ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Nordic Museum, including its open-air department, Skansen is explored as a socially reforming institution. Its conception has much to do with Artur Hazelius's idea that Swedish society should be founded as an organic ‘folk community’ and that he, as one already awoken, should lead this reforming work. The chapter draws attention to concepts central to the idea of a ‘folk community’ at the intersection of notions of folk, social, ‘patriotic love’ and the ‘essence of womanhood’. It focuses on border disturbances between the low and high in society, women and men, the intimate and the public, the social and the political, as well as on ethics, science and cultural history. At the turn of the century, Scandinavian museums found themselves battling over their intellectual and ethical purposes. During this struggle that Hazelius gave the order to load the old guns of Skansen with ‘patriotic love’.
