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Heart and Soul: St Lucia and the New Swedes

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25/12/2015 GMT

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, St Lucia and the New Swedes

Jo Fidgen travels to Södertӓlje  to see how it marks Sweden’s most popular  tradition.

Jo Fidgen travels to Södertӓlje, dubbed the most Christian town in Sweden, to see how its population is marking Sweden’s most popular – but secular – tradition.

In the darkness of midwinter, Swedes come together to celebrate a saint who ushers in the light,and the Christmas season. All around the country, girls are chosen to play the coveted role of St Lucia, who wears candles in her hair and sings angelically. Lucia was martyred in 304BC for refusing to deny her Christian faith. 

Sweden is a largely secular place. But a few miles south of Stockholm is a town dubbed the most Christian in the country. The reason is the high number of Assyrian Christians who’ve moved to Södertälje from Syria, Iraq and Turkey since the 1970s. Many were fleeing persecution because of their faith. Two in five of the town’s residents have foreign backgrounds. They have a number of churches and two bishops.  

Jo Fidgen joins the St Lucia procession in the town to find out what place this most Swedish of traditions has in the lives of the town’s newer residents. What does it tell us about the possibilities for integration in Sweden at a time when the country is struggling with the huge number of recent refugees and an extreme right wing that is growing in confidence? 

Producer and Presenter: Jo Fidgen

Image of St Luci taken by Jo Fidgen

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