Paper short abstract:

For some 30 years there has been a vibrant storyteller movement in Sweden. This paper delves into the motivations and arguments used as foundation and support, including questions on what narratives can do, what problems they can be a remedy for, and subject positions produced.

Paper long abstract:

For some 30 years there has been a vibrant storyteller movement in Sweden. Narratives and storytelling are claimed as important strategies in contemporary society, in areas diverse as medicine, education, heritage, advertisement, and politics. Professional storytellers establish themselves as consultants, and a variety of handbooks aimed at niche audiences are published. Local history, personal experiences, canonical narratives, fictionalized role models and developmental schemes are re/shaped, re/contextualized, re/mediatized in order to raise and allocate attention to new or marginalized fields and objects, from new and old audiences alike. Sometimes folklore scholarship is invoked as support, sometimes storytelling is a new concept. This paper aims to delve into the motivations and arguments that are used as foundation and support for storytelling as a contemporary field of specialization, including questions on what narratives can do, what lacks and problems they can be a remedy for, and who the intended and/or imagined audiences are. Of special interest are the overlaps, contradictions, and conceptual ambiguities that occur when different perspectives and discourses meet, and the strategies developed to handle them.