Mother Svea or ''Mother Swea'' (
Swedish: ''Moder Svea'') is the female
personification
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person, often as an embodiment or incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified, including: places, especially cities, National personification, countries, an ...
of
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
and a
patriotic emblem of the Swedish nation.
Background
Mother Svea is normally depicted as a powerful
female warrior,
valkyrie
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie ( or ; from ) is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god Odin's hall Valhalla. There, the deceased warriors become ('single fighters' or 'once fighters').Orchard (1997:36) and Li ...
or
shieldmaiden, frequently holding a shield and standing beside a lion. Svea is a Swedish female
personal name
A personal name, full name or prosoponym (from Ancient Greek ''prósōpon'' – person, and ''onoma'' –name) is the set of names by which an individual person or animal is known. When taken together as a word-group, they all relate to that on ...
which derives from ''svea'', an old plural genitive form meaning "of the
Swedes
Swedes (), or Swedish people, are an ethnic group native to Sweden, who share a common ancestry, Culture of Sweden, culture, History of Sweden, history, and Swedish language, language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countries, ...
" or the ''Swea''. It appears in ''Svea rike'', a translation of the old Swedish word ''Sverige'', the Swedish name for Sweden.
The popular image is considered to have been created by Swedish writer, (1649–1725) when first introduced in his poem ''Svea Lycksaligheets Triumph'' (1672).
As a patriotic symbol, Moder Svea gained widespread popularity in ''Kunga Skald'' (1697), written by Swedish poet
Gunno Eurelius (1661–1709) in honor of King
Charles XI of Sweden. Eurelius was later ennobled with the name of Dahlstjerna.
Mother Svea appeared frequently as a national symbol in 19th-century Swedish literature and culture. She appeared on various
Swedish banknotes for over seventy years, such as both the 5-kronor banknote printed between 1890 and 1952 and the 5-kronor banknote printed between 1954 and 1963.
Swedish singer
Lena Philipsson and composer
Torgny Söderberg wrote a song entitled ''Moder Swea'' which was introduced in the 1995 album ''
Lena Philipsson''.
See also
*
Flag of Sweden
*
National anthem of Sweden
*
National personification
A national personification is an anthropomorphic personification of a state or the people(s) it inhabits. It may appear in political cartoons and propaganda. In the first personifications in the Western World, warrior deities or figures symboliz ...
*
Three Crowns
References
Sources
*
External links
Moder Sea displayed in the Tumba Bruk printing plant in Tumba, Sweden
{{National personifications
Culture of Sweden
National personifications
National symbols of Sweden
Fictional Swedish people