Since more than thirty years I live permanentely in Warsaw in Poland and, married also since more than thirty years with Jolanta Johnsson, a polish artist whos artistical works you might admire on her homepage: www.jolantajohnsson.eu

I studied History , History of Ideas and Science as well as Political Science at the University of Lund from 1969 to 1974. After graduating from the High School for Teachers in Linköping a year later I worked for some years as a teacher in the same town.

I began seriosly to write about and from Poland and the other countries in former Eastern Europe 1980, that is the the year when the famous strike broke out at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk and when the Independent Trade Union Solidarity was established.

During several years before – i.e during the second half of the 70:s - I had close contacts with the democratic opposition in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and GDR, working with support from the West to this opposition. When I began to write from former Eastern Europe I was working for the magazine ETC. It was a wondeful time, working with some of the best and most famous photografers of Sweden and being able to spend several weeks in one Country to select material for one longer feature. In todays mediaworld you can mostly only dream of such possibilities.

Later I have been writing for Svenska Dagbladets 7 Dagar and Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning. Since 1984 I am ackreditated corespondent for the daily morningpaper Göteborgs-Posten. During the years I have been writing for Kuvalehti in Finland, for Berlinske Tidende and its Weekandavisen in Denmark. During one year i wrote for the swedish News Agency TT och during two decades for Yle Radio and Television in Finland. Since 2010 I am regulary publishing longer articles in the english language scholarly journal Baltic Worlds, being published by the Centre for Baltic and Eastern European Studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm.

During more than three decades my field of work has been the ”old Eastern Europe”, which during the last year of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s turned into what we today calls Central and Eastern Europe. Working in nearly all countries, including the western parts of former Soviet Union, I have had the privilegue of being a witness of the fall of communism in this part of the world.

Being, before I took up my journalistic profession, an historian who abrupted my doctoral studies at the University of Lund in order to begin to work with the democratic opposition in former Eastern Europe and afterwards to write from the polish and East European turbulent soil, I never turned away from my deep interest for History. As long as I have been writing about the CEE-countries I have been studying the history of those countries. The first book on Poland and polish history was published in 2004 in Finland and the first book on Poland and polish history in Sweden some years later. Today the work on new book-projects take up most of my time although I am still working for Göteborgs-Posten and Yle Radio and TV as a foreign corespondent.

Read more about Peter Johnsson: exerpts from an essay written of professor Barbara Törnqvist-Plewa about Peter Johnsson as en eminent translator between two cultures.

Excerpt from Peter Johnsson – a cultural translator between Sweden and Poland. An analysis of a life story by professor Barbara Törnquist-Plewa. Lund university. Published in Slavica Lundensis vol 26 (2011).

Nobody needs to be reminded that interpreters and translators play an important role in the contact between different countries and peoples. However, it should be noted that it is not only about those who translate (in its literal meaning) from one language to another, but also about those who explain the culture and contribute to spreading the knowledge about the culture in another country. This translation between cultures is based on the same models as translation of literature. It can thus be either a philosophical, word-by-word translation or a free translation. The first focuses entirely on the original source with the primary goal of remaining as close to the source as possible, while the latter focuses on the reader and its primary goal is to make the text as easily accessible to the reader as possible (Schleitermacher 1998:115-135). When we apply this classification to cultural translators, we can say that researchers of different cultures are the equivalent of philosophical translators, while the free translators are journalists and authors of popular-scientific works about other cultures. Both types of translators play an important role.

The goal of this text is twofold. First of all, I want to present a distinguished, contemporary cultural translator between Sweden and Poland - Peter Johnsson - who in his works tries to balance the two above-mentioned models, and act as both a researcher and a popularizer of Polish history. Secondly, I want to analyze Peter Johnsson’s life as a case study in order to draw some general conclusions about the identity of a cultural translator. The questions I am seeking an answer to, except for trying to portrait Peter Johnsson, are: what is it that makes people engage so deeply in another country’s history and culture that they devote almost their whole life to writing about it? What are the driving forces behind a cultural translator’s deed? What is needed to become a prominent cultural translator.”

Peter Johnsson is without doubt one of Sweden’s foremost experts on Eastern Europe, especially Poland. ... With the book Polen i Europa and its updated and more in-depth version Polen i Historien, Peter Johnsson filled an important hole in the Swedish book market, which had been lacking a work presenting synthetic overview of the Polish history. Such a book had not been written in Sweden since the 1920’s. Neither was there a Swedish-language book about the mass murders in Katyn... Peter Johnsson’s books are not only based on solid research of historical documents and the newest historical investigation, but they are also very easily read. Peter Johnsson, who speaks Polish fluently, has used works of Polish historians, which often are unaccessible in the West, hence he familiarized himself with the Polish perspective on the course of history, at the same time maintaining the desired critical approach. He has thus been successful in reaching the difficult balance between personal engagement and a critical approach.

In the interview about his life Peter Johnsson mentions various roles that he has played during his lifetime: student, teacher, political activist and fighter on the side of the opposition in communist Eastern Europe, and, least but not last, father of a family. It is in many ways an impressive (and not exhaustive) list of the activities Peter has been involved in. Can we, through his life story, distinguish some more general characteristics which made him a successful cultural translator? In my opinion it is possible to do so. These characteristics are first of all curiosity, adventurousness and courage - to dare to venture out to foreign countries and learn new cultures and languages. Secondly, it is about the joy of writing and storytelling, the need to write and create and to share one’s knowledge and experiences. This need is often based in the desire to influence and the belief that this is possible. All these characteristics are crucial to become a cultural translator, but which ones are necessary to become a prominent such?

The case of Peter Johnsson tells me that to accomplish this one needs to be emotionally involved in another culture. This can probably emerge in various ways. In Peter Johnsson’s case there were several interplaying factors. The most important of these were: political engagement in the foreign country, friendships he found there and, most importantly, love for a woman from that country. This led Peter Johnsson to settle down in Poland, learn the language, start a family and “sink down” in a different culture. He left the security of his homeland Sweden to be exposed to a foreign environment, with both the good and the bad things that such a situation brings. Through daily life in Poland, and close contact with Poles and the Polish culture and media, he became involved in “polishness” to such a degree that Polish history and memories became his “prostetic memories” to use a phrase from Alison Landsberg (Landsberg 2006: 2-4). This means that he embraced memories pertaining to a different society in both an intellectual and emotional way, and came to identify with this society. “Prostetic memories” have, according to Landsbert, the capacity to generate empathy (Landsberg 2004: 24) and this is, in my opinion, a prominent trait of Peter Johnsson’s historical writings about Poland. I believe that here lies the key to understanding the fine balance between closeness and distance, involvement and alienation that Peter Johnsson has managed to reach in his writings and which makes him a prominent cultural translator, comparable with for example Norman Davies or Timothy Garton Ash. In Peter Johnsson’s books, just like in Davies’ and Garthon Ash’s books, empathy and engagement for the fortune of the people he describes are clearly distinguishable. These qualities are needed to become a distinguished cultural translator.”

From Professor Barbara Törnquist-Plewas essay about Peter Johnsson’s life and writings, published as  Peter Johnsson – en kulturtranslator i  Polsk-skandinaviska möten Spotkania polsko-skandynawskie Slavica Lundensia series, Center for Language and Literature, Lund University. 2011