For my generation and for myself particularly Sweden has been a paradise on earth. Visiting Sweden was like a pilgrinage. Of course everyone was thinking that we were looking for those beautiful Swedish girls, but this was a very common approach of less educated young Italians driving to North. For the most intellectual young it was an immersion in what we were believing the future of the world. A peaceful society out of wars from Napoleon times, full of freedom and education, with top urban planning and the new cities like Farsta as a model of civilisation, with a diffuse well-being and no visible sign of poor. For me Sweden was Ingmar Bergman movies and theather works, and his own biography, focused on his family having as father a Lutheran priest. Unforgettable coloured small houses of Dalarna were the objects of my desire of happiness. My first trip until North Cape was in 1966, and I returned every three or four years, not only in the main cities but also around the country lakes, visiting Gotland island and the mountain until Kiruna. And I was very lucky twenty years after, to work also there as a consultant of Change Management in ICA, the most important retail chain extended in all the country and with small shop in gasoline stations saving your life basic needs in the deep North. In most recent years I travelled along the Norwegian border in Fiatwallen and Tannas. Big problems were arising in major cities along with immigration growing, because the local laws were totally opened to anyone putting a tent also in your garden.
Suddenly these peaceful traditions and local relaxed climate of friendly relationships have been put at risk: Sweden decided last year to enter in OTAN and to accept quite twenty military basis in his hydilliac landscape. This is for my generation another ruining of dreams and illusion, but for Sweden is only a return back to a very different past, probably hinted for two centuries by protestant hypocrisy and moralism. Sweden had an imperial and aggressive past from Viking times, when they were navigating through Baltic rivers until Kiev and the Black Sea, establishing the kingdom of Vladimir in Rus people area, in strict relationship with Byzantine empire. They dominated Finland and Finnish were not so happy until independence of 1918, but also the South rim of Baltic Sea, with Riga second city of the empire and parts of Russia around St. Petersburg, and kept many small territories in Denmark. Not forgetting the glory of Gustav Adolf during the Thirty Years War, as main supporter of protestant coalition he was attacking Prague and Central Europe. But the Swedish Empire expanded until the second war of North 1700-1721, where after initial successes against Danish in the border with Germany and Russian in Narva, they were dramatically destroyed in Poltava in center Ucraina, with the King Charles XII escaping to Ottoman Empire. Peter the Great of Russia was the big winner of Baltic territories, but the war was involving Denmark, Poland, Lithuanian and also Cosack tribes in coalition against Sweden.
So Back to the Past, or Back to Basis, the geopolitical constraints have again won on rational and human aspirations, in a truth operation which broke the veils of religion and education. Or the long progressive and peaceful time will return to conflict with these last political choices? It’s very hard for me to forget a civil and peaceful Scandinavia, model of possible nice future of cooperation and progress, and to accept a transformation of these Nordic regions in blood lands, like Poland and Ucraina have been for two wars. For the moment the trend is very negative, withthe creation of a large number of military basis among Norway and Finland, similar to Italian hundreds, but we can hope. History and culture gave to Italians the basic skeptic and passive character, accepting any domination, the Nordic traditions are more oriented to strength and independence of the individuals, we will see if the Viking aggressive roots will prevail on the civil behaviour patiently built in three century by teachers and intellectuals.
