Search

Emotions at War: Sensibility and emotional strategies among Swedish officers, 1788-1814 This thesis studies the relationship between the emotional sufferings of Swedish officers in wartime during the period 1788-1814 and the various mental strategies they employed in order to deal with those sufferings. The study is positioned within the field of research commonly refered to as the history of emotions, and draws methodological inspiration from the concept of ”emotional narratives”, as defined by Peter Goldie. Drawing on diaries, letters and memoirs written by Swedish officers about their experiences of war during the period of investigation, repertoires of suffering and emotional strategies are analyzed in three empirical chapters, concerning the letters home, personal relationships in the everyday life of war, and emotional strategies on the battlefield. Each of these highlights a different arena of war which actualized different repertoires of sufferings and emotional strategies. A general observation of the thesis is that no clear distinction can be made between civilian sensibility, as described in earlier studies, and military sensibility during the investigated period. The military sphere was thus under heavy influence of an expressive culture of sensibility. Another important observation is that emotions could function both as problems and solutions in the narratives implied by the officers' emotional strategies. In this sense the emotions were not only expressed within the context of war, they were also at war with each other.

In the years after WWII the Baltic Sea Area developed into an area strongly divided between East and West. Because of the tensions between the blocs, the coastal areas where strongly militarized and prepared for war. The new political situation after 1989 propelled an international military disarmament and closing down of bases, training areas around Europe. Since the Baltic Sea Area was one of the heaviest militarized part of Europe the question of disarmament here is of particularly great economic, social and cultural importance. This study is about the post-military landscape in the Baltic Sea Area with examples from Dejevo on the Estonian island Saaremaa, Dranske on the (East)German island Rügen and Fårösund on the Swedish island Gotland. The aim of this thesis is to shed light on the process where the military landscape of the Cold War is transformed in order to be incorporated in the macro-regional endeavors for unity in the new Europe. I want to analyze the implications that planning visions have on the everyday life of people. A following aim is to shed light on the challenges that urban planning has to face in this transformation. Three research questions frame the study. The first question analyzes the process where the coastal areas of the Baltic Sea after the end of the Cold War are disarmed and transformed, from a landscape of production of military services and objects into a landscape of consumption for recreation and tourism. The second question takes its point of departure in the relation between planning visions and everyday life. The third question concerns the matter of the past and analyzes what aspects of the military landscape are emphasized respectively pushed aside in the transformation into post-military landscape. The study is based on interviews with inhabitants and local planners as well as macro-regional and local planning documents, articles and photographs.