Norwegian Skilling Ballads, 1550-1950: recovering a cultural heritage

This project har uncovered unknown chapters in the history of Norwegian popular culture by investigating the function of the skilling ballad in the period 1550-1950. So far we have revealed that early modern ballads played an incremental role as intelligencers prior to the establishment of a printed newspaper in Norway; we have discovered that 17th and 18th century ballads are sometimes the only surviving source material to describe dramatic incidents such as natural disasters and executions, and we have revealed that the popular genre influenced the formation of a national identity for the lower classes in the early nineteenth century. In collaboration with researchers from other countries we have also uncovered how the Norwegian skilling ballads were part of a pan-European tradition, and we have revealed the political, social and cultural significance this form of cheap print has played in society as a whole. We have published a full-text, open access database of ballads from the NTNU Gunnerus library - the first of its kind in Norway. The database includes interactive functions, like recording of songs, transcriptions, graphs and maps. We have published two major, edited books of 1200 pages - the first two books on ballads in Norway - as well as one monograph and many articles written in Norwegian and English. One additional monograph and the first doctoral thesis on ballads is due in 2023. We have arranged several seminars and concerts for a specialized and broader audience, and we have communicated our research results in multiple national medias throughout the project period.

Dette prosjektet var det første av sitt slag til å belyse skillingsvisene som en viktig men underkjent litterær sjanger i Norge. Vi har undersøkt hvilken politisk, sosial og kulturell betydning disse små sangtekstene har hatt i samfunnet; avdekket at visene kan klassifiseres som Norges eldste, trykte litteratur, og at de antakelig har vært den mest populære sjangeren her til lands. Vi har vist at tidligmoderne skillingsviser var en viktig kanal for nyhetsformidling forut for etableringen av den trykte avisen i Norge; at 1600-tallets skillingsviser i mange tilfeller er de eneste bevarte historiske kildene til dramatiske hendelser, slik som naturkatastrofer, og vi har kartlagt hvordan skillingsvisene påvirket dannelsen av en nasjonal identitet for allmuen i begynnelsen av 1800-tallet. De viktigste resultatene av prosjektet er to redigerte bøker (2021 og 2021) på tilsammen 1126 sider; en monografi (2020); ti bokkapitler, fem artikler og en database. Et doktorgradsprosjekt og ytterligere en monografi ferdigstilles i løpet av 2023. Vi har driftet en godt besøkt forskningsblogg gjennom hele prosjektperioden, og vi har kontinuerlig formidlet funnene våre for et bredt og allment publikum gjennom seminarer og konserter, og i mange nasjonale medier. De siste årene har dette prosjektet etablert et forskningsfelt på skillingsviser som har blitt lagt merke til i offentligheten. Dette har hatt særlig stor betydning når det gjelder å utvikle forskningsfeltet på skillingsviser videre, og vi ser at arbeidet vårt har inspirert flere andre til å forske på skillingsviser. Gjennom arbeidet med katalogisering og digitalisering av NTNU Gunnerusbibliotekets skillingstrykksamling, inspirerte vi flere andre biblioteker i Norge og i Sverige til å digitalisere sine egne samlinger. Databasen vår er åpent tilgjengelig, og den inneholder en rekke interaktive funksjoner og musikkinnspillinger. Den vil bli en særlig viktig ressurs for musikere, slekts- og lokalhistorikere og lærere som nå får tilgang til eldre, folkelige tekster til bruk i undervisning og formidling av det som en gang var en forsømt del av vår kulturarv.

This project argues that the low status of knowledge on broadside ballads has obscured their role in Norwegian cultural history, and bypassed the potential of these texts to reveal powerful but marginalized voices and viewpoints of the past. The broadside ballads were Norway's first mass medium: from the early modern period onwards they were the main source of news intelligence and entertainment for a broad audience, serving as cheap and easily digested alternatives to more expensive books and newspapers. They circulated in large numbers across the country and were sold and sung for almost 400 years. This project will show how the distribution and endurance of the broadside ballads make them the most popular genre Norway has ever fostered, and we argue that their widespread appeal means that they had a greater impact on public opinions than texts written for the elite, with a more narrow circulation. The broadside ballads are an ideal starting point for investigating alternative routes into our past. For these routes to be discovered, the inaccessible broadside ballads need to be made available to academics and the wider public. In cooperation with the Gunnerus special collections library, this project will create a database consisting of the 1200 extant prints in the Gunnerus archive, which includes ballads from all over Norway and constitutes a representative, national corpus. To ensure an extensive approach to a neglected genre, the project unites a group of eighteen distinguished scholars from different disciplines who will combine new methodologies from digital humanities with more traditional methods from bibliography, print history, and literary, historical and cultural studies. The combined expertise of this group will allow for research into the hybrid quality of the genre - the ballads as literary artefacts, conveyors of news, and foundations for musical performance - as well as explorations of the important role of ballads in Norwegian history.