The Country That Made Its Own Canon

"That the country which bestows Nobel Prizes should play this parlor game is no surprise. Less expected was how the Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel in Literature each year, condemned the project. "Anyone who wishes to establish a canon is by definition seeking to make their own small, authoritative list, which requires instrumentalizing literature and using it ideologically," the Academy's secretary, Mats Malm, wrote. This opposition was part of a broader debate that has swept the country, amid the rise of a conservative government and a demographic transformation that has called into question the very idea of "Swedish culture.""

"In the past twelve years, more than a million people have migrated to Sweden, a country of fewer than eleven million. A fifth of its residents are foreign-born, and a population that was for centuries mostly white and Lutheran has become far more diverse. After a period of relative openness to immigrants, and especially to asylum seekers, public opinion and policy have shifted. Immigrants are now regularly blamed for taking resources from the state, driving an increase in gang and gun violence, and contributing to the country's high unemployment rate-around eight per cent, twice that of the United States."

Sweden published a national kulturkanon of one hundred works and accomplishments, combining canonical art with national institutions and inventions. The list included Strindberg, Hilma af Klint, the Vasaloppet ski race, the invention of paternity leave, laws, churches, and IKEA. The Swedish Academy condemned the canon as an ideological effort that creates an authoritative, instrumentalizing list. Over the past twelve years more than a million people migrated to Sweden, making one-fifth of residents foreign-born and substantially diversifying the population. Public opinion shifted toward blaming immigrants for strained resources, rising gang violence, and high unemployment near eight percent. The Sweden Democrats emerged as a rising nationalist force.

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