En alldeles svensk historia

by Kajsa Norman

"Kajsa Normans beskrivning av det svenska hyckleriet och dess paradoxer är mer medryckande än en thriller."
The Times

Sommaren 2015, under musikfestivalen We Are Sthlm, skedde en mängd sexuella övergrepp mot tonårsflickor i publiken. Både polis och vittnen på plats förväntade sig stora rubriker i media efter händelsen, men istället: total tystnad.

När massövergreppen i Köln ett halvår senare kommer fram i offentlighetens ljus börjar så plötsligt svenska medier rapportera om vad som hänt på festivalen. Men varför först nu? När reportern Chang Frick börjar nysta i historien så skapas en kedjereaktion som skakade Sverige. Ingen ville ta ansvar för den uteblivna rapporteringen, eller svara på den obekväma frågan om faktumet att de misstänkta förövarna var ensamkommande flyktingbarn hade påverkat rapporteringen.

Trots att den svenska tryckfriheten är bland de äldsta i världen, har landets historia, präglad av homogenitet och social ingenjörskonst, skapat en konsensuskultur som få vågar bryta mot. Den som ställer sig utanför åsiktskorridoren utmålas snabbt som extrem. I denna internationellt hyllade bok skildrar journalisten Kajsa Norman det dolda förtryck som präglar den svenska demokratin.

Genres: Sweden, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Cultural, Crime

Hardcover

Published April 29, 2019

About the author

As a writer, I’m fascinated by the way in which people and power structures act and react in extreme, politically charged environments, such as dictatorships and conflict zones.

At the age of 15 I left my hometown Hudiksvall in the north of Sweden and moved to Brazil. I’ve been on the road ever since, traversing all seven continents and living in over 20 different cities.

I began my writing career as editor-in-chief of the Mid Sweden University magazine in the year 2000. From there my trade as a journalist took me on extended assignments around the world. Besides various Swedish newspaper and magazine postings, I have covered finance as a reporter at The Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina and innovation as a journalist in Silicon Valley. I also spent a semester at Stanford University as an Innovation Journalism Fellow examining the impacts of technology on society.

My first book, about political prisoners in Cuba, was published in 2003 by Swedish publishing house Silc förlag. My second book, on the state of the opposition movement in Zimbabwe, came out in Swedish in 2010. It is also available in English under the title Give Me Cholera – Forging a Future for Zimbabwe.
In 2011 and 2012 I lived in South Africa where I researched Bridge Over Blood River, a non-fiction book about racism and the Afrikaners' fight for survival in the new South Africa. Renowned author and Africa expert Henning Mankell took an early interest in the project, becoming an important mentor to me. The book was published in Swedish in 2015, with a foreword by Mankell. In October 2016 it was published in English (by Hurst Publishers, in the UK and Oxford University Press (OUP) in the USA).

A Hero’s Curse – The Perpetual Liberation of Venezuela came out in Swedish in 2015 and in English in 2017. It covers the rise and fall of Hugo Chávez and how the pursuit of heroism has defined Venezuelan politics.

In my latest book, Sweden’s Dark Soul – The Unravelling of a Utopia, I take a close look at my native Sweden, scrutinizing the repercussions of the Swedish herd mentality on our democratic institutions. What happens to a country when brand and ideology takes precedence over free speech, real debate, and true pluralism of opinion?

In between writing assignments I have served as press and information officer for the Swedish Armed Forces in Afghanistan and Mali, and as an election observer for the OSCE. I enjoy photography, outdoor recreation, and spending time with my family travelling the world.

Reviews

[Jakob · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Swede, it's hard to actually appreciate how complex our social norms seem to outsiders. This book tells of the long standing social engineering that has made the swedish psyche, and its harrowing consequences for people who do not fit in. It is framed around the unreported mass sexual assaults at a youth festival in Stockholm in 2015, when young men from Afghanistan in assaulted young girls in an organized fashion. It was followed with silence. Both from the police, who didnt make any arrests, and the media, who didn't report anything. This book tries to answer how a country which sees itself as the most feminist state in the world came to this.
What emerges in the historical rundown of the swedish state is a form of authoritarianism, where people are towed into internalizing the consensus opinion. At one point, the author claims that Swedes have an ingrained capacity to know what not to say, which opinions are faux pas, and to fear the repurcussions of their surroundings. I am bound to agree.
This is a book that from the beginning grips the third rail of Swedish politics, namely the immigration issue, and doesn't let go. It probably says something about my social conditioning that, while I found myself agreeing with most of the contents, it still gave me a vague uneasy feeling reading it.
This is a not at all flattering look at the Swedish psyche, but one that is necessary to correct an often self-inflated view of Swedish culture and norms.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Propaganda for The Sweden Democrats, disguised as investigative journalism.

The Sweden Democrats are a right-wing populist party similar to the British UKIP, but have their roots much more deeply planted in the violent far right.

If you Google two of the protagonists of this story: Chang Frick and Katerina Janouch you’ll find more reputable and diligent exposes of their motivation.

Very unsavoury links to Russia and suggestions of funding by the Sweden Democrats.

Norman fails to mention some very troubling questions surrounding their politics and connections. Instead presenting them as modern freedom fighters, innocently standing up against the oppressive Swedish State.

Read it by all means, but read it alongside some of the more trustworthy investigative journalism written on this subject. Question the rhetoric of Norman’s narrative.

Without caution, this book becomes another piece of far right propaganda.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

In "Sweden's Dark Soul," Norman explores some of the less flattering sides to Sweden, it's people, and our history. Hypocrisy is alive and well, we're fed it from day one. She centers the book around a slew of mass sexual assaults of young women/girls by primarily Afghan men during a youth festival in Stockholm 2015, but skillfully weaves in a number of related narratives.

Seriously, there are some real crazy doozies in here. Among them a hard look on Sweden's past of heavy handed, eugenically based sterilization programs (including a few accounts of young women who lived too close to military bases), racist laws (ironically some of the laws we laud today, like our animal rights laws for example, were instituted for all the wrong reasons), colonial ambitions, dabbles with slavery, cooperation with Nazi Germany during WWII, and the ever present, more or less coercive herding towards the middle road and consensus - deviate and you will likely be shunned, ignored, and/or defamed.

While a lot of this should be viewed with some realpolitik and nuance through historical glasses - for example, cooperating with the Nazis was a political necessity to stay out of the war, neutrality always has a cost (admittedly, and for that reason, it can be debated whether neutrality is a thing or not) - but a lot of it pertains to contemporary issues in Sweden.

Specifically, Norman illustrates both the staunch denial of racism and its odd fellow, the refusal to acknowledge or discuss some of the real challenges surrounding immigration and immigrants. She does this by telling the stories of a few individuals in what almost amounts to hero-portrayals. Chang Frick in particular gets the hero treatment since he's the one who finally broke the mass sexual assault scandal - and named the journalist at Dagens Nyheter (DN, arguably Sweden's journalistic gold standard and largest morning daily newspaper) who had passed on the story when it happened.

The "protagonist" stories are, however, a bit problematic. While Norman is rightly critical of the mainstream news media in the book, she appears to bend over backwards to legitimize Frick's journalistic endeavors. Admittedly, as she points out, Frick has not published any more fake news than the mainstream - and he has managed to dig up reputable stories that live up to high quality standards despite being largely shunned by big media outlets and government officials and organizations. Nonetheless, there are more than one way to be political with news. Frick's weapon of choice is and has been story selection. He actively chooses stories that emphasize the negatives of immigration, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. In short, Frick has been - more or less - the media opinion driver for the Swedish Democrats (the far-right party of Sweden with roots in racism and Nazism - they even had a few Waffen-SS veterans as founding members back in 1988). He also served a term as municipality representative for the party after the 2010 election.

(For another perspective on Frick, I recommend Sverigevänner: ett reportage om det svenska nätkriget to those who read Swedish. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

In my opinion, it's a shame that Norman chose such questionable protagonists, because the story she tells is both very good and a necessary one. It shines a light on the previously mentioned contradictory yet mutually reinforcing dualism inherent within the Swedish "thought/opinion corridor" - essentially that which is acceptable to think and discuss officially. Where the denial of racism and denial of issues surrounding immigration, and the established political parties' unwillingness to touch the topics, allowed the Swedish Democrats to grow into a political force.

Although this has changed somewhat since Norman wrote this book, for years, the Swedish Democrats were the only ones willing to discuss that maybe everything wasn't great with the Swedish immigration system. The book shows that the same abstention from hot-potato topics was present in journalists who did not follow up on the story of mass sexual assault in 2015. While DN and the journalist named by Frick denies that they dropped the ball, the situation was (and is) not unique in Swedish news media. It continues today, albeit that what's "untouchable" shifts somewhat with time. Unfortunately, even when issues are addressed, it is not unusual to note misrepresentations of studies and statistics on certain topics. I believe this is simply because they do not always fit the agreed-upon truth.

Had Norman stuck to focusing on the less-flattering past wrongs of Sweden, how they came to happen, how they relate to - and to some degree allowed for - the harrowing events of the summer of 2015, and how both Swedish society and news media sometimes sacrifice the truth in pursuit of consensus and thinking "right," this book would have been fantastic. As it is, I find it too politically dishonest to sing its praises.

Nonetheless, I think it's a great book to read for those who are interested in a different perspective on Sweden. Just, you know, proceed with caution and skepticism. Verify.

[Måns Söderbom · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Sweden’s dark soul” was published in November 2018, and I became aware of it after stumbling across a positive review in The Times on November 17th. At the time of writing (Jan 2nd, 2019), it seems the book has gone unnoticed in Swedish media, but reviews have appeared in The Guardian and The Hindu (!). The fact that no Swedish newspaper has yet taken an interest in the book is intriguing in and of itself. Maybe this is because the book is only available in English, but it is also consistent with one of the themes of the book itself which is that established Swedish media will deliberately ignore contributions that challenge the prevailing Swedish liberal “model democracy”. It will be interesting to see if the book, in due course, gets any attention in the country that it critiques.

The starting point for Kajsa Norman’s storyline is the media silence following incidents of sexual assaults by what seems to have been primarily Afghan men on teenage girls at a music festival in Stockholm in August 2015. Norman argues quite convincingly that established media outlets considered these assaults too sensitive to cover, on the grounds that coverage would fuel further hostility towards immigrants in general. In January 2016, just after the mass sexual assaults in Cologne, leading Swedish broadsheet Dagens Nyheter decided to spin the story of the August incidents, and published articles accusing Swedish police of a cover-up. This provoked outrage among those who, several months earlier, had tried to alert media to the events at the Stockholm festival. Email and phone conversations between witnesses of the incidents and journalists and editors at Dagens Nyheter are intriguing and do not present the newspaper in a favourable light. The Swedish “opinion corridor” began to shift, and it gradually became more acceptable in mainstream media to openly discuss crime and antisocial behavior related to immigration, Still, the Swedish opinion corridor remains narrow, and individuals who are too critical of immigration are, the story goes, systematically excluded from the discourse.

What I have described above summarizes the start (“The Crime”) and end (“On the Tail of the Culprit”) points of the book. These, the strongest and most intriguing parts of the Norman’s narrative, shed light on several disturbing twists and turns of the public discourse in Sweden during the past decade. This is solid investigative journalism. The intermediate parts of the book comprise a mix between a brief account of Swedish history and the portrayal of the main individual characters of Norman’s storyline. In contrast to the investigative analysis, this is not Norman’s home turf. The description of Swedish history covers well-known ground, and the writing is not particularly inspiring. The tone of Norman’s historical account is mostly negative, lacks nuance, and there are certainly a few exaggerations (e.g. regarding the prevalence of home inspections in the 1930s) that might mislead readers not familiar with Swedish history. The author’s description of certain aspects of contemporaneous Swedish society is not very thoughtful and occasionally turns into a caricature: assertions like “Swedes (...) feel unconventional, a little wild and crazy, even, if they consume Friday-night tacos on a different day of the week” are silly, out of place, and slightly devalue Norman’s efforts overall. Moreover, Norman sometimes gets the facts completely wrong, e.g. when she mixes up the 2010 and 2014 election results for Sweden Democrats (p. 219).

Norman’s concluding message is that “we need as a nation, as a people, to hear criticism; to consider it, and to accommodate it where it makes sense to do so”. It is hard to disagree, but I suspect that, despite Norman’s efforts, the impact of “Sweden’s dark soul” on the Swedish debate will be pretty modest. Indeed, she may well fall victim to the exclusion mechanisms she discusses at length herself. She could have bettered her chances of impact by, for example, writing in Swedish, fact-checking more carefully, or rooting out the clichés of Swedishness (some of which are quite embarrassing). Despite its many weaknesses, the book is a welcome contribution to an important debate, and one can only hope that the response to the book will reflect the importance of the topic.

[O* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Det här var en intressant bok, och det var även intressant att i efterhand läsa de många recensionerna av dem, både i svenska och utländska medier, som har en räckvidd från ”författaren är en högerextrem rasist” till ”tankeväckande sanningar som vi inte gillar att läsa”. Som utlandssvensk känner jag igen mig i mycket av stoffet som behandlar det svenska kollektivet, hur alla förväntas göra, tycka och tänka lika om hur man bör leva sitt liv.

Texten är välskriven och lätt att följa. Mycket av det som skrivs känner man nog igen från den allmänna debatten och andra fora, men det är tankeväckande att läsa det i samlat format. För den som inte är bekant med Sveriges historia under andra världskriget, och den svenska hjälpen till Nazityskland ges även god information.

Jag är inte helt enig i den del som handlar om hur DN kanske mörkade händelserna kring övergreppen på festivalen We are Stockholm. Även om det finns en del iögonfallande märkligheter kring rapporteringen så kan jag inte själv dra slutsatsen att det var ett medvetet mörkande från tidningens sida, som författaren verkar mena. Jag rekommenderar alla intresserade att även lyssna på SR-programmet Mediernas genomlysning av fallet: https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/662154. Utöver en intervju med redaktionschefen på DN intervjuas även en professor i journalistik i programmet. Denne kommenterar åsiktskorridoren och hur den ändrade riktning som nästan över en natt hösten 2015 – väldigt intressant, och man får ännu en bild av hur det kan ske i Sverige, utöver den som boken ger.

Självklart är jag dock enig i analysen att svenska medier i allmänhet var/är försiktiga med att uttrycka kritik mot invandrare i allmänhet, och mycket försiktiga med att ge någon möjlighet/anledning att dra kopplingen ”hög invandring medför fler brott”.

Det är lätt att förstå att boken på en del svenska håll kommer ses som ännu en lans för Sverigedemokraterna, men jag hoppas den även leder till att de som läser den får insikter som gör att de tänker en gång till innan de automatiskt säger t ex att ”all invandring förstör Sverige” eller ”all invandring gynnar Sverige”. Rekommenderas.

[Jonatan Almfjord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Journalisten Kajsa Norman skriver om svenska normer, värderingar, politik och media i den här utmärkta boken. I En alldeles svensk historia alternerar kapitlen mellan olika teman: (1) Svensk historia och hur det lett fram till det vi idag kallar svensk kultur, (2) fallstudie av de övergrepp som skedde år 2015 på musikfestivalen We Are Sthlm, (3) fallstudie av den svenske journalisten Chang Frick, som var den första att rapportera om övergreppen 2015 och (4) en fallstudie av Samvel Atabekyan, en kille uppväxt i Armenien som tar sig till Sverige. Variationen i de olika kapitlen gör att boken kan uppfattas som splittrad till en början, men det dröjer inte länge innan man börjar förstå hur de olika temana vävs in i varandra. Resultatet är en riktigt bra bok.

Några guldkorn:

"Sundberg beskrev svenskarna som stela, känslokalla, nästintill autistiska, hopplöst opatriotiska, ständigt missnöjda med allt svenskt, men samtidigt snabba att prisa andras nationella strävanden." (Om Gustav Sundbärgs analys Det svenska folklynnet från 1911.)

""Väldigt osvenskt", skrattar Samvel nöjt. Att kalla en armenier oarmenisk eller en jänkare oamerikansk skulle betraktas som en grov förolämpning, men i Sverige används begreppet osvensk som en komplimang."

""Konspirationsteorier" från en "hatsajt". Chang stänger webbfönstret på sin dator och blir sittande framför skärmen. Pressens opinionsnämnd har aldrig fällt honom för att ha brutit mot god publicistisk sed. Ändå kommer skattefinansierade public service undan med att kalla honom hatsajt. Inget förvånar honom längre."

"Men ingen vill ensam spräcka fasaden. Bit för bit rivs i stället hela huset bakom fasaden, som får stå kvar. Så kommer det avgörande ögonblicket. På en given signal faller den gamla fasaden. Bakom den finns redan en ny. Den ser ut att alltid ha stått där. I ett slag är allting ändrat. Politiker, journalister, alla, följer med. Nu är det den här korridoren som gäller." (Citerat från Johan Hakelius text (2015) som försöker sätta ord på föreställningen om en "åsiktskorridor".)

[Richard Dennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

For someone living outside Sweden this is especially interesting and moving for its broad sweep of things meaningful. And whilst therefore very compelling, it is also very easy and lucid reading. And includes stuff such as this: 'In a country that closely monitors virtually everything that can be measured, no official statistics have been produced on crime prevalence among immigrants since 2005.' The Swedish Govt argue stats would not "add knowledge with the potential to improve Swedish society". 'In the absence of further research by the state, this has prompted a number of citizens to put together their own "studies". Published on blogs or alternative sites, these are most frequently focused on asserting a significant overrepresentation of immigrant as perpetrators of sexual violence. The lack of comment or statistics from official agencies means that these arguments cannot be debated with authority.'

[Keen Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Sweden is the loneliest country in the world. About half the population live alone-in Stockholm it is 60%-and one in four die alone.”

Me oh my am I glad that I picked this up on a whim! I didn’t realise how much I didn’t know about Sweden until I got my teeth into this belter of a book. I really enjoyed the approach that Norman took to writing this, she wisely chops her story up into short, sharp chapters which works really, really well and keeps it fresh and quick to read and soon spins a oh where is this going then?...feel to it. She teases out a few seemingly disparate stories and drip feeds a nicely told history of Sweden into the mix, setting a good tone and pace as she builds towards her points.

Norman delves into the nation’s slavery connections, as well as short lived colonies in New Sweden, by the Delaware River, Cabo Corso in Ghana. In 1784 Sweden finally acquired the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthelemy (St Barts) from France in return for trading rights in Gothenburg. The Swedish West Indian Company then formed to transport enslaved Africans to the Caribbean, with King Gustav III being the largest shareholder. A fee was charged for each slave leaving the island. The amount of slaves more than tripled in the 3 years that the Swedes took over the island to over 1,000.

“A total of 5,334 slaves were transported from Africa to St Barts under the Swedish flag. The peak years were 1801-1805.” Under Swedish rule, Gustavia was home to the largest slave auctions in the Caribbean. In 1815 the leaders of Europe met in Vienna to abolish slavery, in Gustavia the slave trade would continue until 1847.

We also learn of the many wars Sweden was involved in over the centuries and then some more modern history like the ideas of Bruk and Volksgeist, and the significance of politicians like Per Albin Hansson, Folkhem (people’s home) speech 1928 one of the founding fathers of socialism. Hjalmar Branting who became Sweden’s first Social Democrat PM in 1920 and the eventual emergence of the “Swedish Model” and the truly shocking assassination of the Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986.

Despite declaring itself neutral in WWII Sweden refused the Allies access to pass through, but instead allowed the Nazis to move through Sweden and the country, providing logistical support, with members of the public even showing up along the route with chocolates, fruits and flowers for the Nazis. The country played a vital part in ensuring that Germany had a reliable supply of high quality iron ore, which was essential in keeping Hitler’s war machine running, by 1941 45,0000 tons of ore were being shipped to them every day, and eventually 90% of Sweden’s foreign trade was with the Nazis.

We see that Sweden also had a long and dark fixation on eugenics, with many instances of forced sterilisation, in many cases it was done without the woman’s knowledge or permission and could result in death. In 1946 Alva Myrdal argued for mass sterilizations of welfare recipients. We learn that, “After the war, the Scandinavian countries were the only ones in Europe to apply laws that aimed to categorize people as “adequate” or “inferior”.” Between 1935 and 1975 more than 60,000 individuals were sterilized, at least 20,000 entirely against their will.

Norman also reveals that, “Sweden is near the top when it comes to the number of shootings per capita, in parity with certain regions of southern Italy. There are four to five times as many deadly shootings per capita in Sweden as in Norway or Germany.” And also that “Some 300 Swedish passport holders have travelled to fight for ISIS. About half of them have returned to Sweden. In April 2016, it became illegal to join terror organisations such as ISIS.” To say Sweden were slow to catch on to the danger is somewhat of an understatement.

The emergence of the New Democrats and the subsequent escalation of right wing hate groups it appeared to influence or encouraged, which included the Laser Man attacks and VAM. From 1990-91, 52 attacks of refugee camps involving petrol bombs, arson and explosives. This book is packed with many facts and cases which do much to contradict the myth and romance of the Swedish Model. Without doubt there are many fine and encouraging aspects to it, but it also reminds us that there is no system on earth that is perfect or flawless.

This is a brave, fascinating and enlightening book which was a real pleasure to read, it was a thoroughly absorbing and provocative read, which allowed a far deeper understanding into contemporary Sweden and its rich history and shines a stark light on some of the big problems it currently faces from media transparency to managing immigration.

[Inna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kajsa Norma had done a brilliant job researching the roots of Swedish utopia. She is trying to find out what led to the development of the "unimind", how come thinking the same became the norm and what really Swedish democracy is all about. The author managed to weave some personal stories into the historic narration, portraying the lives of the outcasts of the Swedish "multicultural" society and demonstrating how one can never be fully accepted by the unimind if there is even a slightest deviation present. One the best investigative works I read in the past few years.

[Nathalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intressant bok och ämne. Den är ganska speciellt skriven och om du inte gillar sidospår är detta inte en bok för dig, men jag tycker den var intressant och rekommenderar den.

Spolier.

Bara det att jag lärde mig att staten kunde komma hem och sova över för att se att människor tog hand om sina hem (hello 1984) och att Sverige exporterade 45 000 ton järnmalm (!) dagligen till Nazityskland (neutral my a**) gjorde den väldigt läsvärd.

[Rafael · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading this book, it struck me that Sweden is probably one of the most socially complex countries to live in if one is not born here. Sweden's Dark Soul, is an amazingly intelligent and gripping book that exposes the Swedish collective mind and institutions and uncovers the Swedish modus operandi filled with shortcomings, illusions and a collective narrative that aims to foster the citizens of a socialist nation into a certain way of thinking. The book explores how this came to be from a historical perspective, and how it via manifestation in Swedish media and politics many times is working against the interest of the citizens. The story is intertwined with the enthralling fates of individuals that throughout their lives have to navigate the Swedish society of conformity, double standards, facade and social barriers that nobody will admit exist. It shows how hard it is to work against the collective and how hard the top layer of the collective is working to preserve what it deems to be in the interest of the collective, but in fact is in the interest of themselves.

[Iain Patience · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having previously lived many years in rural Sweden, I was aware of many of the issues addressed in this illuminating book. However, I now have a greater understanding of just why the country and its general culture is so full of unexpected and at times inexplicable paradoxes. This is an enlightening work that frankly should be mandatory reading for most Swedes, people I'm sure that have no true realisation of why they behave and believe as they do. Social engineering gone wild! Swedes will constantly tell you 'Bast i Varden! ' (Best in the world). With this book it's easy to see why they honestly believe this is the case, despite growing evidence. Startling stuff, revealing the dark underbelly of Swedish culture. This is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Sweden and Scandinavia.

[Gabriel Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply worrying

A deeply worrying analysis of Sweden today, and how it got there. For anyone Swedish, this is a frightening wake-up call. You may not agree with everything the author says, but her criticism of Sweden’s monolithic debate climate, with room for only one accepted view, what the French call la pensée unique and what she calls the ‘Unimind’, is very true and apposite.

[Joel Trout · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's unusual for me to read an entire book in a sitting but I absolutely couldn't put this one down. Kajsa Norman has tapped into something major here, a failing of the modern human way of thinking that may go way past just Sweden's unique cultural proclivities. This is why I adamantly believe EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK, whether you have an interest in Northern Europe or not!

[Ilaria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another bad book, which lets a weird agenda take the place of good writing. Tries to be journalistic yet describes thoughts and emotions of the main characters in a completely imaginary way. Half truths make up for about half of the book. Oooof.

[Niklas Laninge · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stoooort behov av en redaktör. Författaren tar en rejäl omväg via Changs barndom, Vasaätten och diverse annat bös. Känns som en bra artikelserie som aldrig såg dagens ljus. Funkar dock inte som bok.

[Rahul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book.

I like to travel and live in other places because you have that thrilling experience of getting under the skin of a new place and because it helps me understand home, and myself, better.

This book helped me travel from the comfort of my home or the Tube.

Quick, but longer than I planned, reflections:

Sweden: it so often championed for innovative ways to organise and order society and the economy. Sweden offers challenge to established ways of doing things in other places. This book provides a more rounded picture describing some of the cultural dependencies and weaknesses of those models.

Choice and Markets: I’ve reflected recently on how the hyper choice available in many elements of our lives is overwhelming and in some ways irrational. No one has the time to make in depth and careful decisions about ALL the formal and informal contracts we must sign. So, I’ve pondered about shortcuts to make those decisions in a ‘sensible’ way, be it the advice of an NGO, professional body, unions, kite marks, government ‘nudging’ or regulation, trusted friends and colleagues or companies contracting for you. I enjoyed reading the experience of an immigrant, from a former communist state, resiling from the unimind or government-recommended option, despite his love of Sweden and its culture.

City or village: The freedom and cold anonymity of the city or the love and cloistered support of a village. For different people and different moments, needs from a society change. It suggests Sweden’s clear and unwritten rules both support the ability to fit in / conform and exclude otherness. The anecdotes however, of muttering discontent and frustration, suggest how a surfeit of prescription slows societal or cultural change and can make them more abrupt

Structure: initially, by which I mean 2/3 of the book, I found the structure slightly frustrating as it bounced between stories of Swedish history, criminality at a festival and the lives of first and second generation Swedish immigrants. It really did come together beautifully in the end.

Brexit: I couldn’t help but enjoy reading about another country’s dysfunction as I’m so aware of the UK’s.
But I’d be a fool not to see another gentle explainer of the divisions in the uk and its own metropolitan unimind on matters of immigration, culture and Brexit.

Despite the differences between UK and Swedish cultures, there is much that is similar. The UK has had its own, worse, race-related cover ups exposed where its institutions have failed. So, swedish culture isn’t the problem, but our human failures mean social exclusion, taboos and diversity of thought are unaddressed.

Finally, I’m left wondering what opinion corridors I am just following.

And I can’t wait to go back to Sweden one day.

[Hilton Ratcliffe]

The liberal doctrine that provides artificial support to tribes that bring their cultural failures to successful nations like Sweden is a self-inflicted wound that only the Swedish conservatives can halt and expel.
It's purely coincidental that Sweden's game-changing election results hit the headlines while I was reading "Sweden's Dark Soul - the Unravelling of a Utopia" by Kajsa Norman. Both the book and the political shift are controversial, giving me an insight I wouldn't have had otherwise. I'm watching with interest as Sweden joins NATO and rejects neutrality.
The book intrigues me. It is non-fiction, an account of Sweden's social democracy through the experiences of Polish Jew Chang Frick and a handful of his contemporaries in the dark shadow of social engineering. It's not an easy read for me; the tale is so heavily dramatised that it could easily be a work of fiction. But it is not. The words put into the mouths of the protagonists are verifiable even though they are decorated with insights that seem to be constructed by the author for literary effect. It makes the plot difficult to follow. I still don't know for sure what the Armenian character Samvel was doing in this book. The author gives so much detail that my head was spinning. For some reason, two of her protagonists rode bicycles and we are told what colour they were. One was blue and the other red. Is there some kind of symbolism there? I don't know.
The essential point as I understood it is that we are dealing with taboos: Factually true but not to be discussed in polite company. The elephant in the room is the migrant crisis Sweden got herself into with liberal immigration laws. The basic premise of this book is that a middle-aged psychologist takes family to a summer youth music festival in Stockholm where he witnesses young girls being sexually assaulted by groups of youths. The shocking truth is that the perpetrators are obviously of immigrant stock, but the man (who remains anonymous) is prevented by law from saying that publicly, even to the police. Speaking badly of people who are racially distinct is taboo. Reports in the press make no mention of it. They can go around sticking their hands into the panties of thirteen-year-old girls and no one will do anything about it. It's something that can fracture a society and that has just happened in the latest election.
Geopolitics have never been more fascinating. The West is heaving itself to the right. That what happens in Sweden will predict analogues in Holland, France, and the UK is certain. This weekend, Italy shocked us all by going hard to starboard. Interesting times we live in!

[foxalicious · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, it’s far from painting a pretty picture of Sweden. But as a young Swede that has lived abroad all my life, all I know about Sweden is what parents and family have told me, this gives me a knowledge of my country that I didn’t know before. I don’t feel that this is a particularly unbiased view of a country, but I don’t think it should have to be unbiased in order to depict a valid point of view/experience. It shows Sweden in different perspectives. I also think it is quite good in telling historical information in deep but not complicated ways, there are things that I’ve learnt from this book that I wouldn’t have grasped from a textbook because of the way it’s worded. Very nice

[Karsten Karpius · Rating 4 out of 5]

En utifrånblick på Sverige, men ändå inifrån, skriven på engelska för en internationell publik. Kapitlen som sammanfattar den svenska historien från vikingatiden till idag kan med fördel läsas kursivt då de är till för icke-svenskar. Det som lyfter detta projekt är parallellhistorierna om altmediamogulen Chang Frick och den armeniske svedofilen Samvel. Man behöver inte hålla med om tesen författaren driver, att svensken i gemen pga. historien i allmänhet och socialdemokratin i synnerhet formats till en ryggradslös hycklare och kappvändare (även om det ligger en hel del i det...), det är samtidigt en flyhänt berättad resa genom en illusionslös samtid.

[Anton Alm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well-written and captivating book that offers a less rosy picture of Sweden. It follows two personal stories and also contains a general history of Sweden with emphasis on how some of the more peculiar characteristics of that society developed.

At its core it's a book about trade-offs: freeing people from dependency on others might be liberating, but it could lead to depressed individuals struggling to find meaning in their tiny appartments. Shared values and best practices might lead to a more harmonius society, but they could also create issues with integration if interpreted in overly strict ways or to low tolerance of differing views.

[Dez Van Der Voort · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writing: 5/5
Knowledge Gained: 5/5
Enjoyment: 5/5

This book should be renamed: "Introduction of Swedish History, with some dirty laundry, and deciphering how the Swedish mind works and their accepted behavior, how they think and act, with a side story about an immigrant who became truly Swedish but was sent back, while non-Swedish language speaking immigrants remain".

Great book, but I can understand that "troubles should be kept inside the family" and no one likes their own country's dirty laundry aired out in the open. This truly hit the sweet spot about how Swedes think and act, about their non-individualism and how quickly their opinion corridor shifts. Great read!

[Michael Thelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Klart läsvärd. Tidvis upprörande läsning. Hög igenkänningsfaktor i beskrivningen hur åsiktskorridoren kröktes under flyktingvågen 2015. På minuskontot för egen del upplever jag att boken kastar sig lite väl tvärt mellan Sveriges kulturs framväxt och huvudpersonernas öden, åtminstone i första halvan av boken.

Uppskattar man den här boken så vill jag rekommendera Det lilla landet som kunde av Ganman och Panshiri.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read. Kajsa Norman is a wonderful author who takes the time to show us how some of the people who travel to our country to find a new life can turn out to be our heroes. Written with great empathy for those who have come to Sweden seeking a better life, Kajsa Norman challenges us to look deeper, and beyond our prejudices, to understand what it is to truly be Swedish.

[David Hejna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable investigative journalist account with excellent mix of personal reports and broader themes. The book is very well-written and organized to hold the reader's interest all the way through. I learned a lot of interesting information.

[Fred Göransson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det pendlar mellan en 3:a eller 4:a.Tycker delarna med Chang Frick och Samvel är intressanta, hur författaren kopplar detta med grunden.Det är inte svårt att bli upprörd kring förjungenheten i samhället. Men där finns vissa delar med inramningen kring Sverige som land som blir lite tjatigt.

[Emil Svantesson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book, very important read

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

It made some very interesting points, but also at times seemed to lack a more balanced view.

[Peter McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Half way through this at the moment, so it's really a review in progress but this is incredibly compelling for a work of non-fiction. We've always been sold the story that Sweden is a Social-Democratic Utopia -- the very model of a fair and equal society that embraces capitalism while simultaneously redistributing the fruits of that economically productive model.

I picked it up because I was curious to see how well that egalitarianism has held up in the shift from a culturally and ethnically homogenous population to one that is much more diverse. I've not even got to that part of the book yet, but I'm completely shocked at what it reveals about Sweden's totalitarian history. Who knew that Sweden continued to embrace Eugenics long after the end of WWII? As late as the mid-seventies, the Swedes were performing compulsory abortions on people it regarded as 'undesirables' in an attempt to keep the society (and the race) 'pure'.

Until quite recently, this generally meant Sweden's travelling population as there were very few people of brown complexion in this homogeneous country, and alongside the history of the formation of the Swedish national culture/psyche, the book recounts the story of Chang -- the mixed race son of Roma travellers. For a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism, Chang's story of childhood bullying are quite harrowing. I believe he grows up to become a journalist and I'm guessing that his history is what shapes his ability to stand up to the dominant cultural norms and allows him to break the story of the muslim molestation gangs that are attacking/molesting/raping children at an annual pop festival for teenagers.

As I said before, I'm not sure I'm even half way into this one, but it's so compelling that I wanted to get up some early thoughts before I finish the book. More later.

[Martin Weigand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book is like solving a puzzle: why would a highly advanced, rich, well-educated society like Sweden commit national suicide by letting in millions of primitive, savage, uneducated, deeply Islamic people who are more at home in the 7th-century than the 21st?

I have puzzled over this for some time, especially since my ancestors are Swedish. This book answers that puzzling question and more. Of particular interest is her descriptions and examples of the "Unimind" which is a totalitarian collectivist thought-control and behavior modification to rival anything from the Soviet Union or East Germany. Her story is personal, as are those she features in the book. If you want to understand Sweden, and the "Unimind" then you need to read this book.