Artikeln undersöker fantastikens roll i historiska studier och betonar dess betydelse för att förstå historiska sammanhang och förändringar. Fantastiken, som manifesteras genom berättelser, bilder, artefakter, texter och kroppar, fungerar som ett verktyg för att undersöka hur kunskap om världen uppfattades under olika historiska perioder. Representationer av det fantastiska, ofta kopplade till tabubelagda ämnen och normbrytande fenomen, skapar gruppgemenskap och erbjuder sätt att förstå världen. Artikeln argumenterar för att det fantastiska är ett legitimt studieobjekt inom historisk forskning, och visar hur det offentliga och begripliga naturen hos fantastiken kan väcka starka känslor och förmedla komplexa idéer och erfarenheter. Exempel från svensk forskning illustrerar hur fantastiken kan avslöja insikter om maktstrukturer, kulturella möten och kollektiva minnen, vilket gör den till ett värdefullt verktyg för historisk analys. Fantastiken är aldrig obegriplig för dem den berör; snarare skapar den igenkänning och gruppgemenskap, och erbjuder handlingsmöjligheter. Detta kan inkludera att mobilisera massorna för revolution, göra koloniala processer hanterbara eller konkretisera Guds oändliga skapelse. Genom att studera fantastikens former och sammanhang kan forskare tillämpa historiska teorier om tillstånd och förändringar som var internaliserade i världsbilder och förståelser av världen, där flera kunskapsparadigm ofta samexisterade. Artikeln diskuterar också fantastikens roll i moderna ideologier, som utforskats av olika forskare. Till exempel användningen av myt och fantasy i politiska ideologier, skildringen av monster och drakar i medeltida historiografi, och den spekulativa fiktionens roll i att förstå kulturella möten och kognitiva strategier. Fantastiken fungerar som ett kognitivt verktyg för att navigera komplexa och ofta hotfulla upptäckter, och reflekterar både historiska och samtida erfarenheter. Slutligen behandlar artikeln fantastikens roll i kollektiva minnen och trauman. Den utforskar hur det fantastiska kan överbrygga klyftan mellan det begripliga och det obegripliga, med exempel på traumatiska minnen som Förintelsen. Fantastiken möjliggör representationen av komplexa och ofta smärtsamma erfarenheter på ett sätt som kan vara både meningsfullt och tillgängligt för samtida publik.

Scandia introduces: The Astonishing, Supernatural, and Spectacular. The Fantastic and Historical Studies

This article explores the role of the fantastic in historical research while emphasizing its significance for understanding historical contexts and changes. The fantastic – manifested through stories, images, artifacts, texts, and bodies – serves as a lens for examining how knowledge of the world was perceived in different periods. Representations of the fantastic, often linked to taboo subjects and transgressive norms, create group cohesion and offer ways to make sense of the world. By studying the forms and contexts of the fantastic, researchers can apply historical theories in order to understand past worldviews and knowledge paradigms.

The article argues for the relevance of the fantastic as a legitimate subject of historical research by demonstrating its public and comprehensible nature, its role in evoking strong emotions, and its ability to convey complex ideas and experiences. Examples from Swedish research illustrate how the fantastic can reveal insights into power structures, cultural encounters, and collective memories, thus making it a valuable tool for historical analysis. The fantastic is never incomprehensible to those affected; rather, it creates recognition and group fellowship and offers opportunities for action. This may include mobilizing the masses for revolution, making colonial processes more manageable, or concretizing the infinite creation of God. By examining the forms and contexts of the fantastic, researchers can apply historical theories regarding conditions and changes that were internalized in worldviews and understandings of the world, where multiple knowledge paradigms often coexisted.

Furthermore, the article highlights the importance of the fantastic for understanding knowledge practices, such as the interplay between science, religion, and magic in early modern Europe. It examines how the fantastic can reveal internalized assumptions about the world and how these assumptions change over time. The study of the fantastic in historical contexts offers insights into the ways in which people made sense of their world and the knowledge paradigms they used. Finally, the article addresses the role of the fantastic in collective memory and trauma. It explores how the fantastic can bridge the gap between the comprehensible and the incomprehensible, particularly in the context of traumatic memories such as the Holocaust. The fantastic allows for representing complex and often painful experiences in a way that can be both meaningful and accessible to contemporary audiences.

This study takes as its starting point 12-year-old pupils’ imagination when they take a tour and learn about past events at Löfstad Palace, a historic house museum in Sweden. The guide stimulates affections and haptics -- sensory dimensions such as hearing, seeing, and smelling (Ludvigsson et al 2021: 1) by telling ghost stories when mediating the past to the pupils. Most research about dark tourism and ghost tourism starts with analyzing the special guided tours in which paranormal elements characterize the event. This essay examines the use of paranormal features on a regular tour at Löfstad Palace to learn more about the past. The premise of this essay is that authenticity is not created solely by historical facts or by material traces of the past but rather by people's ability to collectively imagine (Trenter et al. 2021). Imagination is fundamental in the assumption that ghost experiences create authenticity. The essay proceeds in the following way: after presenting paranormal tourism’s relation to heritage and the past, I will briefly introduce affective and haptic aspects in history learning followed by how this pedagogical research can be connected to critical heritage studies’ focus on how visitors collectively encounter the past. Thereafter, these perspectives are combined with how the paranormal contributes to the affective and haptic dimensions. The paranormal element as a means of communicating cultural heritage is here understood in terms of how emotions and bodily senses, such as sight and hearing, as well as materiality, affect visitors’ experience of the past. The theoretical standpoints are accompanied by a presentation of the design of the project and method. Finally, tourist guides’ use of paranormal stories during a guided tour and the pupils’ subsequent reactions is explored. 

The study explores the meaning-making of cultural heritage in school field trips to five sites in the region Östergötland in Sweden. It treats the materiality of the place and experiences of the guides and the pupils, obtained in school as well as in other contexts, as meaning-making resources during the site visits. It emphasises that sites should be seen as processes, open to interpretations and reinterpretations. The visitor is steered by expectations and common values as well as by the ways in which the heritage site is displayed and presented. In the present study, both adults (guides) and children (pupils) are defined as visitors. The authors draw on theories from history education research and from heritage studies when interpreting how pupils encounter heritage sites, they underline the centrality of 'the flesh and embodied agency' in the experience of sites. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The aim of this chapter is to introduce cultural heritage through the lens of game design. The game industry should be studied within cultural heritagestudies on similar terms that museums, archives and other cultural heritage actors are studied, namely as creators and mediators of cultural heritage.

This chapter explores the use of heritage and history in the popular romance series The Legend of the Ice People (1982–1989) by Norwegian-Swedish author Margit Sandemo. The epos is the 47-volume multigenerational saga of a family. The series is here defined as a story world in which Sandemo is the creator, but fans are actively involved in collective negotiations. The use of the past within the series offers interpretations to readers, who are putting the old-fashion modes into up-to-date, concurrent, and contemporary understandings of morality by emerging from the historical past within the series. 

This anthology is the result of an international workshop with the aim to initiate new discussions and new research on cultural heritage – contested as well as uncontested. The workshop was held at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity at Malmö University, in October 2022. Contested heritage, sometimes also referred to as “dissonant heritage” or “difficult heritage” has been discussed, explored and studied by cultural heritage scholars from various disciplines over the last two decades. However, there is still limited knowledge about what contested or dissonant heritage is. How, when and by whom heritage can be contested and how it is related to or understood in relation to uncontested heritage are also unresolved questions. The contribution of this anthology thus falls at an intersection between the process-perspectives of critical heritage studies of cultural heritage, the empirical-historical studies of power and agency in social and cultural history (after the archival turn), and the conceptual fields that examine the use of history and history mediation. It rests firmly on the collective expertise drawn from historians and other scholars, at different stages of their careers, from researchers with theoretical proficiency as well as practical experience from cultural heritage work, both within and outside of traditional cultural heritage institutions. The result, if not a comprehensive rendering, is a range of multifaceted insights into research on why and how cultural heritage can be both contested and (un)contested.

Haptics in the sense of active touch, as well as internally felt bodily sensations, add an important dimension to learning sessions at historical sites. Drawing on observations of primary school pupils visiting historical sites in Sweden, and interviews with pupils, teachers, and site educators following the visits, this study investigates in which ways haptics affect how young pupils learn history. Three aspects of haptics are identified as important to learning in history education: touch, internally felt bodily sensations, and visual and auditory senses, the latter interacting with haptics. The study argues that visits to historical sites help pupils develop their historical understanding through knowledge by acquaintance. It also emphasises that for historical learning to take place, the experience must be put in relation to a historical frame of reference.