Den här studien lyfter fram och problematiserar skönlitterär fredstematik i verk ur tre svenskspråkiga författarskap i Östersjöregionen: Frida Stéenhoff (1865–1945), Elin Wägner (1882–1949) och Hagar Olsson (1893–1978). Mot bakgrund av det tidiga 1900-talets västerländska feministiska fredsrörelse och den europeiska koloniseringen visas hur dessa går i dialog med en internationell tanketradition om fred. Med utgångspunkt i det skönlitterära materialets gestaltning av temat fred fokuserar studien på de lokala och internationella kontexter som adresseras däri samt tematikens förhållningssätt till tre tendenser tillika dilemman i den västerländska traditionen av att förstå relationen mellan krig och fred: 1) förståelsen av fred som krigets negation, 2) könandet och rasifierandet av fredsbegreppet, 3) uppfattningen om att krig är något för människan naturgivet.

Fredstematiken i det skönlitterära materialet – dramat Stridbar ungdom (1907) och den historiska dramaromanen Ljusa bragder och mörka dåd: kulturhistoriska tablåer från 1700-talet (1915) av Frida Stéenhoff, romanerna Den befriade kärleken (1918) och Den förödda vingården (1920) av Elin Wägner samt romanerna På Kanaanexpressen (1929) och Chitambo (1933) av Hagar Olsson – lyfts fram och problematiseras medelst kontextualiserande närläsningar med utgångpunkt i en begreppsapparat från det postkoloniala- och avkoloniserande forskningsfältet. Vidare utförs litteraturanalyserna med avstamp i en historisk och idéhistorisk kontextualisering av den moderna västerländska fredsrörelsen, i synnerhet dess feministiska gren och tanketradition liksom ovannämnda författares positionering i densamma.  

Sammantaget åskådliggör litteraturanalyserna att fredsfrågan i det skönlitterära materialet förankras i såväl en lokal Östersjökontext som ett internationellt sammanhang, därtill behandlas i dialog med den moderna västerländska feministiska tanketraditionen om fred liksom dess förhållande till den europeiska kolonialismen. Studiens genus- och kolonialkritiska ingång till fredstematiken aktualiserar också flera av Stéenhoffs, Wägners och Olssons understuderade verk. Närläsningarna av dessa pekar på förbisedda budskap och problemformuleringar i författarnas produktion, i synnerhet att där finns en samtidig rörelse av motstånd mot den västerländska traditionen av att i negativ bemärkelse köna fredsfrågan som något feminint respektive reproduktion av rasifieringen av densamma. Vidare förenas de undersökta verken i ett teatralt berättar-grepp som skapar distans mellan läsaren och det som berättas. Fredstematikens kritiska potential framträder här med skönlitteraturens möjlighet till perspektivskifte medelst verktyg som distansering, osäkring, paradoxer, ambivalenser, tvetydigheter, parodi, ironi, sarkasm, iscensättning och metaperspektiv. Inte minst visar analyserna av det skönlitterära materialet att den mening som läggs i fredsbegreppet i en västerländsk feministisk kontext även den är fylld av paradoxer och ambivalenser liksom att ett problematiserande av denna mening bidrar till att utveckla förståelsen för freds-begreppets sammanflätning med intersubjektiva konstruktioner som genus och ras. I förlängningen åskådliggör detta resultat att det fredsvetenskapliga forskningsfältet kan dra lärdom av den kritiska potentialen i såväl skönlitterära gestaltningar av fredstematik som litteraturvetenskapliga studier av dessa. 

This study highlights and problematises the literary composition of peace in selected works by three Swedish-language authors in the Baltic Sea region: Frida Stéenhoff (1865–1945), Elin Wägner (1882–1949) and Hagar Olsson (1893–1978). Against the background of the early 20th century Western feminist peace movement and European colonisation, it is shown how these authors enter into dialogue with an international tradition of thinking peace. Based on the literary composition of peace in the material, the study focuses on the local and international contexts addressed therein and its approach to three tendencies and dilemmas in the traditional Western understanding of the relationship between war and peace: 1) the understanding of peace as the negation of war, 2) the gendering and racialisation of the concept of peace, 3) the idea that war is something natural to man.

The literary composition of peace in the material – the drama Stridbar ungdom (Pugnacious Youth 1907) and the historical drama novel Ljusa bragder och mörka dåd: kulturhistoriska tablåer från 1700-talet (Bright Feats and Dark Deeds: 18th Century Cultural History Tableaux 1915) by Frida Stéenhoff, the novels Den befriade kärleken (Love Liberated 1918) and Den förödda vingården (The Ruined Vineyard 1920) by Elin Wägner, and the novels På Kanaanexpressen (On the Canaan Express 1929) and Chitambo (1933) by Hagar Olsson – is displayed and problematised through contextualising close readings, based on a postcolonial and decolonising conceptual apparatus. The analysis then proceeds through a historical and ideological contextualisation of the modern Western peace movement, in particular its feminist branch and tradition of thought, as well as the above-mentioned authors’ positioning within it.

All in all, the analyses illustrate how the issue of peace in the fictional material is anchored in both a local Baltic Sea perspective and an international context and is treated in dialogue with the modern Western feminist tradition of thinking peace and its relationship to European colonialism. The gender- and colonial-critical approach to the literary composition of peace in this study brings to the fore several of Stéenhoff’s, Wägner’s, and Olsson’s understudied works. In turn, close readings of these works point to overlooked messages and problem formulations in the authors’ production. In particular, these works display a simultaneous resistance to the Western tradition of gendering the peace issue – negatively, as something feminine – as well as a reproduction of the racialisation of the peace issue.

Furthermore, the works examined are united in a theatrical narrative approach that creates a distance between the reader and the story being told. The critical potential of the literary composition of peace asserts itself in the possibility for changing perspectives that is inherent in fiction, specifically through tools such as distancing, uncertainty, paradoxes, ambivalences, ambiguities, parody, irony, sarcasm, staging, and meta-perspectives. Not least, the analyses show how the meaning attached to the concept of peace in a Western feminist context is also full of paradoxes and ambivalences, and that problematising this helps develop an understanding of the intertwining of the concept of peace with intersubjective constructs such as gender and race. By extension, it is clear from this result that the field of peace studies has something important to learn from literary compositions of peace as well as the literary studies of these.   

Around the turn of the nineteenth century writer, and opinion leader, Frida Stéenhoff (1865–1945), developed a theory of the future and the present of society, and argued that contemporary ideas of the social, ethical, and aesthetical were provisional, not comparable to the coming. An affinity between drama and theory, as well as investigations of peace as an idea, are distinctive features of her writing. Her play, Stridbar ungdom / Pugnacious Youth (1907), can be positioned in a tradition of peace dramas spanning from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to Sarah Kane’s Blasted. This article studies the utopian potential of peace in Pugnacious Youth. By reading the play with Ruth Levitas’ method the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (IROS) – suggesting that utopia is a method rather than a goal in itself – peace does not emerge negatively, as non-war, but as concrete development and possible presence. Furthermore, the division between realism and idealism when it comes to militarism and peace, as well as the realist and idealist branches of the peace movement, are problematized. In conclusion, it appears that studying ideas of peace in fiction enables an alternative entry into the actualization of its not-yet-here quality.

The dominance of militarism needs to be understood in relation to gender. This relation is complicated by the fact that peace is often defined as non-war – just as woman is traditionally represented as non-male – a lesser being or the exception that proves the rule. In other words, war and peace are gendered concepts. This is particularly evident in the reporting on armed conflicts where war is characterized through male notions and words. Elin Wägner (1882–1949), one of the most influential European voices for peace and women’s emancipation during the first half of the 20th century, was well aware of this. With her novel Den förödda vingården, published 1920, she moved from depicting World War I and its consequences from a distance, to placing the plot at its epicenter. Unlike media reporting from war zones, Wägner sheds light upon women’s and children’s situation in the aftermath of the war, while placing men’s stories in the background. In the novel the impact of who is telling the story of the war as well as what is being told, and how, is acknowledged and problematized. By exploring the performative elements of war, as well as its relationship to the mythological and ritual, Den förödda vingården makes war visible as a gendered mythology and punctures dichotomies such as “war/activity/development/rationality” and “peace/passivity/stagnation/irrationality”. This can in turn be read in relation to Wägner’s later attempts to contrast a patriarchal historiography with the mythology of matriarchy. In particular, the plot of the novel focuses on another mythology – one that overshadows matriarchy – the mythology of war. 

This article claims that Western culture is tinged by an idea of an ontology of militarism. By analyzing how bodies are militarized because of this presumption, and how resistance against that very same presumption is carried out in Frida Stéenhoff ’s Stridbar ungdom (1906) and Elin Wägner’s Släkten Jerneploogs framgång (1916), this article presents an alternative understanding of the relationship between militarism and peace. Both works problematize and challenge the idea of militarism as a pre-condition for the human being. Finally, utopia, rather than militarism, emerges as indispensable to human beings.

For large groups in the East, the fall of the Soviet Union was like a floodgate opening through which history flowed in. The period following 1991 has been described as transitional, and the literature as post-Soviet. In the panel discussion “Fast forward – Rewind” at the Stockholm Literature Fair at Kulturhuset in December 4, 2021, questions such as how this transition can be understood in retrospect, and how we are to talk about Russian literature of today, were addressed.