61 pages • 2-hour read
When the Cranes Fly South
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Background
Authorial Context: Lisa Ridzén, Sociology, and Masculinity
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. It was a Bonniers Bokklubbars “Årets Bok” (Book of the Year) in 2024, won the “Årets Debut” and “Årets Roman” awards at the Adlibris Awards, and was later awarded the Swedish Booksellers’ Award for Book of the Year. It has been translated into dozens of languages and shortlisted for international prizes, including the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
Geographical Context: Östersund and Sweden’s Far North
Sweden’s far north, broadly understood as Norrland and its lake-and-forest interior, is organized by a seasonal rhythm that structures everyday life as much as it does local storytelling, including Lisa Ridzén’s When the Cranes Fly South. The novel reflects a regional culture where harsh climatic conditions, an emphasis on manual labor, and gender norms have taught men to value self-reliance and avoid care until it becomes an absolute necessity. The novel’s temporal structure, pivoting around the cranes’ southward turn, mirrors the way many households map the year. During the winter months, daylight can dwindle to roughly five hours. By June, Östersund sees nearly 20 hours of daylight at midsummer.
The migration of cranes is the region’s most audible spring and late-summer marker. In Sweden, tens of thousands of cranes arrive at Lake Hornborga in March and April, and large numbers pass through Jämtland in August and September on their way to wintering grounds on the Iberian Peninsula. It is no accident that Ridzén’s title fixes on cranes orienting southward: The phrase names a calendrical pivot, when summer nears its close and preparations for winter resume. The changing of the seasons reflects the changes in Bo’s own life as his life draws to its close.
Östersund is a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy, a designation tied to its network of artisan producers, restaurants, and training centers, including Eldrimner, Sweden’s national resource center for artisan food in nearby Ås. The landscape provides milk, a variety of game, lake fish, and wild plants, with food sources changing with the seasons. Recreation and work follow these same constraints. Ice fishing on Storsjön or the other nearby lakes is a winter and early-spring routine, with cross-country ski loops running through town and across the lake; summer is a popular time for cycling and hiking through the forests. The social rhythm reflects these seasonal routines: In winter, community concentrates on known tracks, rituals, and meeting points; in summer, it disperses into longer evenings and far-flung cabins.
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