Nordic Fascism : Investigating the Political Project Behind Bollhusmötet

This thesis investigates the political project behind the infamous tennis hall meeting, commonly referred to as Bollhusmötet, that took place in February of 1939 in Uppsala, Sweden. Gathering in the local tennis hall, the members of the Uppsala Student Union decided to send a resolution to the Swedish king protesting the reception of Jewish refugees into Sweden in the wake of the 1938 November Pogrom. The protest was widely influential, spurring similar resolutions at other universities and arguably influencing Swedish refugee policy on a national level. The event itself was orchestrated by a group of nationalist students as part of a political project aiming to establish a Nordic power bloc with Sweden as the central power. This political milieu rejected the geopolitics of both England and Germany to promote a specific form of Nordic fascism. Antisemitism was a central part of their ideology, both regarding short- and long-term goals, and antisemitism was also the ultimate motive behind the tennis hall meeting. The architects of these events joined the mainstream conservative milieu in 1940 as part of a strategy to abolish the Swedish political system from within and restructure the Swedish state according to a fascist model bearing many similarities to national socialism