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Contemporary horse stories between realism and fantasy
Mid Sweden University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0555-2683
2025 (English)In: Paper presented at the 27th Biennial International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Conference, Salamanca, June 21-25, 2025, 2025, p. 238-238Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The contemporary series Ödesryttarna (Dahlgren 2018–), exemplifies how the horse story genre has lately broadened its scope. The world depicted in this series hosts a battle between good and evil and includes elements from the fantasy tradition (Robinson 2018; Johansson 2009). Evil is incarnated by Mr Sands, who extracts oil and contributes to the pollution of the world, creating an imbalance which needs to be restored. To fight against him, four girls and their horses have been selected. Horses and girls form a particular bond, challenging the notion of borders between species. They are connected to a legend according to which a girl and her horse once upon a time created light, nature and goodness. Her spirit hovers in nature but if the quartet of girls and horses accept the challenge, she will come back in full force. The fantasy element makes this series stand in stark contrast to realistic series. Its origine in the computer game Star Stable contributes to giving it a particular status. Also, the series makes a feminist statement connecting generations of girls: the future of the world depends on the capacity of these young women and their horses to fight against evilness. In this paper, the aim is to unravel how contemporary horse stories work across boundaries between literature and girl gaming (Chess 2020), how liminality is of importance in the fantasy driven narrative and how the concept of generations is reconstituted as ancient in the fantasy world.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2025. p. 238-238
National Category
General Literature Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:miun:diva-54814OAI: oai:DiVA.org:miun-54814DiVA, id: diva2:1977539
Conference
27th Biennial International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Conference, Salamanca, June 21-25, 2025
Available from: 2025-06-26 Created: 2025-06-26 Last updated: 2025-09-25Bibliographically approved

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Asklund, Helen

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
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  • html
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  • asciidoc
  • rtf