Etnologiämnets tillkomst och examensrätt

Abstract

The Establishing of Swedish Ethnology as a University Subject

Via a donation from the married couple Hallwyls, a professorship in Nordic and Comparative Folklife (Folklivsforskning) was established at the Nordiska Museet in Stockholm in 1918. This post, however, was mainly a research one and since the first person to be given the chair, Nils Lithberg, was required by the benefactors to participate in excavations and the cataloguing of the collections at Schloss Hallwil in Switzerland, it was not until 1928 that regular lectures and seminars were held. The subject was then incorporated into Stockholm University (then called Stockholms högskola), but a curriculum was not laid down until 8 July 1932. It was drawn up by Nils Lithberg and contained a comprehensive view of the subject.

In Lund, the subject Nordic and Comparative Folklore (Folkeminnesforskning) was introduced at the university in 1913, with Senior Lecturer C. W. von Sydow as its teacher. The same appellation (and course of study) was used at Gothenburg University (then Göteborgs högskola) in the period 1927–1931. In Uppsala, Folklore was introduced in 1923 (with the same curriculum as in Lund and with C. W. von Sydow as its examiner), and subsequently Ethnology in 1928.

In Lund, the subject Folklore was renamed Nordic and Comparative Cultural Anthropology (folkkulturforskning) in 1940, but it did not really become a full-blown subject until it took the name Nordic and Comparative Folklife (folklivsforskning) in 1946. In the following year, the subject was given the same title in Uppsala, when a chair was also established. In 1970, the term Folklife was replaced at the university where the subject existed by Ethnology, which is also the term used at the universities where the subject was later introduced. So the comprehensive view of the subject maintained by Nils Lithberg and others was victorious in Sweden.