The Shortest History of Scandinavia

Mart Kuldkepp

• Publisher: Black Inc.
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781760644963
• eBook ISBN: 9781743823989
• Edition: 0
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

From the Stone Age to 'Scandimania' – a brisk, illuminating journey through 14, 000 years of Nordic history

Outsiders have long viewed Scandinavia as special, starting with the ancient Greeks and their myths of ultima Thule, a place 'where the Sun goes to rest'. Today, we admire Scandinavia for its universal welfare, equality, peacefulness and untouched nature – not to mention its interior design, crime literature and love of all things hygge.

Yet Nordic history has had its hardships and dark periods too: pandemics, war, the expansionism of the Viking Age and the eighteenth century, alliances with Nazi Germany in World War II and a eugenics movement in the twentieth century.

In The Shortest History of Scandinavia, historian Mart Kuldkepp masterfully sketches the outlines of Scandinavia's rich history – from the first known peoples of the region, who followed the ice sheet north as it retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, to the Scandinavians living in nations that are among the happiest in the world today.

In this short but deeply insightful volume, Kuldkepp illuminates the concept of 'Nordicness' – a hard-to-define quality that has nonetheless steered the region to respond to major challenges, actively shaping their history and exerting a considerable influence on European and global history in the process.

'A superbly clear, learned and wide-ranging history of the five Nordic nations'— Andrew Scott, author of Northern Lights

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. What Is Scandinavia?
• 2. Prehistorical Scandinavia
• 3. The Viking Age
• 4. The Rise of Scandinavian Statehood
• 5. The High Middle Ages: Centralisation and Europeanisation
• 6. The Late Medieval Crisis and the Kalmar Union
• 7. Wars and Politics: 1500s–1600s
• 8. The Early Modern Period: Absolutism and Parliamentarianism
• 9. Economy, Trade and Colonialism in the 1700s
• 10. The Napoleonic Wars and the Swedish–Norwegian Union
• 11. Romantic Nationalism, Liberalism and Scandinavianism
• 12. Economic and Social Modernisation: Late 1800s – Early 1900s
• 13. Modern Parliamentarism and the End of the Swedish–Norwegian Union
• 14. World War I: Neutrality and Political Renewal
• 15. The Interwar Period: Crisis and Recovery
• 16. World War II: Resistance and Acquiescence
• 17. The Cold War and the Nordic Balance
• 18. The Classic Era of the Welfare State
• 19. European Integration and Post–Cold War Transition
• 20. Political Developments in the 1990s and 2000s
• 21. Nordic Cultural Exports and ‘Scandimania’
• 22. Scandinavian Successes and Failures
• Acknowledgements
• Select Bibliography
• Image Credits
• Index
• Back Cover