From tales of drinking a “very tasty” 100-year-old sherry with Putin to diplomatic shock over Finland’s entry into Nato without Sweden and the secret to happiness, surprisingly few subjects were off the table for a sitting president. Perhaps even more surprising was that Finnish head of state Sauli Niinistö was talking out of choice to an international broadcaster at a time of heightened sensitivity for the region and a political crisis at home – and all without the prompting of an interviewer.
Such candour has become expected from those who are chosen as Sommarpratare (summer speakers) on Sommar i P1, an annual Swedish radio institution in which guests are given 90 minutes to talk about a subject of their choice and play music. To be selected is considered such an honour that it’s been described as the Swedish equivalent to a knighthood.
The more than 60-year-old radio show begins each year on Midsummer’s Day and runs daily until the middle of August, featuring 58 different guests, ranging from politicians to artists and actors, chefs, sports stars, scientists and teachers.
It used to be a slot for celebrities to play music and talk. But in recent years, despite the shift to less traditional forms of media, Sommar has defied the odds and cemented its status as a place for luminaries to address Sweden on their own terms and start a national conversation.
Its closest equivalent in the Anglophone world is the BBC’s Desert Island Discs, but the Sommar format is uniquely Swedish. Unlike the Radio 4 flagship there is no interviewer: hosts work with a producer to create their own structure to the programme and script, and they are photographed wearing a traditional flower crown.
Some use it as tell-all space to share their deepest secrets, make a personal announcement, take a stand, or use it as a blank performance space. Others, such as former England football manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, have used it as an extended CV interspersed with anecdotes and music.
Alumni include Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, climate activist Greta Thunberg, directors Ingmar Bergman and Tarik Saleh, popstar Robyn, actor Gizem Kling Erdogan and fashion designer Selam Fessahaye. In 2020, Anders Tegnell, then Sweden’s state epidemiologist, admitted on the programme there had been failures in his globally discussed Covid strategy.
As well as appearing daily on Swedish radio at 1pm, the programme is put out as a podcast, which this year reached its largest-ever audience of 1.6m devices per week – making it Sweden’s biggest podcast.
Finnish president Niinistö’s Sommarprat quickly made headlines this summer. So did crime writer Camilla Läckberg, who talked about the death of her father and her lifelong struggle with her body image, and former politician Annie Lööf, who stood down as Centre party leader in February after a murder attempt against her.
In his talk, the final episode of the season, Niinistö discussed having to manage the expectations of Finland and Sweden entering Nato “hand in hand”, as Sweden’s bid was delayed due to Turkey’s veto. “The separation was something that nobody had hoped for,” he said.
He also described a decade of meetings with Vladimir Putin. “I remember Putin as very polite,” he said of a 2012 encounter in St Petersburg. “He offered me and a number of other leaders a sherry that was 100 years old. It was very tasty. Maybe he wanted to impress us.”
Their final meeting, in October 2021, was “completely different to the others”: Putin’s “obsession” with Ukraine had worsened and transformed into “hate”. “He was clearly very frustrated, not just by Ukraine, but the situation with the western world,” said Niinistö.
As the president of what has been described as the “world’s happiest country”, Niinistö said the secret to happiness comes from feeling like “you have your life in your own hands”.
Sommar recently made a dramatised appearance in Netflix show The Playlist, in which Spotify co-founder Martin Lorentzon is seen delivering his side of the story on the radio programme.
Bibi Rödöö, Sommar’s programme manager, laughs at this portrayal, which she says was way off. What it got right, though, is the requirement that guests drop the rose-tinted glasses when talking about their lives.
“You can’t just brag about your successful life. You have to talk about how it really was,” says Rödöö, who has overseen huge change during the quarter of a century she has been at the programme’s helm. The show represents safety for many Swedes, she says. Of its theme tune, an old-fashioned violin melody, she adds: “People want to hear this, it feels safe. It’s always like that, it’s something people can gather around.”
Rödöö begins phoning guests in November to ask if they would like to appear. From the first conversation to assigning them a producer and meeting as a group afterwards, the key to its success is trust, she says. It’s a process that can take years.
“Often they’re completely exhausted afterwards. They have emptied themselves. They’ve been out of their comfort zone – they’re not used to speaking on the radio and talking about these kinds of things.”
Generally, Swedes are not the most open about their feelings, she says, preferring to hold things in, which means sometimes the show is accused of being “cry radio”. “What I said from the beginning is that we have to be honest,” says Rödöö.
The summer crown is part of the celebration – of midsummer and of honouring a person: “Summer begins on Midsummer’s Day and it’s the symbol for summer in this dark and cold country.”
Sommar has been criticised for not representing the full diversity of Sweden, but Rödöö says its hosts bring diverse perspectives. “It’s a bridge-builder between the ‘old Swedes’ and the ‘new Swedes’, and between old and young,” she says.
For Gizem Kling Erdogan, star of the Netflix series Caliphate, it was a career-long dream to host the show, but when she was asked, in 2021, it was a harder to put together than she thought.
Her programme, which explored the idea of melancholy and what led her to becoming an actor, spanned Istanbul, the Turkish village she visited every summer with her family and Gothenburg, where she was born. It also featured music by her brother, who is a trumpet player, atmospheric scenes and poetry.
She has yet to listen back to the programme. “I don’t know if I would do it again,” she says. “It’s part of the concept, maybe, that if you want to do something that means something to you then it also has to be a little painful.”
Investigative journalist Axel Gordh Humlesjö received an overwhelming response when he used his interview to tell harrowing stories of his experiences enduring sexual abuse as an ice-hockey-loving 12-year-old growing up in northern Sweden.
The final segment recorded him going to a police station to report the crime – inspiring men across Sweden to talk about their own experiences of sexual abuse and to report them to the authorities.
Describing Sommar as part of Swedish “folklore”, he says it acts as the last remaining platform to talk to the nation around a communal campfire.
“Everybody is away from work and they have some time to lie on the beach or a hammock and listen to somebody that they don’t know – listen to their story aurally as you did 3,000 years ago,” he says. “I noticed it when during the summer everybody had heard my talk. It was amazing.”
“I realised that this kind of programme is the last common campfire in Swedish society today. We lack this kind of common ground nowadays because everyone has their niche and their own favourite media; there’s a lot of polarisation. So Sommar has become the last campfire for the Swedish people and that’s fascinating.”
