Dressed to Represent : The Dalkulla as Symbol and Agent in a Modernizing Stockholm, 1870–1930

This thesis explores the role of the dalkulla – a young woman from Dalarna – in the formation of Swedish national identity during the period of rapid urbanization and modernization between 1870 and 1930. Drawing on Erving Goffman's theory of frontstage and backstage, Benedict Anderson's concept of the imagined community, and the notion of the boundary object, the study examines how the kulla was a real, working woman and at the same time through the use of her parish dress became a symbolic figure in a national narrative. Through case studies of museums (primarily Skansen and the Nordic Museum), department stores (e.g., Nordiska Kompaniet), and public places in Stockholm, the kulla is analyzed as both a visual emblem and a socio-economic actor in the Swedish nation. Her traditional folk dress functioned as a uniform, a marketing tool, and a disciplinary mechanism. The empirical material includes personal letters, archival documents, newspaper articles, and visual sources. While sources portraying the kulla in her frontstage role are plentiful, backstage perspectives are fragmented and rare – making visible the structural silencing of working-class women in the archive. Ultimately, the study argues that the kulla’s role cannot be understood in isolation. It is only through a multi-sited and layered approach that we can grasp how she functioned as a living symbol in the national imagination, caught between romanticism and reality, celebration and subjugation.