Moments of Renewal: Critical Conversion of Nordic 'Samhällsgeografi'

In 1979 the Swedish leftist journal Häften för kritiska studier, involving young geographers from the three Scandinavian countries, published a special issue on ‘Geography and society: capitalism and the analysis of space’. A group of geographers from University of Uppsala, Sweden, decided to arrange a small two-day seminar around the topics of the issue. This event can be claimed to mark the beginning of a ‘Nordic’ critical geography. The seminar surprisingly attracted more than 100 participants from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and fruitful discussions rendered the participants convinced that it was an occasion worthy of repetition. This evolved into the annual Nordic meetings (or symposia) of critical geographers.