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Abstract
This article examines how narrators of four historical legends construct their relation to the past through the use of particular narrative strategies. They do this by manipulating patterns of speech representation, allowing themselves to merge with history; and by focusing on memories embedded in the landscape and material traces of the past in the present.
Notes
1 On the importance of combining distance and voice, see Coste and Pier (Citation2014, 296).
2 I wish to thank Niklas Huldén at Kulturvetenskapliga arkivet Cultura for assisting me in finding Wessman’s field notes.
3 Georg Carl von Döbeln, considered the greatest hero of the Finnish War in both popular tradition and in Johan Ludvig Runeberg’s seminal poems on the war in Fänrik Ståls sägner (Legends of Second Lieutenant Stål), was actually promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, but he was never commander-in-chief of the whole Finnish army, which is probably what the narrator had in mind.
4 Sid. ‘När “Lang-Matt” kom till Blaxnäs’ [When Tall-Matthew came to Blaxnäs]. http://sid-newblog.blogspot.se/2009/09/journalistik-i-50-ar.html.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Camilla Asplund Ingemark
Camilla Asplund Ingemark is a docent at Åbo Akademi University, Åbo (Turku), Finland. She is currently finishing a book on the representation of fear in ancient oral narrative, co-written with Dr Dominic Ingemark, Lund University, Sweden. She has also published on Finland-Swedish folk belief (The Genre of Trolls: The Case of a Finland-Swedish Folk Belief Tradition, 2004) and Finland-Swedish historical legends on the Finnish War (Historiska sägner om 1808–09 års krig [Historical legends on the war of 1808–09], 2009, with a historical introduction by Johanna Wassholm).