Poetic Resistance: Girls' Autograph Albums during World War II in Norway

Abstract

In this article, six autograph albums that were written in World War II will be analyzed. The owners of the albums were girls of eight to fourteen years from Bergen, a city on the western coast of Norway. The writers in the albums are mostly same-aged friends, but older family members also contribute with texts. The analysis includes different aspects of the texts: the memory verses, the illustrations, and the spelling. Because Norway was occupied by Germany starting in the Spring of 1940, all explicit utterances of national feelings—like singing or writing the national hymn, or hoisting or drawing the flag—were forbidden. Therefore, texts or illustrations displaying national motifs in words or drawings can be interpreted as acts of resistance. years before in spelling reformed and changed quite dramatically. New spelling were alongside the state administration. In a situation where access to school was difficult, and at times impossible, it is not necessarily obvious a it seems the new spelling prioritized. The aim of this article is to shed light both on how children’s resistance was shown through the texts and illustrations in the autograph albums and on how the teachers’ resistance might also have shown through the spelling conventions that the children used.