Swedish National Heritage Board (RAÄ)

The Swedish National Heritage Board is Sweden’s central administrative agency in the area of cultural heritage.

Our assignment includes ensuring that the cultural value of buildings and landscapes is preserved, utilized and developed, and watching over the interests of the cultural heritage and cultural environment in community planning and construction. Our vision is “Everybody thinks in time”.

Heritage policy

Cultural heritage protection and management in Sweden aims to preserve and manage sites of historical, architectural or archaeological significance and to empower cultural heritage as a force in the evolution of a democratic, sustainable society. The national cultural environment goals are:

• a sustainable society with a great diversity of cultural heritage sites which are to be preserved, used and developed,
• people’s participation in cultural heritage management and their potential to understand and take responsibility for the cultural heritage,
• an inclusive society with the cultural heritage as a shared source of knowledge, education and experiences,
• a landscape management perspective in which cultural heritage is utilized in the development of society.

Public cultural heritage management is regulated mainly by the Historic Environment Act. Click here for a summary of the Government Bill 2012/13:96 ”Diversity of the historic environment”.

Roles and responsibilities

The Swedish National Heritage Board works for a sustainable society and looks after the interests of the cultural heritage in community planning and construction, distributes grants, supervises, monitors and supports regional cultural heritage management and works to increase knowledge based on research and co-operation with other parties such as universities and international organizations. The majority of decisions concerning the local and regional level pursuant to the Historic Environment Act are made by the 21 County Administrative Boards, which are state authorities with regional responsibility for matters including cultural heritage management.

Since 2000 the Church of Sweden is no longer a state church, but receives 46 million euros in state grants each year to cover costs for measures concerning preservation of the 3,700 or so listed churches.