Nordic Winter and Cold: Their Correspondence with Tomas Tranströmer’s Poetry

Mohammad Akbar Hosain

Abstract


The Nobel Prize winning poet Tomas Tranströmer was born and bred in Sweden, a remarkably Scandinavian country. Topographically, Scandinavian countries1 are locations of extreme cold and snowing. This distinguishing climatic condition has had a dominant influence and impact on almost all Scandinavian art and literature, including Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry.  The chief aim of this paper is to elaborately explore the impact of Nordic winter and its conditions on the body of Tranströmer’s poetry. My paper argues that this impact is of multiple facets, affecting both form and content of his poetry. It also argues that physical as well as psychological landscape is shaped by the penetrating Nordic winter conditions. To achieve the aim, two selections of his poetry (English translation from original Swedish) have been frequently consulted and interpreted, along with a wide range of secondary sources.

Keywords: Scandinavian, Nordic, winter and cold, climatic, Swedish, psychological landscape

 

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References


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