Kolbottnar, bönemöten och krut : En etnologisk studie av Karlskoga : identitet och image : [an ethnological study of Karlskoga] : [identity and image]

Sammanfattning: This dissertation aims at analysing how local history has been built up of variouselements in the past and how it is exploited. The exploitation may cause a tensionbetween different interests in society and may contribute to a change of identitiesand images. Certain people, in the study called visualizers, perceived and drewattention to places in the surroundings which had been important in one way oranother. People close to the visualizers, the like-minded, saw the value of theseplaces and helped to build the culture milieus, sites of a special social and culturalinterest, today's tourist attractions. The `designers' were people representing thegreat popular movements. The formative periods of five sites eventually appearedto contribute to an all-embracing formative period of the whole community.In the course of my studies of tourist brochures, newspapers, interviews andbooks on local history, and from participation in social life in Karlskoga for manyyears, a change of identities and images became apparent to me. The old image ofa place designed for iron founding gradually changed into an image of hightechnology - `Alfred Nobel's town'. This is an image which is not yet accepted byall. The identity which was formerly connected with the ironworks, changed intoseveral identities, associated with age, class, geographical district and ideology.Today, there is no common identity among people in Karlskoga. Instead, there aremany, changing in step with Time itself, as in many other places in Sweden,