This thesis addresses devil beliefs in Karlstad diocese during the years ca. 1870-1950. The aim of thethesis is to shed light on devil tales that were told during the above-mentioned timeframe with thetheoretical framework of Ulrika Wolf-Knuts’s devil genres. Moreover, the thesis attempts todistinguish a folklore-devil affected by the Christian revival in Sweden during the 19th century. Thethesis thus contributes to a deeper understanding of devil tales in Karlstad diocese, the revival’ssignificance over folklore and comprehension of the Värmlandic and Dalslandic peoples’ culturalhistorical heritage. A hermeneutic as well as comparative methodology was used to navigate the source materialwhich consists of 20th century records of folk belief from The Institute for Language and Folklore(Isof) archives; these consists of stories told by people born during the second half of the 19th century.Furthermore, the records are complimented by a printed work by Carl-Martin Bergstrand,Värmlandssägner, wherein additional stories where analysed. The analysis shows that the source material fits well together with Wolf-Knuts’s devil genres,moreover, four new genres could be identified within Karlstad diocese. These contain mostlyinformative storytelling but are also complementary to Wolf-Knuts’s non-necessary devil genres.Wolf-Knuts’s theoretical framework can thereby receive an update considering these findings.Furthermore, the results determine that the peoples’ understanding of the devil is uniform in itsmultifaceted nature. The thesis puts out a hypothesis; the terminology when referring to the dark lorddiffers in places wherein the Christian revival had a greater hold. There, it was commonplace to usebiblical names for the devil. If the Christian revival is definitively responsible for this occurrence ornot could not be determined.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-98413 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Andersson, Marcus |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för humaniora och samhällsvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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