| dc.description.abstract | This thesis investigates how imagined community identities were articulated in the days leading up to and immediately following the public referendum campaigns for membership of the European Communities in Norway and Denmark in the autumn of 1972. In what ways was national imagined community expressed and negotiated during the debates? How were other potential imagined communities, primarily the notions of a European Communities-based 'Europe' and the idea of a quasi-political, quasi-cultural Nordic fellowship, employed and articulated in relation to the national identities? These questions have become no less interesting after the 2016 British public referendum concerning its membership of the European Union and the accompanying discussion across all types of media about what "Brexit" means for, or says about, British identity. It is hoped that this paper in English can help to open up the cultural study of Nordic/Scandinavian and Norwegian and Danish relations to the European Union (previously the European Communities) to an international audience. The paper will investigate these questions by synchronic analysis of how ideas and perceptions of national, regional and international identity were employed, debated and perceived in two Norwegian and two Danish national newspapers from the 20th September to the 5th October 1972. The study of such a short time span within a small source base can, of course, only provide a limited overview of the debate at the time. To attempt to mitigate some of the newspapers' potential bias, one newspaper in support of and one in opposition to membership were selected per country: Politiken and Ekstra Bladet in Denmark, and Aftenposten and Dagbladet in Norway. Though they are actors themselves, newspapers also, however, provide one of the best glimpses historians can catch into the general public discourse of a certain time during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite their unique difficulties as sources, their tripartite function as sources of information and knowledges, platforms for discussion, and shapers of public opinion makes them very interesting texts in which to attempt to uncover deeply held societal notions, such as identity, at a certain point in time. In order to throw light upon articulations of (inter)national belonging, the paper will touch upon lingual and rhetorical tendencies in the public debates and the use of the past in narrating, shaping and legitimising collective identity. | eng |