Conference article

Writing the Nation. On Ulf Lundell’s “Öppna landskap”

Ulf Lindberg
Dept. of School Teacher Education, Malmö University, Sweden

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Published in: Inter: A European Cultural Studies : Conference in Sweden 11-13 June 2007

Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings 25:37, p. 351-359

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Published: 2007-11-27

ISBN:

ISSN: 1650-3686 (print), 1650-3740 (online)

Abstract

As Benedict Anderson made clear in 1991; the media are superior creators and perpetuators of nations as imagined communities. Ulf Lundell’s ”Öppna landskap” (”Open landscapes”; 1982) is a song that was immediately appropriated as kind of new national anthem; no matter which were the artist’s intentions. In line with this; my interest in the song focuses on the way it represents an update of “Swedishness” at a time when a national identity crisis is approaching. I will depart from that key feature of Romanticism which literary critic Horace Engdahl has named ”the living gaze” and; to Lundell’s generation; connects the Swedish visa tradition to rock in Swedish. Theories of the experience society; post-colonial criticism and eco criticism are used to discuss the presuppositions of Lundell’s effort.

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