History of the Present (fortnight ending 4 November 2023)
Copenhagen
I'm just back from a somewhat crazy whistlestop tour – four editions of Homelands (Danish, Swedish, Albanian and Greek) in six cities in eight days. Below are a few photos, stories and impressions.
In Borgen, I was delighted to be given a blow-by-blow insider account by Social Liberal party leader Martin Lidegaard of the latest drama in Danish coalition politics, which bore a strong resemblance to the TV series. I almost expected the door to open and Birgitte Nyborg, the fictional Danish former prime minister, to walk in.
Malmö
Across the Bridge to Sweden by train and immediately, bang, the subject of immigration hits me in every conversation. Strikingly, unlike in much of the rest of Europe, the subject currently has a relatively low salience in Danish politics because most of the parties have united around a very tough line on immigration – and the country’s geographical situation enables them to do so.
Sweden, by contrast, is paying the price for its past generosity, also in the 2015/16 refugee crisis, and failures of integration, clearly visible in neighbourhoods such as Rosengård in Malmö. The populist Sweden Democrats have done particularly well here in southern Sweden (aka Scania).
As I travel north to south across the continent, the theme of immigration keeps coming back insistently, bringing the fear of renewed success for nationalist populist hard right parties in next year's European elections.
Lund
I was in Lund because my delightful Swedish publishers, Historiska Media, are there. With their help and a couple of hours to spare, I enjoyed discovering another beautiful corner of Europe's kaleidotapestry.
A very old city, Lund’s early days in the 11th century were closely connected with the Danish king Cnut, or Canute, who also happened to be king of England. (Don't tell me England can ever leave Europe –it's where it has always been, and always will be.)
Lund is a classic university town, like Göttingen or Camrbridge, with a corresponding number of bicycles and cafés – which, along with an iPhone , seem to be the true essentials of contemporary student life.
The original Romanesque part of the cathedral is magnificent, especially that crypt, and it's enhanced by the fact that, unusually, the later construction of the entire cathedral is largely kept in the same style.
Europe.
Stockholm
I showed this photograph to my old friend, Per Wästberg, a wonderful Swedish writer who turns 90 later this month, to explain to him where I was staying. There was a slight pause, then he smiled and said: I was baptised in my maternal grandfather’s apartment in that house. Although Per’s grandfather was Jewish, the old man had thought this was the proper thing to do and a friendly pastor came to the apartment.
At my prompting, Per went on to tell me a few of his childhood memories. He remembered the outbreak of the Second World War and then the 9 April 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded neighbouring Denmark and Norway. Swedish soldiers were sent to stand at the frontier. His uncle actually saw, through his binoculars, the swastika flag being raised over a fortress on the Danish side of the sound. (Perhaps it wasHelsingør, aka Hamlet’s Elsinore.) Then there were the Danish Jews who managed to escape in small boats over the sound from Denmark to Sweden. Two of them stayed for some time with his grandfather.
The memory engine.
Per walked me down to the nearby Armémuseum, the museum of military history, where I was giving a talk for the Swedish edition of Homelands. It's a splendid museum. Amazingly, there hasn't been a battle on Swedish soil since 1809, and the last proper wartime engagement of a Swedish army was in 1814. Since then there have been a lot of peace-keeping operations. But now, in response to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden is joining NATO (when Erdoğan and Orbán finally agree to let them in). One day, that may require a new room in the museum.
Tirana
To fly from Stockholm to Tirana, from the north of the continent to the south and from 2°C to 26°C, was an interesting experience. Two such very different Europes, yet both still clearly Europe.
Albania has the most recent genuinely totalitarian past of any European country, with the possible exception of Romania. ‘It’s the one place where there is no nostalgia’, says Remzi Lani. Or, as they say in Germany, Ostalgie.
I went there first in 1978 when Albania was still under the iron fist of Enver Hoxha. The only way to get in was on a Progressive Tour, and part of being ‘progressive’ was that you had to have a short haircut before entering the country. In one of the massive concrete bunkers now converted to a museum, I was fascinated to discover the original 1975 decree that made this necessary (see below). What a relief that I didn't have ‘exaggerated sideburns’.
In another museum, the House of Leaves, devoted to secret police terror, I was transfixed by this wall display of photographs of people at their trials for alleged political offences. Almost all of them would be executed, and they knew it. Pleading, despairing, defiant.
45 years on from my first visit in 1978, I received a symbolic key to Tirana from the city’s hypercharged US-style Mayor, Erion Veliaj, and returned the compliment with a key to understanding contemporary Europe:
As my very last appointment in Tirana, I enjoyed a lively discussion on this podcast conducted by the country’s remarkable artist-turned-prime minister Edi Rama.
Athens
And so to Athens, where in a sense it all began, some 2500 years ago.
The shadows of the long agony of the Eurozone crisis are still very apparent here, especially if you're talking about a book on recent European history . Not just the 25% fall in GDP but, I'm told, something like a 40% fall in disposable income. And there’s a strong conviction, which I share, that this was not necessary. If Angela Merkel had said ‘whatever it takes’ right at the beginning of the crisis, in 2010, as Helmut Kohl would have done and urged her to do, ‘whatever it took’ would have been much less. Another question to be addressed in her memoirs.
But the country is trying to look forward, and anyway, as someone once said, problems are usually not solved but overtaken by other problems. Immigration. The Russo-Ukrainian and Israel-Hamas wars. The Eastern Mediterranean. On the last, at least, there is a glimmer of hope that relations with Turkey may be improved. Since Turkey has conflicts on three sides (Russia-Ukraine to the north, Nagorno-Karabakh to the east, Israel-Hamas to the south), it would be rational for it to consolidate a more peaceful, stable relationship on the fourth. But is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan still calculating rationally? Watch this space.
Meanwhile, I was glad to talk to Apostolos Mangiriadis about Europe's past, present and future here:
After all of which, it was nice (that most English of words) to get home to Oxford. Many homelands, just one home.
Homelands
Fourteen editions, and more to come. See https://www.timothygartonash.com/homelands.php for more details and how to order in your preferred language. And for my photo gallery and detailed source notes.
You are absolutely right – The arrangement was made by my publisher –I agreed with her at the end of the trip the next time we would take the train it… (it would be more agreeable as well as more environmental....)
Very interesting reading. Delighted that you made it in my Albania ... again. I am thoroughly enjoying 'Vendet e Mia' (English edition though). Warm greetings from Toronto, Canada!