A Journey into the Architectures of Dystopian Sweden: The Cases of Avblattefieringsprocessen and Nattavaara

1 Introduction

Dystopian literary production in Sweden has increased in the last decade, fuelled by epochal changes, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, a growing concern for climate change, refugee crisis, wars, fights for human rights, and conservative political shifts. Recent literary cases are the following: Zulmir Bečević’s Avblattefieringsprocessen (2014), where Sweden is ruled by a semi-totalitarian party which forces people with migration background into a process of full assimilation to Swedishness called Avblattefiering (‘De-migrantisation’); Camilla Sten’s En annan gryning (2015), set in a near-future Sweden ruled by a xenophobic party, where fear dominates society and citizens are divided into different biological classes; Johannes Anyuru’s De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar (2017), where a fascist regime comes to power after an Islamic terror attack, forcing people to sign a Citizenship Contract (Medborgarkontrakt) and committing to vaguely defined Swedish values; Jan Stefan Axell’s series Smittans år (2019–2021), which focuses on the consequences of a new pandemic; Thomas Engström’s and Margit Richert’s Nordmark trilogy (2020–2022), set in a future where Norrland is separated from Sweden; Jens Lapidus’ Paradis City (2021), where a ‘Special Areas Act’ is in force, and a wall separates Stockholm from Järva area with sophisticated surveillance regulating human circulation; Stina Nilsson’s trilogy Det Svarta (2020–2022) characterized by a fantastic tone through the presence of supernatural creatures; Lovisa Wistrand’s novel Blodskymning (2023), set in 2083 in a Sweden ruled by a feminist-driven regime.

The significant increase in dystopias within the Swedish literary field has given rise to what we might define as an authentic dystopian turn which, however, finds very solid ground, since Swedish fiction also offers some veritable chef d’oeuvre of this genre: Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye, Aniara: en revy om människan i tid och rum (1956) by Harry Martinson, and Efter Floden (1982) by Per Christian Jersild.

This recent dystopian turn has pervaded not only the literary market, but also the cultural debate: in 2019, the think tank Smedjan (affiliated with the liberal magazine Timbro) asked five authors involved in a project called Sverige 2050: En dystopi?,^[1] to write five short stories about their depiction of Sweden in 2050, which were all written picturing the future in dark shades.

Of the texts briefly presented above, two will be analysed in this study: Avblattefieringsprocessen by Zulmir Bečević and Nattavaara by Thomas Engström and Margit Richert. Both novels vividly illustrate the socio-political landscapes and systemic structures of the recent dystopian turn, providing a critical lens on how architectures are manipulated to enforce conformity and segregation. Bečević’s exploration of identity and assimilation, alongside Engström and Richert’s depiction of survival in a desolate North, underscore the nuanced interplay between environment and oppression. Moreover, analysing these works will highlight the transformative, and often destructive, role of architecture as a metaphor of control and surveillance, which are two core elements of the Swedish dystopian turn.

2 Theoretical Background

Before delving into a detailed analysis of the chosen novels, it is necessary to define dystopia as a concept and genre, and how it intersects with architectures.

Etymologically, the term stems from the Greek compound δυσ, ‘bad’ and τ o ́ π o ς , ‘place’ and, true to its etymology, it means ‘bad place’. As the Western literary tradition suggests, a dystopia provides a harsh criticism of the present, taking current threats to the extreme, thus working as a descriptor of a society gone ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. In this study, we employ the concept of dystopia according to Frédéric Claisse and Pierre Delvenne’s definition of the genre as “the depiction of a dark future based on the systematic amplification of current trends and features. Thus, dystopia relates to a complex narrative posture that relies on the critical observation of a threatening present that would lead to an apocalyptic future ‘if nothing were done”’ (Claisse and Delvenne 2014, 155–156).

By depicting fictional worlds, dystopias’ function is to make readers aware of our real-life world, prompting them to question not just the boundaries between real and fictional worlds, but rather the invisible threats posed by the real world. Therefore, it should be pointed out that dystopias “provide a counter-narrative that can inspire us to question and resist the negative trends while critically assessing any changes presented as positive” (Marks 2005, 236). By presenting alternative worlds, dystopias urge us to ask ourselves several questions: “[How] does our society differ from what is represented? Can we discern elements of the dystopian world in our world? How are we better (or worse) off than the society portrayed?” (Kammerer 2012, 105).

We distinguish several sub-genres related to dystopia, such as biopolitical, bio-ethical, techno-, eco-dystopia, and many others (Sands 2017). What should be emphasized, however, is that at their core lie dark depictions of real or imaginary societies that show what we can change in our time. In the Swedish literary field, a particularly salient sub-genre is biopolitical dystopia, i.e. a representation of society as fully dysfunctional, thus typically portrayed as a dismal or dehumanising nightmare of state control over bodies and their disposition in public spaces (Trotta and Sadri 2020, 2). Specifically, biopolitical dystopia has an extrapolative-critical function, “identifying something already taking place in society and then employing the resources of imaginative literature to extrapolate to some conceivable, though not inevitable, future state of affairs” (Seeger and Davison-Vecchione 2019, 55).

One of the modalities by which social dysfunction and state control are manifested in literary texts is the representation of spaces and, in particular, architectures. As the art of building, architecture gives concrete form to the world we inhabit, while literature, as the art of writing and the art of time (Zoran 1984, 310), provides a symbolic form for the same world. The intersection between architecture and literature is well explicated by the literary scholar David Spurr, according to which architectural and literary works are the expression of the functions of a specific period, since both tell us something about the time in which we live (Spurr 2012, 3). In particular, the recent dystopian turn in Sweden provides several interesting cases of liminal spaces and architectures related to the function of surveillance, control, and confinement. On careful analysis of the term, ‘dystopia’ seems to perfectly include both dimensions, as it incorporates the concept of place by being closely bound to a proleptic temporal projection. i.e. a time of narration built on anticipation.

As a tool of knowledge, architecture has not solely to do with concepts such as volume, extension, materiality and three-dimensionality, but rather it also works as an instrument to exercise power (Foucault 1995) in a given setting. In the case studies analysed, dystopian governments exercise spatial control through threatening architectures, where bodies are managed according to principles of surveillance and punishment (Foucault 1995; Bouet 2018), mirroring a semi-totalitarian shift towards the use of State power to transform some places into places for ‘the Others’, where the rule of law is altered.

Such spaces of otherness where surveillance and punishment prevail can be called, adopting a term employed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault, heterotopias. During a lecture given in 1967, Foucault coined this term, composed of τɛρoς (different, other), and τ o ́ π o ς (place):

There are also, probably in every culture, places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites […] are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. […] Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias (Foucault 1986, 24).

Unlike a utopia or a dystopia, a heterotopia is an existing and localizable place situated outside any other place. This spatial concept is not to be understood as a ‘non-place’, but rather as a contestation of all the places of society. For this reason, Foucault also defines heterotopias as counter-spaces. Analysing spaces and architectures as heterotopias helps to frame dystopian architectures’ uncanny ability to transform our present into the determinate past of something yet to come (Määttä 2020, 138).

As the novels analysed frame a political scenario featuring measures and infrastructures where human freedoms are restricted to the extreme, they can be framed as heterotopia of deviation, defined by Foucault as places “in which individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm are placed” (1986, 24).

3 The Scenario of a Dystopian Context for Dystopian Literature

How can we associate the concept of dystopia with Sweden, and how do architectures assume a heterotopian character in Swedish literature? Currently, concerning what Kammerer terms as “our own situation” and “our world” (2012, 105), we see how migration, multiculturalism, crime and climate change have become central in the Swedish political agenda to face issues that are injecting ‘moral panic’ into society, among others an increased number of shootings in the whole country, especially in the Stockholm region, and, not least, the Örebro school shooting, occurred on the 4th of February, 2025.^[2]

As a democracy characterised by a long-lasting humanitarianism, Sweden has been considered as a moral superpower (Dahl 2006), equipped with a moderate, and relatively humane, criminal justice system (Franko, Van der Woude, and Barker 2019, 57). This aspect is central in this article, as the dystopias analysed below display a dramatic reversal of Swedish exceptionalism, i.e. the representation of Sweden as a beacon of secular values in the world (Jensen and Loftsdóttir 2022; Milani et al. 2022). As is well known, a fundamental element of Swedish exceptionalism is neutrality, which is now officially lost in light of the country’s entry into NATO in March 2024. In addition to humanitarianism and neutrality, a third constitutive element of this exceptionalism is welfare, which is now increasingly linked to a collapsological discourse embodied in the end of the folkhem, a central metaphor for Sweden, understood as an expression by which a homogeneous Swedish society should be protected by an efficient welfare state. Folkhem was used publicly as a socialdemocratic term intended as a metaphor for Sweden, articulating the idea of a democratic, egalitarian and solidarity-based society where the state would take care of the citizens (Hall 1999, 847).

Over time, however, and especially since the entry of the far-right party Sverigedemokraterna into the Swedish Parliament in 2010, there has been a populist re-appropriation of the term folkhem, which has been reinterpreted as a metaphor for an ethno-culturally homogeneous Sweden ruled by a once efficient welfare State (Önnerfors 2022). In other words, folkhem describes a retrotopian paradise lost to globalization, multiculturalism, loss of Swedish values and shrinking welfare mainly blamed on the growing number of immigrants (Andersson 2009, 240). Retrotopia is a concept we borrow from Zygmunt Bauman, by which the Polish-British sociologist and philosopher described a spatial-temporal dimension thriving on “visions located in the lost/stolen/abandoned but undead past” (2017, XV), where the main concerns are no longer political issues of equality, but “personal security, something that can be linked indirectly to […] law and order, and any punitive regime of securitization” (Önnerfors 2022, 70). A social issue of present-day Sweden is that non-white people often experience exclusion, discrimination, and the constant need to prove themselves as Nordic people (Lundström and Hübinette 2020; Osanami Törngren 2022), where folkhem has come to represent a utopia “without doubt meant for ethnic Swedes, although this was never acknowledged or thought to be necessary to acknowledge” (Hettne, Sörlin, and Østergård 2006, 40).

Today, looking at the political agenda of the so-called Tidö agreement (Tidöavtal) after the latest conservative shift at the General Elections of 2022,^[3] we see an ideological change, where homeland security has become a subject to safeguard by judging the right to exclude bodies as justified and necessary. As an example, the conservative government led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Moderaterna) has introduced harsher criminal policies against murders and shootings through a system of time- and geographically-limited Security zones (Säkerhetszoner, generally known as Visitation Zones, Visitationszoner), to intensify the work against gangs and prevent shootings and explosions.^[4] Swedish Parliament has approved this legislative proposal, which came into force in April 2024, including cutting-edge measures, such as, among others, anonymous witnesses, residence bans, Swedish culture tests, and the abolition of permanent permits. Interestingly, in the aforementioned Paradis City, Lapidus imagines a Sweden where a law come into force in 2025 introduces such zones, which curiously enough, as in the recent legislative measure, are called Visitationszoner, in the vulnerable neighbourhoods of Järva.

In the areas of education, culture and citizenship, the new moderate-led government is reportedly planning to introduce a new Swedish literary canon which, according to the government, should be a useful tool for education, community and inclusion.^[5]

This conservative turn introduced by the Tidö agreement and its developments led to a deterioration of Sweden’s image, both internally and to the eyes of the world, portraying Swedish society as precarious and, therefore, prone to a collapse of the socio-economic, humanitarian and political standards that had made it proverbially exceptional.

Another important notion that constitutes Swedish exceptionalism is the assumption that Sweden has never actively participated in colonial enterprises. As has been widely demonstrated, this is not only incorrect (Rantonen and Savolainen 2002; Loftsdóttir and Jensen 2012), but even today the Kingdom of Sweden maintains precarious and conflictual relations with various indigenous peoples in the far north, especially in Sápmi, where the Swedish language and culture have been imposed by disrupting significantly the Sámi cultures and languages in what is fully defined a colonial enterprise (Fur 2013). The Swedish colonisation of Sápmi started in the 16th century, resulting in a significant expansion of iron production (Evans and Rydén 2013). Today, the region is still exploited for its natural resources, which are systematically monopolised by the central government. This historical notion is important to better understand the background of the novel Nattavaara and to frame the reason why Engström and Richert have depicted a future where Norrland separates from Sweden.

Considering the twists and turns that historical vicissitudes are determining Sweden’s future course, the dystopian narratives published in the last decade seem to somehow anticipate or at least draw attention to certain warning signals that the present is launching.

Acting as signals, dystopian novels act as spotlights for critical readers as they are imbued with an attitude of profound circumspection towards the future defined by Claisse and Delvenne as “enlightened catastrophism”, namely “a realistic depiction of the future as if it had already happened and nothing could be done to stop it” (2014, 166). Linked to this concept is the ethical approach to catastrophe, theorised by the French scholar Jean-Pierre Dupuy in his article “The precautionary principle and enlightened doomsaying” from 2012: to become aware of the catastrophe, we must believe in the certainty that it will take place, and adjust our behaviour accordingly. Therefore, an enlightened approach to catastrophe interprets an event, whatever it may be, as perpetually imminent. Dupuy explains that catastrophe always seems improbable to us, somehow relegated to the realm of uncertainty; however, when it comes we always find ourselves unprepared (2012, 587). Nevertheless, catastrophe needs to be necessary, because thinking of it as inevitable allows us to acquire a critical awareness to try to avoid it.

4 Aim of the Paper

Given the short but necessary cultural, political, and social contextualisation, the aim of this study is to understand how technology can play a crucial role in shaping dystopian imaginaries made of architectural representations that inform a society disempowered and fragmented from within by regimes of surveillance, punishment and contingent human circulation. The object of analysis is the way bodies are disciplined according to a technological regime of security, where internment camps are the dominant architectures of Avblattefieringsprocessen’s and Nattavaara’s settings, regulated by detailed legal frameworks and statutes of citizenship to defend an intrinsically white and retrotopian Swedishness.

The main argument is that both novels inform the dystopian turn with strong collapsological tones, depicting an age of extremes, in which social stability and security shrink while inequalities between people grow. Against the backdrop of Cathrine Thorleifsson’s concept of “Swedish Dystopia”, coined as a sociological tool to construct an image of Sweden as an example of the dangers posed by pursuing naïve migration policies (Thorleifsson 2019), this article frames the dystopian representation in fiction of a Sweden exposed to (1) a threat posed by a “great ethno-religious-cultural displacement” (Juhász and Szicherle 2017), resulting in criminalisation of Swedish citizens with foreign (most frequently extra-European) background (Jensen and Loftsdóttir 2022); (2) Collapse of human freedoms and rights, and internal separations due to an exacerbation of war conflicts and environmental and humanitarian crises.

As these crucial elements are central to each text, the above-mentioned element of Sweden as tantamount to Nordic exceptionalism will serve as a frame to analyse the (at least fictional) subversion “to the argument that generous and inclusionary welfare states are less likely to rely on coercive means to respond to social problems and are more likely to maintain mild and humane prison conditions out of respect for persons inside” (Milani et al. 2022, 58).

5 Case Studies: A Short Profile

An important feature of political dystopias is that they work, as defined by the literary scholars Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, as “critical dystopias” (2003, 7), presenting the issues and reflecting on the challenges they envision in our time, and opening up for solutions. Against this backdrop, both Avblattefieringsprocessen and Nattavaara share a shift from high-pitch moralism to brutally realistic pragmatism, where social problems related to culture clashes, and environmental crisis are tackled drastically to rescue a lost folkhem or a specific region.

Zulmir Bečević is a Swedish author and academic born in 1982 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He moved to Sweden as a refugee in 1992. Bečević has written several novels and children’s books, often exploring identity, migration, and social justice. His debut novel was Resan som började med ett slut (2006), while other notable works are Svenhammeds journaler (2009), nominated for the Augustpriset, and Avblattefieringsprocessen, which will be analysed below.

Thomas Engström was born in 1975. He is a jurist, novelist and journalist, who has authored political thrillers focussing on democracy in Europe. Margit Richert was born in 1981. She is a novelist and columnist. The Nordmark trilogy is their first literary collaboration, resulting in the novels Nattavaara (2020), Armasjärvi (2021), and Talvatis (2022). The Nordmark trilogy offers a thought-provoking blending of dystopian elements with the Scandinavian tradition of Nordic noir, revealing a post-apocalyptic Sweden collapsed into chaos and authoritarianism. In the trilogy, the authors give a postcolonial insight on Sápmi as a resourceless and fragile territory fighting for its survival. The main characters navigate a world marked by survival challenges (pandemics, wars, violent social conflicts, mass migrations, global warming, food shortages), and a quest for justice in a fractured nation, since Norrland has been separated from Sweden becoming the independent kingdom of Nordmark.

6 Analysis and Discussion

7 Thomas Engström and Margit Richert – Nattavaara (2020)

The second text analysed is Nattavaara by Engström and Richert. As the first episode of the Nordmark trilogy, the novel is set in 2049, when planet Earth will have been plagued by geopolitical catastrophes, such as Norrland’s secession from Sweden, health and climate catastrophes, wars, cities laid to the ground, housing and energy shortages: “Hela strömmen var rutten; hela världen var… utgången. Alla visste det, även om ingen kunde enas om vad som varit bäst före-datumet. 2020? 2027? 2034, allra senast. Och det var väl femton år sedan nu” (Engström and Richert 2020, 140). Nattavaara, a minor locality in Gällivare Municipality, Norrbotten County, is one of the few places where human life is still possible, although it will have been transformed into a refugee camp named Instegsläger (Admission camp) for people from southern Sweden to find a place of survival in humanity’s last outpost.

As in any respectable dystopia, the reader collects facts about the historical context of the novel gradually, learning about the most disruptive changes that took place in the textual universe. For example, economy is reduced to barter and plunder, recalling Jersild’s Efter floden, while the kingdom of Nordmark is ruled by a leader called jarl, a title revived from the Scandinavian pre-medieval era, and regulated by its own calendar (tideräkning): “Klockan var elva på förmiddagen den sjunde maj år II EB – efter befrielsen, Nordmarks tideräkning” (Engström and Richert 2020, 14).

As we can read from this quote, the Nordmark calendar dates from an event called Liberation (Befrielsen), i.e. the liberation from Sweden, replacing the common and secular A.D. (Anno Domini) with EB (Efter Befrielsen, After Liberation). Since then, Nordmark has instituted its own flag, described as a white flag with a two-headed raven, one head for Lapland, one for Norrbotten, testifying to the ties between Norrbotten and the historical region of Lapland, thus excluding the Kingdom of Sweden: “Den vita fanan med den tvåhövdade korpen – ett huvud för Lappland, ett för Norrbotten – hängde numera inte bara från stängerna på torgen utan i olika grader av improvisation från väggar, fönster, staket och kärror” (Engström and Richert 2020, 63).

Kiruna is the capital city of Nordmark, and it is described as a place for privileged residents, surrounded by “den oöverskådliga kåkstad som omgav rikets hjärta”:

Alla bofasta i Nordmark var förstås medborgare, men att vara invånare i Kiruna innebar särskilda privilegier. […] Till en början motiverades palissaden och vaktposterna med att Stockholm […] när som helst kunde försöka roffa åt sig området. (Engström and Richert 2020, 64)

The quote contrasts the dense shantytown surrounding the heart of the kingdom with the privileged inner city of Kiruna, defined as a kåkstad (shantytown), highlighting a spatial division enforced by palisades and guard posts. Though considered a rudimentary infrastructure that reflects the precariousness of resources in which the kingdom is situated, palisades reemerge in the dystopian future portrayed in Nattavaara, serving as defensive barriers in destabilised environments where security and isolation become paramount. Thus, the palisades symbolize a physical and socio-political barrier, separating the privileged inhabitants of Kiruna from the broader citizenry of Nordmark. This division emphasises the exclusivity and special status of Kiruna residents, as described later in the novel: “Nordmark var Kiruna, enbart Kiruna, vad de själva än påstod. Utanför stadsmurarna fanns man inte, om man inte hade otur och råkade ut för en trupp soldater som registrerade en” (Engström and Richert 2020, 295).

The justification for such a fortification was the threat posed by Stockholm’s government, which was seeking to seize the territory. This setup underscores themes of security, privilege, and the protection of élite interests within a divided urban landscape. Just to provide some examples, the inner Kiruna is a place of privilege, where residents have free access to electricity and warm water, i.e. material services and comforts that today are considered normal, but which in the post-apocalyptic setting of the novel are not taken for granted anymore: “Erik tog med en handduk och värdesakerna och stiftade sitt livs första bekantskap med en varmvattendusch” (Engström and Richert 2020, 194).

Further in the novel we find a description of the palisades and their function: “Porten var i trä, precis som resten av den tre meter hög palissad man rest för att skydda staden från den bistra verkligheten utanför” (Engström and Richert 2020, 103). As can be seen, regardless of its form and consistence, the wall still plays a fundamental role, as it defends the territory and its inhabitants from an external threat, since outside the gates, in the shantytowns, people are considered as non-existent and subject to military control. In this respect, the Kiruna palisades establish a clear boundary with a heterotopia of deviation and crisis.

The Sámi minorities, who are partly identified in the novel as enemies of the new state order, also belong to this heterotopia of crisis:

Med sin allra mjukaste röst sa Hartmann: ”Har du nån… lojalitetskonflikt du vill prata om? Vad gäller gerillan, till exempel? Såvitt jag förstår finns det samer som har hoppat av statlig tjänst och anslutit sig till gerillan. De verkar sukta efter ett, vad ska man säga … efter en tillhörighet som de inte hittar hos oss.” (Engström and Richert 2020, 69–70)

This passage highlights the marginalisation of the Sámi people, emphasising how systemic exclusion denies them a sense of belonging, even within their ancestral homeland, forcing them to seek identity and community elsewhere. The conflict in the relationship between Nordmark and the Sámi is further emphasised by the fact, as we read in the following excerpt, that the term Sápmi is forbidden as a geographical (but not as a political) concept, and that the Nordmark political elites use discriminatory terms to identify them: “Sápmi var förbjudet att använda som geografisk benämning, men inte som politisk etikett. […] ‘Hämnas vi inte nu’, sa Elsa med demonstrativt tillbakahållen irritation, ‘kommer det att stiga lappjävlarna åt huvudet. Då får vi aldrig vara ifred”’ (Engström and Richert 2020, 72).

Turning to architectural elements, the precariousness of Nordmark is further expressed through ruins: “Solen tittade fram och Erik vände blicken söderut, mot ruinerna efter Jokkfall A1. Om något år, hade byrådet bestämt, skulle man jämna resterna av husen med marken och anlägga ett svedjebruk över hela det sanerade området, precis som man en gång gjort med A3” (Engström and Richert 2020, 12).

Ruins work as a critical tool to illustrate the temporal distance between textual and extra-textual chronology. As stated by Jerry Määtta, ruined landscapes work as a visual shorthand for the post-apocalypse (2020, 138), where what remains is just a blank space without material substance, which can only be replaced by emotions and memories.

Arising out of a space of rupture, through the eyes of the vice-jarl, ruins illustrate the inevitable progression of time, the deterioration of all things, and the briefness of human lives (Spurr 2012, 139): “Enda anledningen till att vicejarlen kände igen Luleå var att han sett ruinerna med egna ögon, strax efter att stan tvångsutrymts och bränts till grunden. Nu återstod bara stålskelett, glassplitter och högar med aska och sotig betong” (Engström and Richert 2020, 230). One element that draws our attention is the fact that the city of Luleå, one of the main urban centres in northern Sweden, lies in ruins. In fact, as mentioned at the beginning of the novel, twelve years before the narration Luleå had been abandoned to chaos and the electricity supply was cut off for good: “Hon saknade fortfarande radion […] innan de för tolv år sedan lämnade Luleå och kaoset och körde hit på sista laddningen – oroligheterna var då i full gång och elen hade slagits ut för gott” (Engström and Richert 2020, 20).

The post-apocalyptic vision emerging from these excerpts is strongly underlined by the architectural element of the ruin, which configures itself as the result of a catastrophe caused by the conflict between Sweden and the region of Norrland. Drawing on Dupuy’s idea of the catastrophe as something necessary and inevitable, Engström himself comments on his co-authored dystopian novel by saying: “Jag ser katastrofen som ofrånkomlig” (Engström in Pahnke 2020), pointing out that, as the years go by, relations between Sweden and Norrland may crack due to unsustainable exploitation of resources and infrastructures.

In addition to this, a noteworthy element of the novel is that the narration presents a substantially reversed scenario: nowadays, in fact, the far north of Sweden is a place of emigration, due to progressive depopulation. In Nattavaara, one striking element is a reversal of migration flows, as people from southern Sweden seek asylum and hospitality in the new kingdom of Nordmark: “Vi kan fylla upp för de instegsarbetare som… alltså för det bortfall som har varit under vintern […]. Det kommer garanterat fler […]. Finns inget som tyder på att det har blivit behagligare att leva söderöver” (Engström and Richert 2020, 73).

Newcomers seeking accommodation and work in Nordmark are labelled with the neologism instegsarbetare, where the first part of this compound, insteg, implies access or entry upon permission. In fact, so-called instegsarbetare are first interned in Nattavaara admission camp, which is described as slightly different from the traditional image of the camp:

Nattavaara var borta. I dess ställe hade Nordmark… ”byggt upp” var kanske lite mycket sagt, snarare hade man bara… gjort plats. Men åt vad? Marja hade halvt medvetet förberett sig på ett koncentrationsläger av andra världskriget-snitt. […] Men det här var så mycket modernare, så mycket mer minimalistiskt, ”skandinaviskt”: inga tegelbyggnader eller höga skorstenar, inga rester från industriella revolutionen överhuvudtaget: bara en enorm inhägnad med klent, nysått gräs, lika spröda nyplanterade träd och så ett antal kasernliknande byggnader i furu som såg ut att vänta på målarfärg. (Engström and Richert 2020, 291)

This description of the admission camp critically underscores the sinister repurposing of once residential areas into internment camps, reflecting a disturbing reinterpretation of Scandinavian functionalism. This minimalist, ‘Scandinavian’ aesthetic tracing back to the well-known funkis, once championed in public housing projects like the Miljonprogram, is now co-opted to enforce control and restrict freedom. The architectural details, spartan, unpainted barracks, sparse grass, and newly planted, fragile trees, betray a cold and impersonal adaptation of functionalism, stripping away its original intent of fostering community and comfort, and replacing it with an architecture of oppression and surveillance. This juxtaposition reveals the dark potential of architectural designs when employed to constrain rather than liberate human life.

8 Conclusions

As this study has tried to show, contemporary Swedish literature is experiencing a true dystopian turn, within which the spatial and architectural tropes are one of its fundamental motifs.

The analysis of two novels such as Avblattefieringsprocessen and Nattavaara show that there are different ways of looking at the future through literary fiction. While on the one hand Bečević looks to a future where ethno-cultural factors will be one of the main battlegrounds, on the other hand Engström and Richert combine identity and environmental, health and war issues.

What the two novels have in common, however, is the central role played by architecture in erecting walls and separating bodies. What we find in the texts shapes a link with Massimo Recalcati’s psychoanalysis of the wall as a fortress that defines the incivility of our time and the urge to delimit one’s territory as a primary securitarian character against the permanent threat of “internal outsiders”, namely those living in our midst who are not seen as belonging to the nation (Recalcati 2020, 17).

From this point of view, although not strictly related to architecture, the same political project of inculcating Swedishness in Alen through a process of doubtful efficiency represents the erection of a wall, which poses cultural, human and emotive obstacles insofar as it describes a Sweden that is not inclined to accept diversity. Similarly, in Nattavaara, the fact that Sweden experiences secession inevitably represents a distancing caused by the impossibility of resolving conflicts. Therefore, before coming to the palisades around Kiruna and before the establishment of admission camps, Engström and Richert intend to signal that there are already emotional and ideological walls which not only separate Swedes and foreigners, but even Swedes among themselves.

To summarise, both novels problematize the folkhem notion as a reference back to prosperity, and high levels of social security. In this sense, architectures contribute to a critical investigation of how Sweden might react to an irreparable breakdown caused by the impossibility of social coexistence, where the folkhem concept becomes a catalyst of a retrotopian sentiment.

Every place is the outcome of experiences and practises accumulated over time. As heterotopias of crisis, the Demigrantisation camp, the palisades and the admission camp come from the nowhere of literary fantasy to illuminate and warn the reader that what we don’t see here and now might be somehow already here. In other words, the recent dystopian turn in Swedish literature may come to be the major precursor of many dystopian variants, initiating certain developments that only the future will be able to unveil, or further inspire.

However, through the open-endedness of Bečević’s and Engström and Richert’s novels we notice the usefulness of a critical dystopia, as the reader is given the instrument to reflect on what might happen if, as Claisse and Delvenne stated, “nothing were done”. For this reason, Avblattefieringsprocessen and Nattavaara work as extrapolative dystopias as they, through thorough reflection, can provide the critical tools to discern the problems of the present and to act, according to the approach of enlightened catastrophism, to safeguard a Utopia beyond Dystopia (Baccolini and Moylan 2003).

It is appropriate to conclude by quoting Tommaso Milani’s study about Swedish national identity and values: “it is only possible to speculate about what is going to happen in the near future. What is certain, however, is that the issue of citizenship is becoming increasingly politicised in Sweden and linked ever more closely to issues of values and norms” (Milani et al. 2022, 74).

Dystopian literature in Sweden serves as a poignant mirror reflecting the nation’s growing tensions around citizenship and identity. As these narratives speculate on future societal fractures, they underscore the urgent politicisation of belonging, intertwining citizenship with evolving values and norms. This literary exploration invites critical reflection on the path Sweden may tread amidst its complex social landscape.