Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2006, Page 106

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VILLAGE-DWELLING
work all day long and hardly ever “mingle”.
How true this myth is, is hard to estimate,
but 1 have talked to a young woman from
another region settled in Gøta who pointed
out that people in Gøta are actually too oc-
cupied, and it isn’t possible just to walk into
each other’s houses as they do in her
homevillage (a more peripheral village out-
side the Mainland) where it isn’t as normal
that women work a lot outside the house.
Seen from this perspective Gøta may not be
that “villageous” anyway. The friendlyness
and openness is not that authentic and re-
ciprocal as it may seem at first glance; it has
become aesthetic. Friendlyness and open-
ness should be seen as a part of the sym-
bolic capital of the village; a part of the brand
of Gøta and thereby of being from Gøta,
being from Gøta in turn meaning that one is
friendly and openminded and perhaps even
“cosmopolitan”.
The mega-event of the Glfestival; a large
music festival situated in Gøta is-seen from
this perspective - a “spectacle” (a concept
that could partially be explained as an “eye-
catcher”; something that is deliberately
posed in order to attract attention) one can
build one’s identity on, both by referring to
it, but also by being a part of the social co-
operation that makes such a mega-event pos-
sible in such a relatively small place. Fur-
thermore Gøta has a fine recent history of
relatively high-quality bands, including the
national super-star Eivør Pálsdóttir.
The blooming cultural life is remarkable
considering the smallness of the community.
The greateness of the cultural life of Gøta
and the smallness of the community is re-
ally an extreme semiotic reflection that cre-
ates an impressive image. One really gets
the impression of a community that exposes
everything it has in order to satisfy the spec-
tator.
One important aspect of the dwelling is
that it is indeed a place, but then again: a
very special place. This does not mean that
the dwelling is the only special place, but it
is commonly one of a person’s special
places. The Danish geographer Ole B.
Jensen has conceptualized the importance
of “place-images”, meaning both imagina-
tions on the place - e.g. dwelling, but also
the image of the place (Jensen, 1999: 25).
What happens when a place is suffíciently
packed with images in a coherent manner,
they might even be constituted as a “place-
myth”. In other words, in order to create a
myth on one’s dwelling means that one has
to engage in a collective imaging of the
“dwelling-place” (in Danish: bosted). This
is oflf course not necessarily a cognitive ac-
tion, but will tend to become so as people
become more reflexive (as theorized in:
Beck etal., 1994). Creating images, myths,
discourses and narratives on the village
where one already lives is just a start.
Myths can also be created on one’s home,
even ifit isn’t built yet. It is important when
building a house that the place where one
builds it is positively discoursivized. A pos-
itive discourse can be construed from what-
ever quality there may be available, but one
frequent quality is off course the social com-
munity aspect, i.e. that the social coherence
can bc stated positively in one way or an-
other. This both refers to the social quality
of the people that already live there, but also
to the people that are going to setlle there in