2025 Gothenburg Book Fair
2025 Gothenburg Book Fair
By Anton Miroshnichenko, Gothenburg, Sweden
Editor’s Note: A longtime reader and friend of Urantia Foundation, Anton relocated his family to Sweden at the beginning of the Ukrainian war. He continues to disseminate the book and its teachings and recently requested financial assistance to acquire a booth at this bookfair. The Foundation was pleased to support him and his team in this endeavor.
Bokmässan is the largest book fair and cultural event in the Nordic region. It is the fourth-largest book fair in Europe and one of the major cultural meeting places in western Sweden. It is held annually in late September.
Bokmässan has an interesting history. Friends Conny Jacobsson and Bertil Falck met in the autumn of 1984 with a shared vision of offering interesting seminars as continuing education for librarians. Their goal was to create an inspiring program, so the venue was important. The Swedish Exhibition and Congress Center in Gothenburg was the perfect choice; they were trying to attract exhibitors, and seminar rooms were available to rent.
With the help of some influential people, several companies signed up as exhibitors. The first fair, essentially a trade show, was called Bibliotek'85. It lasted three days and attracted 5,000 visitors. There was great media interest.
Encouraged by the success of the first fair, they targeted the publishing industry as well as the education and cultural sector. The next fair was expanded to four days and open to the public for two of them. In 1986 the attendance swelled to 26,000, and media interest was unprecedented. Conny and Bertil formed a company, with the logo an image of a mermaid—an illustration from the very first book printed in Sweden, The Moral Dialogue of Creatures (Dialogus Creaturarum), 1483.
This year, four readers of The Urantia Book from Sweden became exhibitors at this renowned event. Steve Sycamore and Johan Ahlén joined me from Gothenburg, and David Fabe came from Stockholm. Michael MacIsaac helped form the exhibition dream team and inspired us remotely. Urantia Foundation paid for the booth, and we covered all other expenses privately.
Bokmässan continues to draw thousands of visitors, so we enjoyed a constant flow of people past our booth. There were many parallel events like seminars and presentations by exhibitors, authors, artists, and public figures, both in booths and in special presentation halls. We added our program to the Bokmässan website, so visitors were able to find our booth and enjoy a few Urantia presentations. Several visitors even managed to arrive at the designated time!
Those four days were inspiring and productive. Our team felt comfortable talking to any visitor who was willing to interact, and the book was a good fit for an event hosting a solid representation of religious and spiritual literature. We offered The Urantia Book in Swedish, English, and a few other languages. We also displayed The Untold Story of Jesus, The Urantia Diaries, and several other secondary works. We substituted 3-D epoxy stickers for business cards and scattered them like candy. A projector showed Gary Tonge's animated clips in the background.
Steve observed more activity and interest than when he previously attended. While alone in the booth, he enjoyed some notable encounters, as one might anticipate. His last conversation was with a Swedish specialist on the topic of religion who affirmed that Sweden is opening up considerably in being able to talk about religion and spirituality. Much of that openness is due to the influence of non-natives bringing in energy and stimulation from outside the country.
Johan, the only one whose mother tongue is Swedish, shared some afterthoughts. “The booth got rather cramped, so I chose to stand in front to face the public, asking passersby, ‘Could a revelation possibly be of interest?’ One in 20 would hesitate and give me a chance to say a little more. About a third of those who stopped gave me a chance to go further. And every 20 minutes we managed to have people stay for dialogue.” He also added that he knows about “slow growth” because he has lived it since the 1970s. “But you don’t attend a book fair to remain silent. We are ambassadors!”
David felt that although our booth was small, its location behind the pancake station was a plus. We also visited other booths to mingle and plant seeds.
The team is already thinking ahead to next year. A larger booth and better location would allow for more foot traffic and space for people to stay, browse books, and talk with us. We could offer a seminar using the private rooms, or we could simply hold scheduled talks in our own booth. It would be smart to have a small leaflet to hand to interested people. It would contain important information and also serve as a way of getting in touch in the future, but for now, we are happy with our many one-on-one interactions.
I end with loving thanks to our team. Steve managed the posters, David explained deep philosophical topics, Johan did a brilliant job talking with attendees, and together we spread Urantia seeds as much as we could.
