A contribution to the popular international and interdisciplinary field of collective memory within a Scandinavian context, this reference presents a number of case studies from the Middle Age to the present time that discuss how people look to the past for identity and meaning. Acknowledging that many pasts exist sometimes harmoniously and other times in conflict this resource attempts to negotiate the past by analyzing the tensions that occur when individuals with different interests, understandings, and points of view study history and by exploring the inherent desire to develop a consensus between the past and the present. Examining subject areas such as social and cultural history, literature, cultural studies, archeology, mythology, and anthropology, this study expresses how crucial it is to understand the processes of dealing with the past when trying to chart how and why societies and communities change and evolve.

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Negotiating Negotiations - Theorising a concept–conceptualising theory
  • Conceptual history, conceptual theory
  • Negotiations in New Historicism: Greenblatt revisited
  • The structures of negotiation: reciprocity, symmetry, conflict
  • The semantics of negotiation: politics, economics, management
  • The pragmatics of negotiation: rhetoric, situation, exigence
  • Notes
  • References
• Negotiating the Past in the High Middle Ages
  • What was being negotiated?
  • Was the past negotiated by textual or traditional communities?
  • Through what kind of negotiations was the past established?
  • Cultural negotiations
  • The past as a winning resource
  • Notes
  • References
• Historical Writing and the Political Situation in Iceland 1100–1400
  • The Free State period: ‘Icelandic’ and ‘Norwegian’ past
  • The period c. 1250–1400: ‘Scandinavian’ past
  • Notes
  • References
• Political Polemics in Early Modern Scandinavia
  • Two arenas of negotiation
  • The Prelude of the Nordic Seven Years’ War: Johannes Magnus and Hans Svaning
  • The Prohibition against Danish-Swedish Defamatory Writings of 1570
  • Defining Danish-Swedish relations after the Nordic Seven Years’ War
  • A Danish violation of the peace treaty of 1570? Erasmus Lætus’ epic poem Margaretica
  • Return of aggressive polemics in the Kalmar War: Johannes Messenius’ Retorsio Imposturarum of 1612
  • Conclusion and perspectives
  • Notes
  • References
• National Histories - Sven Lagerbring and his Channels of Communication
  • To collect knowledge
  • History-writing in the eighteenth century
  • Spreading knowledge
  • Source criticism
  • A common history
  • Notes
  • References
• Negotiating the History of the World
  • Collecting a strong currency
  • Language and public
  • What currency does physico-theology give?
  • Histories of the earth
  • Critique
  • Conclusion: Economies of negotiation
  • Notes
  • References
• On Whales, Potholes and Giants
  • The mystery of the geological potholes
  • Giants from the past
  • From time to space
  • A timeless past?
  • Notes
  • References
• The Historical Novel Negotiating the Past - Enquist’s The Visit of the Royal Physician
  • The demand for truth in historical novels
  • Enquist’s novel and Struensee in historiography
  • Narrative negotiations
  • Rhetoric of authority, doubt and suggestions
  • Staging conflicting interests in history
  • Fiction as metahistorical reflection
  • Notes
  • References
• Using a Past–Magistra vitæ - Approaches to History
  • Explaining the demise of a tradition
  • An alternative view
  • What is missing?
  • A magistra vitæ historian
  • The transformation of an idea
  • Signs of an emerging professional ambivalence
  • Establishing a split professional identity
  • Safeguarding a magistra vitæ approach
  • Negotiating a usable past
  • Notes
  • References
• Personal Pain, National Narrative - Commemorating an SS-camp
  • The camp and the community
  • The first exhibition
  • A local narrative
  • The second exhibition
  • A new narrative
  • Relating to the past
  • The detachment of the second exhibition
  • The attachment of the first exhibition
  • Notes
  • References
• Negotiating Holocaust Memory in School-trip Reports
  • I believe that this trip is important to us!! To all of us …! The negotiation of expectations
  • ‘I know I should cry, because all the others are crying’ –a negotiation between expectations and experiences
  • ‘Dear headmaster’ –the super-addressee becomes a super-speaker
  • The school-reports as ritual acts
  • Negotiating internalisation of Holocaust memory
  • Notes
  • References
• The Emperor and the Aunts
  • Balestrand: a history of myth
  • Private longing: letters to the aunts
  • Today: the dolls’ house
  • The ghost
  • Notes
  • References
• Negotiating Pasts –an Afterthought
• About the Authors