In early June, Olof Bärtås defended his master thesis at the Department of History, Lund University. It is a study of the processes of cultural Europeanization in Sweden 1977–1989, drawing on perspectives from the history of knowledge.

Does Sweden belong to Europe? The question itself has a unique position in Swedish historiography; it arose in a very specific historical moment, when historians and social scientists in the 1990s began to study to what extent Sweden was a part of a European community. Provoked by the contemporary troubling crossroad, whether Sweden should join the EC or not, scholars in this period became interested in the history of these entanglements and its political challenges. 

Following this, many researchers have pinned down a Swedish exceptionality, with regards to both Swedish neutrality politics and the formation of the welfare state, which, in one sense, isolated and disconnected Sweden from Europe. By many Swedes, their country was considered as almost a synonym with modernity and progression; Europe, on the other hand, was perceived as conservative and burdened with a tragic history. 

In my master thesis, “European Discoveries: Cultural Europeanization within Swedish culture pages 1977–1989”, I actively set out a goal to challenge this view, and I wanted to challenge this historiography from a specific vantage point. By combining the history of knowledge and the theoretical perspective of a cultural Europeanization, my goal was to, with Reinhart Koselleck’s concept of Zeitschichten, present and create a better understanding of another chronologies and patterns within this larger process of Swedish Europeanization. I argue that if we study a new set of arenas and actors – arenas and actors not exclusively oriented towards politics but rather towards knowledge and culture – other histories of Europeanization will emerge. 

In contrast to previous research, I argue that Europe cannot be understood solely as a political concept in the sense of the EC or EU. There are other processes and entanglements of Europeanization, and to study these, we, as historians, need a broader scholarly lens. For me, this lens has been provided by concepts derived from the history of knowledge. The history of knowledge stresses the need of studying not only Europeanization as such, but also the infrastructure of this process: the actors, arenas and knowledge which defined and enabled these processes. 

The location for my thesis was the culture sections of three major Swedish newspapers – Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet and Sydsvenska Dagbladet – which I have studied as public knowledge arenas. Focusing on three actors, Madeleine Gustafsson, Richard Swartz and Per Landin, I have studied essential and important actors of Europeanization. Through the practices of journalism, these actors could in the capacity of certain roles – as introducers, translators, essayists, etc. – introduce and discuss European ideas and knowledge in a Swedish public sphere. 

In my concluding chapter, I characterize cultural Europeanization through two main segments, following discussions initiated by Erling Sandmo and Helge Jordheim: Europe as an object of knowledge and as a concept. My thesis presents approaches, methods and professions through which actors have acquired, and Swedish cultural pages in general, knowledge of Europe (reviews, travelogues, interviews, etc.). Considering this, a kind of slow and over time significant circulation of knowledge, which contributed to the cultural page becoming an introductory arena for Europe, should be emphasized. In addition, when discussing Europe, historians cannot evade from the problems of temporality and how history itself emerges in contemporary use. All my actors defined and understood Europe within a historical tradition and there is, in a sense, a need of temporalizing knowledge. Furthermore, the results lead us think of, and create a greater awareness concerning, the relation between knowledge and time. A sense of temporalizating of knowledge – and how specific actors produced and circulated knowledge and understood these practices in relation to time – will deepen our historical understanding of central questions that history of knowledge circles around.

Lastly, I want to encourage students on all levels to engage with the history of knowledge. The field is in many aspects new and vital, but it is also a field in need of theoretical contributions. Further studies need to continue to explore its limits and possibilities. It is both stimulating and liberating to work within a research tradition that is flexible and still under development; the future of history of knowledge in many ways depends on how we, students and young researchers, interpret the basic foundations and what new histories we are able to create from them. I, personally, am looking forward to witnessing and further being part of this process. 

Olof Bärtås