In the tradition of the Nordic Bildungsroman, the protagonist is in search of himself and a place in society. This entails the young person journeying out in search of himself, hence alienating and/or exiling himself from his home, before returning to a feeling of resonance. In the contemporary anti-Bildungstrilogy about Andreas Doppler, Erlend Loe tells a different story. On a faithful morning, Doppler falls on his bike ride in the woods, and suddenly feels completely alienated from his competent suburban existence. In an attempt at recovering his sense of resonance with himself and nature, Doppler flees into the Norwegian woods and settles there. Doppler finds an at least temporary respite from the life of competence and productivity from which he fled. In the third volume of the trilogy however, Doppler begins to long for his children and the intimacy of family life. However, upon returning he discovers that his family is no longer his but has in fact been “invaded”, or so Doppler sees it, by another man. Doppler settles now in the no longer used tree house in the garden, from where he observes the family and its new member. Here, Doppler feels nostalgic, not just for the woods from which he has returned, but also for the productive and competent family life he left behind. He is in exile even when at home. In this presentation, starting from the tale of Doppler, we will explore the phenomenon of nostalgia and exile so characteristic of modern life (Cassin, 2014). Central to the establishment of the ideal of public enlightenment (folkelig dannelse) and the establishment of the folk high schools in the Nordic countries, was the idea of belonging to a particular place and a particular people (Grundtvig, 1983, Straume, 2013). This ideal existed alongside a literary and poetic tradition of tales of alienation and exile as preconditions for finding one’s way back home. Hence Bildung has always rested upon this tension between home and away, resonance and alienation. If, as some current philosophers hold, we can no longer view past, present, or future considering the ideal of progress (Cassin, 2014; Savransky, 2021; Stengers, 2015), then the very dichotomy between home and away, between resonance and alienation, no longer makes sense for theories of Bildung, Nordic or otherwise. Like Doppler, we are stuck in exile in the tree house.

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