Sweden’s divorce rate spiked one year after Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage was released, but was the miniseries the cause? Rising from 2% in 1973 to 3.3% in 1974, the rate did not double, but the increase was substantial, and many point to Bergman’s searing exposé on the reality of marriage as the cause. As nearly half of the entire population of Sweden at the time tuned in to watch the series, it was speculated that the show was directly responsible for the uptick in the country’s divorce rate; however, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
In Scenes From A Marriage (recently remade by HBO and starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain), viewers witness the most private, intimate parts of Johan and Marianne’s “ideal” relationship as it dies a tragic, prolonged death. Marianne aborts their baby and Johan is having an affair. They are vicious and terrible to each other in only the ways a married couple can be. It’s brutal, and as the series’ overwhelming response shows, it was soul-crushingly on-point.
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At the time the series aired, divorce in Sweden wasn’t an easy thing to accomplish. Swedish divorce law required that divorce be mutually sought, that the couple underwent marital counseling before applying, and a year of separation was required before a divorce could be obtained. In 1973, new laws were proposed that would change all of that. So, while Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage may have caused many to question the viability of their marriages, it was the Swedish divorce reform of 1973 that allowed them to act, the two elements working intrinsically to spur a substantial rise in the country’s divorce rate. That year, everything changed about divorce in Sweden.
Dr. Maarit Jänterä-Jareborg explains in Grounds for Divorce and Maintenance Between Former Spouses, published in 2002, “a spouse’s wish to dissolve the marriage alone became sufficient to obtain a divorce and no reasons have to be given in support of the application.” Furthermore, they eliminated the mandatory counseling and the year of separation. The new divorce laws were passed in 1973, but they were not put into effect until January 1, 1974, hence why divorce rates didn’t spike until the year after the miniseries released.
That’s not to say that Scenes From A Marriage didn’t impact divorce rates at all. Following the series’ release, Sweden’s Marriage Guidance Service was inundated with calls, and their waitlist went from three weeks to three months, according to UC Berkeley Professor Linda Haverty Rugg (via EW). Bergman had to remove his phone number from the public directory because strangers were calling him for marital advice. Even TV critic Hemming Sten suggested evening classes to help viewers cope with the ensuing emotional fallout of the series.
It seems likely that the two forces worked together to produce change. Many viewers may have been emotionally changed by Scenes From A Marriage’s raw undertaking of a dying relationship and, when the reform took effect in 1974, making divorces easier to obtain, they capitalized on the opportunity. A study of divorce rate one year from the recent release of the updated series may provide more insight into the content’s direct impact on divorce.
