Turistens blick i Sverige : En analys av två reseskildringar av Mary Wollstonecraft och Gabriel Traveler

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the impression from a travel to Sweden of two travellers from distinct historical periods: Mary Wollstonecraft, who was an Enlightenment representative from Great Britain, and Gabriel Morris, a contemporary traveller and YouTube-filmmaker from Canada. The proposition is that there is no such thing as “an innocent eye”; that the nature of our perceiving the reality is a product (or a construct) of our social environment, upbringing, education, age, ethnicity, or nationality. For this thesis I read Mary Wollstonecraft´s Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and I watched Gabriel Morris´s videos from the journey to Sweden on his YouTube-channel. I have described the journey to Sweden of those two protagonists and put it later into context of their historical backgrounds. The main issue has been whether there are differences in their perceiving Swedish nature, people, and culture, and what these differences are based upon. On the other hand, what can be thought of as uniting these two travellers – based on a simple fact that they both were only visiting the country for a short time? The conclusion I made is that their historical background has affected their experiencing the country; while the common ground could be found in the nature of tourism itself.