I am M. Gustafsson.

 

I was born in a little town in the north of Sweden, Boden —about two hours’ drive from the Arctic Circle. It was called “The Northern Lock” or “Fortress Boden”. At the time, it had 13 000 inhabitants and

8000 young men doing their military service. Boden was the Swedish stronghold toward the East, meaning the Soviet Union. There were five enormous fortresses cut deep into the mountains surrounding the town, built to hold a great number of soldiers that could remain in there for months, and equipped with state-of-the-art communications and weaponry. 

Big signs told foreigners they were not allowed anywhere near the town, and all roads could be blocked in a moment, to make it impossible for unwanted vehicles to approach. 

Sometime, along the 60’s and 70’s a Swedish Intelligence Officer, Stig Bergling, turned Russian spy, selling all intel about my town to the Russians. After that the defense installations turned useless and were dismantled. The fifth and last fortress ceased to be part of our defense system in 1997. Today one of them is a tourist attraction and the others are officially filled with sand. 

I grew up there, never meeting anyone from another country until, in my mid-teens, I spent almost a year abroad, with my mother. 

Of course my hometown and what happened there influenced me. Add my conspiratorial mind, and my choice of genre was unavoidable.

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