Landsbygden, naturen och den svenska jordbrukspolitiken

Vilhelm Moberg i ekokritisk belysning

Abstract

The Countryside, Nature, and Swedish Agrarian Policies. Vilhelm Moberg from an Eco-Critical Perspective

This study applies an eco-critical perspective on the agrarian utopia Vilhelm Moberg depicts in his fictional works. His autobiographical novels about Knut Toring from the 1930s and his emigrant series from the 1950s are put in the foreground. (Sänkt sedebetyg 1935, transl. Memory of Youth 1937; Sömnlös 1937, “Sleepless”, not translated into English; Giv oss jorden! 1939, transl. The Earth is Ours 1940; Utvandrarna 1949, transl. The Emigrants 1951; Invandrarna 1953, transl. Unto a Good Land 1954; Nybyggarna 1956, transl. The Settlers; Sista brevet till Sverige 1959, transl. The Last Letter Home 1961).

These works can be read as variations on a theme which occupied Moberg throughout his life as a writer: the loss of rural Sweden. The study focuses on Moberg’s utopian concepts of how the countryside could be saved. The solution lies in increased productivity and growth. In both his fictional and journalistic works Moberg has come forward as a critic of modernity in general and more specific the emerging Swedish welfare state, the so called ”Folkhemmet”. But the study argues that Moberg’s novels, paradoxically enough, in certain respects are compatible with Swedish agrarian policies in the middle of the 20th century and the ideological ideas underpinning ”Folkhemmet”, with development, progress and growth as overriding goals. The eco-critical perspective puts this policy of growth in a historical and anthropological and ideological context, aiming to show that nature in the works of Moberg is primarily seen as a resource for man. Nature is a bottomless source of riches, and man is assigned to manage it.