Cultural heritage issues
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
M believes that adults should pay for museum visits to show respect for culture 1, but proposes half price for people with weak finances 1. M argues that visits to museums, theaters, and concerts should be payable as citizens should signal that these have a value 2. S believes that the common cultural heritage should be free and accessible to everyone regardless of wallet or age 3. S argues that museums have historically excluded non-privileged groups 4. SD wants to strengthen the protection of cultural heritage during crises 5, preserve the rural cultural environments against EU directives 5 as well as preserve intangible values such as dialects and crafts 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Peter Ollén (M)
Mr. Speaker! Today I would like to speak about our shared cultural heritage. I emphasize the shared, because there are many dimensions of cultural heritage. For the individual family, it is of course about grandmother's brooch or grandfather's letters. For the nation, it is about important documents and works of art, which together constitute our history.
When Russia launched its war in Ukraine last year, they also immediately began attacking the cultural heritage. We have been horrified by how systematically works of art and objects have been taken out of the country. The Swedish National Antiquarian quickly took action to see how Sweden could help. When it comes to documents, the probably oldest version of the Ukrainian constitution is today in the custody of the National Archives here in Sweden.
Parts of the Swedish cultural heritage are currently located in shelters. They are safe, secure places with controlled humidity, which is naturally very good for documents and art. But shelters must be able to be prepared and used within 72 hours to evacuate people.
For many years we have not had to think about war, but now we need to secure new storage locations so that our cultural heritage does not need to be moved out into open areas during a war. These are large costs that lie ahead of our nation, costs that add no value but are only there to protect us against the aggression that Russia now constitutes.
Mr. Speaker! Another consequence of the war has been the high energy prices. They have caused many of our churches to now be decommissioned. As long as they are only dehumidified, it is not a problem. It is actually only during the last 100 years that they have been heated. Before that, they managed through the centuries.
Something that, on the other hand, is a challenge for the church are the new requirements for the cemeteries. The parishes have been tasked to plan to be able to bury 5 percent of the inhabitants within a week. It is a chilling reminder of how the war in Ukraine affects many parts of our Swedish society.
When it comes to the care of our cultural heritage, inflation is currently a major threat. When it approaches 10 percent, it does not help that we have been able to increase the compensation by a few percent in this year's budget. The lack of growth also means that no room for reform arises to be distributed. Therefore, it can be said that the most important thing to achieve effective cultural support right now is to put a stop to inflation.
Mr. Speaker! This autumn, SVT is broadcasting its major initiative, Historien om Sverige. The same theme will also appear in Sommarlov, where different historical environments are built up to interest our children in our cultural heritage. SVT has communicated its initiative to the country's museums, so many will join in and tell the local history of the part of Sweden that they are located in.
When it comes to the local perspective, it is naturally important to highlight that Jämtland and Härjedalen have only belonged to Sweden since 1645 and that Skåne, Halland and Blekinge became Swedish first in 1658. It may seem that this does not have much significance. One might think that cultural heritage is treated equally throughout the country. But Birka and the early settlements at Mälaren are excavated, while the agriculture's plows still grind away 99 percent of our largest Viking Age settlement, Uppåkra in Skåne.
Mr. Speaker! It should be a personal right to be involved in creating the common history. This is how it has been reasoned in Denmark, where anyone with the landowner's approval can search with a metal detector in the plow layer of the fields. This saves many treasures from being destroyed. The Danish assessment is that, for the most part, everything that is found will also be shared with the museums.
Ageism is a common form of discrimination in Sweden. Perfectly healthy individuals are screened out because of their age. The work with cultural heritage is, however, completely dependent on these women and men. Therefore, a special focus is needed on whether the experiences of the elderly are utilized in a systematic way in cultural heritage work.
The daily press and free newspapers are for the majority of the population the most important entry point to history. Here, people and events in our local history are presented, and here the material is created that tomorrow's cultural heritage researchers will dig into. Public service at a national level and the daily press, free newspapers, and museums at a local level are the most important everyday contact with our cultural heritage. This we must safeguard. But here and now, we unfortunately must create an emergency plan for how we protect our cultural heritage in the event of war.
Louise Thunström (S)
Mr. Speaker! I live in Tanum. Tanum is Bohuslän's largest municipality by area. There, 13,000 inhabitants live during the winter and 55,000 during a few hectic summer weeks. Tanum is known, among other things, for its rock carvings, which spread across smooth rock faces and are one of our 15 Swedish world heritage sites. Tanum struggles in many ways with the same problems as several other municipalities in the countryside: an aging population, difficulties in recruiting for the jobs that exist, a lack of public transport, long distances to hospitals, and challenges in meeting the future's welfare and its investments.
In the southern part of Tanum Municipality lies Gerlesborg, a district that has had activity since the 1700s and where farmers in the early 1800s grew oats that were shipped out from the coastal community for export to England. In 1944, Gerlesborgsskolan was founded by the artist, author, and professor Arne Isacsson. Gerlesborgsskolan is an art school that, among other things, offers a two-year basic education in fine art.
In Gerlesborg, it seethes with life. Here, in addition to the school, there is Konstnärernas kollektivverkstad, Scenkonst Gerlesborg, which is a meeting place for performing artists, an ecovillage, a purchasing cooperative, a philosophy café, and cooperative rental apartments that the residents on site have established themselves. Here, ideas flourish, not only within art and culture but also regarding democracy, sustainability, and innovation.
I was invited to Gerlesborg a couple of weeks ago. Then I asked what it is that makes just this place so lively and why creativity is so palpable just here, in an otherwise rather barren and empty area in northern Bohuslän. It is because of the school, was the answer. The free arts have spread and released thought and imagination not only among the school's students but among the entire region. The free arts and culture, which are allowed to challenge, provoke, beautify, uglify, and create debate, create, in addition to their own value as art, also meaning, creativity, health, and development.
The importance of art and culture being free therefore cannot be emphasized enough. We politicians shall not define content. We shall support activities so that people are reached by a diversity of cultural expressions and can themselves decide what is meaningful for them specifically. Making culture accessible to more people is for us Social Democrats one of the primary goals. Creating an arena where more can create, allow themselves to be educated, entertained, enjoy, and perhaps even be frightened by culture is necessary and a prerequisite for a democratic society.
Free admission to state museums lowered the thresholds and enabled more people to take part in our common heritage. Now Sweden's museums testify to a decline in the number of visitors. During a visit to the Nationalmuseum a while ago, I was told that the students who regularly visited the museum for their studies no longer come.
We Social Democrats regret the removal of free admission. We are aware that free admission does not alone provide new visitors to museums, but it is an important prerequisite. The objective for us Social Democrats is furthermore that Sweden's regional museums shall also be included in the long term.
Mr. Speaker! On February 24, we noted here in the chamber the anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In war, cultural heritage is a prioritized target. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime blew up priceless Buddha statues, and during the Balkan Wars of the 90s, the old bridge in Mostar was bombed. From Ukraine, the UN reports that over 200 cultural heritage sites have been destroyed.
Attacks and destruction of cultural heritage in war aim to rewrite history according to a political agenda and for ethnic or cultural cleansing and psychological impact on a society. With the destruction of cultural heritage, history writing is enabled that favors the authoritarian ideological will. This effective tactic destroys important knowledge about a society's culture, development, and opportunity for future building.
Before Russia's war of invasion in Ukraine, discussions on the protection of cultural heritage have tended to focus on areas outside of Europe. Unfortunately, the issues have also become relevant in our immediate vicinity due to the ideological warfare currently taking place on our continent. It is worrying when report after report emphasizes the acute need to take measures to secure the Swedish cultural heritage in the event of war or crisis.
The Swedish Defence Research Agency and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency have recently noted deficiencies regarding knowledge acquisition concerning the Swedish cultural heritage as well as organization and action plans for evacuation. The regulation of protection and evacuation of cultural heritage objects is set out in several laws and ordinances. It is specified which actors are responsible for preparedness preparations, care and maintenance, as well as protection and evacuation of the cultural heritage in the event of crisis or conflict.
Despite this, Swedish museums and archives struggle with object prioritization, lack of storage space for relocation, and additional costs in this regard. In order to be able to apply the legislation, a national action plan is needed. There must be national clarity on why the cultural heritage should be prioritized, how it should be done, and who bears the responsibility for the implementation. The Government needs to bring together Sweden's cultural heritage sector and assist the operations with solutions.
Cultural heritage should have a special priority in a time of the advance of authoritarian regimes. Lower the thresholds for accessibility and have preparedness in the event of crisis and war. Right now, it is of utmost importance to understand what role cultural heritage plays in our society, why cultural heritage becomes a target in crisis and war, and what must be done to protect our country's preserved cultural history.
Mr. Speaker! For the first time ever, Sweden received a national world heritage strategy in 2019. The strategy is a result of a government mandate that the Swedish National Heritage Board received in 2017. The mandate was to describe how Sweden works with UNESCO's World Heritage Convention and to indicate how the work should be directed and developed moving forward. The strategy shows an increase in ambition for the work regarding our world heritage sites, but moving forward, more will be required.
On February 1, I participated in the association Världsarv's annual meeting conference. There, I was told that several of our world heritage sites do not manage to meet the criteria that Unesco set for information and communication about world heritage.
Their visitor center does not tell about the World Heritage Convention or about democracy and peace issues, which form the basis for all world heritage sites. They sell towels and distribute brochures. Accessibility is limited as many visitor centers have very limited opening hours, primarily scheduled for three summer months. It is not enough. It also becomes all too clear when one compares with other countries' world heritage centers.
World Heritage sites were created for democracy and peace. They are also incredibly important for understanding and solidarity between countries. Sweden has 15 World Heritage sites, and one of them, Struve's Meridian Arc, passes through ten countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine. Struve's Meridian Arc is a reminder of international scientific cooperation. World Heritage sites are humanity's collective memory and perhaps also our future opportunity through global work.
Mr. Speaker! We Social Democrats have several reservations in the report, but for the sake of time, I move for approval of only reservation number 6.
Peter Ollén (M)
Mr. Speaker! I am pleased that we are both so clear when it comes to cultural heritage and what threat the war we now have in Europe poses to European cultural heritage.
What I want to bring up is the member's criticism of the introduced fee for adults over 20 years of age that they have to pay when they visit museums. My view is that even if we had fantastic growth, adults should pay when they take part in culture.
Then one can manage it by having half price one day a week or by having a special price on some evening and so on, so that it is made available even for those with a weak economy.
I mean that it is incredibly important, out of respect for the culture, to show that one pays for it. We give 1.5 billion to the state museums from here. The revenues from adult admissions are approximately 100 million.
I come from Malmö and personally think it is very strange that, for eight years, from the Social Democratic side, it was pushed that it should be free to visit museums in Stockholm.
But it costs exactly the same as usual to visit the museums out in the countryside, even though they often have a significantly simpler and lower quality. I do not understand the logic.
Louise Thunström (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Peter Ollén, for the question!
Free admission has enabled more visitors to our museums. Now the museums face a decline of approximately 30 percent in the number of visitors. Nationalmuseum is forced to remain closed two days a week.
This is also occurring in a time of recession, rising inflation and high electricity prices where households in their finances cannot prioritize museum visits.
We Social Democrats believe that our common cultural heritage should be free and accessible to everyone regardless of price and wallet and regardless of age. It is extra important in the times we live in now, just as I said in my speech.
Several museums are located in Stockholm, but not all of them. We have the Railway Museum in Gävle, the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg, and the Maritime Museum in Karlskrona, to name a few. With its 2.4 million inhabitants, this is nevertheless the region that has the highest population.
As I said in my speech, the Social Democrats' goal in the long run is that regional museums shall also be covered by free admission.
Peter Ollén (M)
Mr. Speaker! One had eight years to take it further and, if so, adjust it if one wanted to change it so that it also applied in the rest of the country.
Now I think, in principle, that it should be the other way around. Whether one goes to a concert, a theater visit, or a museum, one should pay. As a citizen, one should signal that this has a value for me that I am willing to pay for.
Louise Thunström (S)
Mr. Speaker! The museums came into existence at one time to exclude the non-privileged groups from these fantastic collections. It is with that approach that we Social Democrats believe it is our common cultural heritage. We own it together. It should be free and accessible to everyone.
I would like to send a question back to Peter Ollén. But I realize that I cannot do that in this exchange of remarks.
Runar Filper (SD)
Mr. Speaker! It has been a while since I stood here. I believe it was in May, so I feel a bit rusty. At that time, the debate concerned the Committee on Environment and Agriculture.
I begin by moving for approval of reservation 5 on world heritage issues. We naturally stand behind all our ten reservations. But for the sake of time, I move for approval of only this one.
Today we are debating the Committee on Cultural Affairs' report on Heritage Issues. I will focus heavily on the rural areas' heritage. The term heritage is not used only for objects, buildings, and archaeological remains. It also applies to stories, norms, traditions, and other intangible values that we inherit from previous generations.
It is literature, art, monuments, knowledge, stories that we have learned from our ancestors, food that we enjoy and much more. We Sverigedemokrater always drive a broad cultural heritage policy where we focus on the preservation and development of the Swedish cultural heritage. Ten of the 25 reservations in this report come from Sverigedemokraterna. That says quite a bit about our enthusiasm for just the cultural heritage.
It is about us standing behind efforts that aim to preserve the cultural heritage for future generations. But it is also about digitalization initiatives to make the cultural heritage accessible for the future.
Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine demonstrates that cultural heritage is not protected in the event of a crisis or conflict, and we therefore want to see political measures aimed at strengthening the protection of Swedish cultural heritage in the event of a crisis or conflict.
Mr. Speaker! In Värmland, we have no castles. Here we must content ourselves with our manor houses from the ironworks era. Several hundred years ago, it was good times for the ironworks owners in Värmland. They built magnificent manor houses and lived the manor life of the kind that Selma Lagerlöf so vividly described in Gösta Berlings saga. I come, by the way, from Sunne municipality, which hosted Selma. That is important.
Many of the old manor houses of the industrial works still have outstanding cultural environments today. Many times, complete small industrial communities grew up around a river or a slightly larger body of water that was dammed. There could be both water-powered smelters, hammers, smithies, sawmills, and mills within a limited area. It became a *bruk*.
A similar cultural environment exists at Järle kvarn in Örebro län, which is a national interest. It is located in a nature reserve that was established, among other reasons, to protect the dam and the mill as a cultural environment. Directives and decisions made in Brussels are now leading to the destruction of these cultural environments in Sweden. The Land and Environment Court has given Naturvårdsverket the right to carry out the demolition of the dam at Järle, but the judgment has been appealed. I believe that the judgment will be delivered on April 7 from the Land and Environment Court of Appeal, which is what it is called.
If Naturvårdsverket is granted permission to demolish the dam, a several-hundred-year-old cultural environment where humans and nature have lived in symbiosis will be lost forever. The mill is unique, but the demolition of cultural environments near waterways is not. Virtually all old ironworks have some form of dam. These are now being demolished based on justifications regarding nature values that the EU has decided upon. EU directives should not be able to be used to justify the demolition of cultural environments in Sweden. Such decisions should always be made within Sweden's borders.
We must now immediately utilize the opportunities that exist to assert and protect the cultural heritage at all political levels. Cultural environment interests in Örebro län appeal to the government to stop the demolition of Järlefallsdammen on the grounds that the issue has become relevant in the Tidö Agreement. Everything else is a betrayal of the previous generations who have built Sweden rich with both solid cultural environment values as well as natural values all around in our elongated country.
Mr. Speaker! To return to Värmland, we also have our unique Finnish forest there. It is Sweden's absolute largest contiguous Finnish forest, with parish churches built by Finns and a dozen smoke huts in their original locations - the only remaining ones in the entire world that stand where they were once built, except for a few that are on the Norwegian side.
From here, interviews have uncovered previously missing pieces that have complemented the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Here, linguists have studied the Savolax dialect, which has been extinct in Finland for hundreds of years, but has survived in Värmland's isolated Finnish forests but not in Finland.
There is much to say about this mythical region and about the people who inhabited this vast forest. Here, we wish to see Sweden's next World Heritage site. This is a cultural heritage that is worthy both materially and immaterially. Sweden has today 15 cultural heritage sites, the latest from 2012. It is thus 11 years ago, and it is now high time to take advantage of this unique cultural environment and give it the strongest protection against destruction and decay that we have. This is clarified in the reservation I have just moved for approval.
The Sweden that many associate with the landscape of red-painted cottages and barns, and the Sweden that so many vividly describe when they proudly tell how their home region and its buildings look – that landscape image may be gone in a few decades, half a century, or a century when all these rural barns and sheds have decayed, been demolished, or changed in appearance and color.
Today, fewer and fewer of the older outbuildings that have belonged to the farms and agriculture in a traditional way are being used. Outbuildings that have lost their original function become surplus buildings. These buildings should be preserved and not demolished, as they tell of older times' social structures and farm contexts and constitute documentation of how agriculture was managed in the past.
There is something valuable in the appearance and colors of the Swedish villages through the presence of the old barns and haylofts. Without them, the nuances and beauty would not be as dazzling in the Swedish cultural and agricultural landscape.
The buildings constitute a part of Swedish history and tradition and contribute to a uniform cultural environment in the countryside and in the cultivated landscape. The design and coloring of the houses constitute a part of the cultural heritage. It would not feel as full of experience to behold a beautiful landscape that has been disfigured by the fact that only newer, industrial-like barns and outbuildings of sheet metal stand there.
Taking the above into consideration, more targeted support is needed for the restoration of old barns and outbuildings, so-called outbuildings that are no longer used or needed for the farm's operation.
Mr. Speaker! Food products and foodstuffs have always been produced in the countryside, and Swedish agriculture has thereby passed on an important part of our cultural heritage. Swedish food and craft traditions originating from the old farming society risk being forgotten and changed at a rapid pace in today's changing society.
Inherited knowledge of everyday and natural tasks such as preserving and making preserves, salting, smoking, and drying is on the way to disappearing. Blood food of various kinds was more common in the past when one was careful to utilize everything edible on the slaughtered animals. It could be black soup, blood sausage, blood palt, and paltbröd. It could also be about bread baking and old milk dishes.
Taking into account all that which was self-evident during the time of self-sufficiency is not as common or self-evident today. Here we have a goal of preserving the heritage that otherwise risks being lost.
Against the background of the above, a national regulatory framework for the labeling of culturally and historically valuable Swedish food products should be developed. Such a labeling could increase interest in our food heritage and bring about positive effects for both the tourism industry and rural development. The national labeling rules could then complement the EU's protected designation of origin for food and agricultural products.
It must be urgent and natural to safeguard the dialects as an important part of our cultural heritage. Swedish dialects are an irreplaceable part of our common cultural heritage. Our dialect, our way of speaking, we have with us in one way or another wherever we find ourselves in our country. The local tongue is what most associates us people with the home region. There are events and occasions when the right feeling can only be conveyed in local dialect.
But the dialects are getting less sharp boundaries and are thereby losing users, at least in their distinctive forms. Therefore, the everyday word and language use has also become poorer in Sweden. When we comment on different dialects' deviation from standard Swedish, it is primarily the language melody and pronunciation we read, which soon is the only thing that remains of the former dialects. What is disappearing at the fastest rate is the vocabulary, dialectal words and expressions that disappear with the passing of the older generation.
In addition to the fact that the dialects have an irreplaceable historical value, they are unique as carriers of identity and must therefore be preserved, used and secured for future generations.
Here, the Institute for Language and Folklore has an immensely important role in its mission, where they research and disseminate knowledge about dialects and work with collecting, examining, conveying, and making dialect material accessible. They have an important role to fill in order to safeguard our intangible cultural heritage. The Sweden Democrats will continue to drive and promote initiatives for the important mission that the Institute for Language and Folklore works with.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.