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Anmeldelse af Dan Ringgaard: Årsværk. En kritikers dagbog. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag 2017, 460 sider, 349 kr.

Inspired by the spatial turn in literary criticism, this article seeks to combine a traditional biographical approach of the versatile oeuvre of the late 19th Century Danish poet, painter and bon vivant Holger Drachmann (1846–1908), with a space-oriented perspective. One of the key concepts of the Scandinavian literature of the latter half of the 19th Century, the era of the so-called Modern Breakthrough, was to promote a literature that dealt with contemporary social issues; at the same time, many of the artists who adhered to this program turned their backs on everyday routine, by frequently travelling and living abroad for long periods. Especially Southern Europe, and in particular Italy was a favorite destination. In Drachmann’s oeuvre too, the lure of the South is omnipresent, but his initial infatuation with Italy shifts radically between his first (1867) and second (1876) journey to the country, from an Orientalist notion of Italy as an eroticised Nirvana, to a horrendously degenerate country. This case study proposes a spatial reading of one of Drachmann’s still well-known poems, ”Sakuntala” (1879), where the lure of travel, exoticism and erotic enticement are brought together in a poem, in which travel is a mere metaphor for the state of mind in which exotic landscapes morph into erotic spaces, while eroticist desire remains forever unfulfilled.

How does Iceland appear in postcolonial literary texts by writers from Denmark, the former colonial power? Three texts from modern Danish literature were chosen, with Iceland as their main theme and based on first hand knowledge of the country gathered through sojourns and travels by the authors: Rejse paa Island (Journey on Iceland, 1954) by Martin A. Hansen (1909-1955); Nord for Vatnajokel (North of Vatnajokull, 1994) by the writer-art historian Poul Vad (1927-2003) and Raevesletten og andre islandske omveje (The Fox Plain and other Icelandic detours, 2009) by the painter-graphic artist Per Kirkeby (1938-) and the writer Keld Zeruneith (1941-). These travelogues, in various ways, are hybrids of text and image emphasizing Iceland's exotic, insular and primarily literary qualities. Critical analysis leads to the hypothesis that these postcolonial depictions are characterized by a high degree of descriptive stylisation and aestheticism and by a prominent role of visual forms of representation. While decolonisation itself is an issue in the oldest work discussed, this is no longer the case in the two more recent books. Iceland has become a post- colonial landscape, a palimpsest-like space where political open wounds from the past are overwritten by the aesthetic gaze, which primarily focuses on the graphic qualities of the Icelandic countryside.

During the Second World War the various Scandinavian countries found themselves in fundamentally different military and political positions. Denmark and Norway were occupied from 1940 till 1945; Sweden declared itself neutral during the war; Iceland was occupied by British forces in 1940 and proclaimed its independence in 1944; meanwhile Finland was engaged in two wars, the so-called Winter War against the Soviet Union (1939–40) and, with German help, the Continuation War against the Soviets (1941–4). Norway and Finland suffered immensely, while war damage in Sweden and Denmark was relatively limited. Hence, it is not surprising that the era of the Second World War cannot be treated in the same way for all the Scandinavian countries; the political and social differences are simply too great to allow such an approach. This essay focuses mainly on Denmark. One of the reasons is the interesting role of this country’s political and cultural elites during the German occupation and the years immediately after.1 Special attention is paid to the author and cultural celebrity Martin A. Hansen (1909–55), whose works provide a good insight into the different positions and dilemmas of the Danish public and literary debate of the mid-1940s.