Petrocultures in the making: Oil in 1920s Scandinavian newspapers

Abstract

Based on the assumption that the periodical press was crucial for synchronising the world and preparing for global energy transition in the early 20th C., the article proposes a historiog- raphy of oil that acknowledges newspapers’ excess capacity as research material and takes advantage of analytical approaches developed within print culture studies. Empirically, the article provides new knowledge on how US petroculture was negotiated in Scandinavia in the interwar era, using the press-mediated critical reception of Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! in Sweden and Norway as a steppingstone. Increasingly accessible newspaper archives show that petroleum dominated 1920s print culture to such an extent that basic assumptions in contemporary petro- culture studies regarding oil’s invisibility must be reconsidered.

Petrocultures in the making: Oil in 1920s Scandinavian newspapers