Nordic topographies in contemporary German literature: Klaus Boldl's studie in Kristallbildung and Sudlich von Abisko

Klaus Böldl’s prose works explore the Scandinavian North offering a narrative construction of a remote, lonely and forlorn place, which cannot produce any empathy. The persons moving in his writings are displaced figures, German “travellers” whose perception of the Nordic reality can produce only fractal images of the immediate surroundings. By treating two of Böldl’s texts, Studie in Kristallbildung (1997) and Südlich von Abisko (2000), my paper aims at analysing the recurring patterns of Nordic topography to start out from the descriptions of the environment and from the distinct ways how the protagonists experience the landscape and map cultural geographies.