Nordic and Conservative: The Rising Shift to the Right in Sweden and Its Nordic Neighbors

In the early months of COVID, as one government after the other enforced lockdowns and mask mandates, one country stood as the outlier: Sweden. Going it alone against prevailing left-wing thinking was an unusual way to make headlines for the poster child of European progressivism.

Sweden and its Nordic neighbors make for an unexpected addition to the list of countries where the European Right has achieved victories in the past decade, including Orbán’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, and a Brexit UK. Poland and Spain, where elections this year will determine the fates of the incumbent Law and Justice party and the rising VOX party, will receive much attention as a test of the phenomenon’s durability. The Nordic countries, though, will also be worth keeping an eye on.

A Shift to the Right

Though often regarded as the quintessentially progressive countries on both economic and social matters, the Nordics have in recent years shown a willingness to dissent from left-wing orthodoxy. Sweden’s lax approach to COVID—which, notably, resulted in one of the lowest excess death rates in Europe—is not the only surprising development to make the news. In Denmark, the Left has shifted to the right on immigration. Finland, Norway, and Sweden have all taken steps in recent years to discourage or restrict transgender surgeries and hormones for children. There is also a rising openness to nuclear power among the Swedish government and public.

The trend has been visible in recent years at the polls too. Last fall, the Swedish Right pulled off a narrow victory boosted by the rise of the migration-skeptic Sweden Democrats party. A similar story played out in early April in Finland, where Prime Minister Sanna Marin, the country’s charismatic young female leader and a rising star on the Left, failed to hold on to her position. Her party, the center-left Social Democrats, was edged out by both the center-right National Coalition party and the once-obscure right-wing Finns party, which captured its highest-ever share of the vote.

Conservative Priorities

What does it mean to be conservative in some of the world’s most progressive countries? Swedes, after all, like to consider their nation a “humanitarian superpower,” a bastion of progressive ideals. “In the Swedish mindset, to be conservative is not a good thing,” says Anders Hedman, a board member of the center-right Moderates party in Gävleborg County. “Swedes like to be the country of the future. We like to look forward, to be progressive, to be a role model for the world.” 

The immigration issue has stood at the forefront of political discourse in recent years in the Nordic countries and has served as a clear dividing line between Left and Right. This is especially true of Sweden, where of 20% of the population is now foreign-born, a large portion coming from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia. Former prime minister Frederik Reinfeldt encouraged Swedes to “open their hearts” to immigrants. Conservatives say it was too much too quickly. It is impossible to overlook, they argue, the urban immigrant enclaves where there has been scant integration into Swedish society and where crime runs rampant. Politics in Sweden are subject to an ever-present “consensus culture,” a strong cultural emphasis placed on agreement, conformity of belief, and the fear of being perceived as an outcast. It results in a fear to speak one’s mind, explains 29-year-old Sebastian Holmberg, the 2019-2020 chairman of Heimdal, a conservative student organization. “If a consensus forms around a political issue, it can be a career-ending event to try and tackle it. This means that problems can grow unchecked … until they become too large to ignore.”

Vocal dissent on the country’s open-door immigration policy was once almost unthinkable. Since the migrant crisis in 2015, however, that has steadily changed. Mattias Karlsson, MP and former leader of the Sweden Democrats, says that he and other members of his party are no strangers to receiving verbal harassment. In recent years, however, people have been coming up to congratulate him on the street or to buy him a beer at the bar.

Sweden Democrats MP Lars Andersson, who lived in the United States for over twenty years, entered politics after returning to Sweden to find that his hometown of Malmö had become a “nightmare.” “We are not uncaring,” he says, arguing that while Sweden should accept refugees, it has done much more than its fair share. “We prioritize caring for our own citizens more; our retired people who have spent a lifetime of paying taxes, our young people and their opportunities in education, and sick people getting proper care.”

As Sweden has received an influx of immigrants with strong cultural and religious identities, many Swedish conservatives have taken a renewed interest in their own Swedish heritage. “As in many other countries it has been fashionable to question what is Swedish or to deny that there truly is anything Swedish,” explains Holmberg. “For most conservatives, however, patriotism and cultural heritage is not a political tool, rather something that has organically arisen among themselves [and] so is naturally something to enjoy and protect.”

This was on display at the youth organization Conservative Union’s annual traditional Swedish ‘gask,’ a boisterous evening of food, drink, and songs that defied the Swedes’ reputation for reservedness. 28-year-old Christian Democrats member Amanda Åkesson, who attended the event, says that “in these rapidly changing times, part of the reason why people turn to conservatism [is] to protect Swedish values and tradition.”

Though she has always leaned Right economically, she explains, cultural issues have become a more important aspect of her conservatism in recent years as she has come to appreciate the conservative emphasis on, as she puts it, “tradition, family, stability, and community, rather than unbridled individualism and societal experiments with an unclear ending.”

The Nordic Political Spectrum

Conservatives in the Nordics are quick to point out, though, that their political spectrum is significantly to the Left of most other countries. The Nordics have garnered a reputation as social welfare states par excellence, touted by self-styled democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States. High taxes and ample government assistance are the norm, popular across the board from left to right. Andersson argues that, by the standards of the American political spectrum, Sweden has seven socialist parties and one communist party. He points out that his own party, considered the furthest to the right among major parties in the country, is supportive, for example, of socialized healthcare and generous work leave. The Right’s criticism of immigration, in fact, is largely rooted in a concern that the population influx and lack of societal integration will threaten social safety nets.

Perhaps the most conspicuous difference that sets Nordic conservatives apart from those in, say, Poland, Italy, Hungary, or the United States is the absence of religion. The Nordic countries rank as some of the world’s most irreligious countries. The Swedish state church, whose leaders are elected on ballots and are often affiliated with political parties, differs little from society at large in its promotion of left-wing values. Issues that tend to motivate Christian conservatives elsewhere like abortion and same-sex marriage simply cannot be touched. They enjoy widespread support in society, even among those who vote for right-wing parties. Karlsson explains that in 2018 the Sweden Democrats pushed for a modest amendment to the abortion limit that would have put the policy in closer alignment with modern science and the language of the law. They suffered significantly at the polls for that decision, he says. In Finland, Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola and politician Päivi Räsänen faced prison (though were ultimately acquitted this spring) for speaking against same-sex marriage.

23-year-old Rebecka Ullström grew up in a non-religious family in an especially left-leaning part of Stockholm. She explains that while studying foreign cultures in school, she began to think, “maybe the religious people are right, because the majority of the world is religious and very few are secular completely like Sweden.” She initially explored the Swedish Lutheran church, but found that it felt more like a political organization. She eventually converted to Catholicism and attends the traditional Latin Mass. Max-Martin Skalenius, co-founder of the traditional Catholic youth organization Saint Erik’s Legion, has heard many similar stories. “Most Swedes who end up finding a classical Christian faith will end up being Catholics,” he says. “Young people do not want a Church that moves with the world, but a Church that moves the world.”

Shifting Allegiances

The Right’s newfound success may largely result from a broader shift in political coalitions globally. Just as Donald Trump and the Republicans’ successes in the U.S. have been attributed to changing voting patterns among the working class, the Sweden Democrats’ success has rested on its ability to erode the Social Democrats’ traditional hold on the working-class voter base. Andersson says that disillusionment with the impact of EU policies and immigration on the labor market has attracted voters to his party. Hedman argues that many of these blue-collar workers are drawn to the Sweden Democrats’ more right-leaning orientation on social issues. The Social Democrats, meanwhile, he says, “have become a party of immigrants to a very great extent.”

It is similar in Finland, where the ‘populist’ right-wing Finns party, like the Sweden Democrats, has risen from 4% in the 2007 election to second place with over 20% of the vote this spring. They too have captured working-class voters from Finland’s Social Democrats. At the Finns election night watch party, the mood grew more jubilant as each new release from the polls showed an increase in the party’s vote share. I spoke to a young man at the event who had only recently become interested in politics. He explained that he sees the Finns as the party of the average working person. His friend said that he was drawn to the Finns because they are one of the few parties with a message for the entire country, not just an electoral identity group. For him, the party demonstrates courage in opposing unrestricted immigration, defends Finnish national sovereignty against EU overreach, and promotes values like individual responsibility and objective rationality that are neglected in modern left-wing thought. On June 20, the Finns party officially entered government along in a right-wing coalition that some call the most conservative in recent Finnish history.

Perhaps the most striking demographic development on the Right is its rising youth energy. On election day in Copenhagen last fall, I interviewed people on the streets about their political views. The most surprising interaction was with a group of four young Swedes from Malmö. They were unanimous in agreeing that lack of integration of immigrants was a big problem in Sweden. When the conversation turned to U.S. politics, a couple of them even revealed their enthusiasm for Donald Trump. This expression of conservatism, it turns out, was not a fluke. In Sweden and Finland, schools hold student polls leading up to the national elections. The results in the last two elections were telling, upending common assumptions on youth political attitudes. In Sweden, the top two finishers for grades seven and up were the Moderates (27.23%) and the Sweden Democrats (20.8%). The Social Democrats finished in third with 16.13%. It is quite a change from 2014, when the Social Democrats finished in first with 25.1% and the Sweden Democrats finished in fourth with 12.16%. In the Finnish school election, the Finns party came in first (18.9%) and the conservative National Coalition party and Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats were neck-and-neck for second (13.1% and 13%). A poll of Finnish voters aged 18-29 leading up to the 2023 election showed similar support for the Finns party, who finished on top with a wide margin at 26%. 

25-year-old Emanuel Berenett, a project manager with the Moderates party during last year’s election campaign, grew up in a very left-leaning family and social environment. He attributes his embrace of conservative values, at least in part, to a bit of youthful rebelliousness. “If you are not an active ‘ally’ of the liberal policies of open borders, multiculturalism, extreme environmentalism, and LGBTQ+, you are seen as cruel, problematic, and a problem for the picture of Sweden many liberal and left-leaning politicians want to portray to the outside world,” he says. In a country that has been thoroughly progressive for some time, he explains, it creates a certain frustration among young people who want to be left alone, unburdened by the pressure to adopt and cheer on the Left’s priorities. 

While acknowledging that Sweden remains very progressive on social issues, Skalenius senses a shift. “Many young people are becoming more and more traditional on topics like Islam, feminism, [and] socialism,” he says. “Even secular childhood friends of mine, who span everything between well-educated and blue-collar workers, nowadays often surprise me by saying things that I would never expect them to say just a couple of years ago.”

Holmberg argues that organizations like the Conservative Union and Oikos, a conservative think tank, are important, if nascent, steps in challenging the Left’s hegemony that was won with a gradual domination of societal institutions over the past century. Heimdal, he emphasizes, aims to offer its participants a foundation that goes deeper than news-cycle politics. “You are as likely to visit a lecture there about theology or linguistics as you are to hear a political debate.”

24-year-old Henric Colliander, Chairman of the Conservative Union, hopes his organization will channel and amplify the Right’s youthful energy. “It has become less attractive to be associated with the leftist block since they are usually seen as a complacent establishment,” he says. “Conservatives have become the new rebels in Swedish society.”

Progressives have long celebrated the Nordic countries for being ahead of the curve, bellwethers of the future of society. If the Nordics keep it up, however, perhaps it will soon be the conservatives doing the celebrating.