Från Framtidsland till Ödemark : Föreställningar om Norrland hos Ludvig Nordström och PO Tidholm

The essay is an analysis of the ideas about problems and possibilities concerning the northern region in Sweden, as presented and discussed by authors and journalists Ludvig Nordström and Po Tidholm, in their books Norrland i stöpsleven (1937) and Norrland (2014). The essay draws on theoretical concepts such as center and periphery, Orientalism, progress, as understood by Bernt Skovdahl, and Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment, as employed by Wendy Brown. The essay offers a discourse analysis of the representations and images of Norrland that the authors present in their works. Nordström portrays Norrland as a region with a bright future, predicated on its inhabitants’ capacity to improve their primitive mentality and start acting as entrepreneurs in the industrial age. Tidholm, though, is much more pessimistic: with bitterness and resignation, he sees a region that no one no longer cares about and where the people suffer from inferiority complex. In a comparison between the two authors three main themes are identified and developed. These are: utopia and dystopia, development and decline, and center and periphery. The essay concludes that Nordström’s and Tidholm’s views are historically conditioned. Nordström’s texts reflect notions of progress typical of modernity, whereas, produced in an era when all grand narratives have lost their credibility, Tidholm’s texts fail to imagine any potential alternatives to the situation he laments