Scan Magazine | Culture | Jonas Gardell
all kinds of ridiculous consideration for families and relatives,” he says. “It’s taken 25 years. I think time gives a much-needed perspective to look back at something and see patterns; we can look back today and see that what we were subjected to was completely baroque and absurd, but it was everything we knew then.” He pauses for a moment. “This was my way of writing my friends back to life again. And in Sweden it was as if an entire generation was hit by collective grief, a 25-year-late national mourning. It became exactly the kind of redemption I had fantisised that it might be.”
‘We need to laugh’ Next up, alongside another run of 30 År Tillsammans, is another book: Bara på Besök (or, Just Visiting). It is a memory book full of images and texts from the past three decades, “no expenses spared, extremely swanky”, Gardell says. 110 | Issue 91 | August 2016
“Probably more for the real fans than the general public,” he is quick to interject, well aware that there are people out there who dislike him. “I’ve had my fair share of death threats, but I’ve lived with that since I was 18,” he says casually. “I went through and read all the things people wrote about me a few years back, including some incredibly vicious things, but after a while I realised that they ran out of ways to insult me – they couldn’t think of more ways to chop my head and genitals off, and then it felt like I won.” At the time of speaking, Gardell is just about to get suited up to receive S:t Eriksmedaljen, a medal awarded to those who have worked with considerable impact for or in the city of Stockholm. “Now they’re going to thank me!” he laughs. “We need humour, we need to laugh. We should look after the people who make us laugh, and I’ve been making the Swedes laugh for 30 years now.”
Bara på Besök by Jonas Gardell and Stellan Herner is out on Norstedts förlag at the end of September. A new run of 30 År Tillsammans is starting in the middle of September. For more information, please visit: www.jonasgardell.se