Kämpen Med Pennan : Det skandinavistiska narrativet i O. P. Sturzen-Beckers Allmänna Öresunds-Posten 1848

Sammanfattning: In this essay the Scandinavianistic narrative is examined in Oscar Patrick Sturzen-Becker's depictions of the Schleswig-Holstein war of 1848 in his newspaper Allmänna Öresunds-Posten. Through both poetry and prosaic agitation, he sought during the first months of the war to gather an opinion for a Swedish intervention for the cause of Denmark against the Prussian-supported uprising in the southern duchies and at the same time work for a consensus on a larger pan-national demarcation with Germany and Europe. He had a dream of a united Scandinavia that was shared by the student movement of the 1840s and contemporary liberal political groups, a dream of a resurrected great power from the past and at the same time a modernized liberal democracy.  What the essay intends to analyze is what the Scandinavianistic narrative looked like and in what way it changed with the development of the war. The old hereditary enemy Russia came to be increasingly overshadowed by the new German threat and even though Swedish troops did enter Danish soil for the sake of their Scandinavian brothers, they never joined the battlefield in Schleswig. The military intervention soon turned into a diplomatic pursuit of a temporart ceasefire and peace, so how did Sturzen-Becker's narrative create meaning in these twists and turns and was this period, after all, to be regarded as a part victory for his Scandinavian dreams?