Veteran Teachers’ Strategies in History Teaching History didactic narratives from practice in Sweden Thomas Nygren Introduction History teaching in Sweden on the upper secondary level has become more and more comprehensive. From having been a national subject whose primary task was to mediate the nation’s great past, history has become global, aimed at giving students in various ways perspectives on the past, historical thinking and democratic values. The national curriculum for history teaching reveals a complex subject for teachers to deal with in their classes. Teaching history demands a great deal from the teacher both in terms of subject knowledge and pedagogical skills. The present study examines how highly experienced teachers comprehend the challenges of history teaching in Sweden, today and in the past. Interviews with veteran teachers give an insider perspective on the teaching in Sweden previously noted by research mainly through written sources and external conditions. The aim of this study is to examine highly experienced history teachers’ conceptions of history teaching, based upon the didactic questions of “why”, “what” and “how” should you teach history? In Sweden this field of research is called subject didactics, in this case history didactics, which I see as an inclusive bridge between subject and pedagogies. Studying and learning from practice A teacher of history lands in an area of knowledge within and between the subject of history and pedagogy. 1 The subject examines the past and pedagogy studies learning in general. Teaching in particular subjects with their special demands and possibilities has been given little attention in Swedish research, even though subjects such as English, math, sports and history are clearly distinguishable as separate subjects and thereby different as subjects for learning. As regards knowledge, Lee S. Shulman described this borderland in research as “the missing paradigm” 2 . In Sweden this was still the case in 2004, which was obvious in Bengt Schüllerqvist’s research survey on history education. 3 Thus Swedish history teachers have developed their teaching with a certain amount of 1 Lee S. Shulman, “Those who Understand: Knowledge growth in teaching?” Educational Researcher. 15, no 2 (1986): 4-14; Svein Sjøberg, Fagdebatikk: Fagdidaktisk innføring i sentrale skolefag. (Oslo: Gyldendal akademisk, 2003), 11-37. 2 Shulman “Those who Understand: Knowledge growth in teaching?”. 3 Bengt Schüllerqvist, Svensk historiedidaktisk forskning (Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådet, 2004).