Estlandssvenskar på Sverigeturné med körsång och ett bondbröllop på Skansen

Abstract

This article discusses the formation of Estonia-Swedish musical self-images during the interwar period. The question that is raised is what influence the relation between a cultural minority, Estonia-Swedes, and its historical land of origin, Sweden, had on the minority’s image-creation. The case-study analyses the first Sweden tour ever with an Estonia-Swedish music group. The tour consisted of performances both in churches and in the open-air-museum Skansen in Stockholm among a couple of other places. At Skansen, the choir performed the play Ett bondbröllop från Wormsö (A Farmers’ Wedding from Ormsö) that was written specially for the tour. The research material consists of archive material with the musical expressions used on stage, articles in newspapers about the performances and other texts related to the persons and organisations behind the arranging of the tour. Seen as a whole, the tour expresses two cultural belongings: the pan-Swedish and the Estonia-Swedish. Pan-Swedishness focuses on bounds with an imagined pan-Swedish community expressed by spritual and patriotic songs in standard Swedish. Estonia-Swedishness, on the other hand, is based on a revived repertoire of wedding songs and dances from the mid-19th century that expresses uniqueness using a well-known cultural mould – the farmers’ wedding.