'Hallo boys! I'm horny Ulla of Sweden' 

When opening a Swedish pornographic magazine from the 1960s, a blonde woman looks you in the eyes and says “Hallo boys! Jag är kåt-Ulla of Sweden.” Although the Swedish constitution regulated obscene materials at this time, pornographic magazines were still considered a huge problem, and the expansion of the industry at the end of the 1960s was frequently called a “porn wave”. According to public debates, tourists travelled to Sweden to enjoy the wide range of pornographic publications on offer there and to watch movies such as the Vilgot Sjöman film I am Curious – Yellow (1967) and the Ingmar Bergman film The Silence (1963). Although it is hard to measure the size of the industry, there seems to be some truth to the claims about the “porn wave”. According to my preliminary findings, the number of producers of pornographic magazines increased rapidly during this period; in 1960 there were about fourteen publishing houses that produced pornography and in 1968 the number peaked with forty-three such publishing houses. Together they produced almost a hundred different titles. This made Sweden one of the leading producers of pornography in the world.

Sweden abolished the regulation on obscene publications in 1971. It was the second country in the world to do so. Denmark was the first, abolishing the regulation of texts in 1967 and pictures in 1969. In both countries, however, the pornography market was already well established when the law changed. The interaction between the states and the pornography market in Sweden and Denmark helped to establish a political discourse and a legal precedent that was undoubtedly influential when the movement to legalize pornography reached other countries. In this article I analyze what preceded the legal change in Sweden by discussing different parallel developments in the 1960s. I also discuss how the conception of Swedish national character served as a marketing tool for Swedish pornography.

The Swedish Sin

Sweden’s reputation as a sinful country was created as part of a larger critique of Swedish economic policies and sexual policies by European and American newspapers in the 1950s. Its introduction of compulsory sexual education in schools in 1955 was the first in the world, and European and American press at the time published several articles that claimed this Swedish “experiment” caused widespread promiscuity in the country. The Swedish economic system was also criticised for its socialist elements that supposedly made people shallow, suicidal, and promiscuous. Unmarried mothers were even said to be regarded as heroines in Sweden, where secularization had gone too far. The myth of “the Swedish sin” was thus known worldwide in the 1960s and in 1968 the Italian filmmaker Luigi Scattini made his film Sweden – Heaven and Hell on the same theme. In Swedish parliamentary debates the country’s international reputation was considered to be a big problem, by both right wing Christian members and members of the ruling social democratic party.

But at the same time Swedish pornographers used this idea of “the Swedish sin” as a kind of marketing tool. A lot of the magazines had headlines like “Svenska flickor, Schwedische Mädchen, Swedish girls”. It was not only Sweden as a nation that was considered promiscuous then, but especially Swedish women. The different languages that were used in these headlines indicate that the magazines were directed to an international audience as well as a domestic one. The pornographic press started to grow in Sweden at the same time as sexual freedom was discussed frequently in public debate. A freer view of sexual issues such as pre-marital intercourse was said to help boost acceptance of a pornography industry by the authorities and by the public in general. The students and intellectuals who introduced the debate in Sweden advocated for an expanded and value-neutral sexual education in schools, free abortion, and unregulated pornography. In the parliament, however, these arguments were not ever truly considered. Pornography, it was argued by most of the members of the parliament, could harm its viewers and distort their sexuality, disconnecting it from love and even potentially leading them to sexual violence. In spite of this, the regulation of pornographic materials was later abolished with arguments about the incompatibility of censorship and a modern democratic society.

Prosecuting Pornography

Although pornography or sexually explicit material had long been a subject of political concern, after the Second World War pornography was framed differently in public debate. Viewed as being a moral dilemma about bad literature, pornography was also increasingly regarded as an economic concern. When political action was demanded, it was often because pornography was said to be a growing industry and, thus, a pressing commercial problem. The pornographers were described as the new rich in cities like Stockholm and their profiting from the interest of sexuality was seen as unacceptable. Even if strong measures were called for to stop the “porn wave” as a commercial phenomenon, the law only regulated pornography on moral grounds. Printed pornography was controlled via the minister of justice and his representatives in other parts of the country. When the minister found a magazine that he thought “harmed the common sense of discipline and morality,” the attorney general prosecuted it. This crime was without a formal victim, except for the common sense of dignity.

The number of prosecutions rose dramatically as a consequence of the growing range of pornographic magazines. Later, it was considered impossible to maintain this system, since judicial decisions differed widely between courts around the country. Pornographic magazines that were essentially the same were judged differently by different juries. Thus, the thing that determined whether a magazine was considered criminal or not was not primarily its content, but rather the place where it had been produced. One producer of a girlie magazine was asked in an interview as early as in 1958, whether she considered the images of women in her magazines to be provocative (after she had been prosecuted for the magazine). She said that all women were provocative, with or without clothes. If they were not, it would be a fraud to take five Swedish crowns for the magazine, since this was quite expensive. Her statement is slightly ironic and it highlights the problems that arose for producers who tried to strike a balance between producing a competitive product while still staying within the boundaries of the law.

Toward an Unconditional Freedom of the Press

A committee was appointed in 1965 to investigate the possibility of introducing a change in the constitution that would totally abolish the regulation of obscene material. In the directives the minister of justice commented that the public’s opinion about what would be harmful to the common sense of discipline and morality had changed in the preceding years and that now there was a greater openness toward sexuality. Moreover, he argued that the threat that pornography posed to society had to be proven in order to justify any restrictions on the freedom of the press.

When the chairman of the analogous American commission (the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography) asked the secretary of the Swedish commission about its findings, he got the following answer:

• I can inform you that the members of the Swedish committee – Kommittén för lagstiftningen om yttrande- och tryckfrihet – are of the opinion that pornographic material is harmless, it can not do any harm. We think the point is to fix a limit where the majority of the citizens can accept to have it, and we work now according to that hypothesis.

This passage from the letter summarizes the commission’s conclusions. Since there was no clear-cut evidence of harm related to the consumption of pornography to be found, the committee argued that the government should not regulate simple sexual images, but should only intervene in serious cases such as images including animals and children, or images depicting extreme acts of sexual violence. The social democratic government did not agree with this conclusion, however, and a bill about the freedom of the press was introduced. The paragraph in the constitution regulating obscene material was abolished and a new one that only regulated window display and spreading pornography without consent of the receiver was introduced. It was argued that after this change in the legislation, people who did not want to be confronted by pornographic images would not have to. It was also argued that Sweden’s reputation would improve since pornographic publishing houses could no longer advertise their products by sending pornography abroad without consent of the receivers. The cities would also look nicer without the massive marketing of pornography in shop windows. In this way, the moral regulation that was considered conflicting with modern ideals was withdrawn and a regulation on marketing of pornography replaced it without any serious effect on the freedom of the press and free speech.

Conclusion

Regulations on pornography were introduced again in the 1980s when child pornography and violent pornography were officially banned. According to some of the arguments made in parliament at this time, the sexual revolution, which had started out as a good movement, had been turned into a marketing tool by the pornography industry, and now the industry cared about nothing but profits.

What is striking about the pornography debates from the 1960s is that issues of gender are almost absent. It is also striking how pornography is only thought of in terms of harming its viewers, not its participants. In the 1970s the women’s movement became much more of an influence on parliamentary debates and consequently, pornography was described as being degrading to women. It also became more common at that time to say that pictures like the one of “horny Ulla” sexualized Swedish women in an unrealistic way.

Klara Arnberg is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Economic History at Umeå University in Sweden. She is writing her dissertation about Swedish pornographic press and the regulation on Pornography 1950-2000.