En ny läsebok för en ny nation: Moralfostran i 'Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige'

Abstract

A new primer for a new nation: Moral education in 'The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson'

In 1906 and 1907, the famous Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) published a two-volume textbook, 'The Wonderful Adventures of Nils'. Beyond the financial rewards, the former teacher saw the book as an opportunity to influence children’s values and moral education. And she was successful: it had a profound impact and became central to geography teaching in Swedish primary schools for working-class and rural children in the first half of the twentieth century.

The story follows a peasant boy who is transformed into an elf as punishment for his naughtiness and cruelty to the farm animals. To break the spell, Nils joins a flock of wild geese on a journey across Sweden and attempts to improve his bad behaviour. Along the way, he learns about the country’s history, people, wildlife, geography, and natural environment.

Although Lagerlöf’s book is a classic that has been studied across several disciplines, we identified further aspects to explore. While earlier research emphasised its function as a tool for national education, less attention has been paid to how that educational project related to moral instruction and contemporary notions of gender and class. In this study we instead use an intersectional perspective to analyse how gender and class were mutually constituted within the national moral education presented in the book, relating it to the expansion of mass education at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Our analysis focuses on three of the book’s central characters: Akka, the disciplined leader of the wild geese; Åsa, the diligent, polite girl; and Nils, the mischievous but educable boy. In line with earlier studies, we found that Lagerlöf challenged contemporary gender norms in her portrayal of the two heroines – Akka as a wise teacher figure and Åsa as a strong, righteous girl. A key finding is that, although working-class girls and women were offered a new set of ideals in Akka and Åsa, they were still expected to contribute to the greater good of the nation and to adhere to traditional male workingclass norms such as discipline, docility, and diligence.

We conclude that national moral education in 'The Wonderful Adventures of Nils' is closely connected to class-, gender-, and age-related norms. Our analysis of this historical textbook ultimately demonstrates how Lagerlöf’s work contributed to the construction of Sweden as a ”new” nation at a time when a new class, a new pedagogy, and a new woman were flourishing.