Walking in (a) Bordertown: Sorjonen, Liminality, and the Spatial Imaginary of Lappeenranta

Abstract

Finnish programming is increasingly finding success beyond the country’s borders. Sorjonen - or as it is known internationally, Bordertown - is perhaps the best example of this trend, having been distributed with subtitles in multiple languages via Netflix. Set in the idyllic lakeside resort of Lappeenranta, which is also Finland’s closest city to St. Petersburg, Russia, Bordertown revolves around Detective Inspector Kari Sorjonen (Ville Virtanen) following his relocation there in the wake of his wife’s illness. Hoping to leave major crimes behind in the capital of Helsinki, Sorjonen is soon investigating horrific violence and gruesome events. The criminal networks he discovers often extend far beyond tiny Lappeenranta, thus placing the city at the nexus of illicit flows that link Russia to continental Europe. While Bordertown does not engage in the crass Russophobia of many other screened geopolitical interventions, the series does deploy its setting’s geopolitical liminality to engage with a variety of challenges to Europe. This essay interrogates Bordertown’s use of a real place, i.e. Lappeenranta, to sculpt a geopolitical imaginary that can tell a story. Focussing on a variety of elements from water to windmills and from the city council to the cellar, I employ various scales of engagement (i.e. the local, border, state, land and nation) to examine the series’ narrative, dramaturgical and visual “scaping” of a chimerical “border town” that maps on to the “real” city of Lappeenranta. Informed by my June 2018 Bordertown TV-Series Walking Tour, my analysis synthesises approaches from cultural geography, critical IR and television studies to assess the Bordertown’s intervention in the everyday, lived and embodied geopolitics of this south-eastern Finnish city.