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Swedish Fairy Belief: Traffic Accidents, Folklore, and the Cold Light of Reason
Institute for Language and Folklore, Avdelningen för arkiv och forskning i Uppsala.
2021 (English)In: De Natura Fidei: Rethinking Religion Across Disciplinary Boundaries. Volume II / [ed] Mathew Jibu George, New Delhi: Authorspress , 2021, p. 256-276Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

An article in a Swedish newspaper revealed that the high number of traffic accidents at a certain location had two different explanations. One was furnished by the Swedish Transport Administration, which maintained that the incidents were due to natural circumstances and blind spots on the road. The other was local narratives which claimed that the accidents were the work of angered supernatural beings. This triggered a debate on the internet with claims for and against belief in supernatural beings. The present chapter examines this modern debate and contextualizes contemporary Swedish fairy belief with older narratives of fairy roads and similar phenomena in pre-industrial Sweden. It is argued that notions of the supernatural reflect the age and culture to which they belong. Discussions on two different internet forums express fairy belief and fairy disbelief, respectively. The debate can be interpreted as a conflict of enchantment versus disenchantment of the world. The believers find sympathies towards fairy spirituality online and form collective identities, where a concern for nature and the ecological system seems to be crucial, while the disbelievers are concerned with what they believe to be a rational and scientific explanation.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New Delhi: Authorspress , 2021. p. 256-276
Keywords [en]
folklore, vittra, supernatural, folktro, folk belief, enchantment, traffic accidents, fairies, disenchantment
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Research subject
Folklore; Cultural History
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sprakochfolkminnen:diva-2335ISBN: 978-93-5529-075-5 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sprakochfolkminnen-2335DiVA, id: diva2:1621977
Available from: 2021-12-21 Created: 2021-12-21 Last updated: 2021-12-21Bibliographically approved

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Swedish Fairy Belief - Traffic Accidents, Folklore, and the Cold Light of Reason(401 kB)1411 downloads
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Kuusela, Tommy

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
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