'To become a citizen, you should know something about Sweden's values'

Local Sweden

25-03-2025

Trägårdh is in some ways a strange choice to lead an inquiry into how to build a list formalising Sweden's cultural heritage.
He only returned to the country in 2010, after 40 years living and teaching in the US, and he prepared the ground for his return with a best-selling book, The Swedish Theory of Love, which was provocatively titled
Är svensken människa?
in Swedish, meaning "Are Swedes human?".
He has always, he says, been ambivalent about Swedishness. "I
fled
Sweden when I was 17, so how much more ambivalent can you get?" he exclaims. "Sweden is a really extreme society, and in an interesting way, right?"
The main thesis of his book is that the Swedish welfare state, frequently seen as a collectivist enterprise, in fact expresses an extreme individualism, and is aimed primarily at freeing individuals from reliance on dependence on relatives and friends.
But his mixed feelings about Sweden, he says, do not diminish the importance he gives to citizens of the country understanding its culture and unwritten rules.
"We have a lot of people today that are foreign-born in Sweden, ranging from expats, who are doing very well in terms of their jobs, to refugee migrants who are in a more difficult position," he says.
"Everybody needs to understand this country to survive, to be successful and possibly even happy. And so you need a roadmap and a compass to manoeuvre in society. It doesn't mean that you have to like every bit, but you do have to understand how it works."
Fostering that understanding is his main mission, he claims.
"That's really what drives me, in my work as an historian, as a public intellectual, and in this job with the cultural canon."
READ ALSO:
What do we know about the plans for a future Swedish cultural canon?
A broader canon
When the proposal to develop a Swedish cultural canon was included in the Tidö Agreement between the far-right Sweden Democrats and the three government parties, the inspiration came from Denmark, where the canon comprises 108 works of cultural excellence in eight categories: architecture, visual arts, design and crafts, film, literature, music, performing arts, and children's culture.
But Trägårdh has from the start pushed against this, favouring a broader concept that will also draw on fields like history and engineering.
"I'm sure some of them are surprised by my take. But I did warn everybody to begin with that I'm not just your sort of regular guy who runs a commission," he grins. "I did offer the advice to think twice before they offered me this job."
Lars Trägårdh at the press conference launching his inquiry into a new cultural canon. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT
'A story about who we are'
The plan is now to split the canon into two parts.
"We have what we call the two sectors of the Swedish cultural canon, one which is about the arts, and the other which is society."
The way he sees it, a cultural canon is nothing new. Swedes had a strong sense of a common cultural heritage from the early 19th century right up until the mid-20th century, with the first state-run schools educating young Swedes about their shared background, and "bringing them up to be both Swedes but also citizens".
"It was based on a story about who we are, who we were, and who we might become, and that stuff was really important for creating a society that was democratic, and also, unusually, high-trust."
Advertisement
It was only after the Second World War, he argues, that the ideologies of modernism, internationalism and multiculturalism started to take hold, leading to this shared cultural understanding being swept away.
"This had tremendous positive effects, but it also meant there was a gaze away from history and from Swedish culture. Swedes became post-national and anti-nationalist. You can applaud that, but there is a loss involved."
The impact, he argues, has not just been on Swedes' identity and a sense of belonging, but also on the integration of immigrants.
"This happened to coincide with an explosion of immigration, so just at the moment when you needed some really good efforts at transmitting fundamental knowledge, that was all gone, and we're paying a price for that. Sweden has had a horrible time in terms of integrating newcomers to the country."
READ ALSO:
What books and art can we expect to be have in Sweden's cultural canon?
Advertisement
Citizenship tests
Trägårdh wants the canon to counter this and hopes it will be drawn on for future citizenship tests, will influence the school curriculum, and will even feed into special education programmes for foreigners who come to Sweden.
"Citizenship is a social contract," he argues. "If you're going to become a citizen, you should know something about the laws and the values of the country that you're becoming a citizen of."
He insists however, that if the canon is used in future citizenship tests based the questions should be relatively easy, as they are in the US, and not "onerous", as he says the questions prospective citizens have to answer in France tend to be.
"I think it is important that you learn something about the culture. That seems to me to be highly useful and hardly controversial, but I think the test should be more along American lines than French lines," he says. "The point is not to punish people, but to celebrate something that we all now have in common."
He doesn't see including the canon in citizenship tests as in any way exclusionary.
"Underlying all of this is [the idea] that citizenship needs to
mean
something. It's not like, 'I'm a citizen of five different countries. It just gives me an extra passport in case I lose the other one'. There's an element of a social contract. We belong in a country. We have responsibilities towards each other.
"The social contract idea, centered around citizenship and some notion of society where we actually live together seems to me to be hardly scandalous or exclusionary," he continues. "On the contrary, it's a way to include people."
Lars Trägårdh photographed outside a school in Södermalm, Stockholm. Photo: Judit Nilsson/SvD
Angry minorities
Two of the groups Trägårdh has managed to anger since he was appointed to lead the inquiry last spring are indigenous minorities such as the Sami and Tornedalians, and immigrants to Sweden.
After a meeting with Trägårdh in October, seven representatives of Sweden's five national minorities complained they had been informed that they would neither be given positions among the two expert groups who will decide on the two canons, nor any influence over the contents.
"I have no
gräddfil
[
literally "sour cream", but meaning "special treatment"
] for either Tornedalians or Bandy fans," he told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, indicating that he didn't see ethnic identity as having any greater significance than membership of an association around a sport like bandy, a variant of ice hockey.
"People don't understand the extent of my respect for voluntary organisations, which is an absolutely important part of Swedish society," he protests when The Local accuses him of being provocative. "And if you're going to suggest that people don't have any identity connected to sports, think again. These things are important."
Advertisement
Marlen Eskander, an Iraqi-born member of the inquiry team, resigned in October claiming Trägårdh had not been open to her suggestions, one of which was to include the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Babylonian epic, in the canon as a gesture to the heritage to Iraqis in Sweden.
Both of these conflicts, Trägårdh argues, stem from his opposition to identify politics or ethnic nationalism of any form, describing himself instead as a "civic nationalist", or "citizenship universalist".
"Diversity is a wonderful thing, particularly in a voluntary society. But we also actually do need to take seriously the need for a common 'we'," he argues.
"I think ethnic nationalism is very deeply problematic. I was doing a double critique, both of the Sweden Democrats and of the Sami, because both of them are subscribing to forms of ethnic nationalism, and I don't think that's the way to go forward. The only thing that can unite us in a modern society like Sweden is citizenship."
He dismisses the criticism that members of the two committees now deciding on the canon all have an ethnic Swedish background, saying that they had been selected on the basis of expertise alone.
"We were not trying to achieve representation. We were trying to achieve actual knowledge, and particularly a broad knowledge that will allow you to think not about this group or that group."
Advertisement
Sweden Democrat backing for idea
While the impetus for including the canon in the government's programme may have come from the Sweden Democrats, Trägårdh pushes back at the idea that it is a far-right project.
"There are a lot of political anxieties around this commission. People who are from the left think of this as a kind of a conspiracy from the Sweden Democrats to eliminate all kinds of diversity."
The reality, he argues, is that it builds on a long tradition of popular education, or
folkbildning
, in Sweden, culminating in the book
Medborgarkunskap
("Civic Knowledge"), by the Social Democrat educationalist Värner Rydén, which was published in 1922. The Liberal Party, he says, has been campaigning for a cultural canon since 2006, long before the Sweden Democrats began to push for one.
At any rate, he says, politicians have kept what in Sweden is called a "double arms-length distance" from the project, and there has been no attempt whatsoever to influence him.
Advertisement
So what happens next?
The two committees now have until the summer to decide on their two lists, while Trägårdh himself will work on the inquiry's conclusions, which will include thoughts on the idea of a canon, comparisons to other countries' systems, and recommendations for how the canon should be used.
The inquiry is due to deliver its report on August 31st and despite the project's tempestuous start, Trägårdh is in no doubt that he will deliver.
"We'll be ready by the deadline. There's no question about that."