The Letter Hidden Beneath Sweden’s Perfect Image
We built a society celebrated for equality. But did we extend that equality to everyone whose existence our systems affected?
Sweden’s chapter reveals a contradiction that is especially important to your series: a country internationally admired for equality, environmental consciousness and human development must also account for slavery, racial classification, forced sterilisation and the suppression of Indigenous peoples.
One of the most significant developments is extremely recent. On 30 September 2026, Sweden’s Truth Commission for the Sámi People delivered its final report, documenting dispossession, forced relocation, racial discrimination and policies that undermined Sámi language and culture. It called for meaningful recognition, restitution and changes to the relationship between the Swedish state and Sámi people. Regeringskansliet +1
Sweden also participated directly in Caribbean slavery. Saint Barthélemy was under Swedish rule from 1784 to 1878, and slavery remained legal there until 9 October 1847. Sweden’s own statistical agency preserves records of the enslaved population. Uppsala University +1
The following letter is written from the perspective of a Swedish person who loves their country’s achievements but finally asks whether a society can truly call itself advanced while the people harmed by its historical and contemporary systems continue carrying unresolved consequences.
MUSEUM OF DOOM X
The Letter Hidden Beneath Sweden’s Perfect Image
We built a society celebrated for equality. But did we extend that equality to everyone whose existence our systems affected?
An imagined letter of atonement from a Swedish soul who finally recognises that the beauty of a well-organised society cannot erase the humanity denied to those who helped sustain it, or to those whose existence was disrupted by its decisions.
To the Sámi people.
To the people of Saint Barthélemy and the descendants of those enslaved under Swedish colonial rule.
To the peoples of Ghana and the West African coast.
To the Lenape and other Indigenous peoples of North America.
To the Roma, Tornedalians, Kvens, Lantalaiset, Swedish Finns and other communities whose identities and rights were suppressed.
To the peoples of the Baltic territories historically governed by Sweden.
To the people whose bodies were subjected to racial classification and involuntary sterilisation.
To the workers and communities across the world affected by Swedish commercial activities and consumption.
And to my fellow Swedish citizens.
I am Swedish.
And I love my country.
I love our forests.
Our lakes.
Our mountains.
Our rivers.
Our architecture.
Our cities.
Our relationship with nature.
Our creativity.
Our music.
Our engineering.
Our scientific achievements.
Our education.
Our traditions.
And our extraordinary capacity to organise society.
I love Stockholm.
Gothenburg.
Malmö.
Uppsala.
Kiruna.
The beautiful landscapes of northern Sweden.
The archipelagos.
The islands.
The countryside.
The forests extending beyond what the eye can see.
I love that we have developed institutions intended to support people throughout their lives.
Healthcare.
Education.
Social protections.
Public infrastructure.
Parental leave.
Childcare.
Public transport.
Environmental protections.
And a social understanding that people should not simply be abandoned because they lack financial resources.
I recognise that our systems are not perfect.
But I also recognise that Sweden has achieved things worth appreciating.
And perhaps that is exactly why this letter is so difficult to write.
Because the country I belong to has built an international reputation around some of the very values that its historical institutions have not always extended equally to everyone.
Equality.
Humanity.
Environmental responsibility.
Freedom.
Social wellbeing.
And I want to ask something.
How can we celebrate these values as defining characteristics of our civilisation while failing to fully confront the people whose humanity our institutions denied?
How can we be proud of our relationship with nature while the Indigenous people whose existence has been connected to that nature for generations continue demanding recognition of their rights?
How can we celebrate our social protections while accounting so inadequately for the people once subjected to racial classification, segregation and coercive sterilisation?
How can we celebrate our reputation for peace while minimising our historical participation in overseas colonial expansion and slavery?
And how can we measure the environmental responsibility of our own country without examining the ecological consequences of the products and resources we consume from elsewhere?
I am beginning to recognise something.
A society can become extraordinarily good at organising wellbeing within the boundaries it has chosen to measure, while remaining insufficiently accountable for the harm that exists beyond those boundaries.
And I want to apologise.
Not for loving Sweden.
But for every time I have allowed my love for Sweden to become a reason not to investigate its complete history.
To the Sámi people
I am sorry.
And I want to begin with you because there is something profoundly contradictory about our national identity.
We are a country that celebrates its forests.
Its mountains.
Its relationship with nature.
Its environmental consciousness.
Its beautiful northern landscapes.
And yet our own state has spent centuries imposing authority upon the Indigenous people whose ancestral territories extend across those very landscapes.
The Sámi people did not begin existing when Sweden decided to govern their land.
You already existed.
Your languages existed.
Your knowledge existed.
Your communities existed.
Your relationships with the environment existed.
Your traditions existed.
Your spiritual practices existed.
And your systems for understanding and sustaining life existed.
The land was not empty.
It was not without meaning.
It was not waiting for Sweden to make it valuable.
It already possessed value through the lives connected to it.
And I am sorry for the extraordinary arrogance of the historical institutions that treated those relationships as subordinate to the ambitions of the Swedish state.
For the appropriation of land.
For the restriction of traditional rights.
For the forced relocations.
For the suppression of languages.
For the interference with reindeer herding.
For the policies that divided Sámi communities into categories determined by Swedish authorities.
For the attempts to reshape Sámi education.
For the religious coercion.
For the destruction and suppression of spiritual practices.
And for the generations whose relationship with their own cultural inheritance was interrupted.
I am sorry for the policies that treated Sámi people as though they were incapable of determining how to live within their own environments.
And I am sorry for every occasion on which the Swedish state claimed superior authority over a relationship with nature that Sámi communities had developed through generations of experience.
The land was never merely land
This is something I want my fellow Swedes to understand.
When we speak about land, we often speak about property.
Resources.
Timber.
Minerals.
Energy.
Infrastructure.
Economic opportunity.
Development.
And financial value.
But land is not simply a commercial asset.
For the Sámi, relationships with land, water, animals, ancestral territories and seasonal migration routes are deeply connected with cultural knowledge, livelihoods and identity.
Those relationships cannot be fully understood through the financial value assigned to a particular area.
And this is where I believe our historical institutions failed so profoundly.
We measured the land through the systems we had created, then treated those measurements as though they were more legitimate than the relationships that already existed.
We created property definitions.
Administrative boundaries.
Permits.
Legal classifications.
Commercial rights.
And institutions determining who could use what.
Then we began treating those arrangements as though they established the ultimate truth about the land.
But the Sámi did not suddenly lose their historical relationship with the land because Sweden developed a different legal framework for describing ownership.
And they did not cease to possess knowledge because Swedish institutions failed to recognise it.
I am sorry for the times when the authority of our laws became a means of overriding relationships that preceded those laws.
And I am sorry for the families who were forcibly relocated.
For the people compelled to leave places connected to generations of their ancestors.
For the disrupted migration routes.
For the loss of grazing grounds.
For the communities that received displaced families and experienced additional pressure upon their own lands and livelihoods.
For the people whose cultural continuity was treated as less important than the priorities of the state.
Displacement is not simply a change of address when the land is part of the knowledge through which a people understands existence.
And I want us to recognise that.
The report of September 2026
There is something I can no longer pretend not to know.
On 30 September 2026, Sweden’s Truth Commission for the Sámi People delivered its final report.
The Lands Speak and Remember.
And I want that title to remain with us.
Because the report documents centuries of policies whose consequences did not disappear when those policies were changed.
The commission examined land rights.
Forced relocations.
Restrictions upon reindeer husbandry.
Racial biology.
Language suppression.
Educational segregation.
The treatment of Sámi cultural heritage.
And the ways Swedish institutions contributed to the loss of autonomy and cultural continuity.
It called for acknowledgement, redress and meaningful changes to the relationship between the state and Sámi people.
And I want to ask something.
Why did the people who were harmed have to wait until 2026 for this comprehensive state-commissioned account to be delivered?
How many generations lived through these conditions?
How many people died before seeing their experiences acknowledged in this way?
How many children grew up without fully understanding why their parents or grandparents had become separated from their cultural inheritance?
And how many people spent their lives being told that the institutions responsible for those conditions represented equality and progress?
I welcome the commission’s work.
I recognise the Sámi individuals and organisations whose testimony, advocacy and persistence helped make it possible.
But I do not want us to treat the existence of a report as proof that the responsibility has been fulfilled.
Documenting harm is not the same thing as repairing harm.
A commission can establish facts.
It can produce recommendations.
It can make suffering visible.
But the lives affected by those facts continue beyond the publication of a report.
And the question now becomes what Sweden is prepared to do with the knowledge.
Will we listen?
Will we change our institutions?
Will we recognise the rights that remain insufficiently protected?
Will we address the continuing disputes concerning land and resources?
Will we support Sámi languages and cultural continuity?
And will we treat Sámi communities as participants in determining their own future rather than merely as populations to be consulted after decisions have already been shaped?
Because consultation is not necessarily the same thing as meaningful authority.
And acknowledgement is not necessarily the same thing as justice.
To the people whose ancestors were studied as though they were specimens
I am sorry.
For one of the most disturbing contradictions within our history.
Sweden became known internationally for scientific advancement.
For education.
For research.
For the development of sophisticated institutions.
And yet, in 1922, the Swedish Parliament established the State Institute for Racial Biology in Uppsala.
An institution dedicated to a field of supposed scientific inquiry built upon false assumptions about human hierarchy.
Researchers attempted to classify people through physical characteristics and ancestry.
They measured bodies.
Examined skulls.
Took photographs.
Collected information.
And attempted to develop categories that would assign different social and biological significance to different human populations.
Sámi people were among those subjected to degrading examinations.
Roma people and other populations were also targeted by racial classification.
And I want to ask something.
At what point did the possession of scientific instruments convince us that we had developed the right to measure the humanity of another person?
How did we become so confident in our intellectual capacity that we failed to recognise the injustice of our own assumptions?
How did educated people convince themselves that human beings could be organised into hierarchies of worth?
And how did institutions claiming to advance science become involved in producing ideas that reinforced discrimination?
I want to recognise something.
Intelligence is not established merely through the ability to classify.
Nor is scientific knowledge automatically humane because it is produced within a university.
A system can be sophisticated.
Its researchers can be highly educated.
Its methods can appear technical.
And its foundational assumptions can still be profoundly wrong.
That is something I want Sweden to remember.
Especially when we celebrate the excellence of our educational and scientific institutions.
Because the history of racial biology reveals that a society can become extraordinarily educated while remaining profoundly mistaken about the humanity of the people it is studying.
And I am sorry for every person who was reduced to a specimen within that system.
For the people whose bodies were photographed without meaningful consent.
For the people whose dignity was violated.
For the human remains taken from Sámi burial grounds and retained within institutional collections.
For the families whose ancestors’ remains became objects of scientific study.
And for the generations who inherited the humiliation and consequences of those practices.
I want the return of ancestral remains to continue where appropriate.
I want affected communities to possess meaningful authority in decisions concerning their ancestors and cultural heritage.
And I want our institutions to recognise that possessing a human remain does not establish an ethical right to keep it.
The human body does not cease to deserve dignity when life has ended.
To the people subjected to involuntary sterilisation
I am sorry.
For the decades during which Swedish law permitted sterilisation without meaningful consent under certain circumstances.
Between 1935 and 1975, approximately 63,000 sterilisations were reported under the legislation then in force.
Not all were involuntary.
But official investigations identified extensive coercion, pressure and circumstances in which people did not possess genuine freedom to decide.
And I want to ask something that goes to the very foundation of our claimed commitment to equality.
How can a state claim to protect human wellbeing while exercising coercive authority over whether certain human beings may reproduce?
Who gave our institutions the right to determine that one person’s genetic inheritance was less desirable than another’s?
Who gave officials the authority to define somebody as unsuitable for parenthood through categories shaped by prejudice, disability discrimination and social assumptions?
Who decided that the supposed wellbeing of society justified depriving particular individuals of reproductive autonomy?
And why did it take so long to confront what had been done?
I recognise that Sweden eventually investigated these practices and created a compensation programme for eligible survivors.
I welcome that acknowledgement.
But compensation cannot reverse an operation.
It cannot restore the reproductive possibilities denied.
It cannot recreate the children someone might have had.
It cannot return the years spent living with the consequences.
And it cannot completely undo the emotional or psychological impact of having one’s body subjected to a decision made by somebody else.
A society does not become humane merely because it claims that the harm it is inflicting will benefit society.
The individual matters.
Their autonomy matters.
Their body matters.
And their reproductive existence cannot be treated as an instrument through which the state pursues an idealised population.
I am sorry.
To the people with disabilities.
To those institutionalised.
To those classified through discriminatory assumptions.
To those subjected to pressure by authorities.
To those who were made to feel that their existence was less valuable.
And to every person whose right to determine their own reproductive future was denied.
I want Sweden to remember this history whenever we celebrate our relationship with healthcare, science and social welfare.
Because a healthcare system is not humane simply because it is efficient.
It must also respect the humanity of the person receiving care.
To Saint Barthélemy
There is another history that I believe many people do not adequately associate with Sweden.
Slavery.
Not merely the slavery carried out by other European nations.
Not merely the atrocities of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal or the Netherlands.
But slavery under Swedish colonial authority.
Sweden acquired Saint Barthélemy from France in 1784.
And for almost a century, the island remained under Swedish rule.
Gustavia became an important port.
Commercial networks developed.
Merchants arrived.
Goods were exchanged.
And human beings were enslaved.
Swedish colonial authorities established and enforced laws that treated enslaved people differently from free inhabitants.
The rights and punishments assigned to individuals depended upon their legal status and racial classification.
The island participated in the commercial networks of the Caribbean slave trade.
And slavery was not abolished there until October 1847.
1847.
I want us to understand what that means.
In the nineteenth century, while Sweden was developing the institutions and narratives through which its modern history would be understood, human beings were still legally enslaved within a Swedish colony.
And I am sorry.
For the men, women and children whose lives were treated as property.
For the people bought and sold.
For the families whose futures could be determined through commercial transactions.
For the people subjected to punishment.
For the women whose bodily autonomy was denied.
For the children born into enslavement.
For the people whose labour sustained the colonial economy.
And for the generations who inherited the consequences.
I do not want to exaggerate the scale of Sweden’s overseas colonial empire.
It was considerably smaller than those of several other European powers.
Nor was Saint Barthélemy a major sustained source of surplus revenue for the Swedish Crown.
But I want to ask something.
Since when did the size or profitability of an injustice determine whether it required accountability?
Does slavery become less important because the colonial territory was small?
Does the suffering of an enslaved person become less serious because the state did not earn as much as expected?
Does the existence of larger slave-trading empires reduce Sweden’s responsibility for participating in the same institution?
Of course not.
We do not need to exaggerate our history in order to recognise the wrong within it.
The documented reality is enough.
And I want us to acknowledge it without minimisation.
Saint Barthélemy was not an insignificant footnote merely because the island was small.
For the people enslaved there, it was part of the conditions of their entire existence.
What is a footnote in the history of an empire can be an entire lifetime in the history of the person subjected to it.
And I am sorry for every occasion on which our national narrative has treated those lifetimes as secondary.
To Ghana and the peoples of the West African coast
I am sorry.
For Sweden’s participation in European colonial trading networks along the Gold Coast.
The Swedish Africa Company operated trading establishments in the region during the seventeenth century.
Swedish traders sought commercial access to gold and other commodities.
And in 1653, Swedish authorities established a fort at Cape Coast, in what is now Ghana.
The structure became part of a wider history of competition among European powers.
It passed through different hands.
And Cape Coast Castle later became deeply associated with the transatlantic slave trade under subsequent European rulers.
I want to distinguish those histories accurately.
Sweden’s presence was relatively brief.
The castle’s later use under other colonial powers cannot simply be attributed to Swedish authorities.
But that does not remove Sweden’s participation in the establishment of European trading and territorial infrastructure on the coast.
And it does not erase the country’s involvement in slave-trading networks.
I am sorry for the commercial ambitions through which European institutions sought influence over African territories and resources.
For the people whose existence was affected by those arrangements.
For the trade in enslaved human beings.
For the attempts to establish external commercial authority.
And for the assumption that the possession of financial and maritime capabilities gave European traders a superior claim to African resources.
I recognise that African political authorities and merchants were not passive participants in this history.
They negotiated, resisted, traded and exercised power.
But the complexity of those relationships does not erase the responsibility of Swedish institutions for their own actions.
I want Ghana’s history to be understood through the societies that already existed there.
Their political systems.
Their cultures.
Their economic knowledge.
Their relationships.
And their ability to determine their own futures.
Not merely through the succession of European flags raised above coastal forts.
Ghana did not become historically meaningful when Europeans began competing for access to its resources.
It was already meaningful to the people who lived there.
And I want us to recognise that.
To the Lenape and other Indigenous peoples of North America
I am sorry for the Swedish colonial ambitions that produced the settlement known as New Sweden in 1638.
For the establishment of a European colony in the Delaware River valley.
For the assumption that a European crown could legitimately extend its authority across a region already inhabited by Indigenous peoples.
I recognise that New Sweden existed for only seventeen years before being conquered by the Dutch in 1655.
I also recognise that Swedish and Finnish settlers developed trading relationships with local Indigenous communities, including the Lenape, and that those relationships were not identical to the violent expansion of every other European colony.
I do not want to invent atrocities merely to make our history resemble another empire’s.
But I want to ask something.
Why was the establishment of a European colony considered an achievement when the land was already part of somebody else’s world?
Who determined the boundaries?
Who possessed the authority to establish sovereignty?
What did the different parties understand about land agreements?
And how did the presence of European settlers affect the long-term relationships between Indigenous communities and the territories they inhabited?
I am sorry for every occasion on which the colonial narrative has centred the arrival of Europeans while reducing Indigenous peoples to the background of their own history.
The Lenape were not waiting for Sweden.
They already possessed communities.
Languages.
Knowledge.
Political relationships.
And histories.
I want that reality to remain central.
Even when we celebrate the historical achievements of Swedish settlers.
To the peoples of the Baltic and the Finnish-speaking communities shaped by Swedish rule
I recognise that Sweden was not merely an overseas colonial power.
It was also a regional empire.
At different times, Swedish political authority extended over territories in the Baltic region and across the eastern part of the Swedish realm, including Finland.
These histories were not identical to colonial slavery in the Caribbean.
Nor should we assume that every territory incorporated into the Swedish kingdom experienced the same form of domination.
But they involved questions of military conquest, political authority, taxation, land, language and the distribution of power.
And I want us to examine those relationships without assuming that incorporation into a Swedish state automatically represented an improvement for every community involved.
To the Finnish-speaking populations historically governed by Swedish institutions, I recognise the unequal status and social advantages attached to language and class during different periods.
I recognise that Finland formed part of the Swedish realm for centuries before being ceded to Russia in 1809.
Its history cannot simply be described as that of an overseas colony.
But the relationship between political authority, language and opportunity deserves acknowledgement.
And to the peoples of the Baltic territories once governed by Sweden, I recognise the need to examine the military and administrative consequences of Swedish rule alongside the reforms and institutions introduced during that period.
An empire’s history must be understood through the people it governed, not only through the rulers who expanded it.
And I want our national education to reflect that complexity.
To the Tornedalians, Kvens, Lantalaiset and Swedish Finns
I am sorry.
For the suppression of minority languages.
For the school policies that pressured children to abandon their mother tongues.
For the humiliation experienced by those whose language was treated as inferior.
For the families whose ability to pass cultural knowledge to the next generation was interrupted.
For the children who were discouraged or forbidden from speaking the language of their parents.
For the generations whose identities became shaped by the expectation that becoming fully accepted meant becoming more Swedish.
I recognise that Sweden has since formally acknowledged its national minorities and established legal protections for their languages and cultures.
And in 2023, a truth and reconciliation commission delivered a report examining policies affecting Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset.
The government has continued work on reconciliation.
I welcome those developments.
But I do not want us to confuse the recognition of a language with the restoration of everything that was lost when its transmission was interrupted.
Because language is not merely a tool for communication.
It carries stories.
Humour.
Knowledge.
Relationships.
Ways of interpreting nature.
Family histories.
Cultural references.
And understandings of existence.
When a child is made to feel ashamed of their ancestral language, the harm is not limited to the words they stop speaking.
It can affect their relationship with their family.
Their community.
Their identity.
And the cultural inheritance that should have been available to them.
I am sorry for that.
And I want our modern institutions to support the living continuation of those cultures rather than treating them merely as historical traditions to preserve in archives.
To the Roma people
I am sorry.
For centuries of discrimination and exclusion.
For the restrictions historically placed upon movement, settlement, education and participation in Swedish society.
For the prejudice.
For the degrading assumptions.
For the people whose opportunities were limited because of their identity.
For the families subjected to discriminatory public policies.
And for the Roma individuals affected by Sweden’s historical sterilisation practices and other abuses.
I recognise the long work undertaken by Roma organisations and individuals to challenge these conditions.
I recognise Sweden’s commitments to combating anti-Roma racism.
But I also recognise that prejudice and discrimination have not simply disappeared.
And I want to ask something.
How can a society claim equality as one of its defining values while people continue facing unequal treatment because of who they are?
I do not want us to celebrate inclusion only through the existence of legislation.
I want us to examine whether people can actually exercise the rights that legislation is supposed to protect.
Because a right written into law is not the same thing as a right experienced in everyday life.
And a society that prides itself upon equality should be especially willing to investigate the distance between those two conditions.
And now, to Sweden’s relationship with nature
This is where my letter becomes especially uncomfortable.
Because Sweden is internationally associated with environmental responsibility.
We have invested in renewable energy.
Waste management.
Public transport.
Environmental regulation.
Energy efficiency.
And many forms of technological development intended to reduce ecological harm.
We have made real achievements.
But I want to ask something.
What exactly are we measuring when we describe our country as environmentally responsible?
Are we measuring the pollution produced within Sweden?
Or are we measuring the full environmental consequences of the products and resources we consume?
Because those are not necessarily the same thing.
And in 2026, Statistics Sweden published figures showing that most greenhouse gas emissions associated with Swedish consumption in 2024 occurred outside Sweden.
Approximately 48.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent were associated with emissions abroad.
Compared with approximately 31 million tonnes occurring within Sweden.
And I want to sit with that.
Because it exposes something fundamental about modern economic organisation.
A country can reduce the pollution visible within its own territory while continuing to consume products whose production creates emissions elsewhere.
That does not mean Sweden has made no meaningful environmental progress.
It has.
But it means our responsibility cannot stop at our borders.
We must account for the materials.
The manufacturing.
The transport.
The energy.
The supply chains.
And the ecosystems affected by the things we purchase.
I want Swedish companies and consumers to understand that environmental responsibility is not simply a matter of keeping Sweden clean.
It is a question of the full relationship between our consumption and the world sustaining it.
What happens when we purchase products manufactured in countries with different labour or environmental conditions?
What happens when commercial demand encourages extraction?
What happens when waste or emissions are produced elsewhere?
What happens when the environmental costs of our standard of living are experienced by people who do not share the same access to its benefits?
The fact that pollution occurs outside Sweden does not automatically make it somebody else’s environmental responsibility.
And I want our understanding of sustainability to reflect that.
The contradiction of green development on Indigenous land
I want to speak about something else.
The growing demand for minerals and infrastructure associated with the energy transition.
Because Sweden possesses valuable mineral resources.
And the transition towards lower-carbon technologies creates opportunities for mining, electricity generation, transmission networks and industrial expansion.
I recognise the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
I recognise the need for materials used in batteries, electricity networks, vehicles and other technologies.
But I also recognise that some proposed developments affect territories used by Sámi communities.
And I want to ask a question.
What does environmental progress mean if achieving it requires undermining the rights of Indigenous people whose cultures depend upon the very environment being transformed?
I do not believe every mining project is inherently illegitimate.
I understand that societies require resources.
But I want us to question whose interests are prioritised when decisions are made.
Who determines the value of the land?
Who evaluates the environmental impact?
Who assesses the consequences for reindeer migration?
Who understands the cultural importance of the territory?
Who receives the economic benefits?
And who bears the long-term costs?
The controversy surrounding the proposed Kallak/Gállok iron-ore mine illustrates these tensions.
There are competing legal, economic, environmental and Indigenous-rights considerations.
And the Swedish courts have examined aspects of those decisions.
But I want our society to recognise something beyond the legal outcome.
An activity does not become environmentally responsible merely because it supplies materials used in an environmentally beneficial technology.
The process matters.
The land matters.
The people matter.
And the relationships disrupted by the activity matter.
We should not replace one form of environmental disregard with another and call it progress.
If our understanding of sustainability is sophisticated, it should be capable of accounting for the entire ecosystem.
Including the people whose knowledge of the environment developed long before our modern industrial systems existed.
To the people who manufacture what Sweden consumes
I am sorry for the extent to which modern commercial systems can separate the people enjoying a product from the people producing it.
I want to talk about something ordinary.
Clothing.
Furniture.
Electronics.
Household products.
Food.
The objects that form part of everyday Swedish life.
We purchase them.
We use them.
We replace them.
And often, we know far more about the brand than we know about the people who created the object.
We may recognise a Swedish company’s reputation.
Its design.
Its simplicity.
Its functionality.
Its price.
Its marketing.
Its international identity.
But what do we know about the worker?
Their earnings?
Their safety?
Their working hours?
Their ability to support their families?
The conditions of the factory?
The origin of the materials?
And the environmental consequences of production?
I do not claim every Swedish company behaves irresponsibly.
Some have established meaningful labour and environmental standards.
And Swedish companies can contribute employment, technology and economic opportunities abroad.
But I want us to recognise that outsourcing production does not eliminate responsibility for the consequences of production.
A company does not become ethical simply because the harmful part of its supply chain is located beyond the country in which its headquarters are registered.
And I want consumers to understand something similar.
The price of a product does not necessarily reveal its complete human cost.
The beauty of its design does not tell us how the worker was treated.
And the reputation of the country associated with the brand does not automatically establish the conditions of every factory participating in its production.
I want Sweden to develop an understanding of commercial responsibility that extends beyond the point of sale.
Because our products do not appear from nowhere.
They come from ecosystems.
Land.
Water.
Energy.
Labour.
Knowledge.
Materials.
Transport.
And relationships.
And all those components deserve consideration.
To the people who experience Sweden differently from its international image
I want to acknowledge something about our own country.
Because the Sweden presented internationally is not always the Sweden experienced equally by everyone living within it.
There are people who enjoy extraordinary security.
Access to education.
Stable housing.
Employment.
Healthcare.
Beautiful environments.
And opportunities to live with a degree of independence that much of the world admires.
But there are also people experiencing poverty.
Housing insecurity.
Discrimination.
Social exclusion.
Difficulties accessing opportunities.
And other forms of disadvantage.
I do not want us to deny the genuine achievements of the Swedish welfare state.
But I also do not want those achievements to become a reason to ignore the people whom our institutions do not adequately serve.
A successful average is not proof that every individual within the population is experiencing success.
And the fact that an institution exists does not mean it functions equally for everyone.
I want us to examine the realities beneath our national indicators.
Who has access?
Who encounters barriers?
Who receives support?
Who is excluded?
And who is responsible for addressing those inequalities?
I do not want Sweden to measure its humanity primarily through its position relative to other countries.
I want us to measure it through the actual wellbeing of the people who live here.
Because a country should not need another country’s worse circumstances to recognise that its own remaining injustices require attention.
The guilt hidden beneath our reputation
There is something I want to examine within myself.
Perhaps for years, I felt comfortable being Swedish because our national identity is associated with so many positive values.
Equality.
Peace.
Tolerance.
Human rights.
Environmental consciousness.
Social responsibility.
And perhaps I allowed that reputation to become an assumption about our history.
Perhaps I thought Sweden was fundamentally different from the countries that built large overseas empires.
Perhaps I knew about the British Empire.
The French Empire.
The Spanish Empire.
The Dutch Empire.
The Portuguese Empire.
And Belgium’s atrocities in the Congo.
But I did not give equal attention to the histories associated with Sweden.
Perhaps when somebody questioned our treatment of the Sámi, I immediately spoke about our social protections.
Perhaps when somebody mentioned Swedish slavery, I pointed out that our colonial empire was small.
Perhaps when somebody criticised our historical racial science, I explained that the practices belonged to another time.
Perhaps when somebody questioned the environmental consequences of Swedish consumption, I reminded them of our renewable energy and recycling.
And perhaps those responses contained important facts.
But I want to ask myself something.
Why was I searching for evidence of our achievements before I had fully acknowledged the harm being described?
What was I protecting?
My country?
Or my understanding of my country?
And is it possible that I had become so accustomed to seeing Sweden through its achievements that criticism of its historical institutions felt like criticism of my own existence?
I do not believe every Swedish person experiences the same emotional response.
Nor do I claim that every defensive reaction is evidence of guilt.
But from my metaphysical perspective, I want to examine the possibility that historical inheritance carries burdens that may exist beneath conscious recognition.
Because guilt is not necessarily something that announces itself.
A person can experience discomfort long before identifying its origin.
They can become defensive without recognising what feels threatened.
They can protect an inherited identity without understanding what part of that identity requires protection.
And they can spend years avoiding a truth before recognising that the avoidance itself was connected to something unresolved.
I do not want my pride in Sweden to become the reason I remain unconscious of Sweden’s complete history.
I want that pride to develop into something more mature.
Something capable of recognising our achievements without requiring the denial of our failures.
And something capable of participating in the work of repair.
We have already begun apologising. But have we completed the responsibility?
I recognise that Sweden has not remained entirely silent about these histories.
The Church of Sweden made a formal apology to the Sámi people in 2021 and has undertaken a reconciliation programme extending through 2031.
The Swedish state has investigated and compensated certain people subjected to coercive sterilisation.
There have been truth commissions examining historical policies affecting minorities.
Museums, historians and researchers are documenting colonial slavery and the lives of those subjected to it.
And the Sámi Truth Commission has now delivered its final report in September 2026.
I welcome all these developments.
I recognise the people who worked to make them possible.
The Sámi advocates.
The Roma activists.
The historians.
The researchers.
The surviving victims.
The descendants.
The community organisations.
The people who refused silence.
And the individuals within Swedish institutions who were willing to confront uncomfortable truths.
But I also want to recognise something.
The existence of an apology does not establish that atonement has been completed.
An apology cannot return ancestral land.
It cannot restore every language interrupted through assimilation.
It cannot reverse a sterilisation.
It cannot resurrect somebody who died in slavery.
It cannot undo the humiliation of being treated as a biological specimen.
It cannot recreate the family relationships destroyed through forced relocation.
And it cannot automatically resolve present disputes over land, resources and rights.
An apology can be meaningful.
But its meaning depends, in part, upon what follows.
I want to know what we are prepared to change.
What we are prepared to return.
What we are prepared to recognise.
What responsibilities we are prepared to accept.
What institutions require reform.
And what the people affected are asking us to understand.
Because reconciliation should not be defined solely by the comfort of the institution seeking reconciliation.
The people who experienced the harm must have a meaningful role in determining what repair requires.
To the Swedish people
I am not asking us to abandon what makes our country beautiful.
I am asking us to understand the complete conditions of that beauty.
Keep preserving our forests.
But recognise the rights of the people whose ancestral relationship with those lands predates modern Swedish administration.
Keep developing renewable energy.
But do not ignore the communities and environments affected by its infrastructure.
Keep advancing science.
But remember the people whom Swedish institutions once subjected to racial pseudoscience.
Keep protecting healthcare.
But remember the people whose reproductive autonomy was denied through policies presented as social or medical improvement.
Keep celebrating equality.
But examine those who continue experiencing discrimination.
Keep producing beautiful design.
But understand the labour and materials that make it possible.
Keep enjoying our prosperity.
But examine the environmental consequences of the products we consume.
And keep appreciating our history.
But do not expect the people harmed by our institutions to abandon theirs so that our historical narrative remains comfortable.
Our national achievements do not become less real when we acknowledge our historical injustices.
They become more honestly understood.
And our future does not become weaker when we recognise the rights of other people.
It becomes more capable of sustaining genuine relationships.
What I want Sweden to become
I want Sweden to become a country whose reputation is matched by the humanity exercised through its systems.
I want the rights of Sámi people to be respected in decisions concerning their ancestral territories.
I want meaningful processes for restitution and reconciliation.
I want the languages and cultures suppressed through historical state policies to continue being restored and supported.
I want the remaining human remains and cultural objects held in institutional collections to be examined through processes that respect the affected communities.
I want honest education concerning Swedish involvement in slavery.
I want the histories of Ghana and Saint Barthélemy to be understood through the people who lived there, not merely through Sweden’s commercial ambitions.
I want the history of racial biology and sterilisation to remain visible.
Not as an opportunity to humiliate future generations.
But as a reminder that institutional intelligence is not automatically an expression of humanity.
I want environmental assessments that account for the full lifecycle of our products.
And I want our international businesses to recognise responsibility throughout their supply chains.
I want our social protections to become more effective for those who remain excluded or disadvantaged.
And I want the people affected by decisions to possess meaningful opportunities to influence those decisions.
Because a society is not truly organised around humanity if the people affected by its systems have no meaningful authority over the conditions of their own lives.
My final letter to Sweden
I love you.
I love the forests.
The lakes.
The mountains.
The cities.
The creativity.
The extraordinary work of our people.
The knowledge we have developed.
The systems we have built.
The recognition that human beings require support beyond what they can purchase individually.
And the possibilities that exist within our society.
But I do not want us to become a country whose international reputation protects it from confronting its own history.
I do not want our identity to depend upon the assumption that because we have developed good institutions, we must always have acted humanely.
I do not want the beauty of our environment to become a reason to overlook the people whose rights to that environment were restricted.
I do not want our technological advancement to become a reason to disregard the people affected by its production.
And I do not want our achievements in equality to become a defence against recognising those who continue living with inequality.
To the Sámi people:
I am sorry for the dispossession, forced relocation, cultural suppression and institutional discrimination.
May the recognition of your rights become more than the findings of a commission.
To the people of Saint Barthélemy and the descendants of those enslaved under Swedish rule:
I am sorry for the suffering and exploitation sustained through our colonial institutions.
May your ancestors’ lives remain visible in our historical understanding.
To the peoples of Ghana:
I am sorry for Sweden’s participation in colonial trading networks and the ambitions that sought to turn your coast and its resources into instruments of external commerce.
To the Lenape and other Indigenous peoples of North America:
I recognise that your histories and relationships with the land existed long before Swedish colonists arrived.
To the Roma, Tornedalians, Kvens, Lantalaiset and Swedish Finns:
I am sorry for the discrimination and assimilation policies that suppressed languages, identities and cultural continuity.
To the people subjected to racial science and coercive sterilisation:
I am sorry for the violation of your bodies, dignity and autonomy.
To the communities affected by the environmental consequences of Swedish production and consumption:
I recognise that our responsibilities do not end at our national borders.
And to every person whose experience has been made less visible by our reputation for progress:
I want your humanity to be recognised.
Not merely counted.
Not merely studied.
Not merely documented.
But respected through the conditions of your existence.
And to Sweden itself:
May we never stop being proud of what we have created.
But may we become equally willing to account for what was taken, damaged or denied in the processes through which our society developed.
May we continue appreciating our relationship with nature.
But may we cease treating nature as though it becomes valuable only when Swedish institutions define its use.
May we continue celebrating our scientific achievements.
But may we remember that the capacity to study a human being does not establish the right to disregard their dignity.
May we continue building systems of social protection.
But may we recognise that the human being is more important than the institution designed to serve them.
And may our idea of equality finally become capable of accounting for the human beings who have historically existed outside the boundaries of our preferred national narrative.
Because there is something deeply contradictory about a society that celebrates equality while remaining insufficiently conscious of the inequality through which some of its historical institutions operated.
A country cannot fully understand its own humanity by examining only the people for whom its systems worked.
It must also examine the people whom those systems harmed.
The people excluded.
The people displaced.
The people classified.
The people controlled.
The people exploited.
And the people whose rights remain insufficiently recognised.
I am sorry.
Förlåt.
But I do not want my apology to become another achievement that Sweden can add to its international reputation.
I want it to become a responsibility.
A relationship.
A process of recognition.
An examination of what remains.
And a commitment to repair what can be repaired.
Because the purpose of accountability is not to create a more impressive public image.
It is to recognise the humanity that was neglected while the image was being created.
And perhaps the greatest achievement Sweden could offer humanity now is not another demonstration of how well organised we are.
But a demonstration of how deeply a well-organised society can examine itself, recognise those it has harmed, and change its systems accordingly.
Not because Sweden is perfect.
But because it is prepared to stop mistaking its reputation for perfection as evidence that there is nothing left to account for.
A civilisation does not become truly humane by appearing better than others.
It becomes more humane by recognising, protecting and respecting the human beings affected by everything it does.
With remorse, recognition, gratitude, consciousness, accountability and a responsibility extending beyond our national borders,
A Swedish soul who finally understands that equality cannot be measured only through the people who benefit from it, but must also be examined through those whose equality was denied.
Museum of Doom X — The Letter Hidden Beneath Sweden’s Perfect Image.
SHS – Human First
The letter’s main historical foundations come from Sweden’s own government investigations, the Swedish Living History Forum, Uppsala University’s colonial archives and Ghana’s Museums and Monuments Board. These document the Sámi Truth Commission’s findings, Sweden’s involvement in Atlantic slavery, the Swedish Gold Coast trading establishments, racial biology and coercive sterilisation. Sveriges riksdag +4
The modern environmental comparison is grounded in Statistics Sweden’s October 2026 release on consumption-related emissions, which distinguishes emissions generated domestically from those embedded in imports and other production abroad. Statistikmyndigheten SCB
The central question of this tenth letter is whether the standard Sweden uses to measure its own success is broad enough to account for everyone affected by the systems sustaining that success.
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