He took them out to the Baltic, through the marvellous labyrinth of islands and waters.

And those who met on board and were carried by the same hull for a few hours, or days, how much did they come to know one another?

Conversations in misspelled English, understanding and misunderstanding but very little conscious falsehood.

How much did they come to know one another?

(From "Baltics" by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton)

On the last metres of our Nord Stream 3 project, we were able to make one of our most read texts from the Baltic Sea library, the poem cycle "Baltics" (“Östersjöar”) by Tomas Tranströmer sound.

The poem was written in 1974 in a divided Baltic Sea, remembering personal connections from the times before and reviving friendship relations across the borders in spite of all hindrances. It is translated in 12 languages on our platform and some of the translations came about on our request before Tranströmer received the Nobel prize in 2011.

Whilst Tranströmer’s voice was lost in 1990 after a stroke, we undertook a journey this late autumn to give it a a voice through his translators in the Baltic region.

Our platform now features audio recordings of "Baltics" in Danish, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Lithuanian and Sami, which we especially created together with the translators during corresponding trips. Recordings in Latvian and Russian have already been made available before. For Swedish, we are expecting the original recording by Tomas Tranströmer himself from the year 1990, which we will be able to post after New Year.

In addition to the support from the "Neustart Kultur" programme by the German government, the trips for recordings to four countries – Lithuania, Estonia, Sweden and Denmark – were made possible by the EU mobility fund i-Portunus. Our thanks also go to Monica Tranströmer whom we met at her home in Stockholm for the rights to publish the poem digitally.

The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.