The Story of Scandinavia

In SCANDINAVIA, academic and international scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture. Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European powers, at the expense of their own populations. The last two hundred years have been a battle to escape that legacy. The unexpected success of that battle is a great European revolution. From the Vikings to IKEA, this personal history will seamlessly interweave the stories of Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, alongside other countries, and ask, What is Scandinavia?, Where does it come from?, and What does it mean, today, to be Scandinavian? Yet there are a set of constant storylines. One thread, from the Viking Age onward, is the European influence and the Scandinavians' problem with becoming European. A second thread is inter-Scandinavian competition - conflict, warfare and mutual hatred. The brand we now know as "Scandinavia" is a recent invention. During most of its history, Denmark and Sweden, and to some degree Norway, were bloody enemies. These sentiments of enmity have not been fully settled. Under the surface of collaboration remain undercurrents of hatred, envy, contempt and pity. A third thread is the standing of those the Viking age sagas called "small-folk" and how they gradually emerged into an entirely new world in which states serve people, rather than people states. What does it mean today to be Scandinavian? For the author, whose identity is Scandinavian but his life European, this masterly history is a personal exploration as well as a narrative of compelling scope.