In the study of tourism and travel writing it is a well-known truism that the travel narrative is just as much a representation of the home culture of the travel writer as it is a representation of the foreign culture that the writer visits. Travel writing is a speci�c act of cultural translation, in which the travel writer, by representing the foreign, in effect translates it into something known, thus packaging it and making it meaningful for a home audience. In that process they also

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... ly interpret their own culture and nation. In the following paper I will focus on the idea of the travel narrative as an implicit story about the self. In other words, I will look for a Swedish identity in texts that are supposedly about faraway, exotic places. In order to do this I will refer to Swedish/Scandinavian travel journalism from two different times, and see how the writers in various ways make use of and contribute to the construction of a Swedish identity, and how this construction relates to societal issues at the time. I will also describe how the travel writers of my study can move between their Swedish identity and a more broad European identity, and how the image of Europe changed in signi�cant ways over the later part of the 20 th century. �e texts I am referring to here is a series of articles written by a Danish travel writer called Hakon Mielche who wrote for Allers Familj-Journal (Allers Family Journal) about his journey to Australia in 1956, and the narratives in the Swedish travel magazine RES, from the 1990s and onwards. Hakon Mielche was a very proli�c travel writer and adventurer who published many books on travel, including many guidebooks. After having travelled through Australia he wrote a whole series of articles about the country, 33 in total, which were published over almost a year in the magazine. 1 �e series was introduced in the editorial as "our new glorious travel narrative" promising "excitement and drama". �e articles covered a whole spread and then continued over a few columns