Paper short abstract:

The Icelandic Euro 2016 success, revived a problematic Viking imagery but also highlights questions regarding ownership and the authenticity of "homegrown" identities. Through visual material and performances this paper discusses the uses of transnational folklore in local identification processes.

Paper long abstract:

Iceland's history with national football tournaments is almost as troubled as its history with Viking imagery. The national football team's success at the Euro 2016 quarter finals, and much celebrated "Viking war chant", was, therefore, surprising. The "thunderclap", as it is also known, was originally appropriated from a local Scottish club before following the Icelanders to France and back. It was performed by thousands at the Reykjavík homecoming celebration, but not before being re-appropriated by the French national team at their home arena. It took the outside world to convince Icelanders that they were Vikings, a term that originally denoted Norse raiders and pirates. The tongue-in-cheek references to "venture Vikings" during a time of aggressive Icelandic business ventures abroad only gathered more negativity after the country's banking collapse and failures to fulfil prior commitments. The small nation's success at the European football tournament, and various dark horse narratives, revived a more benevolent use of Viking imagery but also highlights questions regarding ownership of stadium performances and the authenticity of "homegrown" identities. Looking at both visual material and everyday performances this paper will discuss the activation of banal nationalism in European football and the uses of transnational folklore in local identification processes.

Paper short abstract:

In this presentation I want to discuss the phenomenon of the 'away section', a home away from home which allows visiting teams to create their own symbolic space.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation I want to discuss the phenomenon of the 'away section', which is a selected and marked area at a stadium. It hosts guest supporters during matches. The chosen ethnographic examples come from my current PhD project about producing and performing history in four Swedish football clubs.

Sport stadia are very specific, heterotopic environments, with particular rules attached to them. Further, home arenas have special meaning in a community, carrying the notion of local pride, with memories and local sport heroes attached.

The visiting fans come with different paraphernalia like flags, banners, scarves and also flares and smoke bombs, in other words materiality that allows them to create a symbolic home, a section devoted to them and their team. At the same time, this takes place on the home ground of the opponent team. The visiting supporters claim the right of that place for brief two hours of a match, being both controlled and protected, yet with rights to express themselves and their emotions.

Using the concepts of space, construction of emotions and performativity, I analyse how supporters can create a symbolic section of the home arena on the opponent's home ground.

Paper short abstract:

Through auto-ethnographical notes from a trip to the women-only running race ‘Women’s Mini 10K’ in New York City, this paper will discuss how togetherness of being runners, women, and Swedes, arises in connection to running the race among the race travellers.

Paper long abstract:

Through auto-ethnographical notes from a trip to the women-only running race 'Women's Mini 10K' in New York City, this paper will discuss how togetherness of being runners, women, and Swedes, arises in connection to running the race. With a focus on a T-shirt in yellow and blue with SWEDEN printed across the chest, the paper will discuss femininity, nationality, ethnicity, and whiteness as constitutive features of a runner's community of women engaged in recreational sports. The paper is part of the ethnological research project "Women-only sports races as a cultural phenomenon - conditions for women's recreational sports," in which the project group does an ethnograhical study of women-only races, based on fieldwork and a call for written stories, and a historically oriented study, based on archive materials. The theoretic framework of the project is positioned within discourse theory, post structuralism and feminism, with influences primarily from Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe and Judith Butler.

Paper short abstract:

Iceland took to the stage in the finals of the european football championship last summer and the nation subsequently went crazy for all things football. This presentation will focus on the fans of the team, what distinguishes them from other fans and what they have in common with them.

Paper long abstract:

When Styrmir Gíslason, the founder of Tólfan, the fan group of the Icelandic national football team, was met with judgemental looks from other people over his cheering in the stands, at the home of the team in Reykjavík, he knew he needed to do something about that issue. He thought that it was not normal to be judged for cheering at a football game and that Icelandic football fans were only spectators rather then supporters, like they were in a classical concert or a play.

A group of close friends of Styrmir grew rapidly to a massive fanbase of people dressed in blue, cheering for the team with songs and flags, throwing away there everyday habitus and replacing it with a habitus they can only experience within the liminality of the ninty minute gameplay and the communitas they all share. But the communitas does not stop in the stands like Heimir Hallgrímsson, the Icelandic man´s national football team coach, explaines. "Where in the world could the national teammates paint the town red with there hardcore fans, you know, and just have fun with them until the bars are closed and everyone is swept out of the bars? Where else then in Iceland could that happen?"