New Psalm Book: 233 Psalms will be singing sung

In 2016, the Swedish Church’s church meeting decided that the hymn book should be renewed. New hymns should be added, outdated being removed, but the hymn book should also be larger.

When the church went out and asked for newly written hymns, 9,500 proposals were submitted. In a selection process, the authors were anonymized. Selection groups have since gone through the lyrics and tested the songs. On Wednesday, the 233 works that went through the needle eye were presented.

Now parishes all over the country will be testing the songs on the list. On November 30, 2026, they must have submitted their judgment. Assembly and individuals who are not part of the selection work can also comment on the proposals.

Choirs from all over the country Has already recorded all the 233 psalm proposals. As of Wednesday, they can be listened to The Swedish Church site. There they are arranged for different themes: praise and worship, church acts, today’s and this year and so on. For each hymn there is the lyrics, an audio file to listen to and pdfs with notes. For the summer, all the hymns will also be posted on the Spotify streaming platform.

– It is special to work with the hymn book, it is the worship service book that almost all Swedes have a relationship with. In many ways it is more important than the Bible in that it is more used and there is an incredible commitment to it, says Karin Tillberg.

She presented Wednesday, the proposals together with Carl Henrik Svanell and Karin Runow in the Storkyrko Assembly’s premises in the Old Town in Stockholm – historical land when it comes to hymns. Here, Pastor Johan Olof Wallin, who wrote many hymns and who named the 1819 Wallinska hymn book, worked.

– The selection groups have focused on the theme, theology and language of the texts and of course the singability. A main requirement has been that a hymn cannot oppose the church’s faith and confession and learn, says Carl Henrik Svanell.

A co -condition has been that there should be hymns of church acts, such as baptism and marriage. Another is that there should be hymns for crisis and disaster situations and hymns that are linked to the holidays of the church year.

– The idea is not that everyone should like everything, but that there should be something that appeals to everyone. We find some themes that are particularly common: to be human and live in their everyday lives, the search for a faith and God, he says.

Not everyone is newly written but may have been sung for several years, perhaps in local contexts. Among the 270 authors are both known names from the previous Psalm Book and newcomers. Many are active church musicians but also priests.

However, there are few well -known artists from the world outside church music, but Py Bäckman and Åsa Jinder are two. Among the composers are also really old celebrities such as Beethoven and Dvorak, whose paragraphs received new texts. It is not run for anyone who thinks that a beloved song by a famous artist should be included. The tip box for this type of music has not yet been gone through.

It hadn’t been a hymn conference without hymn song. With Karin Runow at the piano, we sang, among other things, « God, bless Sweden », which could, among other things, fit around National Day, but also « Keep me hard » written within the project « Young writes Psalms ».

There are also hymns in the minority languages ​​and a Norwegian and a Danish example. Karin Runow plays Norwegian « Keep my world together ».

– Our Nordic neighbors’ hymns are more wordy and here are odd pictures in the text, she says.

We sing: « Brushes your teeth at the sink / see myself in the glass of the mirror, wash away the fake mask / feel like everything has been crashing ».

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