ABSTRACT
One thing that makes the Swedish reception interesting is that it started very early, already in Kierkegaard’s own lifetime. There are two well-known Swedish interpreters, Torsten Bohlin (1889-1950) and Lars Bejerholm (b. 1930), and there are a few more interesting interpreters worth mentioning. But their achievements have had no effect on the Swedish reception, and it looks indeed as if this history of reception lacks all sense of continuity. With the Swedish debate concerning Kierkegaard’s attack on the Danish Church as the only exception, every new interpreter seems to rise up out of a vacuum, feeling himself called upon to introduce Kierkegaard anew. It follows that most of what has been published in Sweden on Kierkegaard are introductions, and their form is always the same: an introductory part about his engagement to Regine Olsen and his painful relationship to his father, after which follows a biographically oriented description of the authorship, work by work. Our article will mainly focus on the books which attempt to move beyond merely introducing Kierkegaard. When one gets deeper into texts that are better informed, a certain tendency in the Swedish reception appears, i.e., an interest in Kierkegaard’s view on religious and subjective truth.
