In 1959, the politics of assimilation led to the creation of a set of municipally organised camps for Roma people in the Stockholm area. The camps were to function as controlled settlements of transition for Roma families awaiting proper homes. This paper focuses on one such camp – the Skarpnäck Camp – which existed longer than anticipated, to the point that its continued operation was criticised as being inconsistent with the government’s assimilation policy. This paper represents an analysis of historical archaeological fieldwork at the former Skarpnäck Camp in southern Stockholm and is based upon interviews conducted with former inhabitants of and visitors to the camp. It uncovers aspects of Roma history on the margins of Swedish society and how marginalisation of the Roma group was given physical form in the creation of sanctioned camps.

This article examines an audio recording with a Roma family made by the collector Arvid Andersson in Sweden, in the early 1950s. The aim of this article is to unfold this jointly constructed conversation between the collector and the Roma family members. The analysis of the conversation shows a delicate interplay between the Roma family and the interviewer, and we especially stress the agency of the family in the process of negotiating belonging, challenging a discourse about the Roma as a passive group merely subjected to discrimination and stereotyping. The foreignness of the Roma was continuously stressed, while the Roma opposed being positioned as foreigners and tried to clarify that they did belong in Sweden and contributed to society. 

I år firas den Internationella romadagen för femtionde året i rad. För att högtidlighålla dagen uppmärksammar forskningsarkivarie Charlotte Hyltén-Cavallius Johan Dimitri Taikons (1879–1950) gärning. Taikon hade en stark ställning inom den romska gruppen och kom att bli en nyckelperson i dokumentation av sagor, folklore och språk. Blogginlägget har tillkommit i samarbete med Fred Taikon, barnbarn till Johan Dimitri Taikon och ordförande för kulturföreningen É romani glinda.

In the early 1950’s and early 1960’s Sweden, two Romani men, Karl and Sven, handed in their written life stories to the folklorist Carl-Herman Tillhagen at the Nordic Museum in Stockholm, who added them to the museum archive. Karl identified as “zigenare” (Gypsy, or Kelderash Roma), and Sven as “resande” (Traveller). These life-stories were written in the aftermath of a public debate on “tinkers” containing suggestions such as sterilization, politics of territorial exclusion while the Kelderash Roma to a large extent were still excluded from permanent housing and schools. The narratives are read as an act of “talking back” (Hancock 2010), by the authors to the majority population in a discriminatory and often racist societal climate. The inclusion of the stories in a national archival collection provides an opportunity to see the history of a few members of Romani groups in Sweden from an in-group perspective, in opposition to the otherwise often stereotypical and antigypsyist portrayals of these groups in the archival sphere. The article focuses on how the narrators positioned themselves and which issues they wished to mediate to the supposed majority Swedish readers.

I Ett lapptäcke av källor undersöker Lotta Fernstål ochCharlotte Hyltén-Cavallius äldre samlingar och sätterfokus på insamlarna. De granskar kritiskt materialenstillkomst och användandet av dem, och belyser därmedden kulturarvsproduktion som samlingarna är en del av.Författarna lyfter även fram nytt, tidigare förbigångetkällmaterial i vilka romer och resande själva berättar omsina liv och livsvillkor – detta i dialog med insamlarna vidarkiven i en inspelning från 1950-talets Småland och i tvånedtecknade levnadsberättelser.Författarna gör närläsningar och kontextualiserandestudier av arkivmaterial vid bland annat Institutet förspråk och folkminnen och Nordiska museet samt i vissmån föremål ur museisamlingar. Arbetet är teoretiskt förankrati forskningsfälten Romani studies, kritiskakulturarvsstudier, arkivstudier och folkloristik med inriktningmot frågor om kunskapsproduktion och insamling.

This article focuses on archival collections relating to so-called “tattare” and “zigenare” (approximately meaning “tinkers” and “gypsies”) created by Swedish folklore scholars during the twentieth century, and how these scholars influenced politics and interventions regarding these categories. It addresses questions regarding the production of knowledge about these categories and the contexts, structures and actors that have created the basis for these kinds of collections. Special focus is on works by the folklore scholars Carl-Martin Bergstrand and Carl-Herman Tillhagen, and collections at the Institute for Language and Folklore, Department of Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research and the Nordic Museum Archive. By unfolding the networks of Bergstrand and Tillhagen and following the traces of their work to other archives, the article highlights some of the political and monitoring dimensions in archival practices in relation to minority groups in Sweden.