SVEN OLOV LINDHOLM AND THE LITERARY INSPIRATIONS OF SWEDISH FASCISM

Abstract

Very little research has been done into the leader of the most prominent Swedish fascist party of the interwar period, the leader of the Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet, Sven Olov Lindholm, in spite of extensive source material in his personal archive. This article explores the literary influences on his politics, which Lindholm cited in his private documents and interviews, both contemporary and post-war. The immediate impact of notable Swedish writers, poets especially, such as Verner von Heidenstam, Viktor Rydberg, Esaias Tegnér, and Bertel Gripenberg, is demonstrated. These authors, largely of the Swedish Romantic tradition, are shown to be parts of one major Scandinavian cultural current in particular, namely Gothicism (göticism), manifested through a centuries-long interest in the Old Nordic heritage. In Sweden, the influence of new far-Right ideas that made their way into the country in the 1920s intersected with Gothicism in unique ways, which gave Swedish fascists a peculiar relationship to both fascism and their national heritage. Ultimately, these literary Gothicist influences allowed a particular naturalizing codification of Swedish fascism in the 1930s. Under the influence of, above all, contemporary Finno-Swedish health specialist Are Waerland, Lindholm is shown to have actively shaped Swedish fascism in line with his literary exemplars.

Keywords:

• fascism
• Sven Olov Lindholm
• Gothicism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Throughout this article the terms fascism and National Socialism/Nazism will be used interchangeably. Contemporaries distinguished between the two terms in varying and mutually irreconcilable ways, but not in a way that substantially affects the argument of this article. The term fascism is preferred to highlight the wider academic debate about fascism in Europe in which this article is situated.

2. Klas Åmark, Att Bo Granne Med Ondskan: Sveriges Förhållande till Nazismen, Nazityskland Och Förintelsen (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2011), 288–304.

3. Lena Berggren, ‘Swedish Fascism: Why Bother?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 37.3 (2002), 395–417; also published in Sweden as: Lena Berggren, ‘Den svenska mellankrigsfascismen – ett ointressant marginalfenomen eller ett viktigt forskingsobjekt?’, Historisk Tidskrift, 2002, 427–44.

4. Lena Berggren, Nationell Upplysning: Drag i den svenska antisemitismens idéhistoria (Stockholm: Carlsson Förlag, 1999).

5. Maria Björkman and Sven Widmalm, ‘Selling Eugenics: The Case of Sweden’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 64.4 (2010), 379–400.

6. Eric Wärenstam, Fascismen Och Nazismen i Sverige 1920–1940: Studier i Den Svenska Nationalsocialismens, Fascismens Och Antisemitismens Organisationer, Ideologier Och Propaganda under Mellankrigsåren (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1970), 15.

7. Klas Åmark, Att Bo Granne Med Ondskan: Sveriges Förhållande till Nazismen, Nazityskland Och Förintelsen (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2011).

8. See also recent research on German infiltration of Swedish clubs and corporations, e.g.: Birgitta Almgren, ‘Svensk-Tyska Föreningar: Mål För Nazistisk Infiltration’, Historisk Tidskrift, 135.1 (2015), 63–91; Sven Nordlund, ‘”Tyskarna Själva Gör Ju Ingen Hemlighet Av Detta.” Sverige Och Ariseringen Av Tyskägda Företag Och Dotterbolag’, Historisk Tidskrift, 125.4 (2005), 609–41.

9. Victor Lundberg, En idé större än döden: en fascistisk arbetarrörelse i Sverige, 1933–1945 (Stockholm: Gidlunds Förlag, 2014), 110.

10. Victor Lundberg, ‘Within the Fascist World of Work: Sven Olov Lindholm, Ernst Jünger and the Pursuit of Proletarian Fascism in Sweden, 1933–1945’, in New Political Ideas in the Aftermath of the Great War, ed. by Salvador Alessandro and Anders G. Kjøstvedt (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 199–217 (209–12).

11. Lundberg, ‘Within the Fascist World of Work’, 212.

12. Sven Olov Lindholm, Soldatliv och Politik, vol. I, 1, photocopy in National Archives of Sweden (Riksarkivet), Marieberg, SO Lindholm’s archive: 3A.

13. Olle Larsson and Andreas Marklund, Svensk Historia (Lund: Historiska Media, 2012), 44–49.

14. Underscored in the original text. Lindholm, Soldatliv och Politik, I, 1.

15. Ibid., 2–3.

16. Lindholm interview, by Ingemar Carlsson, 1980–81, tape 00262:B, c. 17.30 mins, Marieberg, SO Lindholm’s archive, vol. 4.

17. For the state of deprivation and hunger in post-war Austria, see: Robert Gerwarth, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End, 1917–1923 (London: Penguin, 2017), 204–5.

18. Lindholm interview, 00262:B., c. 21.00 mins.

19. Lindholm, Soldatliv och Politik, I, 4.

20. Sven Olov Lindholm, Svensk Frihetskamp (Stockholm, 1943), 19.

21. Lindholm interview, 00262:B, c. 28.30 mins.

22. Ibid., c. 30.00 mins.

23. Interestingly, both Lagerlöf and von Heidenstam were among the founders of the Swedish-German Union, a key organisation for infiltration by the Nazi government in the 1930s. Birgitta Almgren, ‘Svensk-Tyska Föreningar: Mål För Nazistisk Infiltration’, Historisk Tidskrift, 135.1 (2015), 63–91 (70).

24. Larsson and Marklund, 316–18.

25. Lindholm, 16–18.

26. ‘Heidenstams nationalism: Några tankar vid skaldens 80-årsdag i morgon’, Den Svenske Folksocialisten [DSF], no 46, 5 July 1939, 1–2, 4; for the telegram, see: ’SSS hyllade Heidenstam’, DSF, no 48, 12 July 1939, 1.

27. Lindholm quotes Runeberg’s poetry among other places in: Soldatliv och Politik, I, 28.

28. Letter [copy], Lindholm to Lennart Westberg, Rönninge, 24 October 1977, 6, Marieberg, SO Lindholm’s archive, vol. 5.

29. Bertel Gripenberg, Under Fanan (Helsingfors: Holger Schildts Förlag, 1918), 41.

30. For the text, see: Bertel Gripenberg, ’Invokation’, DSN, no 2, 9 January 1935, 4. For the report on Lindholm’s recital, see: ‘Göteborg i N.S.A.P:s tecken’, DSN, no 13, 11 June 1933, 3.

31. Sven Olov Lindholm, Döm ingen ohörd, 2nd edition, (1969), 10, Marieberg, SO Lindholm’s archive, vol. 8.

32. Lindholm interview, 00260:B, c. 1 min.

33. Celestine S. Kunkeler, ‘The Evolution of Swedish Fascism: Self-Identification and Ideology in Interwar Sweden’, Patterns of Prejudice, 50.4–5 (2016), 378–97.

34. Lindholm, Soldatliv och Politik, I, 101.

35. Letter, Lindholm to editors of Svenska Män och Kvinnor (Albert Bonniers), Stockholm, 22 June 1946, Lindholm’s archive, vol. 5.

36. E.g.. Letter, Lindholm to Heléne Lööw, Rönninge, 12 September 1987, Lindholm’s archive, vol. 5.

37. Lindholm interview, 00262:B, c. 41.00 mins. Cf. the concluding argument of: Celestine S. Kunkeler, ‘Narratives of Decline in the Dutch National Socialist Movement, 1931–1945’, The Historical Journal, 2017, 1–21 (20–21). doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000188.

38. Larsson and Marklund, 269–72.

39. ‘Svea’, in: Esaias Tegnér, Fritjofs Saga, och andra större dikter (Stockholm: Saxon & Lindströms Förlag, 1935), 257.

40. Sven Olov Lindholm, ‘Vår anfallsväg: II. Den politiska utvecklingen’, DSN, no 87, 19 November 1938, 8.

41. ‘Norrlandsting i regn’, DSF, no 44, 28 June 1939, 4.

42. Tegnér, ‘Svea’, 262.

43. Lindholm interview, 00262:B, c. 39.00 mins.

44. DSN, no 2, 2 February 1933, 4.

45. Lindholm diary, 12 December 1937.

46. Lindholm diary, 11 July 1938.

47. Like Heidenstam’s ’Medborgarsången’, he cites it as the literary expression of Swedish fascist ideas, in: Lindholm, Döm ingen ohörd, 10.

48. Viktor Rydberg, Fädernas Gudasaga, m.m., Skrifter av Viktor Rydberg, XII (Stockholm: Albert Bonnier, 1918), 19–22.

49. ‘Den Nye Grottesången’, IV, in: Viktor Rydberg, Dikter (Stockholm: Albert Bonnier, 1929), 224–25.

50. Ernst Ekman, ‘Gothic Patriotism and Olof Rudbeck’, Journal of Modern History, 34.1 (1962), 52–63 (52–55).

51. Introduction to: Sweden’s Age of Greatness, 1632–1718, ed. by Michael Roberts (London: Macmillan, 1973), 1–2.

52. Ekman, 59.

53. Olof Rudbeck, Atland eller Manheim/Atlantica sive Manheim, 3 vols, I, (Uppsala: 1675), 24–25, 85–87.

54. Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History (London: The Free Press, 1997), 56–59.

55. Not, it may be added, that it had much hope for success would it have tried – the secret police was entirely aware of their plans. Karl N. Alvar Nilsson, Svensk Överklassnazism, 1930–1945 (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1996), 154.

56. Henrik Sandblad, Olympia och Valhalla: Idéhistoriska aspekter av den moderna idrottsrörelsens framväxt (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1985), 28–35.

57. Sandblad, 43–47; Yvonne Hirdman, Urban Lundberg, and Jenny Björkman, Sveriges Historia, 1920–1965 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2012), 106.

58. Bernhard Risberg, introduction to: Tegnér, 7.

59. Risberg, 17.

60. Sandblad, 261–68.

61. Preface to: Rydberg, Fädernas Gudasaga, 5.

62. For a closer analysis of Nazism’s race mysticism as opposed to race science, see: Dan Stone, ‘Race Science, Race Mysticism, and the Racial State’, in Beyond the Racial State: Rethinking Nazi Germany, ed. by Devin O. Pendas, Mark Roseman, and Richard F. Wetzell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

63. Sven Olov Lindholm, ‘Rasen inför ödestimman: Den nordiska andan hotas med död och förintelse’, DSN, no 4, 1 March 1933, 1.

64. ‘Vårt kulturav i fara! Förfallet triumferar’, DSN, no 7, 11 April 1933, 3.

65. ‘Germaniskt blod’, from ‘Gallergrinden’, in: Bertel Gripenberg, Dikter i Urval (Stockholm: Björck & Börjesson, 1919), 103.

66. Lindholm interview, 00262:b, c. 39.00 mins.

67. First and last stanza from ‘Vaknen!’, in: Rydberg, Dikter, 56–57.

68. ‘Meddelande från Plg’, DSN, no 32, 21 December 1933, 2.

69. En virde, ’Sverige Vakna!’, DSN, no 3, 18 January 1934, 6.

70. Kunkeler, ‘The Evolution of Swedish Fascism’, 383–87.

71. Argus, ‘Där vi kämpa: Midwintervaka i Ånga’, DSN, no 2, 8 January 1936, 5.

72. H.J., ‘Vikingatiden – en nordisk storhetstid: Nordlandets kamp mot västerlandet’, DSN, no 45, 14 June 1936, 4.

73. H.J., ‘Vikingatiden – en nordisk storhetstid: Nordlandets kamp mot västerlandet’, DSN, no 46, 17 June 1936, 4.

74. Ibid.

75. ‘Ledarens stabsflagga’, DSN, no 45, 14 June 1936, 5.

76. Rydberg, Fädernas Gudasaga, 232–36.

77. ‘Ledardagen: På gammal nordmannased rådslog vår Ledare med sina främstra förtroendemän om frihetsrörelsens kommande uppgifter’, DSN, no 38, 19 May 1937, 4.

78. T. L-n, ‘En SSS-färd till Upplands runstensrikaste bygd: I Jarlabankes gamla domäner’, DSF, no 14, 22 February 1939, 5.

79. Police report, ’Översikt över nationalsocialismen i Sverige’, 5 October 1935, 19, SÄPO archive, Arninge, file 2B:4 (Teser, programm, upprop m.m.).

80. Nilef, ’Sveriges ungdom för ungdomens Svarige: Nordisk Ungdom får framåt!’, DSN, no 47, 19 June 1935, 6.

81. ‘Nordisk Ungdoms mål och medel’, DSN, no 10, 8 March 1934, 5.

82. Sven-Olov Lindholm, ’Nationalsocialistisk midsommar i Södermanland: Nordisk Ungdom kallar till samling!’, DSN, no 36, 18 May 1938, 1, 4.

83. Lindholm interview, 00258:B, c. 28 mins.

84. ‘Solryttarsång’, DSN, no 4, 1 March 1933, 4; ‘Sången om Goliat’, DSN, no 20, 21 August 1933, 6; ‘Svensk Morgon’, DSN, no 9, 1 March 1934, 6; all poems published under the name Sven Olov.

85. Sven-Olov, ‘Vikingasång’, DSN, no 24, 1 October 1933, 7.

86. Letter, Lindholm to Chief of the Army, Stockholm, 3 July 1942, Marieberg, Lindholm’s archive, vol. 5.

87. Kruska is made by putting seeded raisins in water, and leaving them overnight for a period of twelve hours. One hour before serving, the water is boiled, and a measure of oat meal added while stirring with a long wooden spoon. After two to three minutes, special wheat germs are added to the mixture until it has a gruel-like consistency. The whole thing is then left for half an hour in a warm, sealed box. It is ideally served with a helping of milk. Are Waerland, Kruskan som kraft- och hälsoföda (Göteborg: Örnförlaget, 1939).

88. Are Waerland, In the Cauldron of Disease (London: Nutt, 1934), 374.

89. Are Waerland, Död åt det vita sockret – Liv åt de vita folken (Stockholm: Reformförlaget, 1938).

90. Lindholm diary, 1 November 1936.

91. S. L-m, ‘Are Waerland talar för sundare livsstil: Entusiastiskt hyllad vid möte i Göteborg’, DSN, no 26, 7 April 1937, 4.

92. Lindholm diary, 9–13 November 1936, 1 January and 20 March 1937.

93. ‘Under Tyrsflaggan: Med propagandalaget i fält’, DSN, no 61, 11 August 1937, 6.

94. ‘Ut i fält! Skänk livsmedel åt våra aktiva frontmän’, DSN, no 43, 15 June 1938, 5.

95. See for instance: Note from Lindholm, 1935 (Spring), Marieberg, NSAP/SSS Archive, vol. 1.

96. Police memorandum, S. Fransson regarding splits in the NSAP, 27 February 1937, 1, Arninge, XII 64: 1.

97. Are Waerland, Känn dig själv: En studie av den svenska folkkaraktären (Helsingborg: Logik, 2017), 23. Note that Waerland’s works are now reprinted by far-right publishers.

98. Waerland, Känn dig själv, 26–46.

99. Waerland, Känn dig själv, 93–105.

100. Waerland, Känn dig själv, 103.

101. Waerland, Känn dig själv, 129.

102. Sven Olov Lindholm, ‘“Svensk frihet är vår lösen”: Lindholms tal på Östermalmstorg i Stockholm’, DSN, no 48, 23 June 1935, 4.

103. The figure of the brooder was probably a reference to Odin, see: Rydberg, Fädernas Gudasaga, 39.

104. DSN, ibid..

105. Are Waerland, Idealism och Materialism (Uppsala: J.A. Lindblads Förlag, 1924), 29–30.

106. Aristotle Kallis, ‘Fascism and the Right in Interwar Europe: Interaction, Entanglement, Hybridity’, in The Oxford Handbook of European History, 1914–1945, ed. by Nicholas Doumanis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 306–10.

107. E.g.: Mark Neocleous, Fascism (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1997), 1–6.

108. Bernt Hagtvet, ‘On the Fringe: Swedish Fascism 1920–1945’, in Who Were the Fascists? ed. by Stein U. Larsen (Oslo: Universitetsförlaget, 1980), 586.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Celestine S. Kunkeler

Celestine S. Kunkeler is a PhD student at the History Faculty of the University of Cambridge, where they have written a thesis on myth and respectability in Swedish and Dutch fascism in the 1930s. Their main research interest is in political cultures of the far-Right in modern Europe, focusing primarily on fascism across the continent in the interwar period. They are interested in the way myths and identities are constituted through discourse and performance, and how these operate within and influence public debate and knowledge.