My story

I was born in 1949 in Malmbäck, outside Nässjö, in the heart of Småland. From 1969 to 1974 I studied history, the history of ideas and political science at Lund University, and then trained as a teacher in Linköping. You can take the smålänning out of Småland, but never Småland out of the smålänning.

From 1980 I devoted my whole working life to reporting on Central and Eastern Europe as a foreign correspondent. In 1983 I settled in Warsaw, where I would live for more than thirty years. I wrote for ETC, Svenska Dagbladet's 7 Dagar, Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning and, for three decades, for Göteborgs-Posten, as well as for the Danish Berlingske and Weekendavisen, the Finnish broadcaster Yle on radio and television, and Baltic Worlds.

I covered Solidarity and martial law, the fall of communism, the years of transformation after 1989 and these nations' path into the European Union. In 1992 President Lech Wałęsa awarded me a medal for my work in support of the democratic opposition.

Over the years I have become, above all, a historian. I have written Polen i historien (Poland in History), Stalins mord i Katyń (Stalin's Murder at Katyń) — awarded the Polonica Prize in 2010 and translated into Polish, German and Finnish — Ukraina i historien (Ukraine in History), Polen! Quo vadis? and Tyskland och Förintelsen i historien (Germany and the Holocaust in History). Today I live in Malexander in Östergötland and lecture across Sweden on the history of Poland, Ukraine and Europe.