The People’s Home 1900–2020: An interpretation
‘The People’s Home 1900–2020: An Interpretation’ will provide the first comprehensive history of this quintessentially Swedish concept folkhemmet, usually considered to be the premium political concept in modern Swedish history, from its first appearances to the present. ‘The People’s Home' has been widely used in different medial, political and academic contexts and seems to be more popular today than ever before. Folkhemmet is usually linked to the Social Democrats and the welfare state before marketization and privatization – or, as some will have it today, before migration changed Swedish society. It can connote specific policies, typically welfare and labour market policies, society in general or an entire period in Swedish history.
‘The People’s Home 1900–2020: An Interpretation’ analyses how the concept has been defined, understood and put to meaningful usage in Swedish politics and public life since the beginning of the 20th century. The study has a double focus on the changing historical usages and the modern historiography. This means that it maps and studies both the history of the concept and the contemporary processes where folkhemmet has been established as an interpretative framework in public discourse and academic writing.
Final report
The People’s Home (folkhemmet) has acquired an almost mythological status. It is part of Swedish cultural self-understanding and serves as a projection screen for all kinds of ideas about how Sweden was - or should have been - and how it has changed. Nostalgia tends to colour representations of the people’s home which has become an important concept in the interpretations of Sweden's modern history. It is nowadays used more than ever.
This study is to some extent a critique of the contemporary cult of the people's home, the overuse of the word. Instead of taking for granted that folkhemmet was the major political project of 20th century Sweden and analysing it as a societal idea and model, the project asks how the word was actually used. Who used it and how was it used? What did the people's home stand for? When did it become a key word in the sense of being widely used, important and contested in politics and debate, and how has its use changed from the late 19th century to the present day? With these guiding questions, the project examines the history of the people's home as an emerging keyword in Sweden's modern history.
The study deemphasises the importance of the word around the turn of the century 1900. It was at that time used occasionally a ceremonious synonym for the home country/nation. It lacked political significance. The previously prevailing interpretation that the Swedish word folkhemmet has its roots in the German Volksheim, an institution for popular education, is rejected because it overlooks the fact that there were two distinctly separate connotations attached to the word: folkhemmet as a metaphor for the country/nation and folkhemmet as the name of an institution for popular education. The national metaphor was imported from Denmark and Norway where folkehjem was used earlier and to a greater extent than was the case with folkhemmet in Sweden. In other words, the coming Swedish keyword was a Scandinavian import.
Folkhemmet became politicised when the leader of the Social Democrats, Per Albin Hansson, started using the term in the late 1920s. Its political importance increased when the Social Democrats changed their policy, replacing socialism with welfare and explicitly aiming to become a party for the entire population. For a few years from 1928, folkhemmet played an important role in the political debates, and liberals and conservatives made efforts to conquer it, whereas the communists used it as a taunt to expose the Social Democrats' betrayal of the working class. Folkhemmet was the slogan of the popular party leader and later prime minister; Hansson popularised the word. He used it from time to time whereas other leading representatives of the party at the time refrained, some were even openly critical. In the party's propaganda, folkhemmet soon gave way to welfare policy, the umbrella term used in action programmes and election platforms. ‘Welfare policy’ became the central slogan of the 1930s, right from the start. Both Liberals and Conservatives made frequent efforts to conquer the premium concept welfare (välfärd) -- the people's home was relegated to a secondary position. This means that the word's political significance declined markedly from the mid-1930s. Folkhemmet was used less and less in political debates and more often in the media's description of Swedish society. This means that the often-repeated argument that the People’s Home was and has remained the Social Democrats’ mantra must be rejected. Instead, it became the media's favourite metaphor, and their descriptive power thus established the descriptive metaphor. The media were highly active in constructing the image of a modern and successful society characterised by welfare policies and political consensus.
Folkhemmet became a depoliticised metaphor for Swedish society in general. This became strikingly obvious during the period 1945–1965, when the media placed everything "in the people's home", which primarily functioned as a geographical location. Folkhemmet was in this way primarily a flagging metaphor for Sweden as a whole, the cosy idyll in the polarised world of the Cold War. Of course, the Social Democrats were in power, but that was not the main focus of the media. Instead, the key feature is the particular self-image that they promoted, a kind of everyday nationalism built around the comfort, security and prosperity 'in the people's home'.
Something similar applied to the creative arts: for fiction, publishers and reviewers alike stated that folkhemmet was the stage. This applied to stories about contemporary life as well as children’s books set in a lost rural Sweden; plays and films also portrayed life there. Folkhemmet was in this sense the setting, and this regardless of whether the author placed his or her work ‘in the people's home’ or not.
No politicians, whether social democrats or conservatives, put the people's home at the centre, no one spoke of it as a political project which future was planned or vigorously questioned. Such debates were always centred on welfare policy and the welfare state. That was where the political tug of war was taking place. When the Social Democrats of the time mentioned the people's home, it was to emphasise continuity, highlighting the ties to the highly respected leader Hansson and his successful policies.
Outspoken critics also found themselves 'in the people's home' where they did their best to highlight what was hidden: 'the basement of the people's home', 'the dark corners of the people's home', 'behind the facades of the people's home' and so on. But those reports about persisting social problems failed to challenge and crack the image of the idyll. Folkhemmet had political potential that the critics were unable to activate and consequently it remained a descriptive term lacking political contestation. Clearly, the Social Democrats' limited interest in using ‘the people’s home’ as a guiding concept provides the main explanation. During the long post-war boom, ‘the people’s home’ remained a synonym for the affluent Swedish society and not a contested key concept. This was also the case during the leftist wave around 1970, with the important addition that ‘the people's home’ became even less relevant.
Since the 1980s, the construction of folkhemmet has been in full swing in politics, media and academia. Folkhemmet has been filled and refilled with content and has become the most obvious, but at the same time open and amorphous concept in modern Swedish history: a unspecified period in modern history, a synonym for the welfare state under social democratic rule, a loosely defined social model and much, much more. The quantitative increase in usage is clear: in the period 1985-1994, the four major capitol newspapers used the word folkhemmet more than 7 200 times, the same number as in the previous twenty years. And the popularity of the word has accelerated over time: twice as many occurrences in the capital's newspapers in 1985-2022 as in the entire period 1928-1984 (34 000 and 16 000). The digitized press in toto shows that the increase continues: about 11 000 hits in 2000-2010 and four times as many in the following decade.
It was in the battles over welfare policy in the 1980s and 1990s that ‘the people’s home’ was re-politicised and definitively established as one of the premium Swedish concepts. The word's latent political potential was realised when the Social Democrats pitted the people's home against their opponents' demands for system change and marketization. Folkhemmet became the collective term for everything worth defending, a synonym for the threatened and changing social democratic welfare state. This is important: folkhemmet’s enormous popularity is linked to nostalgia, to the sense of fundamental loss, a sense of epochal change where solidarity and equality have been lost. Talk of the People's Home is in this sense always retrospective, no matter if it is praising or condemning.
The keyword’s importance was reinforced by the new and lively interest of researchers and journalists in various aspects of 20th century society where all phenomena were placed 'in the People's Home'. Some highlighted the utopian features (the world's best welfare and most modern society), others highlighted shadows (conformism, sterilisations etc) and Swedish identity (nationalism, Sweden and the EU). These were not novel themes in themselves; new was that they were unambiguously and almost automatically linked to folkhemmet and presented as its almost essential features. They filled a politicised concept with a rich content and described ‘the essential characteristics’ of their studied object. The public debates and the research naturally influenced each other. The Social Democrats talked about defending and updating the People's Home, while researchers and writers attributed distinct characteristics and features to it.
The last two decades have seen both a scramble for the centre in Swedish politics and, with the upswing for conservatism and populism, an intensified debate in connection with the Swedish Democrats' attempt to claim ownership of the People's Home. Their modern folkhem is about recreating lost security and welfare, about national cohesion where everyone does their duty before demanding their right. Whether the Swedish democrats are entitled to claim what opponents see as social democracy's finest metaphor is unimportant here. The debate shows that controversial keywords lack a given meaning and that usage gives it life and content. In this way, the 'people's home' has become and remained a plastic word, used in multiple ways and almost always left undefined, open for the reader and listener to define according to taste. It is the empty screen on which competing, contemporary notions of the Swedish 20th century can be projected.
This study is to some extent a critique of the contemporary cult of the people's home, the overuse of the word. Instead of taking for granted that folkhemmet was the major political project of 20th century Sweden and analysing it as a societal idea and model, the project asks how the word was actually used. Who used it and how was it used? What did the people's home stand for? When did it become a key word in the sense of being widely used, important and contested in politics and debate, and how has its use changed from the late 19th century to the present day? With these guiding questions, the project examines the history of the people's home as an emerging keyword in Sweden's modern history.
The study deemphasises the importance of the word around the turn of the century 1900. It was at that time used occasionally a ceremonious synonym for the home country/nation. It lacked political significance. The previously prevailing interpretation that the Swedish word folkhemmet has its roots in the German Volksheim, an institution for popular education, is rejected because it overlooks the fact that there were two distinctly separate connotations attached to the word: folkhemmet as a metaphor for the country/nation and folkhemmet as the name of an institution for popular education. The national metaphor was imported from Denmark and Norway where folkehjem was used earlier and to a greater extent than was the case with folkhemmet in Sweden. In other words, the coming Swedish keyword was a Scandinavian import.
Folkhemmet became politicised when the leader of the Social Democrats, Per Albin Hansson, started using the term in the late 1920s. Its political importance increased when the Social Democrats changed their policy, replacing socialism with welfare and explicitly aiming to become a party for the entire population. For a few years from 1928, folkhemmet played an important role in the political debates, and liberals and conservatives made efforts to conquer it, whereas the communists used it as a taunt to expose the Social Democrats' betrayal of the working class. Folkhemmet was the slogan of the popular party leader and later prime minister; Hansson popularised the word. He used it from time to time whereas other leading representatives of the party at the time refrained, some were even openly critical. In the party's propaganda, folkhemmet soon gave way to welfare policy, the umbrella term used in action programmes and election platforms. ‘Welfare policy’ became the central slogan of the 1930s, right from the start. Both Liberals and Conservatives made frequent efforts to conquer the premium concept welfare (välfärd) -- the people's home was relegated to a secondary position. This means that the word's political significance declined markedly from the mid-1930s. Folkhemmet was used less and less in political debates and more often in the media's description of Swedish society. This means that the often-repeated argument that the People’s Home was and has remained the Social Democrats’ mantra must be rejected. Instead, it became the media's favourite metaphor, and their descriptive power thus established the descriptive metaphor. The media were highly active in constructing the image of a modern and successful society characterised by welfare policies and political consensus.
Folkhemmet became a depoliticised metaphor for Swedish society in general. This became strikingly obvious during the period 1945–1965, when the media placed everything "in the people's home", which primarily functioned as a geographical location. Folkhemmet was in this way primarily a flagging metaphor for Sweden as a whole, the cosy idyll in the polarised world of the Cold War. Of course, the Social Democrats were in power, but that was not the main focus of the media. Instead, the key feature is the particular self-image that they promoted, a kind of everyday nationalism built around the comfort, security and prosperity 'in the people's home'.
Something similar applied to the creative arts: for fiction, publishers and reviewers alike stated that folkhemmet was the stage. This applied to stories about contemporary life as well as children’s books set in a lost rural Sweden; plays and films also portrayed life there. Folkhemmet was in this sense the setting, and this regardless of whether the author placed his or her work ‘in the people's home’ or not.
No politicians, whether social democrats or conservatives, put the people's home at the centre, no one spoke of it as a political project which future was planned or vigorously questioned. Such debates were always centred on welfare policy and the welfare state. That was where the political tug of war was taking place. When the Social Democrats of the time mentioned the people's home, it was to emphasise continuity, highlighting the ties to the highly respected leader Hansson and his successful policies.
Outspoken critics also found themselves 'in the people's home' where they did their best to highlight what was hidden: 'the basement of the people's home', 'the dark corners of the people's home', 'behind the facades of the people's home' and so on. But those reports about persisting social problems failed to challenge and crack the image of the idyll. Folkhemmet had political potential that the critics were unable to activate and consequently it remained a descriptive term lacking political contestation. Clearly, the Social Democrats' limited interest in using ‘the people’s home’ as a guiding concept provides the main explanation. During the long post-war boom, ‘the people’s home’ remained a synonym for the affluent Swedish society and not a contested key concept. This was also the case during the leftist wave around 1970, with the important addition that ‘the people's home’ became even less relevant.
Since the 1980s, the construction of folkhemmet has been in full swing in politics, media and academia. Folkhemmet has been filled and refilled with content and has become the most obvious, but at the same time open and amorphous concept in modern Swedish history: a unspecified period in modern history, a synonym for the welfare state under social democratic rule, a loosely defined social model and much, much more. The quantitative increase in usage is clear: in the period 1985-1994, the four major capitol newspapers used the word folkhemmet more than 7 200 times, the same number as in the previous twenty years. And the popularity of the word has accelerated over time: twice as many occurrences in the capital's newspapers in 1985-2022 as in the entire period 1928-1984 (34 000 and 16 000). The digitized press in toto shows that the increase continues: about 11 000 hits in 2000-2010 and four times as many in the following decade.
It was in the battles over welfare policy in the 1980s and 1990s that ‘the people’s home’ was re-politicised and definitively established as one of the premium Swedish concepts. The word's latent political potential was realised when the Social Democrats pitted the people's home against their opponents' demands for system change and marketization. Folkhemmet became the collective term for everything worth defending, a synonym for the threatened and changing social democratic welfare state. This is important: folkhemmet’s enormous popularity is linked to nostalgia, to the sense of fundamental loss, a sense of epochal change where solidarity and equality have been lost. Talk of the People's Home is in this sense always retrospective, no matter if it is praising or condemning.
The keyword’s importance was reinforced by the new and lively interest of researchers and journalists in various aspects of 20th century society where all phenomena were placed 'in the People's Home'. Some highlighted the utopian features (the world's best welfare and most modern society), others highlighted shadows (conformism, sterilisations etc) and Swedish identity (nationalism, Sweden and the EU). These were not novel themes in themselves; new was that they were unambiguously and almost automatically linked to folkhemmet and presented as its almost essential features. They filled a politicised concept with a rich content and described ‘the essential characteristics’ of their studied object. The public debates and the research naturally influenced each other. The Social Democrats talked about defending and updating the People's Home, while researchers and writers attributed distinct characteristics and features to it.
The last two decades have seen both a scramble for the centre in Swedish politics and, with the upswing for conservatism and populism, an intensified debate in connection with the Swedish Democrats' attempt to claim ownership of the People's Home. Their modern folkhem is about recreating lost security and welfare, about national cohesion where everyone does their duty before demanding their right. Whether the Swedish democrats are entitled to claim what opponents see as social democracy's finest metaphor is unimportant here. The debate shows that controversial keywords lack a given meaning and that usage gives it life and content. In this way, the 'people's home' has become and remained a plastic word, used in multiple ways and almost always left undefined, open for the reader and listener to define according to taste. It is the empty screen on which competing, contemporary notions of the Swedish 20th century can be projected.