Images of Leisure and Outdoor Activities in the 1930s: A Mixed Archive Sources Methodology

Abstract

In Sweden, leisure time and outdoor activities were important parts of the 1930s welfare society. The aim of this study is to examine the usefulness of some different source categories in the Nordic Museum’s collections and to complement representations of 1930s ideals about health, leisure time and outdoor activities. The article is written within the scope of the Nordic Museum and Stockholm University research project Images and Stories of Everyday Life. With digitising as an overall purpose, the project focuses on two categories of source material in the museum collections—the responses to the museum’s questionnaires and the photograph archive of the Swedish photographer Gunnar Lundh. Methodologically, around 400 questionnaire responses and 2,000 contact sheets have been looked at, with the aim of finding relevant representations of people’s leisure time and outdoor life in the 1930s. A selected number of questionnaires are analysed, and regarding the photographs, four series are analysed and represented by a selected number of photos. Series of photos on Gunnar Lundh’s contact sheets are essential, as they add knowledge beyond the individual photo. The combination of sources used in the article supports that holidays and outdoor life were part of urban people’s lives, while for rural people it was not easily combined with living conditions in agriculture. These results are reflected in the museum’s source material as well as in official government reports, earlier studies and historical sources. Although there is quite a large difference between the source categories, this study shows that the museum material, including evaluation of sources, makes it possible to broaden the image of Swedish people’s outdoor activities in the 1930s. The bricolage research method indicates that combinations of sources enlarge the image of different groups’ relationships to outdoor life.