Nordic Nostalgia and Nordic Light: the Swedish model as Utopia 1930–2007

Abstract

In the last decade, Sweden has emerged on the other side of the 1990s crisis with, if not its self-image intact, then at least a reasserted confidence as, once again, the most modern country in the world. Crisis management in the 1990s seemed to have succeeded. The Swedish bumblebee – the unthinkable animal that flies despite its high taxes and large public sector – flew again. The ‘Swedish model’ was back after a decade as the punch bag of neoliberalism. Throughout the European centre left – from the debate on the European social model to Ségolène Royal and Gordon Brown – Sweden has reemerged as ‘Nordic light’, proof that a better world is possible. This reappraisal in the eyes of the world has paradoxical consequences in Sweden, since it seems to overwrite the uncertainty and insecurity of crisis with assertion and confidence, while leaving many questions unanswered. It also leads to new definitions of what Sweden is. The paper suggests that Sweden post-1990s suffers from a particular kind of nostalgia, in which the famous Model emerges as a kind of paradise lost with uncertain links both to past and future. While Sweden yet again becomes the utopia of others, it is a kind of future past to itself.

Keywords:

• People's home
• nostalgia
• Swedish model
• 1990s

Notes

1 Världens modernaste land.

2 Hirdman, Att lägga livet till rätta; Rothstein, Just Institutions Matter.

3 Runcis, Steriliseringar i folkhemmet; Broberg and Roll-Hansen, Eugenics and the Welfare State; Broberg and Tydén, Oönskade i folkhemmet; Tydén, Från politik till praktik; Spektorowski and Mizrachi, ‘Eugenics and the Welfare State in Sweden’.

4 In recent years, see Tydén and Lundberg, Sverigebilder.

5 Isacson, ‘Bruket och folkhemmet’; Österberg, ‘Vardagens sträva samförstånd’.

6 Linderborg, Socialdemokraterna skriver historia.

7 Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 10; Stråth and S⊘rensen, The Cultural Construction of Norden; Götz, Ungleiche Geschwister.

8 Childs, Sweden: The Middle Way.

9 Berggren and Trägårdh, Är svensken människa, 11.

10 They were quite right to point out, as however many historians have done before them, that the notion of the People's home has much longer origins in Swedish history than social democracy and that it came out of conservative discourses of the 19th century. See Lagergren, På andra sidan välfärdsstaten; Björck, Folkhemsbyggare.

11 Anderson, Imagined Communities.

12 Crosland, The Future of Socialism.

13 Taylor, Sweden: Proof That a Better World Is Possible; Brown, Fishing in Utopia.

14 The idea that Sweden would have the highest level of suicide is in the world is a myth which, I believe, came out of the Reagan campaign in the US in the early 1980s.

15 Huntford, The New Totalitarians.

16 Lindert, Growing Public.

17 See http://www.slate.com/id/2203433/.

18 Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 23, 25, 27. Stråth, ‘Nordic Modernity’.

19 Andersson, The Library and the Workshop. Andersson, När framtiden redan har hänt.

20 Stråth and S⊘rensen, The Cultural Construction of Norden.

21 In Vaxholm, the Swedish construction workers union put a construction site under blockade because it employed Lithuanian workers who were not unionized in Sweden and had no collective agreement.

22 Waever and Hansen, European Integration and National Identity.

23 Bastow and Martin, Third Way Discourse.

24 Östberg and Thullberg, Den svenska modellen; Stephens, The Transition from Socialism to Capitalism.

25 ‘The New Swedish Model, a Reform Agenda for Growth and the Environment’, Financial Times/London School of Economics Future of Europe Lecture series, London, 26 February 2008.

26 Wiklund, I det modernas landskap.

27 Mishra, The Welfare State in Crisis; Freeman, Swedenborg and Topel, The Welfare State in Transition, Reforming the Swedish Model.

28 Andersson, Between Growth and Security.

29 Maktutredningen, 1985–1990.

30 Persson, Den som är satt i skuld är icke fri.

31 See Tydén and Lundberg, ‘Inledning’.

32 Andersson, The Library and the Workshop.

33 Opening address to SAP party conference, Stockholm 2000, in Persson, Tankar och tal 1996–2000.

34 See for instance the Sapir report, An Agenda for a Growing Europe.

35 Miliband, ‘Nordic Light’.

36 Ibid.

37 French notions of the Nordic model have been described by the Figaro journalist, Marie-Laure Faulon: Faulon, Le rébond du modèle Nordique.

38 Waever and Hansen, European Integration and National Identity.

39 Lindvall, Ett land som alla andra.

40 Andersson, Du levande.

41 Tunbjörk, The Country Beside Itself; Tunbjörk, Vinter.

42 Mamma Andersson, exhibition catalogue.

43 Andersson, The Workshop and the Library.

44 Hall, ‘Flaggor och loggor’; Hall, Den svenskaste historien.

45 Alibhai Brown, Who Do We Think We Are?; Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam; Noiriel, The French Melting Pot.

46 De los Reyes, Diversity and Differentiation; Lindberg, Amin and Dahlstedt, Det slutna folkhemmet.

47 Integrationens svarta bok : agenda för jämlikhet och social sammanhållning.

48 von Essen and Fleischer, Sverigedemokraterna i de svenska kommunerna.

49 Göran Persson, speech to Svenska industritjänstemannaförbundet, 15 November 2002.

50 Andersson, The Library and the Workshop.

51 See Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries.

52 Waever, ‘Nordic Nostalgia’.

53 Waever and Hansen, European Integration and National Identity; Stråth, Folkhemmet mot Europa; af Malmborg, Den ståndaktiga nationalstaten.

54 Anonymous reviewer to Scandinavian Journal of History, January 2009.

55 Bauman, Liquid Modernity.