Kerstin Gunnemark (ed.) 2016. Sommarliv. Minnen, drömmar och materialitet. Göteborg: Makadam. 335 pp. Ill. ISBN: 978-91-7061-218-3

Hagström, Sarah

English

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64 • Ethnologia Fennica vol. 44 Summer life – memories, dreams and materialityKerstin Gunnemark (ed.) 2016. Sommarliv. Minnen, drömmar och materialitet. Göteborg:  Makadam förlag. 335 pp. Ill. ISBN: 978-91-7061-218-3.Th e anthology Sommarliv – minnen, drömmar och materialitet (Summer life – memories, dreams and materiality) invites the reader on an ethnological journey through time and space in Nordic sum-mer landscapes from the 1950s until today. Th is book presents a wide variety of summer housing and summer lifestyles in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Nordic-style summer cottages and sum-mer houses, camping and caravanning, boating as well as summer gardening are presented. Th e focus lies on recurrent aspects of Nordic summer life and fi nding answers to why it is so important for millions of people in the Nordic countries to spend their summers and summer holidays in the same, predefi ned ways, year after year. Nor-dic summer life is also viewed and presented through the lens of outsiders; two of the articles in the anthology give an interesting insight into the views and experiences of Germans spending Ethnologia Fennica vol. 44 • 65their summers in Sweden. Th e key focus here is to unravel their fascination and idealised imag-es of summers in the northern parts of Europe.Th e articles in the book put a strong eff ort in explaining and analysing narratives of summer living, not only experienced during the three short summer months of June, July and August, but also in contrast to everyday life during the re-maining months of the year. Key themes in the analyses are cultural heritage, traditions, family, roots, hobbies, creativity, materiality, aesthet-ics and idealised images. During the recent de-cades, summer living and summer housing has been given much space in both traditional and digital media. Th ere are plenty of magazines, TV shows, blogs and websites aiming to inspire and encourage readers and audience to furnish, deco-rate, renovate and rebuild diff erent types of sum-mer houses, preferably as do-it-yourself projects (DIY) following the current trends of recycling and sustainability. Sixteen researchers with roots in Sweden, Fin-land, Denmark and Germany have contributed to the book, which has its background in an inter-national collaboration project between univer-sities, archives and museums. Th e researchers represent vast disciplinary backgrounds. Most of the authors are ethnologists, but also disciplines such as art history, visual studies and cultural geography are represented. I applaud the author presentations at the very back of the book, which give a personal insight and background to every author’s own experiences, family traditions and views on summer life and summer living. Th e ar-ticles are beautifully illustrated with photographs from fi eld works, museums and archival collec-tions and diff erent forms of media. Photographs by professional photographers are to some ex-tent also included. Th e reading experience is en-riched thanks to the pictorial material; the photos evoked in me personally strong feelings of curi-osity, reconnaissance, nostalgia, memories and longing for summer, sun and holidays.Due to the extensive source material, an im-pressive number of informants from various backgrounds are presented. Th e empirical data has been collected through fi eld work, observa-tions, interviews and through analyses of both visual material and digital media. Th e source ma-terial is analysed and presented in various ways, and both the thematical and geographical width of the data is noteworthy. I would argue that by presenting such a wide range of contemporary ethnographic data on this theme, together with an adequate theoretical framework, this anthol-ogy fi lls a large gap in current ethnological re-search.Th e book is divided into fi ve large themes. Th e fi rst chapter “Berättelser om sommarlivets aktiviteter” (Stories of the activities of summer life) describes summers spent in Finland, Den-mark and Visby, Sweden. Th e article from Finland gives an insight into Finnish summer cottage life from the 1950s onwards as narrated by Finnish Swedish-speaking women. Visby on the island of Gotland in Sweden is considered a true summer paradise. Th e second article depicts how perma-nent residents in Visby choose to spend their summer holidays while the island is invaded by thousands of summer visitors and tourists. Th e Danish contribution follows a similar theme and presents the roles of summer visitors in a small community in Denmark and the societal changes these outsiders have contributed to. Th e second chapter “Drömmar och förverkligande” (Dreams and realizations) presents two articles in which German informants have been interviewed on their fascination of Nordic summer life and cot-tage interior style and aesthetics. Th is chapter in-cludes one article documenting caravanning and camping in the northern parts of Sweden, as well as an article on Swedish garden and allotment en-thusiasts’ views on space, heritage and creativity in an online discussion forum. In “Generation och kulturarv” (Generation and cultural heritage), two articles deal with family relations, heritage, history and feelings of be-longing, manifested in summer houses and the objects within. Th e articles in the chapter “Este-tiska uttryck” (Aesthetical expressions) describe style and materiality analysed through staged pic-tures of summer houses presented in media and blogs, and the summer life style sold and mar-keted in summer concept stores. Th e articles in the last chapter “Från sjösidan” (View from the seaside) deal with boat owners’ views and narra-66 • Ethnologia Fennica vol. 44tives on boat heritage and memories of seaside summer life. Th e editor, professor Kerstin Gunnemark from the University of Gothenburg has done a remark-ably good job in putting the anthology together. Th anks to the cross-referencing between the dif-ferent articles, a well-thought-out and well-struc-tured book has been created. While reading the diff erent articles, I could, however, spot small im-balances. Some articles have a very strong theo-retical approach, while others focus on presenting the source material without a deeper problemati-zation or theorization of the theme. Some articles are heavily compressed with a confused heap of themes, source material and theories. Th ese ar-ticles should indeed have focused more on one or two themes instead of trying to include every-thing. Th e introduction and the epilogue written by the editor, however, create a very good frame-work for the anthology. Th e anthology is also the-matically held together through the articles’ ref-erences to theory and literature. Several articles refer to Bruno Latour and his actor-network the-ory or Michel Foucault and the theory on hetero-topia. Th is does not mean that the articles repeat each other, though, but rather they complement one another eff ectively. Personally, I would also have wished for more focus also on the negative parts of summer life with a more nuanced discussion on for instance class diff erences. Is summer life as it is present-ed in the book valid for everyone in the north-ern parts of Europe? What about the summers of newcomers, such as immigrants? With this critique in mind, there is a risk that the book strengthens a perhaps utopian picture of a “per-fect” Nordic summer life and cultural heritage. As an equal representative for Nordic summer life, the anthology would also have needed a contribu-tion from for example Norway. Nevertheless, this book can surely attract and inspire a wide range of readers, not only researchers or ethnologists. I experience the quotes from the informants as recognizable, and the analyses of these gave me many aha-experiences. Th e book forms a welcom-ing presentation and escape to stories, views and experiences on how summers can be spent in the northern parts of Europe.Sarah Hagström

Summer life - memories, dreams and materiality

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Summer life - memories, dreams and materiality

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