What is Swedish culture? Some obvious answers might spring to mind: Abba, the films of Ingmar Bergman, Pippi Longstocking, Ikea. It’s an almost impossibly broad question — but one that Sweden’s government is trying to answer.
In 2023, the government began an initiative called the Culture Canon, with two streams: an “experts” canon and a “people’s canon.” The first involves academics, journalists, historians and other authorities who will decide on 100 works or other items of cultural importance that have played a key role in shaping Swedish culture.
The second will be made up of suggestions submitted by the Swedish public to the Culture Canon website, which can be drawn from the arts or can include everyday activities like the daily “fika” coffee and cake break or ideas like “Allemansrätten,” the Swedish right explore nature, even on private land. So far, suggestions include saunas and the plays of August Strindberg, the 1361 Battle of Visby and Björn Borg’s five straight Wimbledon victories.
A government committee will present a report to the two canons in the summer.
Yet even the suggestion of such a definitive list is dividing opinion in Sweden. The Culture Cannon is a pet project of a party with far-right roots that supports, but is not part of the government. Many in the arts scene fear that the results will project a narrow view of Swedish culture, glorifying an imagined past and shutting out the cultural contributions of minorities.
Lars Trägårdh, a historian whom the government appointed to lead the project, said in an interview that the Culture Canon would be particularly useful for helping immigrants integrate. Sweden combined a “wonderful openness to immigration with a complete lack of policies that have been able to bring all these people into Swedish society,” he said. A canon, he added, would provide new arrivals “with a map and a compass.”
The project has its origins in a 2022 agreement between parties that allowed them to form a coalition government after elections held that year. The Sweden Democrats, once considered an extremist right-wing party, came second in the popular vote, and although it is not part of the coalition, it used its electoral success to leverage concessions from the governing parties, including an agreement to set up the Culture Canon.
“Most of the culture world is against the idea of a canon,” said Ida Ölmedal, the culture editor of the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet: “It’s being used as a populist tool to point out what is Swedish and not, and to exclude some people from the concept of Swedishness.”
“But even if it wasn’t nationalist, it would still be wrong for politicians to point out what is important culture,” Olmedal added. “We have a proud tradition of the government financing culture without trying to govern culture — and this is an exception.”
Martí Manen, the director of Index, a contemporary art foundation in Stockholm, said the Culture Cannon was “a tool for a specific political agenda.”
In the interview, Trägårdh rebuffed such objections. “They are not real arguments,” he said, adding that he had no cultural loyalty to the left or the right. “I joke sometimes, I’m barely cultural at all,” he said, adding that he was brought in because he is a historian who works on issues of Swedish identity, such as in his 2006 book “Is the Swede a Human Being?”, which he cowrote with Henrik Berggren. “My appointment is predicated on a complete autonomy,” he said.
Trägårdh also rejected the idea that a cultural canon would exclude minorities from the concept of Swedishness. “I don’t do representation,” he said, “I don’t give a hoot in that sense, if there are the right number of women or minorities — the important thing is what has actually mattered for shaping Sweden.”
Parisa Liljestrand, a member of the Moderate Party who is Sweden’s culture minister, said the project had been set up to be independent from government influence and was now “in the hands of the committee.” It was the committee’s job, she added, “to find out what fields we should have a canon in, and also to establish criteria for selection of works.”
One criteria the committee has set for the expert part of the canon is that it can only include entries that are at least 50 years old. This has stirred fears that the results will downplay the importance of cultural output by immigrants, most of whom arrived in Sweden after 1975.
“It’s a retrotopia thing,” said Mattias Andersson, the artistic director of the Royal Dramatic Theater, Sweden’s national playhouse. “It’s about trying to speak about the Sweden from the ’40s, or the ’50s, when everyone had the same God, the same impression of what the family is, of how to live your life.”
Trägårdh dismissed these objections, too. “We can argue about whether it should have been 30 years, or 42 years, but the point is that a certain amount of time has to pass,” he said, “because otherwise we will include things that, four years later, would make us look like idiots.”
For all the Culture Canon’s critics in the arts scene, there are also those who say it is too soon judge. Victor Malm, the culture editor of the Expressen newspaper, said he was reserving his judgment until he read the final report.
If done properly, a defined canon could be a way to “redistribute the knowledge of Swedish culture throughout society,” he said, by drawing attention to great works of art that bring “cultural capital” and “make your life easier.”
Sweden is not the only country to attempt such a project: Denmark and the Netherlands, for instance, each established an official cultural cannon in 2006. In both countries, the proposition prompted similar debates as in Sweden about inclusion and the influence of right-wing parties. The canons are now part of the school curriculums there and their origins are not discussed much these days.
Despite all the debate over Sweden’s Culture Canon in the news media, the public does not seem very engaged. The canon website has received around 9,000 suggestions — a small number in a country of more than 10 million people.
In a dozen interviews on the streets of Stockholm, many people had not heard of the project. Those who had said they took a dim view of it, either because they did not understand its purpose or because they viewed it as an initiative of the far right.
Trägårdh said he hoped that the upcoming report would be something people could enjoy, rather than fight about. He pointed to a lighthearted promotional campaign from Sweden’s national train company, SJ, suggesting places to visit based on suggestions already submitted to the Culture Canon website.
“I’m not bothered what the politicians say, and nor am I particularly bothered by what’s going on in the cultural elite,” he said. “I’m much more excited about this stuff.”
“It’s also just kind of fun, right?” he added. “And we have underemphasized that.”
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