What is the title of the book? Is it available in English? I tried searching on Ystad family on Amazon and got nothing. You've successfully stimulated my interest that I wanted to read it.
Almost no one outside Sweden has heard about this. I went to an ACX meetup in Copenhagen while we were still working on the book, and no one had heard about the story there, in spite of being more geographically close to the allegedly awful family than most Swedes. It really was a storm in a duckpond. I think few Americans would have understood what was so scandalous about a family homeschooling their kids for nine years, because in America homeschooling is not seen as a pathology.
I'm not sure at all that things like these happen in bigger and more diverse countries. I remember that the New York Times also had a story that was too good to check in 2019, about Catholic students misbehaving toward a Native American man. But in America there were enough people who didn't automatically believe that all white people are prone to misbehaving, so there were many journalists eager to present a counter-narrative. Maybe a bad example because there actually was a video in that case, but polarization also certainly helped to bring forth the other side of the story. Sweden is small and homogenous enough for journalists to form some kind of cartel that defends the interests of its members and effectively keeps outsiders out.
Scale is always an interesting issue. With only 10 million people, Sweden scarcely has more people than New York City, which has something of a journalistic cartel.
But I am surprised that there's so little international interest in this story. Americans famously ignore anything that doesn't occur within their borders, but we have a sense of current events in Canada and even Mexico, where the language is totally different. Why does no one in Norway, Denmark, or Iceland know about the Ystad family? And, if they don't, what do you think are your chances of being heard in those countries?
I think it was the duck pond factor that made the Ystad Family newsworthy at all. Without the how-could-this-happen-in-our-amazing-system question, the case wouldn't have aroused much interest anywhere. I mean, I don't know of any American child abuse case where the parents weren't even prosecuted of any crime.
The news markets of Sweden, Denmark and Norway are not integrated at all. We are technically able to read each other's newspapers, but we don't, since we have three different duck ponds where we quack about different issues. For example, political correctness has been on very different levels in Sweden and Denmark during the last 20 years or so. For example, a few years ago a woman with darker skin than most native Swedes complained openly that calling beige sticking plasters "skin-colored" is racist. That was considered newsworthy in Sweden. In Denmark the news was that Swedes are so Woke that they take such a complaint seriously.
Also, Google really doesn't help Scandinavian integration. For me, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are dialects with different armies. For Google they are different languages. Time after time I need to tell Google I actually understand Danish and Norwegian so please give me search results from there too. The vast majority of people never do that, which unnecessarily increases Scandinavian division.
Also, I'm sure the Danish and Norwegian social services produce their own legal scandals at the same rate as the Swedish social services do. Sweden is crowded with legal scandals like this one. I know Norway is too, probably even more, and I strongly suspect Denmark is. If Danes and Norwegians wanted to know that their social services produce legal scandals they could most probably unearth some of their own. But just like the Swedes, I think they have no interest in knowing about that.
So this story is plain dead. It's history, more or less. The only reason we wrote about it was to tell our readers something about the quirks of Scandinavia and about what Anders and I have been doing all the time.
To be fair, this case was always a tabloid topic at heart. Most of Swedish media, including the state broadcaster, were carried away. But not all of them. Dagens Nyheter, the biggest (and snobbiest) Stockholm broadsheet, consistently avoided writing a single line about this case until almost half a year later when the first government investigations started reporting and the story got a veneer of real news over it.
What is the title of the book? Is it available in English? I tried searching on Ystad family on Amazon and got nothing. You've successfully stimulated my interest that I wanted to read it.
It is only available in Swedish. But if you want to give it a try the book is available for download here: http://www.nomadforlag.se/Ystadsfamiljen/
I just discovered Wood From Eden. Thank you for writing insightful articles.
The media's handling of the Ystad story is consistent with Chomsky's description.
"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Noam Chomsky.
The book explains how the system works. I think you would find it interesting.
Thank you. I will check it out. I am not in general a fan of Chomsky which might explain why I have not heard of it before.
I never knew this story before now. But I understand you.
Good luck, Anders and Tove.
Almost no one outside Sweden has heard about this. I went to an ACX meetup in Copenhagen while we were still working on the book, and no one had heard about the story there, in spite of being more geographically close to the allegedly awful family than most Swedes. It really was a storm in a duckpond. I think few Americans would have understood what was so scandalous about a family homeschooling their kids for nine years, because in America homeschooling is not seen as a pathology.
I'm not sure at all that things like these happen in bigger and more diverse countries. I remember that the New York Times also had a story that was too good to check in 2019, about Catholic students misbehaving toward a Native American man. But in America there were enough people who didn't automatically believe that all white people are prone to misbehaving, so there were many journalists eager to present a counter-narrative. Maybe a bad example because there actually was a video in that case, but polarization also certainly helped to bring forth the other side of the story. Sweden is small and homogenous enough for journalists to form some kind of cartel that defends the interests of its members and effectively keeps outsiders out.
Scale is always an interesting issue. With only 10 million people, Sweden scarcely has more people than New York City, which has something of a journalistic cartel.
But I am surprised that there's so little international interest in this story. Americans famously ignore anything that doesn't occur within their borders, but we have a sense of current events in Canada and even Mexico, where the language is totally different. Why does no one in Norway, Denmark, or Iceland know about the Ystad family? And, if they don't, what do you think are your chances of being heard in those countries?
I think it was the duck pond factor that made the Ystad Family newsworthy at all. Without the how-could-this-happen-in-our-amazing-system question, the case wouldn't have aroused much interest anywhere. I mean, I don't know of any American child abuse case where the parents weren't even prosecuted of any crime.
The news markets of Sweden, Denmark and Norway are not integrated at all. We are technically able to read each other's newspapers, but we don't, since we have three different duck ponds where we quack about different issues. For example, political correctness has been on very different levels in Sweden and Denmark during the last 20 years or so. For example, a few years ago a woman with darker skin than most native Swedes complained openly that calling beige sticking plasters "skin-colored" is racist. That was considered newsworthy in Sweden. In Denmark the news was that Swedes are so Woke that they take such a complaint seriously.
Also, Google really doesn't help Scandinavian integration. For me, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are dialects with different armies. For Google they are different languages. Time after time I need to tell Google I actually understand Danish and Norwegian so please give me search results from there too. The vast majority of people never do that, which unnecessarily increases Scandinavian division.
Also, I'm sure the Danish and Norwegian social services produce their own legal scandals at the same rate as the Swedish social services do. Sweden is crowded with legal scandals like this one. I know Norway is too, probably even more, and I strongly suspect Denmark is. If Danes and Norwegians wanted to know that their social services produce legal scandals they could most probably unearth some of their own. But just like the Swedes, I think they have no interest in knowing about that.
So this story is plain dead. It's history, more or less. The only reason we wrote about it was to tell our readers something about the quirks of Scandinavia and about what Anders and I have been doing all the time.
To be fair, this case was always a tabloid topic at heart. Most of Swedish media, including the state broadcaster, were carried away. But not all of them. Dagens Nyheter, the biggest (and snobbiest) Stockholm broadsheet, consistently avoided writing a single line about this case until almost half a year later when the first government investigations started reporting and the story got a veneer of real news over it.