Hit and tell – Swedish hooligan narratives

Abstract

Hooligans telling their own story represent a new voice in the sports narrative: the hooligan memoir. While this is a comparatively new phenomenon in Sweden, this literary genre has a long and productive history in England under the name hit and tell. The purpose of this article is to expound on the pop cultural expressions of hooliganism in Sweden, as epitomized by four hooligan memoirs. The article explores football culture, hooliganism, violence, masculinity and media in Sweden, as it is imperative to the understanding of hooliganism that it is analysed in the contexts in which it occurs. Research has demonstrated that hooliganism and violence in football and supporter culture have become increasingly visible in popular culture over the last few years. The article shows how hooligan culture is created in dynamic interaction between media, political reactions and cultural praxis, arguing that the cultural praxis of hooliganism is manifested through actual fights and, to an even greater extent, the various media narratives surrounding the hooligan subculture presented in the four memoirs.

Notes

^1. Other English scholars have called the genre ‘Been There, Done That – dramatized personal experience’ (see Wagg 2000, 406; Poulton 2007, 153).

^2. I ran a search on www.amazon.com on 28 May 2012. The results were sorted in the following categories: books 486, kindle store 43, clothing and accessories 9, sport and outdoor 9, tools and home improvement 9, apps for android 3, music 3, MP3 1.

^3. Isidor Behrens founded AIK, and was the club's first chairman.

^4. In a conversation with Tommy Deogan on 7 August 2012, he referred me to the publishing house Bra Böcker for exact figures on the number of copies printed and sold. After two phone calls to Bra Böcker on 7 and 8 August 2012, I was told that the publishing house never divulges information on the number of books printed or sold, due to the competitive climate.

^5. Tony passed away on 2 August 2002 after being brutally beaten in a confrontation between the firms Wisemen from Gothenburg and Firman Boys, AIK, on 29 July 2002.

^6. Excerpt from interview with Patrik Asplund, published in Andersson and Radmann (1998, 127).

^7. In my studies, I have not uncovered any explicit hostility towards immigrants among members of the Swedish firm culture. Fundberg's study concerns a single football club and preceded Zlatan Ibrahimovic's appointment as captain of the men's national football team. Thus, it is questionable whether the term ‘non-immigrant’ is still relevant in analyses of Swedish football culture.