Scandinavian Culture: Home Exam Antoine LE GOFF

HISTORY BOOK:
HOW SWEDEN BECAME SWEDISH

Table of Contents Introduction 1 Creation of Sweden and its culture 3 17th - 18th century: Swedish culture is born 3 Göticism and Viking heritage: Foundation of the Swedish culure 3 18th Century: the Enlightenment: a new view of the nation 3 19th Century: National Romanticism 3 20th century: Contemporary History 4 The dissolution of the Union 4 The First World War 4 Wellfare system establishment 4 The Second World War 4 The Cold War 5 European Union and Immigration 5 How Sweden Becam Swedish 6 Welfare State 6 Cultural Policy and Propaganda 7 Multi-culturalism 8 Gender Equality 9 Conclusion 11

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to try to understand the Scandinavian culture.
To do this, we have to clarify some concepts, like National Identity, Nationalism, culture and Swedishness, in order to understand the connection between those, and finally expose more easely the following arguments.
Those concepts can be seen as pretty dimness and deep, so we have to treat those with caution.

In fact, if we start with Nationalism, many theorists tried to counteract the three paradoxes this concept bring : objective modernity vs. subjective antiquity, socio-cultural concept vs. concrete manifestations and 'political' power vs. philosophical poverty. Therefore, we see that Nationalism involve multiple frameworks, like history, culture, social or politic.

Ernest Gellner reached to mix them and saw Nationalism like a 'theory of political legitimacy, wich requires that ethnic boundaries should not cut across political onces'.
Benedict Anderson also add national identity and sentiment to this definition when he noticed that people may be die for their nation.

Despite this, both of them agree to say that there is a strong link between a cultural group and a state, and the nation can be see like a political organisation coupled with an ethnic and cultural community.

As we saw, Nationalism and National identity are linked with the term 'culture', but what is culture exactly?
According to Raymond William, one of the pioneer of cultural studies, this concept can be defined in three categories:
First, there is 'the "ideal", in which culture is a state or process of human perfection', and it means Humans have to reach their own values in order to set up the perfect harmony between their life and their beliefs.
To reach this goal, it needs a second category, who called 'documentary records' by William. Following this 'ideal' involve practice, experience, and those are mostly made by history.
The third category, named 'social' definition, introduce the concept of 'way of life', and three new ways to think about it: culture as a description of a particular way of life, as an expression for certain meanings and values or the 'clarification of the meaning and values implicit or explicit'.

All that things mean that every human, groups, and nation, had a sort of utopic goal to reach, and based on their own hisory and 'ways of life', they maybe took different paths to achieve it. This paths can be called culture.

As we said before, culture and national identity are quite connected, and as we are going to speak about Scandinavian - mostly Swedish - culture. It is important to defined a final concept: Swedishness.
As a Swede, you have another habitus (a way of being, a general trend, a sate of mind etc.) than an other european, even if the countries are close. We can say that Swedishness is not the same than Otherness: Swedishness can be seen as a form of national identity, based on values or norms wich were percieved as typically Swedish.

In this essay, we are going to give a review of important periods, happenings and special efforts in the creation of Sweden and its culture from the 19th to the 21st century, and then discuss those in relation to the creation of a national identity, and also compare this with the other scandinavian coutries to reveal similitarities and differences between them.

Creation of Sweden and its culture
17th - 18th century: Swedish culture is born
Göticism and Viking heritage: Foundation of the Swedish culure

Göticism is a movement in the Scandinavian countries, especially in Sweden who appears in the seventeenth century, and means that Sweden claimed to derive from people of Götar/Goths, Germanic tribe living in the 3rd century.
Swedes were really attached to this movement, and it's at this time they referring themselves as being Swedish people, and start to assimilate symbols based on Goth epic litterature.
Their belief prosper in the seventeenth century when, after the Thirty Years' War, Sweden became a great power, and Göticism experience a loss of momentum in the next century. In the 18th century, Göticism gives way to Viking heritage, who was used as a symbol in all Nordic countries.
18th Century: the Enlightenment: a new view of the nation

The 18th century is a new stay of thinking about the society for Swedish people. Due to the hard climate and the Nordic nature, Swedes developed a certain hight moral, and the Odal Farmer, became a symbol of the collective individual.
All this new ideas were influenced by the 'enlightenment", like Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke...
19th Century: National Romanticism

A new word appeared at the beginning of this century: Folk, who means Swedish people. This word became a sort of symbol, and we can speak until this time about folk songs, folk tales, or folk tradition, and the Odal farmer in the representation of the folk soul, and he was describe like a political actor, a decison-maker.

One of the major actor in this century, who has made a lot for Swedish culture, nammed Gustav Geijer. He wrote a lot of poems and lyrics about the Odal Farmer. He is also considered as the founder of the Swedish nationals.
He was an historian, poet, philosopher and politician with strong liberal ideas, and he was also one of the foundator of the Gothic association.
With some other politician and historian, they created in 1811 this elite and powerfull association for breaking the enlightment culture and reconnect the Göticism culture.
20th century: Contemporary History
The dissolution of the Union

In June 1905, the Norwegian parliament decreed the dissolution of the Union. This union dating back to 1814, the Treaty of Kiel.
The First World War

Political neutrality of the country, declared in 1912, was to not intervene in any conflict Despite pressure from two warring camps, Sweden tried to keep its neutrality.
Because commercial and industrial blockade , the firm regulatory economics and population suffered the brunt of the rationing and shortages of food. Maximum prices were fixed.
Wellfare system establishment

When the Social Democrat party came into power in Sweden they start to use the word ‘Folkhemmet’ (The people’s home)
The aims of this politics was to create equal conditions for people. There was a norm, ideal, normative value: it was directed for the well behaved and responsible worker.
Welfare system is based on worker and labour market.
The Second World War

Political neutrality of Sweden during these troubled times was challenged and questioned by its Scandinavian neighbors. In fact, the troops of German soldiers are allowed to pass through Sweden.

The Cold War

Sweden joined the UN in 1949 but refused to sign the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO).

20 November 1959 , EFTA, the European Free Trade Association at the initiative of Great Britain is founded in Stockholm .
Its members were : Austria, Iceland, The Great Britain, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland. Most countries are now members of the European Union.
The aim of this association was to establish free trade in an enlarged Europe. EFTA was a response to the construction of the EEC (European Economic Community).

European Union and Immigration
Sweden formally joined the European Union on 1995, January the first, along with Austria and Finland.
In the mean time, Blakan immagration wave arrived because of post communist areas-conflict
In 2000, European Union and the Schengen agreement open the boarders permit to immigrants to come easely, not only for fleeing war, but also poverty
Immigrants fleeing not only war, but also from poverty.
But this immigration wasn't new, and it began in the 17th century with gypsies and Romani people, Walloons from Belgium. Italians and Scottish immigrants were also arrived in the 18th, a so on until now. Thanks to this immigration, Sweden adopted multi culturalism in its own culture pretty soon.

How Sweden Becam Swedish

Regarding to what we said before, we can say that culture is strongly related to history, and it can be define by norms and values shared by a collective. So what are the links between culture and history? Is culture evolve with time? Is Swedish culture is the same as all the Nordic countries? We are going to discust about it by analysing some main cultural points connected to Swedish culture.
Welfare State

Based on history, the welfare state known some changes during the 20th century. At the beginning, they were just some basic social insurances, like sick or injured insurance, but a reform was made encouraged by the bourgeoiseie and the liberal parliament in order to mitigate the effect of indutrialisation and urbanisation.
After that, cultural policies increased during the inter-war period, due to the 'great depression' (unemployement and social deprivation).
This increasment followed the Sweden's economic development until today, and now it is one of the powerful symbol of Sweden's national identity.

This welfare state shows that Swedish culture is worried about social equality. In fact, everybody can enjoy it, and everyone, by paying taxation, is the actor of solidarity.
All the Scandinavian countries adopted this model, but not in the same time, for example Denmark was the precursor, and Iceland began half a century later.

Thanks to this welfare state, the political and cultural education of the people was raised to a matter of national interest.
Every Nordic countries followed the same welfare's behaviour, and it is one of the main point of Scandinavian culture.
As Mary Hilson says, even if some people thinks welfare state is an instrument of social control, it cannot be forget that this welfare state played a major role in the increasing of health, education life life expectancy and social equality.
Cultural Policy and Propaganda

As we are going to see, those terms a quite related, and the historical view can tell us why.
If we look at the 16th century, Sweden had some arguments for its propaganda:
Something is old and for that reason good and worth defending.

. According to law and binding agreements, a certain way of acting is necessary.
. The status and position of a man require a certain way of acting.

. Peace should prevail or be re-established.

. Material damage should be avoided or material advantages reached.

. Every man should act as a good Christian and against what is not Christian.
. The honour of a certain group must be defended.

. Belonging to a certain collective necessitates a certain kind of behaviour

This arguments doesn't care about culture, but there was a strongly evolving during time, especialy in the 20th century.
During the second world war, Sweden has been seen as a traitor to democracy, first for failing to fight for Finland and then for trading with Hitler’s Germany because of Swedish neutrality in allied countries.
After that, Swedish government had to react, and create a new image of Sweden as a modern and cultural country.
Thanks to the democratisation of culture, those previous arguments became obsolete and turn into cultural arguments:
. To promote and tighten the link between arts and businesses.
. To reduce state regulation of the cultural industries.
. To encourage private patrons and companies to act as sponsors and purchase art and support 
art institutions.
. To increase the political regulation of arts and cultural institutions by means of performance 
contracts, via administrative centralisation and by transforming the ‘unspecified means’ allocated on the basis of expert evaluation to ‘earmarked’ pools for specified and politically defined purposes.
.To revitalize the national dimension in cultural policy in order to strengthen the national identity of the people and promote social cohesion in an answer to globalisation, migration and individualisation
As we can see, cultural policy, with help of Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Swedish Institute play a central role in the Swedish's image. The intern cultural effort made by Swedish population has to be seen by other countries, and that's why propaganda is really important.
However, even if the Swedish Institute provide information about Sweden for foreign publics, Nikolas Glover pointed out that 'if the Institute in its first years sought to be perceived as something of an educational institution, today it far more resembles a marketing agency', but even if the promotion of a country is less educational than before, every countries who want to share theire culture, they have to do it properly, and that's means a lot of communication efforts, which is quite normal.
Multi-culturalism

Multi-culturalism can be seen as the opposite of assimilation (absorb the culture, the way of living, turning into the nationality of the country)
Swedish mutli-culturalism has evolve during the centuries, and it is related with open-minded and immigration.
During the Age of Liberty (1718-1772), notion of multi-culturalism was praticaly inexistant. Furthermore, we can says that it was xenophobia era, and the perfect exemple can be showed by a sentence of Hugo Valentine (1741): 'all Jews, Savoyards, tightrope, walkers, actors and other jesters..., Tartares and Gypsies (...) cause great trouble and inconvenience to ordinary people'.
During the 19th century, nationalism stayed strong, regarding of the Romantic Nationalism credo: 'one people, one nation, one state'. Despite this, there were an important import of foreign ideas due to the early industrialisation. At this time, foreign ideas came, but not foreign people.
The borders continued to be close until the Second World War, especialy due to Social Darwinism (racial biology), an attractive idea during this period.
After this time, waves of immigrations from all over the world have come every decades until now, and as an exemple of the beginning of an open-mind, in the late 20th century, public sector which handled relations with immigrants start to think: 'in order to understand their culture we must learn to understand ours'.
Today, more than 1,6 million people with immigration background, and even if it may cause some economical problems, like a higher unemployment rate, Swedish government choose to accept this diversity by instored a policy who explan that immigrants belong to Sweden, in an equal footing and in a spirit of collaboration.
Furthermore, the Social Democratic government, in 1996, claimed that Sweden is now a 'social community based on diversity'.
As long as we avoid some kind of disunity between minorities and majority, multi-culturalism is a strenght for a country, and the Nordic ones understand it quite well.
Gender Equality

Based on the Hofstede's theory, who studying country's masculinity, gave Sweden a scores of 5 on a scale to 100, which mean Sweden is a strongly feminine society. In feminine countries it is important to keep the life/work balance and you make sure that all are included. Managers strive for consensus and people value equality, solidarity and quality in their working lives. The whole culture is based around 'lagom', which means something like not too much, not too little, everything in moderation. Lagom ensures that everybody has enough and nobody goes without.
A feminism country also mean that there is no power differences between men and women, and we find this kind of score in every Scandinavian countries, like Norway (8) or Denmark (16). All of this shows that women and men are on the same equality step, and it is a main part of Scandinavian culture.
We can argue this gender equality with a lot of concrete arguments.
First, if we look at the gender policy, we can see that the government has two aims: 'to combat and transform systems that preseve the gender based distribution of power and ressources in society, and to ensure that women and men enjoy the same power and opportunities to shape their own lives'.
Government also instructedd the National Board for Youth Affairs to distribute grants to organistations to encourage their efforts to promote gender equality among national minorities.
The Swedish government is also acting strongly against the men's violence, and spend a lot of money to promote gender equality (110 millions SEK) in school or research for women's entrepreneurship (300 millions SEK).
In the private life, it is intresting to see that men now claim about 24% of all parental leave taken, wich is quite rare to be noticed.
Whether in business or private life, women's role is as important as a men's, and it shows respect and solidarity in the Sandinavian culture.

Conclusion

In this essay, we tried to understand what were the factors that built the Scandinavian culture and the Swedishness.

Tom O'Dell said that Swedishness is 'identified as a set of values shared amongst individuals and marked by nationalism, practicality, functionalism, a belief in science, and even an accompanying degree of reservedness, coupled with an appreciation of moderation'.
Beyond the fact that Swedish symbols, like the Dalecarlian Horse or the little red cabins, represent Swedishness and in a certain way the Swedish culture, we have to look further and see that culture is not only that.
Welfare state, cultural policy, multi-culturalism, gender equality and more, are things who build the Swedish culture.

Connected with history, politics or sociolgy, culture will never cease to change, and hopefully, to improve.

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[ 1 ]. Anderson Benedict (1991): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London.: Verso, p.5
[ 2 ]. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland 2002 (1993): Ethnicity and nationalism, p.98-100
[ 3 ]. John Storey (2001), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, An Introduction, 3rd edition, p.45
[ 4 ]. Tom O'Dell (1998), Juncture of Swedishness: Reconsidering Representations of the national: In: Ethnologica Scandinavia: A journal for Nordic Ethnology. Volume 28, p.21
[ 5 ]. Bengtsson, Åsa. Lecture 2: The Past – Before Sweden became Sweden
[ 6 ]. http://la.suede.free.fr/suede/histoire.htm, 6/11/13
[ 7 ]. Peter Duelund (2008) Nordic cultural policies: A critical view, International Journal of Cultural Policy, p.14
[ 8 ]. Mary Hilson (2008), The Nordic Model, p.113
[ 9 ]. Harald Gustafsson, The Eighth Argument. Identity, Ethnicity and Political
Culture in Sixteenth-Century Scandinavia, p.96
[ 10 ]. Peter Duelund, Nordic cultural policies: A critical view, p.17
[ 11 ]. Nikolas Glover, Imaging Comunity, Sweden in ‘cultural propaganda’ then and now, p. 255
[ 12 ]. Bengtsson, Åsa. Lecture 6: Multiculuralism
[ 13 ]. Hans Ingvar Roth, Multi-Cultural Sweden. In: Almqvist, Kurt & Glans, Kay (eds) The Swedish success story? Axel and margret Ax:son Foundation, p.217
[ 14 ]. Ibid., p.217
[ 15 ]. Orvar Löfgren (2000), The Disappearance and Return of the National: The Swedish experience 1950-2000. In: Anttonen, Pertti, J (ed). Folklore, heritage politics and ethic diversity. A fastschrift for Barbi Klein. Botkyrka: Mangkulturellt centrum, p.241
[ 16 ]. Hans Ingvar Roth (2004), Multi-Cultural Sweden. In: Almqvist, Kurt & Glans, Kay (eds) The Swedish success story? Axel and margret Ax:son Foundation,, p.221
[ 17 ]. http://geert-hofstede.com/sweden.html, Masculinity / Femininity, 5/11/13
[ 18 ]. Ministry of Integration and Gender Equality, 'The Swedish Government's gender equality policy', August 2009
[ 19 ]. Ibid.
[ 20 ]. Swedish Institute, Facts About Children, Children and young people
[ 21 ]. Tom O'Dell (1998), Juncture of Swedishness: Reconsidering Representations of the national: In: Ethnologica Scandinavia: A journal for Nordic Ethnology. Volume 28, p.32