Tryckfrihetsförordningen: Artwork by GreyType Creative.

Ola Larsmo on freedom of speech in Sweden.

There are some liberties that are truly necessary for a society to function and develop freely. In democratic societies, we tend to take them for granted. Like freedom of expression or equality between the classes and sexes. But, these freedoms were never given away by benevolent kings or queens. They were, almost always and almost everywhere, conquered through prolonged periods of struggle.

In Sweden, where all citizens are constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, we tend to be a bit in the dark when it comes to our own history in the department of freedom of speech, expression and conscience. Few Swedes would recognise the name of Johann Heinrich Schönheit. He was the last Swede to be executed in Sweden for exercising his freedom of speech.

Schönheit was a troubled soul from northern Sweden where he worked as a civil servant during the end of the seventeenth century, before he came into conflict with his superiors. To avoid persecution he fled to Hamburg, from where he launched a series of pamphlets insulting Charles XII, the warrior king of Sweden. In addition to the insults, the pamphlets carried statements that were considered blasphemous at that time.

He was eventually tricked into returning to Sweden. Upon his return, Schönheit was arrested and imprisoned at the Fort of Marstrand near Gothenburg. On a chilly winter morning of 1706, he was executed. His hands and tongue were cut off before he was strangled to death. His body was then cremated together with his libellous and scandalous writings.

Sixty years later, in the spring of 1766, the Swedish parliament passed Tryckfrihetsförordningen (Freedom of the Press Act), the first of its kind in the world. This declaration was quite radical as it involved total abolition of state censorship, which had been maintained until then for religious reasons. The legislation came into effect at a time when the power of the monarchy in Sweden was waning. Interestingly, some of the advocates for Tryckfrihetsförordningen were clergymen themselves.

Despite the decree, people could still be prosecuted for their opinion, and many were prosecuted in the following years. But, the state had no legal means to check an unpublished material beforehand. This led to an outburst of religious and political pamphlets and magazines. Many of them were indeed rebellious and blasphemous.

Subsequent governments, most notably King Gustaf III (1746-1792), tried to reinstate the royal censorship. But the genie was out of the bottle as all the subsequent versions of the Swedish constitution, including the current one, descended from the free speech act of 1766.

This shows two things. First, that the breakthrough for freedom of expression is often swift and when it comes it is almost impossible to roll back. From the year of Schönheit’s execution until the passing of the world’s first free speech legislation, there was a mere sixty years gap. It preceded the American constitution of 1776 and the revolutionary constitutions of France. Second, our freedom of speech was not achieved at the height of a democratic development. It was the other way around. Freedom of speech, expression and conscience was the prerequisite for Swedish democracy to evolve into its current form.

Despite the 1766 breakthrough, the history of Sweden was speckled with moments where these freedoms were repressed. One such moment that found its way into the collective consciousness was the Crusenstolpe Riots of 1838. Magnus Jacob Crusenstolpe was a Swedish writer who had been loyal to King Karl XIV Johan. As he ended up in financial difficulties, he became somewhat of a liberal radical.

In one of his letters, he wrote that the king had broken the sabbath and worked on a Sunday. For this, Crusenstolpe was promptly arrested and sentenced to three years of hard labour. However, since he was a very popular writer, just a few days after his arrest, the royal castle in Stockholm was surrounded by an angry mob demanding his release. Things started to get out of hand as those demonstrations soon turned into riots. Soon, the military got involved and an unknown number of people were shot to death.

That was the first of several such riots, culminating in the riots and demonstrations in the summer of 1917, when many workers were starving from shortage of food due to World War I. One of the results of the 1917 riots was the first liberal-socialist government of Sweden that was elected the same year. The new government introduced universal and equal suffrage for men and women. Through the next election, in 1921, Sweden evolved into a modern democracy.

The next real crisis for freedom of expression in Sweden came about during World War II. It was during those years, 1940 to 1942, a gale of repression swept over the Swedish press.

In 1940, the enforcement laws that empowered the police and intelligence services to monitor Swedish citizens, came into effect. In February 1940, a government agency called Informationsstyrelsen (Information Board) was formed for monitoring the press, or, as it was stated back then, “to give press advise on what to publish or not.” It was considered an instrument of state censorship by many writers and editors.

From 1940 to 1943, the Swedish police confiscated hundreds of magazine and newspaper issues for publishing articles criticising (or in some cases just informing the readers) what was going on in Germany and in Nazi occupied territories. Informationsstyrelsen had the power to intercept newspapers that were writing about such sensitive matters, and did that on a number of occasions.

The most famous of those defiant newspapers was Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning (Gothenburg Shipping Post), under its legendary editor Torgny Segerstedt. Segerstedt, a radical liberal, used to be a modest fan of fascists like Mussolini before he became the leading antifascist in the Swedish press. In March 1942, Göteborgs Handels carried a front page with a blank space under a very telling headline: “What goes on in concentration camps and prisons in Norway.” The first edition of the day was intercepted by the censors and the original article was killed, however, Segerstedt decided to publish a second edition and show what he was not allowed to talk about.

It was indeed dangerous to publish radical and oppositional views in Sweden in those times. This became apparent when a communist newspaper, Norrskensflamman (The Northern Lights), was bombed in 1940 and Israel Holmgren, a leading liberal politician and famous medical researcher, was prosecuted for publishing his book, Nazisthelvetet (Nazi Hell), in 1942.

Holmgren’s book was the first Swedish book to detail the methods used by the Nazis against the Jews in Europe. As a result, he was soon sentenced to four months of hard labour, after a parodic trial, where the prosecutor made it very clear that it did not matter whether Holmgren’s descriptions were true or not – what was at stake was what people could write during wartime.

But, truth did matter. In November 1942, thousands of Norwegian Jews fled to Sweden. Then, there was no way of hiding the real picture of what was going on. It soon became obvious to everyone that Holmgren had been telling the truth all along. Thus, his sentence was commuted.

In 1949, Tryckfrihetsförordningen was updated in a tragic acknowledgement of the fact that Swedish law and Swedish democracy did not really stand the test during World War II.

As we all know, the Information Age has brought new possibilities and new threats. In recent times, the discussion in Sweden has been focused on a new law that empowers the intelligence agencies to monitor Internet traffic, something unheard of in 1949. But, now the threat is spelled terrorism, and our privacy, integrity and freedom of expression are again laid on the weighing scale: safety or freedom?

As Benjamin Franklin put it, around the time Tryckfrihetsförordningen came into force in Sweden, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It still rings very true.♦

Ola Larsmo, a novelist, is the president of Swedish PEN. His website, in Swedish, is available at http://www.olalarsmo.com