The outbreak of the Corona virus pandemic has led to a number of legal measures, varying in time and space, over the Baltic Sea area and neighboring states. But the actual distribution of the pandemic does not necessarily follow the administrative territories that form the statistical basis for decisions. While usually defined for specific territories (whole states or administrative areas), the effects on peoples’ daily behavior have been particularly strong in the borderlands. In March 2020, suddenly a sharp line was created along the hitherto almost invisible border between Tornio-Haparanda, Finnish police and border guards checked the line, and only a few people were admitted to cross, based on strict definition of purpose. The reason for the closure was a high incidence of illness and deaths in Sweden.
By
Thomas Lundén
Both the Alliance, the Red-Greens and the Sweden Democrats seek to profile themselves as the defenders of the welfare state, against the allegedly anti-welfare policies of the others. This rhetorical scramble has not, however, resulted in any deeper debate on the reach of the welfare state and the scope of solidarity. In Sweden as well as elsewhere, polarization proves a fertile ground for the deployment of alternative facts, fake news and propagandistic hyperbole.
By
Carl Marklund
The 400th anniversary of the peace treaty between Sweden and Russia has for obvious reasons been in the shadow of […]
By
Thomas Lundén
The Russian Byzantinist Sergei Averintsev writes in a critical article about laughter in Bakhtin’s interpretation of popular medieval culture that Bakhtin makes laughter too absolute and that he was wrong in maintaining that it has nothing to do with violence. I apply the reasoning of both authors on a historical phenomenon: the witch trials in Sweden, focusing on one precise geographical place. There seem to be many factors behind the witch trials, but their cultural manifestations demonstrate the qualities of reverse or carnival, culture although without having laughter as their main feature, and including violence as a main element.
By
Per-Arne Bodin
Sweden’s indigenous people, the Sami, have struggled for years to get more attention. With little result. But now something is happening.
By
Påhl Ruin
How the realist approach during the years around 1970 played out in the force field of society and the psyche, the collective realm and the individual, is exemplified by our two very different Swedish case studies. Svedberg’s political narratives compose montages in which fictional, metaphorical figures are inserted side by side with political leaders drawn from newspaper clips. Kåks’s allegory-like oil painting shows a stone worker working in the face of his imminent disappearance. They both reveal myths as opposed to historically manifested commodity relations.
By
Charlotte Bydler and Dan Karlholm
Christer Lokind: DC-3:an. Kalla krigets hemlighet [The DC-3: the secret of the Cold War]. Stockholm: Medströms bokförlag, 2014.
By
Thomas Lundén
The evolution of political contacts between exile activists in Sweden and the occupied homeland sheds light on the largely underresearched phenomenon of anticommunist cooperation between capitalist and communist societies and challenges the narrative of the impermeability of the “Iron Curtain” between the Soviet Union and the West.
By
Lars Fredrik Stöcker
During the war von Otter worked at the Swedish legation in Berlin. In 1942 he met an SS officer, Kurt Gerstein, who had witnessed killings by gas at the Bełżec extermination camp. Gerstein joined the SS to oppose the Nazi regime from within and he asked von Otter to report to his government on the atrocities. At that time the official policy in Sweden was to not anger Nazi Germany by publishing reports on war crimes. There is much obscurity about von Otter’s report.
By
Mose Apelblat
+ Cecilia Notini Burch, A Cold War Pursuit: Soviet Refugees in Sweden, 1945–54. Stockholm: Santérus Academic Press Sweden, 2014. 359 pages.
By
Ann-Marie Ekengren
Issue 2020, 4 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.
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