An updated edition of the definitive history of Scandinavia over the past five centuries
Despite certain distinctions and differences the lands of Scandinavia or Norden?Sweden
Norway Finland Iceland Denmark and the Faroe Islands?are united by bonds of culture
language and geography and by a shared history that comes richly to life in this landmark
work. Now in an expanded updated edition this definitive chronicle of five centuries of
Scandinavian history incorporates the geopolitical developments and momentous events that have
marked the Nordic world in recent decades. Scandinavia since 1500 situates the region's
political history within the traditional European chronology?in which the long modern? period
is subdivided into the Renaissance early modern modern and contemporary. Within this
framework Byron J. Nordstrom traces the various ways in which economic social and cultural
ideas and practices have come to Scandinavia from abroad only to be modified and recast in a
uniquely Nordic character. Long-unquestioned national mythologies come under Nordstrom's
scrutiny along with historical blind spots and erasures as he ranges from canonical figures
like Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Christian IV of Denmark to the constitutions of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries the resistance movements in World War II and the
Scandinavian welfare states literary culture and modern design. Expanded to include the
nature and realities of the increasingly postindustrial economies of the late twentieth and
early twenty-first centuries?including environmental concerns integration with Europe
globalization and immigration?Scandinavia since 1500 offers a comprehensive yet nuanced
portrait of this unique region in all its political diplomatic social economic and cultural
complexity.
