The relationship with Royalty
INBOX:
Dear Editor,
As a Swedish-American I understand and appreciate the sentimentality and sense of tradition that drives Nordstjernan’s reporting.
However, in reading in issue 3 of Feb. 15 that the recent “royal” visitors to Silicon Valley “are both very interested in Swedish entrepreneurs abroad”, I am disappointed at the paper’s fundamental lack of understanding of what Silicon Valley, and America, is all about. At its best, Silicon Valley is based on genuine meritocracy, the mixing of different cultures and complete disregard for nationality or lineage. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs represent the antithesis tired old European “royalty”.
One marvels at how Nordstjernan, an American publication, can provide such glowing coverage of the symbols of the rigidity and pomposity that make Silicon Valley an impossible idea for so many Europeans.
Jacob Wallin
Sunnyvale
Thanks Jacob.
Jacob Wallin has a point: Although America has always had its own version of classes, it was also the land of opportunities. It offered — and offers — immigrants the promise of a better life, a fresh start without carrying the weight of a more rigid society.
The relationship between modern Swedes and second and third generation Swedish-Americans and “their” royalty has been an interesting mix in the 20th and 21st centuries. The ancestors of the later generations signed their citizenship papers, including The Certificate of Citizenship from 1876, shown here, which included the words: “… and that he doth absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever, and particularly to the King of Sweden of whom he was heretofore a subject.”
They did this gladly.
The generation that left at the end of the 19th century left a feudal country where they were often oppressed by king, nobility and priests. People were starving, most commoners were poor and miserable in Sweden but the early Swedish immigrants to America also sought freedom. Freedom of religion, freedom from a rigid class society, from poverty and serfdom under the then Swedish system.
And yet, once people had arrived, with little or no knowledge of the new language, with two pairs of spare pants and sometimes a few tools of trade, the king and the old country started meaning something else. It’s no wonder our very first issue, Nordstjernan of September 21, 1872, covered the illness and death of his Majesty King Carl XV.
Today, more than 140 years later, when the king has become a mere symbol and no longer represents the ultimate power and the upper classes of society more than in name, it is precisely the ancestors of those who left to escape the “Kungl. Maj:t” (at present H.R.H. / His Royal Highness) that hold him highest. The royal family is a clear symbol of the “Swedish.”
The King of Sweden today represents something else. He has become a face of Sweden itself. The Sweden of our dreams and the Sweden we may sometimes idolize in a way that may have been unthinkable for our forefathers.
We humans have always created symbols. We need people or objects to represent something else entirely, often a feeling or an abstract entity not easily defined. And the royal family is a strong symbol of Sweden, of being Swedish and everything it represents. That particular symbol seldom becomes stronger than here — in the diaspora.
It would be useful for all the royal family’s detractors in Sweden to go to the Swedish communities in America in conjunction with visits by the royal house to get a sense of just how strong a symbol and how important the royal house is for the image of Sweden abroad.
Our Swedish-American friends, who are often more fond of the Swedish than Swedes themselves, are the royal family’s biggest supporters. Let’s face it: It’s nowadays not always easy to find the right symbols and representatives to fill the need to find common ground most of us share. When it comes to Sweden in America: Better friends of Sweden and the Swedish just do not exist!
Ulf Barslund Martensson
Editor & Publisher
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The Editor & Publisher
Inte som andra bloggar.... this entry will be sometimes in Swedish, sometimes 'på svenska' - Just så händelsrikt är livet som utgivare av Amerikas äldsta och numera enda Svenska tidskrift.
Här ovan poserar jag “on location” kl 6 på morgonen i Minneapolis St. Paul för två år sedan. Henrik Olund tog bilden som förberedelse för en porträttbild av Vice President Walter Mondale. (Det var en bra intervju med en bra person) Jag skriver sällan med byline i Nordstjernan men jag är alltid ansvarig för innehållet, även om jag inte alltid håller med om allt.
(PS. Intervjun med Mondale hittar ni på nordicreach.com DS.) |