Hilma Natalia Granqvist (17 July 1890

Sipoo Sipoo (; sv, Sibbo) is a municipality of Finland. It is part of the Helsinki metropolitan area. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . The administrative center of the munic ...

– 25 February 1972

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...

) was a Swedish-speaking

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

anthropologist who conducted long field studies of Palestinians. She was a student of

Edvard Westermarck Edvard Alexander Westermarck (Helsinki, 20 November 1862 – Tenala, 3 September 1939) was a Finnish philosopher and sociologist. Among other subjects, he studied exogamy and the incest taboo. Biography Westermarck was born in 1862 in a ...

Studies

In the 1920s Granqvist arrived at the village of

Artas ARTAS (ATM suRveillance Tracker And Server) is a system designed by Eurocontrol to operationally support Aerial surveillance and Air traffic control by establishing an accurate Air Situation Picture of all traffic over a pre-defined geographical ...

, just outside

Bethlehem Bethlehem (; ar, بيت لحم ; he, בֵּית לֶחֶם '' '') is a city in the central West Bank, Palestine, about south of Jerusalem. Its population is approximately 25,000,Amara, 1999p. 18.Brynen, 2000p. 202. and it is the capital o ...

in the then

British Mandate of Palestine British Mandate of Palestine or Palestine Mandate most often refers to: * Mandate for Palestine: a League of Nations mandate under which the British controlled an area which included Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan. * Mandatory P ...

as part of her research on the women of the Old Testament. She had gone to Palestine "in order to find the Jewish ancestors of Scripture". What she found instead was a Palestinian people with a distinct culture and way of life. She therefore changed the focus of her research to a full investigation of the customs, habits and ways of thinking of the people of that village. Granqvist ended up staying until 1931 documenting all aspects of village life. In so doing she took hundreds of photographs."

Example of wedding song, recorded by Granqvist

"God knows that our outfit today
A hundred ‘royal’ robes which we have cut
For the bride to whom we are betrothed.
God knows – today is our outfit
A green and a ‘royal’ alakdress we have bought
For the bride to whom we are betrothed!
Ten jackets aqsirehhave we bought
For the beloved ones in order to appease her"
(Granqvist: ''Marriage conditions in a Palestinian village'', vol. 2 (1931), p. 42.)

References

Publications

* *1931
''Marriage conditions in a Palestinian village'' I
Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica *1935
''Marriage conditions in a Palestinian village'' II
Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica *1947: ''Birth and childhood among the Arabs: studies in a Muhammadan village in Palestine.'' Helsingfors; Söderström. (Reprinted 1975, New York: AMS Press. ) *1950: ''Child problems among the Arabs: Studies in a Muhammadan village in Palestine.'' Helsingfors : Söderström *1965: ''Muslim death and burial: Arab customs and traditions studies in a village in Jordan.'' Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica *1981: ''Portrait of a Palestinian village: The photographs of Hilma Granqvist.'' Editor Karen Seger, with a foreword by Shelagh Weir. London: Third World Centre for Research and Publishing.

Literature

* * Naili, Falestin (2007): "L’oeuvre de Hilma Granqvist: L’Orient imaginaire confronté à la réalité d’un village palestinien." ''Revue d’Etudes Palestiniennes'', 105, pp. 74–84. * Naili, Falestin (2008): "Hilma Granqvist, Louise Baldensperger et la ‘tradition’ de rencontre au village palestinien d’Artas." ''Civilisations'' 57, pp. 126–138. * Sirignano, Rosanna (2012): "Mother and Child in Palestine: the Artas material in Hilma Granqvist's Nachlass at the Palestine Exploration Fund." ''Studi Interculturali'' 3/2013, pp. 159–181. Mediterránea, Centro di Studi Interculturali, Trieste. * Weir, Shelagh (1975): "Hilma Granqvist and Her Contribution to Palestine Studies." ''Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies'', 2, 1, pp. 6–13. * Weir, Shelagh (2012): "A pioneering anthropologist." ''Palestine, The Middle East in London'', vol 8, No. 4, April–May 2012, pp. 16–17. * Willman, Jarkko (1997): ''Ideal och verklighet: Hilma Granqvists studier av "Kvinnorna i Gamla testamentet" åren 1921–1925''. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. . (In Swedish.)

External links

University of Helsinki.
Hilma Granqvist.
375 humanists 6.4.2015. University of Helsinki.
Hilma Granqvist’s archives
at Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland. {{DEFAULTSORT:Granqvist, Hilma 1890 births 1972 deaths Cultural anthropologists Finnish anthropologists People from Sipoo Social anthropologists Symbolic anthropologists Finnish women anthropologists Finnish expatriates in Mandatory Palestine Swedish-speaking Finns 20th-century anthropologists Palestine ethnographers