Mellan ideal och praktik

Barnbiblioteket Saga och indianböckerna – exemplet Den siste mohikanen

Abstract

^{Theme: The Children’s Library Saga and the Swedish Teachers’ Magazine’s Publishing House. Logo: The Swedish Institute for Children's Books}

Between Ideals and Practice: Barnbiblioteket Saga and the “Indian Books” – the Example of Den siste mohikanen

The book series Barnbiblioteket Saga, published by Svensk läraretidnings förlag, was perhaps the most important reading-promotion project of twentieth-century Sweden. This article examines the publication of so-called indianböcker, which in direct translation means “Indian books,” a term used in Sweden during the first half of the twentieth century for books mainly set in North America and depicting the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While the publisher released several such books, it also criticized the genre and claimed to publish only “good” ones. Focusing on Den siste mohikanen (1911), Barnbiblioteket Saga’s adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826), the article explores how the ideal of “good” indianböcker was defined and how this ideal related to translation and publishing practices. The study reveals a tension between commercial and ideological values: although the novel was presented as an alternative to indianböcker of the time considered harmful to young readers, it nevertheless contains many of the very elements that the publisher associated with that category, such as “the bloody, wild adventures,” rendering the publication ideologically contradictory.