The stray ways of geopolitics. Rudolf Kjellén’s posthumous world-wide reputation.The text is an overview and analysis of how Kjellén’s concept of geopolitics has beeninterpreted and valued. After his death in 1922, Kjellén’s repute grew in Germanythrough the translations of his The State as a form of life and the last version ofThe Great Powers with Karl Haushofer’s revisions using Kjellén’s name. With theNazi take-over Kjellén’s legacy waned but was kept alive by geographers in Estonia,Denmark and Switzerland.After World War II, two scholars, Grabowsky and Kristof, both in 1960, publishedreviews of Kjellén’s work, explaining his world view and freeing him from allegationsof being a proto-Nazi. In Scandinavia and Finland his ideas were only occasionallymentioned.With the resurgence of geopolitics, Kjellén has been cited and evaluated indiverse ways. In Russia, Central Europe and Latin America Kjellén has for better orfor worse been mentioned as giving the state a wider role beyond its constitution,including that of performing geopolitics. In the English-speaking world Kjellén has,with some remarkable exceptions, only been given a short reference as the creatorof the concept of geopolitics, often misinterpreted as something fundamentallyaggressive, territorial states fighting for power.

Nordic and Baltic geographers in the years 1933–1945 were surrounded by, and eventually under the rule of dictatorial regimes while Sweden remained peaceful and only partially subject to censorship. To what extent is this visible in the academic work of Swedish geographers, in their publications and in their reviews of publications of the surrounding world? The paper will address these issues of Swedish academic geography of the time. Most dissertations for licentiates and PhDs in human geography were chosen within the sub-discipline of historical regional geography of Sweden. In general, very few publications reflected the geopolitical situation surrounding Sweden. In the reviews sections, works of a Nazi character are criticized, and the number of German works reviewed declines rather abruptly after 1933. Soviet geography is only mentioned a few times. In 1938–40 the annual SGÅ published a geopolitical survey of Europe in a pro-Nazi (and pro-Soviet) spirit. The concept of race is used to differentiate Swedes, Finns, and ‘Lapps’. Beginning in 1942, there is a critique on the lack of social and geopolitical aspects in education and research. The history of Swedish geography 1933-45 thus shows a resistance to Nazi German geography, a few examples of accepting of Nazi geopolitics, but in general an almost total lack of addressing the geopolitical realities of the surrounding neighbourhood.