Åsa Linderborg about a wedding that changed Sweden
Culture
Åsa Linderborg
Published 2026-06-19 05.00
This is a cultural article which is part of Aftonbladet’s opinion journalism.
Today it is 50 years ago the king and Silvia got married. The rapidly inflamed royalist tyranny knew no bounds, but Aftonbladet set its own priorities: the massacre in Soweto was given twice as much space. From a historical perspective, this wedding means nothing, wrote the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Gunnar Fredriksson.
In the weeks leading up to the spectacle, Aftonbladet’s young columnist was daydreaming Åsa Moberg that the Great Church with the bride and groom and all the guests would be blown up. It was hard to take, but I shared her frustration even then and do so even more strongly today.
1976 was Sweden still the world’s most social democratic country, but the party was under strong pressure. Carl XVI Gustaf and Silvia Sommerlath announced their engagement eleven days after Astrid Lindgren’s Pomperipossa saga and shortly before the police arrested the “tax evader” Ingmar Bergman in the middle of a rehearsal at Dramaten. In the autumn, the citizens were to pause 44 years of social democratic rule, but they did not know that yet Olof Palme and the Speaker Henry Allard who deliberately broke etiquette by coming to the wedding wearing a blazer.
Anyone who is too young to remember this probably cannot understand the effect Silvia had on Sweden in general and the monarchy in particular.
There was one questionable and sexually restless bachelor who in 1973 settled on the throne. For years, Carl Gustaf had made headlines around the world with his partying and all kinds of ladies, not all of whom were the free imaginations of the media. “Swinging Sweden” he was called in the British press, while the French called him “King Conqueluche” (the darling of the girls). “My brother wasn’t exactly a pillar saint,” to quote the princess Bridget’s memoirs.
Carl Gustaf met Silvia at the Olympics in Munich in 1972, but it was still four years before they married. Legend has it that the crown prince had to wait out his conservative grandfather – Silvia was unsaved after all – but that’s probably not the whole truth. He had a hard time deciding, admits the princess Christina in the old days.
In the winter of 1973, the press suspected that Carl Gustaf had met a new girl, but they did not know her name. In the fall, Svensk Damtidningen found Silvia Sommerlath in Munich, where she originally offered an interview. A year later, Silvia again offered an interview, this time for Vecko-Journalen, when the press is convinced that it is over between the two. On both occasions, Silvia says that she hopes to see Carl Gustaf again. It sounds like a plea.
Official girlfriend becomes Silvia first on the same day as the outcry. The news hits like a bomb. Sparklingly happy, they sit together on the castle’s traditional engagement couch. Silvia tries to say something in Swedish, afterwards a newspaper wonders what Miss Sommerlath had meant when she said she felt “cozy”. And this thing that she is a “mixed pickled”, what does that mean?
Yes, who was she then, this unimaginable beauty with the long black hair and olive complexion? In the absence of information, the press writes freely, but this much is known: her father was never a Nazi, period. He has been asked. Thirty years later, the historian rolled Mats Deland on Arbetaren up a completely different story and a few more years later, TV4 continued to reveal things.
The media reported impressed about Silvia’s upbringing, that she was never allowed to go to the beach or to a party without her brothers. It is even claimed that she was a virgin when she met Carl Gustaf. If it is true, it would be a tragedy, Silvia was 33 years old when she was married. The year Runt was interspersed with a German, snarky reportage in several parts about Silvia’s former “boyfriends”, one man even had a child, they counted at least three serious relationships.
When the media constructs the image of Sweden’s new queen, it is the antithesis of Swedish sin that is chiseled out. Silvia is not only a dark beauty, she is also extremely intelligent. She doesn’t like to party and she never watches TV, no she reads advanced literature, and if Vecko-Journalen is to be believed, she is also a skilled gouache painter. In addition, she is a language genius who is fluent in at least seven different languages.
However, one identifies immediately a serious problem: the clothing. Silvia has a penchant for skirts in sullen colors, stiff as the German Alps. The hats are a special chapter. When Diana enters four years later, the issue becomes urgent. But otherwise, we agree: this is the world’s most beautiful woman. It was not just a Swedish claim.
It is the women who support the monarchy, they are the ones we look up to and they are the ones who give birth to us heirs to the throne. Silvia’s beauty has given national pride, but it must have also meant terrible pressure. Silvia started doing cosmetic surgery long before it was comme il faut. One sees the first interventions in the same vein as Carl Gustaf’s friends begin to exchange their wives for a younger generation. That can make anyone feel like an old hat rack.
Before he married himself, Carl Gustaf said in various interviews both at home and abroad that his future wife, whoever it will be, can expect to be at home. He didn’t mind women working, but his wife wouldn’t. But Silvia, she wanted to work.
The king quickly realizes that it is the wife who is the whole crew, and unlike the prince Charles he has no problem with that. Maybe because he was raised in a private matriarchy, maybe because Silvia never tried to put her husband in the shade.
But once Silvia fulfills her primary duty – giving birth to new heirs to the throne – she wants to be at home. Then the king doesn’t want it. For years, Silvia, the mother of young children, has testified in various interviews about her frustration at not being allowed to take “a sabbatical” and so on.
Most parents can probably identify with the queen, but she has not been content to speak for herself. In DN 1979, Silvia is presented as “the country’s dominant female model”, and there she says that all of Sweden’s children would not have to spend so many hours in kindergarten if the parents “stopped chasing material wealth”. She calls being a single parent “a fad”. The so-called “key children” are a topic she will return to.
When the king turns 50, he tells Månadsjournalen that he has never changed his children’s diapers, something he is “proud of”. At the same time, the royal couple is expected to explain the peculiar Swedish father’s months, when they make state visits to countries such as India.
In 2003 the magazine Amelia asked the Queen what the word “feminist” means? She replies that she thinks a woman should be feminine. In the same interview, Silvia says that she would never consider having an abortion, because a child is God’s gift.
In 1980, Silvia warned for the first time that Swedish equality was at risk of going too far: “It’s easy for the pendulum to swing over and women’s emancipation takes place at the expense of men,” she says to Svensk Damtidning.
Over the years, both she and the king have openly worried about “the confrontational” equality seekers, as well as this Victoria will take over the throne. In 1981, Silvia told Danish Søndags-BT that the thought “scares her”, because how will Victoria manage to be a mother at the same time? The following year, she tells West German television that Victoria herself will be allowed to decide whether she wants to be queen. In other words, the Riksdag’s decision was an open question.
The royal couple is of course entitled to their opinion, but it becomes ironic if you consider that in recent years the monarchy has strengthened its shares mainly in the group that was previously republican in nature: the well-educated women. In Victoria, they see a so-called “strong and modern woman”.
When Silvia arrived for Sweden, the queen’s role was already written several hundred years ago. She was expected to be virtuous, friend, representative, motherly and the man’s main co-worker. Silvia has played that role with gusto. She has stood up for Carl Gustaf even in the worst of days, like when “coffee girl” rushed right into the New Swedish dictionary.
Silvia has institutionalized the caring role in the lucrative charity organization Childhood as well as in Silviahemmet, which she founded with start-up capital from Wallenberg. The queen has thus become Sweden’s foremost representative of privatized healthcare.
I always have wondered what Silvia really thinks about the country that became hers in 1976. She was welcomed like a goddess, but how did she view all the progressives, all that is now under renegotiation? After the democratic breakthrough, a royal should be quiet and preferably say “well!” to everything. The Swedish royal couple has not always done this and the more secure they sit, the more air they can fill their lungs with if they run out of breath.
When the royal couple visited Risbergska school last year, the queen asked in front of a rolling camera what kind of country Sweden has really become. A queen should lead the mourning procession when we need to weep, but now she came out at us with an accusing anger, which was non royal.
The Torekov Compromise in 1974 has had to legitimize the monarchy through the claim that it is from now on powerless. In that case, it means that the royal family is of no importance. No one can seriously claim that. Today we see a shift in the royalists’ argument: Yes, of course the monarchy has power, but that’s good because the royal family is so good.
Gunnar Fredriksson was as wrong as a person can be: the wedding itself in 1976 certainly did not change Sweden, but it coincided with the time of the breakup. The royal couple became one of the main servants of the new bourgeoisie.
In 1976 there were still some who questioned this state of affairs. Is it really right that the country’s highest office should be inherited within a family, which is considered finer than all others? Should our need for pomp and circumstance lock people in from birth?
Today is it completely silent. Aftonbladet has become as royalist as all the others. This text gapes red, like a madman in the desert.
As I said, blowing the whole crap up would be drastic. But a discussion of this stultifying state of affairs and the degrading lackey spirit it breeds, is that really too much to ask?
Åsa Linderborg is currently working on “Tjabo – a biography of Carl XVI Gustaf” (Polaris publishing house).
