Regathering the Lost Lands

Introducing my new column for the Norwegian newspaper Klassekampen

Einar Jolin, Stockholm, overlooking the Skeppsbron, 1955

Most of you know me from the Balkans–from my writing about Serbian politics, from my time running the website Balkanist, from my many years living in Belgrade (with stints in Sarajevo and Zagreb). But few are aware that before all of that, I had a perfectly quiet and self-contained Scandinavian life with a Swedish-Danish husband whose father worked for Lars von Trier and summers spent drinking elderflower saft and swimming in the Baltic Sea. In recent years, I’ve found myself gravitating towards that part of Europe again, though it wasn’t initially deliberate. New Left Review’s Oliver Eagleton plucked me from Balkan obscurity in 2022 when he asked me to cover Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. I figured I could do it: I’d been married to a Swede, which meant I’d experienced all of their strange little national neuroses firsthand. I had taken classes at the Scandinavian department at Berkeley, so had a (very) basic grasp of the language, enough, at least, to understand what was being written about in the newspapers. Besides, it was striking that the rhetoric around joining NATO in the Nordic countries was so similar to what it had been in the Balkans a few years prior: some Swedish commentators, just like Montenegro’s then-President Milo Đukanović in 2015, were describing NATO accession as a Huntingtonesque “civilizational choice”–as “joining the West”.

Me near a cliff in Skåne, southern Sweden, many years ago

As it would turn out, that piece changed my entire career. It was one of the most well-received articles I’ve ever written, and it freed me from the shackles and tedium of Balkan correspondence. These days, I get asked to write about everything from JD Vance to Silicon Valley to elections in Estonia: truly a dream career for a novelty seeker with crippling ADHD.

My personal history with Scandinavia is only part of why I was so thrilled to be contacted by the editors of the Norwegian daily newspaper Klassekampen earlier this year and asked if I would be open to writing a regular column. The paper puts out great writing and interviews and is beautifully designed. With my new rotating “Horisont” column, I’ll also be in excellent company: I’ll be alternating with Francesca Borri and William Shoki, among other greats. The focus of my column should mostly be trans-Atlantic affairs, though for my first, I wrote about the fissures opening up in MAGA since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran–a contest we might describe crudely as unfolding between the “America First” and so-called “Israel First” factions. Scandinavian friends can read it now. Coincidentally, on the day that Klassekampen reached out to me about writing a column, I also got news that I’d been accepted for a writing residency in Finland for the month of August. I’m looking forward to once again spending summertime in the Nordic countries.

In other euro news, you can also read my “Requiem for the Populist Decade” in Spanish over on Spain’s El Salto. The paper is taking stock of ten years of Brexit and Trump, as I imagine many others will be doing this year.