Why did realism develop slowly in Swedish literature during the 1840s and 1850s?

During the 1840s and 1850s, realism made only slow progress in Swedish literature primarily because the period was dominated by the lingering aftereffects of Romanticism.

While writers like Fredrika Bremer had begun incorporating sketches of ordinary life into their work as early as the late 1820s, the literary landscape remained largely tethered to Romantic ideals. During the 1840s and 1850s, cultural energy was heavily directed toward Pan-Scandinavianism, a movement that prioritized political and cultural unity and found its primary expression in verse rather than realistic prose.

It was not until the "modern breakthrough" of the 1870s and 1880s—fueled by the influence of international thinkers like Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and Georg Brandes—that Swedish literature fully broke free from these conventional, idealistic constraints to embrace a more rigorous form of realism and naturalism, most notably through the work of August Strindberg.1