This paper discusses changing views about gender and drinking in Sweden c. 1830-4922. The author posits that the emergence of bourgeois morals in the 19th century were associated with a decline in the tolerance for female alcohol consumption, and also shows how the values, norms, and activities of the temperance movement interconnected with religion and notions of purity. Yet, in spite of hardening attitudes against women's drinking, alcohol remained integral in Swedish upper-class women's lives. The results are based on a qualitative study of Swedish women's diaries. The study was financed by the Swedish Research Council, 2009-2012. Study limitations are also noted.

On the basis of an extensive survey of primary and secondary sources from 19th-century central Sweden this article looks into the most neglected area of alcohol history, namely the role that alcohol played within the middle and upper classes. More specifically, it aims to analyze the relationship between drinking habits and respectability', as described by scholars such as George Mosse. The author identifies an aristocratic drinking culture with roots in the 18th century, in which respectability was not the governing structure of gendered behaviour. Among men belonging to the middle strata of society a different drinking culture existed, where the primary aim was to create a sense of brotherhood between men. The increasing insistence on respectability during the course of the period slowly eroded the old aristocratic drinking pattern, but also challenged the heavy drinking in middle-class male circles. The study thus adds detail and complexity to concepts such as 'respectability' and 'separate spheres'.

Cheap Scandinavism. An investigation of Scandinavist texts in popular prints in the mid-nineteenth century

In nineteenth-century Sweden, chapbooks (small leaflets containing various rhymed texts or ”ballads”) were among the few printed products that were cheap and easy enough to read to be available to the majority of the population. In this article, the impact of Scandinavism in chapbooks is investigated, thus adding a piece of information to our knowledge on how these thoughts were diffused among the broader population. The conclusion drawn is that Scandinavist texts were indeed published in chapbook format, but, it seems, with a delay. This indicates that Scandinavist popular prints were not primarily a result of an active effort on behalf of the Scandinavists themselves, but of ”text scavenging” among the printers producing chapbooks. However, it is suggested that this gesunkenes Kulturgut might still have played a part in introducing the idea of shared Nordic interests to the general population.

The research on European ballad prints is currently entering into a very exciting phase. For years, these ephemeral yet long-lived leaflets have been lying uncatalogued in the dustiest corners of the archives. Now, collections of ballad prints are being digitized in country after country, and the volume of researchis growing. For the field to really take off, however, we must publish in English. This is one reason why the anthology Czech Broadside Ballads is such a welcomework of scholarship.

In 21 chapters written by 27 authors, the anthology deals with topics ranging from the sixteenth-century origins of printed ballads to the cordel prints of twentieth-century Brazil. It is not possible to do justice to all of the texts in a single review, but I attempt to identify the volume’s most significant results, point out a few weaknesses, and discuss the implications for further research. My perspective is that of a historian specializing in Scandinavian printed ballads (in Swedish, skillingtryck).

1600-talets Europa plågades av krig, farsoter och hungersnöd. Livet var skört och det gällde att ständigt vara redo att möta döden som en god kristen. Ute på sitt gods i Tyresö lät Herr Gabriel, bror till rikskanslern Axel Oxenstierna, uppföra en kyrka som på samma gång var hans grav: ett monument som för all framtid skulle minna om släktens ära och fromhet.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Music was founded in 1771 with the primary objectives of promoting art music and musical life in Sweden. In 1782, the first woman entered the academy: Elisabeth Olin, prima donna of the newly founded Swedish opera. This essay investigates the academy’s female fellows and its attitude to female musicians. The results show that the academy was relatively open toward women (especially opera singers in the soprano range) during the late 18th century, in 1860−1880 and from the late 1990s and onwards, but elected few women in between. The study also reveals why the academy decided to admit a woman 1782. It appears that the academy was economically indebted to Elisabeth Olin and that she was elected honorary member as an act of gratitude for remitting the debt.

The aim of this essay is to investigate the mixed church choir and the Swedish Association of Church Choirs (Svenska Kyrkosångsförbundet, SKSF) in the social and musicological context of Sweden c. 1900–1950. Questions asked are why the mixed choir became the dominant form of choir singing in the Church of Sweden, what stance SKSF’s leaders took in response to women, and how they regarded mixed choirs compared to boys’ and men’s choirs. The main source used is the organisation’s periodical, Kyrkosångsförbundet.

A literature review reveals that the establishment of mixed church choirs was boosted by several factors around the turn of the 20th century. The evangelical revival movement, especially the Baptists, had long featured mixed choirs. Towards the end of the 19th century, a new interest for liturgy emerged within the Church of Sweden, and choral singing was officially sanctioned as part of the service. But above all, women as a collective were ready and able to participate. During the first decades of the 20th century, societal reforms and a simultaneous plunge in childbearing rates gave women more opportunities than ever before to play an active part as citizens.

Lutheran Germany exerted a strong influence on Swedish church music, and the tenets of die neue Sachlichkeit in music were embraced by many of SKSF’s leading men. Several of them wrote with enthusiasm of a restored Lutheran music, purged of sentimentality and brought back to the austere purity of the Reformation era. Some offered up the opinion that the voices of girls and women lacked the ”chaste” clarity needed for such a music, and that, in a perfect choir, they would all be replaced by boys. This dream was rudely shattered as scores of basses and tenors left to man the Swedish borders during WWII. The SKSF instead turned to the task of keeping choir singing in church going with the help of second altos, three-part settings and compositions for female and children’s choirs.

Although SKSF’s leadership and its periodical completely ignored the ‘woman question’ so prominent in early 20th-century secular discourse, the mixed church choir contributed to the democratisation of the Church of Sweden, and so of Swedish society as a whole. Women were heard as singers, choir leaders and members of choir boards, and the mixed choir provided a context where women and men could meet on an equal footing.

Sällan har en kyrka blivit mer utskälld än Oscarskyrkan. Den inflytelserika konstkritikern Tor Hedberg kallade den för ett "alster av en förtorkad, andelös och plebejisk smak". Enligt Göteborgsposten var den rent av "ett vidunder av pretentiös och banal fulhet". Men var kyrkan verkligen så avskyvärd – eller blev den ett slagträ i en strid som gällde mer än bara en arkitekturstil?

I den här boken undersöker historikern Hanna Enefalk vad ett skillingtryck egentligen var. Vad handlade ”visorna” om, och vilka var det som kom till tals i detta tryckmedium? Boken inleds med en grundläggande genomgång av skillingtryckens historia, deras position inom forskningen och deras bevarandestatus i arkiven. I bokens andra halva studeras särskilt skillingtrycken från 1800-talets mitt. Genom att analysera tryckens innehåll, proveniens och samhälleliga kontextvisar författaren vilka mekanismer som styrde skillingtrycksproducenternas val av texter. Boken presenterar på så sätt en ny historia om skillingtrycken: en historia om ett medium som förändrades från att ha tjänat den kyrkliga reformationen under 1500-talet till att gå hand i hand med den liberala tidningspressen vid 1800-talets mitt. Boken vänder sig till forskare, studenter och alla som ärintresserade av förelöparna till vår tids massmedia.

Tyska S:ta Gertruds kyrka, som Tyska kyrkan egentligen heter, kan verka som en anomali: hur har Sveriges huvudstad och Svenska kyrkan fått en tysk kyrka med tillhörande församling? Men det är inte S:ta Gertrud som "blivit" tysk. Det har den alltid varit. Det är resten av Stockholm som blivit mindre tyskt. Den påkostade kyrkan i Gamla stan står som ett minnesmärke över Sveriges tyska historia.

Hur har kyrkan format svenskarna? Och varför ser egentligen kyrkorna ut som de gör? Enbart inom Svenska kyrkan finns 3 700 kyrkor. De flesta är gamla sockenkyrkor, spridda över alla landets bebodda delar. Hur kunde ett fattigt jordbruksland på randen av det odlingsbara Europa producera ett sådant bestånd av monumentalbyggnader? Vad betydde kyrkan egentligen, rent konkret, för de människor som bekostade byggnaderna och lyssnade på predikningarna? Historikern Hanna Enefalk tar oss med på en tusenårsresa till ett Sverige som vi ofta bara har anat. Lagar, moral, tidsuppfattning, till och med själva landskapet  allt har utvecklats i samspel med landets kyrkor.

Aims We aimed to map the context of the large increase in vodka consumption in Sweden during the transition from early modern to modern times (c. 17751855). What were the attitudes to alcohol among the groups that dominated society, and how did these attitudes relate to contemporary legislation and socio-economic change? Methods Qualitative analysis of diaries and memoirs. Information was also collected from legislation, writings of the temperance movement and previous research. Findings During the period studied, attitudes to alcohol among the socio-economic elite were positive if the drinker was a person of standing, whereas drinking among the working population was scorned and, from the 1830s onwards, a cause for concern. Legislation was characterized by frequent and radical changes. Consumption levels are difficult to estimate: in the 1820s, agricultural overproduction, liberal legislation and improved distilling methods probably resulted in a major consumption increase. In 184653, permissive licensing laws and the industrialization of distilling similarly led to very high consumption levels. Conclusions In Sweden in the late 18th and early 19th centuries the social elite appears to have used alcohol as a tool in their negotiations with the working population but later, as the spread of wage labour and cheap vodka coincided with Sweden's largest ever population growth, the view that popular drinking must be checked gained support in leading circles.