Abstract
In recent decades, it has become public knowledge among the post-war generations that Sweden was not as neutral during World War II as had been previously claimed.1 This belated realization has been dealt with in different ways in the Swedish public arena, to which crime fiction is an important contributor. Swedish crime fiction has a long tradition of conveying social criticism, and continuously scrutinizes topical issues. It is currently the most popular fiction genre in Sweden, and attracts a large Swedish (and international) readership.2 Accordingly, crime fiction is an important voice in the Swedish public arena. One of the increasingly popular themes in Swedish crime fiction has concerned the memory of Sweden’s role during World War II. Through these late twentieth and early twenty-first century fictional depictions, Swedish crime writers have taken part in reshaping Swedish collective, or social, World War II memory into a history that lets Swedes feel better about themselves and their past. In this chapter, Swedish crime fiction from the first decade of the twenty-first century will be examined in order to identify how this is done.
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Notes
After World War II, an official investigation, the Sandler Commission, was made into Swedish refugee policies and the activities of the Swedish security police during the war. A few other similar efforts were also made but only lasted a couple of years. And while the above resulted in the levelling of harsh criticism, there were no legal consequences. Thereafter, the extent of Sweden’s wartime activities remained concealed for a long time. (Cf. Johan Östling, Nazismens sensmoral. Svenska erfarenheter i andra världskrigets efterdyning (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2008) pp. 105–112
Johan Östling, ‘Småstadsrealismens sensmoral. Svenska berättelser om andra världskriget’, in Historieforskningen på nya vägar, Klas-Göran Karlsson, Eva Helen Ulvros and Ulf Zander (eds) (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006) pp. 163–179
Jie-Hyun Lim, ‘Mapping Mass Dictatorship. Towards a Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Dictatorship’, in Jie-Hyun Lim and Karen Petrone (eds) Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship. Global Perspectives (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Lars Gyllenhaal and Lennart Westberg, Svenskar i krig 1914–1945 (Lund: Historiska Media, 2008), pp. 334–335.
These political parties did, however, not have any real power and were not very successful in public elections (cf. Östling, Nazismens sensmoral, p. 28). Tobias Hubinette, the somewhat controversial Swedish Korean studies scholar and Nazi expert, has examined the seven Swedish Nazi parties that were most important during World War II. Hübinette’s lists of members and other people associated with these parties (and with the pro-German association Riksföreningen Sverige-Tyskland) contains around 28,000 names (Tobias Hübinette, Den svenska nationalsocialismen. Medlemmar och sympatisörer 1931–1945 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2002).
Helene Lööw’s Nazismen i Sverige 1924–1979. Pionjärerna, partierna, propagandan (Stockholm: Ordfront förlag, 2004).
Bibi Jonsson’s Blod och jord i trettiotalet. Kvinnorna och den antimoderna stromningen (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2008), pp. 195–199.
Arne Dahl, Europa Blues. Kriminalroman (Malmö: Bra Böcker, 2001), p. 301.
For a discussion of crime fiction as popular science, see Kerstin Bergman, ‘Crime Fiction As Popular Science. The Case of Åsa Nilsonne’, in Codex and Code. Aestethcis, Language and Politics in an Age of Digital Media, Kerstin Bergman} et al. (eds) (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press}, Issue 42, 2
Henning Mankell, The Return of the Dancing Master (Danslärarens återkomst, 2000), translated by Laurie Thompson (London: Vintage, 2003), pp. 465–466.
Emma Vall, Vänskapspakt (Stockholm: Alfabeta bokförlag, 2000), p. 70.
Sven Westerberg, Flugfiskaren (Göteborg: Tre Böcker, 2006), pp. 50
Peter Gissy, Man med kapuschong (Göteborg: Tre Böcker, 2004), pp. 184–188
Ann Rosman, Fyrmastarens dotter (Malmö: Damm förlag, 2009), pp. 179–182
Olle Lönnaeus, Det som ska sonas (Malmö: Damm förlag, 2009), p. 276.
Inger Jalakas, Den ryske mannen (Stockholm: Normal förlag, 2006), pp. 109–110.
Inger Kampås, Människans varg (Stockholm: Prisma, 2004), pp. 247–248
Bill Nichols, Blurred Boundaries. Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. ix.
Aino Trosell, Om hjärtat ännu slår (Stockholm: Prisma, 2000), pp. 243–271.
Dahl, Europa Blues, p. 300. In 1936, Harald Lundborg, director of the Swedish State Institute for Racial Biology (Statens institut för rasbiologi, SIFR) and an outspoken pro-Nazi, was replaced as director by Gunnar Dahlberg, who was more interested in medicine and statistics than in racial hygiene (Gunnar Broberg, Statlig rasforskning. En historik över Rasbiologiska institutet, 2nd ed. (Lund: Lund Studies in the History of Science and Ideas/Ugglan 4, 1995)).
Hans-Walter Schmuhl, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics 1927–1945. Crossing Boundaries (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), pp. 29–30.
Nils Hansson, Göran Bergkvist and Peter M. Nilsson, ‘Svenska läkare var gäster vid nazisternas elitskola’, Läkartidningen, no. 5, vol. 106 (2009), pp. 301–303.
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© 2013 Kerstin Bergman
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Bergman, K. (2013). The Good, the Bad and the Collaborators: Swedish World War II Guilt Redefined in Twenty-First-Century Crime Fiction?. In: Schoenhals, M., Sarsenov, K. (eds) Imagining Mass Dictatorships. Mass Dictatorship in the 20th Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330697_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137330697_10
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