When the Cranes Fly South

Lisa Ridzén (b. 1988) is a Swedish novelist and sociologist whose work combines ethnographic attention to masculinity with a spare literary style. She lives in a small village outside Östersund and is a doctoral candidate at Mid Sweden University, studying gender norms among men in sparsely populated northern communities. This dual vocation as a researcher and novelist informs both her subject matter and her method, inviting readers to consider how place, class, and care shape the performance of masculinity across a lifetime. By tracing how men narrate pride, work, illness, and dependence in the Swedish far north, she seeks to challenge what she labels destructive masculinity norms, especially the pressure to silence emotion in moments of need.

Her debut novel, Tranorna flyger söderut (2024), published in English as When the Cranes Fly South, emerged from two sources: years of research on men’s emotional lives in Jämtland and a cache of notes left by her grandfather’s home-care team at the end of his life. Ridzén began drafting the book while attending the Långholmen Writer’s Academy. The novel treats everyday documentation—care notes, observations, remembered dialogue—as narrative material, echoing ethnographic techniques. The novel became a major success in Sweden and beyond.