ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the story of studying regional cultures in Sweden. It looks at how these cultures were delimited and charted. The chapter also looks at how cultural practices were marshalled into territories; how maps were written into the cultural landscape. It focuses on the translation and switching within two sets of categories: first, the popular and the academic; second, the historic and the traditional. The chapter also focuses on the way the region of Dalarna and Darlecarlian culture that were constructed in a popular historical geographic imaginary. In Cornwall, like Dalarna, the spiritual and natural imagination and landscapes played a crucial ethical role in the Cornish 'renaissance', which was really the rediscovery of a Celtic essence. Large scale emigration and urbanization created fertile ground for this in nineteenth century Sweden. A Sweden in miniature, made accessible through displays of regional variation; each region being represented through collections of typical buildings.