Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria
Lychnos: Årsbok för idé- och lärdomshistoria har sedan 1936 publicerat idéhistorisk forskning och ämnesrelevanta recensioner på de skandinaviska språken och engelska.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The copyright for the work published in Lychnos remains with the authors.
Copyright (c) 2026 Emma Hagström Molin; Anders Burman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Emma Hagström Molin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Emma Hagström Molin; Jacob Orrje https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Lisa Hellman , Edda Manga , Julia Nordblad, Fredrik Petersson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Tema: Marknadens idéhistorier Thematic Issue: Histories of Market Thought
Copyright (c) 2026 Leif Runefelt, Jim Hagström , Liza Jakobsson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Rudolf Kjelléns nationalsocialism och den europeiska unghögerns tankestil
There is little doubt that Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) was an important political thinker in his own time, and that his writings have gained renewed interest duringthe last decade. However, today’s reception often skirts thorough investigation of Kjellén’s ideological coordinates. This article addresses these shortcomings by examining the history of far-right political thought in pre-fascist Europe. It works through a problematization of Kjellén’s reception and identifies a potential context sometimes mentioned there but left underexamined: the so-called German Conservative Revolution. Through the reconstruction of this context, the article finds a wider field of ideological significance in the conceptual history of “national socialism”—a term Kjellén himself used—before the Hitler movement. The political imaginary associated with this semantic field provides a more solid framework for understanding the theoretical and ideological context of Kjellén’s thought—as well as that of the European far right over the long term.
Copyright (c) 2026 Hjalmar Falk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Connoisseurs and the Swedish Alcohol Monopoly: A Cultural History of Swedish Wine Journalism Wine reviews became a fixture in Swedish daily newspapers and lifestyle magazines in the early 1980s, marking the emergence of wine journalism as a distinct field. When Svenska Dagbladet launched its wine column on April 11, 1981, Expressen and Dagens Nyheter followed within months, triggering a rapid expansion of wine coverage in regional newspapers as well. During this period, daily newspapers played a pivotal role in educating the public about wine, particularly in the wake of the 1979 ban on alcohol advertising. My analysis, Konnässörerna och monopolet (The Connoisseurs and the Monopoly), examines early Swedish wine journalism with a focus on its claims to authority and wine’s function as a social marker. It explores how journalists engaged audiences, communicated complex sensory experiences, and established credibility within a newly formed field of expertise. The study highlights a significant yet previously overlooked dimension of modern Swedish consumer culture.
Copyright (c) 2026 Peter Josephson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Around 1916–1918, Sweden established an official cost-of-living index. This index was firstly the enabler of a new kind of wage system, one in which salaries would adjust “automatically” to the rising living costs. Perhaps surprisingly, in Sweden such a “sliding-scale” system was often presented not as a modern innovation, but as the resurrection of a pre-modern, in-kind economy. The leading proponent of this wage reform was Joseph Guinchard, director of Stockholm’s municipal bureau of statistics. For him, the cost-of-living index would serve the aim of rescuing “the middle class”, seen as the backbone of society, and preserving the existing class hierarchy. The article highlights the role of social statistics in the early attempts to organize civil servants, and in the renewal of conservative politics at the time of Sweden’s democratization. It also presents Oscar Ljungström’s related but competing proposal for wage reform, which he made a cornerstone for a proto-fascist vision. While relatively obscure, this more radical line of thought may help highlighting certain aspects of the cost-ofliving politics of the 1910s, including its characteristic fascination for in-kind economy. This too stands in contrast to the modern concept of inflation, and to the present role of the consumer price index.
Copyright (c) 2026 Rasmus Fleischer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In 1955, one of Sweden’s earliest indoor shopping centers opened in the city of Luleå. The shopping center formula was widely debated in Swedish industry press in the 1950s, and the developers of the Luleå center launched an intense campaign for shopping centers as a selling-technology in the years after it opened. Investigating this campaign, this article analyzes the planning rationalities that were attached to the shopping center as it rose to prominence in the 1950s and suggests the term consumer engineering to understand them. I show how the shopping center formula rose out of a disbelief in the free market as steering logic for organizing consumer practices in a city. Old ways of physically organizing stores were deemed obsolete and insufficient, and unfit for planning consumer practices “rationally”. In light of this, the shopping center formula was argued to enable new and increased forms of expert planning of the behaviors and desires of consumers, from experts who could model the consumer experience on research into consumer behavior and consumer psychology. Thus, the campaign for shopping centers in Sweden was centered around making Swedish retailers embrace the planning rationality of the shopping center. In the literature on Swedish social engineering, it is often taken for granted that social engineering was primarily a statist undertaking aiming to shape the private life. In this article I investigate another side of these governing rationalities, and show how imperatives of subverting an unplanned free market in favor of expert-led planning also came from the market itself.
Copyright (c) 2026 Arvid Sjödin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fantasin om totalt skydd av samhällskroppen
This article examines the Swedish forestry debate on swampification (försumpning) from the turn of the 20th century to the early 1930s, when concerns about declining forest productivity were framed as threats to the state body and the future. Using a biopolitical perspective, it shows how the debate reflected broader societal discourses on risk, degeneration, and national improvement. Imagined dangers and protective measures were part of the same rationality that shaped welfare, hygiene, and population governance. The forest’s swampification was cast as a degenerative process requiring state-led intervention, yet this protection also concealed internal contradictions. Alongside fears of decay, the debate was driven by science and a modernizing optimism that emphasized control, regeneration, and progress. Drawing on the concepts of immunization and fantasy, the article analyzes historical scientific reports, media sources and opinion pieces. The results illustrate how forest management was shaped both by anxieties about disorder and by desires for a better future. This article situates a specific forestry debate within the discursive logics of modernity and societal transformation and thereby connects environmental history, the history of science and ideas, and political theory.
Copyright (c) 2026 Erika Skilström https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This study examines the use of the term “market” in Swedish from the perspective of the history of language usage. First, four modes of speech are identified: the stable, problematic, productive, and dominant market. A focus on the productive mode during Sweden’s industrial period, around 1870–1970, then guides close readings of encyclopedias and remote digital readings of parliamentary material. The results show that the understanding of the market gradually became more abstract. Additionally, an increase in the productivity of market-related compound words is observed, particularly in the context of labor markets. The study highlights how the market is construed linguistically and conceptually, and how shifts in the usage of market words reflect broader socio-economic transformations. By demonstrating the variety of alternatives in past market discourse, the analysis challenges the assumption of the market as a homogenous and timeless economic concept, thus contributing to a more nuanced historical understanding.
Copyright (c) 2026 Henrik Björck, Claes Ohlsson, Shafqat Mumtaz Virk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Interdisciplinary Circulation of “Holism”
Holism is a term charged with multiple meanings. Coined by statesman and botanist Jan Smuts in 1926, it was mainly used in academia until its public breakthrough around 1980. This article examines the interdisciplinary circulation of holism in science during its first sixty years of existence, focusing on ecology, psychology, medicine, social science, pedagogy, and philosophy. While primarily an epistemic term, holism has carried ideological and spiritual connotations that have shifted over time, from associations with totalitarianism in the interwar era to environmentalism and New Age spirituality since the 1970s. By tracing the interdisciplinary history of holism, this article maps its use in different scientific contexts, identifies its partnerand counter-terms, outlines what its appeal has consisted of and what its critics have rejected, and shows how it moved beyond the domain of academia to become part of the broader cultural vocabulary.
Copyright (c) 2026 Bruno Hamnell https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article examines how Assar Lindbeck in the 1950s and 1960s employed neoliberal ideas to address key problems of Swedish social democracy. Drawing on Friedrich von Hayek’s notion of the market as a superior information processor and Gary Becker’s theory of human capital, Lindbeck developed a model in which inequality could be managed without redistribution. He integrated a neoliberal conception of the market into the mixed economy, functioning as an epistemic and moral instrument of governance. Here, the economist—rather than the politician—was legitimized as the interpreter of effective societal development. The article argues that neoliberalism should not be understood as “marketization,” but as a qualitative redefinition of the market: from a sphere of exchange to a site of competition, discipline, and subjectivation. Lindbeck’s case demonstrates that neoliberalism did not imply state retreat, but could be hybridized within the expanding Swedish welfare state while contesting visions based on planning.
Copyright (c) 2026 Victor Pressfeldt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article contributes to discussions on Sweden’s rapid and thorough financialization process by examining how the people’s shares concept has been used in both public discourse and marketing campaigns since the mid-20th century to increase shareholding among the Swedish public. It focuses on the privatization of state-owned companies during the mid-1990s and how the centre-right government applied the people’s shares concept in marketing design and rhetoric to advance the idea of financial market democratization. The analysis covers the share sales campaigns of forest management company AssiDomän and mortgage lender Stadshypotek as well as the popular educational “People’s shares project”, conducted by lobbying organization Aktiefrämjandet. The article reveals that from heated political-ideological discussions on people’s shares and owner democracy around 1960, the concept was depolitized, emerging as related to the tradition and reliability of both large Swedish industry and welfare state (“People’s home”) ideals.
Copyright (c) 2026 Charlotte Nilsson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The 19th century saw the privatization and industrialization of Swedish forests, together with increasing concern for future forest shortages. This article investigates market notions and the relationship to the future in Swedish forestry debates during the middle and end of the century. It shows that the rights of present and future generations were partly conceptualized in economic terms. It further argues that as a balanced, economic interest was seen as an important incentive for forest management, the market was given an important role for notions of responsible forestry. Nevertheless, some worried that the forest differed from other commodities. For example, “räntabilitetsteorin” stated that the forest’s value growth was slower than other long-term investments, leading to questions about the economic rationality for private individuals to cultivate forests. The end of the century also saw growing concern for the forest as a capital being “locked” while growing, clashing with modern economic life.
Copyright (c) 2026 Malin Sternesjö https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Since the 1980s, financial deregulation and welfare cuts have driven an economic risk shift, requiring individuals to take greater financial responsibility through private savings in stocks and mutual funds. An unexplored aspect of this “financialization of everyday life” is the personal finance advice provided by experts employed by banks and other market-oriented actors. This study examines financial savings advice provided by these advisors in Sweden’s four largest newspapers from 1987 to 2017. The study identifies three eras: the family economists (1987–1997), the private economists (1997–2012), and the savings economists (2012–2017). The findings suggest that, following the economic turmoil of the early 1990s, personal finance advice became increasingly decontextualized and focused on developing generic financial skills and risk-embracing subjectivities. This risk shift, in turn, raises important questions about the role of consumer journalism in paving way for and reinforcing the market-oriented notion of financial literacy that has become prevalent in the 2000s.
Copyright (c) 2026 Axel Vikström https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article examines the representation of women artists in the online modern art auctions of Bukowskis, one of the leading auction houses in the Nordic region. The study finds that women artists are significantly underrepresented compared to their male counterparts, both in terms of the number of listed works and in dedicated thematic auctions. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, the article analyzes how Bukowskis’ marketing strategies contribute to the transformation of works by women artists into symbolic goods within the art market. In particular, the marketing highlights the artists’ education, connections to established male figures, international influences, and institutional recognition. Through these strategies, Bukowskis portrays women artists as historically significant figures. The promotion of artistic recognition is thus positioned as a key component of the auction house’s broader commercial strategy, thereby contributing to the canonization of artists.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tintin Hodén https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article examines how historians positioned themselves within academia and society, as reflected in Swedish press debates about historical research during the second half of the twentieth century. Focusing on debates from 1950, 1978, 1993, and 1999, the study explores the evolving relationship between the humanities and the social sciences, as well as the tensions between academic and popular history. Drawing on concepts of contextualisation, it examines how historians articulated the societal relevance of their discipline. Through a close examination of press material, the study shows that historians consistently balanced scientific rigour with the need to engage a wider audience. While popular history gained prominence in the 1990s, its roots extend back to the post-war period. The findings also demonstrate how the increasing influence of social scientific methods placed the humanities in a more defensive position. The article underscores the importance of distinguishing between historical actors’ self-understandings and historians’ contextualisations, warning that overreliance on the former can obscure broader historical dynamics. This research provides insights into the public discourse that has shaped the discipline, reflecting the shifting boundaries and ongoing challenges faced by historians.
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Nyström https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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Copyright (c) 2025 Jenny Eklöf, Erland Mårald https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Hampus Östh Gustafsson, Synne Myrebøe, Annelie Drakman, Erik Isberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In the late 1970s, the media debate about recombinant DNA technology was Sweden’s first, but far from last, controversy about the risks and possibilities of genetic engineering. Based on the concept of knowledge cartographies, this study highlights how the main actors in the debate tried to make sense of what gene technology entailed, but also, and more importantly, how knowledge about the technology and its consequences should be communicated and disseminated in society. The article shows that the combination of a relatively unanimous research community with the absence of an organized and engaged public meant that the communicative line of conflict mainly came to stand between researchers on one side and the mass media and individual politicians on the other. Here, long-established trust in experts stood against a new approach in which the research community was held democratically and morally accountable. The whole debate can be understood as being placed in a transitional period in which the previously dominating authoritative knowledge cartography began to make room for a burgeoning public sphere cartography. The debate was also colored by its contemporary context; by other ongoing science-related controversies, such as that of nuclear power, and not least by the emergence of new journalistic ideals and broader public discussions about academic freedom and scientists’ communicative obligations.
Copyright (c) 2024 Jenny Eklöf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fostering Elites in the Shadow of the Cold War: Scientific School Competitions in Sweden, 1960–1980. This article aims to investigate the multiple reasons for the launching and development of two forms of scientific competition for high school students in Sweden. It also seeks to analyse if and how these events could be understood as social practices for the fostering of scientific elites during the period 1960–1980. The two competition formats were imported simultaneously from the Soviet Union (so-called “Olympiads”) and the United States (so called “Science Fairs”) respectively in a time dominated by the Cold War. The article deploys three analytical levels: Firstly, it discusses the motives and reasons for the events being launched in this specific period. Secondly, it investigates whether the competitions can be understood as social practices where the most successful participants were able to accumulate different forms of advantages in science compared to their peers. A third analytical level examines the position of the competitions in relation to the Swedish secondary school system during the period and its role in the tension between meritocratic and democratic goals of education.
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Lövheim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In 1920, Sweden experienced a severe outbreak of pandemic influenza, primarily affecting the rural areas in the north. The epicentre of the 1920 outbreak was Arjeplog, a small and remote parish that had escaped earlier pandemic waves. However, in 1920, the parish exhibited the highest influenza mortality in Sweden during the entire period of 1918–1920. This article examines the extensive press coverage of the outbreak in two newspapers, Norrskensflamman and Aftonbladet, focusing on how the events were reported, perceived, and analysed in relation to the newspapers’ political stances. The findings reveal that although their journalistic ambitions, motives and political stances differed, both newspapers expressed similar ideas about an underprivileged, underdeveloped, and uneducated north, where poor social conditions and ignorance had exacerbated the severe consequences of the outbreak. Norrskensflamman’s coverage, featuring substantial critical social analysis, became instrumental in political debate, while Aftonbladet’s reports, characterized by human-interest journalism, helped prompt the allocation of philanthropic relief.
Copyright (c) 2024 Elisabeth Engberg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Lärdom och läsande kring sekelskiftet 1800
During the latter half of the 18th century, the doors of German universities were opened from within. Scholars abandoned Latin in favor of the vernacular and turned outward to a broader audience. Philosophers and scientists saw in the printing press a tool that would help eradicate ignorance and superstition, ultimately laying the groundwork for a better society. However, the enthusiasm was short-lived. Influential scholars increasingly lamented by the turn of the 19th century that competition for readers' attention had compromised the quality of science. Many described a situation of intellectual undercutting and warned that popular science was displacing the genuine. In "Hermeneutics for the People!", I examine the late 18th and early 19th-century German-language debate on the increasing commercialization of academic knowledge. Specifically, I analyze how one sought to stimulate demand for serious and educational literature by fostering people into good and quality-conscious readers.
Copyright (c) 2025 Peter Josephson https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Surveillance, integrity and metadata in the information age
I augusti 1994 presenterade Sveriges sittande statsminister Carl Bildt bildandet av Informationsteknologikommissionen för allmänheten. Detta var en rådgivande kommission, bestående av ministrarna i Bildts regeringskabinett samt inbjudna experter och entreprenörer, och anses allmänt vara ett avgörande ögonblick i det svenska politiska beslutsfattandet på IT-området. En underskattad del av IT-kommissionens historia är dock att även om det är allmänt accepterat att införandet av IT på 1990-talet mottogs positivt av politiska eliter och intellektuella, var allmänhetens skepsis mot IKT ett känt problem och något som behövde övervinnas. Det blev IT-kommissionens roll att göra detta. Inspirerad av STS-forskarna Jasanoff och Kim kan IT-kommissionen tolkas som ett slags statligt finansierad inbäddningsaktivitet, avsedd att övervinna allmänhetens skepticism och riskmedvetenhet och att samlas kring en gemensam socioteknisk föreställningsvärld. Med utgångspunkt i ett STIM-perspektiv är syftet med denna artikel att fördjupa vår förståelse av denna period i den svenska IT-politiken och vilka konsekvenser den fick. Att studera hur IT-kommissionens rapporter och aktiviteter hanterade dessa problem är intressant eftersom det ger ett nytt perspektiv på kommissionens arbete och deras roll i det offentliga rummet. I artikeln kopplas också kommissionens historia till samtida diskussioner om så kallad "surveillance culture" genom att visa exempel på hur inbäddningsaktiviteter sökte hantera risker med potentiell digital övervakning och integritetskränkning, samt fostra en positiv attityd till delning av data bland allmänheten.
Copyright (c) 2025 Peter Bennesved https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0