Minnesflöden

Att närma sig dagböcker

Abstract

The cultural organisation of visions and dreams is the theme of this article. It is about a young teenager and daughter from a farming family who in the 1930s decided to leave home and start a new life. Her name was Hedvig and she was completely focused on a career as a female airline pilot. The first stage of her journey involved time at a loosely organised flying school in the vicinity of Ystad in southern Sweden, led by the aristocrat, Count Douglas Hamilton.

After years of conflict and turbulence she realised that no professional training was in sight. The instructions given to her were improvised, and her role as a combined secretary, chauffeur and mechanic had no future. After years of struggle on the labour market she got a job with a national airline company — the prestigious AB Aerotransport in Malmö with passenger services all over Europe. She gained her private pilot licence in 1935 and at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 relinquished her dreams of conquering the skies and instead became the only female shop steward at the Saab production site in Trollhättan.

Her diary is fascinating and peppered with insights and experiences about her life as a single woman in a masculine world. One of the concepts discussed in the article is streaming modernity; something that mirrors her conviction of being on the move and the feeling of streaming and flowing along with society. The article also highlights the use of diaries in cultural analysis. From a scholarly point of view it has often been argued that diaries are appealing yet subjective presentations of the writer in question. In the article, the view expressed is quite the opposite. This is no ordinary day-to-day story. Instead her diary is an interewining narrative of seberal personal themes. A close reading of it also reveals the accuracy of her experience of constructing a personal world.