The Development of Swedish Sport Politics Until the 1930s

In this chapter, it will be clear that the period from 1870 to 1920 was formative for Swedish sport politics, that sport politics was greatly affected by the general political development in the country and that this comes to the fore by comparing Sweden with Norway and Denmark. The fact that sport in Denmark and Norway at the end of the nineteenth century was integrated into the political right-left dimension, and that this was not the case to the same extent in Sweden, had far-reaching consequences for how sport politics was conducted (which will be followed up in Chap. 8 ). Although Swedish sport was not politicised, it was certainly governmentalised. The second main argument of this chapter is that Swedish governmental politics played a decisive role in the organisation of Swedish sporting life during the twentieth century and in attributing to it certain core values. Actually, the low level of politisation helped making the process of governmentalisation particularly smooth.