Viking Dynasties: The Royal Families of Lejre and Uppsala Between Archaeology and Text, ed. Tom Christensen, John Ljungkvist & Neil Price, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications Vol. 127, 2024 [here on Academia.edu, the author's original Swedish text is uploaded, while an English translation..., 2024
This is the original Swedish text of the work, which has been published in Esnglish translation (... more This is the original Swedish text of the work, which has been published in Esnglish translation (by Charles Phillimore) under the title "The Uppsala Kings. Narrative - Tradition - Reality" in Viking Dynasties: The Royal Families of Lejre and Uppsala Between Archaeology and Text, ed. Tom Christensen, John Ljungkvist & Neil Price, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications Vol. 127, 2024.
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Books by Daniel Sävborg
Under det senaste århundradet har historikerna omvärderat dessa berättelser om Sveriges forntid och avfärdat dem som sagor. Det har lett till att de numera har fallit i glömska – men så hade det inte behövt bli. Sedan länge har ingen trott att Odysseus, Teseus eller Romulus och Remus har funnits i verkligheten, men ändå fortlever berättelserna om dem och fortsätter att fascinera oss. Varför skulle det vara annorlunda med de svenska berättelserna? De är minst lika fängslande som de antika grekiska och romerska sagorna, och har lika många lager av mening och djup.
I Händelser ur Sveriges ohistoria presenterar Daniel Sävborg elva sådana berättelser om Sveriges forntid. Dessutom visar han hur de har förvandlats med tiden, tolkats och omtolkats och både roat och berört människor på djupet. Det gör han inte minst genom att diskutera de konst- och diktverk som bygger på berättelserna. För inte så länge sedan var dessa verk välkända, men i dag är de i hög grad bortglömda, eftersom de är svårbegripliga för en publik som inte känner till bakgrunden. Boken gör en försvunnen del av kulturarvet känd och levande igen. Med kunskap om de klassiska berättelserna om den svenska forntiden blir många konstnärliga verk tillgängliga på nytt, och många platser runt om i Sverige blir åter laddade med mening och mystik.
oriented. This is evident in saga scholarship, where the book-prose ideology turned the issue of the origin of individual sagas into an issue of direct influences from other written works. This focus has methodological advantages, but it has also meant that valuable folkloristic knowledge has been neglected. The present volume targets the advantages, the problems and the methods of using folklore material and theory in Old Norse scholarship. An important theme in folklore is the encounter with the Supernatural and such stories are indeed common in saga literature. Generally, however, scholars have tended to focus on feuds and the social structure of the sagas, and less on encounters with Otherworld beings. In this volume, the supernatural themes in the sagas are discussed by means of several approaches, some folkloristic, some traditionally philological.
elegies". In addition, the study wants to discuss the role of grief in Eddie poetry. I use a comparative method and try in different ways to be as free as possible from presumptions and dependence of earlier scholarship. Therefore, I examine consistlently all Eddic heroic poems, not - like earlier "elegy"-scholars - only the "elegies". In the comparative studies where I want to establish the literary-historical context behind the grief descriptions of the Eddic poetry I search in many different periods, genres and poetic works for such literature that could have influenced the Eddic poetry and its poetic treatment of grief; unlike earlier "elegy"-scholars I do not proceed from a hypothesis about one particular model, nor do I test specifically the hypotheses of earlier scholars. My studies led me to the following main results:
—Grief as a poetic motif, its presentation and function in most Eddic poems - the so-called "elegies" as well as those that are supposed to be old - should be explained as proceeding from a Norse Viking Age tradition with roots directly in Old Germanic poetry, not as proceeding from later mediæval literature, either Norse nor continental.
—The grief in most poems of the heroic cycle of Codex Regius is directly linked to the heroic poetry as a genre; most of he "elegies", too, are genuine heroic poems and not, as has been claimed, lyrical poems or something of that kind. Further studies suggested that grief was one of the permanent components in Norse/Old Germanic heroic poetry.
—The established view that there is a sharp distinction between the group of "elegies" and the group of "old" Eddic poems is not correct. On the contrary, my studies demonstrated common basic characteristics, as regards both grief and other supposedly
distinctive features. These poems as entities belong to the same poetic tradition. Still, it is a fact that grief is a considerably more dominant ingredient in the "elegies" than in other Eddic poems. This characteristic, however, is due to the fact that these poems focus on women, not to a different origin.
• There is a well-developed and distinctive indigenous tradition of love depiction. Love is in several family sagas a more important motif than most scholars have realized, due to their misinterpretation of elements in the technique of love depiction in the sagas.
• The indigenous saga literature and the indigenous poetic tradition show in all essentials different tendencies. There is not only one indigenous tradition of love depiction in Old Norse literature.
• The translated riddarasögur reproduce to a great extent the courtly continental tendencies from their originals as regards love/eroticism.
• The indigenous saga tendency does hardly at all influence the treatment of the motif of love/eroticism in the translated riddarasögur, and the continental tendency does only slightly influence the depiction of love/eroticism in the family sagas.
• Fornaldarsögur connect in their treatment of love on to the tradition of the indigenous saga literature. The theory of a strong influence on the fornaldarsögur from the translated riddarasögur and courtly literature is refuted. The indigenous riddarasögur connect in their treatment of love principally to the tendencies of the translated riddarasögur. The prevalent theory of a close relationship between the groups of fornaldarsögur and indigenous riddarasögur is strongly overstated.
Papers by Daniel Sävborg
However, for this book, I have been asked to ‘highlight differences I have experienced in the communication / business style’ in the Estonian culture. I will try to take this task seriously, but also strongly remind my readers that the differences which I do discuss are not generally Estonian – the similarities dominate completely and, as will be shown, the differences which I discuss, constitute a matter of generation and do hardly exist among Estonians under 50 years.
However, while differences in ‘national character’ between Estonians and Swedes hardly exist, there are clearly differences at one point: differences in experience concerning political and system during a long time. When Swedes see all the large similarities between the Swedish and Estonian societies today, it might be easy to forget that the differences until only 30 years ago were all the more fundamental.
Estonia was for more than 50 years a dictatorship, while Sweden during the same period had basically the same political system which today is common to Estonia and Sweden. The dictatorship and its ideology were least of all a native, Estonian, creation, but something that hade been forced on Estonia by foreign occupants, but nontheless, it ruled and permeted the Estonian society for a long time. And a political system, as well as a government-imposed ideology, affects those people who live under them. And here mentalities evolved which, without being ‘Estonian’ at all, nevertheless affected many people deeply and gave rise to attitudes and behaviour which not have clear counterparts in Sweden.
I will relate my meeting with such types of different mentality, but once again with necessary reservations: it is not about ‘Estonian culture’, but about consequences of the influence on humans of dictatorship and totalitarian ideology. This mentality is something directly connected to the generations which grew up in, were fostered and impregnated by this political and ideological system – Estonians under 50 mostly lack all signs of this mentality. And last but not least: this is a social heritage which most people have been able to get rid of.
The fact that I believe I am able to point out some of these, from a Swedish perspective, surprising forms of attitude as a Soviet heritage, is rooted in experience from my own youth as a Swede in Moscow of the 1970s. My mother, who was the correspondent for the Scandinavian news agencies, met in her contacts with Soviet authorities much which both surprised and scared her. Some of this, I have also met in today’s Estonia.