A Funny Story and a 170-year-old Psalmodikon Practicing an intangible cultural heritage; [En rolig historia och ett 170 år gammalt psalmodikon Att praktisera ett immateriellt kulturarv]

is justified by those who participate in the implementation. The article raises the question of whether traditions and cultural heritage, instead of being seen as incomparable ways of producing the past of the absent in the present, can perhaps be considered two aspects of the same phenomenon.; The psalmodikon is a stringed instrument that was very common in large parts of Sweden during the 19th century. Nowadays, the psalmodikon is on the Swedish list of intangible cultural heritage. According to the UNESCO Convention intangible cultural heritage is “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills that communities and groups recognize as forming part of their cultural heritage”. Since the convention is about living intangible cultural heritage, i.e. traditions and skills that are practiced today, the practitioners themselves are central to the work.; This article, based on a fieldwork at the Psalmodikon Association’s annual meeting and archive material, discusses motives for engaging with the instrument of psalmodikon. The aim is to investigate how an intangible cultural heritage is passed on and how the commitment; For the participants of the annual meeting, the past appeared as a given and agreed starting point for negotiations in and about the present. The past functioned as a kind of resource in the present that they used to create feelings of community. The article concludes that involvement in psalmodikon is a practice in which multiple traditions with local roots are woven together into a common intangible cultural heritage.