SCANDINAVIA

   This entry refers primarily to Sweden and Norway; there are separate entries for DENMARK and FINLAND. Scandinavia has always been somewhat isolated from the main roads of European cultural development, and never more so than during the 18th century, when the Age of Enlightenment swept across the rest of Europe. Outside the mainly French-speaking court, Scandinavia was poor and starving, mainly agricultural, and crushed byrepeated, ruinous wars. It is perhaps not surprising that excursions into fantastic literature were few: Scandinavia had nothing to compare with the French Voyages imaginaires, a 36-vol series published from 1787 andrunning from LUCIAN to CYRANO DE BERGERAC to Jonathan SWIFT. The first noted Scandinavian example of fantastic literature was Danish (DENMARK): Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum (1741 in Latin; exp 1745; trans anon as AJourney to the World Under-Ground. By Nicolas Klimius 1742 UK; vt A Journey to the World Underground 1974 US) by Ludwig HOLBERG. This witty journey into a HOLLOW EARTH, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Swift, is regarded as a classic and has never been out of print. In Sweden, Olof von Dalin (1708-1763) published in his magazine Then Swanska Argus an amusingpolitical story about extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, "Saga om Erik hin Gotske" ("Tale of Erik of the Goths") (1734), and in Norway there was the early TIME-TRAVEL play Anno 7603 (1781) by John Hermann Wessel (1742-1785). But these were isolated examples. Fantastic literature waspopular, but most of it was what we would today call HEROIC FANTASY, with sword-toting heroes, maidens in distress, sentient dragons, etc. The first Scandinavian novel that can be considered as modern sf, with everythingthat description implies, appeared as late as 1878: Oxygen och Aromasia("Oxygen and Aromasia") (1878) by the Swedish journalist Claes Lundin (1825-1908). Unfortunately, it bore unmistakeable signs that Lundin hadread the German book Bilder aus der Zukunft ("Images of the Future") (coll 1878) by Kurd LASSWITZ, published in Breslau earlier that same year.Lundin's version is a tale set a few hundred years hence in a failed UTOPIA; it is a funny SATIRE bursting with then-new sf ideas-time travel, tv, moving sidewalks, ALIENS, airships and SPACESHIPS, and even an interesting TIME PARADOX. It is still eminently readable; a new edition was published as recently as 1974.Again, however, this was an isolated example. Lundin wrote no more sf - he is today mostly remembered as the mentor of August Strindberg (1849-1912) - and no new talents appeared to take his place. Although the first book ever written about sf, Camille FLAMMARION's Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes reels (1864; trans asReal and Imaginary Worlds 1865 US), was translated into Swedish as early as 1867 and Jules VERNE's novels were translated into the Scandinavian languages as soon as they appeared in France, few indigenous authors tried their hands. Of the 286 straightforward sf novels published 1870-1900 in Sweden, the leading literary market in Scandinavia, the overwhelmingmajority were translations of the popular foreign sf authors of the time: Verne, Flammarion, Lasswitz, Mor JOKAI, Andre LAURIE and H.G. WELLS. Therewas an early attempt at a Swedish sf magazine, Stella - 4 irregular issues Apr 1886-Aug 1888, with short stories by these foreign authors and ascattering of anonymous material that may have been by local hands - but it was much before its time and vanished without trace.Very little happened in Scandinavia until the explosive arrival on the Swedish literary scene of Otto Witt (1875-1923). Originally a mining engineer, he worked in Germany until 1912, then returned to Sweden firmly resolved to win fame and fortune. (Interestingly, he had studied at the Technicum in Bingen, Germany, at the same time as Hugo GERNSBACK, later to launch thefirst US SF MAGAZINE, AMAZING STORIES, and Karl Hans Strobl, later to launch the first sf/fantasy magazine in AUSTRIA, Der Orchideengarten. There is no evidence that they met.) To this end Witt wrote dozens of sfnovels, all bursting with new and usually harebrained ideas which nobody else took seriously. He can be thought of as a Swedish Hugo Gernsback but with ten times the ego. His many novels were merely vehicles for his crackpot theories; Hur manen erovrades ("How the Moon was Conquered") (1915) treated the creation of the MOON, Guldfursten ("The Prince ofGold") (1916) proposed a sure-fire way of making gold, and so on. But his great accomplishment was the creation of Sweden's first modern sf magazine, Hugin, which ran for 85 issues 1916-20, preceded by a few irregular issues published to test the market. According to its cover, Hugin offered "scientific novels, scientific causeries, inventivesketches, adventure stories and scientific fairy-tales". Inspiration probably came from German and French sf magazines, like the German Der LUFTPIRAT UND SEIN LENKBARES LUFTSCHIFF series, but the style was entirelyWitt's own. Hugin was unique among sf magazines: written, edited and published by Witt, advocating in fictionalized form every mad idea he could think of - as if John W. CAMPBELL had extended some of his more notorious editorials into short stories that filled every issue of ASF. Witt even wrote the advertisements as sf shorts, complete with kind wordsabout the sponsor's products!In Norway Ovre Richter-Frich (1872-1945) issued more than 20 popular novels from 1911 detailing the adventures of the superscientist Jonas Fjeld.Until now, inspiration for Scandinavian sf had come mostly from Germany and France. After WWI, however, UK authors - and to some extent Italian and Russian futurists - became more noticeable. Wells, Vladimir MAYAKOVSKY, Mikhail BULGAKOV and Antonio Sant'Elia(1888-1916) represented a sort of European New Wave in the field. A very influential Swedish novel, Kallocain (1940; trans Gustav Lannestock 1966 US) by Karin BOYE drew heavily on My (written 1920; trans as We 1924 US)by Yevgeny ZAMIATIN and Soviet "machinism" theories. Then US influence grew stronger as the miseries of WWII diverted the attentions of European sf writers and readers to more important matters, such as survival. Most of Scandinavia felt the full impact of the war on its own territory, especially Finland, which had to fight Germany and the USSR both singly and simultaneously. Sweden, however, was largely outside WWII, and here the world's first weekly sf magazine, Jules Verne-Magasinet ("The Jules Verne Magazine") started in 1940, offering mostly translated USPULP-MAGAZINE stories. It lasted 332 issues before dying in 1948; later it was resurrected as a bimonthly which is still being published. After WWII came other magazines: the Norwegian Tempo-Magazinet, the Swedish Hapna! and Galaxy, and the Finnish Aikamme. During the first boom in Scandinavian sf, in the mid-1950s, there were 4 sf magazines and over a dozen book series being published. Interest was fuelled by Harry MARTINSON's Aniara (1953 Cikada; exp 1956; trans as Aniara: A Review of Man in Time and Space1963 UK), a book-length poem about the starship Aniara which was later made into an opera (MUSIC); Martinson received the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature.Unlike the case in the English-speaking countries, fantasticliterature in Scandinavia - and, indeed, in mainland Europe as a whole - was never trapped in the sf ghetto; one is tempted to suggest that this was because Europe succeeded in exporting Hugo Gernsback, so that he created the sf ghetto elsewhere. Although there is in fact an unimportant fringe sf ghetto in Scandinavia - centring on cheap paperback translations from English and German that are sold at newsstands but never in bookstores - in general Scandinavian sf is published in trade editions, sold in book stores and treated by reviewers with the same respect as any other modern literature. This is because fantastic literature has always been part of the Scandinavian literary mainstream, not generally being regarded as generic; the line between sf and fantasy is very hazy, and most Scandinavian authors have at one time or another ventured into the field. The enormous popularity in Scandinavia today of Dutch and Latin American MAGIC REALISM is probably also a consequence of this historicalattitude. By way of example, we can note that, when Frederik POHL's and C. M. KORNBLUTH's THE SPACE MERCHANTS (1953) first appeared in Sweden in1962, it did so in a series of books of social criticism published by FIB, a company owned by the Labour Government.In short, Scandinavia is much like the rest of continental Europe in having no specialized sf industry but instead a lively world of fantastic literature in the old European tradition, drawing its succour from E.T.A. HOFFMANN, Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), the German Sturm und Drang, the French 'pataphysics (AlfredJARRY; IMAGINARY SCIENCE) and Italian and Russian Futurism, rather than from the world of English-language sf. Where GENRE SF exists, it is confined to fans and FANDOM. Much of this sort of sf has traditionally been published by specialist houses, of which Delta, in Sweden, was, until it folded in 1991, the largest, with a hardcover book series containing more than 300 volumes. Among Scandinavian authors to be published by the specialist houses are Borje Crona (1932-), Carl Johan Holzhausen (1900-1989), Denis Lindbohm (1927-), Bertil Martenson (1945-) and SvenChrister Swahn (1933-) in Sweden, Erkki Ahonen in FINLAND, Oyvind Myrhe (1945-) in Norway and Niels E. Nielsen (1924-) in Denmark. Sweden's Sture Lonnerstrand (1919-) played a major role in popularizing sf, co-editing Hapna! and writing many articles and fictions, such as the juvenile Rymdhunden ("The Space Dog") (1954). All these authors are very popular and eminently readable. However, Lindbohm, for many years a leading light in Swedish fandom, is now writing mainly about mysticism and reincarnation, while Martenson, also very popular in Sweden, now writes only FANTASY.Other sf authors have left genre sf or were never part of it, their books being usually published by mainstream houses and without the "sf" label; they include Jon Bing (1944-) and Tor Age Bringsvaerd (1939-) in Norway, Sam J. LUNDWALL in Sweden and Kullervo Kukkasjarvi (1938-) in FINLAND. Bringsvaerd, in particular, is highly respected in the Scandinavian literary world as a writer of extraordinary merits, while hiscountryman Knut Faldbakken (1941-) achieved international bestsellerdom with his utopian novels Aftenlandet ("The Evening Land") (1972) and Sweetwater ("Sweetwater") (1974). Lundwall has also written manyinfluential CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF, which have to date (1992) been published in 32 languages. John-Henri Holmberg (1949-),another prominent Scandinavian critic, is less known outside his native Sweden. Slightly external to the sf field are a number of MAINSTREAMWRITERS who occasionally write sf, and then almost inevitably to bestselling effect. The well known Swedish author P.C. JERSILD has written several enormously successful sf novels, including En levande sjal (1980; trans Rika Lesser as A Living Soul 1988 UK), about a disembodied brain sloshing about in a glass box, Efter floden (1982; trans Lone Tygesen Blecher and George Blecher as After the Flood 1986 UK), a post-nuclear-HOLOCAUST story, and Geniernas aterkomst ("The Return of the Geniuses") (1987), describing mankind's history from the very beginnings to the distant future. The Swedish journalist George Johansson (1946-) has written a very successful series of young-adult novels set against an increasingly enormous galactic backdrop, starting with Uppbrott fran Jorden ("Flight from Earth") (1979). Among the biggest and most surprisingbestsellers in Scandinavia during the 1980s were several sf novels by Peter Nilson (1937-), starting with Arken ("The Ark") (1982) and goingthrough to his most recent, Avgrundsbok ("The Book of the Abyss") (1987), about an improbable Queen of Sheba travelling in space and time. Other authors of note in this context include Anders BODELSEN in Denmark, Axel JENSEN in Norway and Per WAHLOO in Sweden.Sf in Scandinavia has been hitby the same problems as in the rest of continental Europe. Book sales are very much down in all the Scandinavian countries, and there are currently (1992) no specialist publishing houses in operation. There is only one sfmagazine in Sweden - Jules Verne-Magasinet-although the Finnish SEMIPROZINE Aikakone ("Time Machine") is thriving (FINLAND). All told,just over 100 sf books are published each year in Scandinavia, of which about two-thirds are translations from other European languages and English. About half the total are published in Sweden which, due to itssize, remains Scandinavia's leading sf nation.The first Scandinavian sf CONVENTION was held in Lund, Sweden, in 1956. Since then conventions havebeen held in all the Scandinavian countries, although the first Finnish convention did not come until 1982.

   SJL/J-HH