Sport from Above

In this chapter, we will follow how sport developed in Sweden from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century. We begin here by considering the sporting life of the Swedish regents and aristocrats. Aristocrats’ and regents’ sport extended to several different countries where they became fashionable and contributed to creating a common culture for the upper classes and, largely, Swedish upper-class sport followed continental lines. Swedish folk sport, on the other hand, developed much more slowly. At the end of the eighteenth century in Sweden, there existed neither commercial sport as in England nor mass movements as in Germany. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Swedish sport was instead promoted from above by intellectuals to foster good citizens. Highlighting the importance of nationalism for the development of sport, Swedish sport historians have singled out the Napoleonic Wars and the national disaster of 1809, when Sweden lost Finland to Russia, as defining events of the period. In this chapter, we will instead focus on the country’s social and constitutional developments, both of which were intimately linked to notions of patriotism and masculinity. The re-establishment, as well as the abandonment, of royal power and autocracy during the period had significant consequences for sport and physical education, albeit of markedly different kinds.