Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, constitute the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body that chooses the laureates for the annual Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in memory of the donor Alfred Nobel.
History
The Swedish Academy was founded in 1786 by King Gustav III. Modelled after the Académie française, it has 18 members. It is said that Gustaf III originally intended there to be twenty members, half the number of those in the French Academy, but eventually decided on eighteen because the Swedish expression De Aderton – 'The Eighteen' – had such a fine solemn ring. The academy's motto is "Talent and Taste". The academy's primary purpose is to further the "purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language" .The academy's statutes was drawn up by Gustav III himself. The specified tasks for the Academy included to compile a dictionary of the Swedish language and arrange annual competitions in oratory and poetry on given themes. Moreover, Gustav instructed that the Academy would hold an annual grand ceremony on 20 December, and that a medal would be struck every year to commemorate a prominent Swede.
In the wake of Gustav's death in 1792 the standings of the academy deteriorated, but the institution nevertheless managed to maintain its position as the nations highest authority in literary and linguistic matters.
After having flourished in the mid-19th century, by the end of the century the academy, fiercely negative to new literary movements, had deteriorated and was not looked upon favourably.
After some initial hesitation, by the turn of the 20th century the academy accepted the task of awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature, and soon after a modernisation of the academy began with several new school writers and its first female member, Selma Lagerlöf, elected.
Headquarters
The building now known as the Stockholm Stock Exchange Building was built for the bourgeoisie. The bottom floor was used as a trading exchange, and the upper floor was used for balls, New Year's Eve parties, etc. When the academy was founded, the ballroom was the biggest room in Stockholm that could be heated and thus used in the winter, so the King asked if he could borrow it.The academy has had its annual meeting there every year since, attended by members of the Swedish royal family. However, it was not until 1914 that the academy gained permanent use of the upper floor as their own. It is here that the academy meets and, among other business, announces the names of Nobel Prize laureates. This task arguably makes the academy one of the world's most influential literary bodies.
The Swedish King is the only person who, apart from the members, has the right to attend the meetings of the academy. On 3 March 2022 the Swedish King attended a weekly academy meeting, the first time a Swedish king has done so in over 200 years.
Members
Members are elected by a secret ballot in the Academy and before the result is made public it must be submitted to the Academy's Patron, the King of Sweden, for his approval. Members of the Academy include writers, linguists, literary scholars, historians and a prominent jurist. Initially writers were in the minority in the Academy, but during the twentieth century the number of writers grew to represent more than half of The Eighteen. The Swedish Academy has a long history of being a heavily male-dominated institution, but the Academy has recently moved towards better equality. Since 20 December 2019 one third of the chairs belong to female Academy members.Prior to 2018 it was not possible for members of the academy to resign; membership was for life, although the academy could decide to exclude members. This happened twice to Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, who was excluded in 1794, re-elected in 1805 and excluded again in 1811. In 1989, members Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten chose to stop participating in the meetings of the academy, over its refusal to express support for Salman Rushdie when Ayatollah Khomeini condemned him to death for The Satanic Verses, shortly after a third member, Werner Aspenström, also stopped participating in the meetings for unspecified reasons. In 2005, Knut Ahnlund made the same decision, as a protest against the choice of Elfriede Jelinek as Nobel laureate for 2004, calling her work "unenjoyable, violent pornography", and stating that awarding her the prize had "caused irreparable harm to the value of the award for the foreseeable future". On 25 November 2017, Lotta Lotass said in an interview that she had not participated in the meetings of the academy for more than two years and did not consider herself a member any more.
Assets
's former farm at Backåkra, close to Ystad in southern Sweden, was bought in 1957 as a summer residence by Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General of the United Nations. The south wing of the farm is reserved as a summer retreat for the 18 members of the Swedish Academy, of which Hammarskjöld was a member.On 11 April 2019, the academy published its financial statements for the first time in its history. According to it, the academy owned financial assets worth 1.58 billion Swedish kronor at the end of 2018.
Controversies
1794–1795 Armfelt Conspiracy and suspension of the Academy
In the wake of the Academy's founder King Gustav III's death in 1792, the standing of the Swedish Academy deteriorated. In 1794, member Gustav Mauritz Armfelt was excluded from the Academy after being sentenced for treason for a conspiracy against the Swedish government, and in 1795 the Academy was suspended altogether for two years on political grounds. Armfelt was eventually reinstated in the Academy in 1805, but after being forced to exile in Russia following the coup of 1809, he was again excluded from the Academy in 1811.1881 Henning Hamilton affair
In 1881, member Henning Hamilton was excluded from the Academy after being found guilty of embezzlement through falsifying a relative's signature.1989 Rushdie affair
Following the Academy meeting on 23 February 1989, members Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten resigned from their seats in protest to the Academy's refusal to condemn Iran's death decree against writer Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, which was considered blasphemous by some Muslims. "I am so disappointed and sad that the Academy couldn't choose sides for or against Rushdie," Ekman said. "The academy should have supported Rushdie, it is a question of freedom of speech." Gyllensten said: "Death threats and oppression from Iranian fundamentalists are violations of everything the Academy stands for." Shortly after, a third member, Werner Aspenström, also left his seat. Aspenström did not reveal his reasons for resigning but indicated support for a stronger statement by the Academy on the Rushdie case. At the time it was not possible for a member to formally resign and be replaced, as they were elected for life, so the number of Academy members were reduced following the controversy.The Academy's decision to stay with its traditional policy not to make any political statements in an effort to avoid any accusations of a politicization of the Nobel Prize in Literature was heavily criticized by various commentators in the Swedish press.
In March 2016, the Swedish Academy condemned the death warrant against Salman Rushdie.
2018 controversies
In April 2018, three Swedish Academy members resigned in response to a sexual-misconduct investigation involving author Jean-Claude Arnault, who is married to the member Katarina Frostenson. Arnault was accused of sexual assault and harassment by at least 18 women. He and his wife were also accused of leaking the names of prize recipients on at least seven occasions so friends could profit from online bets. He denied all accusations, although he was later convicted of rape and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. Sara Danius, the permanent secretary, hired a law firm to investigate if Frostenson had violated the Academy's regulations by leaking any confidential information and whether Arnault had any influence on the Academy, but no legal action was taken. The investigation caused a division among the members of the Academy. Following a vote to stop Frostenson's membership, the three members resigned in protest over the decisions made by the Academy. Two former permanent secretaries, Sture Allén and Horace Engdahl, called Danius a weak leader.On 10 April, Danius was requested to resign from her position by the Academy, bringing the number of empty seats to four. Although the Academy voted against removing Katarina Frostenson from the committee, she voluntarily agreed to withdraw from participating in the academy, bringing the total of withdrawals to five. Because two other seats were still vacant from the Rushdie affair, this left only 11 active members. On 4 May 2018, the Swedish Academy announced that the selection of that years Nobel prize laureate would be postponed until 2019, when two laureates would be chosen. It was still technically possible to choose a 2018 laureate, as only eight active members are required to choose a recipient. However, there were concerns that the academy was not in any condition to credibly present the award.
The scandal was widely seen as damaging to the credibility of the prize and its authority. As noted by Andrew Brown in The Guardian in a lengthy deconstruction of the scandal:
King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden said a reform of the rules may be evaluated, including the introduction of the right to resign in respect of the current lifelong membership of the committee. On 5 March 2019, it was announced that the Nobel Prize in Literature would once again be awarded, and laureates for both 2018 and 2019 would be announced together. The decision came after several changes were made to the structure of the Swedish Academy as well as to the Nobel Committee members selection, to " trust in the Academy as a prize-awarding institution". On 19 November, the Swedish Academy added five temporary external members to help its five-strong Nobel Committee in their deliberations for the 2019 and 2020 awards: author and literary translator Gun-Britt Sundstrom; publisher Henrik Petersen; and literary critics Mikaela Blomqvist, Rebecka Karde and Kristoffer Leandoer. Just after two weeks, two of the newly added external members, Sundstrom and Leandoer, left the committee, with the latter saying the work to reform the scandal-hit Swedish Academy was taking too long. "I leave my job in the Nobel Committee because I have neither the patience nor the time to wait for the result of the work to change that has been started," Leandoer said.