Beartown Themes

Beartown is set in a hockey-obsessed, rural Swedish town that has seen better days. Fredrik Backman paints a gritty yet sympathetic picture of a community whose self-respect has withered: “These days almost everyone is asking themselves if it is actually possible. Living here any longer. Asking themselves if there’s anything left, apart from property values that seem to fall as rapidly as the temperature.” The one thing Beartown has left is its junior hockey team…

Beartown starts out with an ironic reflection on the “unimportance” of hockey: “[I]t’s only a game. It only resolves tiny, insignificant things. Such as who gets validation. Who gets listened to. It allocates power and draws boundaries and turns some people into stars and others into spectators. That’s all.” These functions of hockey play out in various ways throughout the book. They are most evident, however, in the story of Maya’s assault and the…

In Beartown, the youth hockey team’s success revives a sense of community cohesion and loyalty for the first time in decades. However, this cohesion is shattered after Kevin Erdahl assaults Maya Andersson, leading people to quickly turn against one another—and most of them turn against Maya, blaming her instead of her attacker. By showing how this division plays out both in town politics and within individual relationships, Backman argues that loyalty can be…

In Beartown, Backman comments: “There are few words that are harder to explain than ‘loyalty.’ It’s always regarded as a positive characteristic, because a lot of people would say that many of the best things people do for each other occur precisely because of loyalty.” However, loyalty often has a dark side, too, when those who aren’t “loyal” become targets. Backman explores this dark side through the resistance and courage of several characters, especially…