This article focuses on the peak moment of interwar Estonian–Swedish relations, the state visit of King Gustav V to Tallinn on 27–29 June 1929. It does so through the lens of competing propaganda and memory politics, situating the visit within a longer arc of post-1918 Estonian efforts to draw Sweden into a wider Baltic–Scandinavian alignment, Sweden’s consistent reluctance to assume security commitments east of the Baltic, and Communist efforts to undermine the Estonian state.
While reciprocal high-level contacts, trade, and cultural diplomacy multiplied after Sweden’s de jure recognition of Estonian independence in 1921 (notably State Elder Jaan Tõnisson’s 1928 visit to Stockholm and Archbishop Nathan Söderblom’s visit to Estonia in the same year), Swedish policymakers continued to treat the Baltic states as potentially unstable buffer entities and rejected a leadership role in any ‘Baltic League’. Against this background, Gustav V’s reception in Tallinn became a stage for rival narratives. Estonian officials and press amplified the long-standing myth of the ‘good old Swedish time’, employing ceremonies, commemorative albums, film, and radio to portray deep Estonian-Swedish historical affinity and to imply a common ‘Nordic’ future. The Swedish guests, while maintaining a more modest tone, underscored good economic and cultural relations between the two states. By contrast, the Communist press framed the visit as a monarchist provocation and a link in an Anglo-Polish-Baltic encirclement of the USSR. Classified Soviet memoranda from the time, however, show that the prospect of a real Estonian-Swedish military understanding was judged as negligible.
A further revisionist narrative was advanced by the émigré politician Aleksander Kesküla, who, in cooperation with local Communists, attacked the 17th-century ‘good old Swedish time’ itself. In a series of articles, also published as a separate brochure, he reinterpreted the Great Reduction of the 1680s (under Charles XI) as a form of fiscal extraction practiced by Swedish absolutist ‘state feudalism’. Kesküla thereby attempted to undercut Estonian memory politics. Although ideologically inflected, this critique anticipated lines of criticism soon pursued by younger Estonian historians who likewise sought to qualify earlier idealisations of Swedish rule.
The article contends that while the 1929 visit was spectacular and politically useful for Estonia, it did not signal strategic realignment. Rather, it reveals how interwar actors instrumentalised the past to shape choices in the present, with ‘Swedish time’/’Swedish rule’ serving as a narrative flashpoint in Estonia’s struggle over foreign-policy orientation.