Sweden
Swedish fandom has been continously active since the early 1950s. The term Sverifandom has been documented in use since the 1960s, when Skandifandom, including also fandom in Denmark and Norway, was also coined.
Swedish fandom can be said to have started in the summer of 1950, when author Sture Lönnerstrand (1919–1999), who had by that time published around 75 sf short stories in a weekly family magazine, met a young librarian, Roland Adlerberth (1923–1993), who was both an sf reader and loved Lönnerstrand's stories. Together, they decided to form a club for sf readers, and named it Futura.
During the first years, Futura grew very slowly but came to include a handful of fans the founders had come into contact with. In 1953, they were contacted by two other sf readers, the brothers Karl Gustav and Kurt Kindberg, who had inherited a small printing press and publishing business, and wanted to start an sf magazine. In March 1954, they launched the monthly and nationally distributed Häpna!, which from its first issue published suggestions for readers to form clubs and even publish fanzines. This was heeded by quite a few, and within months Sweden had a number of small fan groups. At least one had been extant for some time: Meteor in Malmö, headed by Dénis Lindbohm, had started as a social club but under Lindbohm's influence, by 1952 mainly devoted itself to sf.
In the summer of 1954, the first three Swedish fanzines were published: Cosmos News, from the Gothenburg club Cosmos; Clloev, from Lindbohm's Meteor; and Futura, from the Lönnerstrand-run club Futura in Stockholm. Particularly Futura boasted considerable contacts with foreign fandoms; one member, Sigvard Östlund, was one of the judges for the International Fantasy Award, founded in Britain in 1951.
Swedish fandom grew slowly during the 1950s. A first convention, Luncon, was held in Lund in 1956; in 1957 and 1958 conventions were held in Stockholm, the largest of them attended by around 70 fans. Various attempts at starting national sf organizations led to feuds, gafiations and general dissatisfaction during the later part of the 1950s, and by 1960, fandom was at a low point.
Gradually, as new fans were attracted, still via the fan columns in Häpna!, activity again began to rise in the mid-1960s, an both club membership and conventions grew; the 1970 Fancon in Stockholm was the first Swedish con to attract over 100 attendees. Since then, Swedish fandom has both been continuously lively and had a strong international outlook, thanks to correspondence with British and American fans, while many Swedish fans since the late 1960s have regularly visited Eastercon, Eurocon and Worldcon, as well as conventions in nearby Denmark, Norway, and Finland.
Fanzine publishing in Sweden increased enormously from the late 1960s and reached a peak during the 1980s, with around a hundred simultaneously active publishers during the later part of the decade, but declined dramatically from around 1990 due to incessant and vitriolic feuds which led to an imploding fan activity. When the worst part of the feuds finally petered out during the mid-1990s, much fan activity had already moved on to the Internet, and since the early 2000s fanzines have become few and far between. As of 2023, SF forum was the only Swedish paper fanzine still appearing regularly.
There are currently active clubs in Stockholm (Scandinavian SF Association), Gothenburg (Club Cosmos, founded in 1956, and Sweden's oldest still active club), Malmö/Lund (Malmöfandom), Uppsala, and Västerås. The Malmö club maintains close ties with Danish fandom.
Swedish fans run the annual Swecon, as well as occasional other regional conventions.
- “The Swedish SF Fandom” by Bo Stenfors, Yandro 172 (June 1967, p. 6).
- List of Swedish conventions, 1956–2020.
See also Scandinavia, Fans Outside Angloparlantia.
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