If it weren’t for the curvature of the earth I’d probably be able to see the coast of Estonia from here. ‘Here’ is our island in the Stockholm archipelago, looking due east (roughly); and reading Baltic-related literature, after our trip to Latvia and Estonia last month. Now is my holiday reading week.

I began with Henning Mankel’s crime novel The Dogs of Riga, the third in his series of Wallander books, first published in Swedish in 1992, and one of his best. For me it was the ‘Riga’ in the title that attracted me, as Riga was one of the cities we visited. The book is set at the very end of the Baltics’ period of submission to the Soviets, the struggle against which comes to feature as an important part of the plot.

What struck me was the extraordinarily bleak picture the book gives of ordinary and institutional life under the Soviets; which contrasted sharply with my observation and experience as a tourist there just a couple of weeks ago. Can it really have been so bad? If so, what has made the difference in just thirty-odd years? Capitalism? The EU? NATO? A lick of paint on all the historic but decrepit buildings? – Or has Riga (and the other cities we stayed in) been specially tarted up for tourists like us, leaving the rest of the country as dirty and decrepit as it always had been? (I found this when visiting the former East Germany – specifically Halle – a few years ago.)

The book I’m on now is Oliver Moody’s Baltic. The Future of Europe (2025); which explains some of the politics, but is mainly a warning against Russian designs on the West via Finland and the Baltic States, and arguing for greater preparedness. It’s not hard to imagine from here. The Stockholm archipelago, after all, has seen Russian invaders before.