A key moment for the professionalization of the historical discipline in Sweden was the reconstitution of the dormant Scientific Academy in 1786 into Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien (“The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities”). The Academy, which would provide the study of the (national) past and the preservation of cultural heritage with a solid institutional framework, was divided on methodology. The official line, as advanced by King Gustav III, and as practised by most of its constituents, was to endorse the gothicist antiquarian extolling of Sweden’s glorious past. A small minority of members propounded a more source-critical approach. A specifically nationalistic form of history-writing was pursued by literati convening in Götiska förbundet (“The Geatish Society”) of 1811. The society’s name invoked the alleged tribal roots of the Swedish people, the Göter, Geats or Goths, occasionally also used in reference to the common ancient ancestors of all three Scandinavian nations; it also harked back to the 17th-century cultural-patriotic Göticism of Olof Rudbeck’s Atland eller Manheim (“Atlantis, or Man-home”, equating Sweden with Atlantis and the original origin-place of mankind, 1679-1702).

This self-celebrating antiquarian chauvinism was ill-suited to the military defeats against Russia and the loss of Finland in 1809; in addition, the truncation of the Swedish territory after the loss of that province also required a narrative recalibration of the national history. Swedish historicism turned to the archetypical heroes of Viking and Peasant: virtuous, stout and masculine role models for a nation that had to come to terms with the new reality of geopolitical insignificance. A shift from passionate glory-affirmation to sober scholarship followed in due course; it is most distinctively illustrated in the work of Erik Gustaf Geijer. In the year that the Geatish Society was founded, he wrote the programmatic poem Manhem (the title channelling Rudbeck), glorifying the stalwart peasantry and the heroic past, and proclaiming a revanchist agenda of restoring the nation’s former glory. A mere seven years later Geijer criticized Förbundet-member Per Henrik Ling over the latter’s exaggerated claims for the artistic value of Nordic mythology; and later again (1832-36), Geijer would publish a sober and well-considered 3-volume “History of the Swedish People” (Svenska folkets historia, 1832-36).

In the last years of his life Geijer clashed sharply with Anders Fryxell (1795-1881) over the role the king had played in Swedish history compared to the role of the nobility. Geijer perceived the patriarchal relationship of the king towards his people as a natural principle and guarantor of popular liberty, counteracting the aristocracy’s tendency to abuse power. Fryxell on the other hand saw the monarchs as autocrats and the nobility as champions of freedom. The ensuing controversy did much to spark public interest in history and history-writing.

Unlike Geijer, Fryxell reached a wide non-academic audience with his colourful narrative style. His popular 46-volume series Berättelser ur svenska historien till ungdomens tjenst (“Tales from Swedish history to the benefit of the youth”, 1823-79) relied more on literary retelling of secondary sources than on archival research. This type of narrative, popular history for a broad audience, was continued by the novelist Carl Georg Starbäck in his identically titled Berättelser ur svenska historien, which appeared in 12 volumes between 1860 and 1875. Such popular histories also functioned as an important inspiration for fictional literature, infusing the novels and plays of such authors as Verner von Heidenstam (Karolinerna, “Charles XII’s men”, 1895-97), Carl Snoilsky, (Svenska Bilder, 1886; an evocation of personalities and episodes from Swedish history in a series of poems), Viktor Rydberg (Singoalla, 1857) and even August Strindberg (Gustav Vasa, 1899; Erik XIV, 1899; Karl XII and Gustav Adolf, 1900).