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Historisk tidskrift 128:3 • 2008

Innehåll (Contents) 2008:3

Uppsatser (Articles)

Draken, dödsmaskinen och Tjocka Bertha. Första världskrigets vapen i svensk veckopress

Lina Sturfelt

Fulltext (pdf)

Summary

The dragon, the killing machine and Big Bertha: weapons of the First World War in the Swedish popular press

The cultural history approach to the First World War has opened up new perspec- tives on the conflict, focusing on how this devastating experience was imagined and inscribed with meaning. This article analyses how the war was framed in the Swedish popular press 1914–1918, taking as its focal point different narratives of weaponry.

The war marked the beginning of a new, mechanised warfare, often perceived as utterly modern and unexpected. In the heroic and idyllic narratives, the new threats, horrors and expectations of industrial total war were largely ignored, domesticated and trivialized, thereby confirming the importance of the individ- ual on the battlefield. Still, the Swedish popular press did not turn to escapism or simply romanticized war in an unreflecting manner, it also portrayed the hor- rors of modern warfare and mass death. In the tragic narrative, war was seen as a futile mass slaughter showing how man had lost control and authority over the machines and become their slave and victim.

Relating reports in the Swedish popular press to the scholarly debate about the war’s relation to modernity, I argue that the upheaval of war set in motion many different, parallel cultural trends. New weapons such as tanks, aeroplanes, ma- chine guns and poison gas were placed both within older, traditional frameworks, and as signifiers of a futuristic, hitherto unparalleled war. In this respect the war represented neither a complete break nor a continuum. However, there is a ten- dency, especially from 1916 and onwards, in favour of the tragic narrative. This narrative corresponds to a stronger emphasis on a more positive image of Swedish neutrality, portraying Sweden as a peaceful role model in a terrible, meaningless war. But in the end it is rather in the many diverging images, discourses and nar- ratives that the multiple, complex meanings of the Swedish First World War ex- perience are fully made visible.

Keywords

First World War, cultural history, Swedish popular press, weapon technology, modernity, narratives