"We're Not From Norway": Football and Civic Pride in Bergen, Norway

Abstract

The core meaning of individual and group identities is established by sameness over time and space, sustained by ceremony and ritual. This article illustrates the complex relationship between identities, rituals, and memory by focusing on annual public spectacles in the Norwegian city of Bergen, manifestations of youthful rite de passage, expressions of local and national patriotism, and a variety of practices bound up with support for the city's largest football club. The world over the game of football generates loyalty and sentiment that vary in their consequences from mild amusement to acts of violence. Nationalistic displays abound around the game and analysts of the human condition realise that much of what we value most is embedded in the game itself and the epiphenomena around it. Football is a contrived theatre of emotions; with no universal or legal agreed-upon meaning the game becomes a receptacle for identities and loaded with significance. This article addresses to what extent the game and more specifically a football club can provide a focus for a sense of civic loyalty over and above that ideally articulated by the subjects of a modern European nation state. Employing the ethnographic method provided by participant observation, this article focusses on three locations in the collective celebration of a city.

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