New Rituals Out of an Old One: The Slava among Serbian Immigrants in Sweden
Slava or Krsna lava is the Serbian Orthodox celebration of a family’s patron saint on a given day of the year. During the decades of Socialist Yugoslavia (1943-1992), it was confined to the private sphere only. Since the 1960s, there is a sizeable group of Yugoslav or Serbian immigrants in Sweden, a...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
[2020]
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| In: |
Journal of religion in Europe
Year: 2020, Volume: 13, Issue: 1/2, Pages: 23-44 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Swedes
/ Serbisch-orthodoxe Gemeinde
/ Slava (Custom)
/ Religious change
|
| IxTheo Classification: | KBE Northern Europe; Scandinavia KBK Europe (East) KDF Orthodox Church |
| Further subjects: | B
Serbs
B Religious Ritual B Sweden B Migration B Slava B Orthodoxy |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Slava or Krsna lava is the Serbian Orthodox celebration of a family’s patron saint on a given day of the year. During the decades of Socialist Yugoslavia (1943-1992), it was confined to the private sphere only. Since the 1960s, there is a sizeable group of Yugoslav or Serbian immigrants in Sweden, and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Sweden claims 40,000 members. The article is based on eleven semi-structured interviews with immigrants who have started celebrating the Slava in Sweden. We identified four frames of interpretation used in order to provide the ritual with meaning: Orthodoxy, family, ethnicity, and local community. A closer discussion of three cases illustrates different ways of finding a balance between Slava’s possible meanings. The ways of celebrating display individual variation and varying influence of the culture and values of the host society. Slava or Krsna lava is the Serbian Orthodox celebration of a family’s patron saint on a given day of the year. During the decades of Socialist Yugoslavia (1943–1992), it was confined to the private sphere only. Since the 1960s, there is a sizeable group of Yugoslav or Serbian immigrants in Sweden, and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Sweden claims 40,000 members. The article is based on eleven semi-structured interviews with immigrants who have started celebrating the Slava in Sweden. We identified four frames of interpretation used in order to provide the ritual with meaning: Orthodoxy, family, ethnicity, and local community. A closer discussion of three cases illustrates different ways of finding a balance between Slava’s possible meanings. The ways of celebrating display individual variation and varying influence of the culture and values of the host society. |
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| ISSN: | 1874-8929 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of religion in Europe
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/18748929-13010001 |