Take-home exam Swedish society – history and cultural heritage (Part 1)

Traditions have always been affected throughout history and more in a country
like Sweden where the cultural heritage has been determined by the coexistence of many
different peoples where the dynamics of power have varied according to the times
affecting directly the traditions and costumes. However, this has been more evident since
the 20th century since, as Barbro Klein explains, cultural heritage has taken more
prominence in cultural politics all over the world. This is the result of the era we are living
in characterized by the big circulation of people and ideas. Never in all of history have
there been so many migratory movements and also more and more minorities are trying
to have more self-determination. Sweden is not an exception here either as of the 9 million
of its inhabitants, a quarter has not been born in the country or are children that have been
born here after having arrived their parents a few times ago(Klein, 2006).

To understand the terms that have induced the evolution of the Swedishness we
first have to understand what is a nation, as we cannot explain costumes, culture, folklore,
or traditions without nations. The reading of Athena that most help us understand this
concept is the one by Anderson. He defined nation as an imagined political community,
and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. He argues that it is imagined
because it is impossible for a member of a nation to know all other inhabitants, even if it
is a really small country as for example Vatican City. It is imagined as limited because
he says that no matter how big is a nation, all of them have borders and if they pass them,
they are no more under its one jurisdiction. It is imagined as sovereign because of the
origin of the term, as it was in the period when Revolution and Enlightenment substitute
the legitimacy of the divine and hierarchical order for freedom. And it is imagined as a
community due to the concept of nation as a horizontal deep comradeship(Anderson,
1996).

One of the concepts that have variated is folk culture. If the first folklore scholars,
it was principally focused on the peasant culture, they open the concept to include also
the culture of the industrial proletariat. However, depending on the branch of the scholars,
for example, the young radicals of the seventies decided to do not to include their studies
of minorities or ethnic groups. There is also the possibility to continue having the same
conception of the term and questioning different ones, this is the case at Lund University.
They debate the concept of culture, continuing in the same line with the concepts of folk
or tradition. Swedish understand as tradition/folk the handing down of practices, customs,
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or beliefs, being than something more regional and local as its core are the rituals,
expressive forms, dances, songs or customs that variates a lot depending of the
place(Frykman & Löfren, 1996).

If folk has been usually associated with the rural areas, the opposite happens with
cultural heritage. As Ronström explains it has been more predominantly in the urban
areas, and even when is focused in the rural ones it is because is part of an urban
mindscape. Swedish known the concept of cultural heritage under the name “kulturarv”
and in the begging theorists used it more for the great values, ideas, or pieces of art that
are used as a common representation of the nation or a big region or community, and
therefore, unlike folk/tradition, is more transnational or even international as its core are
the sites, monuments or other groups of buildings(Ronström, 2005).

Comparing traditional culture/folk with cultural heritage a new important concept

appears, class. In that case, the first one is related to the upper classes and the former one
is more related to the lower classes. In the past, it was quite difficult to mix classes, we
can see it in the article of Frykman and Löfgren when they explained that during the move
that took place in Sweden from the countryside to the towns, people from the rural areas
wanted to be closed to other rural people so they created local communities in their
neighbourhood, introducing to towns new traditions and new ways of socializing(Frykman
& Löfren, 1996). The class was and is a key factor in Swedish traditions, but more in the
past, because as we have seen in the Nordiska Museum those ones were really different,
for example, we could observe how a rich family could celebrate Christmas all together
in big houses with all type of luxuries while in poor families the houses were really smalls
and in bad conditions, they had to dinner almost usual things as soup and they did not
always have presents. But not only traditions, we could see in Skansen how it affects also
in the diary life because the poorest families slept of them in the same room that did not
have any wall separation with the kitchen, and sometimes they even have to share the
bed. Meanwhile, in bourgeoise families, each member has their own room, and the
kitchen dinning room, living room, and other spaces have their own space.

Another important concept that affects Swedishness is ethnicity. Usually being

from one ethnic or another signifies having really different costumes and traditions.
However here in Sweden ethnic minorities have been forgotten most of the times. It is
true that until the Second World War there was not any mixture at all, there was just one

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principal ethnicity, Swedish. But from the Second World War things changed, and as we
have seen in the beginning the country received many immigrants and refugees, mostly
from the 70s. However, there has been a historical ethnical minority that has been always
forgotten, Saami, and Klein admits it as he says that not many things have been studied
by folklife scholars about ethnic diversity in what customs and traditions concern. We
could also observe it in the museums as almost everything was about “pure Swedish”
traditions, and anything of saamis, jews, or romanis(Klein, 2006).

The last concept to name that also has a big influence on Swedishness is gender.
We can observe here two different trends. If we speak about cultural heritage, important
persons, the gender that will predominate is male, and this is how Zetterström collects it
in his article where he mentions that in national museums there is usually an iconic
sculpture in the centre of the principal hall, and most of the times these are masculine.
The ethnologist Wera Grahn appoints that the entrance of Nordiska museum, where there
is an enormous statue of king Gustav Vasa, detaches a masculine gender script that is the
prelude of what will be the interior of the museum(Zetterström Geschwind, 2013). From
the other perspective, if we pay attention to the folklore culture, we will see that the
predominant gender will be female. Females are usually the represented ones in pictures
about daily life in the past inside the home, and we could also observe it both in Skansen
and Nordiska museum. It is also reflected in witches, as they were always ladies from the
lower classes.

About the last question to answer, about the self-image of swedes in early modern
and late modern Sweden, Klein explains that there are two different views, the first one
is before the seventies when Swedes saw themselves as exceedingly homogeneous(Klein,
2006). In Frykman and Löfgren’s article, it is said also that before the seventies they saw
themselves as people with bad habits such as smoking, overeating, or sitting still, but
since then the government started a successful battle against these habits that improved
people’s health but also state economy(Frykman & Löfren, 1996). The second point of view
is the actual one, in which swedes see themselves as a really open society with an
important multiculturalism, which has helped to assess and study minority groups that
have been forgotten like saamis(Klein, 2006).

Summarizing, we can observe an evolution or even a transition in the nation of

Sweden from a really homogeneous and classical society to a multicultural society thanks

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to factors like gender, ethnicity, or class. This is not something exceptional, and so Linder
makes it known in his article, it has happened in many nations and we can know it with
cultural and touristic activities such as a tour guide, films, or songs(Linder, 2013).

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REFERENCES
Anderson, B. (1996). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Institute Stockholm, 10.

Frykman, J., & Löfren, O. (1996). Force of Habit: Exploring Everyday Culture. Lund University
Press, 19.

Klein, B. (2006). Cultural Heritage, the Swedish Folklife Sphere, and the Others. Cultural
Analysis, 5, 57–80.

Linder, J. (2013). Fictionalized cityscapes. Nordic Academic Press, 229(3056), 30–34.

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(16)30132-4

Ronström, O. (2005). Memories, traditions, heritage. Memories and Visions, April 2004, 1–15.

Zetterström Geschwind, B. (2013). Making cultural history: New perspectives on Western

heritage. Nordic Academic Press, 14.