Min forskning handlar om historieskrivning, historiekultur och identitetsformering under medeltiden. I min avhandling analyserade jag fornsvenska rimkrönikor från sent 1400-tal och tidigt 1500-tal som ideologiska uttryck, där skildringen av det förflutna fungerar som argument om makt och en maktordning i riket.

 

Kvinnor som genealoger. Minne, släktskap och identitetsformering i Sverige och Danmark, ca 1400–1750.

I ett forskningsprojekt finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet studerar jag kvinnor som genealoger under medeltid och tidigmodern tid. I projektet analyserar jag föreställningar om familj, släktskap och identitet i släktböcker och genealogier skriva av adelskvinnor i Sverige och Danmark under perioden ca 1400–1750, med minneskultur som teoretiskt ramverk. Projektet ger nya insikter om hur genealogisk kunskap fördes vidare mellan generationer, samt hur kvinnor bidrog till och förhöll sig till den aristokratiska kulturen och identitetsformeringen. Släktböckernas funktion som en brygga mellan familjehistorien och den större politiska historien aktualiserar också frågor om den aristokratiska familjen och dess kvinnor som aktörer i ett gränsland mellan publikt och privat.

 

Föreställningar om det förflutna: identitetsformering, genealogi och ursprung i det senmedeltida Norden

I forskningsprojektet "Föreställningar om det förflutna: identitetsformering, genealogi och ursprung i det senmedeltida Norden", finansierat av Åke Wibergs stiftelse, ägnade jag mig åt att undersöka hur det förflutna gestaltas i olika typer av texter under senmedeltiden, med fokus på genealogiska modeller för minnesskapande och kontinuitet, ursprungsmyter, samt hur dessa kan kopplas till en pågående identitetsformering på olika nivåer i det skandinaviska området.

 

Riksföreståndargemålerna

Jag samarbetar också i ett forskningsprojekt med Kim Bergqvist: Rikets första dam(er): De svenska riksföreståndargemålernas politiska roller och maktutövning under Unionstiden (finansiering har erhållits från Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse). Det tar fasta på frågan om kvinnors maktutövning och kvinnors agens i aristokratiska respektive kungliga maktsystem (queenship studies).

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

• Sankt Eriks vrede

  2021. Margaretha Nordquist. Lychnos, 125-139

  Artikel

  The purpose of this article is to discuss the expression of political emotions and memory in the vernacular rhymed chronicle Karlskrönikan (Karl’s chronicle), written on behalf of the Swedish king Karl Knutsson (Bonde) in the 1450s. Historical studies of emotions and memory have been prominent in the dynamic field of cultural history but more rarely as a combined approach to explore the temporal aspects of emotional expressions. This article focuses attention on the chronicle’s communicative function and the notion that emotions and memory are integral parts in the construction of human experience and validation of power. Expressions of emotion in the chronicle were analysed as scripts, or narrative sequences, and the result shows how emotions appear in clusters of feelings such as wrath, shame, and sorrow. Emotions are instrumental in the characterization and moral evaluation of actors, their actions, and motives. They provide a visual acuity and energy to the narrative that reinforce the memorability of past events. The chronicle’s reference to the wrath of Saint Erik illustrates the complex uses and meanings of wrath in the chronicle. Wrath can be used both as a mark of legitimate power and of uncontrolled envy or lust for power. This is particularly apparent in the chronicle’s attempt to represent Karl Knutsson as a legitimate ruler, who shows emotional restraint and honorable conduct both in dealing with unruly peasants and envious contenders for power.

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• Celebrating the Memory of Victory

  2020. Margaretha Nordquist. Scandinavian Journal of History 45 (1), 121-142

  Artikel

  This article investigates different, but partly overlapping, memorializing processes linked to the Battle of Brunkeberg (1471). In the decades after the battle, memories of the battle not only served to construct the event as a narrative of victory that reinforced notions of legitimate power and a Swedish community, but also formed the basis of potentially divisive emotions of fear and anxiety among the people in periods of political turbulence. The analysis of memory as articulations of co-existing, partly contradictory, and selective narratives and symbolic expressions shows how various memory practices and formats intersect in the political culture and identities of the past.

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• Constructing Political Time

  2020. Margaretha Nordquist. The Medieval Chronicle, 223-246

  Kapitel

  The representation of time in historiographical narratives reveals important conceptions about origin, continuity and change, and the perceived links between the past, present and future in a society. Through temporal structures of meaning such as genealogy, political power can be explained, legitimized and reinforced in narratives of the origin and history of a people and its rulers. The aim of this article is to investigate the construction of political time in two fifteenth-century Old Swedish narratives, Prosaiska krönikan and Lilla rimkrönikan. These chronicles constitute some of the first attempts to write continuous histories of the Swedish realm and its rulers from time immemorial. While the two chronicles share basic temporal structures, their different narrative forms also involve shifting emphases in their representation of a political time that functions as the basis for claims to a precedence of power and authority in relation to the other Scandinavian kingdoms. By considering temporal structures of meaning in the two chronicles, light can be shed on the political and ideological utility of history writing in late-medieval Sweden.

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• Eternal Bonds of Love or Foreign Oppression?

  2018. Margaretha Nordquist. Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae 23, 379-403

  Artikel

  This paper investigates the occurrence of two common but contradictory themes in the political discourse in fifteenth-century Scandinavia: on the one hand proclamations of the essential bonds existing between Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and on the other hand expressions of hostility against what is represented as foreign rule. The aim is to examine how different forms of discourse reveal coexisting and sometimes oppositional expressions of identity, with a particular focus on the role of cultural memory in the elaboration of these themes. A crucial political framework for the analysis is the Kalmar Union, which throughout the century constituted a common, if not always implemented, form of government of the Scandinavian kingdoms.

  The article explores the occurrence of nativist ideas of origin and identity within the pragmatics of a game of power in fifteenth century Scandinavia. In the vernacular chronicles of fifteenth-century Denmark and Sweden, differentiating between categories of men such as inborn and foreigner was a prominent way of expressing views about legitimate claims to power and privileges in the realms. In the construction of coherent and meaningful narratives of a common past, identities linked to birth and regnal belonging were apparently important. At the same time, personal bonds based on friendship, kinship and allegiance, played a fundamental role in the political dealings of the period. Particular bonds of love were also perceived to exist between the realms, as shown in the treaties negotiated between the realms. Rather than giving priority to the importance of one specific sense of identity in the political game of the period, it is argued that the complex relationships governing political action and discourse in late-medieval Scandinavia should be conceived in terms of entangled identities, where the different forms of identification and allegiance remain distinct, while at the same time inseparable from each other.

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• A Struggle for the Realm

  2015. Margaretha Nordquist.

  Avhandling (Dok)

  The period from the mid-fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century was characterised by recurrent political turmoil and conflict in Scandinavia in general, and in Sweden in particular. Political power was contested, not least because of the disputed conditions on which the Swedish realm should be governed as part of the Scandinavian union monarchy. Contenders for power based their claims on support from various factions of the ecclesiastical and secular aristocracy. Other groups within the realm played a crucial role as allies, supporters or armed levies.

  In A Struggle for the Realm, Margaretha Nordquist examines the late-medieval Swedish rhyme chronicles Sturekrönikan (c. 1496–1497) and Cronica Swecie (c. 1520–1523) as ideological responses to contemporary conflicts of power. The rhyme chronicles describe some of the key events and actors in the period, in ways that both differ and overlap. As partisan narratives written in support of particular political factions, the rhyme chronicles can be seen as verbal contributions in a struggle for the realm. Nordquist's analysis shows that the realm functioned as a fundamental ideological construct in the chronicles. The realm and the Swedish community were key mobilising elements in the efforts to legitimate and consolidate certain positions of power, but the precise meaning and implications of the Swedish realm and the Swedish community were not fixed. The community of Swedes is primarily envisioned as a political and social entity, although the common, ancient origin of the people is an important element in Cronica Swecie. The concept of regnal ideology is used to describe the creation of ideological meaning in the rhyme chronicles. While the realm possesses substantial ideological validity in both chronicles, they differ in the particular configuration of power they advocate as a basis for the government of the realm.

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• Swedes and Others – Identity Formation in Medieval Sweden

  2017. Margaretha Nordquist. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 51 (1), 427-447

  Artikel

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• Rikets första damer

  2021. Kim Bergqvist, Margaretha Nordquist. Historiskan (3), 68-75

  Artikel

  För 500 år sedan försvarades Stockholms slott av den unga Kristina Gyllenstierna mot den danske unionskungen Kristian II. Hon var den sista i raden av handlingskraftiga svenska riksföreståndargemåler vilkas roll inom den nordiska politiken under Kalmarunionens slutskede sällan uppmärksammats.

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• Fru Birgittas förräderi

  2020. Margaretha Nordquist. År, 29-39

  Kapitel

  År 1452 dömdes frälsekvinnan Birgitta Olofsdotter Tott till döden för förräderi. Vem var denna kvinna och vilka omständigheter låg bakom dödsdomen mot henne? Den här artikeln handlar om det dramatiska händelseförlopp som ledde fram till dödsdomen mot Birgitta, men också om hur släktband och lojaliteter sattes på prov i tider av politisk oro och krig i senmedeltidens svenska rike.

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• Medeltidens människor var också barn

  2017. Margaretha Nordquist. Respons : recensionstidskrift för humaniora & samhällsvetenskap (1)

  Artikel

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• "What you hear is the truth"

  2012. Margaretha Nordquist. Authority and gender in medieval and Renaissance, 291-317

  Kapitel

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• Envisioning a Political Community

  2016. Margaretha Nordquist. Imagined Communities on the Baltic Rim, from the Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries, 89-119

  Kapitel

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• Anna Fickesdotter Bülow

  2023. Margaretha Nordquist. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages

  Kapitel

  Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s–1519) was the abbess of Vadstena Abbey, a Birgittine monastery in Sweden, in the early sixteenth century. She came from an aristocratic family of German and Danish origin and entered Vadstena Abbey in 1462 to become a Birgittine nun. She was elected abbess of Vadstena Abbey in 1501 and remained in this office until her death in 1519. Anna Fickesdotter was described as a learned woman in the Diarium Vadstenense, the monastery’s memorial book. She contributed to the monastery’s literary production as author, translator, and supervisor of the sisters’ manuscript production. Among her translations are the Legend of Saint Joachim and the Revelations of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, which were part of a compilation of texts intended for the sisters’ table reading. Around 1515, she also wrote Chronicon Genealogicum, one of the earliest genealogical chronicles in medieval Sweden, which was printed in 1718. The chronicle was written on behalf of the bishop of Linköping and contains information about Anna Fickesdotter’s own family history, personal memories, as well as a survey of kinship relations within the Swedish aristocracy mainly from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries.

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• Genealogy, gender, and memory culture in late medieval Sweden: the chronicle of Anna Fickesdotter Bülow

  2024. Margaretha Nordquist. Scandinavian Journal of History

  Artikel

  Anna Fickesdotter Bülow (1440s–1519), abbess of the Birgittine Vadstena Abbey in Sweden, was also the author of Chronicon Genealogicum (c. 1515), a genealogical narrative of aristocratic families in late medieval Sweden. Anna Fickesdotter’s chronicle is one of the earliest examples of women writing genealogy in Sweden. It sheds light on the roles of women in the transmission and commemoration of family history, genealogy as a gendered imagination and practice, but also the scripting of self as a subjective voice and a woman remembering the past. The account is analysed as an expression of medieval memory culture, where genealogy as a gendered phenomenon had a fundamental impact on the mental, material, and social dimensions of memory.

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