Swedish sailor songs,popular culture and maritime national identities,1918–1960

Abstract

In twentieth-century Sweden, conventional inland nationalism was challenged by strong currents of maritime national identities. The reason was a national frenzy regarding maritime popular music – primarily, songs about Swedish sailors and their adventures in exotic faraway lands. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, and continuing into the 1950s, numerous Swedish composers, singers and musicians produced hundreds of sailor songs. Their commercial success was staggering, to the delight of Sweden's developing music industry, but the identitarian consequences were even more astonishing. Maritime national identities flourished as Swedishness itself changed drastically via this huge exposure to sailor songs.

Introduction: the source material

From 1918 to 1960, hundreds of Swedish maritime songs were written, produced and sold via new mass markets as the modern music industry emerged, developed and matured. These Swedish sailor songs were different from, for example, the Anglo-Saxon tradition of sea shanties, as they had generally never been sung on ships or in other maritime environments. They were not maritime folk music as such. ¹ Instead, the Swedish sailor songs were industrially and professionally produced specimens of modern capitalism, commercialism and popular culture. ² They were intended to satisfy the growing music consumption of the masses – the ordinary Swedish population, not sailors or other limited maritime groups (coastal populations, harbour workers or navy personnel, for example). Sweden's twentieth-century popular maritime music craze was so huge that it came to surround Swedishness. Even today, many Swedes express that these songs culturally represent their national identity. To sing them is to be Swedish.

The sailor songs are sung on a multitude of Swedish media platforms, including national television shows, ³ and at traditional sing-along events like midsummer festivities (midsummer being hugely important to Swedishness) and other social occasions. The songs are such an obvious part of Swedishness that they are taken for granted by Swedes in general. They are commonplace and therefore not reflected on, which means that Swedish academics – even those who specialize in the study of national identities – have largely neglected this significant part of identitarian Swedishness.

Of the hundreds of maritime songs produced during the twentieth century, some 80 songs have been chosen as the source material for this study. They have been selected since they were, to various extents, the most commercially successful songs. They are therefore representative and can be regarded as ‘the greatest hits’ of the golden era of Swedish maritime popular music. ⁴

The Swedish maritime songs of the twentieth century are not all about sailors. Some celebrate other aspects of the national maritime culture and environments, such as Sweden's coastal landscapes, archipelagos and seafaring traditions. Many songs manifest the joy of leisure sailing. However, there is one notable exception concerning the themes of the songs: the naval (military) field – expressed via Sweden's navy, naval seamen, warships and so on – is almost absent in the source material, or at least very rare. ⁵ Maritime militarism almost seems to be perceived as foreign ‘otherness’.

The nation and popular culture

Modern nationalism, being the main political ideology of the post-1789 nation state, uses the collective mindsets of national identities to construct itself. ⁶ The concept of ‘the nation’ is an example of mass identity politics and, as such, far more intricate than the concept of ‘the state’. As was proclaimed in the newly formed Italian Parliament in 1861: ‘we have created Italy, now we must create the Italians’. ⁷ However, creating a nation is not enough, as nations require constant maintenance to imbue themselves with the continuing aura of being a natural given. Accordingly, nations need substantial, repeated and ongoing efforts on the part of groups and individuals. ⁸

Conceptions of a ‘national culture’, in particular, have been crucial to nationalistic rhetoric, practice and ideology. Such ideas have played a central role in fostering mass national identities. ⁹ Anthony Smith writes the following in his study Nationalism and Modernism:

Just as nationalism has become a global movement and the nation the accepted norm of political sovereignty, so a national culture has become entrenched as the raison d’être of each and every national community, its differentia specifica and distinguishing mark. ¹⁰

However, scholars of nationalism, when studying the relationship between culture and nations, typically focus on national high culture, such as art, literature, theatrical drama or symphonies, for example. They frequently overlook national popular culture, such as films, games, television, comic books and popular music. ¹¹ According to Alastair Pennycook, there is an academic perception that popular culture is not a proper focus for serious study:

Popular culture is deemed to be artificial, commercialized, manipulated, inauthentic, or just downright bad. All of this, of course, misses the point that most studies of popular culture may be more interested in the sociology of cultural movements than in the cultural products themselves. ¹²

One exception to this phenomenon is Michael Billig's study Banal Nationalism, which in 1995 opened research space for a systematic analysis of the relationship between popular culture and nationalism. ¹³ According to Billig, it is low-key banal nationalism – rather than extrovert, loud and aggressive displays of nationalism – that makes nationalism pervasive and persisting. ¹⁴ The concept of banal nationalism suggests that the nation is constantly flagged in a ‘multiplicity of ways embedded in the mundane routines of everyday life’. ¹⁵ Emily West studies the relationship between media and nationalism, and writes, regarding popular culture:

large audiences are thought to commune, in a sense, through their shared participation in a mediated event, and in so doing experience and celebrate their connection with national others as much as the explicit content of the event in question. ¹⁶

Successful popular culture represents two-way communication as capitalism launches a product aimed at the masses that must be appreciated (bought) by large numbers of people and turned into profit. If popular culture surpasses a certain point of critical mass regarding commercial success, it becomes highly influential as a societal discourse – and can be a very effective way of promoting national identities, indicating a system of nationalism from below. West uses the concept of ‘affect’ to describe how popular culture circulates (moves through space and time) and in what way these ‘processes of circulation’ are themselves constitutive of interpretive communities, social imaginaries and banal nationalism:

Affect theory gives us tools to add, even serve as a corrective to, exclusive attention to the symbolic and the textual in popular expressions of nationalism. It draws our attention to questions of immediacy, liveness, eventfulness, embodiment, circulation, intensities, and flows. These phenomena may be organized by popular culture but are not readable off popular texts alone. It is only by examining how these texts are consumed, taken up, spread, and circulated that we can understand their role in generating affect. ¹⁷

This resonates with the approaches of national identity and popular culture that attend to bottom-up constructs of popular nationalism rather than limit themselves to government-controlled, top-down disciplinary nationalism. Or, in the brutal words of Joseph Benesh, as he describes the identitarian effects of mass popular culture:

People are spending money to be brainwashed on where to spend their next dollar and pay more for whatever that is. It's genius. Under this psychology, society is, in turn, creating a culture that expresses our deepest yearnings and desires. ¹⁸

Music and nationalism

Ever since 1792, when the initial line of ‘La Marseillaise’ – ‘Allons enfants de la Patrie’ (‘Arise, children of the Fatherland’) – was first heard in revolutionary France, the phenomena of music and modern nationalism have been closely connected. ¹⁹ In 1825, the British song ‘God Save the Queen’ was the first nationalistic song to be named an official national anthem, and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most European countries followed Britain's example. ²⁰ Thus, the same set of musical material repeatedly gathers on the nationalistic stage ‘to give voice to music and nationalism’. ²¹ Nations are collectives, and music is able to muster a collective when expressing the spirit of the nation via sound.

However, identitarian music does not have to be explicitly nationalistic, like national anthems, to produce national identities. Philip Bohlman makes the distinction between ‘national music’ and ‘nationalistic music’. In national music, reinforcing borders (such as the identitarian border between ‘us’ and ‘them’) is not a primary theme, whereas nationalistic music typically mobilizes the cultural defence of borders. ²²

In fact, popular music is a more effective approach to producing national identities compared to the pomp and circumstance of nationalistic state-sponsored national anthems, operas and symphonies. National popular music's effectiveness occurs precisely because its nationalism does not enter ‘from the top, that is from state institutions and ideologies; it may build its path into music from just every angle, as long as there are musicians and audiences willing to mobilize cultural movements from those angles’. ²³ Popular music is therefore better than nationalistic music at transforming narratives into nationalist discourse precisely because it is an example of banal nationalism rather than explicit flag-waving nationalism.

This means that popular music is the most frequently overlooked domain of nationalism in music. ²⁴ Despite its powerful impact in terms of certain national promoted images, ideals and themes, according to Tim Edensor:

culture is not fixed but negotiated, the subject of dialogue and creativity, influenced by the contexts in which it is produced and used. A sense of national identity then is not a once and for all thing, but is dynamic and dialogic, found in the constellation of a huge cultural matrix. ²⁵

At the same time, the fact that popular music produces national identities ‘from just every angle’ means that these national identities can be very different, and sometimes manifest conflicting interpretations and narratives regarding the nation.

Background: Swedish inland nationalism, 1891–1918

States bordering on the sea often experience rivalry between maritime and inland national identities. ²⁶ Commonly, maritime identities fight a losing battle. Almost all nation states prefer inland national identities connected to agrarian traditions, rural culture and farmsteads, as well as old castles, churches and battlefields.

As nineteenth-century globalization, industrialization and urbanization brought about social, political and cultural changes in human life, the notion arose that the ‘true nation’ – battling the degeneration of modernity – could only exist in the unspoiled fields, meadows and forests inland (‘the heartland’), far from the shores, beaches and coastlines of globalized oceans and their threatening transnational closeness to foreign ‘otherness’. An illustrative example is Norway, a coastal country that is almost entirely reliant on maritime resources for its livelihood. ²⁷ Despite this, inland discourses constitute the strongest forms of national identity in Norway:

From a perspective of cultural history, when Norwegian national culture was constructed during the nineteenth century, coastal cultures were considered watered down because of historical contacts with the outside world due to trade and seafaring. The coastline's contact with the outside world was therefore connected to something unauthentically Norwegian. ²⁸

Sweden was no exception to this standardized European inland nationalism when the country experienced an acceleration in the production of national identities in the late nineteenth century. The inland region of Dalarna (Figure 1), in particular, became the hegemonic ideal of Swedishness. This happened for several reasons:

• Dalarna had no contact with the extensive Swedish coastline. ²⁹ Thus, the inhabitants of Dalarna were seen as particularly wholesome, white, unmixed Swedes.

• Dalarna lacked big cities and was therefore perceived as part of rural Sweden, spared from the degeneration of urbanization.

• Dalarna had a particularly strong regional identity, emphasizing identitarian traditions, especially midsummer festivities, folklore and historical events.

Thus, symbolizing ‘true Swedish’ whiteness, anti-urbanization, anti-modernity and anti-globalization, Dalarna was the very essence of inland constructions of Swedish national identities, starting in the late nineteenth century.

Figure 1.

Dalarna (marked with a lighter shade of green on the map) has no coastline.

This was manifested physically in 1891, as parts of Dalarna were rebuilt in Sweden's capital, Stockholm, when the open-air museum Skansen (Figure 2) was inaugurated in the middle of the city. It swiftly became immensely popular. ³⁰ Its founder, Artur Hazelius (1833–1901), transported ‘typical’ specimens from Dalarna – including houses, barns and other buildings, cattle and even people – to the nation's capital and Skansen. Shortly thereafter, Hazelius expanded his efforts beyond Dalarna and brought buildings and artefacts from other agrarian regions to his museum. However, he did not incorporate the maritime culture of Sweden’s coastal regions. Maritime Sweden was not to exist at Skansen.

Figure 2.

Like the region of Dalarna, Skansen (marked with a darker shade of green on the map) has no contact with the sea, even though it is situated on a small island.

Another forceful national identity affecting early twentieth-century Sweden was race biology – the notion that Swedes were biologically superior to all other humans, being the purest Germanic Aryans in the world. In 1895, the renowned Swedish lyricist Victor Rydberg wrote a celebrated poem in which he thanked the divine powers for being born a Swede: Till ariskt blod, det renaste och äldsta, till svensk jag vigdes av en vänlig norna. [To Aryan blood, the purest and the oldest, to Swedish was I wed by a friendly Norn.] ³¹ In 1922, Sweden's State Institute for Race Biology was inaugurated in Uppsala, primarily to safeguard the purity of the racially superior Swedish people. Parliament’s decision to create the institute was taken in political unity. The Aryan quality of the Swede was unanimously regarded as a national asset, much like the Swedish forests and mines.

The birth of Swedish popular-culture sailor songs

In the 1918 Christmas issue of the influential Swedish magazine Söndags-Nisse, the former sailor Evert Taube (Figure 3) made his public debut as a poet.

Figure 3.

A young Evert Taube (1890–1976) on a ship in Australia, 1908.

His poem, ‘Karl-Alfred and Ellinor’, portrayed the adventurous Swedish sailor Karl-Alfred landing in Port Adelaide, Australia: ‘A sailor bold, Karl-Alfred was his name’. The Swede is seduced by the beautiful Australian girl Ellinor, who takes him home. But her intention is not to make love to Karl-Alfred; it is robbery: Uti ett hus uppå Victoria Street, där bodde hon – han följer henne dit. Knappt sitter hon uppå Karl-Alfreds knä, så säger hon: ‘Ta fram din portmonnä!’ Karl-Alfred frågar: ‘Vad skall du med den?’ Hon svarar blott: ‘Ta hit den strax min vän!’ och i det samma kliver in en man, en sådan som, man ej beskriva kan. Han riktar mot Karl-Alfred sin pistol: ‘Hand o’er your money, be quick you big dam’ fool.’ Men vår Karl-Alfred fruktar ej hans tjut, han säger blott: ‘Ja, varsågo och skjut!’ Men utur fickan ta’r han portmonnän, och boven får den mellan ögonen. Se’n säger han till lilla Ellinor: ‘Adjöss me dej, ursäkta att jag går!’ Men den som denna visan diktat har, det är en ung sjöman som en gång var, uti ett hus i tredje våningen, i Port Adelaide, i Australien. [Inside a building on Victoria Street, they climb the stairs up to a room so neat. Soon as they’re sitting in a cozy nook, she says to him: ‘Take out your pocketbook!’ Karl-Alfred asks her: ‘What is this about?’ She answers just: ‘You better take it out!’ And suddenly from somewhere strides a man, to do him justice no description can. He waves a pistol, threatening to shoot: ‘Hand o’er your money, be quick you dumb galoot!’ But our Karl-Alfred won’t take any guff, he simply says: ‘I think I’ll call your bluff.’ Then from his hand the pocketbook it flies and squarely hits the thief between the eyes. He bids adieu to little Ellinor: ‘Sorry, but I can’t stay here anymore!’ This song was written – and it must be true – by a young sailor on the ocean blue, who on the third floor once a visit paid down in Australia's Port Adelaide.] ³² The poem was very well received and put to music. In 1920, one of Sweden's most famous entertainers, the singer Ernst Rolf, made a gramophone recording. It should be noted that, in 1920, there were no Swedish record companies. Instead, Swedish music was produced and distributed by international companies such as His Master's Voice and Odeon (it was not until 1932 that the first Swedish record company, Sonora, was founded by the businessman Erik Ljungberg). Ernst Rolf's recording of Taube's song became a hit. In 1921, Taube made his debut as a singer and recorded ‘Karl-Alfred and Ellinor’ himself. ³³ The ensuing success was huge.

Taube's interwar breakthrough was a milestone in Swedish entertainment history. Taube continued to deliver maritime songs all his life, with most becoming central parts of Swedish national culture and identity. Taube was everywhere – in newspapers, magazines, books and the cinema, on the radio, television and the stage – until the day he died in 1976. He is to this day, almost 50 years after his death, regarded as the primary national poet of Sweden (alongside the eighteenth-century poet Carl Michael Bellman) and generally perceived to personify Swedishness.

As a result of Taube's success in the 1920s, his brand of maritime songs gave rise to the industrial-scale production of similar songs, which were composed and performed by all kinds of Swedish artists. Almost none of them had any experience of working as sailors (unlike Taube), but that was not important. The record companies supplied the artists with songs about being a sailor, photographed them in some sort of sailor attire and sold large quantities of records.

Typically, the artists were male, portraying Swedish masculinity. Their names included national celebrities such as Lasse Dahlquist, Harry Brandelius, Åke Grönberg, Carl Jularbo, Gunde Johansson, Johnny Bode, Gösta Jonsson and the world-famous tenor Jussi Björling. But there were also female artists, such as Karin Juel, Sickan Carlsson (Figure 4), Alice Babs, Lisbeth Bodin, Elisabeth ‘Bullan’ Weijden and later, in the 1960s, Monica Zetterlund. Karin Juel (1900–1976), in particular, became a very prolific female performer of sailor songs.

Figure 4.

The Swedish actor and singer Sickan Carlsson in a colourized photograph from 1937.

The impact of the sailor songs

Most of the twentieth-century Swedish sailor songs were not songs that were sung by actual sailors on ships, sea shanties or maritime folk music. Instead, they were successful examples of modern popular culture that were mass-produced by professional composers and lyric writers who learned maritime themes and language on the job. The point is that the songs were not aimed at limited maritime communities, such as sailors. Instead, the intended buyers were the land-based national mass audience of the growing music-consuming Swedish population. ³⁴

As a result, the songs were controversial among actual sailors, at least at the beginning. One example was Captain Sigurd Sternvall, who was shocked in 1926 when he returned to Sweden from voyages in the Far East. He decided to write a book with ‘authentic’ sailor songs to combat Evert Taube and the formidable surge of Swedish pop-culture maritime music. Nine years later, Sternvall's book Songs under Sails (Figure 5) was published, where he wrote in the foreword:

What struck me when coming home after many years at sea was the sudden popularity of the so-called sailor song. Very few of these songs were sung on board ships or had indeed anything to do with sailor poetry. Are these stupidities meant to represent Swedish sailor songs and poetry? The very thought was repulsive! ³⁵

Figure 5.

Sigurd Sternvall’s Songs under Sails (1935).

The irony was that, thanks to the success of the songs Sternvall hated, his own book became a bestseller, as Swedes were suddenly passionately interested in maritime culture. What Sternvall had intended as a ‘rescue operation’, aimed at eradicating ‘the parodies’ of authentic sailor songs, served to increase the craze around popular songs about the sea. Sternvall became an example of the very phenomenon he had tried to stamp out, as he was constantly heard on the radio singing sailor songs. Sternvall was simply unable to comprehend the true nature of the songs he despised. They were never supposed to be ‘real sailor poetry’. ³⁶ So-called ‘genuine’ maritime culture was not important to the record labels, being commercial companies. They sold songs to make money, period.

National identities in the sailor songs

In the Swedish pop-culture songs of the sea, national identities are constructed via contrasts. The difference between the Swede (‘us’) and the foreigner (‘them’) is highlighted as the Swedish sailor (‘normality’) encounters the outside world (‘otherness’) via voyages on the high seas. Sweden represented superiority and the rest of the world represented inferiority.

This dichotomy was visible from the very beginning in 1918, as Evert Taube's fictional Swedish sailor, Karl-Alfred, encountered the dishonest foreign otherness of the Australian seductress, Ellinor. As the songs became increasingly popular, they produced more complex forms of Swedishness. The source material reveals underlying sub-dichotomies regarding the superiority of Swedishness (the Swedish sailor) versus the inferiority of non-Swedishness (non-Swedish humanity):

The Swede is masculine as opposed to the femininity of the non-Swede.

The Swede is honest as opposed to the dishonest non-Swede.

The Swede is white (a superior Germanic Aryan) as opposed to the non-whiteness of the non-Swede (either being an inferior Germanic Aryan or not a Germanic Aryan at all – for example, black).

A consequence was that the superior Swedish sailor venturing into the world was under the constant threat of being corrupted by the otherness of foreigners. For example, in 1922, the poet Dan Andersson enjoyed a huge hit with his song ‘Deckhand Jansson’ (Figure 6), in which the young sailor Jansson risks forgetting his white Swedish girlfriend ‘for a hooker in Yokohama’. ³⁷

Figure 6.

‘Deckhand Jansson’ (‘Jungman Jansson’) was such a commercial success that it was turned into a brand of tobacco in 1941.

Specifically, the inferior race of foreigners posed a special danger for the Swede abroad. In 1921, Taube recorded a song (written in 1919) about a Swedish sailor – Fritiof Andersson – arriving in Buenos Aires, where he is attacked by ‘two tall negroes’, who try to stab him. ³⁸ Andersson displays Swedish superiority as he deals with the landlubbers: Då drar han av sig tröjan, så gör en svensk sjöman Och slåss med den som bråka vill i land Och knivarna de blänkte, men Andersson han slog Den ene mitt i skallen så han hickade och dog [He took off his sweater, that’s how a Swedish sailor fights landlubbers looking for trouble. The knifes were flashing, but Andersson hit One of them on the head and he died] ³⁹ This song is an example of how several Swedish maritime national identities were constructed in the songs:

The white Swedish sailor is portrayed as the opposite of the non-white foreigners.

The Swede is honest, even in a fight, taking his sweater off to show that he has nothing to hide and using his fists instead of a knife.

The Swede represents superior masculinity, only needing to punch the feminine (black) foreigner once to accidently kill him.

In short, Swedish maritime identity and Swedish whiteness amplify each other in the song. This was made explicit by comparing the superior maritime Swede to the dual identities – the land identity and the black identity – of the inferior foreign ‘other’.

However, in the songs, Swedes risked contaminating their superior Swedish whiteness with inferior ‘otherness’ when venturing abroad on the high seas. In Taube's song ‘I Am Free’ (1926), the sailor Fritiof Andersson returns after being imprisoned for killing ‘the negro’ in the previous song. ⁴⁰ Andersson confesses that he has had a love affair with ‘a creole woman’, who stole his money, signifying that a Swede – being a superior Aryan – should not mingle with non-white ‘others’. This is even more apparent in Taube's ‘The Ballad of Gustaf Blom’ (1928): Jag ville ut och segla, jag ville lukta hav Jag köpte mig en skonare, till Queensland mig begav Jag började fiska pärlor, jag tappade mitt gull Förlorade en halv million blott för en kvinnas skull Hon var från Fidji Island, jag föll i hennes garn Och tvillingar hon fick, det var två nästan svarta barn Så kom den tredje pojken, men den, månntro, var vit Jag for till San Francisco och tog pojken med mig dit [I wanted to go sailing – I had to smell the sea; I bought a fine new schooner so Queensland I could see, And there I fished for pearls, and ’tis there I spent my gold, And for a woman’s favor I dropped half a million cold! She came from Fiji Island – I fell into her net, And soon she had twin boys, who were almost black as jet. And then she had another – but somehow he was white. I took this one to San Francisco, since he was so light.] ⁴¹ The honest, masculine (male), racially superior Swede is tricked by the dishonest, feminine (female), racially inferior ‘other’, who steals his money and taints his racial superiority by giving birth to two non-white children. Still, the third child is white and therefore worthy of acknowledgement by the Swede, unlike his black children.

In general, the Swedish sailors in the songs are happy to return to the whiteness of their homeland. This is manifested by Fritiof Andersson in Taube's ‘Tattooist’s Waltz’ when the sailor comes home to Sweden after many adventures on the oceans. He meets a gorgeous Swedish girl at a dance: Fröken får jag lov, ska vi dansa ett tag? Andersson heter jag – är hemma ett slag! Kommer från Bahia Hej! Sjung faderia! Vi kom in till Saltsjökvarn just idag. [Lady, may I ask if this dance I may claim? Andersson is my name And sailing's my game Just in from Bahia Sing hey, faderia And back home to Sweden today.] He tells the girl how delightful, pleasant, and well-behaved Swedes (being superior white people) are compared to foreigners (being inferior non-white people): Borta i Bahia – Hej! Sjung faderia! Va’ de bara negrer och skräll och skrik [Way out in Bahia, Sing hey, faderia There are only negroes who shout and fight] ⁴² In 1957, Taube wrote the song ‘Invitation to Guatemala’. In it, a Swedish man is living in Guatemala but travels home to Sweden to find a wife. He is enchanted by a lovely Swedish girl, Miss Larzon, to whom he explains his situation: Jag har en rancho i Guatemala, om fröken Larzon vill flytta dit? Där har jag kaffe, miljoner bönor, men ingen kvinna tillräckligt vit. I have a ranch in Guatemala, if Miss Larzon would like to move there? There I have coffee, millions of beans, but no woman white enough.] ⁴³ At the same time, the Swedish maritime songs sometimes portray the globalized brotherhood of merchant sailors in positive terms, if the foreigners are considered white or European. ‘I have sailed with Britons, and Yankees and everything, yes, with Germans and with Portuguese’, brags a Swedish sailor in Taube's ‘Stoker’s Waltz’ (1936). ⁴⁴ In this song, the Swedish sailor uses a strange mix of Swedish and English, signalling that he has spent many years aboard various merchant ships. He has even anglicized his Swedish name, Karl, to the English equivalent, Charlie.

One of the leading celebrity singer-songwriters with regard to Swedish maritime songs, Lasse Dahlquist (1910–1979), recorded ‘Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!’ in 1946 and it became a huge hit.

Figure 7.

Lasse Dahlquist record cover.

It tells the story of the girls in Gothenburg going crazy because the British Royal Navy is coming to visit. Thus, it is an example of naval (military) maritime discourse being used as a non-Swedish ‘other’ in the Swedish maritime songs, which are almost never about the Swedish Navy. ⁴⁵ In ‘Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!’, the girls of Gothenburg sing the following to their jealous boyfriends: Engelska flottan har siktats vid Vinga Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Tusen små sailors som vi ska betvinga Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Då ska vi fröjdas på Liseberg Med Charlie Bill och Tom Dom sätter alltid en särskild färg Och språket ja det klarar dom Tänk att få segla med engelsk konvoj Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! [The English Navy has been spotted at Vinga, Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! A thousand little sailors, whom we will subdue, Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! We will have fun with Charlie, Bill and Tom. They are always so colourful and language won’t be a problem for them. Just imagine sailing in an English convoy. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!] ⁴⁶ This song touches on a remarkable identitarian aspect of the sailor songs, regarding the superiority of Swedish masculinity. Interestingly, this is also the case when the Swede is a woman, as the potent Gothenburg girls above plan to subdue small English naval sailors. Another example of this discourse is the 1947 hit ‘I Am the Female Cook on the Steamboat Rullaren’, by the film star and singer Elisabeth ‘Bullan’ Weijden (1901–1969; Figure 8).

Figure 8.

Actor and singer Elisabeth ‘Bullan’ Weijden (left) in the scene from the film “Sol över Klara” (1942).

The song tells the story of the fearsome Swedish female sailor Blonde Kristin: Jag är en kocka på ångbåten Rullaren, Som smakat saltstänk på sju-åtta hav. I varje stad och i varje hamn, en karl viskar ömt mitt namn, för se män får jag aldrig tillräckligt av. Jag är en kocka på ångbåten Rullaren, som tar ett glas med en karl på vart knä. Jag kysst båd’ röda och gula och vita och blå och gått på syltor och levt som ett fä! Och vart jag än i världen far, var vägen än så lång, så snor jag in på närmsta bar, till män och vin och sång! Jag är en kocka på ångbåten Rullaren, som känner konsten att fixa en man. Jag lurar karln i kabyssen in, och bjud på porto-vin och smeker hans lilla skälvande hand. Si hur det tisslar och tasslar kring gatorna, när som att blonda Kristin går iland. I en korseld av lågande blickar jag går, med en nygräddad pudding i hand! [I am the female cook on the steamboat Rullaren, Who tasted salt on seven or eight seas. In every city and in every port, a man tenderly whispers my name, because I can never get enough of men. I am the female cook on the steamboat Rullaren, who drinks a glass with a man on each knee. I kiss red and yellow and white and blue and go to joints and live like an animal! Wherever in the world I go, no matter how far, I sneak into the nearest bar, to men and wine and songs! I am the female cook on the steamboat Rullaren, who knows the art of seducing men. I trick the man into the cabin, and offer him wine and caress his little trembling hand. It rustles around the streets, when Blonde Kristin goes ashore. In a crossfire of blazing looks I walk, with a freshly baked dessert in my hand!] ⁴⁷ Thus, even a Swedish female is more masculine than foreign men.

Freedom and homesickness

Almost all nationalisms across the world emphasize that their nation is exceptionally freedom-loving. The Swedish national maritime identities portrayed in the sailor songs are no exception to this rule. For example, when the world-famous Swedish opera tenor Jussi Björling (1911–1960) sang ‘To the Sea’ in 1922, he emphasized the importance of freedom: På endlös led är livet fritt ej trives tvång När havet sjunger grönt och vitt sin höga Frihetssång Till havs, till storms, du djärva jakt Till storms, till havs, var man på vakt Till havs [On an endless journey life is free When the sea sings in green and white his song of freedom To the sea! To the storm, thou bold yacht! To the sea! Each man on guard! To the sea!] ⁴⁸ The connection between longing for freedom and venturing out on the high seas was visible already in ‘Karl-Alfred and Ellinor’ (1918). However, if staying away from Sweden for too long, the Swedish sailor could become homesick. It even happens to Taube's bold sailor Fritiof Andersson in the song ‘Encounter in the Monsoon’ (1936), as he is overwhelmed by bad luck and finds himself stranded in Singapore, where he stumbles on the Swedish consul. Andersson admits that he wants to go home: Jag blev held up i Kina, jag blev rånad i Shanghai Jag har suttit hos pirater uti pant Men jag gifte mig med dottern till mördaren Fu Wai Sade Fritiof, det är hemskt men det är sant Med kinesiskans hjälp kom jag sen till Singapore Utan pass och pengar står jag på ett torg När en man i guldgaloner plötsligt fram emot mig går Sveriges konsul, kapten Fredrik Adelborg ‘Se goddag, Fritiof Andersson, säjer Adelborg Vad i Herrans namn gör du i Singapore?’ Ifrån Gula floden kommer jag och vill till Göteborg Det är bäst att en hyra hem jag får [I was hard up in China, I was robbed when in Shanghai, And by pirates I was held for ransom, too, So I had to wed the daughter of the murderer Foo-Wai, Fritiof told me, it is horrid, but it’s true! With the help of this Chinese I went on to Singapore: Broke and friendless in the marketplace I strayed, When I saw a-coming toward me Captain Fredrik Adelborg, Sweden’s consul, all dressed up in fine gold braid. ‘Well, hello, Fritjof Andersson’, said Adelborg to me, ‘What the devil brings you here to Singapore?’ ’Tis from China that I come, but I’d like to cross the sea As a sailor back to Gothenburg once more!] ⁴⁹ Following Taube’s success, the singer Harry Brandelius (1910–1994; Figure 9) became another of the many famous Swedish artists specializing in popular songs about the sea.

Figure 9.

Harry Brandelius promoting his greatest hit, ‘The Old North Sea’ (‘Gamla Nordsjön’).

In one of his hits, ‘He Had Sailed before the Mast’ (1938), Brandelius sang about a Swedish sailor in China: Men så en vacker dag det hände då han låg i en kinahamn Han såg där komma en skuta han kände och hon bar hembygdens namn Han sågs fast solbränd dock bli röd om kinden när som skeppet med ens det föll av och när som flaggan den slog ut för vinden den flaggan han en gång höll av [But one day it happened It was in a harbour in China There came a ship he knew It bore the name of his home His cheeks went red as the ship turned and its flag caught the wind a flag that he once loved] ⁵⁰ The song ends as the Swedish sailor remembers a cottage back home, a girl and a song – and starts to cry.

Something similar occurs in the song ‘Sailor's Christmas in Hawaii’ (1945), where Yngve Stoor (1912–1985) tells the tale of a Swedish sailor who is forced to endure Christmas in the tropics, instead of spending it with his loved ones back home in cold Sweden: Jag är en ensam sjöman här Långt från svenska kustens skär Ska jag fira julen här uppå Hawaii Här finns ingen smyckad gran Ingen snö på juledan Och i solsken ligger båten här vid kaj … Det är julkväll på Hawaii Från dess blomstermändga kaj Längtar jag hem till vinter och snö [I am a lonely sailor far from the skerries of the Swedish coast and I will celebrate Christmas here in Hawaii There is no Christmas tree No snow on Christmas day And the boat lies here in the sunshine … It is Christmas Eve in Hawaii And from the harbour dressed in flowers I am longing to go home to winter and snow.] ⁵¹

The decline of sailor songs

During the 1940s and 1950s, successful Swedish sailor songs were increasingly turned into feature films, as the film industry wanted to capitalize on the maritime craze. Evert Taube played himself in several films. Just about any successful sailor song could become a film, such as the 1948 ‘Girl from Backafall’, which became a hit and was made into a film in 1953. ⁵² These maritime films were generally of questionable quality, ⁵³ but they obviously made money, affirming the national craze for maritime discourse. In fact, in the 1950s, sailor songs were such an obvious part of Swedish popular culture that even parodies became hits. One example was ‘The Ballad of Eugene Cork’, by Sweden's leading humourist Povel Ramel: Med ‘Sinkabel’, en gammal irländsk skorv, vi låg i Veracruz och lasta korv. Bredvid oss låg en bark från Shanghai och lossa sås och därintill en skrutter som var byggd i Mönsterås. … Vi seglade med smör och ost och sill, med fågelskrämmor och vad helst ni vill, hit och dit och av och an, tills vi spydde på varann. [With ‘Sinkabel’, an old Irish tub, we stopped at Veracruz to stow sausages. Next to us there was a barque unloading sauce and close to that a skrutter that was built in Mönsterås. … We sailed with butter, cheese and fish, with scarecrows and whatever you wish, here and there and left and right, until we vomited on each other.] ⁵⁴ However, during the late 1950s, after four decades, the production of Swedish sailor songs started to decline. New songs were written, recorded and sung (and still are today), but the craze was over. ⁵⁵ The main reason was growing competition in popular music, as Elvis Presley was perceived to be cooler than Taube by the growing numbers of teenage record-buyers.

Another reason for the decline may have been that fewer Swedes were working as merchant sailors. Suddenly among the richest people in the world, Swedes could venture abroad without the hassle of working on ships. In 1955, the first holiday trip by charter plane from Stockholm to sunny Spain took off. Thus, in the age of commercial jets, cargo ships were no longer necessary when Swedes wanted to see the world. Instead of songs about sailors, the maritime national identities visible in Swedish popular music of the 1950s and 1960s began to focus more on tunes about leisure boating, the beauty of the archipelagos and living close to the sea.

This trend continued up until the end of the twentieth century. In 1982, the Swedish singer-songwriter Ulf Lundell was hailed by the press as a new Evert Taube when his song ‘Open Landscapes’ became a huge hit, idealizing coastal identity as authentic Swedishness: Jag trivs bäst i öppna landskap, Nära havet vill jag bo [I favour open landscapes, I want to live close to the sea] ⁵⁶

Figure 10.

Ulf Lundell, “Kär och galen”, record cover (1982).

In 1985, the singer-songwriter Marie Fredriksson, who later became world-famous as half of the Swedish pop duo Roxette, sang in a similar way about the perfect way of living as a true Swede: Jag vill ha ett hus vid havet Där jag kan höra alla måsarna Och göra som jag vill [I want a house by the sea, where I can hear all the seagulls, and do as I please] ⁵⁷

In the early twentieth century, it had been important that a perfect Swedish midsummer celebration should take place inland, preferably in Dalarna. However, during 1918–1960, this changed. Today, the perfect Swedish midsummer festivities take place on an archipelago island, and everybody attending is required to – or at least try to – sing an Evert Taube song about sailors, the sea and adventures in faraway lands.

Final thoughts

The example of the Swedish craze regarding maritime songs between 1918 and 1960 demonstrates how random national narratives can become powerful identitarian discourses when manufactured by modern popular culture via mass capitalism, being bottom-up examples of banal nationalism. The professionals who wrote, sang, recorded, produced, marketed and sold these songs did not plan on producing an ideology. Yet these Swedish maritime songs changed the nation, and may still affect Swedish national branding today.

I have tried to find a way of examining how Sweden wishes to portray itself today. I used a Google Images search and the search term ‘visit Sweden’. Figure 11 shows the resulting images. There were 26 images in total, comprising 12 maritime (46 per cent), 4 inland (15 per cent), 3 urban (12 per cent) and 7 other (logos and maps, 27 per cent) images.

Figure 11.

Result of Google Images search using the search term ‘visit Sweden’ (22 November 2022).

I compared these image results to the results for neighbouring Denmark using the search term ‘visit Denmark’ and, even though Denmark has extensive maritime traditions, the search yielded far fewer maritime images (14 per cent) than the Swedish search. ⁵⁸ The search term ‘visit Norway’ yielded many images of fjords, but that does not make them maritime. Instead, the imagery highlights the rugged nature of Norway's mountainous landscapes, overlooking the fjords. In an attempt to find a national example with an exceptionally strong maritime identity, I used the search term ‘visit Britain’, which yielded the surprising result of zero maritime images. ⁵⁹

It is, of course, doubtful whether this Google experiment is scientific. Moreover, it is impossible to say whether my present-day image search results have anything to do with the Swedish twentieth-century craze for pop-culture sailor songs. At the same time, it is likely that Sweden was deeply affected by what happened between 1918 and 1960. One hint regarding this is the fact that few countries have as many leisure sailors per capita as Sweden. There are 864,200 seaworthy Swedish boats in a country of only some 10 million inhabitants, and almost 20 per cent of all Swedish households own a boat. ⁶⁰ I myself am one of these Swedish weekend sailors and I can assure you that the twentieth-century sailor songs are still being heard – and sung – in these extensive maritime communities, numbering hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of Swedes. This exceptional brand of Swedish maritime popular culture is not a thing of the past. For example, the young Swedish singer-songwriter Amanda Ginsburg, who was born in 1990, uses a multiplicity of complex references to several well-known sailor songs in her hit ‘Melody of the Sea’. Ginsburg, a millennial, represents yet another generation who is continuing Sweden's legacy of maritime popular music when she sings: Så kastar vi loss och ger oss av vi sätter segel på öppet hav och gungar sakta fram när havet förför [Let's cast off and leave we’re setting sail on the open sea and slowly sway forward, as the sea seduces] ⁶¹