ABBA left out of Sweden's contested cultural heritage list

Pippi Longstocking, IKEA and the Nobel Prize are among 100 works, brands and ideas deemed to define what it means to be Swedish, according to a cultural heritage list unveiled by the government on Tuesday.

Drawing up such a list, or canon, was part of the election manifesto of the right-wing ruling coalition and is a pet project of the nationalist, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who are not in the government but support it in parliament, Reuters reported.

However some Swedish institutions and minority groups, including the Swedish Academy that awards Nobel literature prize and representatives of the indigenous Sami group population, have criticised the initiative as too narrow and exclusionist.

All items in the canon must be at least 50 years old, meaning it does not include the pop group ABBA, one of Sweden's most famous cultural exports, but also rules out most contributions made by the roughly one in five Swedes born abroad. Most of these immigrants arrived in Sweden after 1975.

"I think it's very much human nature to love lists," Lars Tragardh, a historian and chairman of the Culture Canon Committee that compiled the canon, told a news conference.

A canon, originally a set of rules or collection of sacred books accepted as genuine, such as those that make up the Bible, means a widely accepted, normative list of works. Similar projects have been done in Denmark and the Netherlands.

The Swedish list includes Ingmar Bergman's iconic 1957 movie The Seventh Seal, rebellious children's book character Pippi Longstocking and the practice of Allemansratt, the right to temporarily camp on privately owned nature properties.