Jennifer Eastman Attebery Livres

In Pole Raising and Speech Making, author Jennifer Eastman Attebery focuses on the beginnings of the traditional Scandinavian Midsummer celebration and the surrounding spring-to-summer seasonal festivities in the Rocky Mountain West during the height of Swedish immigration to the area—1880–1917. Combining research in folkloristics and history, Attebery explores various ways that immigrants blended traditional Swedish Midsummer-related celebrations with local civic celebrations of American Independence Day on July 4 and the Mormons’ Pioneer Day on July 24. Functioning as multimodal observances with multiple meanings, these holidays represent and reconsider ethnicity and panethnicity, sacred and secular relationships, and the rural and the urban, demonstrating how flexible and complex traditional celebrations can be. Providing a wealth of detail and information surrounding little-studied celebrations and valuable archival and published primary sources—diaries, letters, speeches, newspaper reports, and images— Pole Raising and Speech Making is proof that non-English immigrant culture must be included when discussing “American” culture. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in ethnic studies, folklore, ritual and festival studies, and Scandinavian American cultural history.

The book explores the migration of Swedish men and women to the American Rockies before the twentieth century, highlighting their roles as itinerant laborers and settlers in burgeoning industries and farm communities. It reveals how this movement significantly shaped the demographic landscape, with one-fifth of all Swedish immigrants residing in the West by 1920. Through personal narratives and historical context, it sheds light on the challenges and contributions of these immigrants in their new homeland.

The book delves into the New Western History by examining the log cabin myth as a significant element of the broader Frontier West narrative. It emphasizes the need for scholars to move past traditional myths to uncover the specific meanings and cultural significance of log cabins within Idaho communities. Through this exploration, it sheds light on the social and historical contexts that shaped the construction and perception of these iconic structures.