ABSTRACT
The making of Swedish heritage in Sweden and Swedish America refers to a desire for culturally authentic traditions. The process of negotiation with commercial culture shows which phenomena lend themselves to heritage making in an American context. This process reveals that certain phenomena belong to a transnational or even international repertoire, while others, such as the never-ending lutefisk and Ole and Lena jokes, are bound to the Swedish American (and Norwegian American) folk context. Among the transnational symbols that are selected and reselected and therefore gain value over time, the Dala horse, folk costume, and Viking stand out as important. It is not in the objects themselves, but in their symbolism and the act of altering them, that a shared Swedish and Swedish American heritage is created.
