The Shortest History of Scandinavia

Mart Kuldkepp

• Publisher: Old Street Publishing
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781913083984
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

From the Stone Age to 'Scandimania – an illuminating journey through 14,000 years of Nordic history Outsiders have long viewed Scandinavia as special, from the ancient Greek myth of a place 'where the Sun goes to rest' to the admiration held today for the region's universal welfare, equality and peacefulness. But the story of Scandinavia is also one of expansion and religious strife, of war and occupation, of famine and plague. From the first peoples who followed the ice sheet north at the end of the last Ice Age to Viking expeditions, from Cold War bridge-building to ranking as the happiest nations in the world, Mart Kuldkepp masterfully charts the story of the wider Nordic region as he ranges from Finland in the east to Iceland and Greenland in the west. As formerly neutral Finland and Sweden join NATO in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, this timely history untangles myth from reality, exploring the region's geopolitics and asking whether life in Scandinavia is quite as hygge as it might seem.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• 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
• 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
• Also in this series
• Copyright