Narrating the Nordic Queer

Comparative Perspectives on Queer Studies in Denmark, Finland, and Norway

Abstract

Among the most frequently repeated stories in queer scholarship nowadays are those concerning the social and spatial localization of queer. Narratives of how queer has occupied and inhabited specific language and cultural areas, and how it has been “domesticated” in different contexts, involve a plot line told time and again. is focus has also informed attempts at finding a queer “common ground” in the Nordic territory. Challenges related to the localization of queer in a Nordic context are also embedded in the framework of a Nordic-oriented journal, such as lambda nordica. At a meeting with the journal’s editorial committee in Stockholm last year, the “Nordic country representatives” were asked to prepare a response to the question: “What is going on in Denmark, Finland, and Norway?” It may be argued, and indeed is the contention of this article’s authors, that Sweden often functions as the default mode of and location for “Nordic queer,” for example in terms of citational practice, in- stitutional visibility, and activist sensibility.