A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Issue 2024, 4: Download.
Professor of human geography, CBEES. Editor of the year-book Ymer.
Professor emeritus of human geography. Recent publications: On the boundary (2004) Crossing the border (ed., 2006), Kaliningrad identity (ed., with Gunnel Bergström and Lise-Lotte Nilsson, 2009). Thomas Lundén holds the Board Chair at Baltic Worlds’ Editorial Advisory Board.
On April 22, 2024, professor Steven Seegel, University of Texas at Austin, was awarded the Vega medal from the hands of the King of Sweden in the Royal Palace in Stockholm, “for his scientific contributions to Human Geography.”
The Kaliningrad Region. A Specific Enclave in Contemporary Europe Eds., Arkadiusz Żukowski and Wojciech T. Modzelewski (Paderborn: Brill Schöningh, 2021) 336 pages
The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of state territorial regulations and restrictions against the spread of Covid-19 on the life of the population of the twin cities of Tornio and Haparanda, on the border between Finland and Sweden. To the inhabitants, the pandemic restrictions meant an oscillating “life world” of opportunities and containments, affecting them differently, often depending on decisions taken by distant authorities and for reasons irrelevant to the local borderland.
Den stora fröstölden. Svält, plundring och mord i växt-förädlingens århundrade [The Great Seed Theft. Famine, starvation and murder in the century of plant breeding.] Jens Nordquist. (Lund: Historiska media, 2020), 333 pages.
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.
The concept of nation is not only, as is often assumed, related to states but to the people who feel that they belong to a community based on a common identity, wherein language and culture are often emphasized as something that knit people together. History, as well as contemporary experience, reveal the notion that state nationalism tends to oppress local languages and cultures. However, in a cultural nation interpretation, all national minorities, while being citizens of their state of domicile, are per definition not members of the majority nationality.
In the period between the two world wars, Swedish interest in the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was in general extremely limited, whereas from the other side Sweden was seen as a geopolitically inactive power and consequently as a possible source of support and an ally against the Baltic states’ two greater neighbors, the Soviet Union and Germany.
Mobility and regionalization: Changing patterns of air traffic in the Baltic Sea Region in connection to European integration. Jan Henrik Nilsson, Geographia Polonica 2018. Vol. 91:1, pp 77–93.
Dystopia’s Provocateurs: Peasants, State and Informality in the Polish-German Borderlands, Edyta Materka, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2017, 234 pages.
The 400th anniversary of the peace treaty between Sweden and Russia has for obvious reasons been in the shadow of […]