Shooting as a Pastime Activity in Sweden, 1870–1914

Between the 1870’s and the First World War, voluntary organized shooting practice in Sweden was marked by a number of tensions and contradictions. Firstly, voluntary shooting associations offering its members leisure for the sake of leisure contrasted starkly with the aims of those who saw shooting practice as a deadly serious way to achieve both personal and national security. Second, gun-proponents were also politically divided, as liberals attempted to counter the threat of the Russian Empire as well as the “Russia within” (i.e. reactionary enemies) by practicing shooting, while conservative on their hand organized corps to counter the threat of international socialism. Lastly, while much of the political ideas and attitudes towards guns originated from the urban center, a highly rural gun culture centered on hunting teams remained vital throughout the period, and would indeed come to dominate notions of Swedishness and masculinity also during the inter- and post-war years.

Through analyzing the processes behind, and the interplay between, these tensions, this paper provides new understandings of the making of modern Sweden and its attitudes towards not only guns themselves, but issues of security, violence and personal autonomy on a more general level. Not least, the article will shed new light on possible explanations to the emergence of a widespread yet largely apolitically coded image of modern Swedish gun culture during the 20th century, by looking towards its belle époque origins.