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Cultural T ourism in Sweden NaRRa CuattiRgguis Head of Information. Central Board of~Vational Antiquities. Sweden Swcden is a small country in the far \\'edding present -a small. Chinese-style north of Europe with an area equalling pleasure palace in the grounds. unique of that of California in the USA. Thailand its kind and also in a good state of in Asia or Cameroon in Africa. Half that preservation. arca consists of forests and almost Another seven buildings and 100,000 lakes, We have a population of environments of widely differing 8.6 million and Sweden is a thinly character. origin and function are now on populated country, with 19 inhabitants a tentative list for inclusion in the World pcr square kilometre, as compared, for Heritage List. example with Sri lanka's 262, Each of them represents Swedish The Atlantic Gulf Stream gives society. and they range from prehistoric Sweden a milder climate than other rock carvings and Iran Age man-made countries on the sa me latitude. landscapes to a small group of timber Constitutionally, Sweden is a buildings. known as a ..church town". in parliamentary monarchy. For a total of the north. a gigantic copper mine -the 40 years during this century, government aldest joint stock company in the world - office was held by the Social Oemocratic a complete manufacturing community Party. The present government is a non- and a woodland cemetery with 20th socialist coalition. Sweden's high century buildings of outstanding standard of living has been founded on architectural merit. cheap hydropower. high-quality iron and timber resources. and an industrial Foreign visitors to Sweden who are sector upgrading products from these interested in a spectacular culture of raw materials. great aesthetic and artistic quality have pJenty to look at. The Heritage But does this tiny country on the fringe of The period between the end of the the world have any culture'? Looking Viking era. at about the beginning of the closely at the UNESCO World Heritage II th century. and the Reformation of the list of more than 300 world-famous Church. in the 15205. when places you just find one single little dot protestantism replaced Catholicism, we on the map for Sweden. and in fact calI the Middle Ages. For many Sweden was ol1ly added to the list in centuries during that period. Sweden 1992. The listed building is was a poor country and was seldom Drottningholm Palace. on the outskirts invaded by foreign powers with the result of Stockholm. the capital. That palace is that something like 1000 medieval the residence of the King of Sweden and churches are extant. Their muraIs, never his family. I t is an 18th century building painted over. their woodcarvings and in a Baroque style to be found almost their vestments and other textiles are a anywhere esle in Europe. supreme art treasure. That treasure possesses a high artistic quality and an And yet Drottningholm qualifies for expressive. provincial character hardly inclusion in the World Heritage List. to be equalled elsewhere in Europe. part Iy by virtue of its authentic. totally unaltered theatre building, complete A few hundred castles and manor with fittings and furnishings, scenery houses survive froro what we call the and stage scenery which are stilt in use. 1t Great Power periods -that is, the 17th is also included on account of a Queen's century. when Sweden controlled rouch 44 Cu/tura/ Tourism of the territory round the Baltic. Those the sights of Sweden. The copper mine places present a European splendour and was visited in 1615 bya German tourist, opulence. in 1634 by a French diplomat and in 1706 by an English doctor and The Authentically Swedish mineralogist. Visitors' books survive The unique thing about Sweden, though, from the 1760s, by which time there is something quite different. Something were also guides on dut y in the mine. which is an obvious, everyday reality to every Swede, something which the Tbe first tourist broucbure aimed at tourist trade has not been perceptive attracting tourists to Sweden's first spa enough to use as a means of attracting was written in 1682. Entitled "Les foreign tourists to the remote, chilly divertissements de Medevij", it is a series Ultima Thll!le, as a Roman visitor once of letters, transcripts of wbicb were called Scandinavia du ring the 2nd distributed to castles and manor bouses. century B.C. Mountains became a real attraction in What is unique is our fresh, unspoiled, Europe during the second half of the verdant, m;agical countryside, with its 19th century. The first Alpine superabundance of water and greenery. associations were the embryo of our What is unique is "Everyman's Right" present-day tourist organisations. First -our rights of common access, which of aIl came the Alpine Club in London. give the general public freedom of The Swdish Touring Club foIIowed in movement in forest and field. 1885, developing into a nationwide, voluntary organisation. At first its What is unique is the countryside, members consisted mainly of naturalists where with your own eyes you oan see and geologists, but from its very and understand the continuity of the inception the organisation concerned man-made landscape, with its traces and itself with places of cultural interst. The remains of settlements and burial founder-chairman of the organisation grounds from the Late Iron Age to the was Hans Hildebrand, at that time present. Director-General of the Central Board of Environments of that kind include National Antiquities. During the 19th manufacturing communities and fishing century the organisation was mainly for villages, shiedking linear villages-and the the upper classes, but it developed "church towns" idyllic small towns with quickly, extended its social range and timber buildings. These places bear the acquired a popular educational mission. imprint of their dominant livelihoods - Holiday legislation was passed in agriculture, fishing, cattle farming, iron Sweden during the 19305, and the production or forestry. The settlement in members of the Swedish Touring Club these places is antiquated, often exactly also came to include junior clerks and the same today as when it was first built. manual workers. The buildings, often on a small scale, Tourism in Sweden Today are made of locally available materials Timber predominates. The architecture The cultural heritage and the natural has seldom been influenced by foreign environment, combined with activities, examples, but it tells us how people used are the cornerstone of Swedish tourism. to live and under what conditions. These The sa me goes for the whole of things can be as exciting and exotic to Scandinavia where international visitors from other countries and they are marketing is concerned. self.evident and part of the everyday scene to the Swedish people. The tourist sector provides 3 or 4% of Sweden's GDP. ln 1991 tourist earnings The History of Tourism totalled about II billion dollars, and From the Falun copper mine in the tourism in one form or another is the province of Dalarna we have writtcn businessof 21,000 enterprises with more evidence of [;oreigners long ago visiting than 230,000 employees. Popular Cu/tura/ Tourism in Sweden 45 purchasing power and the statutory The main task of the Tourist Board minimum of five week's holiday a year was to promote an expansion of tourism encourage Swedes to divide their leave in Sweden. ln 1988 the Board was into short periods spread out over the allotted 9 million dollars for a three-year whole year. ~orthern Europeans, the marketing programme. A scrutiny of the Swedes included, are among the most Board's activities showed them to be far travelled peopie in the world. too extensive, inefficient and poorly organised. After 15 years of activity the Swedes on the whole are not very Board was dissolved. adventurous. As a people they are sa id to be shy, cool and of few words. But the The present non-socialist government lnterrail youngsters, business travellers has relinquished the social and cultural and affluent ?ensioners of today are objectives for tourism. Only economic demanding more in the way of new and monetary objectives remain. The experiences. crossing of boundaries and State now purchase its services from an excitement. organisation owned by the enterprise sector. Two out of every ten tourists in Sweden corne from abroad. which makes Next Stop Sweden was set up in 1992 a total of 3 million foreign visitors as the country's new central tourist annually. One million of them corne from outside Europe. the majority from the organisation. It is a limited company USA and Japan. More than 60% of the owned by upwards of 300 large and small money spent by tourists is collected by businesses, and assumes full the community in the form of taxes and responsibility for marketing Sweden other fiscal charges. Earnings from abroad. The aim is to increase the number of people travelling to and in foreign travellers are estimated at about 2 billion dollars. Foreign travel by Sweden. Sweden has a negative tourist balance. Tourist earnings in Sweden Swedes involves twice that amount. equal only half the amount of money which Swedes spend in other countries. Foreign visitors are attracted by the Sweden comes far behind other sparsely populated welfare society with its great ex panses of unspoiled natural European tourist countries like Italy, France and Greece. scenery. Opportunities of adventure and wilderness experience and the Swedish cultural heritage are the biggest - The activities of Next Stop Sweden attractions of ali. Sweden is looked on as are funded through the Sweden Image a safe country to visit. Board. The words culture.

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