Cordelia Heß 1Nordic Otherness Research on Antisemitism in the NordicCountries in an International Context In December 2008 and January 2009,anti-Israel demonstrations in Oslo turned into riotswith adistinct antisemitic character,whereprotesters shouted “Death to Jews!” and “Hunt the Jews!”¹ In March 2009,several thousand people demonstrated against the participa- tion of Israeli tennis players in amatch in Malmö, many of them screaming anti- semitic slogans,comparing Israel to National Socialist Germany, and displaying maps of the Middle East in which the Jewish State was eradicated.² In the year 2009,police reported seventy-nine attacksonthe synagogue and Jewishcemetery in Malmö.³ In February 2010,the mayorofMalmödeniedthat there had ever been any violence against Jewish institutions, and demanded the city’sJewish community denounce Israeli human rights violations against the civilian population in Gaza.⁴ In June 2011,asurvey carried out by the city of Oslo found that 33 per cent of Jewishstudents in Oslo were physicallythreatened or abused by other high- school teens at least two to threetimes amonth.⁵ In December 2015,aman wounded twopolice officers and killed ayoung Jewishman on security duty at the synagogue in Copenhagen.⁶ Eirik Eiglad, TheAnti-JewishRiots in Oslo (Porsgrunn: Communalism,2010). PerGudmundson, “Varken fredligteller lugnt,” Svenska Dagbladet,11March 2009, ‹ https:// www.svd.se/varken-fredligt-eller-lugnt ›. Ann-Helén Laestadius, “Hatbrott motjudar ökar,” 21 May2015, ‹ http://www.minoritet.se/1357 ›. Ilmar Reepalu, “Reepalu: Israel har skapat en ‘varböld’,” Skånska Dagbladet,27January 2010, ‹ https://www.skd.se/2010/01/27/reepalu-israel-har-skapat-en-varbold ›. AnetteHolth Hansen,Øystein Solvang, and Kjersti Kanestrøm Lie, “Ett av tre jødiskebarn hetses på skolen,” NRK.no,7June 2011, ‹ https://www.nrk.no/ostlandssendingen/en-av-tre- hetses-pa-skolen-1.7664103 ›. Søren KjellbergIshøy, “Mosaisk Trossamfund: 37-årige Dan blev dræbt iterrorangreb,” B. T.,15 February 2015, ‹ https://www.bt.dk/danmark/mosaisk-trossamfund-37-aarige-dan-blev-draebt-i- terrorangreb ›.The gunman had also killed the film director Finn Nørgaardand injuredthree policemen that afternoon at an event at the Krudttønden culturalcentre in Copenhagen. OpenAccess. ©2020 Cordelia Heß, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110634822-003 4 Cordelia Heß In December 2017,agangofyoung men threwfirebombs and Molotovcock- tails at the synagogue in Gothenburg. Anumber of young people wereattending aparty inside the synagogue at the time, though none of them was injured.⁷ In October 2018, the house of aJewish politician in Lund was burned to the ground. The victim had receivedantisemitic hate mail and death threats in the months leading up to the attack.⁸ In all the Nordic countries,kosherslaughter is forbidden,⁹ while parliamen- tariansare consideringalawthat would criminalizeritual circumcision. The de- bate around this often bearsdistinct antisemitic undertones and invokes anti- semitic stereotypes.¹⁰ These graphic examples should be evidence enough that antisemitism exists in the Nordic countries.Itispresent amongst left-wing anti-Zionists, Islamists, right-wing nationalists, and whitesupremacists,aswellasjust ordinary people with all kinds of political views. Manyofthe incidentsabovewerefollowed by expressions of goodwill by politicians – promises to fight antisemitism, to stand up for Jewishcommunities,and to educatethe publicabout antisemitism. The latter in particularhas, however,been noteworthyfor its absence – or rather, whereithas occurred, it is ofteninawaythatonlydefines antisemitism in avery narrow sense. Most of the educational programmesfunded by the Nordic states are about visitingHolocaust memorialsatformer concentration camps, their focus being on the Holocaust and Second World War.¹¹ It is believed thatthe best waytofight against contemporary antisemitism is to focus on the most me- ticulously planned, industrialized mass killing of Jews, Sinti and Roma, homo- “Tredöms för synagogaattacken iGöteborg,” Dagens Nyheter,25June 2018, ‹ https://www.dn. se/nyheter/sverige/tre-doms-for-synagogaattacken-i-goteborg/ ›. Jonathan Norström, “Misstänkt mordbrand mot judisk politiker iLund,” Nyheter Idag,10Oc- tober 2018, ‹ https://nyheteridag.se/misstankt-mordbrand-mot-judisk-politiker-i-lund/ ›. In Denmark, Iceland,Norway, and Sweden the animal must be stunned beforecutting, effec- tively makingritual slaughter impossible.Despitevigorous and sometimesuglydebateinFin- land, this is not the case here, but there areinsufficientresources for ritual slaughter in the country and as in all the other Nordic countries kosher meat has to be imported. AyhanAlKole, “12 grunde til at forbyde omskæringafdrengebørn,” Jyllands-Posten,29May 2018, ‹ https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/kronik/ECE10643216/12-grunde-til-at-forbyde-omskaer ing-af-drengeboern/ ›. See Senter for studier av Holocaust og livssynsminoriteter,Oslo (https://www.hlsenteret.no/); DanskInstitut for Internationale Studier,Copenhagen(https://folkedrab.dk/); and Svenska komit- tén mot antisemitism,Stockholm, particularlytheir educational trips for school classes (http:// skma.se/utbildning/). One exception that does provide information on antisemitism in abroader perspective is JødiskInformationscenter in Copenhagen(https://www.joediskinfo.dk/qa/myter), established in the wake of the 2015 attack on the synagogue there. 1NordicOtherness 5 sexuals,and anyothergroup thatwas defined as deviant by German National Socialism. The educational value of this approach is debatable. Yetitmirrors and per- petuates currents in the academic landscape in the Nordic countries which make them an anomaly in the Western hemisphere. Antisemitism is largely seen as a phenomenon connected to the German, pro-German, and fascistmovements of the 1930s and 1940s, and this is what research has tendedtofocus on – while the almosttwo thousand preceding years of relations between Jews and non- Jews have been largely neglected, as has the growingfield of postwarantisem- itism and secondary antisemitism.¹² This situation seems peculiargiven the vast scholarlyproduction on antisemitism in other European countries as well as in Israel and the United States. Historical perspectivesare particularlylacking as are reliable data on antisemitic attitudes in contemporary societies. Hate crime statistics which explicitlylist antisemitic assaults began to be collected onlya few years ago.¹³ Most discussion about antisemitism occurs in media debates, not in academic publications, and without reliable research results from histor- ical studies and the social sciences.Contributions to public debate tend onlyto come from Jewish voices(or,inDenmark, from afew individual non-Jewishpol- iticians),asifantisemitism wereaproblem that is onlyofconcern to Jews them- selves. Generally, both interest in and knowledge of antisemitisminits historical dimensions and contemporary forms seems to be much more narrowinthe Nor- dic countries thaninthe rest of the Western world. This book on the studyofantisemitism in the Nordic countries is largely a book about something that does not or that onlybarelyexists, at least for certain periods and areas.Insome cases, we can speculate about the reasons for this non-existence,inothers, we can simplyname that which is missing.Some of these contributions are the first accounts of antisemitism in the Northern periph- eries ever published in English – these necessarilyfocus more on the phenom- enon itself than on anon-existent research environment.The present book col- Werner Bergmann, “Sekundärer Antisemitismus,” in Handbuch des Antisemitismus.Juden- feindlichkeit in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Vol3.Begriffe, Theorien, Ideologien,ed. Wolfgang Benz (Berlin: De Gruyter,2010), 300−02. In 2006,two studieswerepublished abouthatecrimesinSweden, the Brottsförebygganderådet studylistedand quantified antisemiticviolencedirectly,while thestudy of the Forumför levande historia did not. See ‹ https://www.bra.se/publikationer/arkiv/publikationer/2007- 06-28-hatbrott- 2006.html › and ‹ https://www.levandehistoria.se/sites/default/files/material_file/homofoba-hat brott.pdf ›.See also Johannes DueEnstad, AntisemiticViolenceinEurope, 2005–2015:Exposure andPerpetratorsinFrance, UK,Germany,Sweden, Norway,Denmark and Russia (Oslo: Centerfor Research on Extremism),12. Seealso FRA, FundamentalRights: Challengesand Achievements in 2013 – Annual Report2013 (Luxembourg: PublicationsOffice of theEuropeanUnion,2014),151. 6 Cordelia Heß lects contributions from scholars who have been workingonthis topic in Den- mark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, as well as contributions on atti- tudes towardsJews in the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Their accounts note three recurringfactors relevant to the lack of scholarlyinterest in the topic: the late and quantitatively limited history of Jewish immigration to the Nordic countries comparedtomuch of Europe; the experiences duringthe Second World War, i.e. Sweden’sneutralityand humanitarian effortsinthe last months of the war, the rescue of the DanishJews, Norway’sbroad antifascist resistance, and Finland’scomplicated wartime role and postwar relationship with the USSR; and, finally,ageneral sense of Nordic exceptionalism. These arguments are sel- dom uttered directly, and yetthey seem to linger behind the lack of interest in and support for research on antisemitism in the Nordic