[Commlist] Call for Papers: 'Solitude and loneliness in Nordic Cinema'

CFP: Solitude and loneliness in Nordic Cinema

Special Issue of Journal of Scandinavian Cinema

To submit visit our website here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-scandinavian-cinema#call-for-papers 
<https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-scandinavian-cinema#call-for-papers>

‘The usual thing: loneliness’. This is the response Isak Borg receives 
in Ingmar Bergman’s Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries) (1957) when 
asked about his punishment for withdrawing from human companionship. In 
the Nordic countries, where personal space and independence are valued, 
solitude and even loneliness can assume meaningful dimensions. 
International travelers, journalists and researchers often puzzle over 
the seemingly paradoxical nature of the Nordic welfare states’ ‘almost 
nearly perfect people’ who at the same time are strangely devoid of 
companionship and love, caring more about their domestic animals than 
other people. While many view solitude positively, as a time for 
reflection and personal growth, especially when spent in nature, long 
stretches of both voluntary and forced solitude can lead to experiences 
of loneliness due to a lack of social connections. In this Special 
Issue, we invite you to join us in exploring the unique aspects of 
solitude and loneliness in the Nordic context and how these themes are 
woven into Nordic cinema.

Recently, loneliness has become a major topic in the academic world. It 
has been studied from numerous perspectives, including those of 
cognitive neuroscience, as in John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick’s 
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection(2008), 
philosophy, as exemplified by Lars Svendsen’s A Philosophy of Loneliness 
(2017), and cultural history, as in Fay Bound Alberti’s A Biography of 
Loneliness (2019). David Vincent’s historical study A History of 
Solitude(2020) provides an overview of the subject, while Peter Stadius 
explores it from a regional perspective in his article ‘Happy voluntary 
solitude? Notes on a Nordic theme’ (2024). Studies on loneliness and 
solitude in Nordic cinema are scarce, but some research has been done, 
as demonstrated by Jaakko Seppälä’s articles ‘Loneliness in the films of 
Aki Kaurismäki’ (2022) and ‘L’Année du lièvre: le bonheur de la solitude 
dans les forêts de la Finlande’ (2024).

In psychological research, loneliness is defined as social pain, an 
emotion cluster that stems from a lack of meaningful social connections, 
causing unhappiness. According to sociologists, loneliness can be a root 
cause behind surface-level ills, including depression, obesity, 
alcoholism and suicide. Yet simply being alone is neither positive nor 
negative, as everything depends on how one is alone. In films such as 
Risto Jarva’s Jäniksen vuosi(The Year of the Hare (1977), solitude in 
nature celebrates freedom, reinvigoration and even happiness. Loneliness 
and solitude are thus two distinct, but related, states of being. 
Consequently, representations of loneliness and solitude are worth 
studying from cognitive, cultural and philosophical perspectives, 
focusing on how films represent the roots and causes of the phenomena. 
Of particular interest here is the way films represent the relationship 
between individuals and society. Is it (welfare) society that causes 
loneliness and solitude or do these conditions stem from individual life 
choices? And when it comes to curing loneliness, is it the 
responsibility of the individual or the collective?

The desire to address these themes has inspired Nordic filmmakers to 
visualize, imagine and understand what loneliness and solitude look, 
sound and feel like. For cinema, representing these conditions or states 
of mind in a manner that evokes affect and engagement can be narratively 
and aesthetically challenging, especially since there are no facial 
expressions or gestures that correspond to them. Thus it is interesting 
to study how filmmakers convey the multiple dimensions of loneliness and 
solitude and how their choices contribute to an understanding of a 
particularly Nordic sense of being alone.

The editors encourage submissions on the following topics, but we also 
welcome work outside or combining these areas:

  *

    Fictional and documentary film approaches to loneliness/solitude

  *

    The visual aesthetics of solitude/loneliness

  *

    Narrating solitude/loneliness in visual media

  *

    Sounds and voices conveying solitude/loneliness

  *

    Cinematic representations of solitude/loneliness in the context of
    other cultural expressions

  *

    Historically contextualized understandings of solitude/loneliness

  *

    Nordic welfare states and loneliness/solitude

  *

    The impact of policies and practices such as neoliberalism

  *

    Social categories related to solitude/loneliness, such as sexuality,
    gender, class, ethnicity, age

  *

    The social psychology of solitude/loneliness

  *

    Philosophies of solitude/loneliness

  *

    Technology connecting and disconnecting people

  *

    Posthumanist perspectives on solitude/loneliness

Projected timeline: Proposals due: 15 April 2025. Full article 
submissions due: 15 September 2025. All contributions will undergo 
double-blind peer review, with publication planned for 15 February 2026. 
Both feature articles (max 8000 words) and short subjects (2000–3500 
words) are welcome.

Please send proposals to guest editors Jaakko Seppälä 
((jaakko.i.seppala /at/ helsinki.fi) <mailto:(jaakko.i.seppala /at/ helsinki.fi)>) and 
Outi Hakola ((outi.j.hakola /at/ helsinki.fi) 
<mailto:(outi.j.hakola /at/ helsinki.fi)>). Feel free to contact them to 
discuss potential contributions.

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