ABSTRACT

The latter years of the nineteenth century might well be described as 'the best of times and the worst of times' for Sweden. Large tracts of the country were ravaged by famine, poverty and ill-health, and over a million emigrated between 1860 and 1920. There were deep-seated ideological differences among the population generally between those who favoured industrial development and liberal economic policy versus those who promoted rural agrarian and patriotic values. Strindberg epitomised the iconoclastic spirit of modern times in Sweden. Connections between socialism, social democracy and the national romanticist movement were therefore tense from the outset. The making of geography in Sweden was influenced by German precedents. German ideas, practices, and research frontiers were transplanted on to Swedish soil. By the 1920s many of the earlier debates on the nature of the subject seemed to have been 'settled' by agreements to disagree, or to have lost their lustre.