The article outlines the history of the concept of modernity in Sweden. The word is related to several different concepts. Three different kinds of concepts of modernity of particular relevance in this context are distinguished, a concept of an epoch (”den moderna tiden”), a concept of a form of society (”det moderna samhället”), and a normative concept of progess, pointing out the direction of progress. The etymological roots of ”modern” and ”modernitet” are traced and historical examples are given of uses of words corresponding to the three different concepts, from early examples to examples from the 19th century, the period before 1945 and the post war era. The rhetoric of ”the modern breakthrough” has been influential in Swedish historiography, but used with different periodization. After 1945 the word ”modernism” came to be used more often as a label for aesthetic currents that had often been labelled ”modern” or ”new” in their own time. In the social sciences, ”modernism” has been much used to label a positive attitude to modern society and modernization, leading to some confusion with regard to modernism in aesthetic discourse. When the word ”modernitet” became more frequent as a theoretical concept in academic discourse in the 1980s and onwards, it was often associated with ”the project of Enlightenment” and rationalization. In the critical analyses of modernity, ”modernitet” tended to be treated with distance and as an object in the past, separating the dimension of progress from concept. ”Moderniteten” seems to have become a society and an in the past, and the words ”modernitet” and ”modern have become less frequent. Belief in progress and development seem to have become related to other concepts and express with other words. Nontheless, much of the perspective on progress is based on ideals that used to be associated with modernity and modernism.