This article analyses the intertextuality of a chapter of the book Gamla byar i Vilhelmnina (Old Villages in Vilhelmina), by folklore scholar Olof Petter Pettersson. It illustrates how the work is a many-voiced and hence sometimes complex text, with much to tell us about the colonisation of Swedish Lapland.
Alongside a neutral narrative voice, it is possible to make out intertextual references by Pettersson to traditional knowledge of various kinds. There are references, for example, to names in use at the time the author was writing, sometimes linked to a specific geographical area or thnic group. Other instances that are discussed include the written texts cited by Pettersson, which reflect the strict legal and economic perspective of the state, and references to early legends and names used in the past, which the author often traces to old Sami oral traditions.
It also emerges that Pettersson alternates between conveying folk traditions and knowledge, on the one hand, and a more analytical mode of writing, on the other.