Swedish speeches compiled in new database
Jon Viklund, editor-in-chief of Svenska tal, is standing in the Humanities Theatre - a place where many speeches have been made over the years. Photo: Daniel Olsson
Secondary school students, researchers and a curious public – these are the groups that could benefit from the new Swedish speeches database. It compiles speeches that have had an impact on the Swedish public debate. It includes everything from the Christmas speeches of contemporary politicians to Queen Christina's abdication speech in 1654, along with speeches from the climate movement such as Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN climate conference COP24 in Katowice in 2018.
“We will have the richest collection of public speeches in Sweden. Our aim is for the database to provide a representative picture of Swedish politics: from the labour movement onwards, certain genres such as eulogies, speeches to the nation and funeral speeches, but also political contexts such as Almedalen and the Riksdag. We already have a large proportion of all the speeches given in Almedalen by party leaders and other politicians. That provides a very interesting picture of Swedish politics and how it has changed over the last 30–40 years,” explains Jon Viklund, Head of the Department of Literature and Rhetoric and editor-in-chief of the database Svenska Tal.
Research infrastructure
Over the next two years, Svenska Tal will be expanded and developed into a research infrastructure enabling researchers to download large numbers of speeches. The general public and schools are also priority target groups, however.
“Oral production and rhetoric are a central part of Swedish studies at school and many teachers are already using the database,” continues Viklund.
The database allows users to search for specific speeches or explore different genres of speeches organised under themes.
“One such theme is speeches to the nation, which is a particular genre of speech that we describe, and we link to a range of examples. It is mostly prime ministers that give those speeches, but we also have examples that are current in the news, such as the environmental and climate movement,” adds Viklund.
The database is still under construction and constantly growing. It currently holds just under 600 speeches. The current focus is on adding significant public speeches from the 20th century up to the present day. In time, many more historical figures will also become available.
Presentation to the class
Oral presentations by politicians naturally represent a large part of the content, but other powerful figures and sports and cultural personalities are also represented. The material may seem inaccessible to a secondary-school student looking for quick tips on how to make a good presentation to the class, but Viklund disagrees, noting that there are many items that could be of interest to the next generation of speakers:
“We try to lead them to speeches that could inspire them as they try and find their voice, like Greta Thunberg's speech in Katowice during COP24. It’s only three minutes long but managed to convey a strong message that reverberated around the world. It’s very clear how she speaks as a young person to an audience of powerful people who do not appear to understand how their policies affect the world as it will be when Thunberg is their age. Such speeches are easy for students to understand and draw inspiration from. So the idea is that these speeches will form a kind of pattern for them in which they can see how rhetoric is structured and how a speaker uses a certain situation to convey a message,” he concludes.
Åsa Malmberg
Facts about Svenska Tal:
Svenska Tal was launched in November 2023 and at the time of writing contains 561 speeches from 278 speakers. It is part of a Nordic collaborative project, Norden och världen (The Nordic Region and the World), whose main task is to help young people find their voice. Collaboration with secondary schools therefore forms an important part of this, with speech competitions being organised, for example.
The project is led by Danske Taler in collabation with the University of Copenhagen, the University of Bergen, Uppsala University and Linnaeus University, among others.
Until 2026, the Svenska Tal website will be run under the Norden og verden (The Nordic Region and the World) project, the Swedish part of which is based at the Department of Literature and Rhetoric at Uppsala University.