Snowy State : An Ecocritical Reading of The Children’s History of Sweden

Abstract Snowy State: An Ecocritical Reading of The Children’s History of Sweden In this article, the interplay of nature and nation in children’s picturebooks is discussed; Sonja Hulth’s four-volume picturebook series The Children’s History of Sweden (1986-1992) is used as a touchstone. It is argued that depictions of snow and winter conditions have been made integral and subservient to a Swedish national(ist), historical narrative – here exemplified by Hulth’s text, as well as by the series four different illustrators: Ann-Clara Tidholm, Jens Ahlbom, Fibben Hald, and Ola Ambjörnsson. It is shown that representations of history and nature play an important role in the discursive construction of nation-states, and is part of the “naturalization” of the nation-state as a meaningful and foundational unit of society: the nation-state thus becomes the “nature-state.” For good or for bad, I will argue that the nation-nature correspondence is a message conveyed to children by history books, such as The Children’s History of Sweden. Furthermore, I will argue that “the snowy state” also relates to conflicting views on Sweden as utopia and/or dystopia, where the utopian march of progress outlined on the verbal level is matched by a corresponding drift towards dystopia, mainly manifested on the pictorial level