People in a painted landscape

1
People in a painted landscape
John Jörgensson
Eugen
Frans Lindberg

• This Study
• Migration and place making in an area in Southern
  Sweden
• Illustrate interrelations between mobility and
  place representations
• Back-ward area ? Periphery ? Unique idyll
• Migration and representations of rurality
• The role of the painters
• The making of Österlen

• The Project Away from the periphery
• Place making, place discourses and migration in
  Swedish
• peripheries.
• Peripheries have been in focus in public debates
• Focus on the North

• Gunnar Malmberg
• Department of Social and Economic Geography,
• Umeå University, Sweden

2
Empirical analyses

• Analyses of different populations and their
  mobility
• Permanent residents
• Temporary and permanent migrants
• Second home owners
• Tourists
• Analyses of their different relations to places
• Analyses of the representations of places
• Paintings
• Films
• Literature
• Advertisement
• Geographical and ethnographical studies

3
Skåne the densely populated South,
Densely and highly urbanised western Skåne
840.000 inhabitants
Peripheral south-eastern Skåne 35.000 inhabitants
0 km
80 km
4
A backward rural area

• Stigmatised as a back-ward area
• People are slow to adjust
• People are keen to follow the traditions of
  their ancestors
• Modernization and industry came late
• No regional identity
• Österlen used by outsiders

Frans Lindberg
5
Making the Periphery

• Centre periphery was created by the
  urbanisation and industrialisation
• But also by geographers, planners and others who
  conceptualised this process.
• Hägerstrands migration study
• from 1949 the flight from the small town
• The stereotyped periphery
• Self-peripherization, local politicians and local
  population

Source Hägerstrand (1949)
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Population decline in the peripheral region
7

• The periphery of south-east Skåne
• Higher share of elderly than in other parts of
  southern Sweden
• High out-migration rates
• High unemployment rate
• But the area is known to most Swedes as ..
• Österlen
• An attractive rural idyll
• Home and second home of many intellectuals and
  artists

8
The making of the Österlen as unique idyll

• Major actors
• The local elite
• Intellectual inmigrants
• The naming process, initiated by the local elite
• Reintroduced the name Österlen and delimited
  the area
• Used by the outsiders - painters and second
  home owners
• Österlen was represented as an rural idyll

9
The Painters

• Pioneer painters already in the late 1800s
• The light in Österlen
• The continental landscape in Sweden
• The pioneers attracted other to follow
• A colony of temporary or permanent painters was
  established in 1950s
• These painters were important place-makers

Gummeson
Wihlborg
10

• The landscape represented in the paintings was an
  attractive rural idyll
• The rural idyll was located to a specific place,
  Österlen

11

• When painted in oil and exhibited in the
  galleries,
• the peripheral landscape, of large plains,
  hamlets and
• fishing villages, was converted into an
  attractive idyll
• The artists and intellectuals had the symbolic
  capital
• and social capital to define the attractive
  place

Eugen
12
Other painters followed

• Filmmakers
• Authors
• Composers
• Rock stars
• who reproduced the idyllic landscape
• and became and attraction that triggered others
  to come to Österlen

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Reproducing the idyllic landscape

• Art exhibitions
• Invasion of art galleries and cafés
• Summer theatres
• Music festivals
• Painting and renovating houses in the old style

14
The residents of Österlen found themselves living
in a painted landscape- in a rural idyll,as
reproducers of the rural idyll or as exotic
inhabitants in that idyll.
They say its a beautiful area, but we cannot
see it local rural worker
John Jörgensson
Eugen
15
The unique idyll attracted new populations

• Second home owners
• High share of houses are second homes (36 )
• High share owned by non-residents (85 )
• High share of second home owners from Stockholm
  (25)
• Inmigration of permanent residents
• Still quite low
• High share coming from Stockholm
• Tourism
• Increasing tourism over the years

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• Two place discourses
• South East Skåne
• the stereotyped periphery
• Österlen
• - the unique idyll

• Part of the everyday life
• Influence values and behaviour
• Structure peoples life opportunities
• More for the locally tied residents
• Less for the mobile

Eugen
17

• Some conclusions
• Planners, geographers and others formed the
  discourse about the periphery
• The painters and the local elite formed the
  discourse about the unique idyll
• They had the symbolic capital to influence the
  place discourses
• While most permanent residents were less powerful
  to influence it
• However, both these discourses could also be in
  the interests of the permanent resident
  population