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PART TWO: IDENTITIES, BORDERS, AND MEDIATIONS

Performances of Swedishness in the Movie Queen Christina 1933: Intersections of National Identity, Stereotypical Ideas of Swedishness, Sexuality, Gender, and Class

Hélène Ohlsson

Abstract

This article analyzes how Queen Christina (1933) constructs Swedishness at the intersection of national identity, gender, sexuality, class, and whiteness. Through Greta Garbo’s star persona and performance, the film merges seventeenth-century mythologies with twentieth-century cultural ideals to create a modern, regal, and gender-transgressive Swedish femininity. Using intersectionality to trace overlapping forms of privilege, and drawing on the concepts of Hyperboreanism and hegemonic whiteness, the study shows how Garbo’s Christina embodies cultural superiority, cosmopolitan modernity, and female masculinity. In contrast, the film frames Swedish commoners through North American stereotypes of rustic foolishness, reinforcing internal hierarchies within whiteness and class. Ultimately, the article argues that Queen Christina reconfigures Swedish identity into an elevated, migrant femininity that exceeds national boundaries. The film thus becomes a key site where historical myth, Hollywood star iconography, and 1930s cultural politics converge to reshape the modern cultural imagination of Swedishness.

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1. Introduction and Background

1After achieving major successes with the films Grand Hotel and Mata Hari in 1932, Swedish born movie star Greta Garbo’s (1905–1990) contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer-Studios had expired. It took eighteen months of intense negotiations before the production of her next film, Queen Christina, could begin.

2The official trailer immediately alludes to this with the headline ”The talk of the world”. (Queen Christina Official Trailer 1933). People of different cultures, races and languages are sending telegrams, calling each other on the phone and writing articles about Garbo and her whereabouts. In the background the globe is spinning. She has lately been thought to have been sailing incognito and disappeared in Sweden, maybe marrying a prince, maybe retiring from the movie industry, nobody knows but everybody is wondering. The mystery is resolved in the headline: ”Garbo returns as Queen Christina” accompanied by a close-up of Garbo with a Royal crown on her head.

3This article investigates elements of Swedishness in Queen Christina 1933. How did the movie amplify and reshape questions of national identity and sexuality?  How can Garbo’s performance of Queen Christina be understood in terms of Swedish national identity and femininity? These questions will be analyzed against the backdrop of factors of Swedish identity and North American stereotypical ideas of Swedes. The analysis is inspired by the theoretical concept of intersectionality (Crenshaw). An intersectional analysis mostly concentrates on how different categories, for example, class, age, disability, and race, reinforce each other and result in unique types of discrimination. However, in this text intersectionality works to investigate overlaps of privilege.

4Writer Wayne Koestenbaum delineates a series of both private and public symbolic gestures and performative behaviors of divas that constitute what he calls “diva codes” (Koestenbaum 84–133). It includes both the attitudes and conduct the diva embodies and the processes through which audiences and society construct her image. A core concept is that for a diva, the lines between the professional stage and private life become blurred. The trailer emphasizes how Garbo’s Swedishness is intertwined with her enigmatic private persona and global divadom. Additionally, it not only highlights that Garbo will play a queen, but also that Garbo is a Queen of the screen, which is shown through a cavalcade of close-ups of her symmetrical face and white skin. Among the diva codes, Koestenbaum identifies the conceptual and affective alignment between divas and queens. He argues that “the diva masquerades as regal,” suggesting a mutual recognition and implicit rapport between these figures (Koestenbaum 107). In his view, the diva perceives herself as sharing a clandestine affinity with the queen, engaging in a subtle, coded dialogue expressed through glances and gestures. The association between Garbo and Royalty culminates in the trailer when Garbo is presented as a queen on the screen as well as off, with the suggestion that she might marry a prince. As a complement to the parade of close-ups keywords conclude that Garbo is “the magnificent,” “the glamorous,” and “the exotic,” and, thereafter, the trailer ends with stating the fact that she is “the one and only – Garbo.”

5Queen Christina has been described as “the most daring and human examination of sex and gender the studio system ever produced” (LaSalle 8), due to Garbo’s performance of female masculinity and bisexuality. It is, therefore, unsurprising that it has attracted extensive scholarly attention in both film and queer studies (Halberstam; Doty; Rosenberg; Horak, Girls Will Be Boys; Horak, “Queer Crossings”; Barthes; Lunde; Weiss). Although these analyses have contributed to this study, I refrain from mainly using queer theory or making this study a queer film analysis. I also refrain from a deeper discussion of it in context with the Hollywood star system and the Pre-Code era. The contribution to feminist film studies is rather to show how the intersections of elements of 1930s Swedish identity, class, gender, and sexuality created a positive symbolic amalgam of Garbo’s performance of Christina, despite its controversiality.

6I will argue that Garbo’s performed femininity of Christina changed the idea of Swedish femininity from primitive, rural working-class to a cultivated, elegant femininity with masculine attributes that had Royal connotations. I will further contend that additional representations of Swedishness in the film, especially working-class, adhered to stereotypical North American views of Swedes.

7The theoretical framework for this article draws upon two key concepts integral to the formation of Swedish national identity in the nineteenth century: Hyperboreanism and hegemonic whiteness. The performances of Swedishness within the film will be analyzed and contextualized through these conceptual lenses, set against the historiographical backdrop they evoke. By using concepts from both the seventeenth-century world of ideas and the twentieth-century cultural context, an analytical framework is created that illuminates how the film not only stages a historical narrative but also negotiates Swedish identity and gender through two different time layers.

2. Swedish Identity: Hyperboreanism

8Worldviews are constructed through shared discourses about specific phenomena. Swedish exceptionalism is a concept which refers to discourses of Swedish identity that frames Sweden as uniquely progressive, gender-equal, and antiracist. Swedish exceptionalism emerged as a common concept in sociocultural and political studies and has its roots in critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, but also in intersectionality and decolonial and indigenous theories. Swedish exceptionalism refers to the idea that Sweden is unique and superior to other nations, often based on its self-image as a “moral superpower” with a strong welfare state, commitment to equality, and a history of peaceful foreign policy. This narrative often erases Sweden’s historical and structural ties to colonialism and racism (Martinsson et al.).

9I take from this body of scholarship cultural geographer Katarina Schough’s concept of Hyperboreanism. In her analysis of Swedish identity, Schough traces Swedish exceptionalism to the cult of the North, particularly through the classical notion of “hyperboré” (Schough). The origins of this idea can be traced to the seventeenth century, during the historical Queen Kristina’s (1626–1689) lifetime when Sweden had colonial ambitions, a period called “The Swedish Age of Great Power.”

10Hyperboré is a concept that originally derived from Greek mythology and denotes a people who dwell beyond the North Wind—a phrase that has come to symbolize remoteness, purity, and spiritual superiority (Schough 13). Schough argues that this strand of Swedish national identity has historically been shaped by the belief in Sweden’s unique position in the world, a perception deeply rooted in pre-modern conceptions of geography and nature. She refers to this framework as Hyperboreanism, a historical figure of thought which continues to inform elements of Swedish identity (Schough 12–24).

11The origins of this idea can be traced to the naturalist Olof Rudbeck the Elder’s (1630–1702) articulated vision of Sweden as the ancestral homeland of the Hyperboreans—a noble race from whom all human civilization descended. In his extensive writings, Rudbeck claimed that the mythological city of Atlantis, as described by Plato, had been in Sweden, which positioned Swedes as the direct inheritors of a high and ancient culture (Schough 15–22).

12Rudbeck’s narrative was grounded in a mythologized interpretation of Sweden’s northern geography and its perceived moral and cultural virtues. Importantly, however, this moral elevation was not devoid of contradiction. Rudbeck’s vision also incorporated elements of militarism, reflecting the political reality of his time, which Schough calls the Gothic-warrior figure of thought (Schough 15–22).

13To fully understand Rudbeck’s historical narrative, it must be contextualized within the geopolitical situation of seventeenth-century Sweden as a major European power whose territory extended into modern-day Finland, the Baltic states, and parts of Russia, Poland, and Germany. Within this context, the myth of the Hyperboreans functioned as a discursive strategy to legitimize Sweden’s colonial ambitions, framing the nation as both culturally refined and militarily dominant. The Swedish nature is portrayed as the generator of a morally superior people that are inherently free, hierarchically elevated, and entitled to arbitrate the relationship between nature and civilization (Schough 14). During the decline of “The Swedish Age of Great Power” in the early eighteenth century, Rudbeck’s historiography was considered as fiction, but parts of his ideology had taken hold.

14During the nineteenth century, the narrative underwent a shift: the militaristic aspects of Hyperboreanism were increasingly overshadowed by the moral and cultural ideals (Schough 19–20). The emphasis moved toward portraying Sweden as a peaceful, ethical, and enlightened society—an identity that reached its apex in the twentieth century, when Sweden adopted a policy of neutrality during both World Wars. This constructed moral identity contributed to the enduring myth of Sweden as a non-racist, non-colonial nation. The Hyperborean figure of thought, though rooted in pre-modern mythology, corresponded to a powerful ideological structure in Sweden during the first part of the twentieth century.

3. Swedish Identity: Hegemonic Whiteness

15As critical race and whiteness scholar Tobias Hübinette and sociologist Catrin Lundström recognize, Sweden entered a national identity crisis during the nineteenth century, which influenced the Swedish identity during the first half of the following century. It started with the loss of Sweden’s eastern territory, Finland, in 1809, and was followed by the dissolution of the union with Norway in 1905. This territorial loss was compounded by significant population decline due to mass emigration, particularly to the United States; approximately one-third of Swedes emigrated between 1860 and 1920 (Lundström and Hübinette 28). As a result, Sweden lost its former status as a Baltic empire and was compelled to reinvent itself as a more ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation, predominantly composed of ethnic Swedes, rather than as the multilingual and multicultural society it had previously been (though this homogeneity mainly applied to southern Sweden, the northern regions still remain home to Sámi and Finnish-speaking populations).

16After the loss of Finland, Rudbeck’s cult of the Hyperboreans had a renaissance. “The Geatish Society” was a Swedish literary society founded in 1811 by poets and academics, with the aim of promoting national sentiment through the study of Scandinavian antiquity and the Gothic idea (Malm 15–16). According to Schough, the Hyperborean figure of thought was supported by the nationalism and the racial biological discourse that grew in Sweden around 1900 (Schough 12–24). What Schough identifies as the peak of Swedish identification with Hyperboreanism in the twentieth century, coincided with a critical phase in the construction of Swedish national identity, which Hübinette and Lundström calls white purity (Lundström and Hübinette 31). In their analysis of the racial dimensions of Swedish identity, they identify three phases in the historical construction of whiteness in Sweden: white purity (1905–1968), white solidarity (1968–2000), and white melancholia (2000–present) (Lundström and Hübinette). This discussion will focus on the first phase, as it overlaps with the 1933 production of the film Queen Christina.

17During the period of white purity, ethnic Swedes were granted a privileged position within public discourse surrounding national identity. Swedes were celebrated as the whitest of all peoples on earth (Lundström and Hübinette 31). This racialized construction of Swedishness—centered on the ideal of hegemonic whiteness—became a fundamental component in the ideological foundation of the modern Swedish welfare state, launched under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party, commonly referred to as Folkhemmet, in English: The People’s Home (Lundström and Hübinette 26–36). The idea of Swedes as a very white people with a superior moral and cultural standing came to dominate both domestic and international conceptions of Swedishness. According to Lundström and Hübinette, Swedishness and whiteness became so deeply intertwined that whiteness emerged as the most essential marker of national identity, and, consequently, to be perceived as fully Swedish, one had to embody whiteness (Lundström and Hübinette 22). I would add that the whiteness had to be specific, what we can call a Nordic whiteness. Embodiment of this typical Nordic whiteness defines hegemonic whiteness in the Swedish context.

18The concepts of Hyperboreanism and hegemonic whiteness function as analytical keys because they link the film’s historical setting to an intellectual discourse on Swedish exceptionalism and northernness. They make it possible to understand how the film not only depicts a historical era but also stages a national identity charged with geographical and cultural imaginaries.

4. North American Ideas of Swedishness

19Although Swedishness is a widely accepted concept in both Sweden and abroad, it is by no means fixed. Its meaning has shifted over time and varies depending on context and perspective. The Swedish identity of the 1930s differs, for example, from contemporary understandings and changes depending on whether it is viewed from a Swedish or North American vantage point.

20When Swedes first arrived in North America, they were not immediately recognized as white. In 1751, Benjamin Franklin famously referred to them as “swarthy” (Werner 171–172). At that time, whiteness was largely defined by early Anglo-Saxon settlers, and newer immigrants—including Swedes—had to struggle for inclusion within this racial category. Upon arrival in the United States, Swedish immigrants were often regarded as industrious and physically robust workers. However, due to limited English proficiency and rural origins, they were simultaneously viewed as unintelligent, slow, and uncultured. Over time, the Scandinavian diaspora gained inclusion within the broader framework of Anglo-Saxonism, especially as immigration from Catholic Southern and Eastern Europe increased in the late nineteenth century—a development documented by historian Dag Blanck (Blanck).

21During these years, the figure of “the dumb Swede” or “the Swedish rube” became staple in vaudeville, literature, film, and television that persisted in American popular culture despite this gradual racial incorporation (Blanck; Lunde 18). The dumb Swede was frequently depicted as emasculated, gullible, ineffectual, hysterical, and even alcoholic. These roles that were often exaggerated by using a faux Swedish accent for comedic effect (Lunde 99). The longevity of this stereotype is evident in cultural icons like The Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show (1970s), who speaks an incomprehensible parody of Swedish, and in Swedish actor Peter Stormare’s portrayal of Gaear Grimsrud in Fargo (1996) by the Coen brothers, a more sinister continuation of this character type. As will be discussed later, elements of this stereotype are also evident in the portrayal of male Swedes in Queen Christina.

22In contrast, representations of Swedish women in North America followed a different trajectory. Many worked as domestic servants and quickly acquired English proficiency. Their perceived cleanliness, practicality, independence, and physical strength, alongside their height and blondness, contributed to a stereotype of Swedish women as capable, honest, independent, and slightly masculine. These traits, while admired, also led to a perception of them as somewhat androgynous. As Wallengren and Merton underscore, “The existence of Scandinavian women was almost unthinkable outside the Midwest, the working class, or domestic service” (174). The Swedish maid also became a stereotype in North American entertainment industry, for example, through the character Sweedie, The Swedish Maid, a comic film series produced by the Essanay studio in Chicago 1914–1916. Sweedie was in drag played by actor Wallace Beery, which implied the masculinity of Swedish femininity (Wallengren and Merton 162–169). According to Horak, another stereotype of Swedish femininity existed in the U.S. popular industry alongside with the mannish housekeeper: the naïve immigrant girl from the countryside lost in the big city and thus a potential victim (Horak, “Queer Crossings” 273).

23This means that Swedishness is not presented as a neutral or abstract identity; rather, it is repeatedly articulated through gendered forms. In other words, the idea of being Swedish becomes intelligible only when performed through gendered representations. This iteration suggests that national identity is sustained and legitimized through gendered embodiment.

5. The Storyline

24Queen Christina is the story of the seventeenth-century Swedish Queen Kristina, who inherited the throne as a child, denied getting married, abdicated the throne, converted to Catholicism, and relocated to Rome.

25In the final script version of Queen Christina, co-written by Salka Viertel and Harold Marsh Harwood, the Queen pressures her Parliament for peace in the Thirty Years’ War, while they pressure her to marry her cousin, the warrior prince (Reginald Owen). Though she does not want to marry, she falls in love with the Spanish ambassador Antonio (John Gilbert) who is not accepted as her consort. Christina abdicates and plans to accompany him to Spain; however, he is killed in a duel by Christina’s former lover, Count Magnus (Ian Keith). Christina ultimately decides to continue with her travel plans alone, and the film concludes with her standing at the bow of a ship, gazing solemnly toward the horizon. The camera slowly zooms in on Garbo’s face until it fills the entire screen. Christina’s future is uncertain and open-ended.

26Although the film incorporates certain historical elements—names of characters at court, the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War, and characteristics of Queen Kristina, for example, that she was raised as a boy, was an intellectual, and liked to wear men’s cloths—the central love affair and narrative arc lack historical accuracy, and the historical Kristina’s conversion to Roman Catholicism is notably omitted.

6. Christina’s Gender

27The film opens with the death of Sweden’s warrior King Gustavus Adolphus. In the Swedish Parliament, the Chancellor (Lewis Stone) informs the assembly that their allegiance must now shift to the King’s six-year-old daughter Christina, who enters alone and confidently ascends the throne. She immediately displays her resolute and assertive nature by chastising the Chancellor for his sentimentality and delivering a bold speech promising that Sweden will prevail in the war. As she exits to the cheers of the Parliament’s men, the Chancellor proclaims, “The King is dead! God save the King!,” thereby underscoring that Christina is not simply a Queen, but also a King. From the age of six, she is thus depicted with an ambiguous, or rather dual, gender identity that encompasses both masculine and feminine qualities in her character as well as in her title. She is an emerging female masculinity. In this way, the scene communicates that the main theme of the movie is confusion of gender boundaries.

28Queen Christina is a film produced during the golden era of Hollywood, subsequently the studio system’s production apparatus included elements of Swedishness beyond individual character portrayals, for example, a paraphrase of Queen Kristina’s Silver Throne (Blomkvist). Another, more prominent example is music.

29When Christina enters the Parliament, the soundtrack features a well-known Swedish folk ballad in a minor key, Liten Karin, though played in an upbeat version. This is not the only Swedish—or more broadly, Nordic—folk song included in the film; several traditional tunes that are shared across the Scandinavian countries are woven into the score, stanzas from songs such as Värmlandsvisan, and upbeat melodies from folk dance games, like Prästens lilla kråka, are heard. By the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish folk songs had become familiar to American audiences through performances by celebrated Swedish opera singers Jenny Lind and Christina Nilsson (Ohlsson 63–64).

30An American review of Lind’s performances described Nordic folk songs as “singularly quaint, wild, and innocent” (Parker Willis 114). Although these adjectives might seem contradictory, the characterization reflects how the melodies’ tonal qualities conveyed an ineffable and mysterious essence identified as distinctly Swedish or Nordic. Consequently, performing Nordic folk songs in the United States became a marker of Nordic heritage and a means of asserting Swedish American identity (Ohlsson 66). The popularization of these songs by Lind and Nilsson reinforced perceptions of Swedes as a rural people living close to unspoiled and wild nature and embodying an innocence associated with that landscape. In this way, the music emphasizes the ideological construction of Swedishness as both natural and moral, situating national identity within a spatial imaginary of the untouched North. By invoking the Hyperborean figure, these songs are not merely associated with a landscape; they encode a discourse of purity, simplicity, and cultural superiority that underpins Swedish exceptionalism.

31In Queen Christina, Nordic folk music serves as an aural backdrop throughout the film, encoding both Sweden and Christina’s (and, by extension, Garbo’s) Swedishness. When Christina walks into the Parliament, the melancholic minor-key ballad infuses the scene with a sense of somber fate. Through the folk music, Swedish femininity is imbued with a romantic aura of melancholy that is associated with the harsh and wild Swedish nature, even though Christina’s speech and body language simultaneously present her as a precocious and well-educated tomboy.

32In the third scene of the film, the background music is urgent and propulsive, underscoring the action of two cavaliers riding swiftly and recklessly across open country accompanied by two large dogs. As they approach a castle, the music slows down, and a few recognizable stanzas of Värmlandsvisan in a minor key can be heard before fading away. One of the cavaliers dismounts abruptly and ascends the castle steps, followed closely by the two Great Danes, pictured in Figure 1. Armored guards open the doors and stand at attention as the cavalier passes. Dressed in black trousers and a short coat, this figure is characterized by purposeful, energetic movement, someone who thrives on outdoor adventure and is accustomed to commanding both animals and men. The wild horse ride, the determined stride, and the deference shown by the soldiers collectively convey an impression of authoritarian masculinity. Upon entering a room adorned with a portrait of the former king, two aristocratic men bow deeply and greet the cavalier with, “Your Majesty!” They then proceed to brief the figure on Sweden’s victories in the Thirty Years’ War. As the camera zooms in for a headshot, the cavalier’s face is initially obscured by the brim of a black hat; when the hat is removed, the audience discovers that the cavalier is, in fact, a woman.

33This is the first scene introducing Christina as an adult. The actress’s symmetrical features and white skin are given ample time on screen as she listens attentively. When she begins to speak, her questions are incisive and assertive. There is nothing ingratiating, timid, or traditionally submissive about her demeanor; rather, she exudes the authority of someone accustomed to leading and being obeyed. Garbo’s dark, resonant voice adds to the character’s commanding presence. As theater and gender scholar Tiina Rosenberg observes, Garbo did not conform to the era’s “obligatory smiling femininity” (Rosenberg 137). Garbo’s Christina is not only presented in male clothes, but she is also presented with masculine attributes like authority, recklessness, and incisiveness. The character represents intersections of class, masculinity, and whiteness, but is embodied by a woman. This brings us back to the movies’ main theme of gender confusion.

34Figure 1. A screencap of Greta Garbo in the 1933 film Queen Christina. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

35According to gender scholar Jack Halberstam, masculinity is not inherently tied to men or the male body. Instead, it is a set of social practices, behaviors, and identities that can be embodied by people of any gender. He challenges the assumption that masculinity is natural or exclusive to men and exposes how female masculinities have historically been ignored, pathologized, or erased (Halberstam). In Queen Christina, though, the female masculinity is enhanced. The transgression of the binary masculine and feminine is in Christina’s female masculinity presented as magnificent, exotic, and glamorous as the actress embodying her, Garbo, was described in the trailer.

36In 1933, when the movie was made, Garbo was regarded as an iconic beauty. Though that was not the case when she first arrived in Hollywood in 1925. Despite being promoted as an emerging star and frequently typecast in roles as seductive vamps, she did not conform to the prevailing beauty ideals. She was described as rustic and mannish, with large feet and broad shoulders; her private cross-dressing was criticized, and she was considered too tall, even though at 170 cm (approximately 5’7”) she would today be considered too short for a fashion model (Banner 28–35). Nevertheless, Garbo soon achieved her breakthrough and was, according to Louis W. Banner, instrumental in outlining the new beauty ideal of the “tall, elegant woman” (Banner 157).

37Almost immediately, the press began to portray Garbo in a dualistic manner: Garbo the actress appeared glamorous and confident, whereas Garbo the private individual was characterized as aloof, timid, and secretive (Horak, “Queer Crossings” 271–272). As Horak has demonstrated, early press coverage linked Garbo’s awkwardness to her national identity, her Swedishness, but by around 1930, this awkwardness increasingly came to be associated with her supposed sexual deviance, her lesbianism. According to Horak, in the early 1930s, the American press began to insinuate that Garbo was a lesbian, deploying stereotypes that had previously been used to depict her Swedishness. This convergence created two competing narratives of her star persona (Horak, “Queer Crossings” 270–294).

38According to Horak, Queen Christina solidified “a coherent persona for Garbo that was both Swedish and lesbian,” enabling the press to promote a unified image of Garbo in which her Swedishness and her alleged lesbianism were intertwined (Horak, “Queer Crossings” 271). Although Garbo’s performance was central to Queen Christina, the Hollywood studio system undeniably amplified and stylized her persona, and as have been seen in the trailer, propelled the exoticization of Garbo to unprecedented heights. In this way, Christina’s glamorous female masculinity can be represented through the intersections of the role’s double Royal crowns, Christina’s of Sweden and Garbo’s of the Screen, and thereby underscoring the intertwining of the actress’ private personality, star persona and the role of Christina.

39The idea of the mannish and independent Swedish immigrant maid in the U.S. is in the figure of Queen Christina transformed to an elegant Swedish femininity with masculine connotations and Royal association. In the scenes that follow the presentation of her, it is implied that Christina in private has erotic relationships with both a man and a woman, relating her character with a trickster or player, enabled by her Royal position. This makes Christina’s Swedish femininity apart from class and masculinity also intersect with sexuality.

40Christina’s cavalier persona aligns with the theatrical tradition of breeches roles. According to Rosenberg, there are two central dramaturgical groups for these roles; the first is when a female character who by necessity or choice disguises herself as a man, as Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It; the second group is when an actress portrays a young male character, such as Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and the character should be regarded as a man (Rosenberg 32–44). Female performers have taken on breeches roles in European theater since the Renaissance, though conservative critics consistently viewed the genre as subversive (Kerr 82–101). Women appearing in trousers while mimicking or parodying male behavior challenged masculine authority and traditional gender binary norms as well as showing off the actress’s body. As Rosalind Kerr notes, “their transvestite performances signified their potential as sexually available and of ambiguous sexuality” (Kerr 86), which aligns with Christina’s trickster personality in the beginning of the movie. Although breeches roles retained popularity in early cinema, by the time Queen Christina premiered, they had largely vanished from Hollywood screens due to the increasingly conservative social climate of the Great Depression (Horak, Girls Will Be Boys). Queen Christina was the last major Hollywood cross-dressing production until the early 1980s (Banner 5).

41Historically, a strict binary divided men’s and women’s clothing. As mentioned earlier, Garbo’s fondness for wearing men’s clothing in her private life attracted significant media attention and was interpreted in the American press as evidence of her lesbianism. While the audience always recognizes the character Christina as a woman, the film’s conventions suggest that when she wears men’s clothing people outside of the palace sees her as a young man. This makes it possible for her to hide her Royal identity.

42Christina’s hairstyle also helps in the masquerade. All the women seen in the film have long hair that is elaborately done if she is aristocratic, while working-class women wear their hair in simple braids. But not Christina, who wears her hair in a shoulder-length bob, which allows her to be mistaken for a man, see Figures 1–4. Although it may pass as a masculine hairstyle in the seventeenth century, it was fashionable for women in 1933, when it signaled modernity and female emancipation. This emphasizes Christina’s female masculinity as a sign of 1930s modernity.

43Christina herself reinforces this gender ambiguity. After once again refusing an engagement to her cousin the warrior prince, the Chancellor despairingly asks if she plans to die an old maid. Christina smiles and replies: “I have no intention to, Chancellor. I shall die a bachelor” (Queen Christina 00:21:00). This line blurs the boundaries between the character and Garbo’s personal identity. It alludes to Christina’s trickster sexuality, but also to Garbo personally, since she was known to refer to herself as a bachelor or a boy (Banner 4).

44The film never explicitly explains Christina’s preference for men’s clothing or her self-identification as male, her cross-dressing, masculine body language, authoritative bearing, and self-reference as a bachelor, apart from the fact that she was raised as a King. But, in 1933, these behaviors and gestures unmistakably infused the character with lesbian-coded subtext (Horak, Girls Will Be Boys).

45According to Salka Viertel, producer Irving Thalberg supported the film’s lesbian undertones (LaSalle 194), likely encouraged by the German film Mädchen in Uniform that had a lesbian theme and was a surprising success 1931 (Banner 206–207; Horak, Girls Will Be Boys 209). If the filmmakers consciously sought to link female masculinity, ambiguous sexuality, and Swedish femininity is unknown, but, as this analysis shows, that was the result. Even if Christina’s cross-dressing still is considered scandalous in many parts of the world, and even punishable, in the West no one reacts at the sight of a woman in trousers or short hair anymore. This shows the volatility of categorizing sexuality according to sartorial style or looks.

46Garbo’s costumes were designed by Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903–1959), commonly known as Adrian. He was a legendary Hollywood designer, and it would take at least an article to properly analyze Christina’s costumes, both her male and female attire. Adrian’s costumes are not entirely faithful to seventeenth-century fashion; they rather convey a stylized idea of the century. Christina’s dresses emphasize her Royal class in their exclusivity. They do not show much skin; only on one occasion does she wear a dress that leaves her shoulders bare (Figure 3 up in the right corner). Her male costumes are well-fitted but simple, reflecting her stern authoritarian personality and enables her physical movement (see Figures 1–2). They are usually suitable for the cold weather in fur and leather, usually high at the neck. The colors of both male and female costumes are dark, and the fabrics are heavy, such as velvet (see Figure 2). Therefore, the contrast becomes striking when she wears all-white clothes, which will be discussed in a later section.

47Figure 2. Greta Garbo as Queen Christina. Unknown author, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

7. Performances of Hegemonic Whiteness

48According to Hübinette and Lundström, Swedishness and Nordic whiteness have become so intertwined that this whiteness is perceived as the most essential marker of Swedish national identity. This was already observed in the U.S. response to the earlier mentioned opera divas Lind and Nilsson in the nineteenth century (Ohlsson).

49Film scholar Richard Dyer’s analysis of whiteness demonstrates how white stardom operates as an ideological norm in Western media. Whiteness is constructed as both universal and invisible, appearing as “just” human, non-raced rather than a marked racial identity (Dyer 2). White stars embody a paradoxical ideal: they signify ordinariness and purity, while simultaneously representing power and privilege. Dyer links this to symbolic associations of whiteness with light, spirit, and transcendence. Through these mechanisms, white stardom naturalizes racial dominance by presenting whiteness as neutral, universal, and morally superior, while masking its specificity and historical privilege. As Dyer concludes: “Being deemed white … is white people’s biggest asset” (45).

50This intersection of class and race is vividly illustrated in the close-ups of Garbo, where her skin appears to radiate a luminous whiteness. Dyer describes this phenomenon as the glow of the white woman, where the radiance of her white skin and the spark in her blue eyes seemed to come from within her and make her glow. He argues that this ideal was intensified through the lighting techniques employed by, for example, Hollywood (Dyer 122–142). In promotional posters and in colored photographs for Queen Christina (see Figure 1), Garbo was deliberately portrayed as blonder than she was, her hair was light brown (see Figure 3). The same effect was achieved through strategic lighting techniques, clear in still photographs from the film, see Figure 1. According to historian Marina Warner, in Western myths and fairy tales, blond hair and beauty are often treated as interchangeable, each symbolizing the other in distinct yet interconnected ways (363).

51Figure 3. Film poster for Queen Christina 1933. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

52Although Christina is frequently dressed in darker garments, the regular framing of her face with large white collars accentuates the brightness of her skin (Figure 1). Dyer notes that white clothing enhances the perceived glow of white skin (122–142). Christina’s use of white garments also serves a narrative purpose: she wears white to express her femininity in the scene where she is intimate with Antonio at the inn and during moments of emotional vulnerability, such as before her decision to abdicate. In Western culture, white has long been a symbol of innocence, purity, perfection, as well as death. But white also functions as a symbol of liminality and spiritual elevation, particularly in relation to cosmic journeys and the overcoming of physical and metaphysical boundaries as well as epistemological awakening. Christian liturgy preserves this tradition in the form of baptismal white garments, signifying the initiate’s entry into a new spiritual life. This symbolism becomes obvious in the scene when Christina abdicates. When she relieves herself of the opulent regal garment and jewels, she exits the Parliament in a simple white dress that underscores her passage to a new life and journey to a new country (see Figure 4).

53Figure 4. Lobby card from the 1933 film Queen Christina with Greta Garbo. Author: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

54White is also the color of winter, and nothing embodies Nordic whiteness more than snow. Roland Barthes recognizes the association between Garbo’s white face in close-ups and snow. He calls it “the snowy density of a mask” that seem to protect her; it is only the darkness of her eyes that uncovers “tremulous wounds” (Barthes 73). In Queen Christina, the Swedish abundance of snow mirrors the whiteness of Garbo’s face, symbolizing the purity and hegemony of her Swedishness. In one scene, Christina performs her morning ritual by stepping out onto the palace balcony and rubbing her face with fresh snow. She expresses clear satisfaction with this practice, which is understood to be routine.

55A bit later Christina seeks respite from her royal duties and flees into the snowy wilderness to ride. This is after the Chancellor once again has pressured her to marry and produce an heir. She states longingly: “Snow is like a wild sea; one can go out and be lost in it and forget about the world and oneself” (Queen Christina 00:19:39). The line combined with a close-up also refers to the whiteness of Christina’s skin, merging her physical presence with the snowy landscape, like in her morning ritual. Simultaneously, it alludes to Garbo’s star persona of aloofness, inaccessibility, and independence. Christina’s enthusiasm of harsh Swedish climate and wild nature conveys a spiritual and almost religious dimension. Here again, the duality of the actress and the role is iterated. Mercedes de Acosta, Garbo’s close friend, and possibly her lover, claimed that it was the Swedish winters that had shaped Garbo, the “wind, rain, and dark brooding skies” (Banner 3). This statement illustrates the idea that Swedes were shaped by the Nordic nature and harsh weather, which highlights both the endurance of the Hyperborean mythology, and the fact that it had migrated. Outdoors in the abundance of snow, Christina can lose herself, forgetting the world entirely, and the Swedish snowy wilderness becomes an enchanted realm of magical transformations.

56The construction of these scenes intersects with Swedish exceptionalism, which linked Swedish national identity to northern nature and imagined innocence. Christina’s and Garbo’s double cinematic presence thus operates within a dual discourse: Hollywood’s racialized aesthetics and Sweden’s cultural mythology of the North. Her whiteness is not incidental but central to the intertwining of Garbo’s white stardom embodying the historical Swedish Queen Kristina, reinforcing the notion of Sweden as a remote, virtuous North, a Hyperborean ideal that underpins both Garbo’s/Christina’s star image and the ideological framing of Swedishness.

8. Performances of Hyperboreanism

57Early in the movie, we learn about Christina’s hate of war and love of the arts and sciences. She thinks the war is too expensive and there are too many losses of Swedish soldiers. She is awake during the night to have time to read the plays of French writer Molière, and she informs the French ambassador that she will be happy to welcome the philosopher René Descartes. Furthermore, during her meeting with Antonio at the inn, she immediately asks about the Spanish painter Velásquez’s and playwright Calderón’s latest work. Even though Christina can charm men, as she does with the French ambassador, Garbo portrays Christina with a stern authority that demands obedience from the Chancellor, her courtiers, her warrior cousin, the priests, and all the men of Parliament, from the highest to the lowest. When they insist that Sweden must continue the war to crush its enemies, she rebukes them with a voice full of disdain:

Spoils, glory, flags and trumpets. What is behind these high-sounding words? Death and destruction. Triumphal of crippled men. Sweden victorious in a ravaged Europe, an island in a dead sea. I tell you I want no more of it. I want for my people security and happiness. I want to cultivate the art of peace. The art of life. I want peace, and peace I will have. (Queen Christina 00:11:28)

58Against all her advisers, the clergy, and the men of Parliament, she enforces peace. Here, we see Christina as an embodiment of both the autocrat who enforces her will and, at the same time, as an embodiment of the cultivated and peace-loving Hyperboreans, a morally upright and empathetic ruler. She makes inquiries about the lives lost among her soldiers and asks what the peasants think of the war. Although she debates with other Swedes, she is presented as fundamentally different: more empathetic, refined, and civilized, although an autocrat.

59In contrast, Swedish men appear to belong to an entirely different breed who wants to continue the war and spread the Lutheran faith. Her advisers and the men of Parliament represent the Gothic-warrior strand of the Hyperborean myth. At this point in the movie, an aspect of the story line is about a conflict between the two different components of the Hyperborean figure of thought: the cultured peace-loving side represented by Christina and the Gothic-warrior strand represented by the military and the men of Parliament.

60In a following scene, Christina rides through a well-hilly landscape with large forests covered in snow. When she stops on a hill to enjoy the view, she smiles and looks relaxed, which suggests that the snowy landscape makes her feel content. Beneath the hill, she spots the carriage of the Spanish ambassador, Antonio (John Gilbert), that is stuck in a ditch. She helps free his horse and directs him to a nearby inn. Antonio, mistaking Christina for a boy, offers her payment. Christina turns and heads to the inn herself, unbeknownst to Antonio. There, they meet again and share a drink.

61During their conversation, Antonio offers a detailed comparison of cultural differences between the North and South, discussing how nature and climate have shaped their different peoples and cultures (Queen Christina 00:31:55). He finds Sweden rugged, strong, impressive with virile qualities of the Viking spirit that has dominated Europe, but he doubts that Swedes know the art of living; “after all you cannot serenade a woman in a snowstorm”, he says. He looks at the common people at the inn and concludes that they at least know how to enjoy themselves, but that they do not know the art of love. Spaniards, on the other hand, know the graces and arts that makes love amusing: “Love, as we understand it is the technique that must be developed in hot countries.” Christina replies that it sounds glamorous but somewhat mechanical and concludes that Swedes are more direct. Antonio argues that it is a question of civilization, but Christina means that true love is an illusion and one must be content with less.

62This conversation mirrors the stereotypes of not only the north versus the south climate, but also of the difference in temperament and culture, and the unwavering belief that climate and nature are crucial to a people’s identity. In this way also, Antonio turns out to be a believer in the Hyperborean myth, though from a southern perspective.

63Christina and Antonio are soon forced to spend the night together in the same room. When the fact that Christina is a woman is revealed, they become lovers, remaining in bed for several days due to the ongoing snowstorm. Even though Christina and Antonio’s relationship is undoubtedly heterosexual, “it comes about in a decidedly homoerotic way,” as Horak writes (Girls Will Be Boys 216).

9. Swedish Men

64At the inn, Christina and Antonio are the only high-born, but there are a lot of Swedish common men that drink, laugh, and flirt. After the conversation of Christina and Antonio, a controversy occurs between two drunk men, and Christina, or rather the courtier boy she masquerades as, is appointed as the judge. The dispute is whether the Queen has had six or nine lovers this year. It develops into a fight where more or less all the men at the inn get involved. Christina jumps up on a table and stops them by firing a gun in the air. She proclaims that both parties are wrong, since the Queen has had twelve lovers this year, “a round dozen!” The men shout, “God save the Queen,” and stop fighting.

65These men are depicted as “swarthy,” to use Franklin’s term, and are marked as naïve, uncultivated, intoxicated, and foolish. Such representations construct lower-class Swedish men as rustic, undisciplined subjects who prize their ale and their queen, and whose loyalty is imagined as extending even into a sexualized devotion. Their uncivilized disposition is further underscored in a later scene where Count Magnus (Ian Keith), motivated by jealousy, mobilizes xenophobic sentiment among the commoners, generating political volatility. The crowd rejects a foreign marriage for the Queen and storms the palace; although Christina admits them, she swiftly compels their retreat. Even when dressed in conventionally feminine attire, Christina continues to embody female masculinity through her commanding authority and intellectual superiority, which ultimately quells the uprising.

66Read through Dyer’s theorization of whiteness, these scenes reveal that whiteness itself is not monolithic but internally hierarchical, produced through intersections of race, gender, and class. Dyer emphasizes that whiteness gains its cultural power by associating itself with purity, rationality, and transcendence, while displacing emotion, irrationality, and physicality onto others (42–45). Here, that distinction is reproduced within whiteness: Christina’s elite, cultivated, rationalized white, and specifically Swedish femininity is positioned as the locus of legitimate authority, whereas the common Swedish men—though equally white—are portrayed as swarthy, emotional, impulsive, and intellectually deficient. The film thus visualizes a stratified whiteness in which gendered and classed differences determine who can embody the “pure,” disciplined ideal of whiteness and who becomes its uncivilized, volatile underside. This representation aligns with the early American stereotype of Swedish masculinity called the Swedish rube or the dumb Swede.

67But there also exist common Swedes that are good natured and truthful, especially Christina’s chamber man Aage (C. Aubrey Smith), who helps her dress, arrange her hair, and who even follows her into exile. He looks like a “swarthy” common man, but his characteristics intersect with conventional female traits, like caring, innocence, and empathy. This suggests that there is a possibility of change for the common Swedish masculinity, from the embodiment of the Gothic-warrior strand of Hyperboreans, towards an embodiment of the cultivated and peace-loving Hyperborean.

10. Swedish Women

68The only woman with whom Christina forms a deeper relationship is Ebba (Elizabeth Young), her lady-in-waiting. The intimacy is immediately evident: Ebba enters Christina’s bedroom before the Queen is fully dressed. She signals submission and formality by bowing deeply and kissing Christina’s hand. Yet the ambiguity intensifies when Christina greets Ebba with an open kiss on the mouth and a gentle caress of her cheek. This kiss carries clear erotic undertones, which have since granted the film iconic status in queer culture, even though Halberstam argues that it is “rather on account of the swagger that Garbo injects into this trouser role” (Halberstam 211).

69Ebba’s style is distinctly feminine, her hair elegantly arranged, her voice bright and youthful. Her childlike conversation makes her appear naive and gullible, but the erotic charge in the way she receives Christina’s kiss suggests an underlying sexual agency.

70While Ebba represents a refined, upper-class femininity, Christina’s encounter at the inn with a working-class Swedish woman offers a stark contrast. The waitress Elsa (Barbara Barondess) is tall and robust with thick, blonde braids. When Christina, in masquerade as a boy, heads upstairs to share a room with Antonio, the waitress follows to offer her services and, more or less openly, invites Christina to her room for the night.

71Elsa embodies the stereotype of the tall, strong, blonde Swedish working-class woman, sexually assertive, independent, and almost mannish in her maternity intersected with overt sexuality. She can be read as a forerunner of the concept of “the Swedish Sin,” the notion of Sweden’s supposed sexual permissiveness that first emerged in American discourse around 1955. Aside from Ebba, this waitress is the only other Swedish woman Christina interacts with in the film.

11. Conclusive Reflections

72The plot of Queen Christina takes place during “The Swedish Age of Great Power.” At the same time, Garbo’s portrayal of Christina represents a Swedish femininity that is more grounded in the twentieth century. Thus, two time periods meet in the film, which means that the use of concepts from both times adds an analytical depth that highlights how the film negotiates identity across historical and cultural contexts. The concepts of Hyperboreanism and hegemonic whiteness show how these eras meet and create tensions or hybrids in representation. In Queen Christina, the historical Swedish Queen Kristina is portrayed as embodying a modern Swedish femininity. This is a hybrid that both preserves and changes the image of Kristina. The analysis thereby shows how national identity and gender are constructed through the combination of historical myths and modern film culture.

73In the scene at the Swedish court where Antonio discovers that Christina is, in fact, the Queen of Sweden, he responds with offense. When confronted by her, he reacts coldly, describing Sweden as “unusual.” Although he does not elaborate, his remark likely refers not mainly to Swedish customs or climate, but to the Swedish femininity embodied by Christina—an independent female masculinity with a liberated sexuality. Antonio’s notion of “unusualness” thus encompasses a femininity that defies conventional gender norms, a quality the film associates with Swedishness, an association that is also suggested in the trailer.

74Christina’s transgressive gender exudes modernity, independence, and liberated sexuality, which attracted both men and women. Through the duplicity of the character and Garbo’s star persona, a new image of Swedish femininity emerged: no longer the innocent rural girl or mannish working-class housekeeper common in earlier North American stereotypes. Instead, the Swedish femininity of Christina is regal, assertive, and sophisticated, and marked elevation of Swedish femininity in the cultural imagination. Christina’s Swedish femininity established a cinematic archetype of the glamorous, active woman who transcends traditional gender roles with positive connotations.

75Christina’s hegemonic whiteness is consistently performed in the film through repeated close-ups of Garbo’s face, enhanced by high-contrast lighting that accentuates her pale skin. This visual strategy reinforces her status as an ethereal, unattainable figure, simultaneously coding her as both Swedish and morally elevated according to Hyperborean mythology. Her whiteness is further reflected in the snow, as if her beauty and body have been shaped by it, in line with Hyperborean tropes and hegemonic whiteness.

76The foolishness of the Swedish male characters provides a stark contrast, underscoring the film’s implicit argument that the true descendant of the Hyperboreans, embodied by Garbo’s Christina, is peace-loving, morally superior, and destined for a cosmopolitan life beyond provincial Sweden. Christina’s divergence from both Swedish men and other Swedish women, such as the naive Ebba or the sexually forward waitress at the inn, further isolates her: she is both Swedish and a foreigner within her own country.

77In the film’s iconic final scene, Christina chooses to leave Sweden, even if it means starting anew in solitude. The migrant Swedish femininity embodied by both Garbo and the character of Christina possesses a unique cultural capital unavailable to resident Swedes of any gender. Here, the film draws a parallel between the historical Queen Kristina’s self-imposed exile and Garbo’s own transnational stardom, as well as all the Swedish women that had ventured to emigrate to North America.

78Queen Christina thus emerges as a cinematic intersection of Swedish and North American constructions of Swedishness, femininity, and modern identity in the 1930s. The film incorporates elements of contemporary Swedish self-perception, including the ideal of Swedes as peace-loving and cultured, transcending the nation’s militaristic and colonial past. Simultaneously, it integrates North American stereotypes of Swedishness, epitomized by depictions of the dumb Swede among the common people.

79The film’s final scene suggests that the exotic and sophisticated modern Swedish femininity, with her ambiguous gender expression embodied by Garbo’s Christina cannot realize her full potential if she stays in Sweden. Instead, she must leave to disseminate to the world a vision of progressive Swedish femininity infused with the Hyperborean idea of enlightened civilization, fulfilling the destiny of the Hyperborean myth. The film thus becomes a key site where historical myth, Hollywood star iconography, and 1930s cultural politics converge to reshape the modern cultural imagination of Swedishness.

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References

Electronic reference

Hélène Ohlsson, Performances of Swedishness in the Movie Queen Christina 1933: Intersections of National Identity, Stereotypical Ideas of Swedishness, Sexuality, Gender, and ClassEuropean journal of American studies [Online], 20-3 | 2025, Online since 01 December 2025, connection on 24 January 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/24966; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/15dmg

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About the author

Hélène Ohlsson

Hélène Ohlsson holds a PhD in theatre studies and is a senior lecturer in gender studies at the Department of Social and Psychological Studies at Karlstad University. Her research lies at the crossroads between theatre history and gender studies and mainly revolves around the professional history of actresses, with a particular interest in critical theories of femininity and whiteness studies. She is preoccupied with the relationship with the past and historiography, as well as how celebrity experiences such as divadom and dandyism are politicized. Since she is also an actress and theatre director, her research always takes its starting point in situated knowledge.

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