Scandinavian history

This article aims to analyse the changes in migration regimes in Sweden over the period 1739–1982. We have chosen to divide this into four periods where each is characterized as a specific regime: the pre-industrial period (1739–1860), the laissez faire period (1860–1932), the rising ambitions period (1932–1951) and the Rehn-Meidner period (1951–1982). These four periods reveal different approaches held by the state regarding labour migration and housing. During the pre industrial period, rules and regulations hindered mobility and aimed to keep the labour force in agriculture. During the laissez faire period, migration increased, but construction and housing was largely left to the market. During the rising ambitions period, a laissez faire approach was maintained towards migration, but both the govern ment and non-profit organizations became increasingly involved in housing. During the Rehn-Meidner period, internal migration was stimulated, and in the course of ten years, one million homes were built with government support. The differences between the periods are not clear-cut. There were dual and contradictory ideas and poli cies during each period. This duality provides an important theore tical starting point for this study. Other significant starting points are the long-term perspective taken and the idea that these periods can be analysed as regimes.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Since the 1990s, an increasing number of inquiries into the history of children's out-of-home care have shown that child welfare sometimes failed to protect children. In this Special Issue, we explore how the Nordic countries have responded to allegations and scandals of historical child abuse within child welfare, and also how history matters in these political processes. We ask how Nordic societies have acknowledged past historical child abuse and how they aim to deal with its legacy. Attempts to redress, and provide compensation for, past failures are discussed in the context of transitional justice.

The article studies the Sámi experiences during the 'German era' in Norway and Finland, 1940-1944, before the Lapland War. The Germans ruled as occupiers in Norway, but had no jurisdiction over the civilians in Finland, their brothers-in-arms. In general, however, encounters between the local people and the Germans appear to have been cordial in both countries. Concerning the role of racial ideology, it seems that the Norwegian Nazis had more negative opinions of the Sámi than the occupiers, while in Finland the racial issues were not discussed. The German forces demonstrated respect for the reindeer herders as communicators of important knowledge concerning survival in the Arctic. The herders also possessed valuable meat reserves. Contrary to this, other Sámi groups, such as the Sea Sámi in Norway, were ignored by the Germans, resulting in a forceful exploitation of sea fishing. Through the North Sámi concept birget (coping with), we analyse how the Sámi both resisted and adapted to the situation. The cross-border area of Norway and Sweden is described in the article as an exceptional arena for transnational reindeer herding, but also for the resistance movement between an occupied and a neutral state.

This study follows about 500 disabled individuals over their lifespan to examine their risks of dying in 19thcentury society, in comparison to a reference group of non-disabled people. The aim is to detect whether people, due to their disability, had a higher probability of meeting an untimely death. We use Sweden's 19th-century parish registers to identify people the ministers defined as disabled, and to construct a reference group of individuals who were not affected by these disabilities. By combining the deviance theories from sociology studies with demographic sources and statistical methods, we achieve new insight into how life developed for disabled people in past societies. The results suggest that disability significantly jeopardized the survival of individuals, particularly men, but also that the type of disability had an impact. Altogether, we can demonstrate that the disabled constituted a disadvantaged but heterogeneous group of people whose demography and life courses must be further researched.

The article examines how people within the Church of Sweden's leadership tried to solve 'the problem of vagrancy' in Sweden in the early twentieth century. In focus are the priest John Melander and the deacon Josef Flinth, who advocated and realized various activities for categories of poor and mobile men in the population. These interventions, defined as help-to-self-help, differentiated between the 'worthy' and the 'unworthy' needy. In publications and lectures, Melander and Flinth presented arguments to transfer 'unworthy' categories to the 'worthy', thereby expanding the community of value. This expansion was conditioned, however, by boundaries drawn regarding ideas on belonging and ethnicity. Working in the borderlands of the community as part of a Christian calling, Melander and Flinth contributed to the expansion of social work in the early twentieth century.

In this article the author analyses how scientific ideas about anthropogenic nutrient load in the sea changed in Finland and Sweden from the 1950s to the early 1970s. In the 1950s, marine scientists considered an artificial increase in the volume of nutrients beneficial to the oligotrophic Baltic Sea. This conception was challenged in the late 1960s by the Swedish hydrologist Stig Fonselius. He theorized that nutrient discharge from municipalities and factories had set in motion a vicious cycle: the growth in biomass consumed oxygen in the depths of the sea, which in turn fed the accumulation of nutrients in the productive surface layer. This process led to eutrophication, which is now widely considered to be the most serious environmental problem in the Baltic Sea. However, Finnish marine scientists divided into two camps vis-à-vis Fonselius' theory of anthropogenic eutrophication. So-called alarmist scientists argued that the Baltic Sea was a victim of industrial development and demanded stricter wastewater treatment. Conversely, eutrophication sceptics insisted that the observed environmental changes originated from natural cycles. The author argues that this division stemmed from the different perceptions of the scientists in regard to the role of the marine environment for the benefit of human society.

The Lectureships for Swedish in Germany in the Context of Cultural Diplomacy 1917–1930. During the Weimar Republic a significant number of lectureships for Swedish was established at German universities. This paper attempts to explain this development through an analysis of the political and academic context of these establishments. Focussing on the actors involved the lectureships are linked to the emerging interest of the German state for public diplomacy emerging after World War I and the following reactions of German academia. The paper also treats the importance of the main Swedish actor, namely the association for the preservance of Swedishness abroad for the establishments of the lectureships. At the end the different actors working for Swedish lectureships in Germany are placed in a broader European context and questions concerning the relationship between universities and cultural diplomacy are raised and answered.

The role of the European nobility and their ability to retain their political and economic power are part of the debate on the modernization of Europe's economy. This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the wealth of the Swedish nobility as the country evolved from an agrarian to an industrial economy. We use a sample of 200+ probate inventories of nobles for each of the benchmark years 1750, 1800, 1850 and 1900. We show that the nobility, less than 0.5 per cent of the population, was markedly dominant in 1750: the average noble was 60 times richer than the average person, and the nobles held 29 per cent of all private wealth. 90 per cent of the nobles were richer than the average person. By 1900 the advantage of the nobles' wealth had declined; the group held only 5 per cent of total private wealth. At the same time, stratification within the nobility had increased dramatically. One group of super-rich Swedish nobles, often large land owners from the high nobility, possessed the biggest fortunes, but a large minority of nobles were no richer than the average Swede.

This article analyses the career paths of Swedish and Finnish sailors from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. The article shows that, for the most of the men, the seaman's occupation was just a passing phase before taking up a job on shore, but many of them also created a longlasting and advancing career by going to sea. There was not necessarily, however, a clear distinction between job opportunities at sea and those on shore in those days: men worked both at sea and on shore. We therefore argue that an individual's advancement in a maritime career was a context-specific socioeconomic phenomenon. In Scandinavia, work on board ships was dependent on features that characterized the division of labour in a predominantly agricultural domestic economy on land and emerging industrialization during the turn of the century. Here we present an analysis of the career paths of almost 60,000 men recruited to serve on Swedish and Finnish merchant vessels from the 1840s to late 1940s.

From around the middle of the 18th century, agrarian reforms came on the agenda in most countries of western Europe. Although Norway’s economy was not manorial like that of Denmark and much of the rest of the continent, a debate emerged on how to improve Norwegian agriculture as well. Contrary to what the idealized picture of the typical Norwegian peasant might make us believe, the Norwegian right of redemption, odelsretten, was at the heart of these discussions. This article explores the differing opinions voiced over the ancient familial right from the viewpoint of intellectual history, drawing on the European historiography on political languages and the rise of commercial society and arguing that they should be interpreted as different responses to the societal changes caused by the economic growth in Norway from the middle of the 18th century.

This article investigates the gendered expressions of emotions in regard to experienced material hardship and professional aspirations in the memoirs of a Lutheran clergyman in 18th-century Finland, Johan Frosterus (1720–1809). In his narrative, Frosterus links the material hardship of his parents during the Great Northern War with the material difficulties he himself experienced during his young adulthood. In retrospect, he underlines the lack of books and appropriate clothing that stood in the way of his aspirations to establish himself socially and professionally as a clergyman, eligible both for a clerical position and marriage. Patronage and the emotional and material help through family members, especially Frosterus’ mother, are discussed as central parts of this process. The narrative describes both the emotions linked to the lack of these objects and the social relationships surrounding these status symbols, offering valuable insights into how materiality and emotions interact with constructions of masculinity – and in particular, clerical masculinity – in early modern life writing.

The cult of St Nicholas spread in Scandinavia and northern Rus' in approximately the same period, namely in the last decades of the 11th and the first decades of the 12th centuries. In spite of such a correspondence, the dissemination of the cult in the two adjacent regions has been treated as two separate phenomena. Consequently, the growing popularity of the cult in Scandinavia has traditionally been dealt with as an immanent part of the transmission of the Catholic tradition, and a similar phenomenon in northern Rus' has been discussed with reference to the establishment of Orthodox Christianity. By contrast, the evidence analysed in this article shows that the establishment of the cult of St Nicholas in the two regions was an intertwined process, in which the difference between Latin Christendom and Greek Orthodoxy played a minor role. The early spread of this particular cult thus suggests that, as far as some aspects of the cult of saints are concerned, the division between Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity in Northern Europe was less abrupt in the 11th and 12th centuries than has been traditionally assumed. This was due to the fact that the medieval cult of saints was not limited to the liturgy of saints, but was a wider social phenomenon in which political and dynastic links and cultural and trading contacts across Northern Europe often mattered more than confessional differences. When we leave the liturgy aside and turn to kings, princes, traders and other folk interacting across the early Christian North, then the confessional borders are less useful for our understanding of how some aspects of Christian culture were communicated across Northern Europe in the first two centuries after conversion.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 presented Swedish Social Democrats with a dilemma: how could they use the transnational revolutionary momentum to further universal suffrage, without supporting actions possibly leading to violence? In striking this balance, the use of communications was central. This article uses the concept of the media system to analyse the communicative practices and strategies developed by the Party in the early 20th century, and how these were employed between 1915 and 1917, in relation to the hunger marches and revolutionary pressures. The study shows that the Party had established conscious agitation strategies and an elaborate national communication structure, which enabled coordinated opinion activities. As early as 1915, the Party began using these tools to initiate a national opinion movement concerning the food situation. In 1917, faced with the combination of events in Russia and erupting hunger marches, the Party leadership chose to emphasize security and stability, focusing on events the Party could control, such as the 1 May demonstrations. The resulting development of revolutionary opinion in Sweden during the spring of 1917 and the ensuing political changes reflected conscious media management strategies by the Left, who used the media system to navigate and shape a transnational revolutionary moment.

The article looks closer at the development of the trade in timber between Norway and the Baltics with Britain in the period 1780 to 1830. It looks closer at the scale of the trade, its role in the economic development of the countries involved as well as how it became a global trade, and also discusses the ballance of power between what is commonly understood as centre and pheripheral countries at the time.

While agro-pastoralism has been introduced in northern Europe – southern Scandinavia from 4000 BC, a hunting and gathering culture – the Pitted Ware (3300-2300 BC) – reappeared in this Neolithic context and left a central question: why it did not adopt agriculture despite contacts during one millennium with its neighbouring farming communities? We provide an explanation based on an economic mechanism related to trade between foragers and farmers. We demonstrate that the terms of trade of raw materials (mainly seal oil) extracted and sold by foragers have a tendency to decline in the long term in relation to the resources produced and sold by farmers. Neolithisation of northern Europe can therefore be viewed as the outcome of a long-term process based on trade in which hunter-gatherers get voluntarily involved without forecasting that it will, in the end, constraint most of them to give up their way of life.

While agriculture has spread quite rapidly from the Levant to most parts of Europe during the sixth millennium, its adoption has been delayed to the fourth millennium in Northern Europe, an area inhabited by complex hunter-gatherers – mainly the Ertebølle culture. This hiatus leads to reject diffusion by migration or acculturation and to favor the integrationist approach in which explanatory models are describing contact between foragers and farmers and the shift to agriculture is relying on social competition between hunter-gatherers. We provide an alternative explanation of this shift, based on an economic mechanism related to trade between foragers and farmers. We demonstrate that the terms of trade of raw materials extracted and sold by foragers have a tendency to decline in the long term in relation to the food resources produced and sold by farmers. Neolithization of Northern Europe can therefore be viewed as the outcome of a long-term process based on trade in which hunter-gatherers get voluntary involved without forecasting that it will, in the end, constraint most of them to give up their way of life. Such explanation is consistent with the long period of contact between foragers and farmers provided by archaeological records and recent palaeogenetic studies.

For no less than 300 years, c. 1550-1860 the Dutch way of fishing was the envy of neighbours in the North Sea area and looked upon as the undisputed best practice. This was a lasting consequence of the Dutch Golden Age in fishing outliving the reality of best practice with at least 150 years. This paper explores the consequences of the image of Dutch dominance, as seen through 41 different attempts to build a fleet and run fishing operations similar to the Dutch. Most of them were short lived, and some never made it to the fishing grounds before going bankrupt. When reviewed one by one, they all have unique reasons for lacklustre performances. Privateering, warfare, bankruptcy, bad fishing luck are all valid explanations at the level of politics and short term events. However, when looked upon in connection to each other, some recurrent features of more or less sound policies appear, as well as structural social and natural conditions for varying degrees of success and failure. Two waves of imitation emerge from this comparison. In the mid-17th century and during the 1760s-70s there was a particularly strong European wide interest in emulating Dutch fisheries.

The Nordic countries are often put forward as forerunners in the acceptance of permissive divorce practices and in the shift away from a patriarchal family system during the twentieth century. This special issue focuses on the long term historical path dependencies that make Nordic institutions and norms regarding divorce stand out as liberal and individualistic in an international comparison, but also shed new light on the differences that exist between the countries. Specific traits that are raised is the role played by the shared Lutheran culture that facilitated the breakthrough of a secular notion of marriage as a civil contract, but also the important role played by the first wave feminist movement in all of the Nordic countries for the early breakthrough of liberal divorce laws. However, it is clear that permissive norms and institutions have tended to spread in two distinct waves with leaders and laggards within the Nordic context. In the early twentieth century, Denmark and Norway spearheaded the shift to bilateral no-fault divorce. In the 1970s, Sweden took over as the leader when the country adopted unilateral no-fault divorce while Finland consistently has tended to stand out as the conservative laggard within the Nordic context.

From a distance, the many wars that took place during the early modern period were
fought by kings and armies, conquering territories and losing them, signing peace treaties
and breaking them. Wars fought with armies were, however, costly and, if possible, the
rulers did what they could to avoid them while still trying to acquire and protect
territories. One strategy employed was to persuade the people of a disputed territory to
surrender to the conquering state by swearing an oath of allegiance to its king. Seen in this
perspective, territories could be acquired and lost by using the oaths as means in military
conflict. The following article discusses the role of oaths in keeping and conquering
territories in the early modern Scandinavian countries, with a special focus on Sweden and
to some degree Sweden’s constant enemy during this period, Denmark-Norway. It also
studies the same oaths from the people’s point of view, and what happened after an oath
was sworn and the war ended. By taking examples from areas under dispute, the article
investigates how oaths could be used by both authorities and subjects in warfare and after
in the early modern context.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

The purpose of this book is to increase our understanding of the driving forces in pre-modern resource exploitation. Within this, the goal is to make distinction between human and natural impacts on the marine ecosystem through analyses of relevant sets of historical source material.
This leads to a starting point of formulating three overarching questions.
1. What were the main forces stimulating changes in the exploitation of North Sea herring in the period of c. 1600-1860. In other words, what were the dynamics of this particular historical system?
2. What was the role of the natural environment in this?
3. What caused the long term decline of the Dutch herring fisheries?

This article discusses the creation of assault as a crime against health and life as this discursive process is expressed through Swedish laws, legislative discussions, and legal practice from 1945 to 1965. Inspired by Michel Foucault's theoretical reflections on biopolitics and sociologist Thomas Lemke's outline to a analytics of biopolitics, the article argues that a most central component in the genealogy of assault as a crime against health and life was a shift in the first postwar decades, from a predominant legal idealistic paradigm within Swedish jurisprudence, by which assault was defined as a crime against bodily integrity, to a legal realistic epistemology, imbued with the scientific knowledge and empirical 'truth'-producing practices of modern medicine. As an effect, new discourses around the victimized body emerged, through which prevailing knowledges and 'truths' around violent crime and its effects were challenged and marginalized. In this discursive process, the 19th-century legal-moral category of violent crimes finally collapsed into the overarching legal category prescribed by Brottsbalken (1965) as 'crimes against health and life'. Consequently, the victimized body was deprived of all meaning but 'life' and thus created as a biopolitical space, available to series of life-governing interventions and regulatory practices.

This article analyses the beginnings, development and prospect of Baltic studies in Romania. The articles stands on three pillars. It starts with an investigation on the main sources of Romanian knowledge of the Baltic region and sorts out the way they have been represented in the Romanian mental images. Throughout the analysis, knowledge of each other is bonded to the concepts of memory and history based on the assumption that the largest part of our knowledge derives from remembering, this being applicable even in the high sphere of international relations. This theoretical framework is sampled to the case-study of Romania’s knowledge of Baltic area assessing the medieval, modern and 20th century legacy of the Romanian encounters with the Baltic States discovering  that, although the distance between Suceava, the medieval capital of Moldova, and Vilnius is less than 1,000 km. (or 600 miles) and the Principality of Moldova of Stephen the Great neighbored the state of Jagiellonians, in most cases, the legacy of the relations between Romanians and Baltic nations played little role in feeding a sense of solidarity or complementarity between these nations. This pattern is now challenged by courses on Baltic and Nordic studies taught at Valahia University of Târgoviște and the activity of the Romanian Association for Baltic and Nordic Studies, which joins the efforts of scholars from various Romanian institutes and universities, especially from Iași, Cluj-Napoca, Bucharest, Constanța and Târgoviște. The analysis of these endeavors, the other two pillars of this article, brings forth educational, scholarly, editorial and dissemination efforts designed to change the perspective of the Romanian public in this respect.

The article is based on a study of the Icelandic 'Lögmanns-annáll' as a part of my doctoral thesis (1996). The main corpus of the annals is written by Einar Haflidason. The fourth hand records Gaute Eiriksson's death in a notice for 1391 although he did not pass away before 1412. The fifth hand is younger than the fourth one, and the notices of the last two annalists must thus have been written after 1412. I further maintain that annals should be analysed in view of the last notices of the manuscript.

This article provides a history of the New Nordic Cuisine* the ideology, the politics, the criticism, and the counter-reactions to it. The article has a particular focus on the Copenhagen restaurant scene which has been recognized as the epicenter of the movement, and it argues that after a decade of dominance of the strict Nordic locavorism, the dogmas of New Nordic Cuisine are being challenged from within by a generation of chefs who were brought up in New Nordic restaurants, but they are currently distancing themselves from the movement. A notable example of this new generation is Christian Puglisi, who while holding on to some of the core elements of the New Nordic Cuisine (particularly ideals of sound production and the focus on vegetables) refuses the geographical dogmas of the movement and unfolds a cosmopolitan fusion kitchen. The article also discusses how different actors in different contexts have used the New Nordic Cuisine to position themselves in the culinary field either by adhering to or rejecting the concept, and how the example of the New Nordic Cuisine highlights the complex and often contradictory dynamics of the local/global dichotomy in contemporary food and consumer culture.

The Swedish redress scheme intended for victims of historical child abuse in out-of-home care compensated only 46% of claimants who sought economic compensation for past harms. This article explores the reasons behind this comparatively low validation rate by investigating a) how the eligibility criteria of the Redress Act were evaluated by the Redress Board; and b) the justifications and underlying values used when applications were rejected with reference to the fact that reported abuse was not deemed to be sufficiently severe according to past standards. Victim capital, which determines how vulnerable or credible a victim is perceived to be by others, as well as competence and narration, are essential aspects for this type of legal proceeding. The article demonstrates that the claimants had to traverse a complicated web of criteria to be awarded compensation. The outcomes for claimants were affected by how the past was conceptualized in this legal setting, what competences the victims themselves possessed, what competence and resources the administrative system offered, and the extent to which the decision-making process fragmented victims' narratives.

is a professor in cultural history at the University of Oslo. Her fields of research are eighteenth century medical history, eighteenth century antiquarianism, museums, heritage and cultural memory. Her latest book is From Antiquities to Heritage (Berghahn Books 2014). Other major publications are Topografenes verden. Fornminner og fortidsforståelse (Pax forlag 2007) and Museum. En kulturhistorie (Pax forlag 2009).

Based on a constructivist approach, this book offers a comparative analysis into the causes of nationalist populist politics in each of the five Nordic independent nation states. Behind the social liberal façade of the economically successful, welfare-orientated Nordic states, right-wing populism has found support in the region. Such parties emerged first in Denmark and Norway in the 1970s, before becoming prominent in Sweden and Finland after the turn of the millennium and in Iceland in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, when populist parties surged throughout the Nordics. The author traces these Nationalist trails of thoughts back to the National Socialistic movements of the 1920s and 1930s (the respective Nordic version Nazi parties) and before, to the birth of the Nordic nation states in the nineteenth century following the failure of integration. Since then, as the book argues, separate nationalisms have grown strong in each of the countries. This study will appeal to students and scholars as well as wider audiences interested in European Politics, Nordic Politics, Nationalism, and Populism.

New electron micro-probe analysis of residues found on the median 'stitched-seams' of Scandinavian flint daggers dating to the late Neolithic are presented and linked to previous work on the mode of production of this artefact type. Analysis suggests that previous interpretation of the production sequence requires revision with consequences for the understanding of social organization of craft production in Southern Scandinavia.

WWII had fundamental consequences for the fishing industry, which in its turn increased its ecological impact both at sea and on land. Changes were due to the partial reprieve for fish stocks and to immediate post-war developments: the use of naval technology for commercial fishing, reorientation of markets, and reassessment
of ocean policies in the light of the war.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

Nazi ideology was premised on a belief in the superiority of the Germanic race. However, the idea of a superior Germanic race was not invented by the Nazis. By the beginning of the 20th century this idea had already gained not only popular but also mainstream scientific support in England, Germany, the U.S., Scandinavia, and other parts of the world in which people claimed Germanic origins. Yet how could this idea, which is now recognised as ideology of the most dangerous kind, be given the appearance of scientific legitimacy by some of the leading physical anthropologists of the day?

This volume deals with the development, implementation and maintenance of Scottish networks in Northern Europe from c.1600-1746. The book contains nine chapters divided into three parts of original and innovative archival reseach. After an introduction providing a theoretical overview of the subject, the first section focusses on the associations of kith and kin, place and nation and confessional loyalty tested in the numerous case studies throughout the book.
Section two provides an analysis of Scottish networks in an economic context providing both quantitative and qualitative evidence to describe their success and failures in a variety of situations and locations. The final section provides three meticulously researched case studies of subversive networks including an espionage network operating in Poland on behalf of Sweden, the confessional network of the irenicist John Durie and rounded off with a review of the Jacobite network stretching across Russia, Sweden, Prussia and Rome.

Building on and applying the theoretical debates developed in /Memory and Remembering: Past Awareness in the Medieval North/, ed. Pernille Hermann and Stephen A. Mitchell, special issue of /Scandinavian Studies/, 85:3 (2013)—itself the result of a 2012 Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar—the articles in this volume deal with the vocabulary, concepts, and functions of memory in medieval Norse texts (e.g., sagas, myths, skaldic poems, laws, runic inscriptions, historiographical writings), with reference to international memory studies. Drawing on these emerging theoretical tools for studying—and conceptualizing—memory, the collection looks at new ways of understanding medieval cultures and such issues as transmission and media, preservation and storage, forgetting and erasure, and authenticity and falsity. Despite its interdisciplinary and comparative basis, the volume remains grounded in empirical studies of memory and memory-dependent issues as these took form in the Nordic world.

CONTENTS: JÜRG GLAUSER, “Foreword” vii; PERNILLE HERMANN, STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, and AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Introduction: Minni and Muninn – Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture” 1; Part I. Memory and Narration —PERNILLE HERMANN, “Key Aspects of Memory and Remembering in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature” 13; JOHN LINDOW, “Memory and Old Norse Mythology” 41; MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS, “Authentication of Poetic Memory in Old Norse Skaldic Verse” 59; KATE HESLOP, “Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic, and Runic Texts” 75; RUSSELL POOLE, “Autobiographical Memory in Medieval Scandinavia and amongst the Kievan Rus’” 109; Part II. Memory and History — RUDOLF SIMEK, “Memoria Normannica” 133; STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, “The Mythologized Past: Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Gotland” 155; GÍSLI SIGURÐSSON, “Constructing a Past to Suit the Present: Sturla Þórðarson on Conflicts and Alliances with King Haraldr hárfagri” 175; STEFAN BRINK, “Minnunga mæn: The Usage of Old Knowledgeable Men in Legal Cases” 197; AGNES S. ARNÓRSDÓTTIR, “Legal Culture and Historical Memory in Medieval and Early Modern Iceland” 211; Index 231""

Some recent studies concerning early medieval Europe have suggested that Scandinavia and Francia represented two ideological poles with which other populations within the Germanic world might have intended to align themselves. While such a view sometimes may be useful, it may also over-simplify a more complex situation. Scandinavians must have recognised cultural distinctions between themselves and Christian Europeans, but may not have viewed these distinctions necessarily as emblems of opposition unless faced by a direct political or military threat. Indeed, ideological contrasts concerning the way society was structured and power was wielded may have cut across apparent ethnic boundaries.

Roman influences on early Germanic society may have assisted in the creation of a ‘Germanic’ identity. Roman pressure also may have affected the development of Germanic governmental structures, encouraging king-centred governmental ideologies that contrasted with possibly older, assembly-centred systems. Scandinavia, never threatened by Roman domination, may have retained assembly-centred structures longer than other Germanic societies. Southern Scandinavia’s ‘central places’ of the Early Germanic Iron Age, such as Gudme, may have had functions comparable with those of the later Old Saxon Assembly and Icelandic Alþingi. Such sites may have provided a focus for an emergent Scandinavian identity. This assembly-centred system may have been disrupted as chieftains struggled to attain the kind of power enjoyed by their counterparts in king-centred societies (much as happened in medieval Iceland), perhaps explaining the poverty of archaeological finds in the region from the Late Germanic Iron Age.
The growing Frankish threat to Scandinavia in the eighth century may have both spurred further consolidation of power in the hands of the élite and, initially, provoked an ideological reaction against Christian Europe. Yet while wary of domination by Christian European kingdoms, the Viking-Age Scandinavian élite may have envied their powerful model of lordship and had an interest in accessing elements of their culture. Such a situation may be reflected in historical legends, particularly the Scylding-Skjöldung cycle, which perhaps developed during the Viking Age. These legends might represent not source material for historical glimpses of early northern Europe (as is often assumed) but rather Scandinavian attempts at self-definition in relation to the burgeoning and powerful cultures of Christian Europe. Scandinavia’s eventual adoption of Christianity and Christian lordship in the course of the Viking Age largely resolved the ideological contrasts that had existed both within Scandinavian society and between Scandinavia and Christian Europe.

The interest of first-wave feminists into eugenics was widespread internationally but the Nordic countries showed an especially keen engagement with these ideals. This link between eugenics and feminism is a controversial one, since eugenics is often thought to restrict women's reproductive choices, whereas feminism empowers women's reproductive choices. This dissertation examines the engagement of Nordic feminists with eugenic ideals between 1890 and 1940. It investigates prominent feminists and feminist organizations from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. I analyse if, and to what extent, Nordic feminists believed eugenics to be an appealing ideology to support their goal of female empowerment This study draws upon theories of the body, intersectionality and biopower to illustrate how eugenic feminists defined, middle class women as valuable, who contributed positively society with their reproductive function as opposed to questionable women from the working class and under class who were unable to contribute to the nation. Using content analysis, this dissertation examines the public writings of eugenic feminists and feminist organizations, such as medical and sexual health advice books, articles, pamphlets, lectures, and magazines. In order to demonstrate the widespread use of eugenic rhetoric by Nordic feminists. The dissertation's main findings are that the Nordic eugenic feminists supported the notion of women as mothers in society and as such defined female civil rights around the concept of motherhood. They argued that women were not only mothers to their own children but were foremost mothers of the nation. As such, the appropriate women needed to contribute their own reproductive function responsibly, preventing degeneration, to the success and survival of the nation, understood in the context of the race struggle and nationalism. This study paves the way for further research on eugenics and its connection to other social movements, as well as the impact of eugenic ideologies on women and welfare policy after the Second World War. to see if I am still alive, which is a very helpful thing for PhD student. He stands at my side in good and bad time, and I can always rely on his support and honest opinion. True friendship is rare to find for a PhD student, but I could not be luckier to call him a friend. My dear fellow PhD students at the Centre for Nordic Studies, Jana Lainto, Tuire Liimatainen and Marina Vulovic. Thank you for your friendship and support. When these three extraordinary women entered their studies my lonely days as a PhD student were almost over. Over countless coffee breaks, lunches, and drinks we discussed work and life. I am especially grateful for making my last few months as a PhD student so much more joyous than ever before.

In the eyes of its inhabitants, post-war Sweden was by all accounts a unique country. With its peaceful, evolutionary character, the course of modern Swedish history was certainly very different from the brutal developments on the European continent. Much of this was thanks to the simple fact that Sweden, as one of few major European countries, had been spared the horrors of the Second World War. At the same time, the Swedish narratives of the war underwent a post-1945 transformation that held close to wider European currents, as of the late 1980s in particular. In an international perspective, the northern neutral democracy is therefore particularly interesting.

The Swedish case stands out in various ways also in the Nordic framework. In contrast to the neighbours, the Swedes had not been directly affected by the war through occupation, bombardment or devastation. The year 1945 did not mark an absolute turning point in Swedish history, and Sweden remained neutral in the Cold War.

Moreover, since the early 1990s, the controversies seem to have been more passionate and the assault on the dominating post-war narrative more fundamental than in the other Nordic countries. This text explores this historiographical transformation in Sweden during the last two decades.