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The way Ulf Lundell feels, Sweden feels too. The claim came from a friend and he pointed out how the old male wolf transformed after the turn of the millennium into something more than just a simple artist or writer. He is the spirit of the country.
And it had very little to do with whether or not “Open Landscape” was the country’s unofficial national anthem. No, the silverback embodied collective Swedishness in its purest form. So a lovably grumpy and stubborn old bastard.
During Reinfeldtåren the records became more and more sullen, the riffs became harder, the voice mumbled the words. Titles like “Rent farbenannat” and “Drunk” – where the political point was directed at the neoliberals of the right and the disappointment, as it had been for a long time, at the social democrats.
A bunch of financial puppies who have pissed off Sweden – the country where the word sellout no longer has any meaning.
Hundreds of pages of introduced acid, interspersed with irritated tirades against the country’s political and cultural elite, from the last third of his life
It was in there The context in which the first “Vardagar” was released in 2018. Lundell’s Diary, an evolution of the regularly deleted and closed blog Badger Drift. With incredible scenes, such as when the national treasure accidentally locked himself in his own BMW. Hundreds of pages of introduced acid, interspersed with irritated tirades against the country’s political and cultural elite, from the last third of his life.
“Vardagar” may have been reduced to a grueling calendar when culture pages columnists could measure their worth once a year by whether they got an extension or not. If you are Expressen Kultur and are always willing to trumpet the fact that you have your name in print, that is an immediate life-sustaining activity.
A parallel “diary trend” among publishers has led to overall citation inflation in recent years
It took eight years and twelve books. In recent years, not just one, but two annual wailing stones have come from Österlen. In the long run it was part of the project’s failure. A grumpy, cocky Icarus on his way to the sun. A parallel “diary trend” among publishers has led to overall citation inflation in recent years.
Got little Sweden even the site of so many pointless duck pond debates – where the culture pages have become such a claustrophobically homogenous environment that it could be Södra Latin’s school magazine “Latin Lover”?
The question is whether even Jens Liljestrand – the man who can’t fix the Toyota without becoming a cultural star – had the courage to do much more than look a little grumpily for his name in the printed PDF when “Vardagar” volumes 11 and 12 hit the email basket last year.
When February couldn’t be worse, the rock icon announced through the publisher that he had put the diary project on hold. There are no plans for anything more. An obvious omen. The way Ulf Lundell feels, Sweden feels too.
Let’s take it the time of our election year 2026 in the small kingdom.
The race between Social Democrats and Moderates is about who can be the most heartless to children, whether that means putting them in prison or throwing them out of the country. But as everyone except those in Magdalena Andersson’s immediate circle knows, it’s difficult to gallop toward the red line of decency without a functioning spine.
Instead of offering an alternative to the inhumane policies the country has pursued in recent years, all ideological doors to change are being closed to voters who will now watch their friends, classmates and children punished for decades of failed balancing act policies.
And what happens then? Well, top man Ardalan Shekarabi sits down and declares that the party he would most like to govern with is the Moderates.
Such a demoralizing thing During the election campaign it was played out that it should have been a matter of exclusion.
And the party dictating the terms of this utterly unbearable political spectacle was founded by the far-right Skinskull movement, which has been spewing nonsense at Lundell himself for decades.
It’s not easy being the nation’s totem animal in a country that feels as shitty as Sweden. It’s completely understandable that Lundell is on strike – even if the whole country desperately needs a real, bloody confrontation right now.
Read more texts by Johannes Klenell.
