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Beatrice M.G. Reed, Department of Language and Literature, Volda University College Civilization in the wilderness: On Stina Aronson’s critical dialogue with the literary sanatorium tradition in Sång till polstjärnan [Song to the North Star] (1948) (Sivilisasjonen i ødemarken. Om Stina Aronsons kritiske dialog med den litterære sanatoriumstradisjonen i Sång till Polstjärnan [1948]) The article argues that Swedish author Stina Aronson renews the sanatorium as a critical literary topos in her short story collection Sång till polstjärnan [Song to the North Star] (1948). By reading two of Aronson’s texts in light of Knut Hamsun’s Siste kapittel [The Last Chapter] (1923), Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain] (1924) and Sven Stolpes’s I dödens väntrum [In the waiting room of death] (1930), it shows that Aronson related critically to central ideological and aesthetic tendencies of her time, especially to the primitivism of the interwar period, and the post-war pessimism of the 1940s. In light of the text being situated in a northern landscape, far from the urban centers in the south, the article seeks to illuminate how Aronson enriches the literary sanatorium tradition by introducing a new geographical environment, in which alternative forms of cultural belonging, class and gender identity are reflected in the tradition of sanatorium literature.