Traveling to “Caribbean Sweden”

St. Barthélemy as Tourist and Tax Paradise

Authors

  • Lill-Ann Körber Aarhus University

Abstract

Lill-Ann Körbers bidrag granskar hur Sverige framställer sin bild av den forna kolonin Saint-Barthélemy i Karibien. Det som framkommer av hennes läsning av nyhetsartiklar, webbsidor från reseagenturer och bloggar, samt från hennes egna erfarenheter som resenär, är att Saint-Barthélemy presenteras som ett renskrubbat paradis. Det förflutnas slavhandel och kolonisation får stå tillbaka för en bild av hemtam europeisk charm i miniatyr, där det är avslappnande att vistas bland svenska flaggor och lyxbutiker. Tack vare kung Gustaf den tredjes framsynthet, som på sin tid förhandlade fram ett fördelaktigt skattedekret, behöver man inte heller idag bli av med sina pengar i onödan. Här finner man inga spår av kriminalitet, fattigdom eller… svarta. Renhet och vithet råder. Körber avslöjar att Sveriges koloniala historia framställs ur ett ”inifrånperspektiv” utan att problematiseras: Ön är nyuppfunnen och nyskapad som ett tomrum på kartan för postkoloniala äventyrare på jakt efter ett obefläckat tropiskt paradis på jorden.

Author Biography

Lill-Ann Körber, Aarhus University

Professor of Nordic literature, media and culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. She holds an M.A. and a Dr. phil. in Scandinavian Studies from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin where she was Assistant Professor between 2008 and 2015. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo in the research project “Scandinavian Narratives of Guilt and Privilege in an Age of Globalization” (2015-18), and Associate Professor II at the University of Bergen (2015-17), both in Norway.

Her recent work focuses on the legacy and remembrance of Scandinavian colonial history, in particular the transatlantic slave trade. Related research interests include Greenlandic contemporary culture, Scandinavian Arctic discourses, and past and present relations with Africa and the Caribbean as represented in Scandinavian literature, art, and film.

Recent publications include her doctoral thesis Badende Männer. Der nackte männliche Körper in der skandinavischen Malerei und Fotografie am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (2013), The Postcolonial North Atlantic: Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands (co-edited with Ebbe Volquardsen, 2014) and Arctic Environmental Modernities: From the Age of Polar Exploration to the Era of the Anthropocene (co-edited with Scott MacKenzie and Anna Westerståhl Stenport, 2017).

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Published

2018-07-06

How to Cite

Körber, L.-A. (2018). Traveling to “Caribbean Sweden”: St. Barthélemy as Tourist and Tax Paradise. Rethinking Scandinavia, 2. Retrieved from https://journals.lub.lu.se/rs/article/view/22314

Issue

Vol. 2 (2018): Looking In, Watching Out

Section

Articles

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