Labba, Elin Anna

Elin Anna Labba is a journalist and former editor of Nuorat magazine. She now works at Tjállegoahte, the Sápmi Writers’ Centre in Jokkmokk, Norrbotten, Sweden, with a mission to strengthen and emphasise Sámi literature.

In 2020 her book Sirdolaččat was awarded Sweden's most distinguished literary prize, the August Prize, for best non-fiction title. The book, a historical reportage with a lyrical tone, describes the deportation of Scandinavia's indigenous people, the Northern Sámi, during the early 20th century, thus highlighting a hidden part of Nordic history.  The settlement, a forced displacement – referred to as a “dislocation” by the authorities – initiated a long period of deportations of reindeer-keeping Northern Sámi from their homes in Norway to new lands in Sweden, and in Finland. Elin Anna Labba hails from a family that lived on a land that was seized by the authorities. This is her way to tell her own family’s story.    

Blomkvist, Nils

Nils Blomkvist was born in Motala – a small-town by Lake Vättern in central Sweden – in 1943, and after humanistic studies at the University of Uppsala, he graduated in 1979 on a monography of the medieval city of Kalmar up until the mid-fourteenth century. After that he was working as an archivist for some 10 years (head of Archives at Nordiska museet, Stockholm) followed by some 8 years at Riksantikvarieämbetet (National Board of Antiquities) and went finally (1996) to Gotland University, sharing his time between Gotland Centre for Baltic Studies (a scholarly institute) and the Department of History (teaching), being appointed Professor of History in 2004.

As a researcher he has focused on the Europeanisation process of the Baltic Rim, covering the period AD 750-1500. Already his doctoral thesis awoke some interest among researchers of the Hanse, and he is a member of the Hansischer Geschichtsverein since 1980. By generous support from the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation he was able to form the multinational and interdisciplinary research project Culture Clash or Compromise, subtitled The Importance of Regional Survival Strategies in the Europeanisation of the Baltic Rim (AD 1100-1400). This so called CCC-project was occupying some 20 scholars – archaeologists, historians and geographers representing seven countries on the Rim and its results are presented in 11 volumes of CCC papers.

For Blomkvist's central contribution to the project, see The Discovery of the Baltic (Brill, The Northern World, Leiden & Boston 2005, 775 pp.). After retirement in 2010, his interests remain the same. From later years a fully commented Swedish translation of Första Novgorod-krönikan (First Novgorod Chronicle) in co-operation with Gun Eile and Gotland museum is to be highlighted (2016), as well as a monography of – “Sveriges första författare” – the Gotlandic 13th-century Dominican friar Petrus de Dacia (Norma 2019).

Nyberg, René

René Nyberg, born in 1946, was raised in a bi-lingual environment in Helsinki. In addition to Swedish and Finnish, he learned German at an early age. He attended the specialized Deutsche Schule, where he completed both his Finnish matriculation exams and the German Reifeprüfung in 1965. Upon graduation from the University of Helsinki with a master’s degree in political science, he took a post with the Finland’s Ministry of Education. In autumn 1971, he moved on to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He devoted most of the 1970s to mastering Russian and working with the Soviet Union. His formal Russian language studies included intensive summer courses in Leningrad in 1971 and 1972, as well as daily contact with Russian in his work at the Finnish embassy in Moscow (1973–1975) and at the Finnish Consulate General in Leningrad (1976–1977). He served as the assistant secretary for the Finnish-Soviet Economic Commission (1977–1979).
Upon returning to the foreign ministry’s political department, he got involved in Nordic Security policy, and published the book “Finland and Nordic Security” in 1984, which he finalized during a sabbatical at Cornel University.
As head of the foreign ministry’s security policy department, he launched an initiative to abolish the sovereignty restrictions of Finland’s 1947 Paris Peace Treaty with the Soviet Union. 
In autumn 1990 Finland unilaterally declared the restrictions concerning the Finnish armed forces as null and void.
Nyberg served as Finland’s ambassador in Vienna, head of Finland’s CSCE delegation (1992–1995), ambassador in Moscow (2000–2004) and ambassador in Berlin (2004–2008).
He left diplomatic service in 2008 after he was invited to lead a newly formed organization for promoting the interests of Finnish industry in Russia, the East Office of Finnish Industries. He has served as East Office CEO 2008 -13.

In 2015 he published his family novel "Viimeinen juna Moskovaan" (Last Train to Moscow) that has been translated to Estonian, German, Latvian, Russian and Swedish. 

Lindquist, Sven-Olof

Born in Stockholm in 1933, Lindquist died in Visby in 2017. He was a Swedish museum director and cultural geographer.
Sven-Olof Lindquist became a doctor of philosophy in 1968 and was an extraordinary associate professor (docent) at Stockholm University from 1968 to 1971. Lindquist was a research lecturer at the Swedish National Council for Social Research 1971–1976, and then became a county antiquarian in Gotland County 1977–1979.
From 1979 to 1995, he was head of Gotland's museum "Fornsalen" (Ancient Hall). From 1995, Lindquist was head of research and leader of the project Gotland Center for Baltic Studies at the Gotland County Administrative Board and the University of Gotland.

Trotzig, Birgitta

Birgitta Trotzig, born in Gothenburg in 1929 and died in Lund in 2011. She was one of Sweden's most celebrated authors, and wrote prose fiction and non-fiction, as well as prose poetry.
Trotzig was born in Gothenburg, Sweden, as an only child. The family lived initially with her maternal grandparents in Gothenburg, later moving to the small southern city of Kristianstad, where her parents' parents worked as teachers. She graduated from grammar/high school in 1948. Trotzig returned to Gothenburg and studied literary history. She began writing for the newspaper "Aftonbladet" and for the literary magazine "Bonniers Litterära Magasin".

She married artist and sculptor Ulf Trotzig and lived in Paris from 1955 to 1969 with her husband; during this period she converted to Roman Catholicism. Through her conversion, she gained access to various aspects of French culture and to Christian and Jewish mysticism; she became very interested in San Juan de la Cruz and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Birgitta Trotzig was the recipient of many literary prizes, amongst others the Övralid Prize in 1997 and was elected to the Swedish Academy in 1993. Birgitta Trotzig lived in Lund and remained active in public life and with the various projects of the Swedish Academy for much of her later life.

Trotzig was one of Sweden's most renowned modern writers, having written several novels in which she gave voice to her Catholic faith (though her perspective is said to have been existential rather than Christian) and her dark visions. Returning themes are the death and resurrection of love. Among her novels are Sjukdomen ("The Illness") (made into the movie Kejsaren, "The Emperor," in 1979) and Dykungens dotter ("The Mud King's daughter") (1985). She also wrote essays and articles on poetry, and works of prose poems: Anima (1982) and Sammanhang ("Contexts") (1996).

Salminen, Johannes

His father was a fervid Finn and his mother an Ålander, and this made issues of belonging a vital part of his formative years in the Åland islands. Johannes Salminen’s (1925 Hammarland, Åland – 2015 Helsinki) first language was Swedish, which he put to subtle and stylish use in some twenty books. The vast majority of these were themed collections of essays, but his œuvre also includes a Ph.D. thesis in literary history, biographical studies, and epistolary dialogues. Two of these dialogic correspondences are very Baltic indeed, consisting of letters exchanged between Salminen and Jaan Kaplinski (Estonia). They resulted in Sjunger näktergalen än i Dorpat? (Can you still hear the nightingale in Tartu?) 1990 and Vita nätter och svarta (Nights white and black) 2002.
Salminen moved to the Finnish mainland for academic studies, and remained there for the rest of his life and throughout his long career with the publishing house of Söderström & Co (1956–1991). He headed this firm for thirty years, attracting writers of renown or making them such. One of his many interests as a writer in his own right was Finland-Swedish literature. Yet he firmly refused to be enlisted as a Finland-Swede: he was happy to be an Ålander based in Helsinki, a non-co-opted observer.
This stance is closely related to a recurrent motif in Salminen’s essays, that of cultural mix, cross-fertilization, overt impurity, and of liminal space. Gränsland (Borderland) 1984 deals with the threats and opportunities Finland is and has been exposed to, squeezed in between east and west. Minnet av Alexandria (Remembering Alexandria) 1988 widens the scope but the gist of the matter remains the same: the potentials of alterity, of foreign influence, even of marginality. Undret i Bagdad (The Baghdad miracle) 1997 and Islams två ansikten (The two faces of Islam) 2010 include further exercises in counterfactual thinking: e.g., what if the battle of Poitiers in 732 had ended in Arab victory?
Johannes Salminen as an essayist started out in the early sixties with a close look at Finland-Swedish positions in the country’s civil war of 1918. The subject obviously was a highly sensitive one, and backing up his case against onslaughts he honed his writing in the art of alternative reasoning. Salminen rapidly grew into a celebrated columnist and polemicist, but his main claim to fame rests on the deftly argued essay, more often than not with strong cosmopolitan underpinnings. It may look sardonic on the surface, because of opportunities lost, but there is something joyful about it because thinking makes it so.

Clas Zilliacus