Selander/Aamotsbakken (Eds.): Nordic identities

This book raises some central questions concerning identities, especially the construction and the representations of identities: How do we understand ourselves? Who are “we” and who are “the Others”? The question of identities in transition in a Nordic context is presented in the following way:

- a theoretic overview
- an overview over languages and language policies in the Nordic countries
- the role of digital media and gender issues related to youth cultures and identity constructions
- religion and ethnicity
- the question of national identities

Nordic identities in transition is an interesting case, as one example of regional changes among almost 25 million inhabitants in relation to global changes like migration, new communicative patterns and increasing mixes – and clashes – between cultural values and norms.

The articles represent transitional processes in Denmark, Finland, The Faroe ­Islands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden


Bente Aamotsbakken is dr.philos. and professor of Text Science at the Centre of Pedagogic Texts and Learning Processes, the University College of Vestfold, Norway.

Table of contents

Staffan Selander & Bente Aamotsbakken: Preface 7

Introduction to Identities, Transitions and the Nordic Scene 11

Staffan Selander & Bente Aamotsbakken: Identities, social relations and cultural experience – a theoretical overview 13

Arne Torp: Language planning and nation-building in three Nordic countries: Finland, The Faroe Islands and Norway 31

Introduction to Youth Cultures and Identity Constructions 69

Willy Aagre: Understanding the identity work of a “semi-goth” girl in a Nordic context 71

Susanne V. Knudsen: Doing Bodies –Visual self-representations on web sites for young people 89

Boel Englund: The making of a woman. Messages, exhortations and offered identities in Swedish new feminism texts 109

Introduction to Religious and Ethnic Identities in Change 129

Yvonne Mørck: Complex travels. Class travellers and (critical) multicultural education in relation to the Danish upper-secondary school 131

Solveig Østrem: ‘We’ and ‘others’ in the tension between culture and ethics 151

Kjell Härenstam: Images of Muslims in Swedish school textbooks 171

Staffan Selander & Bente Aamotsbakken: To be Norwegian or Swedish – examples from social science textbooks 191

Introduction to National Identities in Transition 215

Firouz Gaini: Identities in the stream of the Atlantic Ocean. Identity, culture and education in late-modern Faroese society 217

Kristín Loftsdóttir: The diversified Iceland. Identity and multicultural society in Icelandic school books 239

Svein Lorentzen: Building a Nation. Stages in the construction of national identity in Norwegian history textbooks 261

Bente Aamotsbakken & Susanne V. Knudsen: Founding Fathers and the Mother Tongue. The construction of identities through two periods of Romanticism in Denmark and Norway 283

Staffan Selander: A strong minority in transition – identities in Swedish-Finnish textbooks 329

Sirkka Ahonen: Collectiv identity in transition: a Finnish perspective 343

Authors 362

Staffan Selander is Ph.D. and professor of Didactic Science at Stockholm University, Sweden

ISBN 978-82-7099-528-8, 363 pp., paperback
Format: 15x21,5 cm, weight 0,6 kg, Year of publication 2009, English