The topic of this article is how primary school students express ideas about

the ‘origins of the nation’. The study is based on texts written by Swedish

students aged 12–13 about a historical event well embedded in Swedish

national mythology, the rise to power of Swedish ‘founding father’

Gustav Vasa. The analysis is inspired by James V. Wertsch’s concept of

schematic narrative templates. The main finding of the study is that the

students mainly structure their answers along one of two different

narrative templates; either a kind of historical master narrative with

strong foundations in traditional Swedish history culture, or a more

generic story about the founding father as a ruthless or corrupt

politician, which is arguably influenced by presentism.