Swedish journalist goes beyond Romania's stereotypes

Nana Håkansson makes her way through the crowd gathered in Control, one of Bucharest’s most popular clubs. Holding a small recorder, the energetic young woman wearing red lipstick asks people what they believe about manele, a music style from Romania, derived from gypsy music.

It’s a cold October night in 2015, but the terrace is full of young people drinking and talking. Control just hosted the projection of a short movie documenting a beatbox workshop in Baia Mare’s ghetto. It’s Nana’s first month in Bucharest, where she has moved to start a social project with a friend. They want to help set up a street paper for the homeless people in Bucharest. Nana is a cultural critic and a journalist who covers topics such as Roma rights, feminism, EU migrants for the Swedish radio. Two years later, her home is still in Bucharest, but her journalistic approach has slightly changed “Instead of showing the poor, sad Romania, I am now kind of showing the opposite,” she says. “I’m so tired of the stereotypes about Romania. I will write about manele, biennale, Romanian writers. I will never write about Romanian beggars in a way that you want to.” * Nana Håkansson moved to Romania for the street paper project, but she’s always wanted to come here because she fell in love with the country when she was 19. In her last year of high school, she came by train from Sweden to Hunedoara. She was in a Swedish hiking association and went hiking in Transylvania. The journalist grew up in the countryside in the south of Sweden. Her dad, an economics university teacher who was writing political columns in the newspaper, was a member of the farmers’ party for a long time. Many of her family members were farmers, living in a part of Sweden that belonged to Denmark. A woman that used to know her as a kid told Nana a few years ago. “I’ve never imagined you living in an apartment in a big city.” Nana took up Eastern European studies and journalism in university and started taking Romanian classes. In her early ‘20s, she would come to Romania every summer. On her first trip to Romania, she remembers taking pictures of Roma women, as she found their dresses exotic. It’s a memory that she’s very ashamed of. “Back then I thought of them as exotic people and didn’t realise the history of persecutions,” Nana says. She knew that she also had Roma roots, but somehow it was only a genetical connection, as she never got to experience the culture. In the ‘40s, you were persecuted in Sweden if you were Roma, Nana explains. “The grandfather of my father was Roma and the grandmother of my father was Roma, but from different sides,” she says. “If they had lived openly in Sweden, my dad would have known [the language e.n.] Romani.” Having Roma roots was a big shame in her family. It was only some years ago when the family on her father’s side eventually admitted that they are from a Roma family. However, she’s never had that shame, and nor has her father. “My father gave me copies of the investigations done by the Swedish state about the Roma in the 40s,” Nana says.