Swedishness on Stage

Globalization, stagflation and economic uncertainty challenged the Swedish welfare model during the 1980s, driving renegotiations of state-market relations domestically as well as re-conceptualizations of Sweden’s place in the world internationally. This article addresses how a key media event – the 1638–1988 New Sweden 350th Anniversary of the New Sweden Colony in North America (New Sweden-88) – reflects these shifts. Drawing upon materials from the National Committee for New Sweden ’88 and various public-private Swedish-American foundations and initiatives as well as Swedish and US media reception, the paper argues that these renegotiations of Swedish self-identity in the late 1980s contributed in certain ways to prepare the intellectual ground for far-ranging reforms of the Swedish welfare model which followed during the globalized 1990s.

A 17. századi svéd gyarmatosítás egy rövid epizódja

The possibility of Swedish colonialism emerged for the first time during the reign of Gustav II Adolph of Sweden (1611–1632), when he issued a decree on the policy of Swedish colonization outside Europe in 1625. The Kingdom of Sweden was one of the most spectacularly expanding states in Europe in the 17th century, and the unmatched success of Swedish dynasticism was primarily due to their expansive foreign policy. The establishment of the Swedish colonization of the era – the founding of New Sweden in North America and the Swedish Gold Coast in West Africa – composed important foreground to the Swedish expansion. It is essential to explore the Dutch cultural transfer and intermediation in order to analyze the phenomenon of Swedish colonization, as the political and economic relations with The Hague (Staten-Generaal) and the activity of Dutch agents, diplomats, artists, architects, traders and entrepreneurs produced important background for the Kingdom of Sweden’s ambitions in the 17th century. The present study summarizes the Swedish colonization in North America and examines the activities of the Swedish Africa Company (Svenska Afrikakompaniet) from 1648–1649 to 1663, from the point of view of the Swedish–Dutch cultural transfers of the era, due to the Dutch affiliates involved in the operation of the company.

In search of New Sweden: discovering the ‘American curiosities’ of Samuel Hesselius

In 1736 Samuel Hesselius, former pastor for the Swedish parishes in Pennsylvania, donated a collection of ‘American curiosities’ to Lund University in Sweden. Within less than twenty years, however, the collection had apparently disappeared. In the course of the past three decades the lost ethnographic artefacts have received increasing attention, but for a variety of reasons the collection has remained undetected – despite its importance having been highlighted by scholars from several academic fields since 1871 and despite the fact that the majority of the ethnographic artefacts ultimately turned out to have been on public display throughout this period (albeit with erroneous provenances) at the Historical Museum. Through examination of the archives and collections of Lund University, we have now been able to trace Hesselius’s ethnographic material – one of the oldest and largest collections of its kind – so that it now provides an invaluable snapshot of early eighteenth-century America.

Scandinavia in the Atlantic World

The Scandinavian countries established overseas settlements in Africa and the Americas, starting in the 17th century. In Africa, trading stations were initially established with the consent of local rulers. The Danish trading stations on the Gold Coast developed in time into a more formal colony. In the Americas, Scandinavian settlements were of various natures, including the short-lived settlement colony of New Sweden and slavery-based plantation societies in the Caribbean. The Caribbean colonies would bear resemblance to many other Caribbean plantation economies of the time. The Scandinavian countries also participated in the transatlantic slave trade: while these countries might have been responsible for a quite small share of the total transatlantic slave trade, the trade was large compared to the size of the domestic population in these countries. The formal abolition of the slave trade, and later of slavery, in the Scandinavian colonies made the colonial possessions unimportant or even burdens for the Scandinavian states, so that the colonies eventually were sold to other European nations.