This chapter examines consistent patterns and changing trends in British representations of Scandinavia throughout the nineteenth century. It demonstrates how Scandinavia became not only an alternative destination for British travellers but also the source of new literary forms and motifs which inspired and fuelled contemporary debates in British society. Its case studies are Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Harriet Martineau’s Feats on the Fjord (1841), and Maria Sharpe Pearson’s writings on Ibsen’s work published in the British press (1889–94). These texts demonstrate the growing attraction of the Scandinavian landscape and the so-called cultural (re)discovery of Old Norse literature and mythology as well as Scandinavia’s rising literary reputation from the 1880s onwards thanks to the international impact of realist and naturalist works by Scandinavian authors, notably Henrik Ibsen. Ultimately Scandinavia offered the ‘allure of accessible difference’ as the region was and continues to be perceived as both geographically and culturally close – and yet far away.

The history of peace research offers a window onto mid-twentieth-century European political thought in transformation. This chapter focuses on the transformation of peace research from the 1960s to the 1980s, as it evolved a radical and trans-national approach to politics, linking developmentalist concerns with decolonisation and economic underdevelopment at the global scale to a critique of social hierarchies at the national scale. Historically located both after the post-war pursuit of European peace through economic growth and regional integration and before the emergence of Euromissile peace movements of the 1980s, one strand of peace research soon became an approach to social justice all of its own, and came to be known as ‘positive peace’. Positive peace was most prominent in the Nordic countries, where it offered a means of connecting nationally framed accounts of social democracy to more radical and utopian calls for social justice on all political scales. During these years of international encroachment and domestic upheaval in Europe, positive visions for peace provided a space within which European intellectuals responded to newly recognised global-scale injustices such as the Vietnam War and the spectre of global famine, as well as building a more just social order at home.

Chapter Eighteen introduces us to Scandinavian Romanticism, which helped Denmark, Sweden, and Norway imagine themselves as independent nations by drawing on Old Norse and medieval sources, contributing to a shared sense of identity. The chapter explores its origins in Mallet and eighteenth-century antiquarianism, drawing parallels with Ossian and Percy, and discussing Ewald’s Rolf Krage. It then looks at some of the defining features of Scandinavian ballads, including the figures of elf and shield maiden. Sweden’s loss of Finland led to an ‘Old Scandinavian’ turn in which the Viking became a common topos, as we discover in works by Tegnér and Wergeland. It also led to calls for a new mythology, answered among others by Ewald, Grundtvig, and Oehlenschläger. Other writers include the young Ibsen, who began his career with plays about Norse mythology, and Erik Gustaf Geiger whose stories idealise Nordic liberty. Fairy tales were also an important Romantic genre. Möller discusses the motif of the Isle of Felicity in works by Almqvist and Atterbom before turning to the characteristic features of Andersen’s tales. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of Scandinavian Romantic fiction, including male-authored historical romances but also domestic novels written by women that look towards realism.

This chapter takes stock of current research concerning undergraduate research in Scandinavia. A literature search identified relatively few studies that explicitly employ this concept. There is a strong emphasis on “research-based education” as a principle in all three Scandinavian countries, with a broader view on linking research and education. In recent years, perspectives emphasizing inquiry, student-centeredness and problem-based learning have attracted considerable attention. There are also other indications of practices associated with students behaving as researchers – e.g., the relatively wide use of the bachelors’ thesis and specific examples of institutions and cases where principles from undergraduate research have been employed. More recent developments include theuse of honours programmes.

This chapter concludes the volume’s first thematic strand (Home and Away) with a study of Scandinavia and the North Sea world in the age of William the Conqueror. Beginning with Denmark and Norway, it moves on to scrutinise the legacy of Cnut’s North Sea empire, before turning to Scandinavia’s Christianisation and the consolidation of its Church. This is followed by a study of towns, trade centres, and the settlement and increasing urbanisation of the North Atlantic. The chapter is rounded off by discussions of Sweden and the two Baltic Islands of Gotland and Bornholm.

The societies of medieval Northern Europe were slave-holding societies that revered military prowess and expressed wealth and power through symbols of warrior-hood. They were intensely hierarchical and patriarchal societies in which control, guardianship and naked power over people equated with status. Despite the growth of governmental and religious institutions, they remained societies obsessed with notions of honor and shame, with lineage and kinship, identity and belonging. This chapter explores some problematic historiographical assumptions around the diminishing significance of slavery in these cultural contexts, arguing that only when we acknowledge and recognize the slave-holding nature of these societies are we are better able to understand them. Close analysis of the lifestyle, attitudes, and cultural conceptions of the slave-holder and the enslaver are therefore essential. Indeed slave-holding behaviours are evident in a wide range of medieval sources including sagas, poetry, myths, chronicles, legal texts, manorial records, wills and manumissions as well as penitentials, sermons and hagiography. These sources reveal that enslaved people were regarded as the weakest, most dishonorable and degraded of all individuals. Paradoxically, they highlight that the marginalisation of enslaved human beings was extremely important for these communities - underpinning broader power relations and defining and reinforcing the boundaries of community identity and belonging.

Over time, the Scandinavian countries have earned a certain reputation for being “global good Samaritans” (Brysk 2009; Vik et al. 2018). According to a widespread narrative, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have an exceptional approach to world affairs, which revolves around the pursuit of peace, human rights, sustainable development, and a humanitarian commitment to “saving lives.” Scandinavian countries are indeed the world’s most generous nations in terms of official development aid allocation – the only ones consistently at or above the target set by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Their largesse is cast as uniquely motivated and driven by altruistic and idealist motives, contrasting with the self-interested foreign policies of the great powers (Ingebritsen 2002; Lancaster 2007). This reputation is not exclusive, however, to outsiders who read Scandinavia as a utopian promise of a less cynical world order. It is also a key component of the Scandinavians’ own national identity and collective self-image. Scandinavian citizens are inclined to identify their countries’ foreign policies with values of solidarity and generosity (see Leira 2007).

Scandinavian countries have historically been liberal frontrunners in regard to asylum and immigration policy. Today, however, this picture has changed and each of the Scandinavian countries has introduced more restrictive measures. The present chapter examines the various domestic policy measures adopted by Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the field of asylum and immigration since 2015 and the dilemmas they raise for the traditional “Scandinavian humanitarian brand.” It argues that the particular kind of restrictive policymaking pursued by Scandinavian countries can be conceptualized as a form of negative nation branding. In order to achieve the deterrent effect of these policies, Scandinavian states are further prompted to actively advertise new restrictions in public discourse and through targeted campaigns. On this basis, the chapter discusses whether negative nation branding in regard to asylum and migration have international spillover effects.

The Ibsen play that most often led to problems with the theatre censor was Ghosts. This play, partly as a result of censorship, also became closely associated with the European independent theatre movement. The most famous censorship episode occurred when the newly formed Independent Theatre in London wanted to produce the play in March 1891 and realized that this could not be done without forming a private club. The result was a succès de scandale, fierce criticism and abuse from conservative critics. The play was not licensed in Britain until 1914, and, due to the longevity of the British censorship institution, new stage translations of Ibsen’s plays had to be assessed by the censor’s readers all the way until the abolition of the theatre censorship in 1969. From the beginning, Ibsen may have benefited from a somewhat laxer and less centralized censorship system in Scandinavia. When he started writing his most controversial plays, he was also an established author at home, enjoying considerable status. In addition to this, his plays appeared first as books, thus putting a certain pressure on the censorship simply by being available. This chapter also considers the censorship laws and practices in America, Germany, France and Russia. It shows how opponents of censorship all over Europe associated themselves with Ibsen.

The history of war in the Scandinavian world is inseparable from the history of the Vikings. The stereotype of Norse violence, still prevalent today, was fostered by contemporary writers such as Alcuin, who lamented the strike on Lindisfarne in his native Northumbria (793 ce) as a pagan contamination of Christian society. ‘The heathens’, he wrote to the monks there, ‘have stained the sanctuaries of God, poured forth the blood of the saints all around the altar, laid waste to the house of our hope, and trodden upon the bodies of the saints in the temple of God as if they were dung in the street. What can I say except to lament in spirit with you before the altar of Christ and say “spare your people, Lord, spare your people, and do not give your inheritance to the pagans lest they might say where is the God of the Christians”?’ A century later, a horrified Abbo of St Germain-des-Près recounted how so many Viking longships went down the Seine to Paris that the river itself seemed to have disappeared. According to the view presented in medieval sources from the British Isles and France and replicated in modern textbooks and popular histories, Scandinavians were decidedly ‘other’ to the Europe they plundered.