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Den här boken undersöker den unika samling med bevarade brev från allmänheten till Selma Lagerlöf skrivna under perioden 1891–1940. Tusentals människor från olika samhällskikt skrev till henne för att berätta om sina liv och om sin läsning. Hur använde de litteraturen? Och hur uppfattades Selma Lagerlöf i en tid präglad av förändringar?

This book investigates a unique collection of letters: the many thousands of letters to Selma Lagerlöf from the public. During 1891 to 1940 people from all layers of society wrote to the famous author about their lives, and about their reading of her narratives. How did these people use literature, and how did they view the author, Selma Lagerlöf, in a time of change?

In this introductory chapter, the editors place the current volume within vulnerability scholarship—in particular, discussions by feminist thinkers who see vulnerability as more than a weakness. They address four aspects that may make vulnerability a problematic theoretical lens: the problem of ontology, the question of privilege, the unease with the state and the fact that the language of vulnerability is very much in motion. Given the Scandinavian focus of this volume, the welfare state and its position in relation to vulnerability is particularly addressed. Finally, the chapter provides an outline of the book while also making clear how the various topics have been presented in four different parts.

With 600,000 listeners, P3 Documentary is the most popular pod radio format in Sweden—a country of 10 million people. The majority of the documentaries stage crime—most often, famous murder cases. In this chapter, 19 of the programmes on murder are analysed with a focus on the choice of murders, the use of victims, perpetrators, family and experts, the horror genealogy and a dramatic form that has increasingly tightened over the years. Hyvönen et al. analyse how listeners are vulnerable to the circulation, invoking and mobilizing of emotions (Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2012), and they show that the documentaries do significant political work. A politics of mobility is distributed and, in controversial cases on migrants, the pain of others is used in processes of othering that compromise the public service aim of impartiality.

In this open access book, seventeen scholars discuss how contemporary Scandinavian art and media have become important arenas to articulate and stage various forms of vulnerability in the Scandinavian welfare states. How do discourses of privilege and vulnerability coexist and interact in Scandinavia? How do the Scandinavian countries respond to vulnerability given increased migration? How is vulnerability distributed in terms of margin and centre, normality and deviance? And how can vulnerability be used to move audiences towards each other and accomplish change? We address these questions in an interdisciplinary study that brings examples from celebrated and provocative fiction and documentary films, TV-series, reality TV, art installations, design, literature, graphic art, radio podcasts and campaigns on social media.

In Sweden, as in a number of European countries, it has been possible to discern a shift in the attitude of politicians to culture in general and to contemporary art in particular. Every elected politician is entitled to have views on individual works of art and to discuss them—like any other citizen. But Swedish art controversies since the millennium have not dealt with aesthetic judgments but moral condemnation and the ensuing demands for exhibitions to be closed, cultural funding withdrawn, and the dismissal of leading members of staff of cultural institutions and academies of art. In this article Wrange and Karlsson argue that art scandals are an “ethical kaleidoscope”, particularly as they are seen to transgress religious mores in a secular regime.