What does it mean to fit into norms of gender and family? And what if one does not? And what does this have to do with literature? In 2025, The History of Nordic Women’s Literature online launched a theme on queer literature in the Nordic countries. The theme examines both contemporary literature and rereads older works and authorships through fresh perspectives. It consists of seven articles and an editorial introduction. The introduction explains what is meant by queer literature, why the topic has become particularly topical, and how older literature can gain new relevance when read through a queer perspective. In short, queer literature—and reading literature through a queer lens—centres on questioning norms related to gender, family, and ways of living.
Several of the articles focus on very recent literature that closely explores experiences of falling outside established gender and family norms and challenges dominant codes of appropriate gender identity and behaviour. Other articles turn towards older works, examining “queer” or non‑normative lives and ways of living—that is, lives that do not quite fit in—or tracing motifs across historical periods to show how the relationship between gender, normality, and deviance has been challenged over time. Such readings also affect how we write and understand literary history.
In several of the articles, the perspective is expanded further. Here, authors ask what the established norms regarding gender, family, kinship, and community are based on. The texts discussed range from the period of the Modern Breakthrough onwards—that is, broadly speaking, from the era in which the Nordic welfare state emerged, with the nuclear family as its ideal, and where Western liberal humanism, with its belief in individual freedom and continual progress in both private and social life, shaped prevailing modes of thought. This was also a period marked by sharp distinctions not only between genders, but also between species and forms of existence, and by a view of nature as a resource for human use.
For this reason, the theme also points to the relevance of ecocriticism—that is, reading literature with attention to nature, the environment, and human relationships with other species—when working with a queer mode of reading. Ecocriticism opens up ways of understanding how ideas about gender, normality, and deviance are connected to fundamental conceptions of nature and life forms, thereby offering new ways of reading both contemporary and historical texts.
Being or Doing Queer
As early as the first expansion of The History of Nordic Women’s Literature online, published under the theme Literature of the Twenty‑First Century (2016), the project broadened its scope to include multiple forms of gender and new connections between gender, sexuality, and identity in literary works and authorships. Under the new theme Queer, this perspective is expanded even further. The articles not only investigate literature written by, about, and for women, but also gendered phenomena in literature that have been marginalised as deviant, strange, or insignificant in both traditional literary history and women’s literary history as it has so far been written. The contributions also include literature addressing transgender experiences and gender transition—something reflected among the contributors themselves.
Queer criticism is less about being and more about doing. To queer something means actively disrupting ossified norms—for example, the heterosexual but also monogamous, reproductive, and kinship‑based dynamics of the nuclear family. Queering concerns not only gender and sexuality, but also the life forms and practices associated with breaking away from or deviating from what are understood here as “heteronormative” (heterosexual) or “cisnormative” (gender‑complementary) sexual and family structures.
To queer is to open up an understanding and critique of how systems of norms relating to gender and sexuality are embedded in established family and life forms, while also pointing towards alternatives—other possible ways of forming communities and, by extension, more ecologically sustainable ways of living and organising social life. Queer literature and criticism thus engage with how the nuclear family, reproduction, and human–nature relations are organised within the framework of the Nordic welfare state, as well as with more sustainable ways of imagining reproductive communities.
The Theme’s Main Articles
In the article “Beyond Kinship: Norm‑Breaking Femininity, Queer Antisocial Resistance, and New Collectivity”, Jenny Björklund examines how Swedish literature from the 2000s challenges dominant norms of femininity, motherhood, and the nuclear family. According to Björklund, this occurs, among other things, through portrayals of women who choose not to have children, or mothers who leave their families. Both are presented as forms of resistance to expectations of childbearing and idealised nuclear family happiness. These works thus appear as critiques both of the Nordic welfare state—based on a narrow ideal of the nuclear family—and of neoliberal tendencies that simultaneously dissolve the family as a unit of consumption and labour. Several of the novels explore alternative ways of organising intimate and social relations, not necessarily rooted in biological kinship, but in emotional bonds and shared experiences.
Across time and place (the Nordic region), Camilla Schwartz examines child‑free connections between Selma Lagerlöf, Karen Blixen, and Tove Jansson in the article “Childlessness and Trickster Figures in and across Tove Jansson, Karen Blixen, and Selma Lagerlöf” (nineteenth–twentieth centuries). She considers how their works challenge linear conceptions of time and life trajectories through depictions of child‑free life choices. The article shows how these authors challenge “pronatalist” futurist ideologies that equate fertility with family and the future by presenting alternative ways of living, including the formation of queer communities not bound by biological relations, traditional family forms, or gendered life scripts.
In “Gender, Sexuality, Species, Literature: Companion Animals and Queerness in Swedish‑Language Authorships after 1880”, Ann‑Sofie Lönngren demonstrates how the motif of the pet—historically and similarly to that of the child—has functioned to uphold the “proper” values of the bourgeois nuclear family. While a household consisting of father, mother, children, and pets is perceived as an ideal home, the presence of pets outside the nuclear family is seen as monstrous. Intimate attachments to companion animals disrupt conventional life trajectories and create new ways of thinking about time, relationships, and cohabitation. Lönngren also highlights parallels between the motif of the pet and homosexuality. When different types of works, motifs, and genres are brought together in this way, new literary‑historical patterns and insights emerge.
In “Maria Marcus: Masochism, Truth, and Equality”, Henrik Zetterberg‑Nielsen shows how the authorship of Maria Marcus (1926–2017), spanning several decades from the twentieth into the twenty‑first century, consistently disrupted contemporary norms and ideas about sexuality, liberation, and gender equality—and continues to challenge entrenched expectations of women’s lives and sexuality. Marcus’s work has largely been excluded from Danish literary history, but Zetterberg‑Nielsen argues that it can and should be reassessed through a queer literary critique that situates it within the context of contemporary queer literature and thereby fully acknowledges its distinctive contribution.
Moritz Schramm, in “Radical Queerness: Dissolving the Boundaries between Animals, Plants, and Humans in Charlotte Inuk and Charlotte Weitze”, shows how two contemporary Danish authors extend the critique of the binary gender system by linking it to the separation between animals and humans (in Inuk’s work) and between plants and humans (in Weitze’s). The article demonstrates that the concern is not only with gender and sexual normality versus deviance, but also with a Western liberal worldview based on rigid categories and boundaries that obscure alternative forms of life and existence.
In “Transgender Experience as Theme and Aesthetic Form: The Danish Trans‑Literary Breakthrough of the 2020s”, Mons Bissenbakker highlights how writers such as Mads Ananda Lodahl, Luka Holmegaard, and Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas challenge established narratives of gender. They do so, among other things, by employing hybrid narrative styles that combine scepticism towards language’s representational capacity with strong solidarity with and among trans people. According to Bissenbakker, these works insist on gendered, linguistic, and emotional ambivalence, countering the cisnormative demand for clarity and coherence. In this way, they also invert the gaze—and the power relation—between norm and deviation.
The collection concludes with “Queer Bibliography and Literary History”. In this article, Jenny Bergenmar, Karin Henning, Sam Holmqvist, Siska Humlesjö, Olov Kriström, and Sebastian Lönnlöv argue for the importance of identifying and making visible queer literature that has often been marginalised or forgotten in traditional literary histories and remains underdocumented in women’s literary‑historical scholarship. Through queer information activism, institutions such as KvinnSam in Sweden and KVINFO in Denmark, and resources like the Queerlit database, the LGBT+ movement has worked to uncover and share literature that represents norm‑breaking gender identities and practices. This work has made it easier for queer readers to see themselves reflected in literature and has laid the foundation for a more inclusive and diverse literary history. By “turning the gaze back” through rereadings of literary works, previously hidden or overlooked narratives—crucial for queer communities and identities—are brought to light, offering new perspectives on past, present, and future.
Enjoy Reading
The collection of articles presented under the theme Queer introduces examples of queer literature, while the editorial introduction outlines key aspects of queer literary criticism and its significance for understanding Nordic women’s literature. However, the work is far from complete. The seven main articles represent only a small selection of the many complex perspectives that exist at the intersection of queer literature and critique. Numerous other works, authors, and analytical approaches have contributed—and continue to contribute—to this literary and critical movement and deserve attention.
The collective efforts of researchers, authors, and readers are essential to continuing the exploration and making visible of the many facets of gender, sexuality, and identity in literature. This thematic collection marks only the beginning of a broader conversation about how gender and sexuality can be understood and represented in more inclusive and nuanced ways in literary history—and in how we write it.
Glossary
- Queer (literature): Literature that challenges or questions norms of gender, sexuality, and ways of living.
- The Modern Breakthrough: A Nordic literary period (c. 1870–1890) in which writers addressed contemporary social issues (gender, class, morality) and adopted more realist modes of writing.
- Liberal humanism: A belief in individual freedom and rights, and in continual progress and development in both society and private life.
- Gender system: The rules and expectations regarding gender and relationships that are embedded in social institutions.
- Ecocriticism: A mode of reading that examines relationships between humans, nature, and other species in literature.
- Pronatalist: Ideas or policies that promote having children and regard biological reproduction as desirable and expected.
- Cisnormativity: The assumption that everyone is cisgender (their gender identity corresponds to the sex assigned at birth) and that there are only two genders.
- Heteronormativity: The assumption that heterosexuality is “natural” and “normal,” and that two complementary genders (woman/man) form the nuclear family; other sexualities, relationships, and family forms are often rendered invisible or viewed as “deviant.”