Having an active life with meaningful social relations is often viewed as key for older persons’ well-being. Consequently, experiences of loneliness is seen as something negative which must be avoided or reduced. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue of loneliness among older persons has been highlighted in the public discourse, as the restrictions imposed to avoid the spread of infection has resulted in increased social isolation for older persons. This study examined how older persons talk about social relations and loneliness relating these issues to their own identity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 30 persons (14 men, 16 women) living in Sweden were conducted. We examined how older persons make sense of how their social relations and experiences of loneliness have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, focus was on how the participants construct their self-identity in relation to these experiences using linguistic resources (i.e., concepts, phrases, and metaphors) and to what extent the pandemic altered the process of constructing a self-identity. The preliminary findings indicate that older persons viewed loneliness as a minor problem during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having an active lifestyle and being busy was recurrently mentioned as the preferred strategy for mitigating loneliness. Loneliness was mainly considered as an issue of ”others”, often comparing the ”self” with ”others” who are lonelier. It was concluded that during the COVID-19 pandemic, being ”non-lonely” was an important part of older persons’ self-identity