ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with discussing some historical moments important to the Swedish consciousness and later return to what contemporary Swedish identity is. Sweden is a country situated in the periphery of Europe, on the very north of the European landmass. It has been excluded from many historical and cultural currents in continental Europe due to the great distance between them. The enclosure movement also had a positive effect: agricultural output increased during the nineteenth century, and Sweden slowly evolved from being a very poor agrarian country to a modern industrial society. By the 1930s, Sweden's transformation into a democratic industrial society was almost complete, and the social democratic government was well under way to realizing its most ambitious project: the universal, all-encompassing welfare system called the People's Home. Modernity can be an abstract idea, but in Sweden it was manifested through the development of the welfare system, the schools and the hospitals built, and the telephone lines connecting the country.
