Oscar Törnqvist

Avhandling: Röster från ingenmansland - En identitetsarkeologi i ett maritimt mellanrum Länk till annan webbplats, öppnas i nytt fönster.

Ämne: Arkeologi
Forskarskola: Historiska studier, Baltic and East European Graduate School
Opponent: Eva Svensson, Professor i miljövetenskap, Karlstad universitet, Karlstad, Sverige
Språk: Svenska

Abstract

Archaeological investigations into late iron age and medieval coastal societies in Sweden have been focusing on a maritime culture, a traditional coastal and island-dwelling fisher-farmer and activities centered on fishing in a long maritime tradition as well as a specific maritime identity and habitus.

By deconstructing commonly used concepts and by using primarily written sources, it is here shown that there is a need for putting this culture and its agents into perspective by opening up the history of the maritime interspace and let in previously overlooked or disregarded historical actors in the narrative field dominated by men and landed farmers, such as landless, powerless, strangers, foreigners and women.

The coast is shown to have been an arena for opportunism, societal expansion under landed gentry, nodes for procurement and social oppression and focal points for inter-cultural contacts, trade, networking and self-realization and that the role of the islands and the “fisheries” was constantly remolded to fit different power strategies.

Through a series of case studies, seldom discussed social relations, social groups and social predicaments are unmasked and discussed; the relation between norse and proto-Saami cultures, the role of women in fishing, employment of the poor or serfs, of incentives by strangers and foreigners.

Many localities speak of conflict, struggle and self-sought or forced marginalization; the emergence of taxation and the control of fishing, piracy and insurgency but also of exile, reclusion and asceticism. Running through history there has been a dichotomy and tension between the workforce and the benefactor, between small-scale and large-scale maritime procurement, between cooperation and conflict and between the meeting place and the hidden refuge.

To conclude, the study sketches the ethno genesis of the hitherto “fisher-farmer” and exposes a wider set of actors and their strategies in the maritime space and ends with advocating a series of potentially fruitful research frameworks of study; cultural niches in the maritime environment, actor geographies in the outback, the use of maritime produce in societal transformations, and to further investigate the harsh,hidden or exposed, islands as places for sociocultural and economical strategies withprofound social, psychological and spiritual impact.