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Introduction to Nordic Cultures

Edited by Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

ISBN: 9781787353992

Publication: April 17, 2020

What is this?

Introduction to Nordic Cultures is an innovative, interdisciplinary introduction to Nordic history, cultures and societies from medieval times to today. The textbook spans the whole Nordic region, covering historical periods from the Viking Age to modern society, and engages with a range of subjects: from runic inscriptions on iron rings and stone monuments, via eighteenth-century scientists, Ibsen’s dramas and turn-of-the-century travel, to twentieth-century health films and the welfare state, nature ideology, Greenlandic literature, Nordic Noir, migration, ‘new’ Scandinavians, and stereotypes of the Nordic.

The chapters provide fundamental knowledge and insights into the history and structures of Nordic societies, while constructing critical analyses around specific case studies that help build an informed picture of how societies grow and of the interplay between history, politics, culture, geography and people. Introduction to Nordic Cultures is a tool for understanding issues related to the Nordic region as a whole, offering the reader engaging and stimulating ways of discovering a variety of cultural expressions, historical developments and local preoccupations. The textbook is a valuable resource for undergraduate students of Scandinavian and Nordic studies, as well as students of European history, culture, literature and linguistics.

Annika Lindskog is Lecturer in Swedish in the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS), where her teaching spans language, cultural studies and cultural history in the Nordic region and beyond. She has published on a variety of topics including landscape ideology, collective identity and representations of north, with a particular focus on how classical music functions as a cultural expression in articles on Brahms, Frederick Delius, Stenhammar and others.

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen is Associate Professor in Scandinavian Literature in the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS). His main areas of research and teaching are in literary and cultural studies. He is the author of Scandinavian Crime Fiction (Bloomsbury 2017) and has co-edited the books Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations (Liverpool UP 2019) , Nordic Publishing and Book History (Scandinavia 2013) and World Literature, World Culture: History, Theory, Analysis (Aarhus UP 2008).

Editorial Introduction to Nordic Cultures 
Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

Part I: Identities 

1. Viking-Age Scandinavia: Identities, Communities and Kingdoms 
Haki Antonsson

2. The North: Territory and Narrated Nature 
Annika Lindskog

3. Narrating Nations: Iceland and Finland in Texts 
Haki Antonsson and Annika Lindskog

4. Modern Experiences 
Elettra Carbone and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

5. The Nordic Welfare Model 
Mary Hilson

Part II: Texts 

6. The Trial of Bróka-Auðr: Invisible Bureaucracy in an Icelandic Saga 
Richard Cole

7. Nora: The Life and Afterlife of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House 
Elettra Carbone
8. Nordic Noir 
Anne Grydehøj

9. North Atlantic Drift: Contemporary Greenlandic and Sami Literatures
Kristin Lorentsen and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

10. New Scandinavians, New Narratives 
Anne Grydehøj

Part III: Images 

11. Nordic Nature: From Romantic Nationalism to the Anthropocene 
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

12. Emigration and Scandinavian Identity 
Mart Kuldkepp

13. Film and the Welfare State: Three Informational Films about Healthcare 
C. Claire Thomson

14. Stereotypes in and of Scandinavia 
Ellen Kythor

Index

Format: Open Access PDF

17 colour illustrations

Copyright: © 2020

ISBN: 9781787353992

Publication: April 17, 2020

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