I am writing in response to Martin Gelin’s article (How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden, 11 September). Gelin is right to lament how far Swedish politics has moved from the liberal internationalism of the Fredrik Reinfeldt era. Having grown up in Malmö, I have seen how border controls with Denmark affect an Öresund region whose everyday life has long depended on easy movement across the strait. Gelin is right to see this retreat from openness as consequential.
But to say that Sweden has therefore “lost its soul” goes too far. Its political shift is neither uniquely Swedish nor evidence that the country has somehow ceased to be itself. Reinfeldt’s “open your hearts” Sweden faded in much the same European political moment as Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” Germany. Across the European mainland, mainstream parties have adopted more restrictive positions on migration.
The cases involving British citizens that Gelin describes are troubling, but Britain’s departure from the EU is also part of the explanation for why Britons in Sweden now face immigration rules from which freedom of movement once spared them. Sweden has changed. So has Britain. Neither exists in a vacuum.
There is nothing wrong with romanticising an open, internationalist Sweden. As a young Swede studying at Cambridge, I am susceptible to that image myself. But defining one particular political settlement as Sweden’s “soul” risks turning nostalgia into national essentialism.
Perhaps Jantelagen – the Scandinavian suspicion of thinking oneself exceptional – offers a more Swedish conclusion. We should not imagine that our political upheavals make us uniquely fallen. Sweden has changed, considerably and sometimes regrettably. It has not stopped being Sweden.
Alvin Engström
Cambridge
Martin Gelin’s analysis of how Sweden is losing its soul rings true – unfortunately. After living in Sweden for 33 years, I have never felt more like a foreigner than I do now. I am British (of Scottish origin) and moved to Sweden in 1993, at the age of 37, to live with my Swedish husband and our two children. I remember being so impressed by the social benefits, the access to good and affordable childcare and the job opportunities for women – precisely the ideals Martin describes. Over the past 10. years, opposition to immigration has grown in the wake of the so-called refugee “flood” of 2015, when the door was wide open. Sadly, that door is now permanently closed, and locked.
In recent years, I have repeatedly been asked whether I consider myself Swedish (I have dual nationality). At first, I didn’t think much of it, but over time, I began to find the question very irritating. On one occasion, an older Swedish woman said it didn’t matter if I didn’t feel Swedish, because “we see you as one of us anyway”. I am ashamed to admit that I snapped at her over the word “us”; I know she meant well, but it made me realise just how divisive the question was. The mere fact that it was being asked by nice, ordinary, polite people was playing right into the hands of the far right.
I love my life in Sweden and have no plans to move, but the divisiveness has got under my skin and is hard to ignore.
Jean Fridh
Katrineholm, Sweden
