ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the spaces of cultural ambivalence, when a group of Norwegian immigrants arrive on the colonial arena in Knysna in the Cape Colony in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Ambivalence is an essential analytical concept in colonial discourse, referring to the complex relations between colonizer and colonized. Thus colonial discourse can be understood to be the composite of signs and practices that organize social relations between colonizing and colonized people. The last few decades have seen an increased scholarly scrutiny on the European colonial projects and the interconnections between Europe and its colonies. In general, these contributions are anchored in an understanding that colonial discourses are shaped by the interactions between metropole and colony, rather than preshaped and projected into the colonial spaces. However, studies of colonial discourse from a Nordic point of view have until recently been minuscule.
