Swedish Prog Rock and the Search for a Timeless Utopia

This chapter examines the revival of the psychedelic style of Swedish progressive rock called flumprogg, which originated in Stockholm in the 1960s, within evolving transnational geographies and historical complexities of revivalism. In the late 1980s, this music started to experience a revival in a global sphere of Anglophone DIY culture. The prog-rock revival was not limited to Scandinavian prog rock; it also involved a broader international landscape of progressive rock in the 1970s, including German kraut and English folk prog. Inspired by postmodern historiography, the chapter introduces an analytical approach that explores how people make sense of fragments of the past in particular sites of transnational flows. The analytical method involves ethnography of fragments—recordings, photos, and decorations—as found in record stores, for instance. The authors propose the concept of a retrology to account for how these constellations of fragments create utopian timeless spaces that suggest a historical and spatial consciousness.