Anna-Maria Forssberg, Armémuseum

2011-2014

Final report on project "Lumpen - identity and material memories ca 1940-2010.
A project for documentation and methodological development".

Purpose of the project, including potential changes
In 2011, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) granted infrastructural support to the Army Museum project "Lumpen - identity and material memories ca 1940-2010", a project for documentation and methodological development. The project received additional support from the Swedish Arts Council. According to the application sent to RJ, it had several purposes:
- "The material memory". To develop new methods for the use of collection items as starting points for memory collecting and documentation.
- To ask new questions and produce new knowledge about the history of conscription, which can be presented in a new permanent exhibition at the Army Museum, as well as in a web-based exhibition, and in other contexts.
- To create a source material which will also be of use to future researchers.
- To consolidate the research and development of the Army Museum, and initiate or complete joint efforts with Södertörn University College, specialists on conscription history, the Museum of Work and the National Maritime Museums.

According to the description provided by the museum, the project was to be carried out in line with two fundamental ideas: 1) the material memory - that is, questions on artefacts regarding their ability to awaken memories, and 2) researchability - that is, to make sure that the collected material was of high quality, and could be used by future researchers.

The collection project has been carried out in segments. Thanks to the funding from the Swedish Arts Council, we have had the means to pay a reference group of researchers, who have continuously participated in methodological discussions and seminars, helped analyse our material and produced papers. Within this segment of the project, we have gathered and analysed historical source material (diaries, letters, photographs etc.).
The collecting has mainly been performed through an online survey at www.lumpenminnen.se, funded by both RJ and the Swedish Arts Council. Furthermore, a large number of interviews have been made with the aid of the RJ funding. Apart from minor changes in staff, which have all been approved by RJ, the project has not been subject to any significant change. The co-operation with the National Maritime Museums turned out to be somewhat less extensive than originally expected, while, on the other hand, the co-operation with the Swedish Air Force Museum became very intense and eventually led to a joint exhibition. Since the various segments of the projects are subject to some overlap, they are not strictly separated in this report (except in the section describing project economy). Below is a summary of the project, including answers to the more specific questions from RJ.

Overall project development
On February 11th, 2012, we launched the website www.lumpenminnen.se. This website contained our online survey and a blog, along with some general information on the project. The same day, the Army Museum hosted an event devoted to the project, which attracted many visitors. The public was encouraged to bring their conscription memories to the museum to share. On the museum ground floor, three "story booths", where visitors had the opportunity to sit down and have their stories recorded, were set up and manned.
From the start, the project received a lot of attention in the media, with newspaper articles and news spots on the radio and on television, which contributed to the large number of people who contacted us and wished to share in various ways. In the spring, two postgraduate ethnology students were hired part-time, and began their work in co-operation with curator Anna Fredholm. They held and transcribed a total of 22 in-depth interviews. Parallel to this, seminars were held with the project reference group, which then began to analyse the first 1300 surveys submitted through the website. The online survey remained open until April 2014 and eventually yielded around 2200 approved submissions. Everyone who had been connected to the project used our blog to share their ongoing work, and their thoughts on the acquired source material. In the spring of 2013, the website received an addition in the form of single-question surveys which addressed, among others, people who were conscientious objectors or had served as non-combatants.
In the spring of 2013, an all-day seminar was hosted, where the project members presented drafts for their contributions to the book which was later finished in 2014. Klas Kronberg, co-editor of the yearbook, participated in the work of the reference group as it finished the resulting papers. During the final stages of the project, Dag Lundqvist and Oskar Sjöström joined to aid in the analysis of the material, and to prepare the exhibition. A version of the book, complete with footnotes, was published as an e-book on the Army Museum website, and made available through LIBRIS in January 2014. In April 2014, a popular version was published by Atlantis: Lumpen - från mönstring till muck.
In May 2014, the exhibition Lumpen - från mönstring till muck opened at the Swedish Air Force Museum in Linköping. (The exhibition will be displayed at the Army Museum in 2015). At the time of the opening, the volume Breven från lumpen was published, an edition of a small part of the source material gathered during the project. In addition, the "Story tent" was opened at the Army Museum, where visitors can hear a selection of the stories gathered. The online survey was closed, but the webpage was updated with a sample of the corpus, and the items in the Digital Museum were supplied with new stories. From the autumn of 2014, the source material will be available in the museum archives.

The survey
Some 2200 people submitted complete and approved replies to the survey, which equals more than 3000 pages of source material. The survey was created in consultation with the reference group and an expert on applied sociology, who reviewed the multiple-choice questions. It was important to us that the notions of identity and material memory were given sufficient attention as core themes of the project. The survey was created in a way that enabled people to submit it anonymously. The subjects stated gender, year of conscription, type of conscription post, occupation, occupation of parents, and where they grew up. The first part of the survey prompted subjects to relate memories in their own words, in connection with ten different theme questions. In the second part, they were asked to give their opinion in regard to about a dozen statements by ticking various alternatives. Finally, they were asked to share some of their memories in relation to photographs and items from our collections, divided into seven different categories. The responsibility for the survey analysis was shared among the project participants. The analyses were edited into a short report, available from the Army Museum archives. The source material gathered through the online survey will be made available in an anonymised version in the autumn of 2014.

Interviews
Anna Fredholm has been in charge of the in-depth interviews carried out with the primary purpose of documenting the memories of the former conscripts, in connection to a selection of items from the Army Museum collections. Before the interviews, a method connected to the "material memory" was developed, and then applied and tested during the interview sessions. Before each session, items relevant to the interviewee were brought out of the collections for presentation, with the aid of the museum curators. During the interview itself, a conversation was held on the items presented, and the interviewee was invited to look, feel, smell and associate freely in relation to this sensory experience. Once the interviews were carried out, we found that the presence of the items generated a particular kind of stories, which were characterized to a greater extent by spontaneous and newly awoken memories in relation to the human body.
The results from the interviews have also added a new dimension of knowledge about our collections, in the sense that we have acquired personal stories which can be connected to various types of items. These stories have been added to the collections database of the Army Museum.

Project results
Our inquiries concerning the material memory have shown that interesting things occur when you allow both interviewees and survey submitters to relate to physical items. The stories gained a new quality: they shifted from abstract to concrete, and would concern people's own bodies to a great extent (more on this in Sundevall & Fredholm 2013). However, the most important result gained from the infrastructural project financed by RJ is the extensive corpus of material gathered, which will be available to both researchers and to the public. Additionally, it is important that people who browse for information about conscription items in our collections are now able to access personal memories through the Digital Museum. The two exhibitions based on the material are other important results gained from the project.

Despite the fact that the RJ part of the project did not mainly concern research, we would still like to mention a few results, even though they are difficult to summarise considering the fact that the project contains the stories of over 2200 individuals, and spans a century. The stories show that conscription has been an important life event for many people. In several cases, they have been surprised by their own reactions - those who believed they would appreciate military life did not, and vice versa. Conscription raised questions about your relation to authorities, and, to a certain extent, politics. The military ambitions of fostering that persisted throughout the first half of the 20th century were not always received as expected, but were generally successful (Rudberg). At the same time, your sexuality was related to that of others, regardless of your own wishes (Sundevall). A persistent feature of the material is the ambivalence - the same people who claim to have enjoyed military life may recall horrible experiences (Wollin Elhouar). Within the project, we have examined several informal rituals which have not previously been addressed by science (Fredholm).

Unpredicted technical and methodological problems
None.

Integration of the undertaking into the agency/organisation, including further application
As previously stated, the project has been clearly integrated into the work process of the museum. It has been led and in part conducted by the in-house staff, and the exhibition will be on display at two different museums within the government agency of The National Swedish Museums of Military History. Further, the museum staff has been involved in the two publications. The results of the project will additionally be displayed at the Army Museum in a permanent exhibition on the 20th century, which is being rebuilt in 2014. Data from the interviews and the survey has been entered into the collections database, Primus, which means that the previously rather anonymous items are now supplied with personal stories.
The most concrete result is, of course, the amazing source material which will be registered and made available in the museum archives from the autumn of 2014. The conclusions drawn from the project regarding the importance of items to personal memories will of course be a continued inspiration in further work with the museum collections.

New research questions generated by the project
A number of scientific papers have been published in connection with the project, and there are several researchers who continue to work on the source material. Gender and sexuality are among the topics that have received particular interest from the researchers, but there are other plans as well, such as in-depth studies of formal and informal rituals within the military. The research community is currently experiencing an increased interest in items as sources, and in material culture - another field where we believe that both our own results and the gathered material may be useful contributions.

Relevant homepages
Project homepage:
www.lumpenminnen.se

E-book Lumpen - identitet och materiella minnen:
http://libris.kb.se/bib/14969266

Publications

Publikationer samt presentationer

Projektets huvudrapport, bestående av vetenskapliga artiklar, har publicerats såväl som e-bok med fullständiga noter och i en populariserad version på Atlantis förlag.


Anna Maria Forssberg & Klas Kronberg (red.), Lumpen – identitet och materiella minnen (Stockholm: Armémuseum 2014)
Tillgänglig på: http://libris.kb.se/bib/14969266
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Innehåll:
Lumpen – Identitet och materiella minnen
Anna Maria Forssberg & Anna Fredholm

”Att mönstra kändes självklart i min generation”(O)förändrade attityder till
lumpen mellan 1940 och 2010
Marcus Persson

Inryckningen – en tidsresa
Susanne Wollinger

”Armén måste blifva en skola för hela folket” – Krigsmaktens folkfostrande
ambitioner och praktiker 1901–1950
Pontus Rudberg
Kropp och värnplikt – fysisk fostran i det svenska försvaret ca 1950 till 1980
Fredrik Eriksson

Lumpen som ambivalent berättelse
Elisabeth Wollin Elhouar

”Inga bögavstånd!”: om förhållningssätt till sexualitet i lumpen
Fia Sundevall

Materiella minnen
Olle Westerberg

Pompa, ståpäls, bedrövelse och gemenskap – musikanvändning inom den
svenska försvarsmakten från förkrigsåren till värnpliktens slut
Piotr Wawrzeniuk

Varken fågel eller fisk – det värnpliktiga befälets mellanställning
Thomas Roth

Muckarritualer – i gränslandet mellan ”solis” och ”atom”
Anna Fredholm

Bilaga – Webbenkäten

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Anna Maria Forssberg & Klas Kronberg (red.), Lumpen – från mönstring till muck (Stockholm: Atlantis förlag 2014).

Anna Fredholm och Dag Lundquist (red.), Breven från lumpen (Stockholm: Armémuseum 2014).


Övriga artiklar:
Fia Sundevall & Anna Fredholm, ”Minnesinsamling genom webbenkäter: perspektiv på en dokumentationsmetod i förändring”, Nordisk museologi nr 1 2013.

Fia Sundevall, “Där pojkar blev män?: Maskulinitet och mognad i minnesberättelser om
svensk värnpliktsutbildning”, i Manns, Ulla & Sundevall, Fia (red.): Methods, interventions,
and reflections: report from the 10th Nordic Women’s and Gender History Conference,
Bergen, Norway, 9–12 August 2012. Stockholm & Göteborg: Makadam, 2014.

Anders Ahlbäck & Fia Sundevall, ”Gender, war and peace – breaking up the borderlines”, i
Jouko Nurmiainen (red.) Borderlines: Nordic history meeting proceedings. Kommande/2014.
(projektet diskuteras men står inte i fokus)

Oskar Sjöström, kommande, prel titel: ”Lumpna minnen? Materialitet och mentalitet i Armémuseums lumpenenkät”, Historisk tidskrift eller motsvarande

Marcus Persson, Bosse Jonsson, Ildikó Asztalos Morell & Åsa Snöljung, Mälardalens högskola, kommande, prel titel: ”Mundane military objects and narrative memories of social life in national service”. Målet är att publicera den i en internationell tidskrift.




Konferensbidrag/presentationer

Fia Sundevall ”Kön och sexualitet i minnesberättelser om lumpen”, 10:de Nordic women- and gender history conference, Bergen augusti 2012.

Anna Maria Forssberg och Pontus Rudberg, ”Att skriva historia tillsammans med allmänheten. Projektet Lumpenminnen ur ett historiebruksperspektiv”, Militärhistorisk forskning i Sverige - var befinner den sig idag och vart är den på väg? Konferens den 13 november 2013 i Stockholm med anledning av Svenska militärhistoriska kommissionens 75-årsjubileum

Anna Maria Forssberg, Dag Lundquist och Pontus Rudberg ”Lumpen - identitet och materiella minnen. Ett insamlings- och forskningsprojekt på Armémuseum”, Försvarshögskolans militärhistoriska seminarium den 14 novemver 2013.

Fia Sundevall, ”Gender, sexuality in the Swedish 20th century military”, Senter for tverrfaglig kjønnsforskning, Oslo Universitet, mars 2014.


Fia Sundevall och Klas Kronberg, ”Inga bögavstånd!” – om sexualitet i lumpen”, samtal på Armémuseum 13 maj 2014.


Övrigt

Därtill har Fia Sundevall använt materialet i föreläsningar på Stockholm Pride och Försvarsmaktens personaldag för jämlikhetssamordnare på temat Pågående forskning om HBT-personer i Försvarsmakten, samt på vid ekonomisk-historiska institutionen på Stockholms universitet. Anna Fredholm har, efter särskild inbjudan, presenterat projektet för norska Försvarsmuseets ledning.
Det insamlade materialet har också legat till grund för c-uppsatser i historia på Uppsala universitet och i ekonomisk historia på Stockholms universitet.