\New Swedish Books, spring 2019 1
39 Spring 2019 Maja Hagerman (b. 1960) The Warp a
nd the Weft. Searching among Memories and Cultural Inheritance in Sweden, 260 p. Publisher Albert Bonniers Förlag www.albertbonniersforlag.se Rights Norstedts Förlag Stefan Hilding Stefan.hilding@norstedts.se Works Det rena landet: Om konsten att uppfinna sina förfäder, 2006 Försvunnen värld: Om den största arkeologiska utgrävningen någonsin i Sverige, 2011 Käraste Herman: Rasbiologen Herman Lundborgs gåta, 2015 Literary Prizes Samfundet De Nios Särskilda pris, 2009 Årets bok om svensk historia, 2011 Svenska Akademiens Axel Hirschs pris, 2016 The Warp and the Weft Maja Hagerman has written several important books on Swedish history, paying particular attention to the lingering violence in the shadows of the welfare state’s triumphs: the brutal colonisation of Sápmi; the Race Biology Department in Uppsala, whose work gave rise to racist ideologies in the 1920s. In The Warp and the Weft. Searching among Memories and Cultural Inheritance in Sweden, she returns to the questions raised by the very concept of a nation state as an imagined homogeneous community. Drawing from materials gathered on her travels around the country, she recounts her readers’ stories of ‘Swedishness’, understood not as an essence, but as a constantly shifting inner landscape. It is woven from the breath of fish and the spittle of birds, just like Gleipnir that binds the Fenrir wolf in old Norse mythology. It is a profoundly moving and yet precise narrative of a nation, continually being told by many voices, past and present. Photo: Claes Gabrielson