Cherished Moments : Engaging with the Past in a Swedish Parish

This is an anthropological study of conceptions of the past in a parish in Northern Sweden. History in the local context turns out to be a multi-facetted phenomenon. In daily life, the past appears to in conversations as episodes and unconnected anecdotes. At the local museum, history is firmly centred on farmers and farming life. Here the vehicles of the past are objects collected from different parts of the parish. A third form of history can be found in written accounts. This is a form of history that is more objectified and formal than the other two, although here, too, one may sometimes find traces of the anecdotal. People’s understandings of the past are a mixture of all three forms of history.