Three books about being Swedish

One of the great things about not stressing in a day job is that I read a lot of books. There is something about reading a book on paper that beats the online bite sized reading that otherwise fills up most of our smartphone enriched days.

I’ve become a frequent visitor of my local library and I haul through second hand stores to pick up titles with a few decades behind them. Plus I have a friend with a shared interest in Sweden, Ukraine and Russia that pushes me books on these topics.

These days I gravitate towards factual books on history and contemporary topics with the occasional novel thrown in. Being quicker to drop a book that doesn’t spark my interest also helped me cover a lot of material.

In this post I talk about three books that made my world larger in the last six months. They each give an account of what it means to be Swedish.

The man with black hair

In the Autumn of 1990 Stockholm was shocked by a series of shootings. All except one victim survived but not without permanent injuries. As the first victims reported seeing a red light from a laser scope, the media soon named the mysterious shooter “Laser Man”. All victims were men with black hair. The police caught the serial killer but not until almost one year later. Born in Sweden as a son of immigrants, a mother from Germany, a father from Switzerland. They moved to Sweden to start a better life after the Second World War. Things did not go well for him and at some point — after walking out from a mental institution — he decided to take it out on criminal immigrants. Except he couldn’t really find any criminal immigrants, so he went with any with black hair — like himself.

This is also a time where the media coverage of immigrants changed in Sweden. Populist politicians got attention by making unfounded claims about immigrants. Neo nazism spread. In local communities all over Sweden there were arson attacks against refugee centres. Pranks, the Swedish prime minister at that time called it. True in the sense that of the cases solved, all assaults had been done by local troublemakers, not planned and executed by a central group. But certainly not something to be belittled when it happened so widespread and so frequent. And certainly also related to the Neo nazi movement, the uncritical media coverage, and the lack of legislation against incitement against ethnic groups.

This happened long before I moved to Sweden (which I did in 2011). I am familiar with how the public opinion in Denmark changed in the 1990s on immigration. How Danish People’s Party grew but always under a guise of “we are not nazis, just regular Danes”. But to learn that the Swedish Democrats political party traces a clear line back to Swedish nazi sympathisers left unchecked after the Second World War. And today gets 20% of the votes in Swedish elections. That makes you think. 

If nothing else then because I’m now an immigrant. I live in a cultural diverse suburb of Stockholm. The only nationality missing here are ethnic Swedes. They have long since moved. Even if I don’t have brown skin, I will never pass as an “ethnic Swede”. There are too many subtle cultural codes and hidden cues in the language that I will never learn. At best I will be a Dane whose Swedish is very easy to understand. And leave my own little fingerprint on what it means to be Swedish. 

Highly recommended book. 

Lasermannen: En berättelse om Sverige. Gellert Tamas. 2002.

Choosing not to be Russian

Lena Wilderäng was born in Moscow in what was then the Soviet Union. She moved to Sweden as a teenager. As an adult she was a professional adventurer, taking tourists for mountain climbing and sightseeing in there former Soviet countries. Until the war between Russia and Ukraine made that impossible. She had Russian speaking friends and friends and relatives also in Ukraine. 

In her book the Sunflower Effect, she gives a personal account of how her life changed on February 22nd 2022 when Russia began the full scale invasion of Ukraine. Coming to terms that she would have to pick sides and that side so overwhelmingly came out in favour of Ukraine. The process of giving up her Russian passport. How she ended up buying up, preparing, and driving fire trucks and ambulances to first responders in Ukraine. Life as a volunteer. Helping with a burning passion that at times threatens to tear her apart. Learning how to help with integrity and respect for the people being helped and to also take care of herself.

Lena chose to be Swedish. And to show what it (also) means to be Swedish. Highly recommended book. 

Solroseffekten: Att hjälpa krigets Ukraina. Lena Wilderäng. 2024.

Being Swedish in Ukraine

On the right bank of Dniepr in Ukraine not far from Kherson, there lies a village whose name in Ukrainian translates to ‘Old Swedish Town’. The inhabitants there to this day speak Swedish and practice Swedish protestanism. Right on the front line they suffer from daily Russian terror, bombings of churches and community centres. Drone attacks on civilian cars. Water and electricity long since gone. Old people waiting out the war for lack of better options.

It is bad today. It was bad during the First World War, during the Russian Civil War, during the Holodomor, the Reign of Terror and during the Second World War. Yet the Swedish sweat and blood spilled on this land go way back to 1782 where Catharine the Great wanted skilled farmers to settle the steppe around Kherson. She invited farmers from an island called Dagö off the coast of Estonia in the Baltic Sea. These farmers themselves descended from immigrants from what is today Finland. Invited centuries earlier by the Teutonic Knights to settle the lands and provide services for passing ships.

Yet what makes the account most gripping is the story of those people of Gammalsvenskby who moved “back” to Sweden in 1928, just before the Great Depression. To a country where they knew no-one. And when political winds changed, didn’t welcome them with open arms. So many chose to move on to Canada, or to return to Soviet Ukraine. Only to live through Holodomor and Stalin’s Reign of Terror. To then be “liberated” by the Wehrmacht. Vengeance had upon neighbours. Young men drafted to fight for Hitler, then when the front moved, to be “liberated” by the red army. Vengeance returned. Young men drafted for the red army. I kid you not.

If anyone can answer the question: What does it mean to be Swedish? You will want to hear them out.

The book itself is unevenly written, a hard read at times. But the accounts, the individual destinies and stories told. How much suffering and the choices they had to make and live with afterwards. So hard to take in that the world can be so cruel.

Historien om Gammalsvenskby och svenskättlingarna i Ukraina. Jörgen Hedman. 2023.

To be Swedish

So what does it mean to be Swedish?

My passport says I’m Swedish. I also have one that says I’m Danish. I subscribe to the notion that people self select their group identities. If someone claims they are Swedish, I will meet them as such. Of course I will then expect them to live in Sweden, speak Swedish and at least share some of the same values as me. The Rule of Law. International cooperation. Individual freedom with a high sense of service to the public common good. Paying taxes. But on the details, I will listen and learn. There is so much to learn about the world from other people. Whether you have black hair or not.