in Liberal debateThea Andersson calls for a break in the recent deadlock in Swedish politics. At a time when Swedish governments rely on long, heavily negotiated agreements and form fractious alliances, words alone have lost their power. “Maybe we're just looking for one person — a giant,” Anderson wonders.
But is Sweden too small for its political giants? never. Traditionally, its political history has been shaped by people whose mere presence transformed the political climate, bringing the country together rather than polarizing it. Former Prime Ministers Olof Palme and Tage Erlander, former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld… there is a long list to choose from.
“To be a giant, you have to be flawless, always thinking, and never write bad ideas in online forums that stick around forever,” Anderson says. Today the imperative of compromise may be too strong to resist, and pragmatism may be so deeply rooted in the system that it is impossible to break. Could competition and self-interest make space too small for a potential giant?
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Feminist giant
During the early nineteenth century, as feudal social structures and the power of the nobility began to collapse, the center of Swedish intellectual life shifted to the market-driven urban bourgeoisie. In this early phase of commercialization and capitalism, women emerged as participants in the public sphere. Henrik Dahlgaard writes about the revolution that changed Swedish literature and culture – and about one of its main heroes: Frederika Bremer.
Raised in an authoritarian household but with an early interest in British liberal intellectuals, Bremer became Sweden's most profound feminist writer of the time. While the family unit as a restrictive force on female life remains at the heart of her novel Herta“Woman's right to exist as an individual with her own agency and right to self-realization” was the most important idea.
The message spread not only through the novel itself, but also through newspaper reviews and opinion pieces distributed throughout the country during the early stages of modernization. The widespread controversy it sparked Herta During the 1850s it led to women being granted legal status for the first time.
Through the business press, ideas emerged Herta It could be published, or even generalized, Dalgaard says. This made Frederika Bremer not only an important intellectual during her time, but 150 years later, a feminist giant.
Giant or extraterrestrial?
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is 1.95cm tall, 95kg and 47 lbs. He is a big man. Mikael Lofgren explores how the football hero continues to challenge perceptions of what the Swedish giants can be. “Zlatan’s audacity was a long-awaited middle finger to the know-it-alls in majority society,” he writes.
After his breakthrough in the 2000s, Ibrahimovic – or Zlatan as he is referred to everywhere in his homeland – became the contemporary fictional character of the Swedish welfare state: a symbol of the multicultural society, lifted out of poverty through football. In prosperity.
In 2017, his local club Malmö FF erected a statue in front of the stadium depicting Zlatan in celebration mode, with superhuman size and bulging muscles. At the unveiling, Zlatan declared that he was “a symbol for everyone who feels they don't fit in, or look like others.” I am living proof of exactly this. If I can do it, others can too. We are all the best at what we do.
A month later, Zlatan invested the money in a rival club, Hammarby Stockholm. The anger of Malmö supporters led to regular attacks against the statue, often with racist overtones. He was eventually moved to a secret location.
Lofgren wrote that Zlatan overestimated his global stardom and ignored tribalism in football. cocky Arrogant is the best word to describe him – a trait that stems from his own experience of expatriation, a trait that would always react against something particularly normative in Swedish culture.
