Performance and meaning of punk in a local Swedish context

Abstract

When punk culture travelled from The US and England to Sweden in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the result was a mix of symbols, emotions and attitudes from all three national contexts. One Swedish town where punk made an impact was Norrköping, a middle-sized working class town south of Stockholm. The foucus of this article is the transformation of punk as it entered a new national and local context. We are interested in what happened to punk as it travelled from centre – London, Detroit and New York – to periphery – Sweden and Norrköping and what kind of meaningmaing practices that became possible in the new context. The empirical material consists of interviews with 24 informants who were part of the punk scene in Norrköping during the period. Besides the interviews we have made use of photographs, song lyrics and newspaper material. Our methodological approach is interactive memory work in which we together with the informants reflect on the performance and meaning of punk in Norrköping.