This essay is about how the aesir are used as an ideal image of the original Nordic aspects and as a symbol of heroism and pure strength. The main subject of this essay is to look at how this ideal of masculinity is represented in the art produced during the era of romantic nationalism. The choice of focusing on this era in particular is made due to the fact that it was during this time that the modern images of the aesir and the Vikings were made. The purpose of this study is to examine how the ideal of masculinity reflects upon the artistic interpretations of the Norse mythology in a selected group of art work produced during the 1800?s.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to analyse the construction of European identity in three ofcontemporary EU initiated projects for the digitisation of collections from museums, archives, andlibraries. The source material consists of the web pages of the projects Minerva, MICHAEL, andEuropeana, as well as some other policy documents on digitisation and access from EU authorities.Theories on nationalism and construction of heritage are used as an overall context to the problem.After a brief description of the mentioned projects, the author undertakes an analysis of theways that the concept of ?European heritage? is depicted in the source material. The result is thefollowing: normally, the true European heritage is considered being united even though it isdiveded culturally, historically and linguistically.

BACKGROUND: The relationship between physical activity and health versusphysical inactivity and poor health are well known. Ethnic minorities are generallyless physically active than the residence country's majority population andgenerally have a poorer health status. The study has a health promotion perspective.PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe factors that influencephysical activity among middle-aged and older persons, belonging to an ethnicminority. METHOD: The method used to answer the purpose is a literature-basedstudy. The searching for literature has been carried out in a systematic way.Scientific articles to base the results on, has been gathered from various databases.Included articles were analyzed with a qualitative content analysis and identifiedsimilarities and differences in the content were divided into themes and categories.RESULTS: Recurrent themes in the literature, that influence physical activity inmiddle-aged and older people that belong to an ethnic minority, was support, healthand illness, external factors, internal factors, community related and socioeconomicfactors and ignorance and beliefs.

A refugee reception has been placed in Kungshall, one of Nybros residential areas. The area has a bad reputation and there are arguably prejudices about the area from the local population. I therefore want to investigate if an ethnic residential segregation exists in Kungshall, from a postcolonial perspective. The following research questions have been formulated: How do residents who doesn?t live in the refugee reception, look at ethnic residential segregation in Nybro? How has Kungshall changed since the refugee reception? Does a cultural racism exist in Kungshall? The study is a qualitative study using semi structured interviews of four people living in the residential area, a person who has moved out of the area and a person working on the housing corporation ?Nybro bostads AB?, who is one of the housing corporation responsible for the residential area Kungshall.

This essay will try to explain and compare the different development steps which Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have taken after the war. How could countries with such similar backgrounds develop in such different ways? By analyzing and comparing the two countries the purpose was to examine how these countries which had so much in common could develop in so different ways. My two questions are: What similarities and differences are there between the development which Bosnia and Croatia have taken after the war? Why have Croatia succeeded and not Bosnia?My analysis showed that the main reason to the difference between these countries was that Bosnia is divided; all ethnic groups in Bosnia only consider what's best for their own ethnic group and not what's best for the country. Croatia however has expelled the Serbs which made it easier for them to have a succesfull democratic development. .

The thesis examines how language, culture and family structures interrelate and affect the process of migration. Vital is how women from a different ethnic background integrates during migration and in a dialogue context with us as researchers and native Swedes. The thesis is interdisciplinary and analyzes empirical data through a qualitative method by using the perspectives gender, ethnicity and identity. The empirical material consists of 7 interviews, which have been transcribed and then broken down in to quotations. Thesequotations have then been analyzed using the perspectives mentioned above.

The Sweden Democrats uses a term to describe a situation where ?swedes? are being discriminated against by other ethnic groups and where the elite is promoting this. The term ?svenskfientlighet? can be translated as ?swedofobia? and in this thesis a speech by the party leader Jimmie Åkesson held during the election campaign that solely was dedicated to this term is being analyzed with the help of tools developed by the scholar Ruth Wodak. Ruth Wodak has previously analyzed the rhetoric by other European right-wing-populist parties like FPÖ in Austria and has asked for other researchers to analyze the speech used by right-wing-populist and extremist parties to get a better understanding for just how these parties construct their different enemies.

The survey is a qualitative study that aims to investigate the ethnic housing segregation in the residential area around Malmvägen that is located in Sollentuna. Malmvägen is a millionprogramarea that?s made up of unattractive tall buildings with grey facades. The majority of the residents have foreign backgrounds and the unemployment rate is high among the youths in the area. The apartment rents on Malmvägen are low and many of the residents belong to the subclass of society.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Dakota conflict in 1862 affected the Swedish immigrants in Minnesota and how the collective memory was shaped in that particular group of people. To examine the contents of the collective memory this essay uses the theories of Halbwachs on collective memory as well as Orm Øverlands theories on creating an identity and ethnic memory in USA since the concepts of collective memory and the process of creating an identity is connected on a basic level. The essay compares the collective memory created by the Swedish-Americans with the collective memories of the Dakota Indians and finds indications that both ethnic groups have a highly traumatized memory of the conflict. However the difference between the two groups is that the Indians have both positive and negative memories of the conflict while the Swedish-Americans only have negative memories. Furthermore the essay finds that the fear of Indians that was present in the Swedish-American ethnic groups can be traced back to events of the Dakota Conflict.

The special relationship between Israel and the US has been subject to questioning, and good many theories have tried to explain why it is so strong. The most common explanation is rooted in the school of realism, where strategy and national interest decide who one's ally is. This essay aspires to examine another possible reason for allianceformation; identity. Several books, which make for the theoretical backbone of this study, have been written on the subject of sharing beliefs, identifying with others and the consequences of this. The question being asked is whether Israel and the US actually share beliefs and, if so, which ones.

The aim of this thesis is to seek understanding to how a national identity is constructed. Five women and five men at the age of 21-37 years old have been interviewed during November 2005 and January 2006. All of them lived Oslo at the time. The informants have been divided into two groups, `Swedish immigrants` and `Norwegian immigrants`, none of the people interviewed is ethnic `Swedish` or `Norwegian`. The empirical material has been analysed with the help of Billig´s theory about banal nationalism and Laclau and Mouffe´s discourse analysis.

Teching aid in form of schoolbooks plays an importent role. The teacher uses schoolbooks as a tool in its tutoring. I have examined how and whether the pictures in the schoolbooks are presenting people and ethnic minorities biased and stereotypical. The material I have examined consisted of a series of schoolbooks (So-direkt 1-3, samhällskunskap av Bonnier 2003).To find out if that is the case I have used a theory by Stuart Hall, his theory is about people and how they are represented in different types of media, like pictures and text. I studied it by using the method of image analysis where I investigated and interpreted the denotation and konnontation of the pictures.

This thesis treats lending figures of literature on religion at libraries in Vårgårda and Lerum.Formulated hypotheses are: The use of literature on religion is higher at the library in Vårgårdathan at the one in Lerum; In Lerum the most literature on religion is used by highly educatedpeople; Ethnic groups and librarians have an influence on the stock.The Christian literature has other patterns than other literature regarding selection criteria,reviews and distribution. The conclusions are: The fact that there are many members ofChurch and Chapel in Vårgårda, does reflect the number of loans of literature on religion in apositive way; Education does not influence, but distance between school and library; Thelibrarians' interest and therefore knowledge regarding religious topics has an impact on theirtreatment of religious books, while ethnic groups do not effect stock and use in either Vårgårdaor Lerum..

This study is concerned with the region of Öresund and the aspects of work commuting in particular. The purpose is to investigate attitudes and opinions towards the region among work commuters and then apply them to various theories relevant for the questioning, such as globalization, regionalization, ethnicity, nationalism, culture and identity. To investigate the attitudes towards the region we have done a number of interviews with commuters, using qualitative and semi-structured questions. The analysis is divided into three different parts; In Body and in Mind, Us and Them, the Future; and consists of a discussion of our informants? answers related to the theoretical aspects of the earlier mentioned theories.

The purpose of this essay was to find an understanding of what factors whichaffect refugee reception in two municipalities in the southern part of Sweden, themunicipality of Vellinge and the municipality of Landskrona. Three interviewswere made with three local politicians and these interviews were then analysedusing postcolonial theory. With the help of Matthew J. Gibney we identified sevenfactors which aided us in the analysis these were: Integration history, Ethnicaffinity, Determining who is a refugee, The wealth of the municipality, Thehousing market, The labour market and The action of other municipalities.We found that these factors were all useful in creating an understanding ofrefugee reception in the two municipalities. However they affected themunicipalities differently.