Although the Swedish constitution makes no mention of a national anthem, Du gamla, Du fria enjoys universal recognition and is used, for example, at government ceremonies as well as sporting events. It first began to win recognition as a patriotic song in the 1890s, and the issue of its status was debated back and forth up until the 1930s. In 1938, the Swedish public service radio company Sveriges Radio started playing it at the end of transmitting in the evenings, which marked the beginning of the de facto status as national anthem the song has had since.
Despite a widespread belief that it was adopted as the national anthem in 1866, no such recognition has ever been officially accorded. A kind of official recognition was when the King Oscar II rose in honour when the song was played, the first time in 1893. In 2000 a Riksdag committee rejected, as "unnecessary", a proposal to give the song legally official status. However, there have since been repeated motions with a similar intent.
The original lyrics were written by Richard Dybeck in 1844, to the melody of a variant of the ballad Kärestans död.
Dybeck himself originally wrote the beginning as "Du gamla, Du friska" (Thou ancient, Thou hale), but in the late 1850s personally changed the lyrics to "Du gamla, Du fria" (Thou ancient, Thou free). The song was already published in several song books and sung with "Du gamla, Du friska", but a priest who had known Dybeck got the opportunity to tell the singer most associated with the song, opera singer Carl Fredrik Lundqvist, about the change in the year 1900. From that point on, printings of the "friska" version ceased to be seen in song books.
While the Scandinavist Richard Dybeck originally wrote the text with reference to the three Nordic kingdoms, later it was thought to apply mainly to the two united kingdoms Sweden and Norway. However, the union under the Bernadotte dynasty was considerably more popular in Sweden than in Norway. The royal family and the circles around them were among the most strong adherents of the union, which may explain the popularity of the anthem in these circles. In 1905, the Swedish-Norwegian union was dissolved. Since then, in general, in this anthem, the word "norden" is interpreted as a synonym of "Sweden".
By the early 20th century, many regarded the song unsuitable as a national anthem. In the 1890s it started getting printed in song books in the section for patriotic songs, but as late as in the 1920s it was occasionally published just as "folk music". In 1899 a contest was held for writing a national anthem. It led to Verner von Heidenstam writing his "Sverige", but did not lead to any new national anthem.
Patriotic sentiment is notably absent from the text of the original two verses, due to them being written in the spirit of Scandinavismpopular at the time (Norden in general refers to the Nordic countries in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish). After the song started to acquire its informal status as the national anthem, various people wrote additional verses to increase the "Swedishness" of the song. Louise Ahlén wrote two verses which are occasionally printed still to this day , not the least lately on the Internet. For a long time, they were very seldom published, and are still largely unknown to the public; however, recently they have become popular in Swedish extreme nationalistic circles.
Instrumental performances tend to differ from the original version in one of the following aspects or both: the last line of the melody is often played once first as an introduction, and furthermore, many instrumental recordings are of only one verse. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_gamla,_Du_fria
Do you want to read the text in Swedish and translated to English You can do it at: http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Quick-facts/National-Anthem/
