I have a new chapter out! “The Cartography of Swamps: Making and Breaking Boundaries in Sauna” can be found in Baltic Horror in Film, Gaming and Literature, edited by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and published by the University of Wales Press.
I have to admit that, when I saw the call for papers for this, I didn’t send in an abstract because I knew a great deal about Baltic horror. I actually knew very little. What I did have was unbridled love for the 2008 Finnish film Sauna, directed by Antti-Jussi Annila. Now, a lot of my academic work is just me taking the chance to write about media that I really enjoy – this is my nerdy hobby, after all, and I’m not wasting time on work I don’t like! – so this was my opportunity to talk, at length, about Sauna. Why wouldn’t I take that up?
Sauna, if you haven’t seen it (and you really should) is a historical horror, set in the late sixteenth-century, which follows a map-making expedition along the border of Sweden and Russia. These two countries had just come out of a war, so setting up a mutually-agreed-upon border was a chance to try and limit future conflict. The expedition includes two brothers: one a cartographer, and one a former soldier deeply traumatised by the war. They discover an unmapped village in the centre of a swamp, and if you’ve any exposure at all to wetlands in narratives you’ll be familiar with how they shift and destabilise plot. How can anyone expect a reliable border in a place where land and water are constantly shifting? Answer: they can’t. Of course, given this is horror, geographical boundaries aren’t the only thing to be transgressed, and the brothers find themselves on opposite sides of moral boundaries which really should not be crossed. It’s cartography and ethical behaviour, essentially, and it’s fantastic.
Even if you don’t read my paper, the film is well worth watching. It’s slow, creeping horror and wetlands. What’s not to love?
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