QUEERDOM: queer history in Norway
"Compared to many other countries, Norway was far behind in historical research on queer lives," says Professor Tone Hellesund. On 20-22 May, she and her research group, concluded the five-year project Queerdom with a fully booked research conference with participants from Norway and abroad.
By: Bjørn André Widvey
Published: (Updated: )
Queer people have always existed
The NFR-funded research project investigated how queerness was both lived and rethought between 1842 and 1972. These two years are taken from the legislation's involvement with same-sex sexuality. In 1842, the death penalty for "dealing with nature" was abolished, and complete decriminalization took place in 1972 when §213 (external link) was removed.
"Although the legislation reflects – and has helped to shape – some key understandings in this field, the Queerdom project is concerned with mapping other, and far less explored, understandings than just the legal ones," Hellesund elaborates.
From the start, QUEERDOM has been more interested in ordinary people than in expert discourses. In the same way, the project has been more aimed at everyday queerness than organized activism.
Among both farmers and academics
The project wanted to find out more about how queerness was understood and practiced throughout this period. They have looked at women and men, in rural and urban areas. All of Norway from the north to the south, among ethnic minorities as well as among the Norwegian majority. Among the working class and peasants as well as among academics and the upper class.
One of the project's hypotheses is that sexual modernity, with its understanding of homosexuality as a fixed and inherent essence, first became a dominant notion in Norway after World War II.
Both newspapers, fiction, art and traditional archive material were reviewed to find as many pieces of the puzzle as possible that can help to form a larger picture of the history of queerness 1842-1972. Through new knowledge, about non-conforming sexual lives and marginal intimacies, previous understandings of modern Norway will be both expanded and more complex.
Great interest
The final conference, Mundane Queer History, was packed with participants from all over Europe, including from the United States. Hellesund emphasizes that they received far more summaries than they had room for, which indicates that many people currently share an interest in precisely these questions. She particularly highlights the fact that so many young and eager researchers participated.
"For me, a spotlight on everyday queer stories has the potential to perhaps create different types of knowledge—and perhaps different types of angles. It has also revealed a need for new theorizing in the field," Hellesund concludes.
