The Swedish Exception? The Humanities in the Modern Welfare State

Abstract

weden has proven fertile ground for the history of scholarship. The country has a long tradition for idéoch lärdomshistoria (history of ideas and scholarship), with specialized departments at most Swedish universities, going back to the 1930s. In recent decades, these departments increasingly have oriented themselves toward the international intellectual history and history of science communities. In addition, Swedish historians have now also embraced the history of knowledge, especially with the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge, and the history of humanities, often with reference to this journal and the Society for theHistory of theHumanities. This has in the last couple of years resulted in several books that document the history of the humanities in Sweden in the twentieth century. A central question of these books is whether the history of the humanities in Sweden is different from that of other parts of Europe and the world. The question is raised in Hampus Östh Gustafsson’s book on Swedish research policy. During the first half of the twentieth century, the humanities in Sweden expanded