally, it is suggested that disciplinary accountability may result in actors focusing on finding the perfect measurements, whereas socializing form of accountability may create a greater focus on reciprocal accountability for improvements.