This article applies a cultural perspective on § 51of the Swedish Copyright Act, which prohibits therendering of works in the public domain ‘in a waythat offends the interests of spiritual cultivation’(SFS 1960:729). This so called ‘protection of clas-sics’ was formulated in the 1950s to protect classicalworks against derogatory interpretations, such aspopular cultural adaptions. § 51 has rarely beenapplied, but in 2021 it was for the first time triedin court as the nationalist website Nordfront wasaccused of violating §51 by publishing works bythree prominent romanticist poets in a contextbordering on hate speech. The court ruled that thepublication was not a violation of § 51, which callsthe future of the protection of classics into question.Even though §51 might soon be obsolete, it raises anumber of questions regarding the relation betweenlaw and culture. This article discusses what theprotection of classics and the Nordfront case cantell us about cultural change in postwar Sweden if itis approached as a cultural rather than a legal textand studied not primarily as a legislative processbut as a process of meaning making. The articlemakes no attempts to conduct such an analysis butrather aims to introduce the perspective and presentpreliminary reflections on how the formulation anduse of protection of classics reflects changing con-ceptions of cultural norms and values.