2022:1

Naturally enough, the situation is different in Sweden, although, as we shall see, Håkanson shows there are no grounds for complacency. The Swedish novelist Birgitta Trotzig once described literary translations as ‘half of our national literature’. While it would be hard to verify this statement – what counts as ‘national literature’ and at what point in time do you measure it? – it’s clear that translated works account for a far more significant proportion of the overall book market in Sweden (and the Swedish-speaking parts of Finland) than in the English-speaking world. This has long been the case.

Consequently, Dolda gudar is much more than a study of literary translation: it is also, in part, a social, cultural and literary history of Sweden. The book’s nine chapters alternate between exploring the history of translation into Swedish over five eras (the Middle Ages, the Reformation and Sweden’s ‘great power’ era, the eighteenth century, the industrial age, and the present day), and examining the general theoretical issues that arise in literary translation. Presenting all this material concisely in a form accessible to the general reader is a huge challenge, but one that Håkanson carries off with panache.

The introductory chapter looks at some of the basic features of translation. While the traditional Muslim stance is that translations of the Koran lack the status of the original Arabic text, being regarded as ‘cover versions’, Christians see translations of the Bible as having the same validity as the original. Yet literary translations are both necessarily different from the source text and, where several exist, from one another. Håkanson illustrates this with two contrasting translations from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and three surprisingly different renditions of a key passage from The Hobbit – aka variously Hobbiten eller bort och hem igen, Bilbo – en hobbits äventyr, or Hompen, eller En resa dit och tillbaks igen. (As for the doughty hobbit’s name, that varies in these Swedish translations from ‘Bilbo Secker’ to ‘Bilbo Bagger’ and even ‘Bimbo Backlin’.) Both the Dostoevsky and the Tolkien translations reveal how the first-ever translator felt able to take more liberties with the text; when Walborg Hedberg translated Crime and Punishment for the first time, its author was not considered to be a stylist or thinker of note, and for Tore Zetterholm, the first Swedish translator of The Hobbit, Tolkien was just another unknown English author. Judgements of these authors’ merits have changed over the years, and subsequent translations have paid closer attention to the stylistic features of the originals. This shows that while the original text is invariable, translations are more ‘organic’ and subject to change over time.

It’s impossible, in a short review like this one, to do justice to Håkanson’s scholarly history of Swedish literary translation. but a few general points can be singled out. In medieval times, religious texts accounted for the lion’s share of translations. These were often essentially paraphrases, it being incumbent on the translator to clarify the correct interpretation of Holy Writ for non-scholars reading it in the vernacular. The translators of the first five books of the Bible, for instance, are known as the Penteukparafrastikern, the ‘paraphrasers of the Pentateuch’. Another category of literature much translated in the Middle Ages was chivalric or courtly literature, such as the Eufemiavisorna (a collection of romances). It was not considered important for courtly romances to adhere closely to the source text; regardless of what form the original took, the translations were often in knittelvers, based on rhyming couplets that were easy to recite aloud.  

The translation of the New Testament in 1526 and King Gustav Vasa’s Bible in 1541 marked the emergence of modern Swedish. Disseminated thanks to the new printing press, they were key to the Swedish Reformation. Other religious texts appearing in translation included prayer books, hymns and a sort of handbook on how to identify the work of the Devil, Bock aff dyäffwlsens frästilse (The Book of Diabolical Temptation) – the first book ever printed in Swedish (1495). Sweden’s first ever translator regius (royal translator), Ericus Benedicti Schroderus (1570s-1647), translated a vast array of writings ranging from James VI of Scotland’s treatise on government to etiquette guides and historical works. German was the main language from which he worked.

In the eighteenth century, the novel made its entrance, with works such as Gulliver’s Travels, Tom Jones and Robinson Crusoe, plus a plethora of swashbuckling tales of lesser merit. The nineteenth century saw a rise in the prestige of the novel: but as the cult of the novelist as genius emerged, those who translated such works were increasingly downgraded to a poorly paid, anonymous ‘cultural proletariat’. In the industrial era, literary translators – many of them now women, ‘översättande fruntimmer’ in the belittling parlance of the day – often churned out several novels a year for a pittance.

The twentieth century saw attempts to improve the economic standing and professional status of translators in Sweden. A key moment was the establishment in 1953 of a professional association, Svenska översättarförbundet, driven by the energetic literary translator Elsa Thulin. It was not until the end of the century, however, that a short-lived academic programme for the training of literary translators was set up, at Södertörns högskola: Gothenburg’s Valand Academy has now taken over this function.  

In the last chapter, Håkanson looks at contemporary literary translation in Sweden and concludes that overall quality is higher than ever before. At the same time, he notes that the output of Swedish publishers is extremely biased towards Anglo-American culture: in fact, translations from languages other than English (or Danish and Norwegian) are mostly viewed as necessarily difficult and intellectual. (In the English-speaking world, this tends to be the case for nearly all translated literary works.) A more general concern, Håkanson suggests, is that literature has ceased to provide the shared frame of reference a society needs for its members to communicate with each other at any level above the extremely basic. There is no longer any canon of classics familiar to most people. This comfortless conclusion leaves the English-speaking reader pondering whether literary culture is on the wane in Scandinavia only, or whether Håkanson has put his finger on a more universal phenomenon.

In my attic in Pargas there’s an old confectionery tin. Inside it are the letters my grandparents wrote to each other in autumn 1939 – the same autumn the Winter War broke out between Finland and the Soviet Union.

My grandad was in Helsinki, working as a lawyer. Granny was at home taking care of the farm, and had just had her first child – my dad.

The letters have a familiar, everyday tone to them. In one letter, my granny tells my grandad off for not eating enough; when she sees him next she doesn’t want him to be as skinny as he was the last time. In another, she comments in passing: ‘We can’t seriously believe there’ll be a war’.

There were tough negotiations going on between Finland and the Soviet Union in autumn 1939. The Soviet Union had already forced Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to sign mutual assistance treaties, and Soviet bases were established in all three Baltic countries.

A death sentence for independence.

Finland was next in line, and Helsinki had drawn its conclusions. It was ’No’ to Soviet bases. ’No’ to redrawing the border.

Stalin thought the Finns were stubborn, obstinate, and incapable of understanding what was best for them. In his memoirs of the period, Juho Kusti Paasikivi, then chief negotiator (and later president) wrote that Stalin at one point lost his composure and exclaimed:

‘This is going nowhere!’

The government in Helsinki, following the lead of foreign minister Eljas Erkko, was convinced there wouldn’t be a war; the Russians were bluffing.

Paasikivi, on the other hand, was convinced there was an imminent risk of war. As early as the start of August 1939, he wrote to the finance minister Väinö Tanner:

‘You don’t believe in war. You just say "The world cannot be so insane." You’ve lived through everything that’s happened this century – how can you say such a thing? Where in the past four decades have you seen reason prevail?’

To the very last, Erkko was convinced there would be no attack – even though the Russians were mobilising at the border and anti-Finland propaganda in the Soviet Union was becoming more intense.

On 26 November, Moscow claimed that four Soviet soldiers had been killed by Finnish shell fire in the village of Mainila. Two days later, three Finnish border guards were kidnapped and accused of having attempted to attack the Soviet Union. On 30 November, the Soviet Union attacked Finland.

The sequence of events has so many similarities with the current situation between Russia and Ukraine that you almost do a double take. That doesn’t mean it’s the same situation. What I recognise, though, is the conviction that war cannot happen – that the world cannot be that insane.

My granny didn’t want to believe there would be a war in 1939 either. When I travelled around Ukraine last week, few of the people I met thought the Russians would invade. Since then, Putin has recognised the breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Now he’ll militarise them to the teeth.

He’s carried out a carefully planned extortion campaign and the result is two banana republics. That can hardly be what he originally had in mind.

In autumn 1939, Finland tried to negotiate right up to the end, even after the Soviet leadership stopped responding to attempts at contact. Emmanuel Macron did all he could to convince Putin to back down. On Twitter, Jan Eliasson, an experienced diplomat, pointed out when you’re trying to avert a catastrophe, diplomacy shouldn’t be thought of as a concession.

People who try to negotiate don’t deserve ridicule. But the West can’t sell out on Ukraine’s independence, which is the only thing Putin wants. The best case scenario is that we are now facing a long period of instability; the worst case scenario – war.

This column was first published on 22 February in Dagens Nyheter, who hold all rights to the text.

Since the early 1990s there has been an ongoing, and sometimes controversial, discourse in Sweden which entails revisiting the historical narrative of Sweden’s role during World War II. Maria-Pia Boëthius’ Heder och Samvete (Honor and Conscience, 1991) was an important early investigation of this time in Swedish history. Some recent noteworthy works on the subject are Elisabeth Åsbrink’s And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain (published in English translation in 2020) and 1947: When Now Begins (published in English translation in 2017). This discussion has particular relevance in light of the last decade’s increasingly heated debate about immigrants and refugees in Scandinavia.

Margit Silberstein is a Swedish journalist who has previously published En marsch mot avgrunden - socialdemokratins svarta år (Marching towards the Abyss - Social Democracy’s Dark Years) with Tommy Möller (2013). Förintelsens Barn, her first memoir, has the potential to follow the success of Swedish journalist and author Göran Rosenberg’s memoir A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz (2012), which has been translated into nine languages.

Silberstein’s memoir beautifully weaves together the poetic love story of her parents, who were forced apart during the war, with her own coming-of-age story as the child of Jewish refugees who wanted nothing more than for her and her brother to fit into Swedish culture while simultaneously cherishing her heritage and fulfilling all of her parents’ dreams of a happy, prosperous future in their new home country; Sweden. ‘My brother and I became their salvation, we gave their lives meaning and they loved us beyond everything. Is being the object of this sort of all-encompassing love always a good thing? It might give you self-esteem but it comes with a devastating sense of guilt.’

Förintelsens Barn is a story about surviving the unthinkable and how to carry on this legacy of hope tainted by wild despair; being the child of survivors. Silberstein’s finely crafted narrative conveys her parents’ wondrous love story, which shines through the pages even in the depictions of horrific despair and paralyzing fear. It’s a story about two remnants of human beings who are shaped by their destiny, and about how this destiny carries on to the next generation, and the next one, as well.

It is also a story about belonging and not belonging, believing and not believing, hoping when there is no hope, but still carrying on. ‘I created my own manual for childish and inconsistent integration, based on my parents’ instructions: don’t stand out, but don’t forget who you are either.’

Vit melankoli is a cohesive and useful analysis of the history of Swedish society through the lens of whiteness theory (a discourse based on critical race theory that argues that whiteness is a constructed concept and the centric standard to which racial minorities are compared), showing how this relates to class, gender and the evolution of Sweden as a country from the start of the 20th century until today. The book comprises four chapters: ‘How did we even get here?’, ‘White purity. The forming of a white Sweden, 1905-1968 (phase 1)’, ‘White solidarity. The construction of the good Sweden, 1968-2001 (phase 2)’, and ‘White melancholy. A nation in a crisis. 2001- (phase 3)’. It ends with a short seven-page section, titled ‘The old whiteness and the new Swedishness’.

Throughout this groundbreaking work within race and cultural studies, the authors define and dissect Swedish society in relation to the rest of the world and explain Sweden’s particular challenges with regard to race, whiteness and migration as well as gender issues. The book’s perspective is wide and holistic while at the same time homing in on the specific struggles of a small nation. Vit melankoli covers and discusses significant concepts of the evolution of the Swedish welfare state such as assimilation, colonialism, adoption, immigration, colorblindness, segregation and anti-globalization. The title of the book reflects the authors’ current diagnosis of Sweden as suffering from the loss of self-identification with a sense of goodness based on its connection, historically, between whiteness and solidarity. Consequently, there is a sense of loss of ‘the old (white) Sweden,’ as the country is facing a new reality and the need to recreate its national identity as less homogenous and more diverse.

The authors end their book with an expression of their wish for the future of Sweden: ‘Thus, our hope for the future is that there will be a new transition period which dissolves the current regressive and destructive situation that defines this time of white melancholy - a condition which may most accurately be described as a white psychosis.’ Vit melankoli, a well-written and accessible work, is both useful for scholars and students and a valuable and fascinating read for anybody with an interest in topics regarding Sweden and Scandinavia in relation to immigration, race/whiteness and cultural/political studies.

His starting point is to relate social science to today’s world and, as the title suggests, position it as an intellectual framework for the critical scrutiny of those features of modern, democratic Western societies that may potentially militate against the common good. He points out the limitations of social science and rejects comparisons with ‘hard’ science, i.e. the STEM disciplines, which advance our current well-being and modernity. Hallonsten asks us to accept that inexact social science methodologies are incompatible with ‘hard’ science. When researching human behaviour, the subject can answer back, thereby advancing understanding but at the same time making research conclusions permanently provisional; consequently, the social sciences can rarely if ever provide conclusive solutions to problematic issues.  One example is the ongoing ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ debate concerning the development of human characteristics.

If ‘hard’ science delivers concrete, identifiable results, what then do the less exact (and less exacting, some argue) social sciences provide? Here, while the STEM subjects give us physical benefits such as energy capture, Hallonsten also asks us to accept that despite their evident inexactitude and rolling theoretical development, the social sciences ‘remain relevant’ as the only reliable critical commentary of modern society, its institutions, groups and behaviours, thanks to their methodological approaches and academic rigour. Social science nevertheless remains a ‘toolbox’ without packaged solutions. This brings the field into the frontline of today’s political disputes and culture wars, making it a target for all sides.

Social science should be ‘consequence-neutral’, i.e. findings must be supported by exacting research, but should not back contested positions. One example in Britain is the study of ‘institutional racism’ on educational outcomes of black pupils and students, when social sciences are catapulted into the arena of public discourse. Hallonsten demonstrates clearly how creeping ‘academic capitalism’ and safe-space sanctuary to exclude uncomfortable issues are extending political and corporate control of social sciences which are largely university-based. Funding preferences for ‘solution-thinking’ and providing binary answers disadvantage social sciences, a field which, Hallonsten argues, relies on disturbing the status quo – an activity that is never popular in any institution with vested interests.

Social sciences funding risks competition from ‘hard’ science when applications are assessed quantitatively with a preference for early results and ‘knowledge transfer.’ When Hallonsten proposes that social sciences’ unique appeal is ‘modernity’s critical conscience’, that will resonate with funders with all the attraction of a hair shirt on a sensitive skin. The problem is that the considered language of this field appears to lack the cutting edge so favoured by less ethical and less impartial disciplines. In the increasing hoopla of academic self-promotion, practitioners holding out the prospect of ‘organised scepticism’ may not attract the funding decisionmakers.

Hallonsten is also concerned about the proliferation of increasingly irrelevant and poor-quality research chasing publication in order to boost the author’s ranking in the quantitative measurements which are now used by academic institutions to award staff resources and/or promotion and to attract students.

Yet what else stands between our freedom of thought and action and the forces of business and politics that increasingly threaten them, apart from the social sciences? Do we want a world where the unaccountable monster of Google harvests our data without our knowledge or conscious consent and insidiously infiltrates our academic institutions, where Amazon can determine our consumer choice by eliminating targeted competitors, and where social media propagate fake news and campaigns of abuse while claiming not to be responsible? Bystanding Western politicians have lost control of the tax base that funds our democratic institutions, including the welfare state, to these architects of abuse, enabling them to spend on vanity projects such as ‘space research’ and their own cryogenic immortality – while education, welfare and health are starved of resources. This is indeed a society that requires a ‘critical conscience’, and Hallonsten’s book should be required reading for all politicians and academic leaders.

Land has been ‘stolen’ in two senses: the indigenous Sámi have lost the right to pursue their traditional livelihoods in certain areas, and in some cases the land has been despoiled. This remains a burning issue. A current example is Beowulf Mining’s plan to open an iron mine on Sámi pastureland near Jokkmokk, Norrbotten, as reported in the Guardian on 11 February 2022 (‘Greta Thunberg condemns UK firm’s plans for iron mine on Sami land’).

The history of the Sámi, as shown by Anna-Lill Drugge’s useful overview, has been plagued by colonisation. One result has been the imposition by the state of administrative structures that fail to take account of Sámi people’s wishes and needs. This is the subject of Elin Anna Labba’s article about samebyar, which are both administrative districts and associations of reindeer herders. Since relatively few Sámi people now live from reindeer herding, and because it is difficult to join these associations, they have all too often proven divisive. Labba quotes researcher Malin Brännström as follows: ‘It sometimes feels like the way Europeans drew colonial borders in Africa. In a Swedish context, there’s a need to draw clear lines on a map […] Yet reindeer husbandry is incredibly flexible, by nature; it depends on weather, wind, who comes down to the winter pastures and who doesn’t.’ As Labba pointedly remarks, the word sameby – which misleadingly suggests something organic, a ‘Sámi village’ – has no natural equivalent in the Sámi languages.

Language, and specifically multilingualism on the one hand and language shift on the other, is another of the anthology’s key themes, and the link with colonisation is clear. Lea Simma writes of learning Swedish almost like a foreign language. She would stammer when obliged to speak it, and, after a long day at school, came out with, ‘I don’t understand how Swedes can speak Swedish all day. My tongue is worn out.’ Inga Marja Steinfjell writes of switching between Norwegian, North Sámi and South Sámi in different family constellations. Ann-Helén Laestadius and Elin Anna Labba explore the discomfort of not fully mastering the language or languages you feel closest to. Laestadius, with a Sámi mother and a father who speaks Meänkieli (a variant of Finnish, spoken in Tornedalen), learned to speak neither language fully as a child. Labba writes movingly of the continuing struggle to make the language she loves best fully hers:

jag vill hålla kvar Gárasavvondialektens rum
dit jag inte fick komma
kan jag en dag hålla i språket, jag också
ömt lägga det mot bröstet som mitt nyfödda barn
se dörrar gläntas
efterlängtade fjäll ta form

I want to keep that room where they speak the Karesuando dialect
the room I wasn’t allowed into
will I too be able to embrace the language one day,
lay it tenderly at my breast like my newborn child
glimpse the fells I yearn for
through doors now slightly ajar

Several contributions address the legacy of racism against the Sámi. Proponents of the pseudo-scientific theories of race current between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century regarded the nomadic Sámi as a primitive people who would ultimately disappear, in line with the theories of social Darwinism. Herman Lundborg, head of Sweden’s State Institute for Racial Biology, travelled around Sápmi in the 1920s and 1930s taking skull measurements of Sámi people and photographing them like zoological specimens. In ‘Baksidan av ett släktfotografi’ (Reverse of a family photo), Lis-Mari Hjortfors voices her indignation at the realisation that her grandmother’s family were made to take part in this pseudo-scientific project whose aim was to classify ‘races’ with a view to keeping them separate. Discrimination remains even today, as detailed by Patricia Fjellgren in ‘Racismens koreografi’ (The Choreography of Racism), and Anna Elin Labba in her chilling poem about the malicious slaughter of a child’s reindeer calf (a theme that also runs through Ann-Helén Laestadius’s novel Stöld (Stolen)).

The variety of the contributions to the anthology raises the question of its target readership. In a podium discussion at the Gothenburg Book Fair, editor Patricia Fjellgren pointed out that the historical articles are useful not just to the non-Sámi majority, but also to Sámi people who have never had the opportunity to study their own history in Swedish schools. Ann-Helén Laestadius noted the importance of representing Sámi people in a way younger readers, in particular, can identify with. For anyone with an interest in the literature, arts, culture, and socio-political situation of national minorities, particularly indigenous peoples, the anthology is a rich source of inspiration.

Finally, there is a universal message in the late Paulus Utsi’s poems about the place of humans in the natural world. We would do well to reflect on our individual insignificance and the vastness of nature. As Sofia Jannok says, ‘We own nothing, not even our own time here.’

Vårt liv

Vårt liv
är som ett skidspår
på den vita vidden
som snöstormen sopar igen
redan i gryningens början.

Our life

Our life
is like ski tracks
in the white expanse:
swept away by the snowstorm
at early dawn.

From: Giela Gielain (1980). Original language: North Sámi.

‘Wind howls over the merciless defeat of summer’

Wind howls over the merciless defeat of summer,
tears in the old woman’s torn clothes;
a silver-grey streak shines already in my hair,
and the leaves are bathing in their golden blood.

Nature is suddenly surprised by a deep stillness:
a moment-before-death of waiting.
The trees stand hushed with their arms bare,
the water is washed-out and wistful
as a melancholy eye,
clouds drift uneasily away
and the last birds of passage depart the dying land –

But I
swimming in the red blood of tonight’s sun 
            will depart for the second page of life.

translated by Arthur Allen

When it comes to how words are used, there is simply an enormous tolerance in Russia for changing their meanings on rhetorical grounds. It isn’t considered odd to have a debate where each side is actually talking about different things.

I’m not sure why. Is it because rhetorical skills are so highly prized?

More likely, it’s because political debate isn’t expected to lead anywhere, as Russia doesn’t have democracy and never has. Instead, you focus on sounding good in a debate.

A functioning public discourse requires some kind of consensus on what words and terms mean. No such consensus exists in Russia. Everyone changes the meaning of words whenever they feel like it, to make it suit their own rhetoric. As a result, it’s often unclear what the debate is actually about.

In our small Nordic countries we often complain that we can only talk about one thing at a time. In Russia there are a thousand different conversations, each on its own platform, and no one cares what everyone else is talking about. When from time to time the editors back home want me to write about ‘how Russians are reacting’ to a particular event, the assignment can be impossible to carry out in practice, as there is no shared debate. What is more, issues that for us would come top of the agenda are often considered marginal in Russia, which means that ‘the Russian perspective’ is something you need a magnifying glass to search for.

In other words, it’s not true to say that Russians don’t debate, that everyone just passively accepts orders from above: it’s just that the debate takes place in so many different places that it’s near-impossible to get an overview.

It’s hard to bring about real change if you can’t even make the effort to talk about the same things.

Life in Russia has made me understand why listening is such an important part of democracy.