Tell Your Story, Save Our Community: Raising Local Consciousness and Reinforcing Political Mobilization in Bjurholm through Storytelling

Abstract

The present article focuses on how storytelling events serve as a tool in reinforcing local identity. The case study presented here centres on Bjurholm, a small rural town in northern Sweden, where a local storytelling society called Bjurholms Berättarakademi has been emphasizing municipal community building as a singularly important task. Initially offering public storytelling evenings and festivals celebrating prominent local storytellers, it soon shifted strategy and instead concentrated on storytelling in schools and villages, by pupils and villagers, and addressing urgent local topics at special events. The tenuousness of relying on only a handful of activists and the problem of continuity has been countered through collaboration with other local societies, as well as by embracing new media.

Introduction

For a good thirty years, a vibrant storytelling movement has spread throughout Sweden. A plethora of storytellers share their tales, give courses, address microsocial problems and individual dilemmas, lead writing circles, and perform in schools, theatres, and mass media to a variety of audiences. There are festivals, competitions, and awards. There are formal and informal networks, institutions, and local societies organized for the promotion of storytelling, working in different formats towards varying goals.

Storytelling and local knowledge often are seen as two sides of the same coin. The present article focuses on how storytelling events serve as a tool in reinforcing a sense of local identity. The case study presented here centres on a small rural town in northern Sweden, where a local storytelling society has been emphasizing municipal community building as a singularly important task for its survival, in the face of worrying depopulation trends that could affect the maintenance of local public services.

The society has chosen to concentrate on gatherings among villagers rather than staged entertainment or events meant to draw tourists, thus embarking on a somewhat different path than contemporary strategies of regional development and local branding have staked out. By staging their events as local meetings rather than shows, and focusing on themes and places rather than specific entertainers, the society strives for inclusion and attempts to function as a tool for political mobilization across party lines. At the same time, this inward-looking perspective is balanced by outreach to other volunteer actors in regional development, cultural heritage, and the storytelling movement. With this case study, I want to direct attention to and raise questions as to how this strategy serves as a tool for achieving local social aims within the context of national trends of storytelling, and for rural development in general.

As indicated, the storyteller movement in Sweden is far from homogeneous. Rather, there are numerous unique local forms and individual manifestations. This case study deals with one particular example that on the one hand subscribes to many of the general trends and is therefore quite representative, while on the other displays its own unique qualities. Furthermore, there are some compelling discourses circulating nationally on the virtues of storytelling, overlapping yet quite distinct from each other, that are drawn upon and upheld by a variety of networks. For the purposes of the present article, let it suffice to simply name them: storytelling as pedagogy (i.e. as basic linguistic competence and didactic device), as artistry, as local identity and heritage, and as a means of corporate development.¹

Materials and Method

I have followed the Bjurholms Berättarakademi (Bjurholm Storyteller Academy [BBA]) for at least fifteen years. I have taken part in public activities such as storytelling evenings and workshops, noted mentions in local media, given an introductory open university course planned with and for local storytellers, and, as honorary member,² I have access to e-mails and protocols. I have conducted formal interviews and had many informal meetings with a chairman of the BBA and one of its founding members, alongside shorter informal conversations with others. I also draw on various media presentations—compact discs (CDs), books, films—produced by Academy members.

I will analyse the work of the BBA in relation to the common themes and discourses on the national level, in order to provide a clearer picture of the factors that have made the everyday practices of oral storytelling a phenomenon that is actively promoted in media as a specific tool and remedy for social concerns. The specific case of the BBA serves to underline the importance of particular local contexts that make storytelling meaningful. Literature describing the manner in which stories circulate locally has been a prime source of inspiration (Briggs 1988; Cruikshank 1998; Jackson 2002; Cusack-McVeigh 2017; cf. Bönisch-Brednich 2016), as has the noted importance of local communities in promoting cultural sustainability and construing heritage (Auclair and Fairclough 2015; Baron 2016; Feintuch 2019).

Bjurholm and the Bjurholm Storyteller Academy

Bjurholm is a small community in northern Sweden, facing many of the problems common to the countryside: a shrinking, ageing population (approximately 2,500 inhabitants); an uncertain labour market; a sizeable demand for social services but small tax base; and the threat of ultimately being incorporated into the periphery of some neighbouring municipality. In many places, different strategies are tried outside or alongside the political system in order to raise awareness and mobilize the public, including strikes and occupations as well as petitions to the government (see Lundgren and Nilsson 2018; Nilsson 2021). In 1973, Bjurholm was in fact merged with an adjacent municipality as part of a national reform programme, but after protests its autonomy was reinstated in 1982. The central government broached plans for a merger of municipalities again as recently as 2019.

In 1999, some middle-aged and older citizens founded a ‘Storyteller Academy’ in order to preserve tales of the villages and homesteads and deploy local knowledge in the struggle for survival. Although there are a handful of active local storytelling clubs in Sweden, and a general movement of promoting local development in rural areas by means of increased self-reliance, Bjurholm differs by not choosing the most typical ways of using narratives: arranging festivals, courses, and tourist events in order to reach out to others. Instead, it has directed its main efforts inward, collaborating with teachers to get the children interested in local stories, and arranging diverse events where the inclusion of all residents is the priority.

On its website, the Academy presents itself as ‘an association for the safeguarding of the art of oral storytelling, by means of’:

Creating meeting-places for storytelling for all ages

Taking inventory of local stories

Recording texts, images, sounds

Working with storyteller networks

Arranging seminars and conferences

Taking part in courses for storytellers

Cooperating with universities, schools, businesses and organizations

Encouraging storytelling

Seeking new forms of storytelling

Rewarding talented storytellers.³

It is not my intention to evaluate how closely its efforts live up to its ideals. As a voluntary commitment, personal and financial resources often determine, and at times restrict, what is possible to achieve. The programme could, however, serve as the template for any number of local storytelling societies.

The Academy emerged as part of a broader interest in local culture at the turn of the century. Alongside the Academy, an umbrella organization called Kärnhuset (the Core or Nucleus House) was founded in order to coordinate the use of an older house as a cultural venue; furthermore, a Werner Oland Academy was established to honour the Hollywood actor born in Bjurholm.

Initially, staged public events dominated. The Academy met once a month at the local inn and members took turns telling stories. As one of its founders was already well known regionally as an entertainer, musician, and storyteller, and other storytellers were gaining an audience, Bjurholm was described in regional media as a place where the growing movement was thriving. In the summer of 2000, the first annual day-long festival was organized, featuring workshops followed by performances and an open mic. In October of the same year, a two-day seminar arranged by the county library board to promote storytelling and theatrics for children took place in Bjurholm. The monthly storytelling evenings began inviting gifted storytellers from other regions. But after some time, the Academy reassessed the wisdom of arranging public events. The current chairman relates the evolving strategy:

I remember one time, we had an invited well-known storyteller. And I was seated so I saw the reactions of the people listening. And their body language said, No, we know this already, why can’t we take part? So we changed to make storytelling a meeting place: We decide the theme, and someone from the board starts, but not for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Then it is up to the audience to take part. And it can get up to, it started to be many people, eighty or ninety of them many times, sometimes we didn’t even have room for everybody. And we had started to make recordings, but we realized that it was restraining the storytelling, so we skipped that. So it was, short stories from everybody on this or that topic, so it would be ten or fifteen people telling stories over an evening.⁴

For the chairman, having as many people as possible take part was a notion related to his memories of listening to stories when he grew up.

I stuck to this idea because I felt this was an important part of bygone days, you sat at the kitchen table and told each other stories, and every one contributed something. So when someone suggests lecturers, and there are those who ask for an opportunity to perform, then I say, That is something separate. We can have something like that on the odd occasion, but that is not what we are doing.

The schedule for the latter part of 2010 provides a typical example of programming:

Table

Date	Place	Theme
May 20	Balsjö Educational Institute	Family
June 17	Village of Karlsbäck	Stories from the Wilderness
Aug. 19	Village of Bredträsk	Stories from the Village Archive
Sept. 2	Church Annex	A Royal Visit
Oct. 14	Sunnanå Elementary School	Youth Cultures of the 1940s and 1950s
Nov. 11	Näsland Community Centre	Supernatural Beings

The ambition to reach out to all the villages in the municipality is clearly reflected. The various venues are almost invariably old chapels of the revival or temperance movements of the late nineteenth century, thus evoking images of a more vibrant and self-sufficient local society. The themes for the evenings contrast everyday structures with extraordinary experiences, offering a wide range of possible topics.

The venues are all under communal or village ownership and are intended to be used for free or for a nominal fee. Funding comes from the traditional infrastructure of Swedish cultural life, the adult educational movement,⁵ whose local chapters support cultural events, making access to venues smooth and also providing support for travel and other expenses.

The BBA also took advantage of the many opportunities for funding made available after Sweden joined the European Union, in particular the various frameworks for rural development. In 2002, the BBA launched a project together with teachers of Swedish, social studies, and the arts at the local school, where children in the eighth form (age fourteen or fifteen years) were to interview an older family member or neighbour about local knowledge and oral history, and write a transcript (Johansson 2010). They were also given the option of writing fiction based on the material. From the collection produced, Academy narrators made recordings and the material was edited onto CD. Three years later, the teachers and the Academy repeated the assignment with another class; this time the teacher also wrote songs that she sang with the children, which were then interspersed with the stories. The CDs, Bjurholm Narrates Volumes 1 and 2, were distributed among the pupils with the surplus sold or given away as gifts by the Academy. A third round was completed in 2008, and the school ultimately printed a new edition of all three collections (Johansson 2010). Thus, the idea of the community sharing common stories, and the children sharing in them by transmitting them into the future, takes material form that can function as a reminder of being a vital part of the community.

Storytelling on Stage

As stated, the Academy gained the attention of the media as well as an institution of county cultural policy. In 2005, a one-day seminar gathered teachers, culture administrators, storytellers, and some university professors and administrators (myself included) in order to share its results and spur further regional cooperation. In 2010, the annual Storytelling Festival in Skellefteå⁶ chose Bjurholm as the first ‘Storytelling Municipality of the Year’. The award grants the municipality a day’s programming at the festival and the opportunity to work with the county museum’s storytelling curator in developing its ideas.⁷

The Academy responded by showcasing its work with schools by arranging three seminars, where the teachers described the documentation project and the school librarian spoke of folktales, after which she and a puppeteer gave a performance and led a discussion on working with stories and children. Furthermore, it presented a full day of continuous storytelling featuring a variety of speakers in the main hall of the theatre for some eighty listeners (a room without a stage, probably intended for meetings rather than conventional performances, but in this context closer to conventional situations for oral narration).

The programme was divided into nine segments each forty-five minutes long, with breaks for coffee, lunch, and dinner, starting at 10:00 am and finishing at 9:00 pm.⁸ The first set was presented as ‘Profiles and Characters: People from Bjurholm who Stand Out from the Crowd’.

In this way, the focus on reality-based local interest gazing back at bygone days is clearly delineated. The next segment, ‘Child in the Epidemic Ward’,⁹ presented two individuals recalling memories of being left by their parents in hospital, to be treated for tuberculosis and scarlet fever, respectively. ‘Female Wanderers through Time’ told stories of impoverished women in the nineteenth century. A session called ‘The Moose in the Lake and the Fish in the Tree’ recounted some remarkable hunting and fishing stories, while chairman Thure Johansson told stories of Vitter-Gustav, a man who was taken away by the vittra (supernatural beings similar to fairies). Four revival-church members told stories under the heading ‘Det är saligt att samla citron’, that is, ‘It is blissful to gather lemons’. This is the key line in a story where samlas i tron ‘congregate in faith’, is misheard as samla citron. Two men with a background in sports told their stories; one of them also spoke of his life in the tourism trade by starting a farm stocked with tamed moose. Professional folk musician and storyteller Greger Ottosson, one of the founders of the Academy, gave a performance where he played local tunes on harmonica and told stories about the musicians and the tunes. The final session was called ‘From All Corners of the World’ and was also the final meeting for a study circle for new residents led by Thure Johansson. One man from Congo-Kinshasa told a story of love, infidelity, death, and haunting; another from Stockholm told anecdotes from his life as a private security guard; and Thure himself delivered his favourite story, of how local farmer Alfred persuaded his friend Rickard to follow him to a hill to watch the Midsummer morning sunrise, leaving their families puzzled and anxious as to their whereabouts. Finally, all participants were called up centre stage, making manifest the large number of contributors made possible within the oral narrative format.

There is a retrospective tendency implicit in the foundational basis of the Academy, not only in this specific programme aimed at the outside world, but also in its work in general. The twentieth century was a period of profound modernization: rapid communications, increasing secularization, transformation from agricultural to industrial society, development of the welfare system, democratization of the school system, and growth of the public sector. These are all changes that have been felt particularly by rural communities like Bjurholm, thereby creating a strong sense of a distinct ‘before’ in stark contrast to ‘now’, a lived reality to which many can bear witness. The ideal of gathering as equals around the kitchen table is also anchored in a historicized, binary polarity. As a result, a strong sense of realism dominates. While many a tale of supernatural beings is told, they are contextualized as local episodes and personal experiences. To narrate in the Academy context means to a large extent to speak from and about personal experiences, re-telling stories heard from older relatives and neighbours, or offering stories from the region that are based on archival evidence and have a distinct connection with places and families.

Participation in Local Politics

The goal of reinforcing communal spirit and contributing to local development is further evident in the desire to collaborate with other local, regional, and national associations and organizations—except for political parties, in order not to threaten the intended communal spirit with political division. However, avoiding party politics does not mean the Academy lacks political savvy. Quite the contrary: the ultimate aim of the Academy is after all to assure the survival of the community, which is a political goal. Leaders of the Academy have experience in organization and local politics; one of them led the local Social Democratic Party, was a member of the community council, and briefly served as deputy local commissioner. Another served as local commissioner for the Centre (formerly Agrarian) Party, while a third had taught at Umeå University.

Many of the events are arranged in collaboration with local adult education organizations, the municipal board of culture, and village associations. In recent years, ties with the local branch of the Norden Association¹⁰ have grown stronger. The two organizations already boasted plenty of personal connections; now, the sheer lack of numbers to fill working boards for all of the local societies was for some time solved with a system of co-boardship, where one individual served as chair in one society and as vice-chair in the other, and many events were presented as joint arrangements.

An example of how the Academy participates in politics occurred in 2011, when there were indications that right-wing extremists were trying to establish themselves in the community by seeking to purchase an allotment or farmstead to start a ‘training camp’, while at the same time racist leaflets began to be spread. The Academy devoted a full storytelling evening to the issue of immigration and the conditions for refugees arriving in Bjurholm. Local authorities, a county official, a researcher, as well as a couple of recently arrived refugee families were specially invited to the event. Storytelling was reduced to a minimum on this particular evening; instead, the focus was on information. The refugees were the ones most likely to tell personal stories, but due to their lack of fluent Swedish, most chose to simply show their joy and gratitude at feeling safe and secure.

As a small municipality with a rather large agrarian economy and family ties a strong factor in social cohesion, the influx of immigrants has been rather low and subsequently there have not been so many inter-ethnic confrontations as to be imagined as a local ‘problem’.¹¹ The political point of the meeting lay not so much in who was speaking or what was communicated during the evening, but rather in the evening itself being arranged and publicized in the media and by word of mouth by Academy members, mustering a public reaction from ‘the citizens of the community’. Since the Academy had established itself as a forum for local cultural heritage, it was imperative for it to show that immigrants were an integral part of the community.

Oral Narratives Across Media

While the metaphor of the down-home, kitchen-table conversation has been central to the BBA, it has not shied away from the opportunities offered by contemporary media. The aim of keeping local stories alive is more important than the actual means of transmission. As already mentioned, two CDs were produced in cooperation with the local elementary school. Thure Johansson was inspired by all the positive feedback he received to fulfil his long-time dream of writing a book about his mother’s life (Johansson 2007). With the advent and spread of the Internet, the Academy created a website where its statutes, programmes, and other information were made available. From 2010 to 2015, stories were published under the rubric ‘Story of the Week’ (although there were often several weeks in between). Stories from 2010 and 2011 were anthologized in print, while stories from 2012 onwards are available on the website.¹²

In the 2010s, the ranks of the Academy were strengthened when Anders Lindkvist, a retired filmmaker with the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, returned to his native Bjurholm and began producing documentaries on local culture and history together with local historians. Some of the films make use of photographs and newspaper clippings with a voice-over (like one telling the history of a village dairy), while others feature interviews and public gatherings. They are distributed locally and are available at the municipal library. His magnum opus is a four-hour canvas of ‘the people of Balå Valley’, a broad ethnography of people and folklife in several Bjurholm villages, telling stories of bygone days, of fascinating people, and of plans for the future. As a local boy who came home, Lindkvist brings up his own memories of people, places, and structures as topics, and interviews others who also have returned after a career in southern Sweden as he searches to understand local change. At the same time, he investigates innovation, new forms of informal collaboration, and new ways of making a living in the countryside.

Discussing the Conditions for Municipal Politics

One of the films Lindkvist has made met with particular interest and garnered regional press coverage when it premiered in May 2019. Can Bjurholm Survive? tackled the issue of the municipality as an autonomous unit and the problems of being a politician. Earlier that winter, Bjurholm had come to national attention when several individuals attempted to break a local stalemate. The outdoor ice hockey rink had not been readied, due to unclear security issues. One night, a group of individuals gathered (including a member of the responsible committee) and put up dasher boards so that the children could use the rink. Since technically this was an illegal act bypassing the municipal authority structure, this could have turned into a local crisis. However, after some discussion, the responsible politicians decided not to go to court. The incident provided an instant snapshot of the problems of small municipalities, but also of civil agency as a social force. In his presentation, Lindkvist played down this specific incident and emphasized the long-term questions it raised.

At the film’s premiere, a good hundred guests (or four per cent of the total population) crammed the church annex, a nineteenth-century peasant cottage now used for public gatherings.¹³ The forty-five-minute film combines oral history interviews (intersected with some footage from television broadcasts and newspaper clippings from the 1960s and 1970s) with reflections on contemporary issues. Historical references included the forced merger with a neighbouring municipality in 1973 and the bitter fight for a milk-bottling factory that eventually closed down after the regional dairy farmers’ cooperative chose a different format and supplier. But it also featured success stories. The stories from the 1960s and 1970s serve to show that ‘things were different in those days’ and ‘it was a simpler time’, but also ‘that’s the way the game is played’ and perhaps also ‘this is how things work in Bjurholm’. That politics should work to serve the common good and that personal competence is more important than party allegiance are recurring themes. The dominance of agriculture and forestry in the local economy is emphasized, and individual initiative and entrepreneurship are praised. The lack of a hotel (for maintaining business contacts) and the housing shortage are mentioned as obstacles to future development.

After the viewing, politicians in attendance were asked questions and given suggestions. One of my informants commented afterwards, ‘I got really worried, since the politicians gave such vague answers. The film showed a contrasting view, today society is so complicated—politicians nowadays just pass things off to their administrative employees. There is such uncertainty; the staff has the leading role now since the heads of the boards rely on them. But few want to talk about this.’¹⁴

The film and its lively response show that its ambition to play a part in local society has been fulfilled when the Academy can offer a platform for discussion outside the political system and act in a format that draws attention and gathers people together. As in Julie Cruikshank’s and Susan Cusack-McVeigh’s studies from the Yukon and Alaska, memories of changes in social and economic structures and the political framing of them can serve as resources for orientation in contemporary social and political questions. Memories can help to shape a sense of collective subjectivity over time, provided that there is shaped a public space to meet and discuss in. There is also a therapeutic function in getting an opportunity to discuss disappointments (see Asplund Ingemark 2013); however, the aims and intended uses of public storytelling events of the BBA has been more forward-looking.

Discussion: The BBA and Storytelling Discourses

The activities of the BBA highlight some questions, problems, and tensions in the storytelling movement. How does the Academy fit into the general discourse on narrative and as a local society in relation to the greater storytelling movement? Since much of the oral narrative promoted by the BBA—dealing with everyday knowledge, taking common ground for granted—has a very local reference point intended to promote local awareness and cooperation, links to the outside world are weak at best.

The pedagogic idea of narration as a basic linguistic competence is present here, both in the retrospective celebration of older generations of almost no education and in the attempts to invite anyone in the community to tell his or her story. Its collaboration with the schools is what the representatives of the Academy are most proud of, and what they have been most eager to communicate to people outside, especially to teachers, schools, and the university.

When compared with the conventional perceptions of storytelling as intangible cultural heritage, the BBA both adheres to a notion of storytelling as traditional folkways but also keeps a low profile. The common Swedish discourses of what traditional storytelling ‘is’ or ‘used to be’ include some stereotyped images, like the landsmålsberättare (dialect narrators), an 1890s folk culture revitalization role (with representatives active well into the 1940s) that included folk costume, humorous songs, and jokes and anecdotes about country people meeting (and outsmarting) urban and modern culture. Later on, skippers’ tales, long and fantastic wonder tales, and even exotic Arabian Nights stories are genres that have been identified as ‘oral narrative’, as have Icelandic sagas. The perception of oral narrative as ancient or medieval stories transmitted through oral tradition, and the popularized concept of tradition-bearer, leads to an expectation of traces of ancient traditions still thriving in the countryside. Bjurholm boasts no sensational tradition or extraordinary genre; instead, focus is on people’s own experiences and the memories of older generations. Even stories of supernatural beings, a topic that has gained increasing interest in mass media and among younger generations and has sparked guided ghost tours in the nearby city of Umeå, are reframed as ‘strange experiences in the forest’, merely hinting at an area of uncertain knowledge to be taken seriously, with respect to the people who have had the first-hand experiences (some of whom are still alive).¹⁵

Although oral storytelling is usually mentioned in discourses of intangible cultural heritage, the BBA has not put much effort into staking a claim in this field. Seeing as the county cultural board has actively promoted storytelling as a regional profile and appointed an official ‘Storyteller Curator’, the BBA would be well situated in claiming an influential role. The BBA also has personal ties to the county museum board in the form of its recent chairman, who is active in promotive storytelling as an important means for local historical societies. But again, with a focus on municipal cohesion rather than national outreach, the scarce resources of the BBA remain concentrated on the local activities.

The notion of storytelling as an art form, featured in the BBA website agenda as well as in national discussion, positions the entertainment aspect of storytelling in juxtaposition with the stated goal of community building. As noted, although ‘promoting good storytellers’ is one of the aims of the BBA, the importance of belonging to the municipality, either living there or having family kinship, supersedes professionalism. Bringing the storytelling evenings out to the villages was a step towards getting people with no interest in gaining attention on a public stage to speak up and be heard in local contexts.

Yet storytelling as an art form is not promoted much, even though there is recognition of good storytellers—one of the founders would subsequently go professional with the regional theatre company (giving storytelling performances as well as doing more conventional acting). The BBA is also a member of Berättarnätet Nord (the Narrator Network, Northern Section), but is not fond of all the forms it takes, seeming hesitant to indulge the more professionalized, entertainment-oriented aspects lacking local connection. Arranging a storytelling festival has the potential to promote tourism, but the BBA chose not to continue this line of work. The focus of the BBA has instead been on having stories live on within the collective, rather than be performed by a professional. The stories are seen as local cultural heritage, and are used in order to reinforce local collective identity. This also includes learning about each other as individuals through public storytelling. The therapeutic and commercial discourses are rather absent. Even viewed as a case of team building for the community, the focus is on the myriad of stories rather than on a single story as key symbol.

Discussion: The BBA and the Local Community

This also has a bearing on the question of how organized storytelling is to be integrated with society at large. The BBA has named the development of the municipality, perhaps its very survival, as a priority goal. Yet the BBA has chosen not to make storytelling a vehicle for tourism; instead, it has chosen the pedagogy track, the promotion of traditions of local places and people, and the use of storytelling as a vehicle for running events that spur public discussion of contemporary issues rather than mere nostalgia. By providing a different kind of public stage, where citizens can speak without necessarily taking party political sides, and situating it in the ‘arts and culture’ realm while not demanding any performative skills outside basic narrative competence, the aim of promoting local cooperation has been given a practical solution. The varying themes scheduled for the evenings, and the practice of including the many villages in the programme, have served well as a strategy for the inclusion of as many people as possible. In this way, the BBA bridges the specialized interest of local storytelling with the general goal of making a contribution to the public political system—thus countering a tendency where civil society is said to become more and more fragmented (Amnå 2006). As noted in an international comparison of small maritime communities (Barrett et al. 2011), a diversification of civil society strengthens the viability of the community by establishing many different networks through which communication and action are possible, thus diminishing the vulnerability of small populations. From this perspective, the (at first glance) unconventional collaboration with the Nordic Association appears a logical outcome of these close local relationships, as well as a means of reproducing them.

In comparison to the communities in the USA and Canada which Briggs, Cusack-McVeigh, and Cruikshank studied, the political structures are different. The sentiments of the local ‘us’ being ruled by the distant ‘them’ (political authorities and big companies in tandem) were checked under the long era of social democratic rule (1932–76 and several shorter periods thereafter) and the growth of the welfare state by a strong sense of inclusion in this national project. Geographical uniformity in social services as well as in economic growth has been a national political goal despite the strong urbanization and intensified industrialization after World War II. Local political leadership has not been defined in contrast to national leadership, but rather as mediating between the levels. Even though this national social contract has to a large extent been replaced by neoliberal ideas and the logics of the ‘new public economy’, there is still much trust in local and national authorities as potentially acting in favour of the local community. The strategy of the BBA of not taking sides but, rather, contributing with a platform at the public’s disposal relies on this trust.

But the history of the BBA also betrays the problems of continuity in popular movements and in civil society in general. As Sarah Baker has noted in relation to DIY pop-music museums, generational change is a key challenge to sustainability (Baker 2018, 176). The BBA was launched as a gathering of locals who knew the old stories and wanted to keep them alive and meaningful; thus, the self-elected few established themselves as experts. Attempts to democratize local storytelling may have revitalized storytelling and general knowledge of the municipalities’ stories, but have not contributed to the reproduction of the Academy, which in recent years has suffered from a fall in active members. The generational change is even more apparent when considering that the other culture organizations that started at the same time as the Academy also had problems of continuity. The Kärnhuset met its end in 2019 when the people who had run it for twenty years could no longer continue to do so and there was no new recruitment, while the Oland Academy seems to have ceased operation after 2015. This supportive effect when many people and many culture initiatives confirm each other’s value and importance in the local infrastructure seems to have a ‘generational’ impact that can result in a lack of renewal. At the time of writing (March 2022), the BBA has discarded its principle of being a select group and reformed as a society open to anyone interested in promoting and supporting its aims, resulting in a rapid increase in membership—now some eighty full members, with a Facebook group of some 350 members reflecting the general interest. The importance of reaching out to new residents is stated in the latest minutes of the board meeting.¹⁶

Conclusion

The storytelling movement can be seen as an outlet for cultural critique of contemporary society.¹⁷ Nostalgia for the past and emancipatory strivings as well as ideals of a participatory political democracy are articulated together in the conscious advancement of an everyday art. Whereas Briggs, Cruikshank, Cusack-McVeigh, Jackson, and others have highlighted the crucial role that personal experience storytelling can play in social life, the movement is actively promoting a social life where storytelling could have such a role by emphasizing its importance and pointing out its value as a democratic competence. Thus, there is a meta-cultural aspect to the movement (see Urban 2001), a reflexive stance that goes beyond the promotion of an art form purely for the sake of its own aesthetic norms.

The Bjurholm Berättarakademi spans a field of several storytelling discourses—some of which it has been influential in introducing in the region: some directly support their activities and goals; some put them on the margins of the storyteller movement; and there are still others that could serve as a resource were it not for the conflict between ‘stories to build internal cohesion’ and ‘storytelling as a product to sell to outsiders’. As a grassroots DIY initiative, the local perspective comes first for the BBA, and therefore the availability and use value of discourses on the national level are restricted. Nearness to the audience, indeed the dissolution of the performer–audience divide, is secured with the strong emphasis on local rootedness, while rendering the organizational form more vulnerable by relying on a handful of self-appointed enthusiasts. As a unique formation, it presents local and general driving forces behind the current interest in oral storytelling, as well as strategies for bringing local narrative traditions into socially meaningful use.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alf Arvidsson

Alf Arvidsson is Professor in Ethnology at Umeå University, Sweden. His fields of study include life stories, everyday storytelling, popular beliefs, jazz and popular music studies, and cultural policy. Recent publications are ‘Everyday Storytelling in the Eighteenth Century: Some Examples from Pehr Stenberg’s Life Description’ (Fabula 60, nos 3/4, 2019) and ‘Representations of a 20th-Century Swedish Storyteller and His Repertoire’ (Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore, 2021).

Notes

1 For a presentation and analysis of the Swedish storytelling movement, I have a work in progress: ‘The Swedish Storytelling Movement as Cultural Critique, Heritage, and Emancipation’. See also Arvidsson and Wolanik Boström (2022). The present study was conducted as part of the project ‘Muntligt berättande som immateriellt kulturarv och samhällskraft’ (Oral narration as intangible cultural heritage and social force), supported by the Swedish Research Council, Dnr 2016-02275. I would like to thank Stephen Fruitman for helping me with the English version of the article.

2 In 2013 I was appointed honorary member. This means I am potentially biased in my presentation of the BBA; however, I see no conflict of interest since the questions I address and the points I make have general relevance. I have not changed my ways of interacting with people in Bjurholm, or attempted to play any significant role in the BBA besides being the occasional resource any researcher with good local rapport can be.

3 http://berattarakademi.se.

4 Chairman, interview, 12 February 2018.

5 Actually, the Swedish concept is not adult education but folkbildning—referring to the German Bildung ideal; hence, you join a circle, not a class. There are some ten national organizations recruiting from a variety of social pools (class, religion, party politics, etc.) that receive large public subsidies for both running circles and arranging cultural events; the largest of these have offices or representatives in all municipalities. Interestingly, the movement was seen as a component of national cultural policy in the 1960s and 1970s, and since the 1980s as an aspect of educational policy, thus marking a difference between professional and amateur spheres in culture.

6 This festival is a spinoff from the Storyteller Ensemble that was established in 2002 at the County Theatre in Skellefteå, in part launched as a platform for freelance storytellers, including Greger Ottosson, one of the founders of the BBA.

7 This is a position that was established in 2008 at the initiative of a county culture administrator—the first of its kind in Sweden, following up the profiling of Västerbotten as Berättarnas län (Storyteller county).

8 My description and analysis draw upon my audio recordings from the event, 21 April 2010.

9 One of the stories is published at http://berattarakademi.se/veckans-historia-4/sanatorium/.

10 The Norden Association was founded in 1945 as a voluntary association for the support of inter-Nordic cooperation. For various reasons, the Bjurholm branch has long been one of the largest per capita branches in Sweden—its geographic location along a highway leading from Finland via Baltic ferries to Sweden and further into Norway being one reason.

11 The ratio of citizens ‘of foreign background’ to total population (twelve per cent) is half of the average for Sweden.

12 http://berattarakademi.se/veckans-historia-4/.

13 I draw from field notes at the film premiere of Kan Bjurholm överleva?, Bjurholm, 13 May 2019.

14 Telephone conversation, 14 May 2019.

15 This attitude is also illustrated in Nygaard (2019).

16 Bjurholms Berättarakademi, minutes, board meeting, 29 November 2021.

17 See note 1.