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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Brill. I'm Lee Chung-Grejo, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Today we're speaking with Henrik Edgren, he's associate professor at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and Meredith Ruse, professor of history at the University of Southeastern Norway. Their article is exploring textbooks and cultural change in Nordic education from 1536 to 2020.
Welcome to you both. Thank you. Thank you. And we have three other editors that contributed to this piece as well if you'd like to introduce them.
Yes, I can do that. It's Schellar Fagier, who is a professor at the University of Uppsala, in Norway. And it's Kristina Mottissen, who's an associate professor at Copenhagen University in Denmark. And it's Perio Hiedema, who is a professor at Helsinki University in Finland.
And they were not, unfortunately, not able to be present with us today. So we are Henrik and I are representing the editorial team. Well, excited to still have the conversation today with the two of you. First off, tell us what's the aim of this volume.
Why did you track the history of textbooks all the way back to the 16th century for this piece? Well, I could start. As we said, the overall objective of the book is to highlight in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, how textbooks reflect national cultural politics and legislation from the 60th century up until today. And you know why we start so early as the 60th century is due to the introduction of the reformation, not only in the Nordic countries, but all over Europe.
These are major significance for not only for the church and religious organisations, but also for how education was organised in different perspectives. I can continue with some comments on that. And it's perfectly right that Henrik is saying that it's also important to take notice that the Nordic countries are very often mentioned together. And we are kind of tracing the common roots back to the reformation, because the reformation in the Nordic countries took on a different colour or different aspects in the Nordic countries than in Western Europe.
So our aim is to trace a line from the reformation up to today. And it's of course the reformation in the church has a great significance in the cis-free. Yeah, I think also it's important to stress why we are looking into the Nordic countries. And that is in our case, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
There is a major common historical heritage of course, but there are also some important differences between the countries. That way, it's quite interesting and constructive to look into the uniquenesses of every country as well as similarities. So this is why this region is so interesting to have the research object. So just...
I might comment up on that again. And it's also important for us to show non-Nordic readers. That it is like Henrik says that there are differences between the Nordic countries, because many think of the Nordic countries as a united union or a united region. So it's important for us to show both the similarities as well as the differences.
Yeah, and that leads me into my next question, which was the effect of the reformation on education. You mentioned that it differed so much from the West, but I'd also like you to touch on how it had a different effect in each Nordic country, because as you mentioned, it's not all just one block that we seem to lump it into. Well, I didn't start with that question, because this must be seen in a complex... In a lot of the complex history of the Nordic region, because Norway and Denmark was one country from the late 13th century and until 1814.
The reformation had a different impact on Denmark and Norway than what it had in Sweden. But what has come on to the contrast is that it had a great impact on reading and writing skills. So really fascinating effect then. You focused on three main questions in your article here.
You asked, to what extent is governmental control reflected in your material? To what extent is participation from the public reflected in your material? And then who are represented in the contents and didactics of the empirical material? What do these questions illustrate about Nordic society and education?
Well, I could have started with the first perspective about government control and how that is reflected in historical textbook materials. I would say that, you know, as I said, from the 16th century, there was really an intention of control from first of course, from the church and then also from the stage to the meaning that they really decided and controlled the contents of the textbooks. So the contents should really be of the right. They should teach all the people in this society how they should act and what were they brought in values and in a matter of also controlling the population of these states.
So I mean, the government control is really important. I would say from the beginning, at least in the middle half of the 20th century. And then of course, it is a change in the variations of the government control. It's really crucial from the beginning, I would say.
Yeah, and that leads us to the representation keyword because the representation can be seen as a parallel to the control of the keyboard because in the beginning, right after the reformation, who is represented in the textbook is in fact the church and the theology. The main goal for the textbook editors and the skill system is to educate people into being believers and into being Christians and good moral citizens. And when you go towards or on time in the environment, there's more and books are more and more increasingly more secularized. And the independent and individual human is represented in a much more clear way the longer you turn toward or on time.
So I would say that the representation is slowly, it's going in a sort of progress from being represented by the church and increasingly to secularize and to the humans. Yeah, and I would like to add there that Maryte is of course a talkier writer when she is stressing the importance of the church in 1678 and 18th century. And it's also important to say that in the 19th century, especially from the 1850s, the state, I mean the state of Sweden, the state of Denmark, the state of so on and so forth, they got more involved in not only in textbooks but in financing and in organizing schools and the states got also more involved in taking control over the whole society. So the state involved itself in many other areas as well.
And you can see this also when we're looking to the textbooks and how the state progressively is more and more interested in so to speak governing that the contents of the books and financing the contents of the books and paying authors to write these textbooks which were spread all over the countries, all pupils going in the elementary schools and so on and so on and so the state really put enormous resources in writing these, publishing and financing these textbooks. And this is an important shift compared to Hogwarts before that. Yeah, and it's also, if I may comment on that, it's also very strongly related to the development of the national states because around 1850, a 50s and a success, the state takes over control over the textbooks and but it also has an educational project to teach the individuals to become good citizens within the national state. And from this moment, you can also see that there are different textbooks, functional as nation-building tools, if I could say so.
Yeah, to put it simply, you could say that in the 19th century, there is a shift from, if you look in a general way or the contents of the textbooks, you can see that in the beginning of the 19th century, there is this old tradition of teaching subjects, which really should be having focused just to obey authorities, obey the king, obey the church, obey God and so on and so forth. But the longer we come into the 19th century, there is more of a teaching of citizens with more of a national way of looking into things that they should be more scholarised in how to live in a constitutional society, they should be more taking more responsibility over the lies, which is more of an individualistic view of the person. So, I mean, this is a major historical change in it, all over Europe in the 19th century. It's interesting that you can also see this noted in the contents of the textbook during this 100 years, I would say.
Can you mention those different shifts you have, the shift during the Enlightenment when textbooks became more secular and then you have that shift again in the 1850s when you said that government gained control over textbooks more. I'm wondering though, again, as you noted before, Nordic countries are not this one block, so I'm wondering how each of those shifts played out differently in each country if you can touch on that at all. I would say that if you look into this aspect, if you look into how the state took more responsibility and how the state was more involved in schools and in textbooks and in the contents of textbooks, I would say it's quite similar in the Nordic countries as well as in other European countries in the same time. If you look at what happened in Russia, if you look at what happened in France, if you look at what happened in the UK, you had the same kind of UK was a little bit later, but and how you see the same kind of development.
So, this is really, I mean, this shift from the second half of the 19th century where the state got more involved in school systems and for responsibility. I would say this is a very interesting and international history. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that these changes must be seen in national context and that the differences are more on, well, perhaps more in the more than 20th century, we will see differences and because these changes are convincing in life, are most the national impulses with a secularization, with big historical events or revolutions that goes throughout Europe.
So, I think that Henik is perfectly right in mentioning that or in saying that this is an incident or this is a fact that we don't see much differences between the Nordic countries. It can really be seen in a context of international impulses. But although, if you're looking at the, if you're talking about nationalities, for instance, in this area, and nationalities, the ideology of nationalities where there is this big effort of building, imagine communities, that's the word of Belly Decanderson, where all the people in one country should learn their own importance, their own history, their own language, their most important writers and their geography and their wonderfulness of everything that was in the Sweden and Norway, Finland, so on and so forth. This is a general development, but if you're looking to how nationalism was used in these countries, there are, of course, differences.
If you look at Norway, compared to Sweden, for instance, Norway and Sweden was in the Union this time, and the Norwegian Nationalist was very much focused on making Norway to become an independent country, an independent state. So, in that sense, the liberal part is in Norway. They use nationalism as a tool to have arguments to getting rid of the union between them. In Sweden, on the other hand, nationalism was used in a more conservative way, where the aim was to, so to speak, keep Norway in the Union.
So, here we have, of course, major differences in how nationalism was used and the contents of the nation is between the different countries. In Denmark, on the other hand, we have the kind of classical and conflict with the southern states of Denmark, which is also where there is conflict with the kind of German influence. Nationalists from Prokosia, conflicting with the Danish Nationalists. So, here we have, of course, differences as well, but in general, I mean, the overall development was very similar in the world.
I just want to say that differences should be seen in the context of the history of the countries and because there has been a tension between the Nordic countries regarding political history and as Henrik also mentions Denmark and Shesik Hölstein and the union between Norway and Sweden, which lasted for May 14, 1905. And so, there are differences, but in the way you asked about the similarities are stronger than differences. And that all really answers my last question, which was, you know, talking about the growth of nationalism in the 19th and early 20th century and how that was reflected in textbooks. I am curious though, the way that you describe nationalism as reflected in the textbooks, it seems more positive, it seems like learning authors and sort of taking pride in one's country versus the more negative connotations that we now associate with nationalism.
So, I'm wondering if you can talk about that at all. Were there other shades to this sort of nationalism that was coming up? No, it's a very important question. Of course, in many perspectives, there was this positive way of describing your own culture, your language, your the wonderful history with the heroic kings and adventurers and great authors and so on and so forth.
But in this, I mean, in these countries, there were also other ethnic groups that were not really included in this nationalistic narrative. For instance, in both Sweden and Norway, we have the, I mean, the indigenous people living in the North called the Sami people, they were not included in this construction of the imagined community of Swedish and Norwegian nation at all. So, yes, obviously, there was this as we see today, with some groups where of course included, but other groups of the groups were not included. I mean, so here we have the same kind of kind of content of the nationalism as we have today.
I think there is a very thin line between the negative and the positive side because on the positive side, the nationalistic aspect tries to include or to to strengthen the national feeling, but at the same time, this strengthening of natural feeling involves or includes that some of the nation's group like they did in Jesus and like the Sami population is not included in this in this concept at all. So, I think that there were a thin line between the positive and the negative side should be underlined here. I think it's also important to remember how nationalists, not only in the Nordic countries, but everywhere, as perhaps they also in many countries of the world, were used as a way of building the realities to the power. So, this was a way of saying to the people living in the state that we have many things in common, we have a proud history, we have a wonderful language, and you are including that.
And this means also that you have to be loyal to the government or to the people of our government, the countries. And so, you have this aspect of power, all the nationalists and how it was used, but at least how it was used, that is very crucial and important to remember when we are discussing, I mean, the major, the huge impact of nationalists during this time, of European and especially European history, I would say, in the second half of the American statue. Henrik and Marita, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.
Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Henrik at Grinn, he is Associate Professor at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and Marita Rus, she's Professor of History at the University of Southeastern Norway. Their article is Exploring Textbooks and Cultural Exchange in Nordic Education from 1536 to 2020.
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