ABSTRACT

Per Anders Fogelstrom's series is fiction with serious claims to historical authenticity, and this analysis will explore how this claim can be made and what it implies about both history and fiction. Both history and fiction are subject to the medium of narrative. Fogelstrom's work is an oxymoron: both history and literature, true and false, reality and illusion at the same time. Fogelstrom's Stockholm series belongs to the specific genre of the historical novel, whether or not Fogelstrom approves of the term. In many respects, Fogelstrom's five-volume suite on the history of Stockholm is a traditional historical epic without so much as a hint of postmodernism. It is very much part of a nation-building project, in that it has become part of the cultural memory of millions of Swedes. Vilhelm Moberg was a proletarian writer writing in the tradition of social realism in Sweden that extends back to the Modern Breakthrough.