Later I found special sections for Anglophone science fiction and fantasy (both in English and Translated), but in Sweden at least, there was very very little in the way of “native” sci-fi and fantasy by dedicated authors of the speculative fiction “ghetto”–on the other hand, flip through the history of Scandi literature a bit, and you’ll find otherwise “respectable” authors from Karin Boye and Harry Martinson to Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gustafsson occasionally slumming in the “ghetto” to greater and lesser degrees (sorry, maybe not the nicest parallel…).

When I first studied in Sweden over a decade ago (yikes…), fantasy seemed to only show up in the children’s section (at least in the bookstores I visited back in Fall 2001). I was especially happy to have Johanna visit, as much of her writing fit perfectly with my course on Scandinavian Other Worlds, and I enjoyed chatting with her about (and hearing her speak on) the status of the unrealistic genres (sci-fi and fantasy) in Scandinavia in general, and Finland in particular. The Out of Scandinavia program at Gustavus is pretty cool, I have to say– previous artists in residence include Jonas Hassen Khemiri (in the news recently for this letter), Max von Sydow (who showed up in the first Conan movie, so you know he’s a big deal), and Liv Ullmann. OK, OK, this cover is in fact not at all representative of the “Finnish Weird” or Johanna’s work, but hey, it works into the genealogy…įor our Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence at Gustavus this year we had the Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo.

Troll by Johanna Sinisalo