The Program Guide can be found here.


Konflikt 2023 will have a multiple-track program, held in both Swedish and English.

Preliminary program times:
Thursday: 16:00 – 21:00
Friday: 10:00 – 21:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 21:00
Sunday: 10:00 – 16:00

The convention venue opens on Thursday at 15:00 and closes on Sunday 17:00.

Additional information as well as schedules will be released at a later date.

Should you have any suggestions, questions or recommendations in regards to panels and program items, please feel free to contact our team at program@eurocon2023.se.

Program items

The program group has released a couple of programme items. They are still somewhat preliminary but they may give you an idea of what you can expect.

As ususal at this type of conventions there will be interviews with the Guests of Honour and possibilities to meet them in small groups at “Kaffeeklatsches”.

Panel discussions

As You Wish: Princess Bride 35 Years
This past October marks the 35th anniversary of the movie The Princess Bride. A meta-narrative combining sly satire with classical fantasy tropes, this classic has been an introduction to the fantastical for many people. But be warned! This is a kissing book, and prepare to die!

The wild magic of Diana Wynne Jones
Diana Wynne Jones has been called “quite simply the best writer for children of her generation”. She is best known for her book Howl’s Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci series. We discuss her authorship and the unique impact she has had as a writer.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
Tea is an important feature in science fiction and fantasy. What role does tea play in a story? Which stories are the big tea drinking stories?

“Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty bitty living space.”
The Djinn – a granter of wishes, a being of evil, or a source of unfathomable, benevolent power?
As a growing presence in western fantasy literature, genies offer new possibilities in regards to untapped lore, power dynamics and representation. But with them comes the risks of fetishizing “the other” and of stories seeped in Orientalism.
Karin Tidbeck and Nahal Ghanbari discuss the potentials and pitfalls of writing the Djinn, as well as their place among other canonically famous trickster beings and deities.

Vaesen – The creatures of Nordic myth and lore
In Swedish/Nordic folklore there are several mythical and mysterious creatures: the Nicor, the nightly Mara, the Huldra, trolls, faeries, mylings … and on it goes. In the old days they were a natural part of the world. Which vaesen is the most fascinating, elusive or perilous? How can we take an old vaesen and make something new of it in storytelling?

Speculative fiction as an arena for the queer
Fiction offers many ways of portraying various kinds of lives and experiences.
Is speculative fiction especially well suited for the telling of queer stories? How can speculative fiction connect to and talk about queer themes and queer values?

Workshops / Activities

Elvish script
Tengwar, professor Tolkien’s strange and beautiful writing system, has amazed us for over half a century. How does it work? This is a hands-on workshop where you will learn to read and write Tengwar.
Bring a pen, any pen will do.
Leader: Per Lindberg from the Forodrim Language Guild; forodrim.org/daeron

Guided tour of Uppsala
See the sights of Uppsala and get to know parts of the local history by walking around the town center with an authorized local tour guide.
Bring good shoes!
Guide: Lena-Maria Jansson

Historical dances
Social dances from the middle ages to the regency period. Branles, allemandes, pavanes, estampies, country dances and more. For all, no prior knowledge or dancing skill required. Bring your two left feet and have fun with us!
Leader: Per Lindberg from the Forodrim Dance Guild; dineth.forodrim.org

Using multi-million dollar space technology to find Tupperware in the woods: Geocaching 101
Here you will learn what geocaching is, how it works and why it may be your next hobby. Hans Persson (known as pinkunicorn in the geocaching world) has been hunting the wild Tupperware in the woods for almost 20 years. A lecture is followed by an excursion.

Talks

From the old “Sense of Wonder” to the new “Sense to Wander”
A multicultural approach to Science Fiction dealing with native innovation and radical inclusivity. Over the course of 8 years, Francesco Verso has published more than 70 books in translation from 13 languages and more than 35 countries with authors such as Liu Cixin, Vandana Singh, Oliver Paquet, Pepe Rojo, Fabio Fernandes, Ken Liu and many others. The Sense of Wander is a precious and useful tool to “decolonize the imagination” and restore dignity to all the major Futures that have been neglected by the current dominant English culture.

The future of pleasures
When thinking about the future – whether in real life or science fiction – we have a tendency to forget about the pleasures of life and the importance of things like wine, species, chocolate and coffee (or their literary equivalents). But our love of pleasure has shaped history and will shape things to come. This is a lecture both about how pleasures are treated in Science Fiction and about the possible real-life futures facing our daily indulgences.
Speaker: Torill Kornfeldt

A Musical History of Swedish Fandom
Karl-Johan Norén takes us on a short tour of the history of fandom in Sweden, from the 1950s until today, by means of the music that fans have made. The lyrics will be in Swedish and English, with English translations provided.

Sweden Solar System
A scale model of the Solar system is layed out across Sweden, where the Sun is represented by the spherical building Globen (Avicii arena) in Stockholm. Uppsala was the site of the planet Saturn, but sadly it has been removed. Shana Worthen presents the model, and if the weather allows we’ll go out and recreate the size and location of Saturn to get a feeling for the size of our neighbourhood in space.

Popular science talks

Fairies with an Agenda
What is the political project of pixies? What are the ideological implications of trolls? In folklore as well as in literature, folkloric creatures have often been imbued with ideological content or made to serve specific political ends, sometimes upholding hierarchies and norms, at other times inspiring resistance and change. In this talk, folklorist Tora Wall and literary scholar Saga Bokne address the political history of fairies and other creatures. The talk spans ancient Scandinavian folklore as well as contemporary American fantasy literature – and some things in-between.

The Mysteries of Urban Fantasy
Urban fantasy is popular, recent, and is mostly set in cities … and everything else, people disagree about. Fantasy scholar Stefan Ekman (Karlstad University) has spent a few years trying to figure out what urban fantasy might be, how it works, and what the disagreement is all about. He will offer some thoughts on the intriguing nature and history of urban fantasy. (Based on his forthcoming book, Urban Fantasy: Investigating Modernity through Magic, from Lever Press.)

Genes and Reproduction in Contemporary Science Fiction
In this presentation literary scholar Jani Ylönen discusses how contemporary science fiction, published since the dawn of the new millenium, has taken part in the discussion on gene technology and reproduction. The lecture examines the many ways in which sf has explored the possible effects genetic editing may have on human existence on Earth and perhaps human existence in its entirety.

Odinn’s, Hrothgar’s, Beorn’s and Theoden’s mead halls were a real thing and often get excavated
Tolkien based Beorn’s and King Theoden’s mead halls on a type of building that recurs in Old English and Old Norse literature.
Archaeologists discovered in the mid-20th century that the literary mead hall is actually an accurate description of a real-world type of wooden building. None survive as standing structures. But decades of research have produced increasingly refined methods of finding and characterising the mead halls of forgotten petty kings around Northern Europe. Dr. Martin Rundkvist of the University of Łódź gives an introduction to this field of research with recent examples from the area around Linköping and Norrköping in Sweden.

JUICE, a mission to the moons of Jupiter
Jan-Erik Wahlund, associate professor in astrophysics at Uppsala University presents The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), an interplanetary spacecraft in development by the European Space Agency (ESA).