Avrättningsvisor : Och deras funktion i rättskulturen i Sverige under 1800-talet.

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how the content of execution ballads, a subcategory of broadside ballads, relates to the discourse surrounding the retention and abolition of the death penalty during the nineteenth century. The purpose is to determine the role these ballads played within contemporary Swedish legal culture, which in the thesis is equated with the emerging discourse on capital punishment. Consideration is also given to the printed format in which execution ballads appeared in order to investigate whether this influenced their content. A selection of four execution ballads — two from the earlier half of the nineteenth century and two from the latter half — is intended to represent a larger portion of the execution ballads produced during that century. These are analysed and compared both with one another and in relation to the capital punishment discourse. Differences can be observed in how the condemned individuals are portrayed: in some cases the perpetrators are described as deeply remorseful, while in others they are depicted as wild beasts beyond redemption, as well as in how the ballads justify the death penalty. The most decisive similarity among the execution ballads is their positive attitude toward capital punishment. The content of the ballads advocates the retention of the death penalty and corresponds with arguments advanced within nineteenth-century capital punishment discourse. The print format was likely a contributing factor to the conservative content of the execution ballads. Through the more than three-hundred-year history of broadsheet prints at that time, readers had likely developed expectations regarding the content of execution ballads. It is therefore quite possible that printing houses published execution ballads intended to meet these expectations. The thesis demonstrates that execution ballads appear to have functioned as a conservative platform for the discourse on capital punishment.