Introduction to Nordic Cultures

Annika Lindskog · Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen

Apr 2020 · UCL Press

About this ebook

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.

About the author

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).