Blood on Swedish Hands

To create a solid “theoretical ground for an exact racial hygiene and rational population policies” was the task of the State’s Racial Biology Institute that was founded here in Uppsala a hundred years ago. The Institute would be active for almost four decades and two recently published works investigate very different aspects of its legacy. 

These works take the form of poetry in the award-winning poet Burcu Sahin’s Blood Book (Blodbok) and prose by author and literary critic Ola Larsmo in his Lesson 11 (Lektion 11).

Burcu Sahin debuted in 2018 with the poetry collection Embroideries (Broderier) for which she was awarded with the Katapult Prize. The poems take craft as their point of departure, as it has been practiced by generations of women: embroidery, sowing, weaving. They unfold a tapestry where tradition and memory contrast with movement, migration and conflict. 

In her recent Blood Book, she poses entirely different questions. How does Sweden relate to its own history of colonialism and racism? What lives on within and outside the archives? What has been erased from history?

Ola Larsmo, writer, literary critic and cultural journalist has also studied the Institute for Racial Biology. As in his previous book, Ten Lessons in Swedish History (Tio lektioner i svensk historia), Larsmo seeks in Lesson 11 – A Book about Racial Biology to correct a number of errors and misconceptions in the historical narrative. It is also a book that tries to narrate the transition in values that led to the implementation of racial biology to values that led to democratic humanism.

In his novels, essays, editorials and lectures, Larsmo consistently returns to Swedish historical narratives. In this conversation, prose encounters poetry when Burcu Sahin and Ola Larsmo discuss their common point of departure: Swedish racial biology. 

Language: Swedish
Saturday 25 march, 14.00
Uppsala Konstmuseum