The aim of this project is to investigate the various cultural meanings
which, since the 1930s, have been associated with the work of men and women
in the Scandinavian communities lying in the Norwegian-Swedish border
regions of Trysil and Värmland, both of whose economies are dominated
by the forest. The aim is not to describe concrete changes in work,
but rather to analyze the narrative aspects of what research reveals about
them.
Stories about men's work often express elements of determinism,
linearity, and teleology, whereas narratives from women's lives are characterized
by diversity, contingency, and openness. The common understanding in this
border region was that men were destinated to spend their lives in "the
forest," whereas women were relegated to "all" kinds of work except "the
forest." In actual practice women also had tasks in the forests, and most
men were also engaged in a large variety of non-forest related activities.
Nonetheless, "the forest" has been defined as the nearly exclusive purview
of men. Within this construction women were considered more open
to change. This attitude also surfaces in the histories detailing
how men and women adapted to new technologies and to changes in the
labor market in the 1960s: men's histories depict the situation as a tragedy;
they tell how progress turned into loss - of both employment and
honor. In women's histories, the same changes are painted more
optimistically; they present a narrative of leaving behind less glorified
kinds of work for better conditions. During the industrialized era
of forestry, women's work had been neither commercially nor culturally
valued, and it took place outside the discursive boundaries of "the
forest," a quasi-sacred realm into which men had invested a lot of
cultural capital. Suddenly this changed.