Scandinavian Is M

Contesting Nordicness
Helsinki Yearbook of
Intellectual History
Edited by Heikki Haara and Koen Stapelbroek
Volume 2
Contesting Nordicness
From Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand
Edited by
Jani Marjanen, Johan Strang and Mary Hilson
ISBN 978-3-11-073501-7
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-073010-4
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-073015-9
ISSN 2698-6205
For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948486
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 Jani Marjanen, Johan Strang, Mary Hilson and the chapters’ contributors. Published by
Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
This book is published with open access at www.degruyter.com.
Cover illustration: The Brooklyn Museum‘s 1954 „Design in Scandinavia“ exhibition launched
„Scandinavian Modern“ furniture on the American market, Installation view from Design in
Scandinavia, April 20, 1954 through May 16, 1954. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Design_in_Scandinavia_exhibition.jpg]
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements VII
Johan Strang, Jani Marjanen and Mary Hilson

A Rhetorical Perspective on Nordicness: From Creating Unity to Exporting
Models 1
Ruth Hemstad
Scandinavian Sympathies and Nordic Unity: The Rhetoric of
Scandinavianness in the Nineteenth Century 35
Merle Weßel
The Nordic in the Scientific Racial Discourses in the United States and
Northern Europe in the Interwar Period: The Passing of Greatness 59
Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor

From the “Middle Way” to The Nordic Way: Changing Rhetorics of the Nordic
Model in Britain 81
Johan Strang
The Rhetoric of Nordic Cooperation: From the Other Europe to the Better
Europe? 103
Pirjo Markkola
Nordic Gender Equality: Between Administrative Cooperation and Global
Branding 133
Tero Erkkilä
Transparency and Nordic Openness in Finland: Ideational Shift, Invented
Tradition, and Anders Chydenius 153
Lily Kelting
New Nordic Cuisine: Performing Primitive Origins of Nordic Food 175
Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Nordic Noir: Branding Nordicness as British Boreal Nostalgia 197
VI Table of Contents
Bibliography 219
Contributors 253
Acknowledgements
This book draws from discussions that began at the University of Helsinki’s Cen-
tre for Nordic Studies and its networks. Largely inspired by Henrik Stenius, we
wanted to develop a way to analyse Norden as culturally constructed, while at
the same time acknowledging that the region is constantly redefined in political
debate. Instead of looking for the essential features of Nordic political culture,
we shifted our perspective towards an examination of the many different things
that were rhetorically coupled with the Nordic countries, as well as the reasons
and motives for this in various historical situations.
These debates developed into the idea for this book, which was first dis-
cussed at a seminar organised by Jani Marjanen and Johan Strang in 2015. We
would like to thank Letterstedtska föreningen and the Finnish Institute in Berlin
for supporting this initial meeting, and the Centre for Nordic Studies and the Fac-
ulty of Arts at the University of Helsinki for sponsoring a follow up seminar in
Helsinki in December 2016. After these meetings, the book matured as a dialogue
between the editors and the individual authors of the chapters in this book. We
also want to direct our warm thanks to those colleagues who attended these ear-
lier meetings and made valuable contributions to the discussion, especially Matti
La Mela, Jussi Kurunmäki, Malcolm Langford, Haldor Byrkjeflot and Kazimierz
Musiał. We are also grateful to Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir, Nils Edling and two
anonymous referees for suggestions and comments that helped improve the in-
dividual chapters. The foundation of the Helsinki Centre for Intellectual History
and the launch of its Yearbook series provided a final impetus to complete the
book. We thank the series editors and the publisher for including this volume
in the series.
Andreas Hansen, Ilana Brown and Mark Shackleton provided us with valua-
ble assistance with preparing the final manuscript.
Acknowledgements are also due to the Academy of Finland (grant number
323489), Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (grant M19-0231:1), the Inde-
pendent Research Fund Denmark (grant number 8018 – 00023B), UiO:Nordic,
and the University of Helsinki three-year project “Vernacularization and nation
building” for their support of our research. Publication of the open-access edi-
tion of this volume was made possible by a grant from the NordForsk university
hub ReNEW (Reimaging Norden in an Evolving World).
Helsinki and Aarhus, May 2021

Mary Hilson, Jani Marjanen and Johan Strang
OpenAccess. © 2022, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-001
Johan Strang, Jani Marjanen and Mary Hilson
A Rhetorical Perspective on Nordicness:
From Creating Unity to Exporting Models
In 2020 the dairy company Arla launched a new range of plant-based drinks.
Marketed under the brand name “JÖRÐ” with allusions to Old Norse mythology,
the products were described as an “oat drink from Nordic nature… made by Nor-
dic wind, rain and sun.” The term “Nordic” featured prominently in the compa-
ny’s own descriptions of its product, with references to “Nordic flavours such as
barley and hemp,” and to oats “grown in the Nordics for hundreds of years.”¹
This apparently trivial example picks up on real and mythical sediments of
meaning at the same time as it tries to convey an image of something modern
and humorous. The brand itself may be full of contradictions, especially as
the Nordic countries are known for their high levels of consumption and produc-
tion of dairy products, but the notion of Nordicness clearly carries a lot of rhet-
orical appeal in this type of marketing.
There are many other examples of the use of “the Nordic” to evoke interest
in the politics, society, and culture of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and
Sweden – the five countries, which together with the three autonomous regions
of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland make up the Nordic region.² In this
book, we explore the appeal and flexibility of the rhetoric of Nordicness. What, if
anything, do the different uses of “Nordic” have in common, and are there any
particular circumstances or historical periods in which the rhetoric has been par-
ticularly popular? The starting point for our book is our perception that there has
been an upsurge in a new rhetoric of Nordicness since about 2010, which so far
has not been discussed in scholarly literature in any great detail.³ What accounts
 Arla Foods, “JÖRĐ Oat Drink | Fresh & Organic,” accessed December 13, 2020, https://jord-
plantbased.com/en-gb/oat-drink/.
 Examples include The Economist’s 2013 special issue on “The Nordic Countries: The Next Su-
permodel”; and the wave of literature on the Nordic way of life and political culture – see Anu
Partanen, The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life (New York: Harper Collins,
2016) or Brontë Aurell, Anna Jacobsen, and Lucy Panes, Nørth: How to Live Scandinavian (Lon-
don: Aurum Press, 2017). There are also examples of attempts to brand design as Nordic (e. g.
https://www.warmnordic.com/) and there is even a local brewery in Tampere that makes “Nordic
beers” (see: https://www.gastropub.net/brewery/).
 We are, however, aware of the fact that the rising appeal of “the Nordic” is also a feature of
academic policy that has generated funding opportunities for scholarly research on Norden. This
publication and its authors are therefore, at least to some extent, part of the phenomenon we
OpenAccess. © 2022 Johan Strang, Jani Marjanen and Mary Hilson, published by De Gruyter.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-002
2 Johan Strang, Jani Marjanen and Mary Hilson
for the recent rise of “the Nordic” in politics, culture and marketing, and how
does this new Nordicness relate to the history of the adjective?
If one were to describe what makes the Nordic countries Nordic a wide range
of characteristics could be listed. These include notions of sparsely populated
societies living in close relationship to nature, comparatively peaceful and con-
sensual political cultures, or the strong, even dominant role of the state and the
weak position of the family in societal affairs. One could also highlight some of
the many paradoxes of Nordicness: the strong but secularised position of reli-
gion in society, the political traditions of equality against the competitiveness
of the Nordic economies, or the peripherality of relatively poor peasant societies
surviving in harsh conditions against rich and modern societies blessed with an
abundance of natural resources. The list of distinguishing features might draw
on geography, language, culture or politics, but cannot really be complete. In-
deed, definitions of “the Nordic” seldom aim at being exhaustive but are more
likely to provide different sets of characteristics that produce tailored descrip-
tions of the region. They represent competing visions of what the Nordic region
is or should be.
It is also legitimate to question whether any of the defining features associ-
ated with “the Nordic” can be said to be exclusively Nordic. The Nordics share
historical legacies with the Baltic States, and many political features with
other small and medium-sized states, such as the Netherlands, Switzerland,
New Zealand or Scotland. Many cultural, religious and political traditions in
the Nordic region have a German origin, while since the Second World War,
the Nordics have oriented themselves heavily towards the Anglo-American
world. In their peculiar outside/inside perspective on “Europe,” Nordic societies
are very similar to other semi-peripheries of Europe, such as the Balkans.⁴ When
it comes to climate and nature, the Nordics might look like parts of Canada or
Russia.
Moreover, it is seldom the case that all Nordic countries share the same char-
acteristics, a realisation that has led welfare state scholars to refer to a Nordic
welfare model with five exceptions.⁵ This perspective highlights tensions present
study. We wish to thank the Academy of Finland (grant 323489), the NordForsk-funded university
hub ReNEW, the Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant number 8018 – 00023B), and UiO:
Nordic for their support of our research.
 Stefan Nygård, Johan Strang, and Marja Jalava, eds., Decentering European Intellectual Space
(Leiden: Brill, 2018).
 Niels Finn Christiansen and Klaus Petersen, “Preface,” Scandinavian Journal of History 26,
no. 3 (September 2001): 153– 156, doi:10.1080/034687501750303828; see also Jóhann Páll Árna-
son and Björn Wittrock, eds., Nordic Paths to Modernity (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).
A Rhetorical Perspective on Nordicness: From Creating Unity to Exporting Models 3
in any notion of the Nordic.⁶ The old kingdoms (Sweden and Denmark) can be
contrasted with the younger nation states (Norway, Finland and Iceland). The
historical legacies of the early modern monarchies can be found in differences
between East Norden (Sweden and Finland) and West Norden (Denmark, Norway,
and Iceland), while the core Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark, and
Norway) may be contrasted with Iceland and Finland, or the large countries (Fin-
land, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway) with the much smaller Iceland. There is
also the notion of the more continental European Denmark versus the more pe-
ripheral parts of Norden. International political affiliations are also complex,
with divisions between the NATO members (Denmark, Norway, and Iceland)
and the non-aligned (Sweden and Finland); and between EU members (Den-
mark, Sweden, and Finland) and non-EU members (Norway and Iceland). As
well as the five nation states the Nordic region also includes the autonomous ter-
ritories of Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland, the transnational Sápmi re-
gion, which spans the northern parts of the Nordic countries and the Kola Pen-
insula of Russia, and border regions such as the Torne valley, the Øresund region
and Southern Jutland/Schleswig.
Linguistic divisions can be made between the three Scandinavian languages,
Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish – which have various degrees of mutual intel-
ligibility – and Icelandic and Faroese, which are insular versions of Scandinavi-
an languages no longer comprehensible to speakers of Danish, Norwegian, and
Swedish. Finnish is of completely different origin, though it has been claimed
that there are semantic similarities between Finnish and Swedish as political
languages.⁷ Other non-Scandinavian languages in the region include Greenlan-
dic and the Sámi languages.⁸ But there are also many languages – such as Ara-
bic, English, and Russian, to name only a few of the most important ones – that
may be widely spoken in the region, even though they are not always associated
with it. Indeed, intra-Nordic communication is to an increasing extent taking
place in English, which further complicates the idea of language being the
core and essence of Nordicity.
 Jani Marjanen, “Nordic Modernities: From Historical Region to Five Exceptions,” International
Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 3, no. 1 (March 2015): 91– 106, doi:10.18352/
22130624– 00301005; Pauli Kettunen, “Review Essay: A Return to the Figure of the Free Nordic
Peasant,” Acta Sociologica 42, no. 3 (July 1999): 259 – 269, doi:10.1177/000169939904200306.
 Henrik Stenius, “The Finnish Citizen: How a Translation Emasculated the Concept,” Rede-
scriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 8 (2004):
172– 188.
 Michael P. Barnes, “Linguistic Variety in the Nordics,” 2019, https://nordics.info/show/artikel/
linguistic-variety-in-the-nordic-region/.
Regardless of the complicated answers to what makes Norden Nordic, there

is one point that remains: throughout at least the past two hundred years or so,
many actors have invested heavily in the notion of Norden. Because of this, there
is a long and complicated history of defining the Nordic region and talking about
things as Nordic. The aim of this book is to analyse the broad variety of ways in
which “Nordic” has been used as an adjective both within and outside the re-
gion. We explore the use of the term “Nordic” – and the related term “Scandina-
vian” – in conjunction with concepts such as race, openness, gender equality,
food, crime fiction, Nordic cooperation, and the Nordic model, from historical
and contemporary perspectives. The leading idea is that all of these uses of
the term Nordic have been crucial in negotiating what the region stands for,
its identity or brand. By analysing the background, context, and rhetorical strug-
gles for the claims for specific “Nordic” characteristics in different discourses,
this book sheds new light on the debates on the cultural construction of the Nor-
dic region,⁹ as well as the broader international discussion on regionalism and
transnational history.¹⁰
This book is part of a recent wave of volumes on Nordic societies and cul-
tures, covering topics such as the Nordic model, Nordic egalitarianism, Nordic
human rights, Nordic democracy, Nordic gender equality, Nordic literature,
and Nordic design.¹¹ Some volumes even explicitly focus on the discourse and
 Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth, eds., The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian
University Press, 1997); Árnason and Wittrock, Nordic Paths to Modernity; Johan Strang, ed., Nor-
dic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition (London: Routledge, 2016), doi:10.4324/
9781315755366.
 See e. g. James Casteel, “Historicizing the Nation: Transnational Approaches to the Recent
European Past,” in Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits, ed. Joan DeBardeleben
and Achim Hurrelmann (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 153– 169, doi:10.1057/
9780230306370_9; M. Middell, L. Roura Aulinas, and Lluís Roura i Aulinas, eds., Transnational
Challenges to National History Writing (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Diana Mishkova
and Balázs Trencsényi, eds., European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2017); Diana Mishkova, Balázs Trencsényi, and Marja Jalava, eds., “Regimes of
Historicity” in Southeastern and Northern Europe, 1890 – 1945: Discourses of Identity and Tempo-
rality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), doi:10.1057/9781137362476; Stefan Troebst, “Intro-
duction: What’s in a Historical Region? A Teutonic Perspective,” European Review of History:
Revue Europeenne d’histoire 10, no. 2 (2003): 173 – 188, doi:10.1080/1350748032000140741;
Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Maria Todor-
ova, “Spacing Europe: What Is a Historical Region?” East Central Europe 32, no. 1– 2 (2005):
59 – 78, doi:10.1163/18763308 – 90001032.
 Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, ed., The Nordic Economic, Social and Political
Model: Challenges in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2021); Synnove Bendixsen, Mary
Bente Bringslid, and Halvard Vike, eds., Egalitarianism in Scandinavia: Historical and Contempo-
conceptualisation of these phenomena, like the recent The Changing Meanings of

the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries. ¹² However,
the scholarly emphasis in all of these volumes is on the Nordic version, and the
appropriation or conceptualisation of particular phenomena, rather than on the
explicit historical discourses in which these phenomena have been labelled
Scandinavian or Nordic. As such, our volume is most closely related to the
2010 book Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, which tried to describe not only the
elements that are so often seen as key features of Nordic politics and culture,
but also the tensions that are present in the historical and discursive construc-
tion of them as Nordic.¹³ In comparing the rhetoric of Nordicness in a wide vari-
ety of discourses, our book is the first scholarly volume to put the focus on the
adjective “Nordic” rather than the nouns that are used following it.
The starting point for the volume is the simple observation that “Nordic”
and “Scandinavian” are flexible and contested concepts that have been, and
continue to be, used in many and often contradictory ways. They have been as-
sociated with political projects and institutions (Scandinavianism, the Nordic
Council) while also functioning as categories of analysis in academic research
(the Nordic model, Nordic welfare states). Moreover, they have been used to pin-
point a regional identity, based on shared historical and cultural legacies, which
is often said to complement, rather than compete with, the national identities in
the region. “Nordic” and “Scandinavian” have often – though not always – had
positive connotations. As such, they have to an increasing extent become resour-
ces for commercial and cultural branding, as in the examples of Nordic noir,
New Nordic Food or Scandinavian design. The chapters of the book discuss in-
rary Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59791-1; Hanne Hagt-

vedt Vik et al., eds., Nordic Histories of Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2021); Nicholas Ay-
lott, Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe: Political Institutions and Discourse (Farn-
ham: Ashgate Publishing, 2014); Eirinn Larsen, Sigrun Marie Moss, and Inger Skjelsbæk, eds.,
Gender Equality and Nation Branding in the Nordic Region (London: Routledge, 2021); Steven
P. Sondrup et al., eds., Nordic Literature: A Comparative History, Vol. 1, Spatial Nodes (Amster-
dam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017), doi:10.1075/chlel.xxxi; Tobias Hoffmann
and Bröhan-Museum Berlin, eds., Nordic Design: Die Antwort aufs Bauhaus = Nordic Design:
The Response to the Bauhaus (Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 2019); Byrkjeflot, Haldor, Lars Mjøset,
Mads Mordhorst and Klaus Petersen, eds. The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideals
and Images (London: Routledge, 2021) doi:10.4324/9781003156925.
 Nils Edling, ed., The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in the
Nordic Countries (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019).
 Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Ten-
sions,” in Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (Helsinki: Fin-
nish Literature Society, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
dividual cases, but this introduction will present our methodological starting
point, discuss a number of key tensions in the rhetoric of Nordicness, and, final-
ly, highlight a number of key turning points and historical layers in this rhetoric.
“Nordic” as a contested concept

The overwhelming appeal of the term “Nordic” during the twenty-first century
has made it an object of political struggle between various groups who seek to
claim the term for their own purposes. During the 2010s, for example, the Nordic
model was at the centre of such disputes between Social Democrats and Conser-
vatives across the region (see Hilson and Hoctor in this volume). At the same
time another rhetoric of Nordicness with nationalist, anti-immigration and
even racist overtones also flourished: at the time of writing in 2021 the populist
party group in the Nordic Council calls itself “Nordic Freedom” (Nordisk frihed),
while extreme right-wing movements such as the “Nordic Resistance Movement”
(Nordiska motståndsrörelsen) make frequent use of Old Norse mythology. Yet,
Nordicness also continues to be evoked in the name of international solidarity,
humanitarianism and solidarity, as for example with the New Nordic Peace re-
port published by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2019.¹⁴ Indeed, in May
2015 the Finnish Social Democrat Erkki Tuomioja criticised a government deci-
sion to make record-breaking cuts in foreign aid by claiming that “Finland is
no longer a Nordic country.”¹⁵
If notions of Nordicness are contested in the present, they were certainly
never fixed in the past. As shown in Merle Weßel’s chapter, the concept of a Nor-
dic race was widespread among scientists and politicians in the United States,
Europe and Scandinavia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries. The adjective “Nordic” was used politically in the 1930s by the German Na-
tional Socialists as well as by the far right within the Nordic region. The Swedish
National Socialists of the 1930s, for example, called their youth organisation
“Nordic Youth” (Nordisk Ungdom). At the same time, the 1930s saw the dawn
of a rhetoric of “Nordic democracy” by which Social Democrats and others
sought to portray the region as a democratic haven in a Europe threatened by
totalitarianism.¹⁶
 Anine Hagemann and Isabel Bramsen, New Nordic Peace 524, TemaNord (Copenhagen: Nor-
dic Council of Ministers, 2019), doi:10.6027/TN2019 – 524.
 Cecilia Heikel, “Vi använder vår yttrandefrihet för att säga ifrån,” Svenska Yle, July 28, 2015,
https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2015/07/28/vi-anvander-var-yttrandefrihet-att-saga-ifran.
 Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions.”
Rhetorical struggles are most apparent in the field of politics. This book sug-
gests, however, that it is important to take stock of the plurality of usages of the
term “Nordic” and analyse the complex interplay between political, academic,
cultural and commercial rhetoric. The fact that similar notions of efficiency, sim-
plicity, and age-old traditions of liberty can be evoked in discourses claiming to
defend Nordic ethnic homogeneity, promoting Nordic democratic values, creat-
ing a Nordic cuisine or selling Nordic crime fiction points towards a certain
transferability of the rhetoric of Nordicness from one discourse to another. For
example, in his chapter on Nordic noir, Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen argues that
the appeal of Nordic crime fiction in the UK from the late 2000s lay precisely
in its complex relationship with utopian and dystopian images of the Nordic wel-
fare state.
In emphasising the contested nature of the adjectives “Scandinavian” and
“Nordic” the book distances itself from the struggles to define the essence or
true nature of the Nordic region and its political and cultural characteristics. In-
stead, we embrace a constructivist approach akin to the theoretical premises of
the discussion on “historical regions.”¹⁷ As such, we build on previous studies of
the Nordic region such as the seminal The Cultural Construction of Norden, the
studies of the “images” of Norden, as well as the more recent discussion on “Nor-
dic branding.”¹⁸ Our ambition, however, is to advance beyond a quest for struc-
tures or elements that made the Nordic region (the free Nordic peasant, egalitar-
ian education, Lutheranism or Social Democracy), or the ways in which these
elements or others were promoted as part of a Nordic brand, and to focus instead
on the “speech acts” through which these elements were appealed to (or reject-
 Troebst, “Introduction;” Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; Todorova, “Spacing Europe”;

Diana Mishkova, Beyond Balkanism, the Scholarly Politics of Region Making (London: Routledge,
2018); Mishkova and Trencsényi, European Regions and Boundaries.
 Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden; see also Árnason and Wittrock,
Nordic Paths to Modernity; Peter Stadius, Resan till norr: Spanska Nordenbilder kring sekelskiftet
1900 (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-societeten, 2005); Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, “Con-
clusion: Mediating the Nordic Brand – History Recycled,” in Communicating the North: Media
Structures and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region, ed. Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius,
The Nordic Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 319 – 332; Christopher S. Browning, “Branding
Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of Exceptionalism,” Cooperation and Conflict 42,
no. 1 (2007): 27– 51, doi:10.1177/0010836707073475; Louis Clerc, Nikolas Glover, and Paul Jordan,
eds., Histories of Public Diplomacy and Nation Branding in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Rep-
resenting the Periphery (Leiden: Brill, 2015); Svein Ivar Angell and Mads Mordhorst, “National
Reputation Management and the Competition State: The Cases of Denmark and Norway,” Journal
of Cultural Economy 8, no. 2 (2015): 184– 201, doi:10.1080/17530350.2014.885459.
ed) through the use of the adjective “Nordic.”¹⁹ As such, it is not the making of
Norden, but the political and cultural struggles over “the Nordic” that lie at the
heart of the book.
We suggest that the rhetoric of Nordicness needs to be analysed by unpack-
ing the historical layers of experiences and connotations present in language. We
do this by bringing together scholars working in various disciplinary back-
grounds under a common framework inspired by the tradition of conceptual his-
tory (Begriffsgeschichte).²⁰ Our starting point is that referring to something as
“Nordic” or “Scandinavian” is both a reflection of how something Nordic is
seen at a given time and a way of forging a specific view on something as Nordic.
Paraphrasing Reinhart Koselleck, we see concepts as both mirrors of and vehi-
cles for historical change.²¹ Together, the historical struggles for defining Nordic-
ness form different layers of meaning that are available for actors who can
choose to claim, reject or redefine them in order to make new assertions and
form future visions for “the Nordic.” Our focus is on phrases where “the Nordic”
is used in order to make an explicit claim about Nordic exceptionalism or differ-
ence from other regions (“the Nordic model” and “Nordic Noir”). It is, however,
important also to acknowledge that even when “the Nordic” is used as a neutral
marker indicating merely the geographical extension of its noun (as in “Nordic
cooperation” or “The Nordic Society for Phenomenology”), the adjective adds
something evaluative or substantial to the noun. It might allude to a wide
range of positive features associated with the adjective “Nordic,” such as democ-
racy, welfare, pragmatism, openness, but it might also potentially evoke different
forms of negative associations: arrogance, self-righteousness, or xenophobia.
The rhetorical perspective allows for a more detailed analysis of how particular
 Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics: Regarding Method, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2002), doi:10.1017/CBO9780511790812.
 Reinhart Koselleck, “Einleitung,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur
politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Kosel-
leck (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972); Reinhart Koselleck, “A Response to Comments on Geschicht-
liche Grundbegriffe,” in The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies on Begriffs-
geschichte, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter (Washington, DC: German Historical
Institute, 1996); Skinner, Visions of Politics; Jan Ifversen, “About Key Concepts and How to
Study Them,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 6, no. 1 (2011), doi:10.3167/
choc.2011.060104; Willibald Steinmetz and Michael Freeden, “Conceptual History: Challenges,
Conundrums, Complexities,” in Conceptual History in the European Space, ed. Willibald Stein-
metz, Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017),
doi:10.2307/j.ctvw04kcs.9.
 Koselleck, “Einleitung.”
agents have seen the Nordic region, thus acknowledging that agency belongs to
particular persons and institutions and not discourses as such.
Tensions of Nordicness
In analysing the motives of individual speech acts that have framed different cul-
tural, social and political items as “Nordic”, this book takes stock of many differ-
ent instances of more or less inventive rhetoric. As noted above, standard ac-
counts of what makes Norden Nordic usually present a number of
incongruities and contradictions. In shifting the perspective to a study of the
rhetoric of Nordicness, these can be identified and analysed more clearly as ten-
sions arising from the various purposes for which the historical actors use the
concept.
Contested Nordic geographies
The geographical extension of the terms “Scandinavian” and the “Nordic” is, of
course, a contested issue in itself. Within the region, the adjective “Scandinavi-
an” (skandinavisk, skandinaavinen, skandínaviskur) is usually, but not always,
used to denote something Danish, Norwegian and/or Swedish, whereas “Nordic”
(nordisk, pohjoismainen, norræn) tends to include Finland and Iceland as well. In
other languages and contexts, including in English, “Scandinavian” might be
used of all five Nordic nations, or sometimes of just some of them. Historically,
the geographical extension of Norden (“the North”) has been disputed. In nine-
teenth-century travel literature, Russia was often included in “the North,”²² while
Iceland had an ambivalent position as an example of what Guðmundur Hálfda-
narson has labelled “boreal alterity” – on the edge of European civilisation but
at the same time associated with the European and Nordic past preserved in its
Old Norse literary traditions.²³
For much of the twentieth century, Sweden was indisputably at the core of
the region, the most Nordic of all the Nordic countries.²⁴ For Denmark and Nor-
 Stadius, Resan till norr.

 Guðmundur Hálfdanarson, “Iceland Perceived: Nordic European or a Colonial Other?” in The
Postcolonial North Atlantic Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, ed. Lill-Ann Körber and
Ebbe Volquardsen (Berlin: Nordeuropa-Institut der Humboldt-Universität, 2014), 39 – 66.
 Jenny Andersson and Mary Hilson, “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries,” Scandina-
vian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 219 – 28, doi:10.1080/03468750903134681.
way, being Nordic has largely been equally self-evident, despite these countries’
slightly more continental European and transatlantic orientations. By contrast,
for Iceland, the turn to Norden was more controversial and demanded a con-
scious effort in the interwar period.²⁵ For Finland, the country’s position as a
Nordic country was far from evident in the first half of the twentieth century,
until the rhetoric of Nordicness gradually became an essential tool to assert its
status as part of the West from the 1930s onwards.²⁶ Claims to a Nordic identity
have at times formed part of the political rhetoric in Estonia and the Baltic region
as a whole, and more recently also in Scotland.²⁷ The recent wave of (New) Nor-
dicness, in turn, seems to point in different directions. On the one hand, geopol-
itical developments and the increased usage of “the Nordic” for branding pur-
poses have furthered the idea of a fixed region consisting of only five Nordic
countries and three autonomous regions.²⁸ On the other hand, as “the Nordic”
has become a brand it refers increasingly to qualities and values rather than geo-
political location or cultural community, and as such questions of the geograph-
ical extension of “the Nordic” have become increasingly irrelevant (see Kelting
and Stougaard-Nielsen, both in this volume).
The relationship to the outside is, of course, a central aspect of defining the
Nordic region, though this demarcation has always been fluid. In the nineteenth
century, “Scandinavia” functioned as a means of distinguishing the Danish and
Swedish monarchies from other northern powers such as Prussia/Germany and
Russia. In early twentieth-century racial discourses, we find the idea of a com-
mon Nordic-Germanic people, as opposed to Alpine or Southern races (see
Weßel in this volume). From the 1930s, and especially after 1945, Norden was
 Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir, “For Equality or Against Foreign Oppression? The Politics of the
Left in Iceland Leading up to the Cold War,” Moving the Social 48 (2012): 11– 28, doi:10.13154/
mts.48.2012.11– 28; Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir, “Facing the Nation – Nordic Communists and
Their National Contexts, from the 1920s and into the Cold War,” in Labour, Unions and Politics
under the North Star: The Nordic Countries, 1700 – 2000, ed. Mary Hilson, Silke Neunsinger, and
Iben Vyff (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017).
 Max Engman, “Är Finland ett nordiskt land?” Den Jyske Historiker 69 – 70 (1994).
 Mikko Lagerspetz, “How Many Nordic Countries?: Possibilities and Limits of Geopolitical
Identity Construction,” Cooperation and Conflict 38, no. 1 (2003): 49 – 61, doi:10.1177/
0010836703038001003; Mart Kuldkepp, “The Scandinavian Connection in Early Estonian Na-
tionalism,” Journal of Baltic Studies 44, no. 3 (2013): 313 – 338, doi:10.1080/
01629778.2012.744911; Andrew G. Newby, “‘In Building a Nation Few Better Examples Can Be
Found’: Norden and the Scottish Parliament,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3
(2009): 307– 329, doi:10.1080/03468750903134749.
 Browning, “Branding Nordicity”; Johan Strang, “Introduction: The Nordic Model of Transna-
tional Cooperation?” in Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition, ed. Johan Strang
(New York: Routledge, 2016), 1– 26, doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 1.
often construed against a German or a European conservative other, or as an ex-

ceptional region representing a third way between Western capitalism and East-
ern communism.²⁹ These uses of “the Nordic” bear a strong similarity to what
Reinhart Koselleck called “asymmetrical counter-concepts,” that is, conceptual
pairs that are defined solely by one part. In Koselleck’s heavily laden examples
“Hellenes and barbarians,” “Christians and heretics,” and “humans and non-hu-
mans” the second term of the pair receives its meaning from lacking a quality
present in the former. “Barbarian” was simply a generic classification put against
the specific name of a Hellene.³⁰ When it comes to “the Nordic,” this use of
asymmetrical counter-concepts was most extreme in the racist discourse ana-
lysed by Weßel in this volume. But, as shown by Strang, it was also strikingly
apparent in the asymmetrical usage of “Europe” to define Nordic cooperation,
Nordic democracy or the Nordic welfare state. In the field of culture, the asym-
metrical other is usually not articulated (e. g., in the example of Nordic design),
but appears in a similar way as something that lacks perceived distinctive Nordic
qualities.
Nordicness as simultaneously age old and progressive
Closely related to these spatial connotations are the temporal dimensions of Nor-
dicness. Recent work on the history of geo-spatial concepts has highlighted how
the formation of geographical entities is deeply entrenched in ideas about prog-
ress, lagging behind and catching up.³¹ As a whole, the Nordic region has at var-
ious points in history been conceived of either as a laggard at the outskirts of
European modernity, or as a progressive region at the vanguards of human de-
 Bo Stråth, “The Swedish Image of Europe as the Other,” in Europe and the Other, Europe as
the Other, ed. Bo Stråth (Wien: Peter Lang, 2010); Lars Trägårdh, “Sweden and the EU: Welfare
State Nationalism and the Spectre of ‘Europe,’” in European Integration and National Identity:
The Challenge of Nordic States, ed. Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver (London: Routledge, 2002);
see also Strang in this volume.
 Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1979).
 Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi, “Introduction,” in European Regions and Bounda-
ries: A Conceptual History, ed. Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi (New York: Berghahn
Books, 2017); Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi, “Conceptualizing Spaces within Europe:
The Case of Meso-Regions,” in European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, ed.
Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017); Marja Jalava and
Bo Stråth, “Scandinavia/Norden,” in European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History,
ed. Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017).
velopment.³² As such, the rhetoric of Nordicness has involved a wide range of

seemingly contradictory temporal speech-acts. On the one hand, as emphatically
shown in Lily Kelting’s chapter on New Nordic Food, Nordicness is often used in
order to refer to historical, even primordial, features of the Nordic region, relat-
ing to nature and landscape. The Viking legacy is often evoked as an “original”
pre-nation-state Nordicness. On the other hand, at least since the late nineteenth
century the rhetoric of Nordicness has – as indicated above – also often been
used to allude to progress, modernity, or even the avant-garde, as opposed to
a more traditionalist Europe.³³ This progressive turn can be dated to “the modern
breakthrough” associated with authors like Georg Brandes, Henrik Ibsen and Au-
gust Strindberg in the late nineteenth century,³⁴ to the rise of Social Democracy
in the 1930s, or to the designation of the functionalist architecture and modernist
design of the mid-twentieth century as “characteristically Scandinavian.”
Perhaps it is precisely this combination of tradition and progress that pro-
vides the rhetoric of Nordicness with its suggestive appeal.³⁵ The 1930s rhetoric
of Nordic democracy is a case in point. The Social Democrats furnished their own
progressive political vision of the future with allusions to its long historical
roots.³⁶ In this sense, Nordic rhetoric touches upon another Koselleckian
theme, the gap between “the space of experience” and “the horizon of expecta-
tion.”³⁷ Today, we see a similar combination of historical tradition and modern
solutions in the discourse of gender equality, in which a notion of the strong Nor-
dic woman in early peasant societies is presented as the background to the con-
temporary position of women in working life, at home and as being in charge of
their own bodies (see Pirjo Markkola’s chapter in this volume). Building on the
French historian François Hartog, it can be suggested that “the Nordic” has be-
 Stefan Nygård and Johan Strang, “Conceptual Universalization and the Role of the Periph-
eries,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 12, no. 1 (2017): 55 – 75, doi:10.3167/
choc.2017.120105.
 Tania Ørem, A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925 – 1950, vol. 1– 3
(Leiden: Brill, 2012); Jenny Andersson, “Nordic Nostalgia and Nordic Light: The Swedish Model
as Utopia 1930 – 2007,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 229 – 245, doi:.1080/
03468750903134699.
 Julie K Allen, Icons of Danish Modernity: Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen (Seattle: University
of Washington, 2012).
 Carl Marklund and Peter Stadius, “Acceptance and Conformity: Merging Modernity with Na-
tionalism in the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930,” Culture Unbound 2, no. 5 (2010): 609 – 634,
doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.10235609.
 Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions.”
 Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft.
come increasingly presentist.³⁸ Notions like Nordic Noir, Nordic food or even the
Nordic model allude to a past that legitimates the present, but do not carry with-
in themselves a promise of a radically better future in the same way as Scandi-
navianism in the nineteenth century, Nordic democracy in the 1930s, or Nordic
cooperation in the Cold War period.
The rhetoric of Nordicness has also been a way of synchronizing the Nordic
countries with each other, bringing them together at the same level of develop-
ment.³⁹ It is well known that Nordic comparisons in domestic political debates
are often used in order to show that one’s own country lags behind the others
in some aspect or another, with the purpose of urging political action. Pauli Ket-
tunen, for example, has argued that the notion of the Nordic welfare state in Fin-
land was a matter of immanent critique of Finnish society, where the temporal-
ised rhetoric of “Nordic” represented a horizon of expectation modelled around
the Swedish example. If Finland purported to be a Nordic country, it had to fol-
low and catch up with developments in the rest of the region, particularly in
Sweden.⁴⁰
In this way, Nordic rhetoric has seldom been a matter of negotiating an aver-
age Nordic state of development, but instead it usually refers to the most pro-
gressive and advanced solutions in the region. For many decades during the
post-war period, Sweden was conceived of as being ahead and by virtue of
this defined “the Nordic,” giving direction to developments in the other Nordic
countries. More recently, this position has been challenged in at least two differ-
ent ways. On the one hand, it seems as if the other Nordic countries have caught
up with and even overtaken Sweden in various fields. As such, “the Nordic
model” often appears in international debate as no longer synonymous with
the Swedish welfare state, but as the aggregate of cherry-picked features from
the different Nordic countries.⁴¹ On the other hand, there has also been a shift
in the political landscape which has meant that an increasing number of people
in the region (and abroad) have begun to frame the Swedish example less as a
 François Hartog, Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time, trans. Saskia
Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015).
 Helge Jordheim, “Europe at Different Speeds: Asynchronicities and Multiple Times in Euro-
pean Conceptual History,” in Conceptual History in the European Space, ed. Willibald Steinmetz,
Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017), 139 – 174,
 Pauli Kettunen, “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of History 26,
no. 3 (2001): 225 – 247, doi:10.1080/034687501750303864.
 Carl Marklund, “The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas: The Welfare State as Scan-
dinavia’s Best Brand,” Geopolitics 22, no. 3 (2017): 623 – 639, doi:10.1080/14650045.2016.1251906.
utopian and more as a dystopian vision of the future. This view has been ex-
pressed especially in connection with immigration policy, but in 2020 also
with the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has raised concerns that
the Swedish welfare state has been wrecked by neoliberal reform.⁴²
The interchangeability of “the Nordic” and the national
It is often argued that the Nordic identity is special because it is complementary,

not opposed, to the five different national identities. In other words, Nordicness
does not challenge, but is an integral part of Finnishness or Danishness, for ex-
ample.⁴³ This means that there is a certain interchangeability of national adjec-
tives (Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish) with the word Nordic.
Using “Nordic” instead of national adjectives can be an attempt to present some-
thing as more primordial than the modern nation-state (see Lily Kelting’s chapter
in this volume). In Finland, the rhetoric of Nordicness can be a way of incorpo-
rating into national history traditions, events, and individuals from the country’s
long shared history with Sweden. In his chapter on Nordic openness, Tero Erk-
kilä shows how in 1990s Finland the clergyman and economic thinker Anders
Chydenius (1729 – 1803) was branded as the father of Nordic openness, at least
in part because it would have sounded awkwardly anachronistic to label him
Finnish.
The substitution of Nordic for the national adjectives may also be a way of
associating with the favourable image of the neighbouring countries, or even
 Mikael Jalving, Absolut Sverige: En rejse i tavshedens rige (København: Jyllands-Postens For-
lag, 2011); Bjarne Riiser Gundersen, Svenske tilstander: En reise til et fremmed land (Bergen: Vig-
mostad & Bjørke, 2019); Jeanette Björkqvist, “Både Finland och Norge öppnar för att hjälpa,”
Svenska Dagbladet, December 12, 2020, https://www.svd.se/finland-redo-att-hjalpa-sverige-
med-coronavard; Anton Ösgård, “How Privatization Hobbled Sweden’s Response To Coronavi-
rus,” Jacobin Magazine, 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/sweden-coronavirus-covid-nor-
dic-scandinavia; Peter S. Goodman and Erik Augustin Palm, “Pandemic Exposes Holes in Swe-
den’s Generous Social Welfare State,” The New York Times, October 8, 2020, https://
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/business/coronavirus-sweden-social-welfare.html; Johan Strang,
“Kommentar: Vår älskade dystopi,” in Sverigebilden i Norden: En studie i Danmark, Finland, Is-
land och Norge (Stockholm: Svenska institutet, 2021), https://si.se/app/uploads/2021/03/bilden-
av-sverige-i-norden.pdf.
 See e. g., Norbert Götz, “Norden: Structures That Do Not Make a Region,” European Review of
History: Revue Europeenne d’histoire 10, no. 2 (2003): 323 – 341, doi:10.1080/
1350748032000140822; Lene Hansen, “Conclusion,” in European Integration and National Iden-
tity: The Challenge of the Nordic States, ed. Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver (London: Routledge,
2001), 212– 225.
hiding more troublesome aspects of the image or reputation of a particular Nor-

dic nation.⁴⁴ For example, at various points in Finnish history the rhetoric of
“Nordic democracy” was not only a way of connecting Finland with “the
West”, but also of smoothing over domestic political tensions and disarming
threats from extremist political factions on the right and the left.⁴⁵ Moreover,
the rhetoric of Nordicness has also been a way of avoiding explicitly nationalistic
rhetoric. In the 1930s, Social Democrats used the same rhetoric of Nordic democ-
racy in order to associate with contemporary trends towards cultural national-
ism, without aligning too closely with extreme nationalist voices.⁴⁶ From the
1980s, Swedish Social Democrats mobilised the concept of a Nordic model in re-
sponse to rising neo liberalism, while references to a Nordic model in the 2010s
allowed centre-right politicians to distance themselves from the (Social Demo-
cratic) ideological connotations of the Swedish model.⁴⁷
Despite the interchangeability of “Nordic” with national adjectives, the rhet-
oric of Nordicness has usually included some kind of reference to the other Nor-
dic countries. Especially during the Cold War period, “Nordic” was customarily
used either with representation from, or as an appeal to, the other Nordic coun-
tries. In an era of nation branding in the new millennium, such references have
become less important and the “Nordic” is increasingly used as synonymous
with Danishness or Finnishness for example, rather than as a transnational Nor-
dic space.
There are clearly also limits to the interchangeability of the Nordic and the
national. It is, for example, unusual to see athletes presented as Nordic, because
they are primarily thought of as representing the nation and often in explicit op-
position to Nordic “arch-enemies.” In general, Norden seems to have become an
 Marklund, “The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas.”

 Petri Koikkalainen, “From Agrarian Republicanism to the Politics of Neutrality: Urho Kekko-
nen and ‘Nordic Democracy’ in Finnish Cold War Politics,” in Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, ed.
Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010), doi:10.21435/
sfh.17.
 Niels Kayser Nielsen, Bonde, stat og hjem: Nordisk demokrati og nationalisme fra pietismen til
2. verdenskrig (Aarhus: Aarhus universitetsforlag, 2009); Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction:
‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions”; Nikolas Glover and Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, “A
‘Swedish Offensive’ at the World’s Fairs: Advertising, Social Reformism and the Roots of Swedish
Cultural Diplomacy, 1935 – 1939,” Contemporary European History 30, no. 2 (May 2021): 202,
doi:10.1017/S0960777320000533.
 Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, “Tracing the Nordic Model. French Creations, Swedish Appropri-
ations and Nordic Articulations,” in The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideals and Im-
ages, ed. Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. (London: Routledge, 2021); Marklund, “The Nordic Model on
the Global Market of Ideas;” see also Hilson and Hoctor in this volume.
increasingly irrelevant framework for sports. Nordic championships are rarely ar-
ranged, and Nordic records in various sports are no longer registered or simply
deemed irrelevant. Even the Miss Scandinavia beauty pageants were discontin-
ued in 2008. Internal rivalries remain, however, and important clashes between
athletes or teams from different Nordic countries can still be framed in the media
as “battles of Scandinavia/Norden.” That said, even in sports the rhetoric of Nor-
dicness can sometimes be a way of expressing sympathies with (or claiming the
success of) an athlete from another Nordic country, as in the case of the Icelan-
dic football success in the 2016 European Championship.
“The Nordic” in different parts of the region
The rhetoric of Nordicness is used differently and for different purposes in differ-
ent parts of the region. Sometimes this can cause misunderstandings and fric-
tions between people who all claim to represent “true” Nordicness. In Denmark
for example, “the Nordic” has been invoked to stress the distinctiveness of Den-
mark from the European mainstream, whereas in Finland Nordicness has been a
way of cementing Finland’s status as a (West) European country. It is beyond the
scope of this volume to explore the different uses of Nordicness within the sub-
national regions of the Nordic countries, but one might expect “the Nordic” to
have a different significance in West Jutland, Northern Karelia, Skåne or the Ha-
paranda/Tornio border regions, say, compared to Copenhagen or Helsinki.
Historians of the Nordic welfare state have documented how Nordic cooper-
ation often functioned as an arena where particularly Danish and Swedish pol-
iticians quarrelled with each other on various social political issues, thus effec-
tively engaging themselves in a struggle to define “the Nordic welfare state.”⁴⁸
The rhetoric of Nordicness is thus connected to power hierarchies in the region,
where the tendency of monopolising “the Nordic” as a designation for something
Danish or Swedish has often generated some irritation in Finland, Iceland and
Norway. Examples range from the establishment of the “Nordic Museum” (Nor-
diska museet) in Stockholm in 1873 to the advertising campaign “Stockholm –
the capital of Scandinavia” in the first decade of the 2000s. Similarly, in 1874
 Pauli Kettunen, Urban Lundberg, and Mirja Österberg, “The Nordic Model and the Rise and
Fall of Nordic Cooperation,” in Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition, ed. Johan
Strang, (London: Routledge, 2016), doi:10.4324/9781315755366; Klaus Petersen, “National, Nordic
and Trans-Nordic. Transnational Perspectives on the History of the Nordic Welfare State,” in Be-
yond Welfare State Models, ed. Klaus Petersen and Pauli Kettunen (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Publishing, 2011), 41– 64, doi:10.4337/9781849809603.00009.
Henrik Ibsen complained that Georg Brandes was using “Scandinavian litera-
ture” as a name for a small circle of intellectuals in Copenhagen, ignoring writ-
ers from other parts of the Nordic region.⁴⁹ Indeed, as shown by Ruth Hemstad in
her chapter, in nineteenth-century Norway there was a strong suspicion that the
cosy rhetoric of Scandinavia or Norden served only to conceal Swedish and Dan-
ish imperialist ambitions, a suspicion that lived on as a Norwegian scepticism of
Nordic cooperation throughout much of the latter half of the twentieth century
(see also Strang in this volume). More recently, however, Norway has become
an enthusiastic promoter of both “the Nordic” and of Nordic cooperation.⁵⁰
This might be related to a fear of being left out when Finland and Sweden joined
the EU in 1995 and when the discourse on Baltic Sea cooperation was most in-
tense.⁵¹ Simultaneously, a case can undoubtedly be made that the oil-generated
economic prosperity of recent years has enabled Norwegian actors to indulge in
the rhetoric of Nordicness with the self-confidence that was previously confined
to Danes and Swedes.⁵²
The ambivalent relationship to “the Nordic” is perhaps a more enduring fea-
ture of Icelandic political rhetoric, the latest Nordic country to reach full inde-
pendence (1944). Ragnheiður Kristjánsdóttir has convincingly argued that the
Icelandic Social Democratic movement was severely hampered by its “Nordic-
ness” and closeness to its Danish sister party. This meant it remained largely
in the shadow of political movements such as the conservatives, agrarians
and socialists, who could more easily flourish in a political landscape thoroughly
permeated by nationalist discourse.⁵³ To be sure, there was also (and continues
to be) a similar nationalist hesitation towards the Nordic in Finland, but more
 Stefan Nygård, “The Southern Prism of the Northern Breakthrough: Georg Brandes and Italy”
in Georg Brandes. Pioneer of Comparative Literature and Global Public Intellectual, ed. Jens Bjer-
ring-Hansen, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, and Lasse Horne Kjældgaard (Leiden: Brill, forthcom-
ing).
 See e. g., Thorvald Stoltenberg, Nordic Cooperation on Foreign and Security Policy, Proposals
presented to the extraordinary meeting of Nordic foreign ministers (Oslo, February 2009),
https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/ud/vedlegg/nordicreport.pdf.
 Kazimierz Musiał, “Reconstructing Nordic Significance in Europe on the Threshold of the
21st Century,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 286 – 306, doi:10.1080/
03468750903134723.
 A phenomenon examined and exemplified by the multi-million kroner programme UiO:Nor-
dic at the University of Oslo, which facilitates studies of Nordic issues and the Nordic region
from a social science and humanities perspective. See https://www.uio.no/forskning/satsing-
er/norden/forskning.
 Kristjánsdóttir, “For Equality or Against Foreign Oppression?”; Kristjánsdóttir, “Facing the
Nation – Nordic Communists and Their National Contexts, from the 1920s and into the Cold
War.”
often than not this has been overridden by the geopolitical imperative to keep at
a safe distance from the eastern neighbour Russia. For example, while Urho Kek-
konen, as a young nationalist intellectual of the Agrarian League had been scep-
tical of associating Finland with Scandinavia, he was, as President of the Repub-
lic during the treacherous Cold War years, eager to emphasise Finland’s
Nordicness.⁵⁴
In the autonomous regions of Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland, the
Nordic discourse has at times had the almost reverse function of strengthening
autonomy and weakening the relation to the host countries Denmark and Fin-
land. While the Faroe Islands and Greenland remain underdogs within the King-
dom of Denmark, the Nordic context may provide them with an arena for exert-
ing sovereignty. In concrete terms, the Nordic Council, where the Faroe Islands
and Åland have been members since 1970 and Greenland since 1984, has become
an important institutional arena for (para‐)diplomacy for these autonomous re-
gions.⁵⁵
The rhetoric of Nordicness within the region and abroad
The rhetorical appeal of Scandinavia outside the region can be traced to the
nineteenth century in certain contexts,⁵⁶ but became firmly established from
the 1930s on. It has even been argued that the very idea of Norden as a distinct
region has been produced abroad, or at least in close dialogue with foreign dis-
courses.⁵⁷ From the 1980s this was expressed in references to a Scandinavian or
 Koikkalainen, “From Agrarian Republicanism to the Politics of Neutrality.”

 Sarah Stephan, “Making Autonomies Matter: Sub-State Actor Accommodation in the Nordic
Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers. An Analysis of the Institutional Framework for Ac-
commodating the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland within ‘Norden,’” European Diversity and
Autonomy Papers EDAP 3 (2014), http://www.eurac.edu/edap; Hasan Akintug, “The Åland Is-
lands Meet European Integration: Politics of History and the EU Referendums on Åland” (MA
diss., University of Helsinki, 2020), https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/318984.
 Andrew Newby, “‘One Valhalla of the Free’: Scandinavia, Britain and Northern Identity in
the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Communicating the North, ed. Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 147– 169.
 Kazimierz Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modern-
isation (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002); Carl Marklund and Klaus Petersen, “Return to Sender –
American Images of the Nordic Welfare States and Nordic Welfare State Branding,” European
Journal of Scandinavian Studies 43, no. 2 (2013): 245 – 257, doi:10.1515/ejss-2013 – 0016; Norbert
Götz and Heidi Haggrén, eds., Regional Cooperation and International Organizations: The Nordic
Model in Transnational Alignment (London: Routledge, 2009).
Nordic “model” (or models) available for emulation or export (see Hilson and
Hoctor in this volume). Here too, notions of Scandinavia or Norden were often
used interchangeably with national labels, with close affinities between the
Swedish and Scandinavian models in particular.⁵⁸ While such images were
often positive, they were never exclusively utopian: “Scandinavia” could also
be used rhetorically to convey dystopian images, such as high rates of taxation
or social control on the one hand, or the decadence of secularism and sexual lib-
eration on the other.
In serving highly local purposes abroad, the rhetoric of Nordicness often re-
fers to pointed ideal types – whether utopian or dystopian – where the actual
state of affairs in the Nordic countries is almost irrelevant. It may be argued
that external circulation sometimes serves to conserve obsolete ideas of what
the Nordic countries are. Examples of this might include references to high
rates of suicide or the debates on “Scandinavian socialism” in connection with
the 2020 US Presidential elections.⁵⁹ The Nordic social democratic welfare
state also continues to live on in foreign political debates, despite the fact that
its foundations have been transformed in the past decades, particularly in Swe-
den.⁶⁰ Indeed, in our volume, Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor show how the idea of
the Nordic model has been used positively by both the left and the right in UK
politics since the 1990s. Sometimes these foreign uses boomerang back to the
Nordic countries themselves, becoming part of branding initiatives or political
campaigns based on simplified stereotypes of innate Nordic cultural traits. The
Swedish centre-right government’s initiative The Nordic Way at the 2011 World
Economic Forum in Davos is a case in point.⁶¹
While it is self-evident that the images of Norden within the region and out-
side it are not the same, the rhetorical perspective can be a useful way of explor-
ing the connections and interplay between foreign and domestic visions of Nor-
dicness. If notions like the Nordic model are invented to serve particular local
purposes in British, German or American contexts, the Nordic appropriation of
this rhetoric shows that the reception is not passive and that actors in the region
actively use the brands for their own purposes. More recently, terms like Nordic
 Hellenes, “Tracing the Nordic Model.”

 Carl Marklund and Byron Zachary Rom-Jensen, “Vanishing Scandinavian ‘Socialism’ in the
2020 US Election,” 2020, https://nordics.info/show/artikel/scandinavias-vanishing-socialism-in-
the-2020-us-election.
 Jenny Andersson, “Drivkrafterna bakom nyliberaliseringen kom från många olika håll,” Re-
spons, no. 1, 2020, http://tidskriftenrespons.se/artikel/drivkrafterna-bakom-nyliberaliseringen-
kom-fran-manga-olika-hall.
 Harvard and Stadius, “Conclusion: Mediating the Nordic Brand – History Recycled.”
noir and New Nordic Food have gained in popularity in, for example, Britain and
Germany, which, in turn has led to an increased awareness of a common genre
(and marketing possibilities) among Nordic authors and publishers (see Stou-
gaard-Nielsen and Kelting, both in this volume).
The rhetoric of Nordicness is often used to distinguish particular features of
the region, but it can also be an appeal to something higher or universal. Talking
about the welfare state as Nordic rather than Norwegian or Swedish gives it the
character of being something more eminent than a contingent result of a series
of domestic political decisions. It becomes a “model” which, paradoxically, is at
the same time culturally anchored and universal, and as such replicable by oth-
ers (see Hilson & Hoctor in this volume). The recent rhetoric of Nordic values can
be seen as a similar attempt to put a partisan position beyond political contest-
ation.⁶² The idea that there are values that are commonly shared by people in the
region either exaggerates the homogeneity of the populace or speaks of values
on such an abstract level that they cannot in any way be regarded as belonging
exclusively to Norden. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference
between Nordic, European or Western values. It seems that all of these three
rhetorical tropes evoke an imaginary of shared values that may be threatened
by an equally imagined other. Nordic values also seem to be inherent to Norden
regardless of the conflicted history of the region, the asymmetrical relations be-
tween the five countries or their complicated relationship to the three autono-
mous regions, or indeed the political tensions of contemporary politics (are Nor-
dic values social democratic, neoliberal or national conservative?). Much of the
universalising character of the notions of the Nordic model and Nordic values is
arguably drawn from the nouns “model” and “values,” but the modifier “Nordic”
provides a rhetorical edge in placing them outside the realm of national politics.
The historical layers of Nordic rhetoric

This book contains eight case studies purposely chosen in order to give a broad
account of the rhetoric of Nordicness in various fields of culture, society and pol-
itics, from the nineteenth century to the present. Although they all take their
starting point from the common theoretical foundation laid out above, they
also represent different scholarly disciplines and offer standalone contributions
to debates associated with the individual themes of their chapters. Thus, some of
 Klaus Petersen, “Nordiske værdier: et kritisk reflekterende essay,” in Meningen med förenin-
gen, ed. Henrik Wilen (København: Föreningarna Norden, 2019), 73 – 83.
them emphasise analyses of long-term diachronic change in the use of concepts,

whereas others are more inclined to analyse rhetoric in individual speech acts or
study the political implications of particular discursive frameworks.
In chapter 2, Ruth Hemstad explores the political visions attached to notions
of “Scandinavian unity” and “Scandinavian sympathies” in the nineteenth cen-
tury as well as the conceptual struggles between Swedish and Danish definitions
of Scandinavia in the nineteenth century. Merle Weßel, in chapter 3, explores the
interplay between American and Nordic uses of the term “Nordic race” in the in-
terwar period. These chapters are followed by investigations of two key notions
of Cold War Nordicity. In chapter 4, Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor discuss the con-
cept of a Nordic model as an interplay between foreign and Nordic discourses
from the 1930s onwards, analysing in particular the role of the Nordic model
in British politics during the 2000s. Johan Strang examines the shifting implica-
tions of Nordic cooperation from 1952 to the 2000s in chapter 5. Chapters 6 and 7
probe more deeply into the 1990s as a turning point for a new rhetoric of Nordic-
ness within Europe. Pirjo Markkola discusses how gender equality became
framed and branded as “Nordic” in the 1990s, and Tero Erkkilä describes how
openness and transparency were turned into features of Nordic political culture
in a period of Europeanisation in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially in
Finland. The final two chapters focus on the recent wave of Nordic branding
in the field of culture. In chapter 8 Lily Kelting studies “New Nordic Food”
with its references to a primordial and masculine Nordicness, showing how
the Nordicness of New Nordic Food paradoxically became de-territorialised
and universalised. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen explores how the Nordicness of Nor-
dic crime fiction became part of the British longing for a lost welfare paradise – a
borealist nostalgia.
The volume is not intended as a final or complete account. Many additional
cases could have been included (e. g., Nordic design, the Nordic welfare state,
and Nordic peace/neutrality). Moreover, most of the examples refer to uses of
the rhetorics of Nordicness within the region or in English-language contexts
outside it, with little attention paid to how the concept is used in other languag-
es. Collectively, however, the book enables us to draw some conclusions regard-
ing not only the main tensions, but also the historical layers present in the Nor-
dic rhetoric. Overall, the rhetorical approach challenges us to rethink earlier
chronologies of what makes Norden Nordic. Our aim is not necessarily to ques-
tion the long roots of features that can be seen as Nordic, but to highlight critical
moments when these characteristics were conceptualised as Nordic. Discussions
of the region’s cultural distinctiveness often trace these to the Reformation and
the early modern period, culminating with the nineteenth-century Scandinavian-
ist project,⁶³ but if we consider the contestation and framing of the Nordic from
the point of view of discourse, the nineteenth century was the starting point for
when the rhetoric of Nordicness became politically and culturally laden. The
same goes for many of the key institutions of Nordicness. For example, histories
of Nordic cooperation usually begin with references to the nineteenth century or
earlier, but the real breakthrough of the rhetoric of Nordic cooperation can argu-
ably be found in the interwar and Cold War eras (see the chapter by Strang). Sim-
ilarly, scholars disagree over whether the roots of the Nordic welfare state can be
traced to early modern Lutheranism or to institutional developments in the short
twentieth century, but the rhetoric of the Nordic welfare state originates in the
1990s (see below).⁶⁴ Accounts of Nordic openness usually go back to the eight-
eenth century, but the rhetorical account highlights the post-Cold War period
(Erkkilä in this volume).
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:

Scandinavianism and the making of the rhetoric of
exceptionality
There are Scandinavian language examples of nordisk used as a denominator for
the Scandinavian Peninsula from the seventeenth century on. For instance, the
commission dealing with the incorporation of Skåne into the Swedish realm
after the Peace of Roskilde in 1658, referred in a letter to the possibility of uniting
“the three Nordic (nordisk) realms under one crown.”⁶⁵ The term was also used
outside the region. Eighteenth-century British discourse on the Northern powers
denoted the Danish and Swedish realms, but often also included Russia and
 For influential examples, see Sørensen and Stråth, The Cultural Construction of Norden; Uffe
Østergaard, “The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity: From Composite States to Nation States,” in The
Cultural Construction of Norden, ed. Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (Oslo: Scandinavian Univer-
sity Press, 1997), 25 – 71; Henrik Stenius, “Nordic Associational Life in a European and an Inter-
Nordic Perspective,” in Nordic Associations in a European Perspective, ed. Risto Alapuro and
Henrik Stenius (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010), 29 – 86, doi:10.5771/9783845225944– 29.
 Tim Knudsen, ed., Den nordiske protestantisme og velfærdsstaten (Århus: Aarhus universi-
tetsforlag, 2000); Robert H. Nelson, Lutheranism and the Nordic Spirit of Social Democracy: A Dif-
ferent Protestant Ethic (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2017), doi:10.2307/j.ctv62hgm7; Niels
Finn Christiansen et al., eds., The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal (Copenha-
gen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006).
 Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB), accessed June 1, 2021, https://www.saob.se/; Lauritz
Weibull, “Efter Roskilde fred. Ur skånska kommissionens och Taubenfelts bref till Kungl. Maj:
T 1658—1660,” Historisk Tidskrift För Skåneland 1, no. 4– 6 (1901): 239.
Prussia.⁶⁶ Nevertheless, the discourse on the Northern realms at this time does
not come across as common or particularly charged with connotations other
than purely geographical. This holds both for intra-Scandinavian conceptualisa-
tions as well as for external descriptions of the North.
It was in the nineteenth century, in the context of intensified nation build-
ing, that “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” gained a politicised future orientation.⁶⁷
This happened primarily within the region itself and especially from the 1830s
onwards, when the rhetoric of Scandinavian and Nordic was geared towards cre-
ating Nordic unity in the spirit of Scandinavianism. Meetings with Danish and
Swedish students as well as literary projects, such as Frederik Barfod’s Brage
og Idun (from 1839) became outlets for Scandinavian unity. Norwegian voices
were seldom as loud as those of Swedish and Danish protagonists, and as
shown by Hemstad in this volume, the Norwegians were wary that the rhetoric
of Scandinavia was a means to subordinate Norway under Swedish rule. Even
in Finland, which was peripheral to the cause, voices for Scandinavianism
were heard. Emil von Qvanten’s Fennomani och skandinavism from 1855 was a
critique of political and cultural developments in Finland after its incorporation
into the Russian empire in 1809 and proclaimed a Scandinavian orientation. It
lamented the Finnish disconnection to “Scandinavian civilization” (Skandinavisk
bildning), thus rhetorically coupling Finland’s Swedish heritage to something
larger. Finland had become disassociated from Scandinavia but could be recon-
nected with it.⁶⁸
It is, however, important to emphasise the complex and intertwined relation-
ship between Scandinavianism and nationalism in the context of nineteenth-
century romanticism. “Nordic mythology” was a common legacy of the region
and in this way the discourses on skandinavisk and nordisk became key parts
of the national movement, particularly in Denmark and Sweden. Indeed, the
Swedish national anthem celebrates “Norden” rather than “Sweden”. Similarly,
the pastor and educationalist N.F.S. Grundtvig, the central figure in the Danish
 Sophie Holm, Diplomatins ideal och praktik: Utländska sändebud i Stockholm 1746 – 1748
(PhD diss., Helsingfors Universitet, 2019).
 Ruth Hemstad, Fra Indian Summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme
og unionsoppløsningen (Oslo: Akademisk publisering, 2008); Ruth Hemstad, “Scandinavianism.
Mapping the Rise of a New Concept,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 13, no. 1 (2018):
1– 21, doi:10.3167/choc.2018.130102.
 Emil von Qvanten, Fennomani och Skandinavism: Om Finland och dess sednaste utveckling
(Stockholm: Zachrish Haeggerström, 1855), 31.
national awakening, was also a spokesperson of Scandinavian and Nordic cul-

tural unity.⁶⁹
For most of the nineteenth century, the terms nordisk and skandinavisk were
usually used interchangeably in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, but Scandina-
vian was more commonly used in conjunction with political visions of the period
and was therefore the term that had a stronger mobilising effect. This changed
gradually towards the end of the century. Nordisk became readily more common
and gained more political salience.⁷⁰ By the early twentieth century nordisk had
become the more dominant term for inter-Nordic political cooperation and mo-
bilisation, while skandinavisk mainly lived on in the names of publications as
well as cultural and literary connections.
The terminological shift echoes a distinction sometimes made between the
era of Scandinavianism in the nineteenth century and the age of Nordism in
the twentieth. In this distinction, the former is seen as a pan-national movement
or even an ideology and the latter designated as political and civic cooperation.⁷¹
Nordism was void of attempts to unify the Nordic nations in a federal structure,
but was embodied instead in collaboration, first in civil society (e. g., the law-
yers’ meetings since 1872 and the Norden Associations in 1919) and later also
at the official state level.⁷² The shift from “Scandinavian” to “Nordic” was partic-
ularly relevant for Iceland and Finland, because after 1918 both countries found
themselves in new positions of autonomy and independence, respectively, and
had to explore different foreign policy alternatives. The issue was contested in
both countries, with some Finns calling for a Baltic orientation and some Ice-
landers hoping for a weaker connection to Denmark. Nonetheless, framing Ice-
land and Finland as Nordic countries provided a balance: emphasising national
uniqueness as part of a Nordic family.⁷³ In Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the
 Østergaard, “The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity”; Eva Danielson and Märta Ramsten, Du
gamla, du friska: Från folkvisa till nationalsång (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2013); Jes Fabricius Møller,
“Grundtvig, Danmark og Norden,” in Skandinavismen, ed. Ruth Hemstad, Jes Fabricius Møller,
and Dag Thorkildsen (Odense: Syddansk universitetsforlag, 2018), 99 – 120.
 Hemstad, “Scandinavianism. Mapping the Rise of a New Concept.”; see also Hemstad in this
volume.
 Østergaard, “The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity.”
 Monika Janfelt, Att leva i den bästa av världar: Föreningarna Nordens syn på Norden 1919 –
1933 (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005); Peter Stadius, “Trekungamötet i Malmö 1914. Mot en ny nor-
disk retorik i skuggan av världskriget,” Historisk tidskrift för Finland 99, no. 4 (December 2014):
369 – 394; Strang, “Introduction: The Nordic Model of Transnational Cooperation?”
 Kristjánsdóttir, “For Equality or Against Foreign Oppression?”; Kristjánsdóttir, “Facing the
Nation – Nordic Communists and Their National Contexts, from the 1920s and into the Cold
War”; Mikko Majander, Pohjoismaa vai kansandemokratia? Sosiaalidemokraatit, Kommunistit ja
shift from Scandinavian rhetoric to Nordic rhetoric was less loaded with geo-po-
litical connotations, meaning that the terms nordisk and skandinavisk could be
used as interchangeable and distinct notions alike.
The complicated relationship between “Nordic” and “Scandinavian” was
not, however, necessarily reflected in usages outside the region. In German,
the term nordisch was applied much more broadly, often including much of Ger-
man-speaking Europe, and was consequently also used more commonly than
the more specific skandinavisch. It was also widely used in National Socialist
rhetoric, generating some aversion to describing the Nordic countries as nordisch
after the Second World War.⁷⁴ The ambivalence of the terms Norden and nordisch
in German also meant that they could be used to describe the Nordic countries
(as in die nordische länder), the Nordic countries and the north German areas to-
gether (as was the case in Danish tourist marketing in Germany in the 1930s), or
they could be used to refer to the north German areas only. The German state of
Schleswig-Holstein in 2020, for example, used the slogan “Der echte Norden” (the
true north) in its tourist marketing directed to German travellers – much to the
amusement of visitors from the Nordic countries who might well have thought
that they had monopoly on the term.⁷⁵
In English the story is different, as the term Scandinavian has clearly been
the preferred descriptor and for much of the twentieth century the preferred
translation for nordisk was Scandinavian. For instance, the Nordisk Andelsfor-
bund founded in 1918 was referred to in contemporary sources from the 1920s
and 1930s as the Scandinavian Co-operative Wholesale Society.⁷⁶ The reference
work Annual Register (founded 1758) mentions “the so-called Nordic countries”
in the 1920s in relation to US migration policies. Writing in 1958, geographer W.
R. Mead noted that the term Norden was used within the region, but “is unsat-
isfactory for world currency.” He also noted that different UK institutions used
different terms – the Foreign Office had a Northern Department for example,
Suomen kansainvälinen asema 1944 – 1951 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2004);
Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions.”
 Malte Gasche, Der “Germanische Wissenschaftseinsatz” des “Ahnenerbes” der SS, 1942 – 1945:
Zwischen Vollendung der “Völkischen Gemeinschaft” und dem Streben nach “Erlösung,” (Bonn:
Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, 2014); Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutsch-
land 1920 – 1940 (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1971).
 Frederik Forrai Ørskov, “In Ideological Transit: German Tourism to Denmark in the 1930s,”
Journal of Tourism History 11, no. 3 (September 2, 2019): 243 – 262, doi:10.1080/
1755182X.2019.1650127; “Urlaub in Schleswig-Holstein – Offizielle Tourismusseite,” www.sh-tour-
ismus.de, August 25, 2016, https://www.sh-tourismus.de/.
 Mary Hilson, The International Co-operative Alliance and the Consumer Co-operative Move-
ment in Northern Europe, c. 1860 – 1939, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018).
while the BBC’s “Scandinavian section” included Finland – but concluded that
the name of the region in English was still largely unresolved.⁷⁷ The term Nordic
really caught on in English only after the establishment of the Nordic Council in
1952. A search of the Google Books dataset shows that “Nordic countries” soon
surpassed the earlier term “Northern countries” and has gradually increased ever
since. Even so, “Scandinavian countries” was more widely used than “Nordic
countries” for much of the twentieth century and up to the 1980s.⁷⁸ One possible
explanation of why “Nordic” did not immediately catch on in English, apart from
the concept’s general unfamiliarity, was its tainted associations from the past:
the concept of a “Nordic race” was prevalent in American eugenics discourse
in the interwar period, and, of course, in German National Socialism.⁷⁹ Today,
these (explicitly) racist connotations have largely been lost. While “the Nordics”
in the 1920s and 1930s was used practically exclusively in order to talk about per-
sons assumed to belong to a Nordic race (for example, in the 1939 volume The
Races of Europe), the term has in the 2000s returned as a friendly short-hand
for the Nordic countries, often used for branding purposes.⁸⁰
Although the discourse of a Nordic race was also present in Norden in the
interwar period – for example in the work of Herman Lundborg – its echoes
were largely pushed to the margins of the radical right. Indeed, the 1920s and
1930s form a critical juncture when “the Nordic” became politicised and tempo-
ralised even more strongly than before, even to the extent that it was the object
of political struggles for ownership. Whereas Scandinavianism and Nordism had
been largely a liberal bourgeois discourse, the rhetoric of Nordicness in the 1930s
was claimed by the labour movement, who used it to provide historical and na-
tional legitimacy to their political project. It formed a bridge between the space
of experience and the horizon of expectation. If Nordic democracy had strong
roots in the age-old traditions of peasant freedom and in popular mobilisation,
it was the task of the labour movement to carry the project into its fruition as a
social democracy.⁸¹
 W. R. Mead, An Economic Geography of the Scandinavian States and Finland (London: Uni-
versity of London Press, 1958), 6.
 For an indicator of this, see https://books.google.com/ngrams.
 Merle Weßel, “The Concept of the ‘Nordic Race’ in German and Nordic Racial-Theoretical Re-
search in the 1920s,” NORDEUROPAforum – Zeitschrift Für Kulturstudien (2016): 29 – 49,
doi:10.18452/8186; See also Weßel in this volume.
 Carleton Stevens Coon, The Races of Europe (New York: Macmillan, 1939); see e. g., https://
thenordics.com.
 Ruth Hemstad, “Scandinavianism, Nordic Co-operation and ‘Nordic Democracy,’” in Rhetor-
ics of Nordic Democracy, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (Helsinki: Finnish Literature So-
This was also a time when it was important to mark a difference between
Norden and Europe, the old continent being plagued by economic, social and po-
litical troubles. This view was presented, for example, by Danish Social Demo-
crat Hartvig Frisch in his book Pest over Europa (Plague over Europe).⁸² In
1935, the Swedish Social Democratic Youth organised a “Day of Nordic Democra-
cy” in Malmö, where the Nordic prime ministers gave speeches under the head-
ing of “Nordic democracy” to rally support for democracy against its internal
and external threats. Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson in particular
saw an international call for the Nordic democracies as models for other coun-
tries.⁸³ Thus, referring to the Nordic countries as Nordic became a way of extend-
ing the description of national culture and politics. It reframed domestic affairs
in a larger Nordic context and, potentially at least, made them more interesting
for those outside the Nordic sphere.⁸⁴
The rhetoric of Nordic democracy, freedom, and unity also played an impor-
tant role during the Second World War.⁸⁵ The threats to the Nordic countries
were, however, very different, so when the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik
von Wright in 1941 wanted to frame Finland’s alliance with Nazi-Germany and
the revenge war against the Soviet Union as a “Nordic struggle,” he might
have received some sympathies from Swedish conservatives, but very little
from Nazi-occupied Denmark and Norway.⁸⁶
Cold War Norden and beyond
Political developments in the decades after the Second World War left the region
divided on crucial issues like defence (NATO members versus non-aligned) and
ciety, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17; Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a

World of Tensions.”
 Hartvig Frisch, Pest over Europa: Bolschevisme – Fascisme – Nazisme (Copenhagen: Henrik
Koppels Forlag, 1933).
 Jussi Kurunmäki, “‘Nordic Democracy’ in 1935: On the Finnish and Swedish Rhetoric of De-
mocracy,” in Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang (Helsinki:
Finnish Literature Society, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
 Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of Tensions.”
 Jan Hecker-Stampehl, Vereinigte Staaten des Nordens: Integrationsideen in Nordeuropa im
Zweiten Weltkrieg (München: Oldenbourg, 2011).
 Georg Henrik von Wright, “Sverige och Ryssland,” Finsk Tidskrift (1941): 193; Johan Strang,
“Georg Henrik von Wright och Ingemar Hedenius: Rollen som intellektuell och analytisk filosof
i Finland och Sverige,” in Tankens utåtvändhet: Georg Henrik von Wright som intellektuell, ed.
Johan Strang & Thomas Wallgren (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet 2016).
the economy (repeated failures to create a Nordic customs union and different
policies towards European economic cooperation), but this only served to
strengthen the rhetoric of Nordicness as a means to display regional unity and
to push the institutionalisation of Nordic cooperation forward. Indeed, as
noted by Norbert Götz and Heidi Haggren, divisive as it was, the Cold War con-
stellation was in many respects particularly supportive of Nordic affiliation.⁸⁷
The discourse on Nordic cooperation was at the heart of this development,
bridging the tension between the idea that the Nordic countries are part of Eu-
rope and the idea that they are, simultaneously, distinct from it (Strang in this
volume). Nordic rhetoric burgeoned particularly in the names of different insti-
tutions and organisations with a transnational Nordic scope and mission – the
Nordic Culture Commission (1946), the Nordic Council (1952), Nordisk journalist-
kursus (1958), Nordisk utredningsserie (1960), the Nordic Culture Fund (1967),
the Nordic Council of Ministers (1971), the Nordic Investment Bank (1976), and
Nordiska nämnden för alkohol och narkotikafrågor (1978), to name just a few
from an abundance of examples. Even if the adjective “Nordic” undoubtedly car-
ried with it many (positive) connotations, it was usually used primarily as a sig-
nifier of the geographical domain of the initiatives (see also Markkola in this vol-
ume). Indeed, the representative transnational dimension of Nordicness was
arguably particularly important during the Cold War period – it was hard for
one country to use Nordic or Scandinavian unless the others were also represent-
ed. While difficult to prove, this also seems to hold for non-state initiatives in the
cultural sector as well as commercial enterprises that were labelled Nordic or
Scandinavian in this period, like the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) found-
ed in 1946.
The representative transnational dimension of Nordicness was important
also in the joint Nordic branding efforts abroad, most notably regarding Scandi-
navian design.⁸⁸ From the 1950s onwards we find several examples of this which
involved an active push by design practitioners and marketers from within the
Nordic region as well as a pull particularly from the English-speaking world.
Catalogues and marketing items with “Scandinavian design” as a heading
were published in Copenhagen, Helsinki and New York.⁸⁹ Although these consis-
 Götz and Haggrén, Regional Cooperation and International Organizations, 2.

 Frantz Wilhelm Wendt, Cooperation in the Nordic Countries: Achievements and Obstacles
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1981), 330 – 331.
 Viggo Sten Møller, ed., Scandinavian Design: Directory of Arts and Crafts Resources in Den-
mark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Copenhagen, 1953 (Copenhagen: Langkjærs bogtrykkeri, 1953);
Ulf Hård af Segerstad, Eward Maze, and Nancy Maze, Scandinavian Design (Helsinki: Otava,
tently included items of Finnish design, the label “Nordic design” seemed to be
used to a much lesser degree, which may be explained by the fact that designers
were adapting to English-speaking marketing. In any case, design comes across
as an early example of how Nordic brands could be used to make profits outside
of the Nordic region, half a century before the rhetoric of New Nordicness.
The end of the Cold War and the accompanying shift in the dynamics be-
tween intra-Nordic and extra-Nordic relations was a period of reorientation
and even crisis for the notion of Norden as a distinctive region and a turning
point in discourses about Norden. The 1990s was a point in time when the rhet-
oric of Nordicness proliferated as a designation for many things that were being
left behind. Rhetorical uses of “the Nordic” surged as a discourse of nostalgia.⁹⁰
The potent example of this is arguably “the Nordic welfare state.” While it is well
established in both social scientific and historical research that there was some-
thing distinctive in the way that the welfare state took shape in the region in the
mid-twentieth century, it was actually very rare that the phrase “welfare state”
(välfärdsstat, velferdsstat, hyvinvointivaltio) was combined with the adjective
“Nordic.” In 1978, Stein Kuhnle wrote an article about “the Nordic Welfare
States,” but that was more an intra-Nordic comparison than an attempt to crys-
tallise a common essence.⁹¹ In fact, it was not until the 1990s that the phrase
“the Nordic welfare state” was propelled into the centre of both academic and
political discourse. This followed the publication of Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s
highly influential study The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. ⁹²
The same argument could be made for the notions of “Nordic peace” or
“Nordic neutrality”, which also mushroomed rhetorically precisely when their
political relevance was cast in doubt.⁹³ While it is certainly true that the Nordic
1961); Erik Höglund et al., “The Revolution in Scandinavian Design,” Craft Horizons 18, no. 2
(April 1958), https://digital.craftcouncil.org/digital/collection/p15785coll2/id/4711.
 Ole Wæver, “Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War,” International Affairs 68,
no. 1 (1992): 77– 102, doi:10.2307/2620462.
 Stein Kuhnle, “The Beginnings of the Nordic Welfare States: Similarities and Differences,”
Acta Sociologica 21 (1978): 9 – 35.
 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1990).; see also the chapter by Hilson and Hoctor in this volume. We would like to thank Nils
Edling for pointing this out to us.
 Clive Archer and Pertti Joenniemi, The Nordic Peace (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Hans Mour-
itzen, “The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall,” Journal of Peace Re-
search 32, no. 1 (1995): 9 – 21, doi:10.1177/0022343395032001002.; see also Douglas Brommesson,
“Introduction to Special Section: From Nordic Exceptionalism to a Third Order Priority – Varia-
tions of ‘Nordicness’ in Foreign and Security Policy,” Global Affairs 4, no. 4– 5 (2018): 355 – 362,
doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1533385; Browning, “Branding Nordicity”; Adrian Hyde-Price, “Epi-
countries collaborated with each other in the League of Nations and the United
Nations,⁹⁴ it was arguably not until the 1990s that the speech act of calling their
engagements for world peace or third world development “Nordic” burgeoned.
The notion of a “Nordic balance” gained some traction as a justification for
Swedish neutrality, but it was mostly used by scholars to describe the Cold
War security configuration in the region with the three Nordic NATO members,
Swedish neutrality and the special Finnish relationship with the Soviet
Union.⁹⁵ The 1963 Finnish initiative of a “Nordic nuclear-weapon-free zone”
can be seen as a partisan attempt at utilising the peace connotations of “the Nor-
dic,” which largely failed to gain support among the Nordic NATO members.
What accounts for this proliferation of “the Nordic” as a projection back-
wards in the 1990s? The obvious explanation, highlighted in the chapters by
Markkola, Erkkilä and Strang, is that in the 1990s context of Europeanisation,
“the Nordic” functioned as a way of articulating a difference from, and later a
distinction within, Europe. But another reason is surely the urge to defend some-
thing that was perceived as being on the verge of being lost. As the welfare state
became challenged, both as an economically viable system during the economic
depression, particularly in Finland and Sweden, and as a semi-socialist ideology
in a period of liberalisation and marketisation, the adjective “Nordic” turned the
welfare state into something more than the result of contingent policies: it be-
came a national and regional legacy that carried obligations into the future. Con-
versely, however, the rhetoric of Nordicness also served the purpose of conceal-
ing change. If Hilson and Hoctor in their chapter show how the pleasant rhetoric
of the Nordic model was used by British conservatives to legitimise neoliberal
reforms, similar uses of “the Nordic” are also easy to find within the Nordic re-
gion itself (see Strang’s chapter). The rhetoric of Nordicness also continued to be
used in foreign policy, for example as part of campaigns for seats in the United
Nations Security Council, even though many scholars point to a significant
change of policy.⁹⁶ In 2015, cuts in Finnish foreign aid and tightened refugee pol-
icies were legitimised by reference to similar changes in the other Nordic coun-
tries. Indeed, as Finnish political scientists Hanna Ojanen and Tapio Raunio ob-
logue: ‘Nordicness’ – Theory and Practice,” Global Affairs 4, no. 4– 5 (2018): 435 – 443,
doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1497451.
 Götz and Haggrén, Regional Cooperation and International Organizations.
 Erik Noreen, “The Nordic Balance: A Security Policy Concept in Theory and Practice,” Coop-
eration and Conflict 18, no. 1 (1983): 43 – 56, doi:10.1177/001083678301800104.
 Anders Wivel, “What Happened to the Nordic Model for International Peace and Security?,”
Peace Review 29, no. 4 (2017): 489 – 496, doi:10.1080/10402659.2017.1381521.
serve, “we can see signs of ‘Nordicness’ turning into a way of legitimizing poli-
cies that deviate from the classic picture of what Nordic is.”⁹⁷
If the 1990s stand out as one of the key turning points in the history of the
rhetoric of Nordicness, several articles in this volume suggest that we have expe-
rienced another recent juncture, which started around 2005 with the reinvention
and redefinition of the Nordic model as discussed by Hilson and Hoctor, and the
coinage of “New Nordic” brands within the field of culture and commerce as an-
alysed by Kelting (New Nordic Food) and Stougaard-Nielsen (Nordic Noir). This
new rhetoric of Nordicness signifies a turn to a logic of branding where the
aim is no longer to overcome regional differences, to learn from each other, or
to create a Nordic community, but rather to promote the region and its products
through simplified and essentialised notions of “Nordicness”. The rise of the
Nordic brand has to be understood as part of the growing international interest
in nation branding during the first decades of the early twenty-first century,
when nation states embraced the idea of having to compete with their reputation
in a globalised world economy. Commercial, political and cultural spheres were
hybridised in national branding programmes aiming to attract investments and
promote export.⁹⁸ With the success of the Nordic countries in various interna-
tional rankings, and by virtue of its inherent flexibility, the rhetoric of New Nor-
dicness proved a powerful addition to the national brands. Accordingly, the Nor-
dic governments urged the Nordic Council of Ministers to adopt a strategy of
region branding to capitalise on a rising global interest in the Nordic region,
for example through its promotion of New Nordic Food, as described in Lily Kelt-
ing’s chapter.⁹⁹
The rise of the Nordic brand and the rhetoric of “New Nordicness” was also
the latest example of the “return to sender” phenomenon described by Carl Mar-
klund and Klaus Petersen in relation to mid-twentieth-century discussions about
the global circulation of the Nordic welfare state.¹⁰⁰ The Nordic brand was born
from foreign interest in the Nordic region, and as a Nordic domestication of for-
 Hanna Ojanen and Tapio Raunio, “The Varying Degrees and Meanings of Nordicness in Fin-
nish Foreign Policy,” Global Affairs 4, no. 4– 5 (2018): 415, doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1533386.
 E. g., Simon Anholt, Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and
Regions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), doi:10.1057/9780230627727.; see Mads Mordhorst,
“Nation-Branding og nationalstaten,” Den Jyske Historiker 126 (2010): 16 – 39; Angell and Mord-
horst, “National Reputation Management and the Competition State.”
 See also Anna Kharkina, From Kinship to Global Brand: The Discourse on Culture in Nordic
Cooperation after World War II (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2013).
 Marklund and Petersen, “Return to Sender.”
eign discussions about “the Nordic.” In this translation process, within the re-
gion itself “the Nordic” became increasingly decoupled from the idea of a re-
gional community, instead it became an international label for various phenom-
ena related to the region. Indeed, it was no longer as relevant whether “the New
Nordic” represented the whole of the region, an average of the region, or even
whether it gave an accurate description of the region. It became a marker of
quality instead of location; something prescriptive or even aspirational.¹⁰¹
Conclusion: from community to branding?

The central argument of this book is that the essential features and historical
foundations of “Nordicness” are subject to constant deliberation and debate.
While there is a lot of valuable constructivist literature describing the political
cultures of the Nordic region, very little has been said from a conceptual-rhetor-
ical perspective about “the Nordic” itself. Such a shift in perspective is motivated
particularly by the proliferation and fragmentation of the rhetoric of Nordicness
during the 2010s. In examining the historical layers of “the Nordic,” our book
contributes to a historical understanding of the increasing frequency and ambi-
guity of the current rhetoric of Nordicness. Intended neither as a complete nor a
final account, our book allows us to identify some general trajectories and topics
for further research.
Crudely put, it seems to us that the Nordic discourse has mutated from one
about cultural community to one about political cooperation, and more recently
to one about branding. This transformation needs to be analysed in close rela-
tion to the complex and often poorly understood interplay between foreign
and intra-Nordic uses of “the Nordic.” In relation to the former, the English-lan-
guage context is especially important, not only because of the global signifi-
cance of English but also because English is so widely used within the Nordic
region. A strict division between the outside and inside is not that useful, as
many active in the field of discussing and redefining “the Nordic” move across
such distinctions with ease. (That includes, of course, the academics who have
contributed to this book.) Still, it seems beyond doubt that the dynamic between
outside impulses and internal innovations has been crucial for the rhetoric of
Nordicness since at least the First World War. It was central to the discourse
 Pauli Kettunen, “The Conceptual History of the Welfare State in Finland,” in The Changing
Meanings of the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries, ed. Nils Edling,
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2019), 225 – 275; see also Strang in this volume.
on Nordic democracy in the inter-war era and to the project of building political
and institutional cooperation during much of the twentieth century.
It also holds the key for understanding the special nature of the recent wave
of New Nordicness associated with the export of Nordic models and brands in
the first decades of the new millennium. The first attempts at marketing Scandi-
navian design or the Nordic social systems were based on a representation of all
five countries. As such, the aim was to create and display a cultural-political
community and the rhetoric was thus closely related to that of Nordic coopera-
tion. In global circulation, however, this idea of representativity was less impor-
tant and “the Nordic” was turned instead into a name and brand for various
things associated with the Nordic region. It became a quality rather than a re-
gional marker. This usage has been picked up in the region itself, as “the Nordic”
has become used with exponential plurality. The New Nordic is no longer about
creating something transnationally Nordic, but about highlighting a quality or a
special aspect of something local or national. As such, the global success of the
Nordic brand has transformed the purpose of the rhetoric of Nordicness within
the region: from creating a cultural or political community, to creating an attrib-
ute or quality to be used in global markets.
While the interplay between intra-Nordic and extra-Nordic conceptualisa-
tions creates a lot of variance in language use, our concern is not to expose or
correct misguided images of the Nordic at different times and in various parts
of the world. Nor do we partake in a nostalgic attempt to recreate a past when
“the Nordic” stood for something simpler than today. Studying the historical lay-
ers of current uses of “the Nordic” is important for recognising that the future is
ultimately open ended and dependent on political struggles over the key features
of what is Nordic. Scholars, politicians and cultural or commercial actors have to
appreciate that they have very limited possibilities of managing the ways in
which “the Nordic” is used around the world. But more knowledge is certainly
needed in order to understand the triggers, logics, and historical layers of the
rhetoric of Nordicness in various parts of the world, especially outside Europe
and North America.
Ruth Hemstad
Scandinavian Sympathies and Nordic Unity:
The Rhetoric of Scandinavianness in the
Nineteenth Century
The history of “Nordic” and – in particular – “Scandinavian” as flexible and con-
tested concepts may be traced back at least to the early nineteenth century. This
history is strongly connected with competing national and pan-national projects
within the Nordic region. This chapter seeks to explore the emergence and trans-
formation of “Scandinavian” and the related and more widespread term “Nor-
dic” as appealing and contested rhetorical concepts during the long nineteenth
century. The pan-Scandinavian movement, it will be argued, played a key role in
this development by stimulating a widespread rhetoric of “Nordicness” – or
rather of “Scandinavianness” – in the 1840s, thus adding significant dimensions
of meanings to these concepts.¹
With the introduction of a range of new phrases with rhetorical power, such
as “Scandinavian sympathies” and the “Scandinavian idea,” the usage of the
term “Scandinavian” rose rapidly from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.
An emergent public sphere and print culture, increasingly influenced by what
was to be known as “Scandinavianism,” stimulated this tendency. Civil society
initiatives further contributed to the development. A range of new pan-Scandina-
vian associations that termed themselves “Scandinavian” and later “Nordic” was
established within as well as beyond the Scandinavian region.²
In mapping the usage of these terms, a combination of quantitative and
qualitative analysis, of distant and close readings is employed. Distant readings
of Nordic newspaper corpora, from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland re-
spectively,³ gives a reasonable idea of key word frequencies and collocational re-
 There are examples, although scarce, of the use of the terms “Nordicness” (Nordiskhed) and
“Scandinavianness” (Skandinaviskhed) from the mid-1840s.
 Ruth Hemstad, “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad: Literature, Sociability and Pan-
Scandinavian Associational Life in German-speaking Europe 1842– 1912,” in Mit dem Buch in
der Hand: Beiträge zur deutsch-skandinavischen Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte/A Book in
Hand: German-Scandinavian Book and Library History, ed. Marie-Theres Federhofer and Sabine
Meyer, Berliner Beiträge zur Skandinavistik 31 (Berlin: Norderopa-Institut, 2021), 159 – 183; Ruth
Hemstad, Fra Indian summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og union-
soppløsningen (Oslo: Akademisk Publisering, 2008).
 The following Nordic newspaper databases are used in this study: Nasjonalbiblioteket, Nor-
way, www.nb.no; Mediastream, Denmark, www2.statsbiblioteket.dk; Svenska Dagstidningar,
OpenAccess. © 2022 Ruth Hemstad, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-003
36 Ruth Hemstad
lationships – words that are frequently used in combination with the key words.
By comparing the frequency of the terms “Nordic” and “Scandinavian” in news-
papers in the Nordic countries during the nineteenth century (1790 – 1900), made
possible through the significant amount of digitized material available, some in-
teresting patterns appear. Although the analysis will seek to identify and explore
changes throughout the century, some periods will be of particular interest.
The emergence of a specific pan-Scandinavian vocabulary and the rhetorical
use of certain phrases based on the adjectives “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” is
evident from the mid-1840s. In order to understand the contested character of
these notions, which is particularly apparent in parts of the Norwegian national
discourse, it is, however, necessary to examine the conceptual transformations
of the previous period, especially since 1814. In the 1840s there was an interest-
ing shift not only in the frequency but also – as close reading reveals – in the
meaning of the terms “Scandinavia” and “Scandinavian”. Following the 1840s,
pan-Scandinavian rhetoric had a lasting influence and around 1900, a renewed
rhetoric of Scandinavianness emerged followed by a rejection of related concepts
in parts of the Swedish public sphere.⁴
In addition to mapping the frequency during the century through key word
searches, collocate searching is employed in order to identify and map relevant
phrases.⁵ Certain phrases are significant and were extensively used, especially in
the period between the 1840s and the 1860s – including “Scandinavian sympa-
thies.” Close readings of additional relevant sources, such as pamphlets, books,
journal and newspaper articles, are used to analyse and place the main results in
their relevant discursive and political contexts.
A first main point is that the term “Nordic” is older and more frequently used
than “Scandinavian” until the first decades of the nineteenth century.⁶ Key word
searches of the digital newspaper corpora in the Scandinavian national libraries
show that “Nordic” is used throughout the eighteenth century.⁷ There are only
Sweden, tidningar.kb.se; DIGI–Nationalbibliotekets digitala samlingar, Finland, digi.kansallis-

kirjasto.fi.
 Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 297– 359.
 Collocate searching was applied on the text corpus at the National Library of Norway in co-
operation with Lars G. Johnsen at the Norwegian Language Bank at the National Library.
 In the Nordic newspaper databases, the oldest reference to “Scandinavian” is in a Danish
newspaper in 1781. Full text searches for “skandinavisk*” and “scandinavisk*” in the compre-
hensive Norwegian book corpus at the National Library of Norway and searches for the same
words in titles in the national library catalogues in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, support
this result.
 The use of “Nordic” and “Norden” in the eighteenth century often reflected a wide concept of
the North that included Russia, Poland and Prussia. Henriette Kliemann-Geisinger, “Mapping
Scandinavian Sympathies and Nordic Unity 37
few examples, however, of “Scandinavian” from the last part of the century. Sev-
eral of them refer to the association Skandinavisk Literatur-Selskab (Scandinavi-
an literary society), established 1796, and its journal Skandinavisk Museum. ⁸ The
society aimed at promoting literary connections between the “Scandinavian
realms” by facilitating closer contacts between Danish and Swedish intellectuals
and improving knowledge of “Scandinavian literature” – a new phrase at this
time.
“Scandinavia” was originally a Latin term, derived from “Scania” in the
south-eastern part of Sweden. Early examples from the mid and late eighteenth
century point towards a growing awareness of Scandinavia as a potential cultur-
al-political entity consisting of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.⁹ The use of the
term also reflected the renewed interest in Old Norse culture at the time. “Scan-
dinavia” and “the old Scandinavians” were terms used to describe the area and
its inhabitants in the ancient era. These terms did not stem from Saga literature
but from Greek and Roman sources, an aspect frequently pointed out by nation-
ally-minded Norwegian scholars arguing against the unhistorical and “false” use
of these terms by Danish and Swedish scholars.¹⁰
Norwegian newspapers and journals in the 1820s and 1830s regularly stated
that “Scandinavian,” “Scandinavians,” and “Scandinavia” were recent terms. “A
Scandinavian is a fresh new word,” the newspaper Morgenbladet stated in 1829.¹¹
In 1835, it was commented that “Scandinavia” had recently became popular – in
Denmark as a common name for the three Nordic countries, and in Sweden as a
common name for Norway and Sweden.¹² Two years later, during a period of in-
creased political tension between the two union partners Norway and Sweden,
the North – Spatial Dimensions and Geographical Concepts of Northern Europe,” in North-
bound: Travels, Encounters, and Constructions 1700 – 1830, ed. Karen Klitgaard Povlsen (Aarhus:
Aarhus University Press, 2007), 70 – 76.
 Skandinavisk Museum (1798 – 1803), followed by the book series Det Skandinaviske Literatur-
selskabs Skrifter (1805 – 1832).
 Erik Bodensten, “Scandinavia Magna: En alternativ nordisk statsbildning 1743,” in Nordens
historiker: Vänbok till Harald Gustafsson, ed. Erik Bodensten et al. (Lund: Historiska Institutio-
nen, Lunds Universitet, 2018), 61– 75; Frederik Sneedorf, “Vigtigheden af de tre nordiske Rigers
Forening. En Tale af afgangne Professor F. Sneedorf, holden i det nordiske Selskab i London i
Foraaret 1792,” Skandinavisk Museum 2 (1798): 122– 134.
 Historians such as Peter Andreas Munch and Jens Christian Berg presented this sort of argu-
ment. See Ruth Hemstad, “‘Norden’ og ’Skandinavien.’ Begrepsbruk i brytningstid,” in Nordens
historiker, ed. Erik Bodensten et al., 45 – 60.
 “En Skandinaver er et nybagt Ord,” published as part of the poem “Forsvar for Rævbælgma-
keren” (anon.) in Morgenbladet, 28 August 1829, reprinted in Tillæg til Morgenbladet, 9 April 1833.
 “Norge,” Morgenbladet, 10 January 1835. The article reprints parts of an article by Jens Chris-
tian Berg published in the series Samlinger til det norske Folks Sprog og Historie.
38 Ruth Hemstad
another Norwegian newspaper criticized the widespread Swedish usage of such

“disgusting” terms as “Scandinavia,” “Scandinavians,” and “Scandinavian” in
books and maps.¹³ In 1839, another writer argued against Danish utilization of
“the blurred and ambiguous terms ‘Nordic’ […] and the later invented favourite
expressions ‘Scandinavians,’ Scandinavian” as common denominators for the
three Nordic nations by those “who want to appropriate what belongs to Norwe-
gian history only,” hinting at Danish efforts of appropriation of Old Norse heri-
tage.¹⁴
The Norwegian wariness towards the use of the adjective “Scandinavian”
and the related terms “Scandinavians” and “Scandinavia,” particularly promi-
nent from the late 1830s, had at least two sources. Two different notions of
“Scandinavia” and “Scandinavians” were put forward during the first decades
of the century, from Swedish and Danish agents respectively, characterized by
a seemingly similar rhetoric. As a consequence, the significance of being “Scan-
dinavian” changed remarkably. The transformation was part of the rhetorical
struggle of what was to be understood more precisely as “Scandinavian” and
“Scandinavia.”
The following sections will concentrate on these two projects – a Swedish-
initiated state-building program from above and a Danish-driven pan-national,
nation-building project from below – and their rhetorical uses of the concepts
in question. The Norwegian nation-building project, in the making since around
1814 was conversely directed towards Danish cultural and Swedish political
dominance, while stressing the principle of reciprocity.
The Swedish Scandinavian Rhetoric

A second main point regarding the history of “Scandinavian” as a contested con-
cept in the nineteenth century is the significant shift in the use of the term, es-
pecially in Swedish newspapers, in 1814. The early Swedish rhetoric of Scandina-
vianness exploded in 1814, reflecting the establishment of the Swedish-
Norwegian union that year.¹⁵ This rhetoric continued into the 1820s and 1830s.
 Den Constitutionelle, 19 February 1837 (editorial article on the front page).

 “Hartkorn. III,” Morgenbladet, 24 November 1839.
 In Swedish newspapers, there are only 3 examples of the use of “Scandinavian” during the
period 1811– 1813, but 62 examples in 1814. I have used the word search facilities using the key
word followed by an asterisk, to ensure the inclusion of different variants (“skandinavisk*”/
“scandinavisk*” and “nordisk*”). The search is case-insensitive. Svenska dagstidningar, ac-
cessed 13 September 2020, tidningar.kb.se.
Frequently used phrases were, in particular, the “Scandinavian Peninsula” and

the “Scandinavian realms” alongside “Scandinavian peoples” and “Scandinavi-
an nations.” The recurrent use of the term “Scandinavian” mirrored a discourse
and a print culture reflecting the union, one way or another, as part of a growing
Swedish public sphere.The term did not, however, refer to the wider Scandinavi-
an region.¹⁶
The French Marshal Jean Bernadotte, who became Crown Prince Charles
John in Sweden in 1810, was pivotal in introducing “Scandinavia” and “Scandi-
navian” as rhetorical and geo-political terms after 1812.¹⁷ He made the older im-
perial Swedish vision of uniting Norway with Sweden his own primary goal.
Based on the Treaty of 1812 with Russia, the policy of turning the Scandinavian
Peninsula into a Swedish Scandinavian empire was a means to consolidate Swe-
den after the loss of Finland in 1809.
In Charles John’s view and in his rhetoric, “Scandinavia” was therefore de-
limited to include Sweden and Norway exclusively. This meant to actively forget
about Finland and exclude Denmark from the region. Both countries had been
included in the definition of “Scandinavia” in Swedish textbooks as late as
1805.¹⁸ Bernadotte’s favourite geopolitical concept was hence that of the “Scan-
dinavian Peninsula,” or “what may be termed the Scandinavian Peninsula”, as it
was framed in one of the key pamphlets distributed throughout Europe, written
by August Wilhelm Schlegel in cooperation with Madame de Staël.¹⁹ The expres-
sion suggests that the term was not settled, an impression strengthened by the
following Danish reactions, which underlined the neologistic aspect of the con-
 “Scandinavian,” in Sweden at this time referred to the Scandinavian peninsula. An example

of this usage is the “Skandinavisk” in Sven Nilsson’s Skandinavisk Fauna: En handbok för jägare
och zoologer. This publication, among others, contributed to the high prevalence of “Scandina-
vian” in the Swedish newspapers in 1820s and 1830s. It was first published in 1820 and had
three volumes, with additional publications of illustration charts, and was frequently advertised
in Swedish newspapers.
 Ruth Hemstad, Propagandakrig: Kampen om Norge i Norden og Europa 1812 – 1814 (Oslo:
Novus forlag, 2014).
 Gustaf Abraham Silverstolpe, Lärobok i Svenska Historien (Stockholm: H.A. Nordström,
1805), 12.
 Mme de Staël, An Appeal to the Nations of Europe against the Continental System (London:
J.M. Richardson, 1813), 58. See also Ruth Hemstad, “Madame de Staël and the War of Opinion
Regarding the Cession of Norway 1813‒1814,” Scandinavica 54, no. 1 (2015): 100 – 120.
40 Ruth Hemstad
cept: “what may be termed (according to Madame de Stäel Holstein’s new Geo-
graphical Nomenclature) the Scandinavian Peninsula”.²⁰
In labelling and naming the new political union of 1814, Swedish authorities
utilised both substantivation and adjectivation, introducing the terms “Scandi-
navia” and “Scandinavians” as common denominators to construct a common
identity within the union. Adjectives, it is emphasized, “apply a common denom-
inator to phenomena whose diversity is recognized; substantival labelling, on
the contrary, tends to do away with these differences.”²¹ The Swedish “Scandina-
via” was an alternative name for Sweden and Norway. “Scandinavians” were ac-
cordingly the inhabitants of “Scandinavia,” i. e., Swedes and Norwegians. These
terms were widely used in books, pamphlets, poems, in newspapers and jour-
nals, in geographical textbooks, statistics, encyclopaedias and maps, in official
proclamations and published speeches in Sweden.²² In one elementary textbook
in geography from 1815, “Scandinavia” was even more narrowly defined, as
“Sweden in a broad meaning” – meaning “Sweden proper” and Norway, as Dan-
iel Djurberg writes in Geographie för Begynnare. ²³ Norwegians later reacted
against this book and its “false” concepts.²⁴ However, Djurberg’s textbook was
commonly used in Swedish elementary schools. This narrow definition was
sometimes commented on in Swedish publications, acknowledging that “Scan-
dinavia” usually denotes the three Nordic realms – Sweden, Denmark, and Nor-
way – to provide balance to Swedish authors who had limited the meaning of the
term to include only Sweden and Norway.²⁵
 Andreas Andersen Feldborg, Cursory Remarks on the meditated Attack on Norway; Compris-
ing Strictures on Madame de Staël Holstein ‘Appeal to the Nations of Europe’ (London: Hamblin &
Seyfang, 1813), 82.
 Marnix Beyen, “Who is the Nation and What Does It Do? The Discursive Construction of the
Nation in Belgian and Dutch National Histories of the Romantic Period,” in The Historical Imag-
ination in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the Low Countries, ed. Hugh Dunthorne and Michael
Wintle (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 69, 76. See also Ruth Hemstad, “The United Kingdoms of Norway
and Sweden and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands 1814– 1830: Comparative Perspectives
on Politics of Amalgamation and Nation Building,” Scandinavica 58, no. 2 ([2019] 2020): 76 – 97.
 Ruth Hemstad, “Geopolitikk og geografibøker for folket: Den norsk-svenske unionens bes-
værlige beskrivelser,” in Sann opplysning? Naturvitenskap i nordisk folkeopplysning 1650‒2016,
ed. Merethe Roos and Johan Tønnesson (Oslo: Cappelen Damm, 2017), 101– 126.
 Daniel Djurberg, Geographie för Begynnare, 6th edition (Örebro: N.M. Lindhs förlag, 1815).
 Carl B. Roosen, Alvorstale i Anledning den i Sverig udgivne Bog: Geographie eör [sic] Begyn-
nare, författad af Daniel Djurberg (Fredrikshald: H. Gundersen & H. Larsen, 1833).
 Hemstad, “Geopolitikk og geografibøker for folket.”
In Norway, being forced into this new union with Sweden after leaving the
dual monarchy with Denmark after 400 years, there was, as has already been
shown, a resistance among parts of the population to these definitions of “Scan-
dinavia,” and “Scandinavians.” They were interpreted as Swedish rhetorical de-
vices used in order to strengthen the common union, potentially threatening the
traditional terms “Norway” and “Norwegians”. There was, it may be argued, an
enduring awareness against what could be suspected of being Scandinavian im-
perialistic plans – under disguise of the rhetoric of Scandinavianness – be it
from the side of Sweden or Denmark.
Between 1814 and the early 1840s “Scandinavia” was, in Sweden – not in
Norway or Denmark – usually used in a narrow sense, equivalent to the term
the “Scandinavian Peninsula.” The Danish author Christian Molbech also
notes in his travel book after a visit to Sweden that this was the common
usage in Sweden until around 1840.²⁶ By 1848, however, “Scandinavia” was
still defined in a Swedish encyclopaedia as an old name for Sweden and Norway,
as an originally Latin, historic-poetic denomination of these two countries.²⁷
“Scandinavia” was never the name of a political entity, it is underlined. The ex-
isting union between Norway and Sweden is, quite strikingly, not mentioned in
this entry.
There was a significant increase in the frequency of the term in Swedish
newspapers – following a common Nordic pattern – in the 1840s, when the con-
cept is broadened considerably.
The Danish Scandinavian Rhetoric

In Denmark, as in Sweden and Norway, “Scandinavian” was used to an increas-
ing degree from the beginning of the nineteenth century, along with the tradi-
tional and more widespread use of “Nordic.” However, “Scandinavia” and
“Scandinavian” had a broader meaning in Denmark and Norway compared to
Sweden after 1814. As a result of a new orientation towards the neighbouring
Scandinavian countries and their common ancient cultural heritage, from the
late eighteenth century onwards, journals, books, pamphlets and poems, associ-
ations, meetings, and events were using “Scandinavian” as part of their name or
title and gradually “Scandinavian” became a widespread adjective. The revival of
 Christian Molbech, Lund, Upsala og Stockholm i Sommeren 1842: Nogle Blade af en Dagbog
med et Tillæg om “den skandinaviske Eenhed” (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandling, 1844),
283‒320.
 Svenskt konversationslexikon, 3rd ed. (Stockholm: Gustaf Berg, 1848), 547– 548.
42 Ruth Hemstad
interest in Old Norse literature, manuscripts, and monuments contributed to il-

luminating an ancient common “Nordic” history and culture and at the same
time stimulating national consciousness in Denmark, Norway, Sweden – and Ice-
land. While “Nordic” was the traditional, and usually preferred, term to describe
Old Norse culture, indicating a backward-looking cultural orientation, “Scandi-
navian” more explicitly included Sweden and Norway and had, at least from the
1830s and 1840s, stronger political connotations. It represented a distinct orien-
tation northward as a way of securing the ancient heritage from German appro-
priation of the Old Norse legacy.²⁸
An early example of a Danish rhetoric of Nordicness was the dissemination
of semi-official pamphlets in southern Sweden from 1808 to 1810, propagating
the candidacy of the Danish King as King of Sweden. In these pamphlets, the
preferred term was “Nordic” rather than “Scandinavian,” even if both terms
were frequently used.²⁹ The choice of Bernadotte as Swedish Crown Prince in
1810 changed the condition for dynastic pan-Scandinavian activities, at least
until the 1850s.³⁰
During the 1830s, “Scandinavian” gradually accrued connotations of “new-
ness,” and “new ideas,” and “Scandinavia” was transformed into the land of the
future – a common future for Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. Old Norse enthu-
siasm merged with liberal and national reactions to absolute rule and a develop-
ing Danish-German conflict over the Duchies Schleswig and Holstein in the div-
ided borderland. The Danish rhetoric of Scandinavianness from the mid-1830s
was thus a new kind, in opposition to the authorities and not directed by
them. Furthermore, it was influenced by, while at the same time being opposed
to, the German national movement at the time. A transnational pan-Scandinavi-
an movement was in the making from the late 1830s, gaining support from lib-
eral-oriented groups and individuals, including publicists, writers, and students,
mainly in Denmark and Sweden, during the 1840s.
 See also Tim van Gerven on the use of this legacy in national consciousness-raising projects:
“Scandinavism: Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Nordic World 1770 – 1919” (PhD
diss., University of Amsterdam, 2020, forthcoming Brill, 2022).
 Ruth Hemstad, “Fra ‘det förenade Scandinavien’ til ‘Nordens Tvillingrige’: Skandinavistisk
propaganda før skandinavismen, 1808 – 1814,” in Skandinavism: En rörelse och en idé under
1800-talet, ed. Magdalena Hillström and Hanne Sanders (Göteborg: Makadam förlag, 2014),
56 – 58.
 Morten Nordhagen Ottosen, “Den dynastiske skandinavismens grobunn og grenser,
ca. 1845 – 1870,” in Skandinavismen, ed. Ruth Hemstad, Jes Fabricius Møller and Dag Thorkildsen
(Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2018), 257– 286.
The pan-Scandinavian movement developed from regional Danish and

Swedish collaboration across the Öresund Sound from around 1800, to gradually
more institutionalized collaboration between devoted groups in Denmark, Swe-
den and, more hesitantly, Norway and Finland. The movement sought to con-
struct a common Scandinavian identity by highlighting the common Old Norse
heritage, the kindred languages, and cultural similarities among “Scandinavi-
ans.” In addition, it focused on the strategic political need to stand up to Prussia
and Russia.³¹ The movement gained momentum and spread from Denmark to the
other Scandinavian countries foremost through the spectacular social and polit-
ical student events taking place from the early 1840s, the so-called “Scandinavi-
an student voyages,” which were media events at the time.³² Influenced by these
impulses, to be a “Scandinavian” in Swedish rhetoric gradually also included the
Danes.
Meetings, associations, and events led to new and strengthened transnation-
al networks. Through a comprehensive and conscious use of journals, newspa-
pers, pamphlets, books of different kinds, songs, poems, and speeches, a new
pan-Scandinavian vocabulary was widely spread and circulated to the Nordic
countries and beyond.³³ The effect this had in increasing the frequency of the
term “Scandinavian” in the newspapers, not only in Denmark but in all the Nor-
dic countries, is striking.
In 1843, after a student meeting in Uppsala, the publicist and scholar Ludvig
Kristensen Daa, one of the few Norwegians publicly and positively oriented to-
wards the new “Scandinavian ideas,” wrote in his journal Granskeren about
the current movement: “Lately, the youth of our neighbours and brothers, the
Swedish and Danish youngsters, have also [as among the Italian and German
youth] found their great idea, namely the Scandinavian idea of Nordic
 Åke Holmberg, Skandinavismen i Sverige vid 1800-talets mitt (Göteborg: Elanders boktryk-
keri, 1946); Erik Møller, Skandinavisk stræben og svensk politik omkring 1860 (Copenhagen:
Gad, 1948); Henrik Becker-Christensen, Skandinaviske drømme og politiske realiteter: Den polit-
iske skandinavisme i Danmark 1830 – 1850 (Aarhus: Arusia, 1981); Rasmus Glenthøj, 1864: Sønner
av de slagne (Copenhagen: Gad, 2014), Rasmus Glenthøj and Morten Nordhagen Ottosen, Union
eller undergang. Kampen for et forenet Skandinavien (Copenhagen: Gads Forlag, 2021).
 Jonas Harvard and Magdalena Hillström, “Media Scandinavianism: Media Events and the
Historical Legacy of Pan-Scandinavianism,” in Communicating the North: Media Structures
and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region, ed. Peter Stadius and Jonas Harvard (Farnham:
Ashgate Publishing, 2013), 75‒98.
 Ruth Hemstad, “‘En skandinavisk Nationalitet’ som litterært prosjekt: 1840-årenes transnas-
jonale offentlighet i Norden,” in Nation som kvalitet: 1800-talets litterära offentligheter och folk i
Norden, ed. Anna Bohlin and Elin Stengrundet (Bergen: Alvheim & Eide akademisk forlag, 2021).
44 Ruth Hemstad
unity.”³⁴ The Norwegian youth were, however, more hesitant. The discussions in
the Norwegian Student association after this meeting were predominantly criti-
cal of the new ideas.³⁵
The “Scandinavian idea of Nordic unity” was only one out of a great many
similar phrases and frequently used expressions that were consciously employed
by pan-Scandinavian activists. These phrases may be seen as part of a renewed
Scandinavian political language, disseminated in different ways, that was used
as a means to achieve political goals.³⁶ Based on the reformulated, rhetorical
concept of a “Scandinavian” as someone supportive of the “Scandinavian
idea” and the broader understanding of “Scandinavia” – being the land of the
common prosperous future – the concept of “Scandinavianism” emerged. This
new ism, which mirrored other pan-national movements of the day, was com-
monly in use after 1844.³⁷
In 1839, Fredrik Barfod’s quarterly journal Brage og Idun, the first transna-
tional journal with an explicit pan-Scandinavian agenda, was published and cir-
culated to Scandinavian, mainly Danish and Swedish, subscribers. The term
“Scandinavian” was regularly used in the five volumes published between
1839 and 1842, when Barfod’s enterprise was stopped due to censorship restric-
tions. Examples are phrases like “a Scandinavian soul”, “Scandinavian endeav-
ours”, “Scandinavian nations”, “Scandinavian sympathies”, a “Scandinavian
mindset” and “the Scandinavian North”. The dominance of the term “Nordic”
in the journal however outnumbers that of “Scandinavian” by a wide margin.³⁸
Significant is also the first “Scandinavian Meeting of Natural Scientists” held
in Gothenburg in 1839. Inspired by German, British, and Swiss examples, it was
the first in a range of regularly held transnational meetings within different pro-
fessions and groups across the Nordic region. Advocates of the “Scandinavian
idea,” attending the meeting in 1839, claimed that it was the first proof of “a sci-
entific union of the North.”³⁹ It was interpreted as a sign of Scandinavian recon-
 “Om Skandinavien,” Granskeren, 15 June 1843.

 See also Frederik Wallem, Det norske Studentersamfund gjennom hundrede aar: 1813 – 1913,
vol. 1 (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1916), 272– 281; John Sannes, Patrioter, intelligens og skandinaver:
Norske reaksjoner på skandinavismen før 1848 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959).
 For more on the languages of politics – including their role in shaping citizens’ actions and
constituting their worldviews, see David Craig and James Thomson, eds., Languages of Politics in
Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 1– 20.
 Ruth Hemstad, “Scandinavianism: Mapping the Rise of a New Concept,” Contributions to the
History of Concepts 13, no. 1 (2018): 1– 21.
 In the five published and digitized volumes there are 36 mentions of “Scandinavian” and
300 of “Nordic” (table of contents and register not included).
 See Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 49.
ciliation and the necessity of closer collaboration. Numerous speeches during

the meeting – published in Scandinavian newspapers and journals such as
Brage og Idun, and as part of the published account of the meeting – demonstrat-
ed an eager use of the rhetoric of Scandinavianness. Several similar meetings
and related associations termed themselves “Scandinavian” from the 1840s on-
wards.⁴⁰
After the first grand student meeting in Uppsala in June 1843, associations
with a pan-Scandinavian goal were established in Copenhagen and Uppsala.
The aim was to strengthen the cultural connections between the three Scandina-
vian countries. In Denmark, the new Skandinavisk Samfund [Scandinavian soci-
ety], established by students and leaders of the pan-Scandinavian movement,
was prohibited by the authorities, due in part to its name. The prohibition caused
a sharp debate in the public sphere and probably only helped to strengthen the
movement. The Copenhagen cultural elite soon established another association,
Skandinavisk Selskab, in September 1843. This time, the association got the nec-
essary approval on the explicit precondition that their meetings would not be
used for political discussion. A similar association, Skandinaviska Sällskapet,
was established in Uppsala in October 1843.
The pan-Scandinavian profile of these new associations is emphasized in a
Swedish encyclopaedia published 1848, in a separate entry on “Scandinavian as-
sociation.”
Scandinavian societies is the name of the associations, which in recent years have been es-
tablished within as well as outside Scandinavia, in order to contribute to the development
of the common Swedish, Norwegian and Danish nationality. The purpose of these associ-
ations is to stimulate the feeling of one nationality, not Swedish, Norwegian or Danish,
but Scandinavian.⁴¹
The encyclopaedic definition is illuminating regarding the use of the term “Scan-
dinavian,” and phrases like “the Scandinavian idea” and “the Scandinavian na-
tionality,” and the perceived role of “Scandinavian associations” in this pan-na-
tional project. “Scandinavian” associations abroad were part of this picture. Pan-
Scandinavian diaspora associations abroad, by and for Scandinavians working
in or travelling to other parts of the world, were usually open to all “Scandina-
vians” in a certain city and commonly termed themselves a “Scandinavian asso-
ciation.” They were established in a range of European cities from the 1840s on-
 A list of meetings held in the Nordic region from 1839 to 1929 is included as an appendix in
Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.
 Translation by the author. Svenskt konversationslexikon 3: 547– 548.
46 Ruth Hemstad
wards, and among emigrants in the United States, Australia, and Africa.⁴² Sever-
al of the new associations abroad stayed in contact with the Scandinavian asso-
ciations back home, which helped to build up “Scandinavian libraries” abroad
by sending “Scandinavian literature,” including books, journals, and newspa-
pers. News from these diaspora associations were reported on regularly in news-
papers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, contributing to a transnational dis-
course.
An interesting, revealing discussion suggesting that “Scandinavian” was as-
sumed as a potentially more political term than “Nordic” in the 1840s took place
in Hamburg when a cultural-literary association was established in late 1842 by
Scandinavians – predominantly Danes – as the first of its kind in the nineteenth
century. The discussions reached the Scandinavian newspapers, which reported
that the Swedish-Norwegian and Danish diplomatic representatives in Hamburg
were informed about the new association, which had termed itself a “Scandina-
vian association.”⁴³ This was not a problem for the Swedish diplomats. The Dan-
ish envoy, however, protested, fearing potential political reactions to the use of
the term “Scandinavian,” including, in particular, the potential reaction of the
Russian court. As a result, the association chose the apparently more neutral
term “Nordic,” calling itself Nordisk Læseforening [the Nordic reading society].
The following spring, however, the original name was restored. The “Scandina-
vian association” in Hamburg continued until 1912 and was regularly reported on
in the Scandinavian press as an example of Scandinavian sentiments and coop-
eration abroad. This picture changed totally, however, due to the dissolution of
the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905, causing a renewed quarrel regarding the
naming of the association after the Swedish members demonstratively left the
association.
The Scandinavian Vocabulary Turn

A third point in the history of the rhetoric of Scandinavianness is the sharp rise
in the frequency of the term “Scandinavian” from the mid-1840s. This applies to
 Ruth Hemstad, “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad”; Ruth Hemstad, “Literature as

Auxiliary Forces: Scandinavianism, Pan-Scandinavian Associations and Transnational Dissemi-
nation of Literature,” in Culture and Conflict: Nation-building in Denmark and Scandinavia 1800 –
1930, ed. Sine Krogh, Thor Mednick and Karina Lykke Grand (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press,
2022), 161– 164.
 Originally referred to in Aalborg Stiftstidende og Adresse-Avis, 27 January 1843. On the asso-
ciation in Hamburg, see also Hemstad, “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad.”
newspapers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway – and to a certain degree in Fin-

land – indicating the emergence of what could resemble a Nordic public sphere.
There are different limitations regarding the scope and quality of the digitized
material in the various Nordic newspaper corpora, especially when it comes to
older printed publications, and there is still a lack of digitized journals and
other printed material. The newspaper databases give, however, a clear indica-
tion of the changes in the vocabulary and of the frequencies of terms such as
“Scandinavian” and “Nordic.”⁴⁴
In Danish newspapers, there was a gradual rise in the use of the term “Scan-
dinavian” since 1800, but this changed dramatically in the 1840s. From a rela-
tively low frequency during the 1830s the frequency increased by a factor of
twenty in the 1840s.⁴⁵ Almost a quarter of these mentions originates from the
pro-Scandinavian newspaper Fædrelandet. ⁴⁶ This is almost as many occurrences
as the overall more frequent term “Nordic” in Danish newspapers during this
decade.⁴⁷ After a gradual rise in the 1850s, there was another sharp rise in the
use of “Scandinavian” in the 1860s.⁴⁸ From the 1870s, the gradual rise of “Scan-
dinavian” continued, while “Nordic” again became clearly more dominant
(fig. 1).
This development corresponds partly – and especially for the period be-
tween the 1830s and the 1860s – with the Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish re-
sults. The comparison also reveals an interesting difference between a dominant
frequency of “Nordic” in Denmark and Finland, and a relatively more frequent
use of “Scandinavian” in Sweden and Norway for the period between the
1870s and the 1890s. In Swedish newspapers, “Scandinavian” rises markedly
from the 1830s to the 1840s, even surpassing the frequency of the term “Nor-
 This is valid also when the frequency is measured in absolute numbers of hits/mentions (the
number of hits in the newspaper databases reflects the amount of newspaper issues with men-
tions of “Scandinavian” or “Nordic”, not the total amount of mentions in each issue put togeth-
er). For the Norwegian material, relative frequency supports the findings in this study.
 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” in Danish newspapers rose from 161 mentions dur-
ing the 1830s to 3,795 mentions during the 1840s. (An asterisk [“skandinavisk*”] was added to
the keyword search to ensure the inclusion of different variants. The search is case-insensitive.)
Mediestream, accessed 13 September, 2020, www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream.
 There were 885 mentions of “Scandinavian” in Fædrelandet during the 1840s.
 The frequency of the term “Nordic” (“nordisk*”) rose from 2,046 mentions during the 1830s
to 4,038 mentions during the 1840s.
 There are 13,253 mentions of “Scandinavian” during the 1860s compared to 18,807 mentions
of “Nordic” during the same period.
48 Ruth Hemstad
Figure 1: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Danish newspapers 1810 –
1899.
Source: Mediestream, accessed 13 September, 2020, www2.statsbiblioteket.dk/mediestream.
Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.
dic.”⁴⁹ After a gradual rise in the 1850s, the use of “Scandinavian” again rose
considerably in the 1860s.⁵⁰ In the 1870s, there was a gradual rise of both
terms, with “Nordic” only again slightly surpassing “Scandinavian” in the dec-
ade between 1890 and 1899 (fig. 2).
Figure 2: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Swedish newspapers 1810 –
1899. Source: Svenska dagstidningar, accessed 13 September 2020, tidningar.kb.se. Illustra-
tion copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.
 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” (“skandinavisk*”) in Swedish newspapers rose

from 710 mentions during the 1830s to 5,967 mentions during the 1840s. The frequency of the
term “Nordic” (“nordisk*”) rose from 1,718 mentions during the 1830s to 5,551 during the
1840s. (A search on “scandinavisk*” gave 32 additional hits during the 1830s, and 83 hits during
the 1840s. The search is case-insensitive). Svenska dagstidningar, accessed 13 September 2020,
www.tidningar.kb.se.
 There are 25,688 mentions of “Scandinavian” during the 1860s compared to 19,524 of “Nor-
dic” during the same period. Included in this result are also advertisements for the bank Skan-
dinaviska Kreditaktiebolaget, founded in 1864.
In the Norwegian digitized newspaper corpus, the same tendency is prevalent,

even if the contemporary number of newspapers was considerably less in Nor-
way than in the established Danish and Swedish print cultures. “Scandinavian”
was used moderately in the 1830s before its usage rose significantly in the 1840s
(cf. fig. 3).⁵¹ In the same period, the term “Nordic” also rose, but comparatively
less.⁵² The 1850s represented a relative rise in the frequency of “Scandinavian”,
surpassing that of “Nordic.” From the 1870s to the 1880, “Nordic” was slightly
more widespread. During the 1890s, “Scandinavian” again surpassed “Nordic,”
but since 1900, “Nordic” has gradually become the most dominant term again.
Figure 3: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Norwegian newspapers

1810 – 1899. Source: National Library of Norway, accessed 13 September 2020, www.nb.no. Il-
lustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.
Swedish language newspapers in Finland also reflect the same development. The
newspaper corpus displays an increase in the term “Scandinavian” from the
1830s to the 1840s compared to that of “Nordic”.⁵³ There is a gradual increase
of both terms in the 1850s and 1860s with a clear increase of “Nordic” in the
1870s and of both terms in the 1880s followed by a minor decrease of “Scandi-
navian” in the 1890s. The term “Nordic” is overall more frequent in this corpus
during the whole period from 1810 to 1900 (fig. 4).
 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” (“skandinavisk*”) in Norwegian newspapers rose

from 79 mentions during the 1830s to 1,209 mentions during the 1840s. (The search is case-in-
sensitive). National Library of Norway, accessed 13 September 2020, www.nb.no.
 The frequency of the term “Nordic” (“nordisk*”) rose from 486 mentions during the 1830s to
1,954 mentions during the 1840s.
 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” (“skandinavisk”*/“scandinavisk*”) in Swedish
language newspapers – and advertisements in Swedish in Finnish language newspapers – in
Finland rose from 95 mentions during the 1830s to 227 mentions during the 1840s. The frequency
of the term “Nordic” (“nordisk*”) rose from 218 mentions during the 1830s to 457 mentions dur-
ing the 1840s. (The search is case-insensitive). DIGI, accessed 16 September 2020, digi.kansallis-
kirjasto.fi.
50 Ruth Hemstad
Figure 4: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Swedish-language new-

spapers in Finland 1810 – 1899. Source: DIGI, accessed 16 September 2020, digi.-
kansalliskirjasto.fi. Illustration copyright Lars G. Johnsen, National Library of Norway.
The references to “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Nordic newspapers in gen-

eral covers editorial content, as articles and submitted letters, but also advertise-
ments, announcements, and lists of publications, reflecting the widespread use
of these terms in different contexts. During the nineteenth century “Scandinavi-
an” and “Nordic” were increasingly used in names of journals, newspapers,
firms, organizations, cultural institutions, and different enterprises of a transna-
tional character. This tendency reflects a general transnational development and
indicates that a Scandinavian/Nordic orientation had become an integrated,
“ambient” part of cultural and social life across the region and could also be uti-
lised for branding purposes.⁵⁴ Part of this picture is the rising number of meet-
ings and associations using “Scandinavian” or “Nordic” in their names.⁵⁵
Scandinavian Sympathies and Related Phrases

The sharp rise in the frequency of the term “Scandinavian” in Nordic newspaper
corpora also reflects the range of new phrases entering the new pan-Scandina-
vian vocabulary. Illustrative is the critical discussion by Christian Molbech in
his travel account published in 1844 where he added an almost forty-page
long, highly critical appendix regarding what he called “the Scandinavian
 Tim van Gerven uses the phrase “ambient Scandinavism” to describe how markers of a pan-
Scandinavian identity (such as literature, monuments, and street-names) became an unobtru-
sive background of daily life during the late nineteenth century. Van Gerven, “Scandinavism,”
264, 327.
 See appendix in Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.
idea” or “the Scandinavian idea of unity.”⁵⁶ The text demonstrates how the term
“Scandinavian” was used in an already flourishing amount of new expressions
and phrases, among them a “new Scandinavianness,” a “Scandinavian connec-
tion,” the “Scandinavian North,” the “new Scandinavia,” “the first sudden Scan-
dinavian enthusiasm,” “Scandinavian sympathies,” and “the Scandinavian
issue.”
In Sweden, the term “Scandinavian” was redefined in the 1840s, even if, as
we have seen, the previous narrower use and understanding continued along-
side the new interpretation. Newspapers and journals naming themselves “Scan-
dinavian” in the 1840s hence referred explicitly to another, larger, and future-ori-
ented “Scandinavia” than what had hitherto been the case.⁵⁷
Along with the marked increase in the term “Scandinavian,” there was a re-
newed interest in “Nordic” as part of the new political-cultural vocabulary. A key
phrase here is Nordens Eenhed [Nordic unity/unity of the North], sometimes
specified as a spiritual, cultural, or even political, unity.
Some specific phrases are used throughout the century, with periods of in-
creasing and decreasing usage. Other phrases, interestingly, only turn up during
limited time periods. Some of these word combinations are seemingly quite neu-
tral, while others are ambiguous, charged with meaning and clearly rhetorical. It
is possible to identify and analyse through a combination of close and distant
readings phrases of interest, frequently used expressions, and term co-occur-
rences. By counting the frequencies of certain bigrams in the text corpus at
the National Library of Norway and searching for key words and specific phrases
in Nordic newspaper databases, as well as conducting close readings of relevant
material, one can begin to see several patterns appear.⁵⁸
Several of the new phrases found in this research were coined by pan-Scan-
dinavian activists. Some of the phrases with the term “Nordic” are integrated
 Christian Molbech, “Om ‘den skandinaviske Eenhed,’” in Molbech, Lund, Upsala og Stock-
holm, 28. Molbech’s list also demonstrates a contemporary use of the term “Scandinavianness,”
see page 297. See also Hemstad, “Scandinavianism,” 11.
 “Anmälan,” Tidning för Skandinavien, 30 December 1843.
 Bigram collocations based on newspaper and books, 1790 – 1920 are made available for this
study by Lars G. Johnsen. N-gram resources at the National Library of Norway: https://
www.nb.no/sprakbanken/ressurskatalog/oai-nb-no-sbr-35/. For descriptions of data resources
at NBdigital, see Magnus Breder Birkenes et al., “From Digital Library to N-Grams: NB N-
gram,” in Proceedings of the 20th Nordic Conference of Computational Linguistics (Linköping,
2015), 293 – 295. See also Lars Johnsen, “Eldre bøker i den digitale samlingen: Et elektronisk
blikk på tekster fra perioden 1650 – 1850,” in Litterære verdensborgere: Transnasjonale perspek-
tiver på norsk bokhistorie 1519 – 1850, ed. Aasta Marie Bjorvand Bjørkøy et al. (Oslo: National Li-
brary of Norway, 2019), 190 – 214.
52 Ruth Hemstad
parts of the pan-Scandinavian rhetoric, having clear political implications and

connotations, such as “Nordic unity,” “Nordic spirit/volksgeist,” and “Nordic
union/federation/alliance.” More frequent in the rhetoric applied by the pan-
Scandinavian movement, and used mainly from the 1840s until the 1860s,
were phrases such as “Scandinavian sympathies”; the “Scandinavian idea” or
the “Scandinavian idea of unity”; the “Scandinavian issue/question”; the “Scan-
dinavian union”; and “Scandinavian efforts/endeavours.” Other frequent phras-
es are the “Scandinavian people(s),” “Scandinavian nation(s)/nationality,” and
“Scandinavian aims/purposes.” Widespread are also phrases including “Nor-
den” or “Scandinavia,” as the “Scandinavian North,” the “spiritual unity of
the North,” “Our Norden/Scandinavia,” and “the unity of Norden/Scandinavia.”
Even “Scandinavian associations,” as we have seen, could be understood as a
specific form of association, meant to propagate “Scandinavian ideas” and pro-
mote the knowledge of “Scandinavian literature.” Many of these phrases were
used in all three Scandinavian countries, as a transnational pan-Scandinavian
vocabulary with shared key concepts, others were mainly used in one or two
countries, like the “Scandinavian fatherland,” which was mostly a Danish inven-
tion. All these phrases should be seen as part of the discursive, semantic context
surrounding the pan-Scandinavian movement.
“Nordic” and “Scandinavian” were to a certain extent interchangeable con-
cepts during most of the nineteenth century, which the bigram counts also sup-
port. In many instances, and out of esthetical-poetical reasons, there was a ques-
tion of using alternatives in the descriptions used. The term “Nordic” is overall
clearly more dominant during the whole century, but “Scandinavian” increased
to a certain point in Denmark in the 1860s and early 1870s, and in Norway and
Sweden until the 1890s, followed by a relative decline. Some phrases were usu-
ally, or only, used in combination with either “Nordic” or “Scandinavian.” Typ-
ically, descriptive phrases of the area and territory used these terms interchange-
ably, for example: “Scandinavian/Nordic countries,” “Scandinavian/Nordic
Kingdoms/realms,” and “Scandinavian/Nordic states” – an exception to this ten-
dency is the description of the peninsula, “Scandinavian Peninsula” predomi-
nates with only a few, mainly Norwegian, examples of the phrase “Nordic Pen-
insula.” Phrases that refer to the inhabitants of territory follow the same logic:
“Scandinavian/Nordic peoples” and “Scandinavian/Nordic nationalities/na-
tions”. Some of these terms could also be used in singular, rhetorically underlin-
ing the unity among the Scandinavians, such as “the Scandinavian people/na-
tionality/nation”. Some phrases changed gradually from “Scandinavian” to
“Nordic” during the century, such as “Scandinavian/Nordic cooperation,” and
related to this, “Scandinavian/Nordic meetings/associations”.
Some phrases could change their meaning, depending on the context, as

part of a Swedish or a Danish rhetoric. The “Scandinavian union” could mean
Sweden and Norway or Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and the inhabitants in
question – the “Scandinavians” – could mean the Swedish and Norwegian peo-
ple or the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian people or even, more explicitly, the
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian supporters of the “Scandinavian idea.” A
“Scandinavian song” could be praising the union between Sweden and Norway,
especially when written around 1814 or it could, later on, be one of the hundreds
of songs distributed during the “Scandinavian/Nordic student meetings.”
Some phrases are predominantly “Nordic,” like the ones describing Old
Norse heritage.⁵⁹ Old Norse history, language, and antiquities were dominantly
termed “Nordic,” not “Scandinavian.” In the Sagas themselves, “Scandinavian”
was not used, as was emphasized in the Norwegian critique against Danish at-
tempts to claim part of the ownership to this heritage. “Nordic” was preferred as
well when speaking of Vikings, pagans, Gods and runes, as well as tribes. History
was also dominantly “Nordic.” There are “Nordic mythology/legends,” as well as
“Nordic folk songs/fairy-tales/poetry/art/authors,” but “literature” could either
be described as “Scandinavian” or “Nordic.” And although countries, states,
and realms are interchangeably “Nordic” or “Scandinavian,” there are seemingly
only “Nordic powers” and a “Nordic force.”
The rhetoric of Scandinavianness around 1840 was soon met by counter con-
cepts clearly indicating the ambiguity embedded in these concepts. One of these,
although quite rare, was “Unscandinavian.” Another, more frequently used, was
“antiscandinavian.” There were also “antiscandinavians,” referring negatively to
“Scandinavians,” or “so-called Scandinavians,” referring to someone who was
in favour of the “Scandinavian idea.” “Unscandinavian” was used in an article
in the Danish satirical and political magazine, Corsaren, while mocking the in-
credible number of speeches and toasts being held at the huge “Nordic” student
meeting in Copenhagen during the summer of 1845. The author claims there were
“247 Scandinavian speeches… always about one and the same thing, that Den-
mark, Norway and Sweden had been in disagreement, but now were the best
of friends – that is simply too much… that is unscandinavian.”⁶⁰
 See also J.J.A. Worsaae, “Om vigtigheden af et centrum for Nordisk Oldforskning,” Annaler
for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 1846: 3 – 20. In Sweden, “Scandinavian” was also used
to describe this past history. “Nordic race” is, however, seemingly not commonly used (on hu-
mans) until the 1920s. See also Merle Weßel in this volume.
 Corsaren, 4 July 1845, cited after Julius Clausen, Skandinavismen historisk fremstillet (Copen-
hagen: Det Nordiske Forlag, 1900), 101. Corsaren was edited by M.A. Goldschmidt.
54 Ruth Hemstad
The development in the rhetorical use of “Scandinavian” in the 1840s can-

not be understood without considering the impact of the pan-Scandinavian
movement. The usage culminated with the two German-Danish wars on the
Duchy of Schleswig, 1848 – 51 and 1864, resulting in the Danish loss of Schles-
wig. During the 1870s, the 1880s, and most of the 1890s the rhetoric of Scandi-
navianness was less outspoken, but still not completely forgotten.
From the Rhetoric of Scandinavianness to the

Rhetoric of Nordicness
A fourth point regarding the rhetoric of Scandinavianness in the nineteenth cen-
tury is the renewed interest at the turn of the century followed by a rejection of
these concepts in conservative parts of the Swedish public sphere. This develop-
ment probably contributed to strengthening another tendency, which is the final
main point, namely, that the rhetoric of Scandinavianness gradually transformed
into a rhetoric of Nordicness from the last part of the nineteenth century on-
wards. This last section will briefly look into this development.
The period of specific interest is around the year 1900, which saw a revival of
pan-Scandinavian sentiments stimulated by what was termed “neo-Scandina-
vianism.”⁶¹ A range of “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” associations and meetings
filled the air, many of them using a rhetoric reminiscent of earlier periods. This
Indian summer period, also reflecting Russian and German pressure against Fin-
land and the Danish borderlands respectively, turned, however, into a cold Nor-
dic winter after the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905. Swed-
ish “neo-Scandinavianists” openly declared the final death of
“Scandinavianism” caused by Norway unilaterally leaving the union. Swedish
reactions hence turned against the flourishing Nordic cooperation at the time,
including the many Scandinavian associations established abroad, such as the
one in Hamburg. The terms “Scandinavia” and “Scandinavian” were no longer
appealing but rather contested and were rejected as inappropriate and in conflict
with Swedish national interests in conservative parts of the Swedish public
sphere.⁶²
The pan-Scandinavian associations abroad, usually termed “Scandinavian,”
not “Nordic,” continued to celebrate “Scandinavian” culture, traditions, and spi-
rit, along with “Nordic Christmas” and “Scandinavian friendship” until the dis-
 Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 87– 229.

 “De ‘skandinaviska’ sjömanshemmen utomlands,” Göteborgs Aftonblad, 17 July, 1908.
solution of the union in 1905. In 1906 and 1907, following the dissolution, and
the subsequent anti-Scandinavian sentiments in Sweden, many associations, es-
pecially in European cities, were terminated.⁶³ The Scandinavian Association in
Rome, established 1860, was one of the few older associations to survive 1905,
and it is still in operation today.
An encyclopaedic entry in the Swedish Nordisk Familjebok – not an untyp-
ical name at the time – illuminates the conceptual changes within this field.
The entry for “Scandinavian associations abroad” was still included in the
1917 volume, but without any definition, only a reference to another entry:
“see Swedes living abroad.”⁶⁴ Utlandssvenskar was then defined as “Swedish
speaking citizens of Swedish origin” (including former Swedish territories), liv-
ing in a state other than Sweden.⁶⁵ Several of the pan-Scandinavian associations
abroad had been dissolved and new, nation-based clubs were established in-
stead, backed by national umbrella organizations in the home countries.
The naming of transnational meetings within Scandinavia illustrates the
transformation from “Scandinavian” to “Nordic” during the last part of the nine-
teenth century. Beginning with the first meeting series, that started in 1839, and
in the decades following, associations and meetings across the region were
termed “Scandinavian.” During the 1860s, new meetings were either called
“Scandinavian” or “Nordic.” Starting with the 1870s, however, new meetings
and conferences were primarily called “Nordic” rather than “Scandinavian,” in
part reflecting a growing number of Finnish participants. After 1900, there are
only rare exceptions still using the adjective “Scandinavian” for these kinds of
transnational activities.⁶⁶
The same pattern can be seen in the names of the pan-Scandinavian orient-
ed networks of associations. Within Scandinavia, associations with pan-Scandi-
navian ambitions, although nationally based, were established in three different,
short-lived rows during the nineteenth century. The naming of them changed
over time following the main transformation from “Scandinavian” to “Nordic.”
A forerunner was the above-mentioned Scandinavian Literary Society, establish-
ed in 1796. During the 1840s, the associations were, as we have seen, termed
“Scandinavian.” When new associations were established after the second Ger-
 Hemstad, “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad”; Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 345 –

359.
 “Skandinaviska föreningar i utlandet: Se Utlandssvenskar,” Nordisk Familjebok 25, 2nd ed.
(Stockholm, 1917), 876.
 Nordisk Familjebok 31 (Stockholm, 1921), 111.
 Among the exceptions are “Scandinavian Labour Congresses,” “Scandinavian Dentists Meet-
ings,” and “Scandinavian Woman Conferences”. See appendix in Hemstad, Fra Indian summer.
56 Ruth Hemstad
man-Danish war in 1864, they were termed “Nordic” in Sweden and Denmark.
The first association of this kind in Norway, established during the war, termed
itself however “Scandinavian” [Skandinavisk Selskab]. As part of the revival of
pan-Scandinavian notions after 1899, new associations were founded, using a
common name: Nordisk Forening [Nordic association]. After a period of reduced
cooperation and contact after 1905, the First World War reactivated Nordic coop-
eration, meetings, and transnational associational life. Foreningene Norden
[Norden associations] were established not only in the Scandinavian countries
in 1919, but also in Iceland in 1922, in Finland in 1924, and later in the Baltic
area. They proved to have a longer life than their predecessors did. They have
represented, and still represent, an enduring rhetoric of Nordicness.
Conclusion
This chapter has explored the emergence, rise, and decline of the term “Scandi-
navian” as a flexible and contested concept in newspapers published in Den-
mark, Sweden, Norway and Finland in the long nineteenth century. Based on
an approach combining close and distant reading, through key word and collo-
cate searching of Nordic newspapers, and additional readings of journals, books,
and pamphlets, it argues that the use of the term “Scandinavian,” along with a
revived use of the older and more common term “Nordic,” increased rapidly in
the Nordic countries in the 1840s. The study demonstrates how different groups
have sought to claim the term “Scandinavian” for their own purposes, leading to
rhetorical struggles. A rhetoric of Scandinavianness – utilising the relatively rare
and unsettled term “Scandinavian” compared to that of “Nordic” around 1800 –
was used in competing Swedish and Danish pan-national projects. The use of the
term “Scandinavian” exploded within the new Scandinavian public sphere that
emerged in the 1840s, with associations, journals, and newspapers promoting
the “Scandinavian idea.” New connotations were attached to established
terms, and a range of conceptual innovations with rhetorical power led to con-
ceptual contests and disputes.
While the Swedish interpretation of “Scandinavia” and “Scandinavian” – as
restricted to the Scandinavian Peninsula – used in the decades following 1814
has more or less faded into oblivion, the pan-Scandinavian movement of the
mid-nineteenth century, it may be argued, had an enduring influence on the con-
tested rhetoric of Scandinavianness and Nordicness throughout the century –
and well beyond.⁶⁷ The re-politicization of this concept around 1900 – 1905, and
the national tensions and anti-Scandinavian sentiments after 1905, contributed
to making it even more contested. When the transnational cooperation started
up again around 1918, and with Finland and Iceland as integrated parts of it,
the term “Nordic” was the most appropriate adjective to use, although it contin-
ued to be flexible, appealing, and contested, as the following chapters of this
volume demonstrate.
 Hemstad, Fra Indian summer, 394– 418; Hemstad, “Scandinavianism, Nordic Co-operation
and ‘Nordic Democracy,’” in Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, ed. Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan
Strang (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010), 179 – 193.
Merle Weßel
The Nordic in the Scientific Racial
Discourses in the United States and
Northern Europe in the Interwar Period:
The Passing of Greatness
Introduction
The term Nordic in relation to race science was introduced in the early twentieth
century in the United States by Madison Grant. Though the notion of the suprem-
acy of the races of Northern Europe was frequently discussed in the nineteenth
century, the prominent terms in this discussion were Aryan or Teutonic, rather
than Nordic. The shift from Aryan to Nordic was a gradual one. Between 1853
and 1855, the term Aryan race was first used by the French author Arthur de Go-
bineau to describe what he regarded as the superior race of Northern Europe.¹ In
1899, the economist William Ripley introduced the term Teutonic race, which, ac-
cording to him, was based mainly in the United States, Great Britain and Germa-
ny.² He did not specifically consider Scandinavia in his definition.
Madison Grant then introduced the term Nordic and put the Nordic countries
– or to be more precise, Scandinavia (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) – on the
racial map as the core of civilisation and political order.³ In the young historian
and journalist Lothrop Stoddard (1883 – 1950) Grant found a protégée who con-
tinued his legacy of scientific racism well into the 1930s with books like The Ris-
ing Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1922) and The Racial Realities in
Europe (1924).⁴ Both were convinced that the Nordic race was superior and the
most civilised of all races, the race that led any great nation to success. They ar-
gued that only with a high degree of Nordic blood could a society be politically,
 Arthur de Gobineau, Essai Sur l’inégalité Des Races Humaines, 3 vols (Hanover: Rumpler,
1853).
 William Zebina Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1899).
 John P. Jackson and Nadine M. Weidman, “The Origins of Scientific Racism,” The Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education 50 (2005): 66 – 79.
 Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (New York: Scrib-
ner, 1920); Lothrop Stoddard, The Racial Realities in Europe (New York: Scribner, 1924).
OpenAccess. © 2022 Merle Weßel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-004
60 Merle Weßel
economically, and socially successful. If the degree of Nordic blood decreased in

a society, civilisation would likewise decline.⁵
This terminological shift was connected to an interplay of scientific and po-
litical changes. The increasing interest of racial scientists and anthropologists in
the understanding of human races was related to the political climate in the
United States This was influenced by fears of poorer European immigrants seek-
ing their fortunes in the new world and the impact of this on US society.⁶ There
was a consolidation of racial discourse in science especially after the turn of the
century, and after the Great War this discourse found its way into politics and
society. This discussion peaked in the Immigration Act of 1924, which regulated
immigration to the United States on racial grounds. The Act favoured people
from Northern Europe and prevented Southern and Eastern Europeans from en-
tering the United States.⁷
However, the idea of a superior Nordic race found support not only in the
United States but also in many Northern European countries. In Germany, for ex-
ample, leading racial scientists like Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz, and Hans F.K.
Günther discussed notions of a superior nordische Rasse and its possible decline
through race mixing.⁸ In the Nordic countries, racial biologists, such as the
Swede Herman Lundborg, adopted the term nordisk in their race studies in the
early twentieth century, though its use did not originate there. The adoption of
Nordic terminology in the Nordic countries followed a pattern familiar from
other usages of the rhetorics of Nordicness – it was largely an adoption of US
uses.⁹
The term “Nordic” [nordisch/nordisk] was the key term in racial science and
the conceptualization of racial superiority and hierarchy in early twentieth-cen-
tury Germany and Sweden. In Germany, the racial theorists Erwin Baur, Eugen
Fischer, and Fritz Lenz published their book Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und
 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History (New
York: C. Scribner, 1936); Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugen-
ics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington: University Press of New England, 2009).
 Kristofer Allerfeldt, ‘“And We Got Here First”: Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Inter-
est in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s,” Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 1 (January
2010): 7– 26, doi:10.1177/0022009409348019.
 Allerfeldt, “‘And We Got Here First.”’
 Hans F.K. Günter, Ritter, Tod und Teufel. Der heldische Gedanke (Munich: J. F. Lehmann Verlag,
1920); Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhy-
giene (München: J.F. Lehmann, 1931), 547.
 Carl Marklund and Klaus Petersen, “Return to Sender – American Images of the Nordic Wel-
fare States and Nordic Welfare State Branding,” European Journal of Scandinavian Studies 43,
no. 2 (January 2013), https://doi.org/10.1515/ejss-2013 – 0016.
The Nordic in the Scientific Racial Discourses 61
Rassenhygiene (1921/1931) in which they claimed that the members of the nordi-
sche Rasse were the bravest and most intelligent.¹⁰ Here nordisch refers to a geo-
graphical area occupied mainly by people of the nordische Rasse – Northern Eu-
rope, Northwest Europe, and the coastal areas of the North and Baltic seas.¹¹
These theorists declared the term germanisch to be a term of the past, used be-
cause the nordische Rasse had its origin in the German Kaiserreich of the Middle
Ages and had developed from there.¹² The term Aryan, as used by Ripley in 1899,
was for them a purely linguistic term that did not relate to the cultural context.¹³
While the German racial scientists saw the origin of the Nordic race in Germany,
the Swedish researchers, such as the racial biologist Herman Lundborg, under-
stood Sweden as the geographical centre of the nordisk ras. He, as with Grant
and the German colleagues, used the term nordisk to refer to a geographical lo-
cation its inhabitants. Yet, he argued that the nordisk ras was mainly defined by
an anthropological bond and that no racial hierarchies could be detected be-
tween the Nordic race and other European races.¹⁴ The different conceptualisa-
tion and nationally defined use of the terms Nordic, nordisch, and nordisk had an
effect on the racial implications made by the different researchers as well as the
racialist results of their research.
This chapter discusses Grant and Stoddard’s conceptualisation of the Nordic
race as a superior race. The primary question is: how did Grant and Stoddard
form the notion of Nordicness in their racial theory? Why did Grant and Stoddard
use the term Nordic rather than following William Ripley’s conceptualisation of
the Teutonic or Germanic race?¹⁵ Since the discourse of the Nordic race was not
limited to the United States but similar ideas emerged at the same time in Eu-
rope, I compare how the concept of Nordicness and Nordic race can be under-
stood in the context of similar ideas, taking Sweden and Germany as case stud-
ies. I chose Sweden as the exemplary case for the Nordic countries because in
Nordic racial theory the Nordic countries constituted the core area of the Nordic
race with the “purest” Nordic people. Yet, though the Nordic race discourse was
very active in Sweden in the interwar period, no political radicalisation resulted
from it. As the second case, I selected Germany because German racial theorists
considered Germany to be a country with a significant number of Nordic people
 Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 547.

 Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 147.
 Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 541.
 Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 542.
 Herman Lundborg, The racial Characters of the Swedish Nation (Uppsala: Almquist & Wik-
sell, 1926); Herman Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes (Jena: Fischer, 1928).
 Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study.
62 Merle Weßel
and the idea of Nordic superiority was politically radicalised in the 1930s. I show
how the geographical and political environment shaped the concept of the Nor-
dic race, despite the cross-national similarities of the discourse. Here, notions of
a transnational transfer of culture and knowledge are relevant to demonstrate
how the knowledge and understanding of the concept of the Nordic race travel-
led across the Atlantic Ocean and within Europe in the early twentieth century.¹⁶
In 2011, Johannes Burgers compared Grant’s racial theory to the theories of
Hungarian Zionist Max Nordau.¹⁷ I build on this comparative literature. The em-
phasis here is not on Grant’s biography, rather it is on Grant’s conceptualization
of the Nordic race and his contribution to the development of a movement pro-
claiming Nordic and White supremacy in the United States during the 1920s.
Many thinkers engaged in discussions about the concept of a Nordic race in
Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. In what follows, I draw on studies of these
debates by Nikola Karcher, Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft, and Gunnar Broberg with Nils
Roll-Hansen, as well as my own work, and for the Swedish context, on studies by
Mattias Tydén and Maria Björkman to show the similarities and differences be-
tween the Northern European and US Nordic discourse.¹⁸
The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the develop-
ment of scientific racism and the conceptualization of the Nordic race as a supe-
rior race in the United States, with a particular focus on the works of Grant and
Stoddard. I show why Grant and Stoddard favoured the term Nordic over the pre-
vious terms Germanic or Teutonic and how this conceptual turn took place. In the
second part, I place the US discourse in relation to similar discourses in Germany
and Sweden. I show that despite common fears about the degeneration of the
 Stefan Nygård and Johan Strang, “Facing Asymmetry: Nordic Intellectuals and Center-Pe-
riphery Dynamics in European Cultural Space,” Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 1 (25 Feb-
ruary 2016): 75 – 97, doi:10.1353/jhi.2016.0006.
 Johannes Hendrikus Burgers, :Max Nordau, Madison Grant, and Racialized Theories of Ideol-
ogy,” Journal of the History of Ideas 72, no. 1 (2011): 119 – 140.
 Maria Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen: Nils von Hofsten, eugeniken och steriliseringarna
1909 – 1963, Pandora-serien xviii (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 2011); Gunnar Broberg, “Scandinavia:
An Introduction,” in Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland,
ed. Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
2005), 1– 8; Nicola Karcher, “Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung: Der Nordische
Ring und seine Repräsentanten in Norwegen,” Nordeuropaforum 1, no. 19 (13 July 2009):
7– 36, doi:10.18452/7996; Mattias Tydén, Från politik till praktik: de svenska steriliseringslagarna
1935 – 1975, 2nd ed., Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm studies in history 63 (Stock-
holm: Södertälje, 2002); Merle Weßel, “Concept of ‘Nordic Race’ in German and Nordic Ra-
cial-Theoretical Research in the 1920s,” Nordeuropaforum, 2016, 29 – 49; Hans-Jürgen Lutzhöft,
Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920 – 1940 (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1971).
Nordic race and the impact of this on civilisation, the conceptualisation of the
Nordic race differed, geographically and conceptually, across the Atlantic
Ocean. In the third part, I focus on the transnational transfer of knowledge
and discourse about the Nordic race. I discuss whether this undertaking can
be considered a transnational movement in the rhetorical uses of Nordicness
and what aims and effects were connected within the different strains. I show
that Germany was a centre for research about the Nordic race, since Grant and
Lundborg had extensive connections to German race scientists although no di-
rect link between Grant and Lundborg themselves can be detected.
Scientific Racism in the United States

The idea of a hierarchy of human races was not invented by Grant or Stoddard.
Charles Darwin argued in his evolutionary theory that no race was superior to
the others. In the decades after the publication of his work, however, the French
writer Arthur de Gobineau, the American economist William Ripley, and the Brit-
ish philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer, among others, contributed to the
idea that evolution was indeed the struggle between the races. This thinking
grew into the ideology of scientific racism.
Whereas Darwin argued against the supremacy of the Northern races and ar-
gued that environment had no effect on genes, de Gobineau argued that in
Northern parts of Europe there developed a superior race due to its context of
a harsh climate. They suggested that civilisation was a product of race and
that the Nordic race produced the highest form of civilisation. They also argued
that race, not nation or political order, was the foundation for social order.¹⁹
While the late nineteenth-century, racial theorists, such as William Ripley, had
focused mainly on anthropological issues in the context of race, racial theorists
such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard introduced social and political
ideas into the discussion. In this way, they turned racial discourse away from an-
thropology and biology and towards social and political discourse.
Grant was born in 1865 into a wealthy, upper-class family in New York. He
studied at Yale University as an undergraduate and received a law degree from
Columbia University in 1890. Yet, his legal career was short-lived as he pursued
his interests in zoology, genealogy, and anthropology.²⁰ Grant developed a spe-
 Jackson and Weidman, “The Origins of Scientific Racism,” 66.

 Charles C. Alexander, “Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth,”
Phylon (1960‐) 23, no. 1 (1962): 73 – 74, doi:10.2307/274146.
64 Merle Weßel
cial interest in the conservation of American wildlife. He was member of the

prestigious Boone and Crocket Club, a conservation and hunting club with
other prominent members, such as future president Theodore Roosevelt. He
shaped various other nature-focused associations, like the National Parks Asso-
ciation and the New York Zoological Society, and he was a founder of the Bronx
Zoo in New York in 1899.²¹ Furthermore, he was vice-president of the Immigra-
tion Restriction League and member of the Eugenics Research Association. His
ideas influenced the drafting of the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924, which regu-
lated immigration to the United States on racial grounds.²² On top of this, Grant
published numerous articles about wildlife conservation, nature, and anthropol-
ogy, as well as the danger of the downfall of civilisation in Europe and its threat
to society in the United States. He was a strong advocate for eugenics and placed
himself in the popular discourse about degeneration and the decline of civilisa-
tion.²³
Grant created a group of followers during his active years. One of his most
vocal protégées was the journalist and historian Lothrop Stoddard. In his biog-
raphy of Grant, Jonathan Spiro calls Stoddard the second most influential racist
of the United States.²⁴ His background was similar to Grant’s. Stoddard came
from an old and wealthy New England family and he also trained, like Grant,
as a lawyer but never actually practised law. He studied history at Harvard Uni-
versity and worked as a journalist and an author. Stoddard was considered the
apostle of Grant, who was considered the prophet of scientific racism.²⁵ He pub-
lished 22 books and numerous articles, the most significant of which were The
Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (1920), The Revolt against
Civilisation (1922) and The Racial Realities in Europe (1924).²⁶ The central
theme, following Grant, was the supremacy of the Nordic race, its contribution
to civilisation and its feared downfall in the near future. Stoddard was well
known in intellectual circles and influenced the intellectuals and authors of
his time. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald alluded to Stoddard and his works in
his book The Great Gatsby (1925), where his character Tom Buchanan refers to
a book on the subject.
 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 75.

 Alexander, “Prophet of American Racism,” 75.
 Alexander, “Prophet of American Racism,” 89.
 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 171.
 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 173.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy; Lothrop Stoddard, The
Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the under Man (New York: Scribner, 1922); Lothrop
Stoddard, The Racial Realities in Europe.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessi-
mist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Colored Empires by this man Goddard? […]
It’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white
race will be – will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved. […] This
fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to
watch out or these other races will have control of things. […] This idea is that we’re Nor-
dics. I am, and you are, and you are, and […] we’ve produced all the things that go to make
civilization – oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”²⁷
The casual allusion to Stoddard’s book and the topic of the presumed downfall
of civilisation in a popular novel show that scientific ideas about race were not
marginalised but that the discourse about races and civilisation was very much
part of intellectual discussions. Books by Stoddard and others were widely read
and became so well known that they appeared in literature as part of the zeit-
geist.
However, the careers of both Grant and Stoddard were short lived, peaking in
the time after the Great War in the 1920s. Yet both left behind extensive material
that enlightens us about the conceptualisation of the Nordic race in the United
States in the interwar period. Grant’s book The Passing of the Great Race (1916/
1936) was dedicated to the history of the Nordic race and its achievements, but
also prophesied its downfall in the next decades. In the preface to the second
edition, the US-anthropologist Henry Fairfield Osborn stated that recent history
had shown that the Nordic race was the race that countries needed to rely on for
leadership.²⁸ In the preface to the first edition Osborn stated: “if I were asked:
What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic today? I
would certainly reply: The gradual dying out among our people of those heredi-
tary traits through which the principles of our religious, political and social foun-
dations were laid down and their insidious replacement by traits of less noble
character.”²⁹ The strong interest in the Nordic race and Nordic supremacy started
shortly before the Great War and increased significantly in the interwar period.
The political and social changes that came with the experience of the war, not
only in the United States but also in Germany, were shaped by a sense of loss
of the world as it had been known and the subsequent uncertainty of the future.
Grant emphasised repeatedly in his works that he objected to the classifica-
tion of some races as superior to others, but at the same time he contradicted his
statement by declaring that the human races were not equal and alike.³⁰ In his
 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, The Great Gatsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, xi.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, ix.
 Madison Grant, The Conquest of the Continent (New York: C. Scribner, 1933), ix.
66 Merle Weßel
books, he discussed the races of the world and especially the three races he de-
fined as European races: the Nordic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean. Here my
focus is on the conceptualization of the Nordic race. Grant’s description of the
physical characteristics of the Nordic race was no different to descriptions by
other international racial theorists, such as Fischer, Lenz, or Lundborg. The
members of the Nordic race were long-skulled with fair skin, blond or brown
hair, and light-coloured eyes. He described them as “a race of soldiers, sailors,
adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers and aristocrats
in sharp contrast of the essentially peasant and democratic character of the Al-
pines. The Nordic race is domineering, individualistic, self-reliant and jealous of
their personal freedom both in political and religious systems and as a result
they are usually Protestant.”³¹
Grant argued that the superiority of the Nordic race was defined by its envi-
ronment. He demarcated the core area of the Nordic race as the areas surround-
ing the North and Baltic seas, though this area was not fixed but changed over
time.³² He supported the neo-Malthusian notion that the environment influenced
genes and that genes changed due to environmental circumstances over time
and generations. Grant argued that the harsh living conditions of the North –
the long winters, the lack of daylight, and the bad weather – had a positive in-
fluence on people of the Nordic race, even though the weather was endured
rather than enjoyed.³³ The fair environment of Southern Europe where the Med-
iterranean race was dominant did not force the people to strive for survival.
Grant stated that good weather made people mentally and physically weak.³⁴
Grant created a complex network of the human race structure. On top were
the three main species: the Caucasians, the Mongols, and the “Negroids”. Sec-
ondly, he divided them into subspecies or races. The Caucasians, for example,
were divided into Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean – the three European
races. Thirdly, Grant introduced varieties. Here, the Nordic race was split into
Teutonics, Scandinavians, and other varieties based on the region they inhabit-
ed. The Teutonics, for example, were based in Great Britain and Northern Germa-
ny, and the Scandinavians in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the coastal area of
Finland.³⁵ Sweden was considered by Grant the core area of the Nordic race,
where the purest types could be found. In Germany or Great Britain, the Nordic
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 228.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 20.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 38.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 38 – 39.
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 65 – 66; Spiro,
Defending the Master Race, 96.
race mixed with other races but the high percentage of Nordic blood within the
people ensured their high quality.³⁶
Stoddard echoed in many ways the thoughts of his mentor Grant and con-
tributed little new to racial theories of the early twentieth century. He also div-
ided European races into Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. He located the
areas of settlement the same way Grant did and followed Grant and most
other racial theorists of his time in the physical description of the Nordic
race.³⁷ Stoddard argued that the terms Aryan, Indo-European, and Germanic
were to be considered purely linguistic. Only Nordic could be considered a
term that defined the racial uniqueness and superiority of the group of people
living in Northern Europe and belonging to the Nordic race, according to Stod-
dard.³⁸ Here Ripley’s terminology of the Teutonic race clearly shifts to Grant
and Stoddard’s Nordic race.
The term Caucasian, according to Grant, was used to distinguish White from
Black people in the United States but could not be used in other contexts.³⁹ Teu-
tonic, as Grant claimed, was also a linguistic term that distinguished the latecom-
ers of the Nordic race from the early Celtic-speaking Nordic tribes.⁴⁰ Grant and
Stoddard agreed that all other terms previously used to describe the Nordic
race, such as Aryan, Germanic, or Teutonic, actually referred to linguistic differ-
ences but not to racial differences – physical and mental traits. Grant stated:
Just as the classification of man according to race needs revision in the light of recent dis-
coveries, so the definition of race must be understood anew in the light of genetics. Thirty
years ago, we talked glibly about the Aryan or Indo-European race, or the Caucasian or Ger-
manic race. All these terms must be discarded. Aryan, Indo-European, and Germanic are
only linguistic terms and Caucasian has no meaning except as used in America to distin-
guish between whites and colored. ⁴¹
Yet, Stoddard started to use the term “White race,” which comprised the Nordic,
Alpine, and Mediterranean races. Grant was not convinced at this time that these
three races could be grouped together but Stoddard considered them all to be
races of “good” stock and genetically at least above the “colored races” [sic].
Nevertheless, Stoddard agreed with Grant that the Nordic race was the most val-
 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, 68, 169, 211.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 5 – 7.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 162.
 Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 21– 22.
 Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 43.
 Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 21– 22.
68 Merle Weßel
uable one.⁴² While people from the Nordic countries had not previously been
considered White, Stoddard connected Nordicness to Whiteness.⁴³
The fear for the future of the Nordic race was a central theme for Stoddard.
Whereas Grant had already anticipated a grim future for the Nordic race, Stod-
dard argued that “it is the Nordics who are most affected by the dysgenic [sic]
aspects of our civilization.”⁴⁴ He gave two examples of the decline of the Nordic
race. With the first he directed the view to the United States. Stoddard argued
that “our country, originally settled almost exclusively by Nordics, was toward
the close of the nineteenth century invaded by hordes of immigrant Alpines
and Mediterraneans, not to mention Asiatic elements like Levantines and
Jews.”⁴⁵ Stoddard refers to “Nordics” here because in his mind the first settlers
in America came exclusively from countries with a high concentration of the Nor-
dic bloodline, such as Great Britain, parts of Germany, and Sweden. He contin-
ued: “as a result, the Nordic native American has been crowded out with amaz-
ing rapidity by these swarming, prolific aliens, and after two short generations
he has in many of our urban areas become almost extinct.”⁴⁶ He drew a direct
line between rising social and economic problems in the United States after
the turn of the century and the geographical change in the migration structures
he appeared to have recognized.
According to Stoddard, following Grant’s argument, the Nordic race was en-
dangered not only in the United States but also in Europe, its area of origin. He
claimed that it was mainly the Nordic race that had suffered during the Great
War: “the Nordic went forth eagerly to battle, while the more stolid Alpine
and, above all, the little brunet Mediterranean either stayed at home or even
when at the front showed less fighting spirit, took fewer chances, and oftener
saved their skins.”⁴⁷ The Great War thus weakened White solidarity, which
have previously been a unifying force.⁴⁸ Stoddard’s line of logic was that in
the Great War the White races fought each other and other races were less in-
volved, which meant that mainly members of the White races, in particular
 Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 157; Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White
World Supremacy, 162– 63.
 Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, “Nordic Whiteness: An Introduction,” Scan-
dinavian Studies 89, no. 2 (2017): 151, doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0151.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 163.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 165.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 165.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 183.
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 169.
the Nordic race, lost their lives in the war. According to him this affected not only
the current generation but also the future ones.⁴⁹
Grant and Stoddard’s scientific racism was based on their experiences of
change in American culture after the turn of the century and the Great War.
They perceived a degeneration of the society and as a result felt that the
world they knew was changing. Their concerns about an increase in low quality
immigrants – as they perceived them – triggered their interest in race mixtures
and trying to preserve the status quo.
Grant and Stoddard, as wealthy, educated men of their time with a strong
belief in science, used scientific argumentation to support non-scientific claims
regarding hierarchies of human races as determinate of historical developments.
It is significant how much influence amateur scientists like Grant and Stoddard
could gain in politics and the scientific community. They were even able to influ-
ence legislation, for instance, the development of the Johnson Act in 1924. The
Nordic race and being Nordic became a main identity marker for these men.
They used it to proclaim their superior position in society and ensure the pres-
ervation of their power in the United States.
Nordisk Ras in Sweden Racial Theory

Enthusiasts for the Nordic race and racial scientists spanned across the Western
world, creating an informal network.⁵⁰ In the early twentieth century, the Nordic
race concept was popular in most Western countries. It was frequently used to
define hierarchies of people, especially to make distinctions between native in-
habitants of a nation and immigrants. The discourse, however, was not the same
on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, as we have seen in the previ-
ous section, the focus was to protect the nation from immigrants arriving from
Europe, in particular Southern Europe, and changing the societal and racial
map of the United States. In Europe the discussion was different. The decline
of the population quality and the fear of racial degeneration constituted the
core of the discourse, but in Sweden, it was not immigration but emigration
 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy, 169, 198.
 Maria Björkman and Sven Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics: The Case of Sweden,” Notes and Re-
cords of the Royal Society 64, no. 4 (20 December 2010): 379 – 400, https://doi.org/10.1098/
rsnr.2010.0009.
70 Merle Weßel
that was the main concern.⁵¹ In the interwar period in Sweden, racial biologists
raised concerns that people of a so-called “high-quality” racial make-up would
emigrate, and that so-called “degenerate” people would stay behind.⁵²
Racial research in Sweden was less directed toward external influence and
instead was concerned with the internal race structure of the Swedish nation.
The Swedish racial biologist and leader of the state institute for racial biology
Herman Lundborg published several books analysing the racial characters of
the Swedish nation.⁵³ In his more general publications on a theory of race,
such as Rasfrågor i modern belysning (1919) and Rasbiologi och rashygien: Nutida
kultur- och rasfrågor i etisk belysning (1922), his focus was primarily on Northern
Europe and he did not take the global approach as Grant and Stoddard did.⁵⁴
However, like his US colleagues, Lundborg argued that nations consist of race
mixtures. For example, the German nation had traces of the nordisk ras but
also others. The nordisk ras, according to Lundborg, could be found in most
races, but in a lower quantity.⁵⁵ Lundborg also highlighted the difference be-
tween the terms race and folk, which had an influence on the use of the word
Nordic in his work. He argued that a folk was a group of people joined by culture
and race constituted a group of people with shared physical and mental charac-
teristics that were inherited.⁵⁶ For example, the German folk included the Nordic
race as well as other races and the Nordic race could also be found among
Roman or Slavic folk. ⁵⁷ He argued that every folk was actually a mixture of
races and never exclusively consisted of one race, but the quantity of nordisk
traces in a folk defined its quality.⁵⁸ The term nordisk did not itself have a racist
connotation in Lundborg’s racial theory; it was a descriptive term, which did not
say much about the quality of the race or create strict hierarchies between races,
as in US or German racial research. He was much vaguer in his publications,
 Hofsten, Nils von, Ärftlighetslära (Uppsala: P.A. Norstedt & Söner, 1919); Herman Lundborg,
Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1919); Broberg, “Scandinavia: An Intro-
duction.”
 Hofsten, Nils von, Ärftlighetslära, 490; Lundborg, Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning, 126; Broberg,
“Scandinavia: An Introduction,” 3 – 4.
 Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Tydén, Från politik till praktik; Maja Hagerman, Käraste
Herman: Rasbiologen Herman Lundborgs gåta (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2015).
 Herman Lundborg, Rasbiologi Och Rashygien: Nutida Kultur-Och Rasfrågor i Etisk Belysning
(Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1922); Lundborg, Rasfrågor i Modern Belysning.
 Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.
 Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.
 Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.
 Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 119.
though more precise about his racist ideas in private.⁵⁹ Since he published his
research in German, Swedish, and English, it cannot be clearly stated how the
term nordisk might differ from Nordic and nordisch in regard to his American
and German colleagues. However, it can be stated that Lundborg used nordisk
not as a cultural or political term, like Grant did, but as a biological one.
In the context of neo-Malthusian ideas of genetic heritage, Lundborg argued
that although the environment influenced physical development – such as body
size – not all differences in physical appearances could be related to the environ-
ment, as many were attributable to racial differences.⁶⁰ In many ways Lundborg
shared Grant’s ideas on the influence of the environment on the racial constitu-
tion but he indicated a certain conceptual uncertainty about how the environ-
ment exactly influenced the development of genes. This may have been due to
his scientific education as a biologist, which gave him a deeper understanding
of genetics. Since Lundborg was a biologist focusing on Sweden, his research
on the nordisk ras was strongly influenced by his academic background and
by his own studies of the races in Sweden that he mapped extensively in the
early twentieth century. Direct contact between Grant and Lundborg has not
been found. Lundborg’s main contacts in the United States were with more es-
tablished and professional racial scientists, such as Charles Davenport, the lead-
er of the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Record Office, and not with amateur sci-
entists like Grant.
Though Lundborg did not have a direct connection with Grant, he had very
direct connections with Grant’s German colleagues Lenz, Baur, and Fischer as
well as racial theorist Hans F.K. Günther who played a leading role in National
Socialist racial theory.⁶¹ Günther lived in Sweden in the 1920s and lectured at
Lundborg’s institute.⁶² The Swedish Racial Biology Institute was modelled
after the German Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.⁶³ Lundborg is described as a radical
conservatist who helped introduce German racial theory to Sweden.⁶⁴ Although
his research was influenced by the idea in radical German racial theory that the
Nordic race sits at the top of a racial hierarchy, it was also influenced by theories
from scholars in the Nordic region. In that sense, nordisk had a double meaning
in race science in Sweden. It constituted the research subject but also the context
in which the research took place. Nordic scholars cooperated in their efforts in
 Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”

 Lundborg, Rassenkunde des schwedischen Volkes, 1.
 Björkman, Den anfrätta stammen; Hagerman, Käraste Herman.
 Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”
 Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”
 Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”
72 Merle Weßel
racial research and shared their ideas in meetings and conferences within a
closed network.⁶⁵
Grant and Stoddard’s Connections to Germany

Grant did have extensive and direct contacts to German racial theorists, especial-
ly to Eugen Fischer, the German medical doctor, anthropologist, and racial hy-
gienist, who studied race mixtures in the German colonies in Africa. In 1937,
Fischer wrote the foreword to the German translation of Conquest of the Conti-
nent. ⁶⁶ The arguments of Fischer, Baur, and Lenz harmonised with those of
Grant. They praised the physical, mental, and social superiority of the nordische
Rasse, which according to them made representatives of the nordische Rasse
leaders of civilisation and the world. Fischer, Baur, and Lenz were not as concep-
tually clear with their terms as Grant and Stoddard but used both germanisch
and nordisch. Lenz argued that “die Germanenreiche, welche aus der sogenannt-
en Völkerwanderung hervorgingen, wurden gegründet von Stämmen nordischer
Rasse. Das deutsche Kaiserreich des Mittelalters ruhte ganz und gar auf den
Schultern von Germanen.”⁶⁷ The interchangeable use of germanisch and nordisch
could be because Germany was not part of the core area of the Nordic race,
which was mostly located in Sweden. However, the German racial scientists
wanted to ensure that Germans could be considered Nordic, so they expanded
the historical core area of the Nordic race to the Germanic Reich of the Middle
Ages and claimed germanisch as a prehistoric term for nordisch. Similarly to
Grant and Stoddard, Lenz surveyed European history proclaiming any major his-
torical event, such as the Reformation or the Renaissance, to be an achievement
made through the contribution of the members of the nordische Rasse. ⁶⁸ He also
agreed with Grant and Stoddard that Aryan was not a term to describe the nor-
dische Rasse but had to be considered a linguistic term. He concluded that it was
not an exaggeration to state that the countries of north-western Europe had the
most developed civilisation due to the high concentration of the nordische Rasse,
since the nordische Rasse was the most intelligent race.⁶⁹
 Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”

 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 359.
 Fritz Lenz, “Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen,” in Menschliche Erblichkeit-
slehre Und Rassenhygiene, ed. Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz (Munich: J.F. Lehmann,
1931), 541.
 Lenz, “Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen,” 542.
 Lenz, “Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen,” 542.
In Germany, Grant’s second important contact was the philologist and racial
theorist Hans F.K. Günther, who was a Nordic enthusiast and a member of the
Nordische Bewegung. This was a network of German race and ‘folkish’ (völki-
sche)⁷⁰ enthusiasts that included several general organisations such as Nordisch-
er Ring and völkische youth organizations such as Jungnordischer Bund or Arta-
manen.⁷¹ Later, Günther was the leading Nordic expert of the National Socialists
and a close friend of Adolf Hitler. He cited Grant frequently in his publications.⁷²
Herman Lundborg was also in touch with Günther, who visited Uppsala and
Lundborg’s racial institute in 1923.⁷³
Grant’s ideas were met with great enthusiasm in Germany from the time of
the Weimar Republic onwards. The Passing of the Great Race was translated by
the Austrian professor Rudolf Pollard with the title Der Untergang der großen
Rasse (1929), who concluded that the book should be a warning to the German
people. Stoddard, too, did not shy away from being in contact with the German
National Socialists and even visited Germany in 1940.⁷⁴
Germany was a meeting point for racial scientists. In the Weimar Republic
and especially later under the National Socialists, Germany became central for
people interested in the Nordic race and concerned with its condition. The over-
lap between the ideas of Grant and Stoddard and those of their colleagues in
Northern Europe was significant. It might not be too far-fetched even to suggest
a global interest in the Nordic race with certain differences occurring between
networks of scholars. The intellectual intersections between Grant and Stoddard
and their German colleagues were, however, far more direct. Fischer, Lenz, and
Baur made, in many ways, the same claims as Grant and Stoddard about Nordic
intellectual superiority. It can be assumed they were more influenced by Grant
and Stoddard than the other way around, because Grant’s books were published
in Germany in the 1920s. Nevertheless, Fischer, Lenz, and Baur were not as con-
ceptually clear as Grant and Stoddard. They used nordisch and germanisch as in-
terchangeable terms, on the basis that Germanen had originated in the nordische
 Völkisch, was often used by racial theorists and within racist movements, especially National
Socialism, to define their own racial superiority.
 Karcher, ‘Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung’; Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke
in Deutschland 1920 – 1940, 55.
 Spiro, Defending the Master Race, 359.
 Hagerman, Käraste Herman; Gunnar Broberg and Mattias Tydén, “Eugenics in Sweden: Effi-
cient Care,” in Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005), 90.
 Burgers, “Max Nordau, Madison Grant, and Racialized Theories of Ideology,” 139 – 140.
74 Merle Weßel
Rasse. ⁷⁵ For them, the term Germanen referred to a population that was part of
the nordische Rasse in the Middle Ages. They all agreed however that Aryan
was only a linguistic term and that the Aryan race had died out a very long
time ago. Conversely, Stoddard and Grant especially, argued that Nordic was
the correct term rather than the obsolete term Germanic.
Transnational Movement of Nordic Enthusiasts?

Following on from the previous section, a question arises whether rising interest
in the Nordic race as a key feature to conceptualising civilisation and superiority
in the United States and Northern Europe can be considered a transnational
movement. Before this question is answered two points need to be discussed:
firstly, why the term “Nordic” [nordisch/nordisk] became so popular in scientific
discourse; and secondly, how it could later enter social and political discourse
and influence legislation like the Johnson Act in the United States or the German
race laws in 1933.
In the context of the United States, Matthew Guterl argues that a Nordic
movement was used after the Great War to try to solve many political problems.⁷⁶
He argues that a Nordic vogue swept over American popular culture in the 1920s,
particularly in New York.⁷⁷ Leading authors of the time like Ernest Hemingway,
Sinclair Lewis, and, as already cited, F. Scott Fitzgerald, showed interest in Nor-
dic subjects and referred to them in their work.⁷⁸ The Nordic vogue also strongly
influenced the political sphere. Visual differences between so-called races be-
came more important than before. Whereas in the nineteenth century Irish immi-
grants were unwanted, now they were able to climb the race ladder due to their
Whiteness, while immigrants with darker skin from Southern Europe and Black
Americans, with their rising liberation movement, became targets of racism.⁷⁹
Whiteness, together with Nordicness, became a leading force within politics
 Baur, Fischer, and Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene, 541.

 Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 41. I do not think the Nordic trend was limited to the US context. It
can also be seen in the Nordic countries with their renewed interest in their region that led to
meetings between Nordic scientists and eventually resulted in political and cultural institutions
like the Nordic Council. See Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”
 Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940, 42.
 Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940, 42.
 Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940, 75, 140.
and the two were strongly interconnected. The framing of the Nordic race and
Nordic supremacy led to a redefinition of Whiteness.
Although the general interest in the Nordic race and Nordicness was rooted
in the ideas of Grantian eugenics, in the interwar period, according to Guterl, it
turned into racial fear.⁸⁰ This was then connected to ideas regarding the social
worth of individuals, with attendant cultural, social, and political implications.
Being Nordic meant being White and Whiteness became an integral part of
American popular culture. Class formation and race consciousness worked
hand in hand.⁸¹ This connotation was rooted particularly in the Anglo-American
scientific race discourse and from there entered the social debates of the early
twentieth century – previously, only immigrants from Germany and England
were considered to be White in the United States.⁸² People with fairer skin
began to be perceived as valuable members of American society, because – ac-
cording to scientific and political theories of the time – their skin colour guaran-
teed that they possessed the characteristics of the Nordic race, such as intelli-
gence, bravery, and morality.⁸³ Whiteness and Nordicness were brought
together as concepts by racial theorists and biologists to describe the most desir-
able people of the American nation. Before this connection was made, people
from Nordic countries were not labelled as White.⁸⁴
In Germany, a similar strong turn – what could be called a movement – to
Nordicness can be observed. In the early twentieth century, several clubs and
committees were founded in Germany, for the purpose of advancing the Nordic
idea, for example Nordischer Ring/ Deutscher Widerbund, Bogenclub or the
Deutscher Bund für Volksaufartung und Erbkunde. These clubs were non-profes-
sional and non-scientific but interacted with the community of racial theorists,
some of whom, such as Fritz Lenz or Eugen Fischer, were even members.⁸⁵
The greatest difference between the German and the US Nordic movements
was, however, their respective eras. The prime era of Nordicness in the United
States was in the 1920s, peaking in 1924 with the Johnson Immigration Act.
After 1930, interest in the Nordic race and Nordic superiority decreased again.
This did not mean that racial segregation was no longer a salient issue, but
the focus on Nordicness in the discourse declined and Whiteness became a
 Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940, 41.

 Guterl, The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940, 41.
 Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, “Nordic Whiteness,” 151– 52.
 Grant, The Conquest of the Continent, 165.
 Catrin Lundström and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, “Nordic Whiteness,” 151.
 Merle Weßel, An Unholy Union? Eugenic Feminism in the Nordic Countries, ca. 1890 – 1940
(Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2018), 34; Karcher, “Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung,” 11– 21.
76 Merle Weßel
more crucial category. Furthermore, Grant and Stoddard’s prominence decreased

dramatically in the 1930s. Grant started to focus more on his work on animals,
and for the New York Zoo, before his death in 1937.⁸⁶ Stoddard’s presence in
New York society also declined at the same time. This might be related to the
rise of fascism in Europe and their claim to the Nordic concept, which was not
compatible with US democracy. However, as the Nordic movement ended in
the United States it was only beginning in Germany. With the rise to power of
the National Socialists in 1933, Germany’s government and political elite were
heavily invested in the concept of the superiority of the nordische Rasse. In
1933, the Nordic club Nordische Gesellschaft was put under National Socialist
leadership. In this way, it was transformed from an independent and open
club to an instrument of the right-wing party. The club had a double task: to
lead the propaganda on the nordische Idee in Germany and to establish and nur-
ture close relationships to other Nordic groups.⁸⁷
The leading Nordic enthusiasts of the 1920s became central figures in Na-
tional Socialist politics. From 1927 until 1942, Eugen Fischer was the leader of
the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschlichen Erblehre und Euge-
nik, which was the state institute for eugenics and racial theory during the Wei-
mar Republic and later.⁸⁸ As rector of the university in Berlin between 1933 and
1934, he facilitated the dismissal of many of the Jewish staff members, though he
only became a member of the National Socialist Party in 1940. From 1933 on-
wards, his colleague Fritz Lenz led the eugenics department of the Kaiser-Wil-
helm-Institute. Fischer was an expert adviser for the development of the Gesetz
für die Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses (1933), and he became a member of
the NSDAP in 1937.
In Sweden, the connections between the Nordic idea and racial politics were
not as clear. Herman Lundborg retired as leader of the institute for racial biology
in 1935. The physician and racial biologist Gunnar Dahlberg became the next
leader. In 1934, Sweden implemented legislation that allowed the voluntary ster-
ilization of so-called unfavourable individuals.⁸⁹ Though at first glance the ster-
ilization law in Sweden might have shown similarities with the German laws of
1933 and 1935, the Swedish law did not have an explicit racial background.⁹⁰ It
 Alexander, “Prophet of American Racism,” 90.

 Lutzhöft, Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920 – 1940, 62.
 Paul Weindling, “Weimar Eugenics: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human
Heredity and Eugenics in Social Context,” Annals of Science 42, no. 3 (1 May 1985): 303 – 318,
doi:10.1080/00033798500200221.
 Tydén, Från politik till praktik.
 Tydén, Från politik till praktik.
was not based on notions of race as such, especially not on a conceptualization

of Nordic supremacy, but it was structurally infused with class, gender and racial
bias as part of the population question in the establishment of the welfare
state.⁹¹ However, racial repercussions cannot be denied, for example in context
of the Sámi people or Travellers.⁹²
Enthusiasm for the Nordic race did not take off in its core country in the
same way it did in Germany and the United States. The reasons for this were
manifold. From the 1930s onwards, Sweden had a rather stable social democrat-
ic government, which steadily modernised the country. The standard of living of
the Swedish people increased, and welfare was distributed more equally. Swe-
den did not see the same political and social issues that were rising in Germany
and the United States. Furthermore, the Social Democrats began using the term
Nordic, resulting in the term being associated with the liberal left. Its political
meaning changed with increased usage of terms such as “Nordic democracy”
and the “Nordic welfare state.”⁹³ In this way it was not exclusively discussed
in racial terms anymore, which made it difficult for right-wing groups and fas-
cists to take over the term, as happened in Germany, for example.
To sum up, Nordicness and Nordic enthusiasm spread in several countries in
the 1920s and 1930s, but the results were very different and very much influ-
enced by the political and social environment. In countries like Germany, that
had a right-wing government, it would gain social and political ground in the
1930s. More moderate countries like Sweden did not experience a political move-
ment of Nordicness but rather a vital interest. Enthusiasm for Nordicness in the
United States was short but intense and far-reaching because the idea was able
to gain ground in politics and influence law-making. Despite the Nordic enthu-
siasts sharing their ideas across borders, it might be an overstatement to suggest
it was a transnational movement. In the context of the term “Nordic race,” how-
ever, one can trace the emergence of a trend towards degeneration, extremism,
and racism that originated in the United States and then spread to Europe.
Conclusion
As prominent and important as they were during their lifetimes, it is remarkable
how the legacies of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, in racial science as
 Weßel, An Unholy Union?

 Broberg and Tydén, “Eugenics in Sweden: Efficient Care,” 130 – 33.
 Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy (Helsinki: Finnish Litera-
ture Society, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
78 Merle Weßel
well as politics, are forgotten today. Both developed ideas about scientific rac-
ism, hierarchies of races, and especially, the supremacy of the Nordic race.
These ideas were transformed from scientific constructs to political instruments.
Grant and Stoddard contributed significantly to the development of the concept
of a Nordic race and its global distribution in the early twentieth century. Neither
man was a scientist himself, but both were influential society people who built a
bridge between science and society. They popularised the idea that the appear-
ance of people as well as their mental characteristics were based on their race.
Most of the ideas Grant and Stoddard proclaimed were not new as such, but
Grant especially shaped the term “Nordic race.” This term was later used and de-
veloped within the global trend towards Whiteness and racial segregation. The
invisibility of Grant and Stoddard’s Nordic race discourse in the United States
can mostly be explained by the irrevocably changed political sphere following
the events of the Second World War. The discourse never gained large-scale po-
litical ground after the Second World War, however it prevails among far-right
and fascist movements who romanticise the Third Reich and continue to discuss
the Nordic race in the context of White supremacy.
As I have shown, ideas about the superiority of the Nordic race were dis-
cussed in several Western countries and across nations.⁹⁴ In the end, it is diffi-
cult to estimate who influenced whom because many publications were written
and published at the same time. They contain the same ideas and descriptions
regarding racial hierarchies and the composition of individual races. However,
two conclusions can be made. Firstly, that “Nordic” [nordisch/nordisk] was a
key term of early twentieth century racial theory and science. Secondly, its
spread did not originate in the Nordic countries, but was first made popular
in the United States and then spread to Europe.
None of the race theorists seemed to doubt that the Nordic race was the most
superior race of all and the guarantee for civilisation and progress. Usually, they
counted themselves as members of this race and their negative view of the future
of the Nordic race might be linked to an expectation of a grim future of their own
position in society. The modernisation of societies, and the rise of new democrat-
ic ideals as well as communism and fascism in the 1920s and 1930s, challenged
the world as they knew it. Grant considered democracy to be an instrument of
the weak and did not agree that everyone should have the same voice in society.
For Grant, democracy was the end of civilisation.⁹⁵
 Björkman and Widmalm, “Selling Eugenics.”

 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History, xx, 5 – 8,
227– 30.
The passing of greatness also seemed to be at the core of racial theory in the
other countries discussed here. Germany feared the disintegration of its nation
after their loss in the First World War. The focus on the nordische Rasse was
one of the methods of the racial scientists of the Weimar Republic and got picked
up in the 1930s by the National Socialists. Racial hierarchy became the method
to prove the greatness of the German nation and bring it back to the centre of the
world stage. This resulted in the long-term bastardisation of the term nordisch in
Germany. The connotations of racial supremacy and National Socialism created a
problematic connection that put nordisch forever in the corner of right-wing pol-
itics and fascism. When talking about the Nordic countries, Scandinavia is the
term most used in Germany today. The term Nordische Länder is basically un-
known and rarely used. Nordisch has been replaced with skandinavisch and
has connotations connected to the Nordic welfare state and Nordic lifestyle.
Racial scientists argued that Sweden likewise saw the passing of greatness,
as parts of its population vanished through emigration. As small country at the
periphery, Sweden always had to fight for its significance in the world. To be at
the core of the Nordic discourse and be identified as the core area settled by the
Nordic race gave it significance. Additionally, the notion of Sweden as a country
in between the political extremes of the time might have proven the point for ra-
cial theorists about the great virtue of the members of the Nordic race. However,
as discussed, Nordic enthusiasts did not gain support in Sweden in the same
way they did in Germany and the United States. Yet that does not mean that
in Sweden the term nordisk remains free of racist connotations. On the one
hand, nordisk was used as political term to describe institutions of the region
like the Nordic Council, Nordic cultural institutions like Nordiska museet, or po-
litical concepts such as the Nordic welfare state. On the other hand, there is
today an ongoing battle with right-wing and fascist organizations, such as Nor-
diska motståndsrörelsen, who try to reclaim the term nordisk for racist and White
supremacist ideas.
To conclude, the concept of a Nordic race was an international concept
based on a glorification of the past and the fear of the future. It was founded
on the idea that people identify themselves according to physical appearance
and skin colour and that human races can be divided into race hierarchies.
The ideas about the Nordic race combined science and politics and brought ra-
cial ideas to the forefront of Western societies. Its significance was strongly shap-
ed by national and political circumstances that defined the grounds on which
ideas of Nordic supremacy could grow and on which today’s extremist move-
ments for White supremacy, like the Nordic resistance movement, still rest.
Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor
From the “Middle Way” to The Nordic Way:
Changing Rhetorics of the Nordic Model in
Britain¹
Introduction
The Economist’s special report on “Why the world should look at the Nordic
countries,” published in February 2013 with a Viking on the front cover, is just
one well-known example of references to the Nordic model since 2010.² Indeed,
the “Nordic model” is possibly one of the most widely recognized examples of
the rhetorical use of the adjective “Nordic.” At the same time, it is also a highly
contested concept, within the region and outside it. There is a well-established
field of research on images of the Nordic region and their circulation. Scholars
acknowledge that foreign images or xenostereotypes of Nordic practices and pol-
icies have been shaped in reflexive interaction with self-images or auto-
stereotypes produced in the Nordic countries themselves.³ Moreover, positive
stereotypes of the region have frequently been counter-balanced by more nega-
tive ones. The Nordic countries have been described as dystopian warnings
against the perils of high taxation and an all-powerful state, sometimes carica-
tured with references to high levels of drunkenness and suicide.⁴
Although it is possible to trace some continuity in the ways in which the Nor-
dic model has been referred to over time, its meaning has generally been unsta-
ble, both internally and externally. International interest in the Nordic region has
 Mary Hilson’s research is part of the project “Nordic Model(s) in the global circulation of
ideas, 1970 – 2020,” supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark (grant number
8018 – 00023B). We would like to thank the other members of the project team Andreas Mørkved
Hellenes, Carl Marklund and Byron Rom-Jensen for valuable comments on an earlier draft of the
chapter.
 Adrian Wooldridge, “The next supermodel: Why the world should look at the Nordic coun-
tries,” The Economist, February 2, 2013, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/02/02/the-
next-supermodel.
 Kazimierz Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modern-
isation (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2002).
 For example Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians (London: Allen Lane, 1971); see also
Frederick Hale, “Brave New World in Sweden? Roland Huntford’s The New Totalitarians,” Scan-
dinavian Studies 78, no. 2 (2006).
OpenAccess. © 2022 Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor, published by De Gruyter. This work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-005
82 Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor
intensified during particular historical periods. One such moment was the 1930s,
when the region was famously celebrated as a “middle way” between the ex-
tremes of authoritarianism and democracy, capitalism and communism.⁵ Accord-
ing to historian Bo Stråth, the earliest references to the “Nordic model” as such
date from the 1960s, when the term was used by political scientists referring to
Nordic co-operation within the United Nations.⁶ As Stråth puts it, the widespread
use of the term “Nordic model” from the 1990s should be seen in the context of
“the search for new identities, communities and interpretative frames… in order
to rescue something perceived to be under threat.”⁷
Studies of different aspects of the Nordic model have proliferated during the
2000s and 2010s, though there have been, as far as we know, few attempts to
explore the history of the term and its rhetorical uses, beginning with its emer-
gence in the 1960s and charting its fluctuating meanings through subsequent
years.⁸ This chapter has two parts. In the first part, we explore how the term
“Nordic model” was used by scholars in comparative analyses of the historical
development of the Nordic countries during the post-war period, paying atten-
tion to the idea of a Nordic political model and the Nordic model of the welfare
state. The focus is on English-language scholarship, especially that produced
within the UK.
The distinction between the Nordic model as analytical category and as a
normative policy model for emulation elsewhere has never been watertight, how-
ever. In the second part of the chapter, we consider how the Nordic model con-
cept has been applied to politics and policy programmes, taking recent political
debates in the UK as a case study. Despite fundamental similarities in European
 The most famous example of this is Marquis Childs, Sweden – the Middle Way (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1936). See Carl Marklund, “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the
Swedish Model: Three Frames for the Image of Sweden,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34,
no. 3 (2009); Peter Stadius, “Happy Countries: Appraisals of Interwar Nordic Societies,” in Com-
municating the North, ed. Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
 Bo Stråth, “Den nordiska modellen. Historisk bakgrund och hur talet om en nordisk modell
uppstod,” Nordisk Tidskrift (1993); see also Musiał, Roots of the Scandinavian Model, 32.
 Stråth, “Den nordiska modellen,” 55.
 See however Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, “Always in Crisis, Always a Solu-
tion? The Nordic Model as a Political and Scholarly Concept,” in The Nordic Economic, Social
and Political Model: Challenges in the 21st Century, ed. Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Hol-
mén, 1– 19 (New York: Routledge, 2021) doi:10.4324/9780429026690 – 1; Byrkjeflot, Haldor, Lars
Mjøset, Mads Mordhorst and Klaus Petersen, eds. The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models,
Ideals and Images (London: Routledge, 2021) doi:10.4324/9781003156925. Work in progress by
Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, Mary Hilson, Carl Marklund, and Byron Rom-Jensen as part of the
IFRD-funded project “Nordic model(s) in the global circulation of ideas, 1970 – 2020” also tracks
the changing meanings of the Nordic model.
From the “Middle Way” to The Nordic Way 83
approaches to politics and governance, there is nonetheless a pronounced ten-

dency to make the central contradictions of foreign political projects and the an-
tagonisms of other societies intelligible through a process of domestication. In
this process, these contradictions and antagonisms are played out through the
familiar contradictions of domestic politics and the antagonisms and social con-
flicts of the “watching” society, rather than the “watched.” In this chapter, the
“watching” domesticating society will generally be the UK and the “watched”
societies Nordic. The adoption of political ideologies in the Nordic countries
and the UK, which were justified in terms of a particular “Nordic” way (or
“model”) of doing politics, were heavily dependent on the academic studies dis-
cussed in the first part of the chapter.
We argue in this section that the adoption of Third Way political logic and
strategy by social democrats in Europe created a rhetoric which was easily imi-
table by liberal and conservative parties in the UK and the Nordic countries, and
which was also used to re-articulate the meaning of the “Nordic” in Norden and
abroad. This manifested itself concretely in two areas: the broad idea of the “rad-
ical centre,”⁹ – an approach to politics characterised by the rejection of tradition-
al economic divisions between left and right¹⁰ – and the related attempt to po-
sition existing social democratic, and later liberal conservative politics,
especially those of the Nordic countries, within the parameters of this “radical
centre.” This case study will suggest answers to two questions: Why and how
were “radical centrist” political strategies adopted in the UK and Sweden from
the late 1990s until the 2010s? And how did this process alter the rhetoric of
the “Nordic model”?
The terms “Scandinavian model” and “Nordic model” are treated as syno-
nyms here, though it is our impression that the term “Nordic model” has become
more prominent since 2010, at least in English-speaking contexts. Use of the Nor-
dic or Scandinavian model also has to be understood in relation to references to
national models, especially the Swedish model. This term was established earlier
and until the 1990s at least often stood as a proxy for the region as a whole,
though never exclusively.¹¹
 Jenny Andersson, The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy in the Knowledge Age
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).
 Chantal Mouffe, “The Radical Centre: A Politics without Adversary”, Soundings no. 9 (Summ-
er 1998), 11– 23.
 Carl Marklund has traced an early usage of the term “Swedish model,” in an American
source from 1941, where it referred to collective bargaining arrangements. See Marklund, “The
Social Laboratory,” 272; Andreas Mørkved Hellenes, “Tracing the Nordic Model: French Crea-
The Nordic model before the 1990s

In his textbook Scandinavian Politics Today, first published in 1999, political sci-
entist David Arter identified two ideal-type Nordic models. The Nordic model of
government referred to “the political institutions, structures and policy measures
in [the Nordic] countries;” while the Nordic welfare model was “in large part the
legislative product of the former.”¹² Distinctive features of the Nordic political
model included: the strength and dominance of social democratic parties within
stable multi-party systems; a consensual approach to policy making involving
formal consultation of corporatist interests; centralised collective bargaining;
strong state regulation and the importance of personal relations among elites
in relatively small states.¹³ Arter’s list of features was similar to those found in
other formal definitions of the Nordic model, for example in the Danish encyclo-
paedia Den Store Danske, which referred to the universal welfare state, tax-fi-
nanced and state-run; the influence of social democratic parties within a consen-
sual political culture; and women’s high levels of economic activity.¹⁴
In defining a Nordic political model Arter was drawing on the established
literature in political science that treated the small Nordic countries as a natural
unit for comparative analysis. Such comparisons could emphasise similarities –
between the Nordic region and other countries or regions – but also internal dif-
ferences within the region.¹⁵ In an earlier study from 1982, Arter and his three co-
tions, Swedish Appropriations and Nordic Articulations,” in Making and Circulation of the Nordic
Model, ed. Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. (London: Routledge, 2021), 83 – 101.
 David Arter, Scandinavian Politics Today (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999),
147.
 Arter, Scandinavian Politics Today, 147– 49.
 Allan Karker, “Den nordiske model,” Den Store Danske, lex.dk, Accessed 27 May 2021, https://
denstoredanske.lex.dk/den_nordiske_model. See also Knut Heidar, “Comparative Perspectives
on the Northern Countries,” in Nordic Politics: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Knut Heidar,
(Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2004); Nicholas Aylott, “A Nordic Model of Democracy? Political Rep-
resentation in Northern Europe,” in Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe: Political
Institutions and Discourse, ed. Nicholas Aylott (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014); Mary Hilson, The Nor-
dic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (London: Reaktion, 2008). On Nordic gender equality, see Pirjo
Markkola’s chapter in this volume.
 Examples include: Dankwart A Rustow, “Scandinavia: Working Multi-Party Systems,” in
Modern Political Parties: Approaches to Comparative Politics, ed. Sigmund Neumann (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1956); Nils Andrén, Government and Politics in the Nordic Countries.
Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964); Peter Es-
saiasson and Knut Heidar, eds., Beyond Westminster and Congress: The Nordic Experience (Co-
lumbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000).
authors – all academics from British universities – had asked whether the Scan-
dinavian (Nordic) states could be regarded as “a separate species of the West Eu-
ropean genus of parliamentary democracies.” If they were, could they be classi-
fied as “consensual” democracies, in contrast to other more adversarial or
confrontational ways of doing politics?¹⁶ Drawing on Arendt Lijphart’s work on
consensual democracies, Elder, Thomas, and Arter defined the term in terms
of a) the broad acceptance of the political system and low levels of opposition
to its rules; b) low levels of political conflict; c) a process of public policy making
based on consensus and compromise.¹⁷ They found that politics in the Nordic
countries largely corresponded to the first two criteria, but in the context of
the early 1980s they noted that consensus seemed to be waning with the rise
of new political issues and parties. They also questioned the distinctiveness of
aspects of policy making in the Nordic context, such as the widespread use of
commissions of enquiry.¹⁸
As reviewer John Logue noted, the notion of consensual democracy func-
tioned here as an analytical “model,” against which the empirical realities of
the Nordic democracies could be studied. The book’s authors also used the
term “Nordic political model” to refer to the five-party system of Scandinavian
politics. Logue’s own textbook on Scandinavian politics, co-authored with fellow
US academic Eric Einhorn, appeared in 1989. Einhorn and Logue were interested
in analysing the “central policy areas of the Scandinavian model,” above all the
provision of social services as part of a mixed capitalist economy, or in other
words the welfare state. They also posed the question, “is there a Scandinavian
democratic model?” analysing the evolution of Scandinavian political institu-
tions and democratic culture in three stages: political democracy, social democ-
racy, and economic democracy. As the book’s subtitle suggested, a central thesis
was that the “key to the ‘Scandinavian model’” was the expansion of the public
sector under the stewardship of strong social democratic parties, although the
authors also insisted that it was a fallacy to regard the Scandinavian countries
as “socialistic.”¹⁹
 Neil Elder, Alastair H Thomas, and David Arter, The Consensual Democracies? The Govern-
ment and Politics of the Scandinavian States (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982), 8. See also
John Logue, review of The Consensual Democracies? by Neil Elder et al., Scandinavian Studies
55, no. 3 (Summer 1983).
 Elder, Thomas, and Arter, The Consensual Democracies? 9 – 11.
 Elder, Thomas, and Arter, The Consensual Democracies?
 Eric Einhorn and John Logue, Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social Democrat-
ic Scandinavia (New York: Praeger, 1989). “Scandinavia” in this book referred to Denmark, Nor-
way, and Sweden.
As with the Nordic political model, the notion of a Nordic welfare model
drew on an established tradition of analysing some or all of the Nordic countries
as a natural unit in comparative studies, even if such studies were not explicitly
theorised as an ideal-type “model.”²⁰ A particularly influential contribution was
Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), which was to
become the standard reference in the field for a generation.²¹ Drawing from a
comparison of eighteen welfare states, Esping-Andersen characterized the
three Scandinavian countries as a distinctive “social democratic regime,”
based on the extent to which these countries had decommodified social relations
or in other words the extent to which citizens were freed from dependence on the
market for their welfare. Through the comprehensive and universal provision of
social rights, the welfare state had contributed to forging social relations in Scan-
dinavia that were relatively egalitarian, in contrast to the more stratified systems
of the other two “worlds,” the liberal Anglo-Saxon countries or the corporatist
welfare states of central Europe. The unique feature of the “peculiarly ‘Scandina-
vian model,’” according to Esping-Andersen and Walter Korpi, was “the extent to
which social policy has become comprehensive and institutional.”²²
As an ideal type, the Nordic model therefore functioned as a heuristic cate-
gory for testing the empirical realities of Nordic politics and society, both within
the region and in broader comparisons with other units. Used in this way, the
term was certainly present in English-language scholarship during the 1980s, im-
plying comparative analyses structured around the question “is there a Nordic
model?” Often, the conclusion was that there was not. Writing in 2001, Niels
Finn Christensen and Klaus Petersen noted how the Nordic model had become
a standard concept in comparative welfare state research, but they coined the
phrase “one model – five exceptions” to sum up the historical differences be-
tween the five Nordic countries.²³A decade earlier, sociologist Lars Mjøset had
 For example: George R. Nelson, ed., Freedom and Welfare: Social Patterns in the Northern
Countries of Europe (Copenhagen: Ministries of Social Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Nor-
way, Sweden, 1953); Stein Ringen, “Welfare Studies in Scandinavia,” Scandinavian Political Stud-
ies 9 (1974).
 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1990). For an assessment of the significance of Esping-Andersen’s study in welfare research
see Patrick Emmenegger et al., “Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism: The Making of a Classic,”
Journal of European Social Policy 25, no. 1 (February 2015): 3 – 13, doi:10.1177/0958928714556966.
 Gøsta Esping-Andersen and Walter Korpi, “From Poor Relief to Institutional Welfare States:
The Development of Scandinavian Social Policy,” in The Scandinavian Model: Welfare States and
Welfare Research, ed. Robert Erikson et al. (Armonk: M E Sharpe, 1987), 42.
 Niels Finn Christiansen and Klaus Petersen, “Preface,” Scandinavian Journal of History 26,
no. 3 (2001); Mikko Kautto, “The Nordic Countries,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare
concluded that “comparative research has so far only demonstrated a number of

Nordic peculiarities… [which] do not, it seems, form a comprehensive and coher-
ent model with common mechanisms.”²⁴ On the other hand, Mjøset also con-
cluded that the Nordic model could form the basis for a renewal of regional iden-
tity at a time of considerable uncertainty for the region. This was an assessment
which has shown itself, in retrospect, to be a remarkably accurate prophecy.
Ideal types never exist in political vacuums, but are always, in J Magnus Ryner’s
words, “decisively shaped by pre-understandings and assumptions, that in turn
reflect particular social concerns and purposes.”²⁵ The history of the Nordic
model as an analytical category cannot be considered independently from
more normative understandings of the region, the shared characteristics of
which were exportable and worth emulating.
As Mjøset predicted, this use of the Nordic model was to become widespread
from the 1990s, but it was also present before then. In reviewing Elder, Thomas,
and Arter’s study of consensual democracy, John Logue noted how this was a
“timely theme, particularly in Thatcher’s Britain” of the early 1980s.²⁶ In 1990,
Stein Kuhnle observed that “[t]he so-called ‘Scandinavian model’ now appears
to attract attention from all political corners of the world, particularly from rep-
resentatives of the failed communist systems of Eastern Europe,” for whom Scan-
dinavian social democratic capitalism was more attractive than ‘Western capital-
ism.’²⁷ Another reviewer of Einhorn and Logue’s book argued that Scandinavia
“may well serve as a model” in changing times, “with a confused world seeking
answers to the riddle of economic and political well being.”²⁸ An early example
of a book that referred to “the Nordic model” in its title was an anthology edited
by two academics from Scottish universities, which appeared in 1980. Subtitled
Studies in public policy innovation, the book posed the direct question “What can
State, ed. Francis G. Castles et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). An outline of the char-
acteristics of the Nordic welfare model and a summary of the literature on this topic can be
found in Niels Finn Christiansen and Pirjo Markkola, “Introduction,” in The Nordic Model of Wel-
fare: A Historical Reappraisal, ed. Niels Finn Christiansen et al. (Copenhagen: Museum Tuscula-
num Press, 2006).
 Lars Mjøset, “The Nordic Model Never Existed, but Does It Have a Future?,” Scandinavian
Studies 64, no. 4 (1992): 663.
 J. Magnus Ryner, “The Nordic Model: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?,” New Political Economy
12, no. 1 (March 2007): 64, doi:10.1080/13563460601068644.
 Logue, review of The Consensual Democracies?
 Stein Kuhnle, review of Modern Welfare States, The Journal of Politics 52, no. 3 (1990), https://
doi.org/10.2307.
 Charles H Zwicker, review of Modern Welfare States, Presidential Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1
(1991), 197– 98.
we learn from Scandinavian society?” in its opening line. The policy models pre-
sented – on topics including the role of women, land ownership, the use of oil
revenues, and state support for the arts and media – were based on national ex-
amples from across the region.²⁹ The volume also included a chapter by Clive
Archer on “Nordic co-operation: a model for the British Isles,” which addressed
explicitly the possibility that the Nordic Council could function as a model for
relations between the nations of the British Isles, following a decade of conflict
in Northern Ireland and an upsurge of nationalism in Scotland and Wales.³⁰ Tom
Nairn’s book on the same theme The Break Up of Britain, first published in 1977,
had also asked rhetorically whether an independent Scotland could be “a can-
didate for membership of an enlarged Nordic Union?” but argued that it “does
not possess the homogeneity of the Scandinavian models.”³¹
The Nordic model since the 1990s

The term “Nordic/Scandinavian model” was used in English-language academic
scholarship during the 1980s. It functioned as an analytical concept for studying
the region with a comparative perspective, most notably in the disciplines of his-
tory, political science and welfare studies, and it was also used in the normative
sense to refer to elements of Scandinavian policies and politics that were seen as
attractive and potentially worthy of emulation, at least in the UK. In this context,
references to the Scandinavian or Nordic model were often understood – at least
implicitly – as synonyms for the Swedish model.³²
As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the early 1990s was an im-
portant watershed for the Nordic region. External shocks – the end of the Cold
War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and a new dynamic phase in European integra-
tion – combined with significant domestic changes to challenge ideas of Nordic
 Clive Archer and Stephen Maxwell, eds., The Nordic Model: Studies in Public Policy Innova-
tion (Farnborough: Gower, 1980).
 Clive Archer, “Nordic Co-operation: A Model for the British Isles,” in The Nordic Model: Stud-
ies in Public Policy Innovation, ed. Clive Archer and Stephen Maxwell (Farnborough: Gower,
1980).
 Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism, rev. ed. (1977; repr., London:
Verso), 182, 193. For a discussion of Nordic models in the context of Scottish devolution debates,
see Andrew G. Newby, “‘In Building a Nation Few Better Examples Can Be Found’: Norden and
the Scottish Parliament,” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (September 2009): 307– 329,
doi:10.1080/03468750903134749.
 An example of this is found in Archer and Maxwell, The Nordic Model, where the literature
cited referred exclusively to Sweden. See also Hellenes, “Tracing the Nordic Model.”
exceptionalism. Taking stock of these changed circumstances in 1992, interna-

tional relations scholar Ole Wæver was not optimistic about the long-term pros-
pects for “Nordicity,” suggesting that the Baltic Sea offered a more dynamic al-
ternative for building a regional identity.³³ For Wæver, “the crisis of the
Scandinavian or Swedish model” – “Scandinavian or Swedish model” here re-
fers to the social democratic welfare state – was triggered partly by deeper cul-
tural shifts, meaning that, “the Nordic or Swedish model has been hit by the
general questioning of modernity and enlightenment values.” The attractiveness
of the Nordic model was also undermined by the end of the ideological conflict
between capitalism and communism, which meant that for the former commu-
nist countries of Eastern Europe, the “German model of economy and society”
was likely to be more attractive.³⁴
Wæver’s use of the Nordic model in this context refers to the social demo-
cratic welfare state, of which the foremost representative was Sweden. The Social
Democratic Party lost the general election of 1991, and the new centre-right co-
alition government, led by the conservative Moderate Party, explicitly distanced
itself from the Nordic model in favour of an agenda of economic reform and Eu-
ropean integration. According to Hans Mouritzen, domestic debates focused
mainly on the Swedish model, while the accompanying rejection of the Nordic
model was largely a “silent revolution.”³⁵ Mouritzen himself, like Lars Mjøset, re-
mained more sanguine about the continued possibility for the Nordic countries
to build a specific regional identity around the Nordic model within an expand-
ing EU.³⁶
A decade later there was little evidence that the vision of a revitalized Nor-
den within the EU materialized, with signs instead that the Nordic governments
were becoming more reluctant to promote the idea of regional exceptionalism.³⁷
But at the same time, the use of the term Nordic model to refer to political or so-
cial developments in the region became ever more widely used. In the second
part of this chapter, we explore how the rhetorics of the Nordic model was ap-
 Ole Wæver, “Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War,” International Affairs 68,
no. 1 (January 1992): 77– 102, doi:10.2307/2620462.
 Wæver, “Nordic Nostalgia,” 86. In this article Wæver used the terms “Scandinavian model”
and “Nordic model” as synonyms.
 Hans Mouritzen, “The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall,” Jour-
nal of Peace Research 32, no. 1 (February 1995): 14, doi:10.1177/0022343395032001002.
 Mjøset, “The Nordic Model Never Existed;” Mouritzen, “The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy
Instrument.”
 Christopher S. Browning, “Branding Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of Excep-
tionalism,” Cooperation and Conflict 42, no. 1 (March 2007): 27– 51, doi:10.1177/
0010836707073475.
plied to politics and policy programmes during the 1990s and after, taking recent
debates in the UK as a case study.
Britain’s “radical centre” and its relationship to

the Nordic model
The Third Way
The late 1990s saw a period of resurgence of social democracy in Europe and the
creation of a detailed formal framework, typically glossed as the “Third Way.”
The process of transmission and circulation of Third Way ideas is resistant to
any simple chronological narrative, and the Third Way should not be considered
a homogenous force across Europe, even though some of its implications were
homogenising.³⁸ Here, the focus will be the development of a new social demo-
cratic logic by sociologist Anthony Giddens and its propagation by Tony Blair in
the United Kingdom, following the latter’s election as leader of the Labour Party
in 1994 and the election of the “New Labour” government in 1997.³⁹ Some of New
Labour’s ideas were adopted in Europe, including the idea of “radical centrism,”
which we will return to later in this section.
Third Way thinkers presented their ideas as novel, positioning them ideolog-
ically between social democracy and neoliberalism rather than capitalism and
communism as previous social science and political models had done. However,
Anthony Giddens, the chief intellectual force behind the Third Way, fits comfort-
ably into a tradition of gradualist political interest in the Nordic countries
stretching back to the 1930s. Early socialist reformers were concerned as much
with co-operatives and agricultural reform as the democratic institutions and
welfare systems which would come to characterise later incarnations of the Nor-
dic model.⁴⁰
 John Callaghan, “Old Social Democracy, New Social Movements and Social Democratic Pro-
grammatic Renewal, 1968 – 2000,’ in Transitions in Social Democracy: Cultural and Ideological
Problems of the Golden Age, ed. John Callaghan and Ilaria Favretto (Manchester: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, 2006), 177– 93; Andersson, The Library and the Workshop.
 Anthony Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 43; Tony Blair,
“Leader’s Speech,” Blackpool, 1996, British Political Speech, http://www.britishpoliticalspee-
ch.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202.
 Kazimierz Musial, Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modern-
isation (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2000); Mary Hilson, “Consumer Co-operation and Eco-
nomic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the
In British political terms, Giddens should be seen as the intellectual heir to a

revisionist tradition most associated with Tony Crosland, a Labour MP and min-
ister, whose 1956 book The Future of Socialism established Sweden, rather than
Scandinavia or Norden, as a place which had achieved the basic goals of social-
ism. Crosland set out the political goals of socialism as follows:
1) the amelioration of “material poverty and physical squalor”
2) the promotion of general “social welfare” for those oppressed or in need
3) belief in equality and the “classless society,” as well as “just” rights for
workers, and
4) rejection of “competitive antagonism” and its replacement with the ideals of
solidarity and collaboration.⁴¹
According to Crosland, Sweden had achieved the first and fourth of these goals
in the 1940s, a full ten years before Britain, and was well on the way to achieving
the second and third in consensual fashion through mechanisms like “joint en-
terprise councils,” public investment, and strict controls on share dividends and
reinvestment of profits. This view did not go unchallenged and Crosland’s rather
uncritical admiration of Sweden led Perry Anderson, a leading thinker of the
British New Left, to state that the country was “not so much a normal object
of real knowledge as a didactic political fable.”⁴² Broadly speaking, however,
it was Crosland’s image of Sweden that prevailed on the Anglophone Left.⁴³
While Giddens’ articulation of the Third Way sits within this revisionist tra-
dition, it nonetheless breaks from it in important ways. Notably, while Crosland
envisioned Swedish society as comprised of social and political institutions
which intervened in and regulated markets, Giddens envisaged Nordic social pol-
icy as ameliorating the excesses of basically unregulated free markets. It is there-
fore characteristic of the period that the Nordic policies of greatest interest to the
Labour Party were those which offered social protection in ways which were con-
sistent with free markets.
Nordic ‘Middle Way,’” Contemporary European History 22, no. 2 (May 2013): 181– 98, doi:10.1017/
S0960777313000040.
 C.A.R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), 67.
 Perry Anderson, “Mr Crosland’s Dreamland,” New Left Review 1, no. 7 (1961): 4.
 Peter Aimer, “The Strategy of Gradualism and the Swedish Wage‐earner Funds,” West Euro-
pean Politics 8, no. 3 (July 1985): 43 – 55, doi:10.1080/01402388508424540; Andrew Scott, “Social
Democracy in Northern Europe: Its Relevance for Australia,” Australian Review of Public Affairs 7,
no. 1 (2006): 1– 17; Andrew Scott, “Looking to Sweden in Order to Reconstruct Australia,” Scan-
dinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (September 2009): 330 – 352, doi:10.1080/
03468750903134756.
This was particularly true of flexicurity: the Danish political economic and
labour market reforms of the 1990s and measures to introduce market structures
into the British National Health Service (NHS).⁴⁴ In his book The Third Way and
Its Critics Giddens, for example, claimed that:
the Nordic welfare states have long since concentrated upon active labour market policies,
now making a delayed appearance in an Anglo-Saxon context under the label of “welfare
to work.” Nordic social democracy has been characterised by a willingness to introduce re-
forms on a pragmatic basis with the aim of finding solutions that are effective.⁴⁵
New Labour’s retrenchment of unemployment payments was, according to Gid-

dens, as much influenced by Swedish and Danish approaches to the labour mar-
ket as they were by the US Democrats’ attacks on “welfare queens.”⁴⁶ Formally,
the Nordic states functioned as a place where the problems facing industrial so-
cieties had already been solved through innovative political economic and wel-
fare policy. The Nordic “pragmatic” approach to this policy captured the essence
of Giddens’ and Ulrich Beck’s shared framework of “reflexive modernization.”
Perhaps the most significant innovation was the gradual association of mar-
ket ideas with the Nordic countries, especially Sweden. Large portions of New
Labour’s policy on health and social care were articulated in terms of Swedish
and Danish public health care systems. This was primarily achieved by position-
ing the Nordic systems as sites of consumer choice. The Department for Health’s
2002 Delivering the NHS Plan, for example, noted that “[I]n Sweden and Denmark
patients have access to information on waiting times and options for treatment,
and patients who have been waiting for treatment have the choice of an alterna-
tive provider.”⁴⁷ This served the immediate strategic imperative of defending a
taxation-funded health care model, which could simultaneously accommodate
market structures; its association with Sweden and Denmark made it seem mod-
ern and pragmatic.
 Jeremy Laurance, “Bed Blocking the Scandinavian Solution,” The Independent, 19 April
2002; Patricia Hewitt, “Investment and Reform: Transforming Health and Healthcare,” Annual
health and social care lecture, 13 December, 2005, transcript, The National Archives, https://we-
barchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100408103750/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCen-
tre/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH_4124484.
 Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 17.
 Giddens, The Third Way, 30 – 31.
 Department of Health, Delivering the NHS Plan: Next Steps on Investment Next Steps on Re-
form, April 2002. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20130107105354/http://
www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digital-
asset/dh_118524.pdf.
This association of market-based health reform with the Nordic countries

continued into the late 2000s.⁴⁸ Patricia Hewitt, Health Secretary during the
third Blair government 2005 – 2007, approvingly quoted the Social Democratic
slogan from the Göran Persson era, “proud, but not satisfied,” arguing that
this reflected the new natural state of Labour government.⁴⁹ Ironically, this slo-
gan was considered unimaginative and complacent in Sweden.⁵⁰ However, from
the perspective of the Labour government, adopting Nordic political solutions –
with reference to well-established social democratic rhetoric about Sweden and
Norden – offered a potential means of justifying otherwise controversial policies.
By domesticating Swedish marketization policies and subsuming them within
British political logics, New Labour had missed the change in public sentiment
in Sweden, away from Social Democratic modes of government.
The Nordic countries were thus the “social laboratories” from earlier eras,
now considered experiments in the application of market solutions to the prob-
lems of “globalised” societies. Of all the Nordic countries, Sweden in particular
featured in this rhetoric, despite its relatively late and partial move towards mar-
ketization, compared to, say, Norway. Politically, these earlier models had been
underwritten by a hegemonic social democracy which could efface the social
tensions and antagonisms of Swedish and Nordic societies. In the aftermath of
the financial crisis of 1991– 92 and the efforts of the Bildt government (in office
1991– 94) to contest the meaning of “Swedish” and “Nordic,” these signifiers
began to acquire new meanings. The weakening of the social democratic hegem-
ony was an opportunity for new articulations of Sweden and Norden to develop,
which were more amenable to free-market policy programmes, both domestically
and abroad.
Liberal conservative centrism
The adoption of “radical centrism” in the early 2000s by the Swedish Moderate
Party therefore makes significant sense. The foundational strategic arguments of
Blair’s Third Way rested on a calculation that the Conservative Party was the
 Tom Hoctor, “Beveridge or Bismarck? Choosing the Nordic Model in British Healthcare Policy
1997–c.2015,” in Making and Circulation of the Nordic Model, ed. Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. (London:
Routledge, 2021), 209 – 228.
 Patricia Hewitt, “Creating a Patient-Led NHS: The Next Steps Forward” (speech), 10 January,
2006, transcript, The National Archives, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
20130107105354/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH_4126499.
 Andersson, The Library and the Workshop, 150 – 51.
dominant force in British politics. Any attempt to win office meant accepting the
basic small “c” conservatism of the British electorate. For Fredrik Reinfeldt, lead-
er of the Moderate Party 2003 – 2015, the same basic situation held, but with so-
cial democracy the hegemonic political force. Where Blair embraced the indi-
vidualism and economic policies of the Thatcher era, Reinfeldt focused on
labour market exclusion among Sweden’s young and migrant populations and
focused on jobs,⁵¹ even going so far as to brand the Moderates as “the new work-
er’s party” [det nya arbetarpartiet].⁵² This was a sharp contrast from some of the
positions Reinfeldt had adopted in the early 1990s, during the era of the Bildt
government.⁵³ The liberal conservative Alliance for Sweden [Alliansen] won the
2006 election on this platform.
David Cameron became leader of the UK Conservative Party in 2005 and
quite explicitly imitated Reinfeldt’s tack to the centre, adopting much of the
same strategic logic as New Labour and the Moderates. This included embracing
social justice and ecological issues, in his so-called “hug a hoodie” and “hug a
huskie” campaigns, much to the chagrin of social democrats and Conservative
Thatcherites.⁵⁴ This was also the era of “Compassionate Conservatism,” which
later became the “Big Society” agenda. Indeed, taking a cue from the Moderates,
the Conservatives branded themselves “the worker’s party” from 2014 in the
lead-up to the 2015 General Election.⁵⁵
As well as the shared political strategies, there were also emergent links be-
tween the two parties during this era. In 2008, Fredrik Reinfeldt gave a speech to
 Christine Agius, “Sweden’s 2006 Parliamentary Election and after: Contesting or Consolidat-
ing the Swedish Model?,” Parliamentary Affairs 60, no. 4 (2007): 585 – 600, doi:10.1093/pa/
gsm041.
 “Det nya arbetarpartiet är moderat nyspråk,” Aftonbladet, 20 July, 2006, https://www.afton-
bladet.se/ledare/a/zLAnrw/det-nya-arbetarpartiet-ar-moderat-nysprak; Dimitris Tsarouhas, So-
cial Democracy in Sweden: The Threat from a Globalized World (London: Tauris Academic Stud-
ies, 2008), 176.
 Fredrik Reinfeldt, Det sovande folket, ed. Christer Söderberg and Per Schlingmann (Stock-
holm: Rätt Blankett & Trycksaksproduktion AB, 1993).
 Gaby Hinsliff, “Cameron Softens Crime Image in ‘Hug a Hoodie’ Call,” The Guardian, 9 July,
2006, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jul/09/conservatives.ukcrime; George Jones,
“Cameron Turns Blue to Prove Green Credentials,” The Daily Telegraph, 21 April, 2006,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1516276/Cameron-turns-blue-to-prove-green-creden-
tials.html; Ruth Lister and Fran Bennett, “The new ‘champion of progressive ideals’? Cameron’s
Conservative Party: poverty, family policy and welfare reform,” Renewal 18, no. 1/2 (2010): 84–
109.
 James Frayne, “The Conservatives Are Now the True Worker’s Party,” The Daily Telegraph, 15
May, 2015, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11605411/The-Conservatives-
are-now-the-true-workers-party.html.
the London School of Economics (LSE) for which David Cameron was a discus-
sant. This, in particular, made explicit the similarity between the way the two
leaders had styled themselves. Reinfeldt set the tone of his speech with a self-
deprecating joke: when he was at school, he was taught that Sweden was the
only world superpower with just nine million inhabitants.⁵⁶ The anecdote though
contained a serious kernel since it positioned Reinfeldt to reject the idea of a
Swedish model. If there ever were “aspirations of a modelling kind,” he claimed,
it was not a Swedish but a Scandinavian model, and, in any case, the relevance
of model-building had been undermined by the process of globalisation.⁵⁷ In
other words, the most that could be achieved was regulatory inspiration, rather
than any visionary political or social programme.
This represented a significant departure from the rhetoric of the Social Dem-
ocrats, who had always maintained the opposite, even during the era of the Third
Way. Göran Persson memorably urged those interested in Sweden to study “the
flight of the bumblebee, rather than the beating of its wings.”⁵⁸ This idea was
taken up by other Swedish social democratic politicians in British political net-
works, notably Pär Nuder, a former Social Democratic Finance Minister and Ka-
trine Kielos, a journalist and commentator.⁵⁹ Moreover, argued Reinfeldt, despite
its domestic and international reputation, the high era of the Swedish model –
the 1950s to the 1970s – was not a time of success, but a “mad quarter of a cen-
tury.” This shared characteristics with rhetoric used in the 1990s by the Bildt gov-
ernment, but it also staked a claim to a different vision of Sweden as part of a
Scandinavian or Nordic model, rather than as a regional leader with a claim
to a universalising social democratic discourse. The Moderates could therefore
legitimately claim that Sweden was bound by participation in the global eco-
nomic system and moreover that Sweden’s fundamental success should be locat-
ed in the pre-social democratic era as a consequence of the rule of law, property
rights, and so on. Strategically speaking, this also set a tone for Cameron’s de-
ployment of the idea of the “Broken Society” later the same year.⁶⁰
 Fredrik Reinfeldt, “The New Swedish Model: A Reform Agenda for Growth and the Environ-
ment.” Speech at London School of Economics, 26 February 2008. Regeringskansliet, https://
www.regeringen.se/49bb53/contentassets/b9cf14e1905b4bc2af652bdfc89e7ae9/tal-2006 – 2010—
fredrik-reinfeldt (London: London School of Economics, 2008).
 Reinfeldt, The New Swedish Model.
 Persson quoted in Peter Lindert, “The Welfare State Is the Wrong Target: A Reply to Bergh,”
Econ Journal Watch 3, no. 2 (2006): 237.
 Pär Nuder, Saving the Swedish Model (London: Institute for Public Policy Research, 2012);
Katrine Kielos, “Flight of the Swedish Bumblebee,” Renewal 117, no. 2 (2009): 61– 66.
 David Cameron, “Fixing Our Broken Society” (speech), Glasgow, 2008, Conservative
Speeches, https://conservative-speeches.sayit.mysociety.org/speech/599630.
Perhaps the Moderates’ most audacious attempt to re-articulate the Nordic

countries was in the Nordic Way pamphlet, submitted to the World Economic
Forum in Davos in 2011.⁶¹ Despite its Nordic focus, the pamphlet was developed
by the Swedish government, further developing the idea of a Nordic region,
rather than a Swedish model. The principal economic claims made in the report
were twofold. Firstly, that financial crises in the Nordic states had created a col-
lectivity of individual responses which focused on budgetary, fiscal, and mone-
tary discipline.⁶² In contrast to earlier articulations of the Swedish model as un-
affected by global economic conditions, The Nordic Way portrayed the Nordic
countries as exposed to the “economic cycle,” but capable of ameliorating the
consequences of busts by way of orthodox financial measures taken in difficult
circumstances. The second claim characterised the Nordic countries as open and
flexible, hostile to protectionism, with limited regulations, buttressed by strong
public welfare systems which socialise the risks of their flexible labour mar-
kets.⁶³
This echoed the arguments made by Reinfeldt at the LSE in 2008, but it also
masked a highly contested understanding of the Nordic model, which was fierce-
ly disputed by the Social Democrats.⁶⁴ Despite this, it was remarkably successful
in UK political discourse, partly as a result of the growing association of the Nor-
dic states with markets, but also in its attempt to situate a form of “Nordic cap-
italism” which possessed “fundamental coherence and vitality.”⁶⁵ This appealed
to liberal conservative figures in the UK who had been trying for some time to
create coherent policies which satisfied the need for social solidarity as well
as allowing intervention from non-governmental actors. Notably, the “Compas-
sionate Conservativism” and “Big Society” agendas were attempts to achieve
this, though both were ultimately failures.⁶⁶
The Conservative Universal Credit and Free Schools policies were explicitly
modelled on Nordic ideas. Free Schools ideas had been mooted within the Con-
 Klas Eklund, Henrik Berggren, and Lars Trägårdh, The Nordic Way: Shared Norms for the New
Reality (Davos: World Economic Forum, 2011).
 Eklund, Berggren, and Trägårdh, The Nordic Way, 5 – 11.
 Eklund, Berggren, and Trägårdh, The Nordic Way, 9 – 11.
 Göran Eriksson, “Slaget om Norden,” Svenska Dagbladet, 9 February 2012, https://
www.svd.se/slaget-om-norden.
 Eklund, Berggren, and Trägårdh, The Nordic Way, 22.
 Tom Hoctor, “Coming to Terms with the Market: Accounts of Neoliberal Failure and Rehabil-
itation on the British Right,” British Politics Online First (June 2020) 1– 16. doi: 10.1057/
s41293 – 020 – 00141– 9.
servative Party and various affiliated and non-affiliated policy organs since the
late 1990s.⁶⁷ A particular attraction of the policy was the potential for the in-
volvement of independent for-profit school chains such as Kunskapsskolan AB,
which had been involved in advocating for private for-profit school ownership
in the UK since the New Labour era. The adoption of the policy by the Conser-
vatives and its positioning as a centrist policy could be seen, in a sense, as
the culmination of a project aligning Cameron’s Conservatives with Reinfeldt’s
Moderates in the “radical centre.” It could be considered the most important
rhetorical success of the centre-right version of the Nordic model.
Conclusions
The Nordic model is undoubtedly a key concept in the rhetorics of Nordicness,
but the meanings of the model are highly contested. The term became establish-
ed during the 1980s, at least in English-speaking contexts, when it was used
mostly by academics to refer to political systems and welfare policies shaped
by the influence of social democracy. The Nordic or Scandinavian model was
often synonymous with the Swedish model, based on the electoral dominance
of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. The early 1990s was a watershed for
the Nordic region and for social democratic parties alike, leading to proclama-
tions of the end of the Nordic model from some quarters. The term did not dis-
appear; rather it has become ever more prevalent in academic and political de-
bates, while at the same time its meanings are ever more contested.
As an analytical term the Nordic model continued to function as an ideal
type for comparative analysis. For some, the model could only be referred to
in the past tense, as a category which described the social and political struc-
tures of previous decades. “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a very distinct
Nordic model of party politics no longer exists,” wrote Erik Allardt in 2000,
though he assessed the “Nordic model of social and welfare policy” to be weaker
but still distinct.⁶⁸ For others, this pessimism was unjustified, as analyses of the
 Linda Rönnberg, “Marketization on Export: Representations of the Swedish Free School

Model in English Media,” European Educational Research Journal 14, no. 6 (November 2015):
549 – 65, doi:10.1177/1474904115610782.
 Erik Allardt, “A Political Sociology of the Nordic Countries,” European Review 8, no. 1 (Feb-
ruary 2000): 129 – 141, doi:10.1017/S1062798700004634. Jan-Erik Lane and colleagues wrote in
1993 that, “The Scandinavian model was a regulative notion comprising a set of concepts and
ideas about what is good government in a wide sense, as well as about the proper way of struc-
turing the public sector, and connecting the public and private lives of the population” [empha-
Nordic political or welfare model revealed that the impact of the changes of the
1990s remained fairly limited, and that many aspects of the Nordic model re-
mained intact.⁶⁹ Since 2000, the impression is of a tendency to emphasize the
need for a more nuanced picture of the Nordic region, which highlights the dif-
ferences between the countries and plays down their exceptionalism in compar-
ison with other regions.⁷⁰ But as an ideal type, the “Nordic model” continued to
function as a starting point for such comparative analyses.⁷¹
Even as the model was questioned, there was simultaneously a proliferation
in the meanings attached to the term: the Nordic model became Nordic models.
In the third and substantially revised edition of his Scandinavian Politics Today,
published in 2016, David Arter identified no fewer than six Nordic models: the
party system, political representation, government and policy-making, welfare,
parliamentarianism, and regional co-operation. Arter concluded that any one
of these variants of the Nordic model remained “a useful organising concept”
for comparative analyses of the region, but he suggested that the last – regional
co-operation – was the most convincing.⁷² In other words, as “traditional” Nor-
dic models of the welfare state and social democratic politics were questioned,
new ones emerged to take their place. Examples include a Nordic model of gen-
sis added]. Jan-Erik Lane et al., “Scandinavian Exceptionalism Reconsidered,” Journal of Theo-
retical Politics 5, no. 2 (April 1993): 197, doi:10.1177/0951692893005002003..
 E. g. David Arter, “Party System Change in Scandinavia since 1970: ‘Restricted Change’ or
‘General Change’?,” West European Politics 22, no. 3 (1 July 1999): 139 – 58, doi:10.1080/
01402389908425319; Virpi Timonen, Restructuring the Welfare State: Globalization and Social Pol-
icy Reform in Finland and Sweden (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003); Torben M. Andersen,
“Challenges to the Scandinavian Welfare Model,” European Journal of Political Economy 20,
no. 3 (September 2004): 743 – 54, doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2004.02.007; Mikko Kautto et al., eds.,
Nordic Welfare States in the European Context (London: Routledge, 2001); Stein Kuhnle, “The
Scandinavian Welfare State in the 1990s: Challenged but Viable,” West European Politics 23,
no. 2 (April 2000): 209 – 228, doi:10.1080/01402380008425373.
 Kautto, “The Nordic Countries”; Kasper M. Hansen and Karina Kosiara-Pedersen, “Nordic
Voters and Party Systems,” in The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, ed. Peter Neder-
gaard and Anders Wivel (New York: Routledge, 2017), 122; Åsa Bengtsson et al., The Nordic Voter:
Myths of Exceptionalism (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014).
 For an example see: Guðmundur Jónsson, “Iceland and the Nordic Model of Consensus De-
mocracy,” Scandinavian Journal of History 39, no. 4 (8 August 2014): 510 – 28, doi:10.1080/
03468755.2014.935473.
 Arter, Scandinavian Politics Today, 11– 12. Arter also noted that these political models had
been defined by Nordic political scientists, not outsiders. See also Johan Strang, “Introduction:
The Nordic Model of Transnational Cooperation?” in Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in
Transition, ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016), doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 1.
der equality or marriage;⁷³ Nordic models of peace and diplomacy;⁷⁴ a Nordic

model of citizenship;⁷⁵ and a Nordic model of economic management – the latter
frequently concerned with the apparent paradox of strong competitiveness in
highly regulated economies.⁷⁶
These changing meanings reflect the way in which the Nordic model became
decoupled from its associations with the electoral success of social democratic
parties. Put another way, where it might once have been common to refer to
the Nordic model as social democracy, in the 2010s there were examples of
the Nordic model of social democracy, among other political understandings
of the model.⁷⁷ This also implied a temporal shift in the understanding of the
roots of the model. The Nordic model was now considered the outcome not ex-
clusively of social democratic policies in the post-war era but of a longer histor-
ical tradition. In this tradition, the “Nordic model” could refer to a distinctive po-
litical culture rooted in the early modern period, influenced especially by the
Lutheran Reformation and its legacies for state organisation.⁷⁸ For example, his-
torians Pasi Ihalainen and Karin Sennefelt presented their 2011 study of Scandi-
navian politics in the late eighteenth-century age of revolution as “an alternative
story of an incipient transition towards modernity, a ‘Nordic model’ in which rad-
ical change takes place within an apparent continuity of the established order,
without open revolution.”⁷⁹
 Lauri Karvonen and Per Selle, Women in Nordic Politics: Closing the Gap (Aldershot: Dart-
mouth, 1995); Kari Melby et al., “The Nordic Model of Marriage,” Women’s History Review 15,
no. 4 (September 2006): 651– 61, doi:10.1080/09612020500530851.
 In his introduction to an edited volume on “Nordic Peace,” Clive Archer had a section called
“Lessons learned,” suggesting that a “Nordic model” of peace may be relevant to the EU. Clive
Archer, “Introduction,” in The Nordic Peace, ed. Clive Archer and Pertti Joenniemi (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2003); Martin Marcussen, “Scandinavian Models of Diplomacy,” in The Routledge
Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, ed. Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2017).
 Bengtsson et al. The Nordic Voter.
 Sören Blomquist and Karl Moene, “The Nordic Model,” in “The Nordic Model,” edited by
Soren Blomquist and Karl Moene, special issue, Journal of Public Economics 127 (1 July 2015):
1– 2. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.04.007; Darius Ornston, Good Governance Gone Bad. How Nordic
Adaptability Leads to Success (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).
 Nik Brandal, Øivind Bratberg and Dag Einar Thorsen, The Nordic Model of Social Democracy
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
 See, for example, chapter two of Uffe Østergård, Hvorhen Europa? (København: Djøf forlag,
2018).
 Pasi Ihalainen and Karin Sennefelt, “General Introduction,” in Scandinavia in the Age of Rev-
olution: Nordic Political Cultures 1740 – 1820, ed. Pasi Ihalainen et al. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 7.
Taken to extremes, this suggested an understanding of the Nordic model as

the description of a highly specific regional culture, which was thus not available
for emulation elsewhere.⁸⁰ The authors of the pamphlet, presented to the World
Economic Forum in 2011, referred to the “Nordic way,” and explicitly warned
readers that they were not describing “a free-floating Nordic model that can
be applied to other countries.”⁸¹ Rather, Nordic exceptionalism was rooted in
cultural specificity that meant it was impossible to export.⁸² From the mid-
2000s centre-right politicians in Sweden began to assert the idea of Nordic dis-
tinctiveness and gradually also to adopt the term Nordic model, based on com-
petitiveness, pragmatism and constant reform.⁸³ Carl Marklund has suggested
that for centre-right politicians in Sweden, references to a Nordic model were
a means to distance themselves from a Swedish model that was too strongly
identified with social democracy.⁸⁴ In response, the Swedish Social Democratic
Party applied in 2012 to the Swedish Patent and Registration office to claim
their ownership of the term “Nordic model,” and the Nordic Labour Movement
Co-operation Committee (SAMAK) produced its own statement on the Nordic
model in 2014.⁸⁵ Meanwhile in Scotland, campaigners on the “yes” and “no”
 Nina Witoszek and Atle Midttun, “Sustainable Modernity and the Architecture of the ‘Well-
Being Society’: Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” in Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and
Beyond, ed. Nina Witoszek and Atle Midttun (London: Routledge, 2018), 1– 17.
 Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh, “Social trust and radical individualism: The paradox at
the heart of Nordic capitalism,” in The Nordic Way, 13.
 The point about the specific cultural context of the Nordic countries was cited by foreign
commentators too: see for example Madeleine Bunting, “We may admire the Nordic way, but
don’t try to import it,” The Guardian, August 15, 2008. See also Lars Trägårdh, “Swedish
Model or Swedish Culture?,” Critical Review 4, no. 4 (September 1990): 585, doi:10.1080/
08913819008459622. Lars Trägårdh, “Statist Individualism: On the Culturality of the Nordic Wel-
fare State,” in The Cultural Construction of Norden, ed. Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth (Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1997); Lars Trägårdh, “Mellem liberalism og socialisme: Om det særlige
ved den nordiske model,” Kritik 45, no. 206 (2012).
 See also Martin Ågerup, “Hvad er den nordiske model egentlig?,” Politiken, October 15, 2011.
Ågerup was director of the independent liberal think tank CEPOS.
 Carl Marklund, “The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas: The Welfare State as Scan-
dinavia’s Best Brand,” Geopolitics 22, no. 3 (July 2017): 623 – 39, doi:10.1080/
14650045.2016.1251906.
 SAMAK, The Sørmarka Declaration: We Build the Nordics, SAMAK, November 2014, http://
www.samak.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sormarka-declaration_English.pdf. See also, Nor-
diska ministerrådet, Den nordiska modellen i en ny tid: Program för Sveriges ordförandeskap i
Nordiska ministerrådet 2013, 2013, http://www.regeringen.se/contentassets/9cec796705ac45a
ba8c5284eb55aab52/den-nordiska-modellen-i-en-ny-tid--program-for-sveriges-ordforandeskap-i-
nordiska-ministerradet-2013. The Social Democratic Party’s application for copyright was chal-
lenged by the Nordic Council, which argued that “[t]he Nordic model is a general Nordic posses-
sides of the 2014 independence referendum referred to a social democratic Nor-

dic model, echoing earlier references to the Nordic region in the devolution de-
bates of the late 1970s and after.⁸⁶
These domestic struggles over the meaning of the Nordic model were mir-
rored in the UK, where the term was debated. While for Blair and Giddens, Nordic
policies had served as inspiration for a revitalized “New Labour” party as part of
a wider European discussion of the “Third Way” in the 1990s, Conservative pol-
iticians including David Cameron cited aspects of the Nordic model as inspira-
tional for their own politics, both in opposition and in government from 2010.
This is not to imply of course that the model was simply imported. The relation-
ship between the Swedish Moderates and the British Conservatives did not ne-
cessitate the articulation of a political or policy programme which resembled
the Nordic countries. Just as the Third Way was a highly decentred force with dif-
ferent responses to the central contradictions of social democracy, the same
could also be said of liberal-conservative “radical centrism.” Whereas Reinfeldt’s
commitment to a growth agenda was explicitly articulated as a means to achieve
full employment – a fundamentally social democratic goal – Cameron’s central
agenda was less clearly asserted. However, the logic of the Conservatives’ auster-
ity policy suggests that in practice the goal was counter inflationary. In other
words, despite the formal similarities, it would be a mistake to think that
there had been a total re-alignment of goals between the Moderates and the Con-
servatives. Nonetheless, as with the “middle way” debate of the 1930s, this ex-
ample shows how recent constructions of the Nordic model have been formed
in a complicated interaction between auto- and xenostereotypes.
A model is something that can be learned from and possibly transferred. It is
one of the ways in which international comparisons are used to shape the search
for new ideas and policies.⁸⁷ This points to what Pauli Kettunen has highlighted
as the paradox of the Nordic model: the model is threatened by the challenges of
sion… and part of the political heritage for the whole of Norden and its inhabitants.” ”Nordiska
Rådet: Vi tänker inte sluta använda ’Nordiska Modellen,’” Nordiska Rådet, accessed November
26, 2020, https://www.norden.org/no/node/4004.
 On the debates in Scotland see Newby, “In Building a Nation”; Michael Keating and Malcolm
Harvey, Small Nations in a Big World: What Scotland Can Learn (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2014);
Malcolm Harvey, “A Social Democratic Future? Political and Institutional Hurdles in Scotland,”
The Political Quarterly 86, no. 2 (April 2015): 249 – 56, doi:10.1111/1467– 923X.12155.
 Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen, “Introduction: Rethinking Welfare State Models” and
Pauli Kettunen, “The Transnational Construction of National Challenges: The Ambiguous Nordic
Model of Welfare and Competitiveness,” in Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical
Perspectives on Social Policy, ed. Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar,
2011).
globalization, but it is also a means to respond to those challenges in a compet-

itive international world.⁸⁸ During the early part of the 2010s, this could be pre-
sented as a conflict between the social democratic interpretation of the Nordic
model as something fixed and needing to be defended against external threats,
and centre-right claims that the Nordic model was not connected to any fixed
ideologies and could therefore serve as inspiration for necessary reforms. Refer-
ences to “threats” were found not only on the political left – expressed, for ex-
ample, in the trade unions’ fears of attempts to undermine collective wage agree-
ments. The right also claimed that the Nordic model was threatened, by
multiculturalism and the undermining of common cultural values.⁸⁹
Understandings of the Nordic model have clearly changed over time, but of
course they also vary in different contexts. Despite the overtly political meanings
that seem to be attached to the Nordic model, the concept is also still widely
used in academic research, though its meanings have become fragmented.
There is thus inevitably a danger that we are creating the object of our own re-
search, and unpicking the fluctuating meanings of the Nordic model thus re-
quires considerable critical reflexivity on the part of researchers.
 Pauli Kettunen, “The Power of International Comparison: A Perspective on the Making and
Challenging of the Nordic Welfare State,” in The Nordic Model of Welfare, ed. Christiansen et al.;
Kettunen, “The Transnational Construction.”
 See for example, Lars Trier Mogensen, “Fogh frelste den nordiske model,” Politiken, Septem-
ber 5, 2009. Asle Toje of the Norwegian Progress Party praised former Danish prime minister An-
ders Fogh Rasmussen for “saving” the Nordic model from “cultural radicalism” and multicultur-
alism.
Johan Strang
The Rhetoric of Nordic Cooperation: From
the Other Europe to the Better Europe?
Introduction
Despite the recent surge in rhetoric of (New) Nordicness, the term “Nordic coop-
eration” continues to evoke a mixture of feelings among most people in the re-
gion. On the one hand, the term refers almost unconditionally positively to the
special kinship associated with the idea of Norden as a cultural, linguistic,
and historical community, and as such it involves a strong sense of normative
obligation. On the other hand, “Nordic cooperation” implies a sense of impo-
tence and irrelevance, relating to the primacy of the transatlantic security regime
and the European economic and political frameworks. A similar tension is also
present in scholarship, which tends to build on pre-determined narratives of Nor-
dic cooperation either as a remarkable success in creating a transnational com-
munity, or as a series of failures to formalise cooperation in economic or security
policy.¹ This chapter explores the political struggles to define Nordic cooperation
from the 1950s until today. It will show that the tension between obligation and
impotence has been an enduring part in the rhetoric of Nordic cooperation, but
also that the criteria for success and failure, and indeed the meaning of Norden
has changed through time.
The chapter analyses the debates of the annual sessions of the Nordic Coun-
cil (NC), focusing primarily on periods of formative importance in negotiating the
tasks and limitations of official Nordic cooperation: the first years of the NC after
its establishment in 1952, the (collapsed) plans for a Nordic customs union
around 1960 and again a decade later, the EU debates during the first half of
the 1990s, and the rise of “the Nordic brand” in the new millennium. A key fea-
ture at all these junctures was the omnipresence of “Europe” in the background
of the discussions. “Europe,” “European cooperation,” “the European Economic
Community (EEC),” or, since the late 1980s and 1990s, “European integration”
and “the European Union (EU),” were for a long time all seen as competitors
to Nordic cooperation, legitimising it and pushing it forward. At the same time
 For a recent discussion of this literature see my “Introduction: The Nordic model of transna-
tional cooperation,” in Nordic Cooperation: A European region in transition, ed. Johan Strang
(London: Routledge, 2016); Anne Elizabeth Stie and Jarle Trondal, eds., “Rediscovering Nordic
cooperation,” special issue, Politics and Governance 8 (2020).
OpenAccess. © 2022 Johan Strang, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
104 Johan Strang
European integration also constituted a massive gravitational force whose move-

ments had huge repercussions for Nordic cooperation even before Denmark
joined the EEC in 1973 and Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995.²
Following the terminology of Reinhart Koselleck, “Nordic cooperation” and
“European integration” can be analysed as “asymmetric counter-concepts.”³ The
rhetoric of Nordic cooperation and European integration was never an antithet-
ical juxtaposition of two equally distinguishable units. Instead, Nordic coopera-
tion was defined through an indeterminate other, associated with a number of
vague and usually quite negative attributes. “Europe” served as the supranation-
al, utopian, bureaucratic, capitalist, conservative, or elitist other, which was used
to portray Nordic cooperation as democratic, pragmatic, progressive, and social-
ly responsible. Yet, it would be misleading to claim that the discussions at the NC
were marked by a general anti-European sentiment; on the contrary, the NC at-
tracted internationally oriented MPs, many of whom were decidedly in favour of
European cooperation already in the 1950s. The point of the asymmetrical juxta-
position was to negotiate the relationship between the Nordic and the European
frameworks, to bolster the idea of Norden as a cultural and political community,
as well as to legitimise the NC as an institution.
The rhetoric of Nordic cooperation and European integration was also asym-
metric in the sense that the one (Norden) in most conventional definitions was
understood as part of the other (Europe). The relation between Norden and Eu-
rope was under constant negotiation, but the 1990s represented a major turning
point. The Maastricht Treaty and the European Union were debated across the
region, initially reigniting the historical opposition between Nordic cooperation
and European integration. Eventually, however, Norden was absorbed by Eu-
rope, not least as Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995. In the new millen-
nium, therefore, many of the old narratives of Nordic cooperation had lost their
foundation. Gradually, however, a new rhetoric of Nordicness was invented,
which relied less on the European other, but also less on notions of transnational
cooperation.
 Thorsten Borring Olesen and Johan Strang, “European challenge to Nordic institutional coop-
eration: past, present and future,” in Nordic cooperation: A European region in transition, ed.
Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016), doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 2; Bo Stråth, “The Swedish
image of Europe as the other,” in Europe and the other and Europe as the other, ed. Bo Stråth
(Wien: PIE Lang, 2010).
 Reinhart Koselleck, “The historical-political semantics of asymmetric counter-concepts,” in
Futures past: on the semantics of historical time, trans. Keith Tribe (1979; New York: Columbia,
2004), 155 – 91; see also Kirill Postoutenko and Kay Junge, eds., Asymmetrical concepts after Rein-
hart Koselleck: Historical semantics and beyond (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2011).
The Rhetoric of Nordic Cooperation: From the Other Europe to the Better Europe? 105
This chapter focuses on the development of two related tropes in the rhetoric
of Nordic cooperation. The first half of the chapter explores how the idea of Nor-
dic cooperation as a more democratic and “popular” form of international col-
laboration than European integration emerged during the first decades of the
NC, and how this trope was turned into a celebration of the “flexibility” of Nor-
dic cooperation, and of the close, trusting, personal connections between lead-
ing Nordic politicians in the integrating Europe of the post-Cold War period. The
second half of the chapter analyses the emergence of the idea of Nordic cooper-
ation as evolving primarily around a culturally, linguistically, and historically
founded community and describes how the turn towards branding in the new
millennia transformed Nordic culture and welfare into examples of European ex-
cellence that were used on the global markets. Together, the two parts of the
chapter make the argument that there in the new millennium seems to be
more use for “the Nordic” as a pre-existing natural quality of the peoples and
products of the region, than of Norden as a political community of five nations,
which is why the recent wave of Nordic rhetoric has so far failed to bolster Nordic
cooperation.
Nordic cooperation and the Nordic Council
The history of Nordic cooperation is usually dated back to the bourgeoning

trans-Nordic networks among professionals and voluntary associations in the
wake of the Scandinavist movement at the end of the 19th century. Of special im-
portance were the Nordic Lawyers’ meetings, arranged regularly since 1872 with
the aim of harmonising legislation and creating a common Nordic legal culture.⁴
The NC, founded in 1952, grew out of the gradual intensification of the political
relations between the Nordic countries during the inter-war period, intense de-
bates on Nordic unification during the Second World War, as well as a general
push for regional cooperation and alignment in Western Europe in the emerging
Cold War setting.⁵ The immediate post-war period saw many Nordic initiatives: a
 Ruth Hemstad, Fra Indian Summer til nordisk vinter: Skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme
og unionsoppløsningen (Oslo: Akademisk publisering, 2008); Pia Letto-Vanamo and Ditlev
Tamm, “Cooperation in the field of law,” in Nordic Cooperation: A European region in transition,
ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016), doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 5.
 Jan A. Andersson, “1950–talet: tid att så – tid att skörda,” in Norden i sick-sack: Tre spårbyten
inom nordiskt samarbete, ed. Bengt Sundelius and Claes Wiklund (Stockholm: Santérus, 2000);
Franz Wendt, Cooperation in the Nordic Countries: achievements and obstacles (Stockholm: Nor-
dic Council, 1981), 33 – 36.
106 Johan Strang
Nordic Culture Commission was founded in 1946 and discussions on a Nordic

customs union began in 1947. Following the Prague coup in February 1948,
there were also prestigious negotiations on a Scandinavian defence union,
which ultimately broke down in January 1949 when Norway (and then Denmark)
decided to join NATO.
According to a common interpretation, the NC was founded as a compensa-
tion for the failure of the Scandinavian defence union, and precisely like the de-
fence union – and the Scandinavist movement a century before – it was primar-
ily a Danish-Swedish initiative. Hans Hedtoft, the Danish Social Democratic
leader and Prime Minister for the periods 1947– 50 and 1953 – 55, served as a po-
litical driving force, and the Swedish Conservative MP and lawyer Nils Herlitz
drafted the founding documents. It has been speculated that Hedtoft’s interest
in Nordic cooperation was motivated by an urge to associate his party with
the success of the Swedish Social Democrats, and certainly, the Nordic labour
movements had already established strong relations before the war.⁶ But Nord-
ism was undoubtedly a catch-all ideology at the time, with the Nordic Associa-
tions attracting high membership figures across the political spectrum in Den-
mark and Sweden. Among Norwegian conservatives and farmers there was,
however, a lingering suspicion that Nordic cooperation was a tool for Danish
or Swedish imperialistic ambitions, and a majority of non-socialist MPs voted
against the establishment of the NC in the Norwegian parliament. Also, in Ice-
land the NC was met with some opposition connected both to economic consid-
erations and to their recent independence from Denmark. Restricted by its rela-
tion to the Soviet Union, Finland was unable to join until 1955, but the founding
documents left a space open for the easternmost Nordic country.⁷ Thus, the geo-
graphical extension of the NC’s definition of Norden was undisputed from the
start and has largely remained so until today, despite some discussions of Baltic
membership in the early 1990s.
 The Joint Committee of the Nordic Social Democratic Labour Movement was founded in 1932
on the basis of cooperation that had taken place since 1886. See e. g. Andersson, “1950-talet”;
Pauli Kettunen et al., “The Nordic Model and the rise and fall of Nordic cooperation,” in Nordic
Cooperation: A European region in transition, ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016),
doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 4; Mirja Österberg, “‘Norden’ as a transnational space in the
1930s: negotiated consensus of ‘Nordicness’ in the Nordic Committee of the labour movement,”
in Labour, unions and politics under the North Star: the Nordic countries, 1700 – 2000, ed. Mary
Hilson, Silke Neunsinger, and Iben Vyff (New York: Berghahn, 2017).
 Andersson, “1950-talet”; Peter Stadius, “Hundra år av nordism,” in Meningen med föreningen:
Föreningarna Norden 100 år, ed. Henrik Wilén (Copenhagen: Föreningarna Nordens Förbund,
2019); Svein Olav Hansen, Vennskap og kjennskap i 100 år: Foreningen Norden 1919 – 2019
(Oslo: Gyldendal, 2020); Wendt, Cooperation, 35 – 38.
The annual sessions of the NC take place in the parliament building of a Nor-
dic capital on a rotating basis. Eighty-seven delegates chosen among the nation-
al members of parliament gather for three to six days of meetings and debates on
Nordic issues.⁸ The NC has never had legislative power. Its main role is to give
recommendations to the five governments, the normative power of which have
varied through time. Even though the NC nominally is an organisation for
inter-parliamentary cooperation representatives from the governments, includ-
ing the Prime Ministers, also take part in the NC sessions. This lends the debates
a parliamentary character, where delegates hold governments accountable for
their activities.⁹ This aspect of the NC was strengthened in 1971, when the govern-
ments established their own organisation for Nordic cooperation, the Nordic
Council of Ministers (NCM), which also has an independent budget (today an an-
nual of €128 million).
Traditionally, the sessions begin with a general debate, which, formally, con-
cerns an annual report on Nordic cooperation put forward by the presidium of
the NC, but which in practice turns into a discussion on the state of Nordic co-
operation in general and the most pressing issues of the time.¹⁰ To be sure, fo-
cusing on the debates at the NC sessions in order to target the rhetoric of Nordic
cooperation involves some methodological challenges. There is an obvious risk,
not only that the significance of the rhetoric of Nordicness and Nordic coopera-
tion is exaggerated, but also that the phrase “Nordic cooperation” is used differ-
ently in the NC sessions to how it is used in the national parliaments or public
debates. The material is particularly likely to contain an overrepresentation of
sentimental Nordism, and the delegates tend to equate “Nordic cooperation”
with the NC and NCM, overlooking other venues for interaction between the
 Iceland has 7 seats and the four larger Nordic countries have 20 each. Two of the Finnish and
two of the Danish seats have, since 1970, been reserved for representatives from Åland and the
Faroe Islands. Since 1984 an additional two Danish seats have been allocated to delegates from
Greenland. Due to the small size of the Icelandic parliament, the sessions in Reykjavik usually
take place in another location. In addition to the annual sessions, the NC has, since the end of
the 1980s, arranged shorter thematic sessions on a semi-regular basis, usually at a venue outside
of the capitals.
 Of the four key features of a parliament listed by Ihalainen, Ilie, and Palonen, the NC fulfils
two: deliberation and representation. The other two features, responsibility and sovereignty, are
not fulfilled. See Pasi Ihalainen, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen, “Parliament as a conceptual
nexus,” in Parliament and parliamentarism: A comparative history of a European concept, ed.
Pasi Ihalainen, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen (New York: Berghahn, 2016).
 There have, of course, been numerous changes to the agenda and choreography of the NC
sessions throughout the years, but the first day(s) of the sessions have usually remained reserved
for more general discussions.
108 Johan Strang
five countries. With these caveats in mind, there is arguably no better material for
exploring the broad variety and complexity of speech acts associated with the
term “Nordic cooperation,” as the NC sessions confront both political and na-
tional variations of this rhetoric with each other.
From democracy to flexibility: Nordic cooperation

and its supranational other
Democracy as national sovereignty
One of the most enduring tropes at the Nordic Council has undoubtedly been
that of democratic Nordic cooperation and its supranational and federal Europe-
an other. Clearly, the NC was not established with any supranational ambitions,
but in the 1950s, when the aims and purposes of the NC were still under nego-
tiation, there were many animated discussions on Nordic cooperation and na-
tional sovereignty. At the very first sessions in Copenhagen in 1953, the issue sur-
faced in the form of a debate on the legacy of 19th century Scandinavism.
Celebrating the establishment of the NC, Hans Hedtoft argued that the Scandi-
navist movement had an unfortunately poor reputation as it was remembered
particularly for its failure to produce a united Scandinavian kingdom or a
more formal union. Its main achievement, Hedtoft argued, was in bringing the
Scandinavian peoples together and making war between Nordic countries im-
possible.¹¹ This idolisation of the Scandinavist movement provoked a response
from the leader of the Norwegian Conservative Party, C. J. Hambro, who ex-
plained that his opposition towards the establishment of the NC had not been
based on any anti-Nordic sentiments, but on a historically conditioned suspicion
against Swedish and Danish great power ambitions. “The word union,” Hambro
explained, “whether it refers to the Kalmar Union or something else, does not
ring well in Norwegian ears.”¹² This Norwegian criticism forced Hedtoft to clarify
 Hans Hedtoft (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd 1. session, København 1953
(København: J. H. Schultz, 1953), 94– 100. I refer to the debates at the Nordic Council with the
name of the speaker (country, party), Nordisk råd (Nordic Council), and the city and year of
the meeting. The protocols are available in the so called Blue book series, published at various
locations and publishers throughout the years 1953 – 2011, after which they have been made
available online at https://www.norden.org/en/information/past-sessions (accessed September
16 2021). All translations from the Nordic languages are mine.
 C. J. Hambro (Norway, Conservative), Nordisk råd, København 1953, 143 – 144. On the Norwe-
gian relation to the Scandinavist movement, see Hemstad’s chapter in this volume.
that in referring to Scandinavism he was not proposing that the NC would lead
the way towards a Nordic union. Rather, in carrying the spirit of Scandinavism,
the NC had learned the lesson that cooperation requires respect for the distinc-
tive character of each nation: “the aim of the NC is agreement, not unity,” Hed-
toft concluded.¹³
Caution was undoubtedly called for, not only with regard to the Norwegian
sceptics, but also against the background of the recent failure of the defence
union and the different foreign policies pursued by the Nordic countries in the
Cold War setting. Indeed, foreign policy was excluded from the agenda of the
NC from the start, which in itself contributed to the wide agreement that “Nordic
cooperation” had to refrain from supranational and federal aspirations. Follow-
ing Hedtoft’s example, a standard argument was that “cooperation” (dk. samar-
bejde, f. yhteistyö, isl. samstarf, n. samarbeid, sv. samarbete) required equal and
sovereign partners, and that the breakup of the former Danish and Swedish em-
pires and the independence of the five Nordic nations had enabled peaceful co-
existence and collaboration in the region.¹⁴ Initially, this was also interpreted as
a strength. Comparisons with European initiatives like the Council of Europe
(1949), the European Coal and Steel Community (1951), and Benelux cooperation
initiatives were common in order to articulate the advantages of the pragmatic
and democratic Nordic model of cooperation. The Danish Conservative Ole
Bjørn Kraft, for example, argued in 1954, “Whereas the Council of Europe is
founded on the idealistic aim of creating a United States of Europe, Nordic co-
operation has grown organically out the independence of the five peoples: it
is practically oriented and rejects calls for unification based on dogmatic princi-
ples or theoretical speculation.”¹⁵ Similarly, in the following year, Hedtoft proud-
ly stated that the NC had not wasted time and energy on fruitless discussions be-
tween federalists and functionalists. Instead it had proceeded soberly and
pragmatically with the issues at hand, and by paying due respect to the sover-
eignty of the participating nations. This approach, according to Hedtoft, now
served as an example for Europe.¹⁶
 Hans Hedtoft (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1953, 167– 169.
 Magnús Jonssón (Iceland, Conservative Independence Party), Nordisk råd, København 1953,
79; Tage Erlander (Sweden, Social Democrats), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1955, 43; Bent Røiseland
(Norway, Liberal Venstre), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1955, 57.
 Ole Bjørn Kraft (Denmark, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1954, 32.
 Hans Hedtoft (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1955, 38; see also Hed-
toft, Nordisk råd, Oslo 1954, 19.
110 Johan Strang
The first years of the NC is often celebrated as a “golden epoch” of Nordic

cooperation,¹⁷ but they were certainly not seen as such by contemporaries. To
be sure, the period produced a passport union (1952– 58), a common labour mar-
ket (1954), and a social security convention (1955), but these agreements were
never central to the debates at the NC – they had been initiated already before
the establishment of the NC and were largely uncontroversial.¹⁸ Instead, the dis-
cussions were marked by the shadow of the failed defence union on the one
hand, and by difficult and divisive negotiations on a Nordic trade deal on the
other. Whereas the Danish representatives aimed for a full customs union that
also included agricultural products, the Swedes and Norwegians feared that
their farmers would be outrivalled. Swedish scepticism was mitigated by the
prospect of an expanded market for their thriving industry, which in turn only
exacerbated the Norwegian concerns.¹⁹ At the NC, the Norwegian sceptics
often associated their resistance with a concern for national sovereignty. Jon
Leirfall from the Agrarian (Centre) Party, for example, believed that the advo-
cates of the customs union were aiming at turning the NC into a supranational
parliament. Leirfall argued that “Danish and Swedish dreams have often proved
to be Norwegian nightmares,” pointing also to the historically conditioned Nor-
wegian scepticism against the word “union.”²⁰ The Norwegian liberal Arthur
Sundt, in turn, stressed that there were limits to how far Norway could go in po-
litical integration only fifty years after gaining sovereignty. He also feared that
the NC was aiming too high, and that the success of Nordic cooperation in the
field of law and social policy should not be scoffed at just because Europe pro-
vided tempting examples of economic integration.²¹
Significantly enough, the proponents of the Nordic trade deal did not object
to this framing of supranationality as essentially un-Nordic. Instead, they played
along with the rhetoric of democratic Nordic cooperation and federalist Europe-
an integration, trying to convince the Norwegian sceptics that there were no su-
pranational ambitions in the Nordic plans. The Swedish Prime Minister Tage Er-
 See e. g. Sundelius and Wiklund, Norden i sick-sack, 18.

 Wendt, Cooperation in the Nordic Countries, 188 – 89 and 213 – 21.
 Juhana Aunesluoma, Vapaakaupan tiellä: Suomen kauppa- ja integraatiopolitiikka maailman-
sodasta EU-aikaan (Helsinki: SKS, 2011), 176 – 80; Mikael af Malmborg, Den ståndaktiga national-
staten: Sverige och den västeuropeiska integrationen 1945 – 1959 (Lund: Lund University Press,
1994), 338 – 341; Bo Stråth, Nordic industry and Nordic economic cooperation (Stockholm: Almqv-
ist & Wiksell, 1978); Vibeke Sørensen, “Nordic Cooperation: A Social Democratic alternative to
Europe,” in Interdependence versus integration: Denmark, Scandinavia and Western Europe
1945 – 1960 (Odense: Odense University Press, 1995).
 Jon Leirfall (Norway, Centre Party), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1954, 197.
 Arthur Sundt (Norway, Liberal), Nordisk råd, København 1956, 81 and 204– 207.
lander, for example, ensured that national sovereignty and democracy remained
priorities, and contrasted this with how the Benelux customs union had been
pushed through by the countries’ respective governments. The Nordic countries
had chosen a more democratic path, Erlander argued, involving the parliaments
in the discussion, thus building their cooperation on solid ground.²²
Nordic cooperation and its accelerating other
Intimately connected to these discussions of democracy, sovereignty, federalism,

and supranationality were notions of temporality and the speed of development.
If the members of the NC in the early 1950s boasted that Nordic cooperation was
“ahead” of Europe, things changed with the complex European free trade nego-
tiations in the latter half of the decade. Already in 1955, when the so-called Inner
Six (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) agreed
upon the Messina plan for economic integration, a worry emerged within the NC
that Nordic cooperation was being outpaced. “It seems as if the decisiveness is
greater in Europe,” the chairman of the Swedish liberals Bertil Ohlin com-
plained.²³ At this point, however, there was still wide agreement that the slow-
ness of Nordic cooperation was a consequence of the lack of supranationality,
and as such a price worth paying: it was “characteristic of the Nordic peoples
to build slowly but solidly,” which would “serve to reduce frictions in the long
run.”²⁴ Just a couple of years later, however, when the Treaty of Rome (1957) es-
tablished the European Economic Community (EEC), there was already a wide-
spread fear that Nordic cooperation was being left behind. While EEC member-
ship was still out of the question, a British proposal for a larger European free
trade area was welcomed by the Nordic countries.²⁵ As the 1958 sessions were
postponed from the spring to the autumn in anticipation of the EEC’s reaction
to the British proposal, impatience and self-criticism grew within the NC.
Ohlin, for example, feared that the pace and practices of Nordic cooperation
had become a handicap rather than an advantage: “Perhaps, making compre-
hensive studies and investigations before every decision serves only to amplify
the problems.”²⁶ A month after the 1958 sessions, France pulled out of the
 Tage Erlander (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1956, 59.
 Bertil Ohlin (Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, København 1956, 41.
 Rolf Edberg (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1956; Finn Moe (Norway,
Labour Party), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1955, 54.
 af Malmborg, Den ståndaktiga nationalstaten, 301.
 Bertil Ohlin (Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1958, 187.
112 Johan Strang
FTA negotiations, which left the UK and the Scandinavian countries stranded
without a deal with the EEC. As a response, “the outer seven” (the three Scandi-
navian countries, UK, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal) established the Europe-
an Free Trade Association (EFTA) in the summer of 1959.²⁷
EFTA effectively put an end to the plans for a tightly integrated Nordic cus-
toms union and the NC sessions in November 1959 were again held in a gloomy
atmosphere, with many speakers bemoaning the fact that the NC had failed with
its key initiative.²⁸ The Prime Ministers, in turn, argued that EFTA was a success
as it created a Nordic common market, but admitted that Nordic cooperation had
been overrun by European developments. The Danish Prime Minister H.C Han-
sen, for example, bemoaned the fact that the Nordic tradition of advancing
step by step – so successful in forging the social security convention – had pro-
ven at odds with the rules of the game on this particular occasion. But he also
emphasised that the prolonged process had served its purpose of forging broad
Nordic unanimity: even the Norwegian opposition to the Nordic customs union
was in favour of EFTA.²⁹
A lasting legacy from the prolonged customs union negotiations was un-
doubtedly the cementation of “Nordic cooperation” as inherently anti-federalist.
Indeed, it was even codified as such in the Helsinki Treaty, signed in March 1962.
The aim of the treaty was to signal Nordic unity at a point when external forces
seemed to pull the region apart: the Soviet Union was, following the Berlin Cri-
sis, increasing its pressure on Finland, while Denmark and Norway were – along
with the UK – considering EEC membership.³⁰ The result was a treaty with vague
and non-committing formulations, which was met with disappointment at the
 Thorsten Borring Olesen, “EFTA 1959 – 1972: an exercise in Nordic cooperation and conflict,”
in Regional cooperation and international organizations: The Nordic model in transnational align-
ment, ed. Norbert Götz and Heidi Haggrén (London: Routledge, 2009). Finland was unable to
join EFTA in 1960 because of Soviet and UK opposition, but after effective lobbying by Finland
in the east and Sweden in the west, Finland became an associate member in 1961 (Finn-EFTA-
agreement).
 Bertil Ohlin (Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1959, 42; Karl-August Fagerholm (Fin-
land, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1959, 46.
 H. C. Hansen (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1959, 59 – 60.
 Johan Vibe, “Norden – et samarbeide nedenfra?,” in Hva skjedde med Norden? Fra selvbe-
vissthet til rådvillhet, ed. Iver B. Neumann (Oslo: Cappelen, 1992); Claes Wiklund, “1962 års Hel-
singforsavtal – den första heltäckande nordiska samarbetstraktaten,” in Norden i sick-sack: Tre
spårbyten inom nordiskt samarbete, ed. Bengt Sundelius and Claes Wiklund (Stockholm: Santé-
rus, 2000).
1962 sessions.³¹ The Prime Ministers, however, defended it as “an important dec-
laration of intent,” and the Finnish Foreign Minister Ahti Karjalainen even ar-
gued that the treaty was “a perfect reflection of Nordic cooperation, bringing
the countries together despite the differences in foreign policy orientations.”³²
The un-Nordicness of supranational federalism was also a key element in
the negotiations for a Nordic economic union around 1970. The ambitious so-
called Nordek plan included, among other things, a customs union and a com-
mon investment bank.³³ Considerations had, again, to be paid to the different se-
curity policies of the Nordic nations, and to the potential Danish –and Norwe-
gian – membership in the EEC. Accordingly, the governments were careful not
to propose any limitations of national sovereignty. The rhetoric of Nordic coop-
eration and European integration served this purpose well. At the 1969 sessions,
the Danish Social Democratic leader Jens Otto Krag recognised that Nordek re-
quired new institutions, but emphasised that it was important to stick to “the
voluntary and consensual form of Nordic cooperation” and “to avoid majority
decision-making procedures like in the EEC.”³⁴ The Norwegian Centre Party
Prime Minister, Per Borten, similarly emphasised that Nordic cooperation had
to stay true to its “democratic ideals.”³⁵ Nordek would undoubtedly have been
a rather strange construction: a comprehensive economic union without supra-
national institutions. It was, however, the only path available, on the one hand
because of the different security policies pursued by the Nordic countries, and
on the other hand because Nordic cooperation was defined as inherently anti-
federal.
If references to Europe, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, served the pur-
pose of rallying Nordic cooperation in order to keep pace with European devel-
opments, the Nordek negotiations were even more strongly marked by the asym-
metry between Nordic cooperation and European integration: it was clear that
the former had to adapt to the pace of the latter. The Danish government
 Gunnar Helén (Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 59 – 60; Kjell Bondevik (Nor-
way, Christian People’s Party), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 77.
 Tage Erlander (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 81; Einar Gerhard-
sen (Norway, Labour), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 70; Ahti Karjalainen (Finland, Agrarian),
Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 197.
 See Jan Hecker-Stampehl, ed., Between Nordic ideology, economic interests and political real-
ity: New perspectives on Nordek (Helsinki: Finnish Society of Letters, 2009); Lasse Sonne, NOR-
DEK – A plan for increased Nordic economic cooperation and integration (Helsinki: Finnish Soci-
ety of Letters, 2007).
 Jens Otto Krag (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 65.
 Per Borten (Norway, Centre Party) Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 100.
114 Johan Strang
launched the Nordek plan when De Gaulle had vetoed British and Danish mem-
bership in the EEC for a second time in 1967: there was a temporary European
standstill, which the Nordic countries sought to utilise. The Danish Social Dem-
ocratic leader Jens Otto Krag urged the Nordic leaders forward arguing that the
experience a decade ago had proven that it was dangerous to wait, and the
Swedish liberal leader Bertil Ohlin stated that he wished the NC could lock
the Prime Ministers in an Arctic hotel to forge the deal.³⁶
The reasons for the failure of Nordek have been subject to much discussion,
but a key factor was the Danish-Finnish disagreement on the relation between
Nordic cooperation and Europe. As pointed out by Danish historian Thorsten
Borring Olesen, the normative appeal of Nordic cooperation was that it could
be – and often was – used as way for the Nordic countries to influence and direct
each other.³⁷ During the Nordek debates, Krag tried to pull his neighbours closer
to the EEC, claiming that “the Nordic union is a desirable and perhaps even nec-
essary step towards something larger: Europe,” while the Finnish Prime Minister
Mauno Koivisto, out of considerations of Finland’s special relations to the Soviet
Union, tried to keep the whole of Norden outside of the EEC by insisting on the
“intrinsic value” of Nordek.³⁸ These different views came to a head when it grad-
ually became clear that Denmark intended to follow the UK into the EEC, which
ultimately provoked Finland to withdraw from the project, causing its collapse.³⁹
Flexible cooperation within Europe
The Single European Act in 1986 and the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which trans-
formed the European community into the European Union (EU), provoked an in-
tense debate on the future of Nordic cooperation. By this time the rhetoric of Nor-
dic cooperation, as something that was unique, pragmatic, and democratic, had
 Jens Otto Krag (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 64; Bertil Ohlin
(Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 82.
 See Olesen and Strang, “European challenge,” 32; Thorsten Borring Olesen and Poul Vil-
laume, Dansk udenrigspolitisk historie V: I blokopdelningens tegn (Copenhagen: Gyldendal,
2006), 545 – 51.
 Jens Otto Krag (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 66; Mauno Koivis-
to (Finland, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1969, 102; Koivisto, Nordisk råd, Reykjavik
1970, 85.
 See e. g. Aunesluoma, Vapaakaupan tiellä, 231– 39; Hecker-Stampehl, Between Nordic ideol-
ogy, 13 – 17.
become part of the liturgy at the annual NC sessions. In 1989, in typical fashion,
the Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson applauded how Nordic cooperation
brought together not only the governments, but also the peoples in Norden, that
it was voluntary in character and respected the sovereignty of the nations.⁴⁰ An
increasing number of delegates, however, started to challenge this rhetoric of
Nordic exceptionality, arguing that Nordic cooperation had to adapt to the
pace of an accelerating European integration. At the 1988 NC sessions, the Dan-
ish Prime Minister Poul Schlüter warned his Nordic colleagues that “the Europe-
an train” was on the move, and that the rediscovered dynamism in the EC was
something that could not be ignored by the NC.⁴¹ Most vocal was the Swedish
conservative leader Carl Bildt, who, from 1987 to 1994, relished presenting tem-
poralized arguments that urged the Nordic countries to get involved in European
integration. He argued that “when history is accelerating in Europe, the clock
must not stand still in Norden,” warning also that “in stagnating, the NC was
risking what it had accomplished.”⁴² Doing so, Bildt alluded to established no-
tions of the slowness and impotence of Nordic cooperation, as well as to its
asymmetrical and reactive relation to European integration. Indeed, one of
Bildt’s leading themes was to call for a shift towards thinking in terms of “Nor-
den within Europe” rather than “Norden or Europe.”⁴³
In the escalating EC/EU debates it was particularly the opponents of Nordic
EU membership who were most eager to sustain the rhetoric of Nordic coopera-
tion as a democratic alternative to the federal European other.⁴⁴ Criticising the
transfer of sovereignty from the national legislatures to Brussels and the “dem-
ocratic deficit” of the EU apparatus, they celebrated Nordic cooperation as a
more democratic model of international cooperation. Olof Johansson, the leader
of the Swedish Centre Party, for example, argued that Nordic cooperation was
unique in being mellanfolkligt (“inter-popular,” meaning transnational or inter-
national at a non-elite level) in the true sense of the word, and claimed, in
 Ingvar Carlsson (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1989, 88; Páll Péturson
(Iceland, Progressive), Nordisk råd, København 1991, 54.
 Poul Schlüter (Denmark, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1988, 132.
 Carl Bildt (Sweden, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1989, 69; Nordisk råd, Mariehamn
1989, 34; Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1990, 95 – 96.
 Carl Bildt (Sweden, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1987, 76; Nordisk råd, Helsingfors
1992, 62; Nordisk råd, København 1991, 57. See also Carl Bildt, Hallänning, svensk, europé (Stock-
holm: Bonniers, 1991).
 Carsten Schymik, “European Antifederalists,” in Northern Europe and the future of the EU:
Nordeuropa und die Zukunft der EU, ed. Helge Høibraaten and Jochen Hille (Berlin: Intersentia,
2011).
116 Johan Strang
1991, that Nordic cooperation could serve as a model for countries in Eastern Eu-
rope who, in recently having regained their independence, were hardly keen on
new supranational constraints.⁴⁵
On the pro-European side, which included the governments, it became a key
task to frame not only European integration, but also supranationality and fed-
eralism in a more positive light. The standard argument was that in binding the
European nations together, supranational European integration had been crucial
in creating peace in Europe. Some, like the Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald
Stoltenberg, also claimed that “binding cooperation” actually was in the interest
of small states like the Nordic ones. With the creation of the EU, France and Ger-
many were no longer able to pursue their foreign policies without taking smaller
European nations into account.⁴⁶ Supranationalism and binding international
cooperation were also presented as inevitable parts of post-Cold War globalisa-
tion. Most explicit was, again, the Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, who, nota-
bly tired of the sovereignty debate, claimed that “[t]here is no place for Robinson
Crusoe politics in the modern world.” He argued that if Crusoe had been sover-
eign on his deserted island, he was certainly very happy to share some of it when
Friday came along.⁴⁷
Significantly enough, the governments reserved their propensity for binding
and supranational cooperation for the European framework. When it came to
Nordic cooperation, they continued to emphasise the right of every nation to pur-
sue its own interests. The Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, for
example, argued that while Finland, Norway, and Sweden would pursue the EU
negotiations separately, the governments would constantly keep each other in-
formed using the unique informal networks that exist between the Nordic coun-
tries. According to Brundtland, Nordic cooperation had not been created through
formal decisions or treaties; rather, its defining feature and special strength was
the multitude of informal networks that existed between politicians, bureau-
crats, unions, and businesses in the different countries, and the cultural and his-
torical affinity based on shared values.⁴⁸ In this way, the governments gradually
redeployed the rhetoric of Nordic cooperation and its supranational European
other: the non-binding and democratic character of Nordic cooperation evolved
into an argument about a pre-existing affinity between the Nordic governments,
and the flexibility and efficiency of their informal relations. If the previous argu-
 Olof Johansson (Sweden, Centre Party), Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1989, 54; Nordisk råd, Mar-
iehamn 1991, 88; Marianne Samuelsson (Sweden, Green Party), Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1989, 53.
 Thorvald Stoltenberg (Norway, Labour Party), Nordisk råd, Århus 1992, 52.
 Carl Bildt (Sweden, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1994, 77.
 Gro Harlem Brundtland (Norway, Labour Party), Nordisk råd, Århus 1992, 39 & 44.
ment had been that the Nordic countries could not unite because of their different
security or economic interests, the argument now was that the Nordic countries
did not need to unite because they shared so many networks and values.
This gradual redescription of Nordic cooperation coincided with a series of
reforms which increased the role of the prime ministers and decreased the fund-
ing of the NCM.⁴⁹ Critics were swift to notice that the celebration of the unique
informal networks were used to cushion or even conceal a dismantling of Nordic
institutional cooperation. As president of the Nordic Council in 1994, the Swed-
ish Social Democrat Sten Andersson expressed his concerns that Prime Ministers
were blocking the NC and the parliamentarians’ ability to influence decision-
making and that Nordic cooperation was developing a democratic deficit like
the EU.⁵⁰ The Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt responded that while the govern-
ments were improving formal institutions, unique informal networks were effi-
cient and something that the Nordic countries should be proud of.⁵¹
Informality and flexibility replaced democracy and sovereignty as the main
characteristic of Nordic cooperation. In 1995, the new Swedish Prime Minister In-
gvar Carlsson proudly stated that Nordic cooperation was part of his everyday
routine: “Among the Nordic Prime Ministers, we phone each other when we
need to, in order to check our positions – it is fast and easy.”⁵² At this point,
the rhetoric of informal Nordic cooperation was used particularly against the
idea of formalising Nordic cooperation on EU matters. One of the most deter-
mined voices was the Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who repeatedly
testified to the intimate informal relations between the three Nordic EU members
while vehemently rejecting the idea of creating a “Nordic block.”⁵³ In his federal
vision of the EU, there were no place for permanent alliances. Aiming at taking
Finland to “the core of the EU,” Lipponen was also reluctant to associate with
Denmark and Sweden, whose governments still struggled with significant do-
mestic scepticism against particularly the Economic and Monetary Union.⁵⁴
 Olesen and Strang, “European challenge,” 35 – 36; Bjørn Otto Sverdrup, “Europeisering som
de-institusjonalisering – nordisk politisk samarbeid i endring,” in Europa i Norden: Europeiser-
ing av nordisk samarbeid, ed. Johan P. Olsen and Bjørn Otto Sverdrup (Oslo: Tano Aschehoug,
1998).
 Sten Andersson (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1994, 56 – 57.
 Carl Bildt (Sweden, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1994, 72– 73.
 Ingvar Carlsson (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1995, 63.
 Paavo Lipponen (Finland, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1996, 49; Nordisk råd,
Stockholm 1999, 51; Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 2000, 49.
 Richard Brander, Finland och Sverige i EU: tio år av medlemskap (Helsingfors: Schildts 2004),
65 – 75; Tapio Raunio and Teija Tiilikainen, Finland in the European Union (London: Frank Cass,
2003), 150.
118 Johan Strang
As the majority of the Nordic countries were members of the EU, the rhetoric
of Nordic cooperation and its supranational and federal European other became
a way of expressing the special informal bonds between the Nordic countries
within a larger European framework. Clearly, it was an attempt to make a virtue
of necessity. In a more cynical interpretation, however, it was also a way of re-
ducing Nordic cooperation to a matter of informal contacts and relations in
the shadow of European integration, and of legitimising or even disguising budg-
etary cuts in the NCM. The rhetoric of the unique democratic, pragmatic, and in-
formal Nordic cooperation served as a handy narrative against strengthening
Nordic institutional cooperation. It provided the governments with an opportu-
nity to frame themselves as pro-Nordic while at the same time refusing to commit
themselves to more formalised cooperation.
In the new millennia, there was a somewhat surprising return of the Scan-
dinavist dream of a formalised Nordic union, associated primarily with the
Swedish historian Gunnar Wetterberg and his 2010 yearbook of the Nordic Coun-
cil calling for a United Nordic Federation. ⁵⁵ Despite receiving quite a lot of public
attention across the region, the politicians at the NC politely ignored Wetter-
berg’s proposal as a valuable source of inspiration.⁵⁶ The former Norwegian for-
eign minister Thorvald Stoltenberg’s report with 13 proposals for strengthening
Nordic security and defence cooperation made a more significant impact on
the debates.⁵⁷ Some observers have claimed that the circle became complete,
as the discussion had returned to the same theme that had started Nordic polit-
ical cooperation in the wake of the Second World War. It was an opportunity to
make good for the failure of the defence union in 1948.⁵⁸ It is, however, impor-
tant to emphasise that the Stoltenberg report did not propose any supranational
elements, that it did not address the divisive NATO question, and that it was cele-
brated for its pragmatism and flexibility.⁵⁹ Indeed, as the Nordic countries in the
 Originally proposed in an opinion article in Dagens Nyheter in 2009, the NC promptly asked
Wetterberg to develop the idea in book form. Gunnar Wetterberg, The United Nordic Federation
(Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 2010).
 Asta Ragnheidur Johannesdottir (Iceland, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 2010, 36;
Bente Dahl (Denmark, Social Liberal), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 2010, 50).
 Thorvald Stoltenberg, Nordic cooperation on foreign and security policy (Oslo: Norwegian
Government Security and Service Organisation (G.S.S.O.), 2009), https://www.regjeringen.no/
globalassets/upload/ud/vedlegg/nordicreport.pdf.
 Bengt Sundelius and Claes Wiklund, “Quo vadis? Tretton insikter om Norden,” in Norden sett
inifrån: Det fjärde spårbytet, ed. Bengt Sundelius and Claes Wiklund (Stockholm: Santérus,
2017), 312.
 At the NC, see e. g. Espen Barth Eide, Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 2012, (https://www.norden.
org/en/event/64th-session-2012) speech 142.
wake of the Stoltenberg report have strengthened their foreign and security pol-
icy cooperation, the rhetoric of the successful informal Nordic cooperation pre-
vails, while proposals for a more formalised framework for foreign and security
policy cooperation has fallen on deaf ears.⁶⁰
From distinctiveness to distinction: Nordic

cooperation and its conservative and capitalist
other
The Nordic cultural community
Closely related to the notion of Nordic cooperation as a particularly democratic

and “popular” form of transnational cooperation, is the idea of Norden as a
unique community of shared languages, cultures, and values.⁶¹ This has also
been a central trope in the rhetoric at the Nordic Council, serving as a legitima-
tion of the NC itself, and as part of the motivations for various cooperation ini-
tiatives. The first sessions of the NC in 1953 were, understandably, marked by
much sentimental rhetoric of Nordic kinship and unity. According to Hans Hed-
toft, for example, the NC was “the latest shoot on the tree whose roots run deep
in the Nordic peoples.”⁶² Comparisons to Europe were common, and a standard
argument was that if “Europe” had succeeded in forging cooperation schemes
and trade deals, the Nordic countries should also be able to do so given the ex-
ceptional cultural ties between the countries. Launching the Nordek initiative in
1968, for example, the Danish Liberal Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgaard argued
that the affinity between the Nordic peoples had “the potential for developing
into something more concrete,” while his foreign minister Poul Hartling claimed
 There have been repeated proposals to include foreign and security policy in the institution-
al framework of the NCM, and in 2014 Thorvald Stoltenberg himself suggested the establishment
of a Nordic defence commission. Thorvald Stoltenberg, Nordisk råd, Stockholm 2014, speech
number 292, https://www.norden.org/en/node/18902.
 See e. g. Iver B. Neumann, “Tre Innfallsvinkler til Norden: Kulturfelleskap, oppdemming for
stormaktspolitikk, regionbygging,” in Hva skjedde med Norden, ed. Iver B. Neumann (Oslo: Cap-
pelen, 1992).
 Hans Hedtoft (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1953, 95 and 101; Vilhelm
Buhl (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1953, 78; Nils Herlitz (Sweden, Con-
servative), Nordisk råd, København 1953, 86.
120 Johan Strang
that the region, by virtue of the special kinship between its peoples, had “out-
standing pre-conditions for economic integration.”⁶³
More common, however, than using culture and identity as a lever for deeper
integration was to refer to the cultural and linguistic community as a way to
strengthen the rhetoric when Nordic cooperation had experienced a backlash.⁶⁴
In the wake of the collapsed customs union negotiations, the Norwegian Chris-
tian Democrat Erling Wikborg argued that in language and culture there was
more that tied the Nordic countries together than there was pulling them
apart, while the Danish Conservative Ole Bjørn Kraft bemoaned the Nordic fail-
ures in defence policy and trade, but urged the NC to take its third chance in the
field of culture.⁶⁵ When the Nordek deal broke down in 1970 and Denmark was
moving towards the EEC, the Danish Social Democratic Prime Minister Jens Otto
Krag called upon the NC to strengthen its focus on areas that remained outside
the Rome Treaty, most notably the field of culture.⁶⁶ His Finnish colleague from
the Centre Party, Ahti Karjalainen, even claimed that “Finland has always seen
culture as one of the most important fields of Nordic cooperation.”⁶⁷ Indeed, it
was often those who, for various reasons, had toppled Nordic integration
schemes who felt obliged to praise Nordic cultural unity and the rhetoric was
also often backed up financially by initiatives and investments to further coop-
eration in the field of culture and education. After the collapse of the customs
union the NC established the Literature Prize in 1962 and a Nordic Culture
Fund in 1966. Similarly, the breakdown of the Nordek negotiations led to a
new culture treaty in 1971 and a significant rise in funding for the Nordic Culture
Fund.⁶⁸
 Hilmar Baunsgaard (Denmark, Social Liberal), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1968, 62; Poul Hartling
(Denmark, Liberals), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1968, 87.
 Nils Andrén, “Det officiella kultursamarbetet i Norden,” Den Jyske Historiker 69 – 70 (1994):
213 – 27; Anna Kharkina, From Kinship to Global Brand: The discourse on culture in Nordic coop-
eration after World War II (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2013); Bengt Sunde-
lius, Managing Transnationalism in Northern Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978), 88.
 Erling Wikborg (Norway, Christian People’s Party), Nordisk råd, København 1961, 54. Ole
Bjørn Kraft (Denmark, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1964, 64.
 Jens Otto Krag (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1971, 60 – 61.
 Ahti Karjalainen (Finland, Centre Party), Nordisk råd, København 1971, 82.
 Kharkina, From Kinship to Global Brand, 57– 70; Anne-Marie Mai, “Dreams and realities: The
Nordic Council Literature Prize as a symbol for the construction of Nordic cultural cooperation,”
in Nordic Cooperation: A European region in transition, ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge,
2016), doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 6.
Of course, from today’s horizon it would perhaps be easy to argue that the
aim of the rhetoric of cultural unity and Nordic cultural cooperation was to cre-
ate a culturally (and even racially) homogenous Norden. In some structural
sense, this might be the case, but it is important to remember that in the
1960s and 70s, cultural policy was not primarily associated with national conser-
vatism; rather, it formed a key part of the toolbox of progressive Social Demo-
crats who wanted to counter marketisation and make culture available for larger
sections of society.⁶⁹ It was seen as a pivotal vehicle for democratising society
and building the welfare state, and in this sense, Nordic cooperation in culture
was not merely a compensation for failures in other areas, but part of a progres-
sive programme for modernising society.
In fact, the use of culture as a rhetorical scapegoat was more pertinent in
connection with the reforms of the NC/NCM structure after Finland and Sweden
joined the EU in 1995. For example, although Carl Bildt had warned in 1990 that
the NC would be “reduced to a forum of cultural manifestations” if it refused to
take European integration seriously, he claimed that the common cultural iden-
tity was the very core of Nordic unity when he was Prime Minister in 1994.⁷⁰ In
his opening speech at the 1995 sessions, the Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup
Rasmussen emphasised the importance, at this critical juncture, of strengthen-
ing the Nordic community and its shared values and cultures.⁷¹ Naturally, con-
cerns were raised that the governments were using cultural cooperation in
order to compensate for, or even conceal, the cuts in other sectors of the Nordic
budget.⁷² However, as the future of the NC/NCM structure was cast in doubt,
there was no opposition against singling out culture as a key focus area of Nordic
cooperation. In a period of Europeanisation, cultural cooperation re-emerged as
a tool for legitimising Nordic cooperation in general and the NC/NCM apparatus
in particular. It provided the governments with an alibi against accusations of
not taking Nordic cooperation seriously.
The explicit othering of Europe – or other regions – was rare in this rhetoric
of Nordic cultural unity and cooperation. However, the compensatory logic of in-
vesting in culture in the wake of failures in trade arguably contributed to a self-
propelling narrative according to which Nordic cooperation was primarily about
 Peter Duelund, ed., The Nordic Cultural Model (Copenhagen: Nordic Cultural Institute, 2003);
see e. g. Kulturrådet, Ny kulturpolitik: nuläge och förslag (Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1972),
66.
 Carl Bildt (Sweden, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1990, 96; Nordisk råd, Stockholm
1994, 73.
 Poul Nyrup Rasmussen (Denmark, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1995, 37– 38.
 Tora Aasland Houg (Norway, Socialist), Nordisk råd, Århus 1992, 83.
122 Johan Strang
culture and identity, while European integration was primarily a matter of trade
and economy. Indeed, it has often been claimed that the Nordics have approach-
ed European integration mainly as a matter of trade and economy, while remain-
ing rather reserved about European identity building projects.⁷³
Nordic cooperation and the welfare state
The European other was more pertinent in the discussions on the Nordic welfare
state. The idea that the Nordic countries share social and welfare political ambi-
tions had been a central part of the rhetoric of Nordic distinctiveness, since, per-
haps, the 1930s. This rhetoric had often been encouraged by foreign interest and
modelled on foreign examples.⁷⁴ At the Nordic Council, Nordic welfare excep-
tionalism was construed particularly by othering European conservatism and
capitalism, which, as shown by Swedish historians Bo Stråth and Lars Trägårdh,
formed central tropes in Swedish anti-EEC rhetoric from the 1960s onwards.⁷⁵ At
the NC, this rhetoric was most pronounced among delegates from the left wing,
who already in the 1960s and 70s described the EEC as an “unholy Roman Em-
pire” dominated by capitalistic interests threatening the solidaristic Nordic wel-
 Caroline Howard Grøn, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders Wivel, “Mr. Svensson Goes to Brussels:
Concluding on the Nordic Countries and the European Union,” in The Nordic Countries and the
European Union, ed. Caroline Howard Grøn, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders Wivel (London: Rout-
ledge, 2015); Mary Hilson, The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (London: Reaktion Books,
2008), 134– 44.
 Nils Edling, The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State: Histories of a key concept in the Nor-
dic countries (New York: Berghahn, 2019); Pauli Kettunen, “The transnational construction of
national challenges: the ambiguous Nordic model of welfare and competitiveness,” in Beyond
welfare state models: transnational perspectives on social policy, ed. Pauli Kettunen and Klaus
Petersen (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011); Klaus Petersen, “National, Nordic and trans-Nordic:
transnational perspectives on the history of the Nordic welfare states,” in Beyond welfare state
models: transnational perspectives on social policy, ed. Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen (Chel-
tenham: Edward Elgar, 2011); Klaus Petersen & Carl Marklund, “Return to sender: American im-
ages of the Nordic welfare states and Nordic welfare state branding,” European Journal of Scan-
dinavian Studies 43 (2013): 245 – 57, doi:10.1515/ejss-2013 – 0016.
 Bo Stråth, “Poverty, Neutrality and welfare: Three key concepts in the modern foundation of
the myth of Sweden,” in Myth and memory in the construction of community: Historical patterns
in Europe and beyond, ed., Bo Stråth (Wien: PIE Lang, 2000); Bo Stråth, “The Swedish image”,
374– 75; Lars Trägårdh, “Sweden and the EU: welfare state nationalism and the spectre of ‘Eu-
rope’” in European integration and national identity: The challenge of the Nordic states, ed. Lene
Hansen and Ole Wæver (London: Routledge, 2002).
fare states.⁷⁶ It would, however, be incorrect to reduce the idea of Nordic welfare
exceptionalism to a left-wing construction. Liberals like Bertil Ohlin were also
wary of sharing social policy ambitions with continental Europe, while the Nor-
wegian Conservative leader Kåre Willoch, in the wake of the Nordek breakdown,
argued that Norden was a natural region for cooperation because of “the natural
fellowship of the Nordic countries, based upon common culture and traditions,
and somewhat similar visions for developing our welfare societies.”⁷⁷ The Nordic
welfare state served as a legitimation of Nordic cooperation across the political
spectre.
In social policy discourse, the asymmetrical comparisons to Europe were
often temporalised, but contrary to the discussions on economic integration,
welfare was a field where the Nordics considered themselves as more progressive
than their European others, at least until the turning point of the 1990s. This per-
tained both to the idea of the Nordic social systems as more advanced than the
European ones, and to the achievements of Nordic cooperation in this area – for
example, the social security convention of 1955. Even pro-Europeans like the
Danish Liberal Prime Minister Hilmar Baunsgaard used temporalised rhetoric
to claim that the Nordic countries by virtue of their “achievements in social wel-
fare, democracy and freedom” had much to offer Europe.⁷⁸
There were, however, also internal Nordic dynamics to this temporalised
rhetoric. As shown by welfare state historians Pauli Kettunen, Klaus Petersen,
and others, Nordic cooperation served as an arena for sharing best practices,
and it was not unusual that the countries competed to claim the most advanced
social legislation.⁷⁹ Being ahead – usually the privilege of Sweden – was to a sig-
nificant degree a matter of having the power of determining the “Nordic” solu-
tion to a particular problem. In a Nordic latecomer like Finland, by contrast,
the rhetoric of Nordicness signified, in the words of Pauli Kettunen, “a future
code and normative standard of Finnish society.”⁸⁰ At a time when social policy
 Einar Olgeirsson (Iceland, Socialist), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1962, 97– 98; C.H. Hermansson
(Sweden, Socialist), Nordisk råd, København 1971, 100; Aksel Larsen (Denmark, Socialist), Nor-
disk råd, København 1971, 149.
 Bertil Ohlin (Sweden, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1957, 101; Kåre Willoch (Norway, Con-
servative), Nordisk råd, Helsingfors 1972, 95.
 Hilmar Baunsgaard (Denmark, Social Liberal), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1970, 76.
 Kettunen et al. “The Nordic Model”; Petersen, “National, Nordic and trans-Nordic.”
 Pauli Kettunen et al., “The Nordic Model”, 77– 78; Pauli Kettunen, “The Nordic Welfare State
in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of History 26, no. 3 (2001): 234, doi:10.1080/
034687501750303864; see also Stefan Nygård and Johan Strang, “Conceptual Universalization
and the Role of the Peripheries,” Contributions to the History of Concepts 12, no. 1 (1 June
2017): 55 – 75, doi:10.3167/choc.2017.120105.
124 Johan Strang
modernisation was thought of as a linear and almost deterministic development,

“the Nordic” became synonymous to “the most advanced” and even “the future”.
Curiously, however, the rhetoric of Nordic cooperation could also have a con-
servative function. A pertinent example was the discussions on the Swedish mar-
riage law reforms at the NC in the early 1970s which aimed at strengthening the
position of wives, making it easier for couples to divorce each other, and improv-
ing the legal position of unmarried couples. This provoked conservatives at the
NC to mobilise the rhetoric of Nordic cooperation against the proposed reform,
claiming that Sweden was abandoning a century-long tradition of Nordic legal
harmonisation. According to the Norwegian Conservative Berte Rognerud, for ex-
ample, the Swedish reform represented not only a radical break with western tra-
ditions and conceptions of marriage. It was also a violation of the Helsinki Trea-
ty, as Sweden intended to transform its legislation without paying due respect to
the situation in other Nordic countries.⁸¹ Carl Lidbom, the legal advisor in Olof
Palme’s Social Democratic cabinet, responded that as a result of Danish EEC
membership “harmonisation was no longer a realistic ambition for Nordic coop-
eration,” but he also expressed fears that the calls for harmonisation were slow-
ing down the development of the welfare state.⁸² Prime Minister Palme made the
point even more forcefully, arguing that “Nordic cooperation must never become
a conservative hindrance for a country to move forward along the path of prog-
ress.”⁸³ Among legal scholars, the debates on the Swedish marriage law are often
referred to as a turning point in the history of Nordic legal cooperation: the point
at which Sweden single-handedly abandoned the aim of Nordic legal harmoni-
sation.⁸⁴ It is more accurate, however, to view it as a clash between two different
understandings of Nordic cooperation: a progressive one according to which Nor-
dic cooperation was a forum where the laggards could learn from the more ad-
vanced, and a deliberative one where Nordic cooperation was a forum for nego-
tiating common solutions. In temporal terms, the question was whether the
Nordic countries would synchronise around the most advanced or around an
average speed of development.⁸⁵
 Berte Rognerud (Norway, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1973, 125 – 126.
 Carl Lidbom (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1973, 80 – 83.
 Olof Palme (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1973, 122.
 Letto-Vanamo and Tamm, “Cooperation in the field of law,” 104– 105; Kjell Åke Modéer,
“Comparative critical legal studies: US and the Nordic countries – a review article,” Retfærd
37 (2014): 128.
 Helge Jordheim and Einar Wigen, “Conceptual Synchronisation: From Progress to Crisis,”
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46, no. 3 (June 2018): 421– 39, https://doi.org/
10.1177/0305829818774781.
The welfare state was in the 1960s and 70s seen as both a product of Nordic
cooperation and as somethig that legitimised it, but it was not until the 1990s
that “the Nordic welfare state” became a key concept at the NC sessions – con-
spicuously at a time when it no longer self-evidently represented the future.⁸⁶
The end of the Cold War pulled the rug from under the rhetoric of the Nordic
middle way between socialism and capitalism, and the economic recession in
Finland and Sweden raised serious questions about the viability of a large public
sector and comprehensive social services. Moreover, the acceleration of Europe-
an integration and the ensuing EU debates across the region challenged the re-
lationship between Norden and its asymmetrical European other.
At the NC sessions it was, again, particularly the left-wing members who saw
European integration as a threat to both Nordic cooperation and the Nordic wel-
fare state. They claimed that the EU was a neoliberal design that played into the
hands of big corporations, capital, and business, and argued that the Conserva-
tives were using the EU as a tool for dismantling the Nordic welfare state.⁸⁷
Some, like the Norwegian socialist Kjellbjørg Lunde, even tried to mobilise inten-
sified Nordic cooperation as a pro-welfare state alternative to the EU.⁸⁸ For the
Social Democrats European integration was a divisive issue. However, a popular
argument, especially among Swedish Social Democrats, was that Nordic cooper-
ation could become a vehicle for exporting the welfare state to Europe – that Eu-
rope could become more Nordic, at least as much as Norden became more Euro-
pean.⁸⁹ The Finnish Social Democrat Erkki Tuomioja, in turn, was less buoyant
and referred ironically to “the admirable self-confidence by which Ingvar Carls-
son has professed the aim of realising Margaret Thatcher’s nightmare of a wel-
 Pauli Kettunen, “The conceptual history of the welfare state in Finland,” in The changing
meanings of the welfare state: Histories of a key concept in the Nordic countries, ed. Nils Edling
(New York: Berghahn, 2019); Bo Stråth, “Den nordiska modellen. Historisk bakgrund och hur
talet om en nordisk modell uppstod,” Nordisk tidskrift för vetenskap, konst och industri (1993),
55 – 61. Moreover, as pointed out elsewhere in this volume, the 1990s was also when the “Nordic
welfare state” was canonised in academic discourse through the Danish social scientist Gøsta
Esping-Andersen’s book Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
 Lars Werner (Sweden, Socialist), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1988, 148; Claes Andersson (Finland, So-
cialist), Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1989, 35 – 36.
 Kjellbjørg Lunde (Norway, Socialist), Nordisk råd, Oslo 1993, 73. The Finnish Centre Party pol-
itician and devoted EU opponent Paavo Väyrynen also proposed a Nordic community as an al-
ternative to the EU. Pertti Joenniemi, “Finland in the new Europe: A Herderian or Hegelian con-
cept,” in European integration and national identity: The challenge of the Nordic states, ed. Lene
Hansen and Ole Wæver (London: Routledge, 2002), 206.
 Mats Hällström (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, København 1991, 100; Ingvar Carls-
son (Sweden, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Stockholm 1994, 66.
126 Johan Strang
fare Europe.”⁹⁰ Conservatives across the region were overwhelmingly in favour of

European integration, which also translated into a somewhat ambivalent atti-
tude towards the legacy of the (Social Democratic) Nordic welfare state. The Dan-
ish Prime Minister Poul Schlüter, for example, argued that Nordic EC member-
ship could have something important to offer Europe, “in their societal model,
even if it has some deficiencies.”⁹¹ Most explicit in their anti-Nordic rhetoric
were libertarians in the Danish and Norwegian Progressive Parties, who saw
themselves as representatives of a liberal wave sweeping across Europe that
eventually would emancipate also the Nordic countries from socialist authoritar-
ianism. The Norwegian Progressive Party chairman Carl I. Hagen professed in
1991 that “The epoch of strong states, high taxes and bureaucracy is over,” call-
ing also for the NC to be shut down, as it was a Cold War construction that had
overplayed its role.⁹² The fate of the Nordic welfare state and Nordic cooperation
were intimately related to each other in these early 1990s discussions on Euro-
pean integration.
The New Nordic brand
The EC/EU debates of the early 1990s were clearly a turning point in the rhetoric
of Nordic cooperation. It was the first time that doubts over, and even criticism
of, the idea of Norden as a distinct region were heard at the NC. As the asymmet-
rical opposition to European integration dissolved, there was a growing confu-
sion as to the meaning and purpose of Nordic cooperation. The professed anti-
Nordists, however, remained few, and the rhetoric of Nordic kinship continued
to figure in celebratory speeches at the NC, but the discussions were undoubted-
 Erkki Tuomioja (Finland, Social Democrat), Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1991, 93.
 Kimmo Sasi (Finland, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1989, 74– 75; Poul Schlüter
(Denmark, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1990, 6.
 Carl I. Hagen (Norway, Progressive), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1990, 89; Nordisk råd, København
1991, 62; Nordisk råd, Mariehamn 1991, 42; Nordisk råd, Oslo 1993, 65; Pia Kjærsgaard (Denmark,
Progressive), Nordisk råd, København 1991, 147; Nordisk råd, Århus 1992, 67; Pål Atle Skjervengen
(Norway, Progressive), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 1990, 66. The right-wing populists changed their
position on the EU following the Maastricht Treaty 1992 (and their view on the welfare state
in the early 2000s). See Ann-Cathrine Jungar and Anders Ravik Jupskås, “Populist Radical
Right Parties in the Nordic Region: A New and Distinct Party Family?,” Scandinavian Political
Studies 37, no. 3 (September 2014): 215 – 38, doi:10.1111/1467– 9477.12024; Jens Rydgren, “Explain-
ing the Emergence of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Case of Denmark,” West European
Politics 27, no. 3 (May 2005): 474– 502, doi:10.1080/0140238042000228103.
ly marked by a sense of marginalisation of “the Nordic.” It did not take long,

however, before culture and welfare returned as key features of the debates at
the NC, but as a significantly transformed rhetoric that relied little on the Euro-
pean other, and even less on Nordic cooperation. Instead, “the Nordic” was re-
invented as a global brand, as a trademark to be used on global markets.
According to Swedish historian Anna Kharkina, the 2005 report Norden – en
global vinderregion (Norden – a global winner region) was particularly signifi-
cant in introducing the concept of branding to the NC/NCM apparatus. Commis-
sioned by the NCM and produced by the Danish think tank Mandag Morgen, the
report painted a picture of globalisation as simultaneously a threat and an op-
portunity for the Nordic countries.⁹³ Threatened by intensified global competi-
tion, the success of the Nordic countries in different international rankings,
such as the World Competitiveness Index, was a source for optimism. According
to the report, the region shared a number of culturally embedded values that
formed crucial ingredients in the recipe for a successful innovation economy,
and thus Mandag Morgen urged the Nordic governments to redefine the aim
and purpose of Nordic cooperation towards branding the region on the basis
of these distinctive Nordic values and the cultural legacy of the region.⁹⁴
The idea of “Norden as a global winner region” captured the imagination of
the politicians at the NC, who were eager to capitalise on the improved global
reputation of the Nordic countries. In 2006, the NC devoted the Prime Ministers’
summit to a discussion of the report. The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stolten-
berg did raise a warning that the Nordics should not attempt to become global
winners at the expense of others.⁹⁵ But the general sentiment among the Nordic
leaders was that the Nordics had succeeded in balancing a free market with so-
cial security, and as such provided an example for others to learn from. The Fin-
nish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen proudly noted that “the awareness of the
Nordic model has increased lately, not only within the region itself. The Nordic
brand is spreading around the world. Our success in the international rankings
has given the Nordic countries well-deserved attention.”⁹⁶ The Danish Prime
Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in turn, praised the Danish model of “flexicur-
 Mandag Morgen, Norden som global vinderregion: På sporet af den nordiska konkurrencemo-
del (Copenhagen: Nordic Council and Nordic Council of Ministers, 2005); Kettunen, “The trans-
national construction.”
 Mandag Morgen, Norden som global vinderregion, 81– 84.
 Jens Stoltenberg (Norway, Labour Party), Nordisk råd, København 2006, 58.
 Matti Vanhanen (Finland, Centre Party), Nordisk råd, København 2006, 39.
128 Johan Strang
ity” and called for joint Nordic branding initiatives to strengthen the position of
Nordic countries in the global markets.⁹⁷
The Nordic welfare state had throughout the history of the NC been thought
of as a model for other countries to learn from, but there was something new in
this turn to region branding. The Mandag Morgen report can be related to the
contestation of the Social Democratic ownership of the welfare state, which
had started already in the 1990s both in politics and in research.⁹⁸ As the origins
of the welfare state were traced further back in history, the welfare state was de-
coupled from social democracy and became an expression of a common Nordic
cultural legacy which every political party could claim to represent – albeit in
different ways. The cultural turn played into the hands of the xenophobic
right, for whom the welfare state was threatened by globalisation and immigra-
tion, but also the Conservatives claimed to represent the Nordic model in a series
of political campaigns that framed them as “the true labour parties” and “the
new welfare parties.”⁹⁹ Even the Social Democrats embraced the cultural turn
proclaiming the values of the welfare state as the natural values of the Nordic
nations: they were Nordic values – “nordiska värderingar.” Intended as a move
to monopolise the welfare state, the redescription of the welfare state from pol-
itics to culture served the contrary purpose of stretching the concept, making it
available for a broader variety of political actors. Indeed, as pointed out by the
Swedish political historian Jenny Andersson, the appeal to national values and
unity was a way of silencing conflicts around change.¹⁰⁰
Crucially, however, the cultural turn and the rhetoric of “Nordic values” also
disconnected the welfare state from Nordic cooperation, putting the emphasis on
Nordicness alone. The Danish historian Mads Mordhorst, for example, has ar-
gued that nation branding transformed the idea of the nation from a social con-
struct to an ontological object with an essence. Branding was a nationalism for
 Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Denmark, Liberal), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 2005, 2; Nordisk råd,
København 2006, 74.
 Lønning, Ojala, Stavad, NC 2005, 31– 40; Peter Baldwin, The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class
Bases of the European Welfare State, 1875 – 1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511586378; Øystein Sørensen & Bo Stråth, ed., The Cultural Construction of
Norden, (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press), 1997.
 See the individual chapters in Nils Edling, ed., The changing meanings of the welfare state:
histories of a key concept in the Nordic countries (New York: Berghahn, 2019); Carl Marklund,
“The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas: The Welfare State as Scandinavia’s Best
Brand,” Geopolitics 22, no. 3 (July 2017): 623 – 39, doi:10.1080/14650045.2016.1251906. See also
Hilson and Hoctor in this volume.
 Jenny Andersson, The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the
Knowledge Age, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 43 – 61.
the new competition state, bringing together the call for economic competitive-
ness and the quest for cultural belonging in a period of neoliberal globalisa-
tion.¹⁰¹ As such, the nation became less an internal concern of creating a com-
mon horizon of meaning and values, and more an external strategy for
promoting the interest of the nation on the global market. The rhetoric of Nordic-
ness served this purpose well as it built a bridge between the competitive and
modern Nordic model and the primordial Nordic culture and values on which
it allegedly was based. Nordic cooperation was no longer part of the narrative.¹⁰²
Something similar also happened to the role of culture in Nordic coopera-
tion. If cultural cooperation previously had served identity building purposes,
strengthening connections across the region, “the Nordic” was now turned
into an attribute or quality of the cultural products of the region. The task of
the NC/NCM framework was no longer to promote dialogue or interaction be-
tween cultural institutions or independent cultural actors in the different Nordic
countries, but to take successful initiatives from the creative industries and pro-
mote them on the global markets. The turn towards branding redefined the pur-
pose of the NCM, who compensated for its marginalisation as a political forum
by accentuating its role as an advertising agency. In the years that followed
the Mandag Morgen report the NCM streamlined its institutions and redirected
funds to grant schemes and a series of region branding projects, like the New
Nordic Food programme analysed by Lily Kelting in this volume.¹⁰³ The rhetoric
of Nordic cooperation and European integration was replaced by a rhetoric of
“New Nordicness,” where not only the asymmetrical European other, but also
the ambition of forging a transnational Nordic community, had lost currency.
By way of paradox, however, this essentialisation of “the Nordic” did not en-
tail a return of “the European other.” As suggested by British IR scholar Christo-
pher Browning, the idea of something distinctively Nordic was, since the end of
the Cold War, undermined by a melding of Nordic and European norms and val-
 Peter Duelund, “Nordic Cultural Policies: A Critical View,” International Journal of Cultural
Policy 14, no. 1 (February 2008): 18 – 19, doi:10.1080/10286630701856468; Mads Mordhorst, “Na-
tion branding and nationalism,” in Nationalism and the Economy: Explorations into a Neglected
Relationship, ed. Stefan Berger and Thomas Fetzer (Budapest: Central European University Press,
2019).
 Kettunen et al, “The Nordic Model and the rise and fall of Nordic cooperation.”
 Duelund, “Nordic cultural policies”; Kharkina, From kinship to global brand; Mathias Dan-
bolt, “New Nordic Exceptionalism: Jeuno JE Kim and Ewa Einhorn’s The United Nations of Nor-
den and Other Realist Utopias,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8, no. 1 (January 2016):
doi:10.3402/jac.v8.30902; Kharkina, From Kinship to Global Brand, 113 – 162.
130 Johan Strang
ues.¹⁰⁴ Indeed, when Matti Vanhanen in 2006 praised the global success of the
Nordic model, he also emphasised that “Europe and Norden share a similar at-
titude towards the soft sectors, to social security and sustainable develop-
ment.”¹⁰⁵ Defined less in terms of social democracy and more through global
competitiveness and international rankings, the Nordic model was transformed
from an alternative to a superior implementation of a common European theme.
When the Nordic ceased to signify “the other Europe,” it was reinvented as “the
better Europe.”¹⁰⁶
Conclusions
This chapter has revisited the debates on the purpose and nature of Nordic co-
operation at the Nordic Council, not to revise the traditional narratives of Nordic
cooperation, but with the aim of exploring how these narratives were created in
the first place. Strategic security concerns and economic interests undoubtedly
pulled the Nordic countries apart, making more binding forms of cooperation,
let alone a formalised supranational Nordic federation, impossible. In the
wake of failures in security and trade, cooperation was directed towards the
fields of culture and welfare, which gradually became defining features of Nordic
cooperation itself. More often than not, this rhetoric of Nordic cooperation was
based on an asymmetrical juxtaposition to European integration. Nordic cooper-
ation was framed as democratic and “popular,” anchored in shared cultural leg-
acies and a common social political vision, in contrast to the supranational, con-
servative, and trade-focused European integration.
The rhetoric of Nordic cooperation was never static, it was constantly adjust-
ing to a mutating relationship to Europe. Particularly when, in the 1990s, the op-
position between Norden and Europe was dissolved, the traditional narratives of
Nordic cooperation had to be redescribed. The democratic and popular character
of Nordic cooperation was turned into a matter of flexibility, anchored in deep
 Christopher S. Browning, ‘Branding Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of Excep-
tionalism’, Cooperation and Conflict 42, no. 1 (March 2007): 27– 51, doi:10.1177/0010836707073475.
 Matti Vanhanen (Finland, Centre Party), Nordisk råd, København 2006, 39 – 40. See also
e. g. Inge Lønning (Norway, Conservative), Nordisk råd, Reykjavik 2005, 18 – 19.
 On the notion of the Nordic region and Nordic cooperation as “the other Europe,” see for
example, Barry Turner and Gunilla Nordquist, The Other European Community: Integration and
Cooperation in Northern Europe (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1982); or more recently, Caroline Howard
Grøn, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders Wivel, eds., The Nordic Countries and the European Union:
Still the Other European Community? (London: Routledge, 2015).
and trusting personal relations between leading politicians in the region, while
Nordic cultural and welfare exceptionalism were reinvented as key aspects of a
“New Nordic brand” to be promoted in international arenas. Both developments
point to a redeployment of “the Nordic” from a transnational community that
the NC/NCM was creating, to a pre-existing quality and an attribute that the
NC/NCM would help Nordic actors to utilise. As such, it is not a surprise that
the rhetoric of (New) Nordicness has not served to encourage Nordic coopera-
tion.
Today, there seems to be more use for the Nordic brand than there is for the
Nordic community. The purpose of this chapter is not to present a nostalgic call
for a return to the past. In an age of Europeanisation and globalisation, it was
arguably quite reasonable that the NC and NCM turned outwards, focusing on
branding the region at a global level. The rhetoric of “the (New) Nordic” served
as a way for the NC and NCM to legitimise themselves in a period when the in-
terest in political cooperation on a Nordic level was diminishing. It becomes
problematic only when branding replaces cooperation, because the first can
hardly survive without the other. There a danger that the rhetoric of Nordicness
loses its rhetorical force without the complex practices of comparing and con-
trasting the countries with each other. As such, the NC and NCM might not
need a European other, but they certainly need to acknowledge their fundamen-
tal role in construing “the Nordic” through Nordic cooperation.
Pirjo Markkola
Nordic Gender Equality: Between
Administrative Cooperation and Global
Branding
The presentation of the Nordic countries as

world leaders in gender equality
The Nordic countries are commonly renowned for their comprehensive welfare
states, a high level of social services and a dual-earner family model. They
also hold top positions in international rankings of welfare policies, social secur-
ity, and gender equality, among others.¹ One such ranking is the World Economic
Forum’s annual Gender Gap Report, introduced in 2006. The aim of the report is
to reveal role models in economic gender equality as well as to provide informa-
tion in support of the Forum’s initiatives to close the economic gender gap glob-
ally.² Based on four criteria – opportunities for economic participation, educa-
tional attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment – the
ranking indicates aspects of equal opportunities between men and women
and the ways in which resources, scarce or ample, are divided between them.
So, the rankings measure only gender-based disparities. Nevertheless, as Saadia
Zahidi wrote in Huffington Post in 2013, the Nordic countries stick out:
Although no country in the world has yet achieved gender equality, the Nordic countries
consistently stand out in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report,
 Johan Strang, “Introduction: The Nordic model of transnational cooperation,” in Nordic Coop-
eration: A European region in transition, ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016), 1– 27,
doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 1; Johanna Kantola, “Persistent paradoxes, turbulent times. Gender
equality policies in the Nordics in the 2010s,” in The Nordic Economic, Social and Political
Model. Challenges in the 21st Century, ed. Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén (London:
Routledge, 2021), 212.
 Klaus Schwab, “Preface,” In The Global Gender Gap Report 2009, ed. Ricardo Hausmann et al.
(Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2009), v; For the reports, see, World Economic Forum, accessed
17 September, 2020 https://www.weforum.org/projects/closing-the-gender-gap-gender-parity-
task-forces.
OpenAccess. © 2022 Pirjo Markkola, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-007
134 Pirjo Markkola
which measures how well countries are doing at removing the obstacles that hold women
back.³
According to the 2014 report, for example, “[n]o country in the world has fully
closed the gender gap, but all five of the Nordic countries have closed more
than 80 % of it.”⁴ The Nordic countries held all five top positions. They were re-
ferred to as “role models in terms of their ability to achieve gender parity.”⁵ In
2020, the ranking appeared quite similar. The top was still occupied by the Nor-
dic countries; however, Denmark was only fourteenth, a position to which it had
dropped in 2017.⁶ Of course, the rankings are problematic, and their results are
always partial. More importantly, changes in the rankings indicate that gender
equality is a process and that the gender gap, as measured by one inquiry,
can also widen. In terms of gender equality, countries are in constant motion.
The Nordic countries are clearly presented as world leaders in gender equal-
ity. However, any historian or social scientist interested in gender issues could
point out a long list of failures and shortcomings in Nordic gender equality pol-
icies and gender relations, whether national or regional. According to several
critical assessments since the 1970s and 1980s, attempts to reach gender equality
constantly encounter both structural and ideological obstacles based on various
factors in education, the labour market, family relations, and general attitudes.⁷
This dilemma, where the Nordic countries are presented as world leaders on the
 Saadia Zahidi, “What Makes the Nordic Countries Gender Equality Winners?” Huffington Post,
24 October 2013, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-makes-the-nordic-cou_b_4159555#:~:tex-
t=All%20Nordic%20countries%20reached%2099,to%20primary%20and%20secondary%20edu-
cation.
 World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2014 (Geneva: World Economic Forum,
2014), 7.
 World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap 2014, 37.
 World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2017 (Geneva: World Economic Forum,
2017), 8; World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report 2020 (Geneva: World Economic
Forum, 2020), 9.
 Elina Haavio-Mannila, “The Position of Women,” in Nordic Democracy, ed. Erik Allardt et al
(Copenhagen: Det danske selskab, 1981); Elina Haavio-Mannila et al., Unfinished democracy:
women in Nordic politics (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1985); Marja Keränen, Finnish ‘undemocracy’:
Essays on gender and politics (Helsinki: Finnish Political Science Association, 1990); Nordic
Council of Ministers, Kön och våld – Gender & Violence: Ett nordiskt forskningsprogram 2000 –
2004 slutrapport. A Nordic Research Programme 2000 – 2004 Final Report (Copenhagen: Nordic
Council of Ministers, 2005), 7. Among the more current studies, see Johanna Kantola, Kevät Nou-
siainen, and Milja Saari, eds., Tasa-arvo toisin nähtynä. Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia tasa-
arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2012); Kantola, “Persistent paradoxes.”
Nordic Gender Equality 135
one hand and filled with problems on the other, is intriguing. What makes seem-
ingly successful Nordic gender equality policies so complicated?
In this chapter, I am interested in the ways in which understandings of
equality between women and men were rhetorically presented and formed a
transnational Nordic gender equality policy, which was shared and confirmed
by several agreements and action plans. The current assessment of the Nordic
countries as leaders in gender equality presupposes not only a historical change
in the concept of equality but also a historical process of conceptualizing gender
equality as specifically Nordic. To understand how “Nordicness” in the field of
gender equality was established, I will give an overview of the Nordic coopera-
tion on gender equality, initiated in the early 1970s, and explore how certain gen-
der equality policies were gradually named Nordic. This chapter argues that the
1990s were a turning point in the Nordic cooperation on gender equality. Since
the 1990s, naming and even branding gender equality as Nordic gained ground
among the Nordic gender equality agencies. The Nordic-Baltic cooperation, in
particular, served to establish a platform for the rhetoric of Nordicness in the
field of gender equality. Moreover, the European Union challenged the Nordic
gender equality officials to sharpen their conceptions. This chapter explores
how policies became “Nordic,” how the concept of “Nordic” was used, and
how the Nordic countries came to be presented as world leaders in gender equal-
ity.
The main sources consist of documents produced by Nordic gender equality
agencies. The Nordic Council of Ministers, founded in 1971, was the main body to
coordinate Nordic cooperation on equal rights. Its publications include action
plans for Nordic cooperation and various project reports and programmes
since the 1970s. The concept of “gender equality” is used as an analytical con-
cept, my tool to study Nordic cooperation in policy and politics. At the same
time, my intention is to be historically sensitive to the changing conceptualiza-
tions of “gender equality” (S. jämställdhet, N. likestilling, DK. ligestilling, I. jafn-
rétti, F. tasa-arvo). Until the turn of the 21st century, jämställdhet and its Nordic
synonyms were often translated as equal opportunities in English language pub-
lications. Equal opportunities referred to the same rights, responsibilities, and
possibilities for women and men; moreover, women and men were mainly under-
stood as binary categories. Later timelines and histories summarizing the early
years of Nordic cooperation often use the concept “gender equality,”⁸ but it
 E. g. Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality – a stronger Nordic Region. Nor-
dic co-operation programme on gender equality 2015 – 2018 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Min-
isters, 2015).
136 Pirjo Markkola
was not the concept used by contemporaries. As the Finnish political scientist
Anne Maria Holli has argued, “gender equality” as a linguistic construction is
always a context-bound concept. Other scholars have also stressed the impor-
tance of studying “gender equality” as a historical concept, as its content not
only varies according to time and place but also can have differing meanings
in the same historical context.⁹ Therefore, a historically sensitive reading of con-
cepts is needed. When it comes to “Nordic gender equality,” the rhetorical as-
pects of Nordicness further underline the need to be historically specific.
Equal rights become Nordic in the 1970s

There is a long tradition of Scandinavian and Nordic cooperation since the 19th
century, that can be tracked through the meetings, conferences, and comparative
projects of professionals and civil society organisations. Academic scholars and
civil servants formed Nordic networks and launched Nordic journals and other
publications. Lawyers started inter-Nordic meetings in 1872 and other profes-
sions followed the same pattern. Institutionalised Nordic cooperation in the
fields of social policy and child welfare were established after the First World
War. In the 1920s, following the inter-Nordic cooperation of lawyers and activists
in the women’s movement, there were national reforms in family law. By 1929,
relatively similar marriage laws were passed in all the Nordic countries.¹⁰
Social policy experts, politicians, and civil servants played a major role in
Nordic cooperation, and their work together lead to a shared interest in gender
issues as well. The Nordic scholars Thorsten Borring Olesen and Johan Strang
 Anne Maria Holli, “Kriittisiä näkökulmia tasa-arvon tutkimukseen,” in Tasa-arvo toisin nähty-
nä. Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, ed. Johanna Kantola,
Kevät Nousiainen, and Milja Saari (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2012), 74; On historical context, see
Kari Melby, Anna-Birte Ravn, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg, eds., “A Nordic model of gen-
der equality? Introduction,” in Gender equality and welfare politics in Scandinavia. The limits of
political ambition? (Bristol: Policy Press, 2008), 18 – 20.
 Strang, “Introduction,” 6 – 8; Kari Melby et al., Inte ett ord om kärlek. Äktenskap och politik i
Norden ca 1850 – 1930 (Göteborg & Stockholm: Makadam förlag, 2006); Klaus Petersen, “Con-
structing Nordic welfare? Nordic Social Political Cooperation 1919 – 1955,” in The Nordic Model
of Welfare. A Historical Reappraisal, ed. Niels Finn Christiansen et al. (Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum Press, 2006), 70 – 71; Kari Melby et al., “What is Nordic in the Nordic gender
model?” in Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical Perspectives on Social Policy,
ed. Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen (Cheltenham & Northampton MA: Edward Elgar, 2011),
150 – 51; Astri Andresen et al., Barnen och välfärdspolitiken. Nordiska barndomar 1900 – 2000
(Stockholm: Dialogos Förlag, 2011).
state that official Nordic cooperation “contributed to a Nordification of political

discourse and to the promotion of inter-Nordic exchange of ideas among govern-
ments, parliamentarians and civil servants.”¹¹ Simultaneously, new popular
movements, especially second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, had an im-
pact on the Nordic arena. Moreover, international organisations and transnation-
al movements highlighting human rights and the rights of women were often
used as a point of reference in the Nordic countries. The 1945 Charter of the Unit-
ed Nations and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided not
only international inspiration but also more compelling incentives for Nordic
gender equality policies. As historian Kristine Kjærsgaard shows, the Danish par-
ticipation in the UN conferences on women in 1975, 1980, and 1985 served in var-
ious ways the promotion of national gender equality policies in the 1970s and
1980s.¹²
Nordic cooperation on equality between men and women became institu-
tionalised in the 1970s. The Nordic Council of Ministers (hereafter Council of Min-
isters) was the main agency to coordinate Nordic cooperation on equal rights.
This has been pointed out by the Danish historian Bente Rosenbeck who argues
that
over a number of years, the Nordic Council of Ministers has prioritized equal rights, spon-
soring a committee for equal rights issues made up of council officials as well as setting up
the post of official equal rights consultant, a position later renamed equal rights advisory
officer.¹³
In 1974, the Council of Ministers decided that the Nordic governments should
nominate representatives to liaise with the other governments on equality be-
 Thorsten Borring Olesen and Johan Strang, “European challenge to Nordic institutional co-
operation: Past, present and future,” in Nordic Cooperation: The European region in transition,
ed. Johan Strang (London: Routledge, 2016), 29, doi:10.4324_9781315755366 – 2.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men in the Nordic Countries: Facts on Equal Oppor-
tunities 1988 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1988), 6; Helvi Sipilä, “Yhdistyneitten
Kansakuntien toiminta sukupuolten tasa-arvon edistämiseksi,” in Toisenlainen tasa-arvo, ed.
Sirkka Sinkkonen and Eila Ollikainen (Kuopio: Kustannuskiila Oy, 1982), 13 – 20; Kristine
Kjærsgaard, “International Arenas and Domestic Institution Formation: The Impact of the UN
Women’s Conferences in Denmark, 1975 – 1985,” Nordic Journal of Human Rights 36 (2018):
271– 86; Heidi Kurvinen and Arja Turunen, “Toinen aalto uudelleen tarkasteltuna. Yhdistys
9:n rooli suomalaisen feminismin historiassa,” Sukupuolentutkimus 3/2018, 21– 34.
 Bente Rosenbeck, “Nordic women’s studies and gender research,” in Is there a Nordic Fem-
inism? Nordic feminist thought on culture and society, ed. Drude von der Fehr, Anna G. Jónasdót-
tir, and Bente Rosenbeck (London: UCL Press, 1998), 354.
138 Pirjo Markkola
tween women and men. The following year, when the UN women’s decade on
equality, development, and peace commenced, the Council of Ministers estab-
lished a Nordic contact group on equal rights. In 1978, it published the first Nor-
dic Equality Bulletin and presented a proposal to establish a Committee of Senior
Officials for Equality. Since then, the Council of Ministers has regularly approved
and confirmed an action plan for Nordic cooperation on equality between
women and men. The Committee assumed responsibility for Nordic cooperation
on equality in 1980, and an advisor with responsibility for equal rights was ap-
pointed to the Council of Ministers’ secretariat in 1981.¹⁴ During the following
years these decisions defined the administrative structures of the inter-Nordic
work for equality.
Policies to promote gender equality were thus institutionalized from above,
which continued and extended the national equality policies that were often
called “state feminism,” a concept coined by the Norwegian political scientist
Helga Maria Hernes in 1987 to describe the ties between the welfare state and
feminism. According to Hernes, the Nordic welfare states were not necessarily
woman friendly, but they had capacity to develop into woman-friendly societies.
The political scientists Dorothy McBride and Amy Mazur define state feminism as
consisting of “the actions by women’s policy agencies to include women’s move-
ment demands and actors into the state to produce feminist outcomes in either
policy processes or societal impact or both.”¹⁵ In the Nordic countries, state fem-
inism materialized on both a national and transnational, Nordic level. Moreover,
one crucial aspect of state feminism has consisted of the focus on knowledge
production, as the historian Eirinn Larsen has indicated in her study of the po-
litical process that led to the establishment of the Norwegian Secretariat for Fem-
inist Research in 1977.¹⁶ In the Nordic debates, state feminism has been criticized
by feminist scholars, but it has also been used as a relatively neutral concept to
describe gender policies in the Nordic welfare states.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality – a stronger Nordic Region: Nordic
co-operation programme on gender equality 2015 – 2018 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Minis-
ters, 2015), 26 – 27.
 Helga Maria Hernes, Welfare State and Woman Power: Essays in State Feminism (Oslo: Nor-
wegian University Press, 1987); Amy Mazur and Dorothy McBride, “State Feminism,” in Politics,
Gender and Concepts: Theory and Methodology, ed. Gary Goertz and Amy Mazur (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 244– 69; Dorothy McBride and Amy Mazur, The Politics of
State Feminism: Innovation in Comparative Research (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
2010).
 Eirinn Larsen, “State feminism revisited as knowledge history: The case of Norway,” in His-
tories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia. Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations, ed. Johan Östling,
Niklas Olsen, and David Larsson Heidenblad (London: Routledge, 2020).
The Nordic contact group, since 1978 the Nordic Committee of Senior Offi-
cials for Equality, took immediate action to arrange seminars and meetings be-
tween politicians, civil servants, researchers, and activists in the Nordic coun-
tries. In 1976, the first joint seminar Equality between Men and Women in
Family and Work was arranged in Sweden. Another seminar, this time in Finland,
discussed legal guarantees of equality between women and men in the Nordic
region. The themes of these meetings suggest that, from the very beginning, fam-
ily, work, and legislation were central elements in the debate on Nordic equality
between women and men. Most publications and seminar programmes did not,
however, name these aspects “Nordic” or define the Nordic characteristics of
equality. An explicitly Nordic gender equality was not on the agenda. Instead,
the adjective “Nordic” was regularly used as a descriptor for region, or cooper-
ation. Nordic cooperation took place in the Nordic region, but the other rhetoric
of Nordicness was not very powerful at this time.
The several projects launched by the Committee of Senior Officials for Equal-
ity reveal other interesting aspects of contemporary concepts of equality. In gen-
eral, the concept of equality (jämlikhet) became central in the language of Nordic
social policy in the 1970s, as Nils Edling, Jørn Henrik Petersen, and Klaus Peters-
en have concluded. The language of equality was promoted not only by Social
Democrats and the trade unions but also by feminists who introduced equality
between women and men (jämställdhet) to the social policy language.¹⁷
Among the first projects on the inter-Nordic level were the 1977 project on pater-
nal leave, the 1977 project about mass media and equality, and the 1978 project
on marriage and livelihood in the Nordic region. Projects on social planning and
types of housing, the gender-segregated labour market, and the impact of new
technology on equality in the workplace also belonged to the first initiatives.¹⁸
All these topics were typical social issues of the 1970s. The topics of the projects
also indicate that key areas of equal opportunities and equality between women
and men dealt with families, parenthood, and the labour market.
 Nils Edling, Jørn Henrik Petersen, and Klaus Petersen, “Social policy language in Denmark
and Sweden,” in Analysing social policy concepts and language: Comparative and transnational
perspectives, ed. Daniel Béland and Klaus Petersen (Bristol: Policy Press, 2014), 24.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1988, 6; Nordic Council of Ministers, Together
for Gender Equality, 26.
140 Pirjo Markkola
Introduction of Nordic programmes

A more systematic way of promoting equality between women and men on the
Nordic level consisted of specific programmes and action plans, while the prac-
tice of launching projects continued. As the Presidency of the Council of Minis-
ters rotated among the member countries, each country in turn had a mandate to
prioritise themes and topics in gender equality. In 1982, the first Nordic pro-
gramme on equality between women and men, approved by the Council of Min-
isters for Equal Opportunity, was launched. During the period of the first pro-
gramme, there were projects on violence in relationships and women in
Nordic politics. One achievement during this period was a 1986 Nordic report
The Divided Labour Market which showed that the labour market continued to
be a key arena in the Nordic struggle for equality.¹⁹ The priority is evident in
the slogan “from women’s pay to equal pay.”
Some new aspects of gender equality were added by the projects “Men and
gender equality” and “Muslim immigrant women,” both created in 1987. These
projects are the first indication that gender equality was to be understood as in-
tersectional; it was not only the position of women that was at stake but also
class, ethnicity, religion, and other categories. However, the binary categories
of women and men continued to dominate debates on gender equality. In
1988, a statistical publication on women and men in the Nordic countries de-
fined the two Swedish concepts of equality as jämställdhet and jämlikhet. Equal-
ity as jämställdhet referred to equality between women and men. It meant that
women and men were to have the same rights, responsibilities, and possibilities
with regard to employment that would provide them with economic independ-
ence, childcare, housework, politics, and trade unions, among others. Equality
as jämlikhet was defined as a wider concept. It was based on the premise that
all people were equal regardless of their sex, ethnicity, religion, and social back-
ground, and so on. Equality between women and men (jämställdhet) was stated
to be not only one of the most important aspects of equality as jämlikhet but to
be applicable to everyone, women and men. In the 1994 publication, Women and
Men in the Nordic Countries, the translation of jämställdhet was “equal opportu-
nities.”²⁰ This translation suggests that the contemporary understanding of Nor-
dic cooperation in gender equality emphasized formal equality.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, The Divided Labour Market (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Min-
isters, 1986).
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1988, 6; Nordic Council of Ministers, Women
and Men in the Nordic Countries. Facts and Figures 1994 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Minis-
A dualistic understanding of equality was more broadly reflected in the Nor-

dic legislation on gender equality. Legislation to promote equality between
women and men was passed in the Nordic countries from the 1970s: in Iceland
in 1976, in Denmark in 1976 and 1978, in Norway in 1979, Sweden in 1980, and
Finland in 1986. All these laws focused on equality between women and men.
Other forms of discrimination, on the basis of age, language, religion, ethnic ori-
gin, disability, and sexual orientation, were later covered by Non-Discrimination
Acts.²¹ On the one hand, the Equality Acts forbade gender-based discrimination
and on the other hand, it demanded measures to promote equality between
women and men. When it came to positive measures, there were some differen-
ces between each country’s acts. The Swedish act, for example, obliged employ-
ers to promote equality whereas the Norwegian and the Finnish acts obliged
public authorities. These Nordic principles of equality legislation emphasised
structural changes, promoted equality in the labour market, and were tied to
the welfare state.²²
In 1987, the Council of Ministers approved a new Nordic programme for
equal opportunities 1989 – 1993. The second programme period focused on the
role of women in economic development. Another prioritized theme dealt with
the opportunities for women and men to combine family and work. According
to the senior advisor Carita Peltonen, “the focus was on women’s participation
in political decision-making, education, equal pay, the situation of immigrant
women and on how women can combine their family life with their working
life.”²³ Here, again, we can note two themes in the Nordic cooperation for
equal rights: women’s position in the labour market, and tensions between
work and family in the daily life of both women and men. The Nordic equality
policy was intended to push women into the labour market and men into parent-
ing and care.
ters, 1994), 12. On difficulties to translate the Swedish (and Finnish) concepts, see also Nousiai-
nen, “Käsitteellisiä välineitä tasa-arvon käsittelyyn,” 32.
 Sinikka Mustakallio, Tulokseksi tasa-arvo. Kokemuksia valtionhallinnon tasa-arvotyöstä Poh-
joismaissa (Helsinki: Valtion painatuskeskus, 1993), 29; On problems of non-discrimination in
Finland, see Anne Maria Holli and Johanna Kantola, “State feminism Finnish style: Strong pol-
icies clash with implementation problems,” in Changing state feminism, ed. Joyce Outshoorn and
Johanna Kantola (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 94– 95.
 Mustakallio, Tulokseksi tasa-arvo, 29; Kantola, “Persistent paradoxes,” 214– 15.
 Peltonen presents this as the first five-year programme, but it was preceded by the 1982 pro-
gramme. Carita Peltonen, “Nordic men – Cooperation on Gender Equality,” in Possibilities and
Challenges? Men’s Reconciliation of Work and Family Life – Conference Report, ed. Jouni Varanka
and Maria Forslund (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006), 126.
142 Pirjo Markkola
International cooperation to promote the position of women, together with

the fact that Nordic statisticians share a long tradition in Nordic cooperation,
was reflected in gender-related projects. In advance of the 1985 UN Conference
on Women, the central statistical bureaus of the Nordic countries initiated a
joint project to publish statistics on equality between women and men in the
Nordic countries. The first booklet, presented in the UN Nairobi conference in
1985, can be seen as a turning point in the rhetoric of Nordicness and the Nordic
framing of issues related to gender equality.²⁴ After the Nairobi conference, the
Nordic Committee of Senior Officials for Equality proposed to the Nordic chief
statisticians that a Nordic contact group on statistics of equal opportunities
should be established and that an updated version of statistics should be pub-
lished for the forthcoming regional conference. The regional conference to follow
up the Nairobi decisions was arranged in Oslo in 1988 in conjunction with the
Women’s Forum, in which the Nordic work on equal opportunities was one of
the main topics. The first results of the cooperation between the Nordic statisti-
cians and equality officials came out as a publication offering “current informa-
tion on the differences and similarities in women’s and men’s situations in the
Nordic countries, in the form of tables, diagrams, and textual analysis.”²⁵
The role assumed by the national statistical bureaus gave Nordic coopera-
tion on gender equality a statistical, fact-based character, in which Nordic (in)
equality became a measurable phenomenon. The aim of compiling these statis-
tics was to reveal shortcomings and failures in the achievement of equality,
rather than to measure equality itself. Moreover, the scholarly field of women’s
studies was promoted by Nordic institutional cooperation and state feminism.
For example, there was a direct link between the 1988 Women’s Forum and
the appointment of a Nordic coordinator for women’s studies. The coordinator,
affiliated with Åbo Akademi University in Finland in 1991– 1995, was also in-
volved in the Nordic action programme for equal rights.²⁶ Knowledge production,
not only in the form of policy programmes and the provision of statistical facts to
decision-makers, but also through support for women’s studies became crucial
ways for the Council of Ministers’ equality officials to promote equality in the
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Facts and Figures about Women and Men in the Nordic Countries.
Kvinnor och män i Norden 1985 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1985).
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1988, 3.
 Christina Österberg and Birgitta Hedman, Women and Men in the Nordic Countries: Facts on
equal opportunities yesterday, today and tomorrow 1994 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Minis-
ters, 1994); Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic Gender Equality in Figures (Copenhagen: Nordic
Council of Ministers, 2015); Rosenbeck, “Nordic women’s studies,” 351; Larsen, “State femi-
nism,” 160 – 63.
Nordic countries. The Council of Ministers funded research on politics and the
labour market. A 1980s project Unfinished democracy, sponsored by the Council
of Ministers, studied Nordic women in political decision-making.²⁷ The project
led also to a handbook in women’s representation. It was authored by the Danish
feminist and political scientist Drude Dahlerup and published in five Nordic lan-
guages. Another book based on interviews with female politicians was also is-
sued. Moreover, Dahlerup contributed to the Council of Ministers’ work for gen-
der equality by coordinating a Nordic-wide project entitled BRYT – which means
“break down” – on breaking down sex segregation in the labour market.²⁸
Until the mid-1990s, the Nordic publications on equal rights tended to em-
phasize shortcomings and failures in equal opportunities for women and men.
For example, Women and Men in the Nordic Countries (1994), as well as a booklet
presenting excerpts from it, motivated this kind of knowledge production. The
publications listed the following reasons for the urgent need for basic statistics
on the position of women and men in Nordic societies: “1) to raise conscious-
ness, persuade policymakers, and promote change; 2) to stimulate ideas for
change; 3) to provide an unbiased basis for policies and measures; and 4) to
monitor and evaluate policies and actions taken.”²⁹ A firm belief in the need
for gender-based knowledge production and gender statistics was made explicit
in the publication series of the Council of Ministers.
The Nordic publications presenting basic statistics on equality between
women and men pointed at several problems that were also analysed by contem-
porary studies on women and gender. When it came to political decision-making,
Nordic facts and figures revealed male dominance at all levels, supporting the
notions of what feminist scholars termed “unfinished democracy” or “undemoc-
racy.”³⁰ Feminist scholars in the Nordic countries analysed women’s and men’s
paid and unpaid labour in the 1980s and early 1990s, and noted how “women
and men work the same amount, but women do more unpaid work, men more
paid work.” Intensive Nordic research on the labour market was also echoed
by statistical publications which noted that men had higher incomes than
 Haavio-Mannila, Unfinished Democracy.

 Drude Dahlerup, Vi har ventet længe nok: Håndbog i kvinderepræsentation (Copenhagen:
Nordic Council of Ministers, 1988). In Icelandic 1988, Norwegian 1989, Swedish 1989, and Fin-
nish 1990; Drude Dahlerup, ed., Blomster & Spark. Samtaler med kvindelige politikere i Norden
(Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1985).
 Numbering added by PM. Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1994, 19; Österberg &
Hedman, Women and Men 1994, 5; Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1988, 18.
 Haavio-Mannila, Unfinished democracy; Keränen, Finnish “undemocracy.”
144 Pirjo Markkola
women and that women tended to reach the basic pension only.³¹ Nordic gender
equality was not presented as an international model to be followed by the rest
of the world. On the contrary, it was full of shortcomings and a work in progress.
Gender equality goes European and global as

Nordic
In the 1990s, the concept of gender became more widely adopted in Nordic
equality policies. The 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, in particular,
introduced new concepts and policies, such as gender mainstreaming.³² The Nor-
dic equality bodies were quick to adopt new concepts that also were familiar
from the expanding field of gender studies. Simultaneously, a growing interest
in regional and European cooperation intensified with the expansion of the Eu-
ropean Union. Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995, Denmark had been a
member state since 1973, and Norway and Iceland chose to not join. In line with
many other policy fields, a dialogue between European and Nordic policies to
promote gender equality was found necessary. The EU also posed several chal-
lenges for Nordic cooperation on gender equality.³³ In the Nordic countries, leg-
islation on equality was mainly based on promoting equality between women
and men in the labour market, while anti-discrimination legislation, emphasised
by the EU, was less developed. Many Nordic gender equality agencies were wor-
ried about the negative impact of the EU on their progressive gender equality pol-
icies; at the same time, they anticipated that, as new member countries, Sweden
and Finland would strengthen the EU’s gender equality policies.³⁴ These ambiv-
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1994, For gender studies, see, for example,
Marja-Liisa Anttalainen, Rapport om den könsuppdelade arbetsmarknaden (Oslo: Nordic Council
of Ministers, 1984); Hernes, Welfare State and Woman Power; Arnlaug Leira, Welfare States and
Working Mothers: The Scandinavian Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Liisa Rantalaiho and Tuula Heiskanen, eds., Gendered Practices of Working Life (London: Mac-
millan, 1997).
 Marjaana Jauhola and Johanna Kantola, “Globaali sukupuolipolitiikka Suomessa,” in Suku-
puolikysymys, ed. Marita Husso and Risto Heiskala (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2016), 223; Raija Jul-
kunen, “Sukupuoli valtiollisen politiikan kohteena,” in Sukupuolikysymys, ed. Husso and Heis-
kala, 251.
 Olesen & Strang, “European challenge,” 32– 36; Johanna Kantola and Kevät Nousiainen,
“Euroopan unionin tasa-arvopolitiikka: Velvoittavaa lainsäädäntöä ja pehmeää sääntelyä,” in
Kantola, Nousiainen, and Saari, eds., Tasa-arvo toisin nähtynä.
 Holli & Kantola, “State feminism Finnish style”; Jauhola & Kantola, “Globaali sukupuolipo-
litiikka Suomessa,” 219 – 20.
alent expectations obviously urged the Nordic gender equality agencies to clarify
their message on the “Nordicness” of gender equality.
The new Nordic programme on gender equality for the period 1995 – 2000
aimed to influence “European and international developments in gender equal-
ity.”³⁵ This goal was also made explicit in the 1994 publication on gender statis-
tics which, for the first time, highlighted a united Nordic approach and a com-
mon Nordic platform in gender equality.³⁶ Among the more concrete aims in
the 1995 – 2000 programme were the following: equal access for women and
men to political and economic decision-making, economic equality and equal in-
fluence, an equal labour market, and improved opportunities for both women
and men to reconcile parenthood and careers. In 1998, the Finnish gender equal-
ity activist and former Gender Equality Ombudsman Tuulikki Petäjäniemi inter-
preted these goals as a Nordic decision to become international leaders regard-
ing men and gender equality.³⁷ Moreover, as Ylva Waldemarson has stressed, the
Nordic Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers tended to strengthen the in-
ternational visibility of the Nordic countries by using the rhetoric of Nordic iden-
tity partially based on the Nordic model of gender equality.³⁸ Work towards gen-
der equality in the Nordic countries was transforming into the “Nordicness” of
gender equality.
The “Nordic” gender equality policies were to assign men and masculinities
a crucial role. In 1997, an action plan for men and gender equality was approved.
A Nordic coordinator position for men’s studies was founded by the Council of
Ministers, and its host organisation became the Nordic Institute for Women’s
Studies and Gender Research (NIKK), founded in 1995 and located in Oslo.³⁹ Crit-
ical studies on men and masculinities appeared simultaneously in other parts of
the world, and the European Union was also funding projects on men and gen-
der equality. Nevertheless, the men’s studies coordinator Øystein Gullvår Holter
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality, 25; Ylva Waldemarson, “Gender
equality the Nordic way: The Nordic Council’s and Nordic Council of Ministers’ cooperation
with the Baltic States and Northwest Russia in the political field of gender equality 1999 –
2010,” in Gender equality on a Grand Tour: Politics and institutions – the Nordic Council, Sweden,
Lithuania and Russia, ed. Eva Blomberg et al (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 34.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Women and Men 1994, 4.
 Tuulikki Petäjäniemi, “Naisten ja miesten tasa-arvo – yhteinen etu,” in Jarmo Tarkki and
Tuulikki Petäjäniemi, Tasa-arvo: Saavutuksia ja haasteita [Equality: Achievements and chall-
lenges] (Jyväskylä: Atena Kustannus, 1998), 18.
 Waldemarson, “Gender equality the Nordic way,” 38.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality, 24; Rosenbeck, “Nordic women’s
studies,” 350 – 51.
146 Pirjo Markkola
stated in 2003: “the connection between the policy level and welfare develop-
ment is in many ways unique to the Nordic region, along with a large proportion
of women in the labour force, a high level of women in politics, and a general
emphasis on gender-equal status and opportunities. This region is a bit of a so-
cial laboratory regarding gender.”⁴⁰ The idea of a specific Nordic gender equality
gradually developed as the Nordic equality policies were exposed to the Europe-
an Union and other contacts beyond the Nordic region.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a changing situation in the
Baltic region. The newly independent Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
posed new challenges not only to Nordic equality policies but to official Nordic
cooperation more broadly. In 1991, the Council of Ministers had established in-
formation offices in the Baltic capitals and Baltic politicians were invited to
the meeting of the Nordic Council, a cooperative body of the Nordic parlia-
ments.⁴¹ In 1995 the Council of Ministers decided to survey the prospects for co-
operation between the Nordic countries and the Baltic states. This initiative led
to a publication which strongly recommended Nordic-Baltic cooperation and a
joint forum to be organised as soon as possible. The Baltic counterparts motivat-
ed the need for immediate action with reference to the ongoing rapid changes in
the Baltic states. Consequently, the first Nordic-Baltic meeting of ministers for
gender equality was arranged in Oslo in 1997. The meeting approved the first pro-
gramme for Nordic-Baltic cooperation on gender equality from 1998 to 2000.⁴²
Governmental cooperation became a crucial part of the Nordic-Baltic coop-
eration programmes. In the beginning, the Nordic counterparts presented Nordic
gender equality activities to the Baltic counterparts and national policy instru-
ments were established in the Baltic states. Joint seminars in which the Nordic
Gender Equality Ombudsmen introduced the Nordic gender equality legislation
were one way to establish cooperation – and to export the “Nordicness” of gen-
der equality. Differing policies within the Nordic region were less relevant in the
common attempts to construct a coherent image of the Nordic gender equality
 Øystein Gullvåg Holter, Can men do it? Men and gender equality – the Nordic experience (Co-
penhagen: The Nordic Council of Ministers, 2003), 7– 8; Nordic Council of Ministers, Miehet ja
tasa-arvo – toimintaohjelma ja taustamuistio (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1997.)
 Olesen & Strang, “European challenge to Nordic institutional cooperation,” 34; Anna Khar-
kina, From Kinship to Global Brand: The Discourse on Culture in Nordic Cooperation after World
War II (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2013), 85 – 86.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic Baltic co-operation on gender equality 1998 – 2003 (Co-
penhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2004), http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?
pid=diva2 %3 A701499&dswid=-6425. Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality,
23 – 24; Waldemarson, “Gender equality the Nordic way,” 44– 45.
policies. Moreover, as Anna Kharkina has pointed out, the values and contents of
cooperation were often determined by the Nordic side of the partnership. She
states that cultural cooperation, in particular, aimed at promoting “Nordic val-
ues.” Those values consisted not only of democracy, the welfare state, and envi-
ronmental policy but also of gender equality.⁴³
In terms of gender equality, the Nordic-Baltic cooperation resulted in a joint
campaign against the trafficking in women in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
This campaign was commonly seen as an outcome of shared values. Governmen-
tal gender equality institutions were also established in all Baltic states but at-
tempts to promote the Nordic understanding of gender equality in the Baltic leg-
islation or to introduce top-down quotas and gender mainstreaming turned out
to be less successful. The American scholar Denise M. Horn, who has compared
the US and the Nordic gender projects in Estonia, concludes that the Nordic dis-
course of gender equality did not translate very well to the Estonian reality.⁴⁴
Nevertheless, Nordic cooperation with their eastern neighbours extended to
Northwest Russia and Poland. The changing power constellations in Northern
Europe intensified efforts to present the Nordic gender equality policy as a
model and to share the established Nordic experiences of cooperation in gender
policies.
When it came to inter-Nordic issues, men and masculinities remained on the
agenda of “Nordic” gender equality initiatives. The gender equality programme
for 2001– 2005 prioritized the themes of “Men and gender equality,” as well as
“Violence against women.”⁴⁵ During this programme period, the Council of Min-
isters’ working group on men and gender equality promoted research on men’s
reconciliation of work and family life. In 2005, the final conference in Helsinki
targeted fatherhood. The Finnish Minister of Social Affairs and Health, Tuula
Haatainen, referred to the special role of the Nordic people in the following man-
ner: “I find it important that we Nordic people raise on the agenda the gender
equality aspect, which has been traditionally important to us. In the Nordic
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic Baltic co-operation 1998 – 2003; Kharkina, From Kinship
to Global Brand, 80 – 82, 93, 100.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic-Baltic Campaign Against Trafficking in Women: Final Re-
port 2002 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2004); Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic
Baltic co-operation 1998 – 2003; Nordic Council of Ministers, Nordic-Baltic co-operation on gender
equality 2004 – 2006 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2004), http://urn.kb.se/resolve?
urn=urn:nbn:se:norden:org:diva-2103; Denise M. Horn, “Setting the agenda: US and Nordic gen-
der policies in the Estonian transition to democracy,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 10,
no. 1 (March 2008): 70 – 71, doi:10.1080/14616740701747675.
 The third priority, and a new one, was the integration of a gender perspective into Nordic
state budgets. Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for Gender Equality, 24.
148 Pirjo Markkola
countries women’s status in society has in many respects long been different
from the gender and family patterns prevalent elsewhere in Europe.”⁴⁶ She ex-
plained that the starting point in the Nordic countries was equal opportunities
for men and women in the labour market and equal rights and responsibilities
within the family. This dual approach was presented not only as something
that differed from the rest of the world but also as something that was inherent
in Nordic culture. However, despite the strong discursive emphasis on father-
hood in the Nordic countries, men’s share of parental leave remained rather
small. Only Iceland, formerly a latecomer, had managed to attract fathers to
take parental leave to a remarkable extent.⁴⁷ When it came to social benefits,
the idea of Nordic fatherhood was stronger in rhetoric than in practice.
However, in the same conference the Finnish senior advisor Carita Peltonen
from the Council of Ministers indicated the shared traditions and mutual benefits
of the Nordic cooperation on gender equality. Moreover, she stressed that “[t]he
Nordic focus on men and gender equality is unique in an international context
and provides a good example of the advantages and necessity of involving all
groups in gender equality work.”⁴⁸ It was now quite common to indicate these
unique features of Nordic gender equality policies. A similar emphasis was ex-
pressed in the final report of a Nordic research programme on Gender and vio-
lence in 2005. The report stated that “the common tradition of welfare and gen-
der equality policies within the Nordic countries constitutes a unique point of
departure for research.”⁴⁹ The report also assumed that the Nordic perspective
would be important both in the European Union and in the international re-
search community.
Active participation in the global arena became part of the Nordic gender
equality policies and supported Nordic branding. Among these branding mea-
sures, a good number of Nordic fringe events or side events on equality issues
were arranged in conjunction with the annual meeting of the UN Commission
on the Status of Women. Starting in 2005, the Nordic themes in New York
 Tuula Haatainen, “Opening speech,” in Possibilities and Challenges? Men’s Reconciliation of

Work and Family Life – Conference Report, ed. Jouni Varanka and Maria Forslund (Copenhagen:
Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006), 11.
 In 2003, men’s share of total days of parental leave was 27.6 percent in Iceland, 18.3 percent
in Sweden, 8.6 percent in Norway, 5.3 percent in Finland, and 5.1 percent in Denmark. Frida Rós
Valdimarsdóttir, “Nordic Experiences on Parental Leave and its impact on Gender Equality,” in
Possibilities and Challenges? Men’s Reconciliation of Work and Family Life – Conference Report,
ed. Jouni Varanka and Maria Forslund (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006), 73.
 Carita Peltonen, “Nordic men – cooperation on gender equality,” 125.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Gender and Violence: A Nordic Research Programme 2000 –
2004 – Final report (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2005), 16.
were gender and youth, women’s participation in politics and management

(2006), the new Nordic role of the father (2007), combating men’s violence
against women (2008), gender equality and climate change (2009), and results
and challenges in relation to Beijing+15 (2010, 2011). In 2012 a panel of Nordic
ministers discussed equality between women and men as “the Nordic way,” a
concept that had been launched in 2010.⁵⁰ A small booklet published by the
Council of Ministers clearly revealed that gender equality had become a
brand: “Nordic co-operation has been striving to improve gender equality for
more than 30 years. The aim is to make policies of gender equality in the Region
the best in the world and a model for other countries.”⁵¹ This message was
brought to the UN fringe events and other international arenas. All former at-
tempts by state feminists and equality officials to reveal and combat the prob-
lems of inequality were utilized as a strength and turned into a narrative of
great progress in gender equality.
The official Nordic cooperation on gender equality celebrated its 40th anni-
versary in 2014 in a changing context. The old issues of women’s participation
in the labour market, men’s right to be caregivers, and the reconciliation of
work and family did not disappear, but the long-lasting focus on heteronorma-
tive family patterns and monocultural Nordic countries in the Nordic discourses
expanded to include intersectional approaches in which diversity had a stronger
role. In the gender equality programme, that ran from 2006 to 2010, it had been
underlined that a systematic minority perspective must be incorporated in all in-
itiatives for gender equality, and new intersectional aspects were promoted.
However, the equal rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex (LGBTI)
people were recognized very late. It was not until September 2019 that the Nordic
programme on gender equality was supplemented with a programme on equal
rights and opportunities for LGBTI people.⁵² Moreover, on the global level the
focus was on more traditional aspects of equality between women and men.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for gender equality, 19 – 23; Nordic Council of Ministers,
The Nordic cooperation programme on gender equality 2005 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Min-
isters, 2005), 4, 9; Nordic Council of Ministers, Gender equality – the Nordic Way (Copenhagen:
Nordic Council of Ministers, 2010).
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Gender Equality – the Nordic Way, 4; Also, Waldemarson, “Gen-
der equality the Nordic way,” 37– 38.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, Together for gender equality, 23; Nordic Council of Ministers,
Focus on gender – working toward an equal society: Nordic gender equality co-operation pro-
gramme 2006 – 2010 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006), 13; Nordic Council of
Ministers, Supplement to Nordic co-operation programme on gender equality 2019 – 2022: Equal
rights, treatment and opportunities for LGBTI people in the Nordic region (Copenhagen: Nordic
Council of Ministers, 2020), 4.
150 Pirjo Markkola
The Nordic tradition of gender mainstreaming, however, incorporated other is-

sues, such as sustainable societies. Climate change and sustainability were
made Nordic gender issues in the global context as well as in the local arena.
Conclusions
The Nordic cooperation on equality between women and men was introduced in
the early 1970s simultaneously with the introduction of national policies to pro-
mote equal rights for women and men. The early years of Nordic cooperation wit-
nessed many events, projects, and publications in which the particulars of equal
rights were defined. Women’s participation in the labour market was one of the
key issues, and the reconciliation of work and family was made into a shared
Nordic equality issue. Interestingly, there seemed to be little interest in naming
these efforts Nordic. The adjective Nordic was mainly used to qualify cooperation
and to name the geographical region where this cooperation took place. In the
inter-Nordic dialogue, it seemed to be less relevant to name equality policies
Nordic. As the Nordic cooperation turned towards international arenas, the
need to define the contents of their cooperation as Nordic became obvious.
The UN Nairobi conference in 1985 was one of those external impulses that
led to some more explicit expressions of the Nordic. Moreover, the concept of
gender was introduced in the equality discourse in the 1990s. This impulse
came from the 1995 conference in Beijing.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the new cooperation with the Baltic
states was one of the turning points in which Nordic gender equality was
made into a product for export. As the product needed to be named and quali-
fied, the rhetoric of Nordicness served as the marketing. Nordic Equality Om-
budsmen were the new ambassadors of gender equality. I see a clear turning
point in the early 1990s, in contrast to previous assumptions that the Nordic
countries had aimed to persuade other governments to “do gender equality
the Nordic way”⁵³ since the 1970s. The first decades of the Nordic cooperation
on equal opportunities between women and men focused on pointing out prob-
lems, compiling statistics on the lack of equality, and seeking improvements
within the Nordic countries. However, I agree with the previous conclusions
that the cooperation with the Baltic states and Northwest Russia really aimed
at promoting gender equality the Nordic way, i. e. taking “Nordic” gender equal-
 Waldemarson, “Gender equality the Nordic way,” 20.

ity abroad.⁵⁴ Since the 1990s, the Nordic model of gender equality was con-
sciously constructed as a model, and the rhetoric of Nordicness served to pro-
mote that model.
Another explicit turning point strengthening Nordicness can be dated to the
mid-1990s when Finland and Sweden joined the European Union. Now it became
important to compare the Nordic gender equality with the European conception
of equality. The Nordic gender equality was based on the values of the welfare
state, women’s labour market participation, men’s family responsibilities, and
the possibilities for women and men to combine working life and family. The Eu-
ropean traditions of anti-discrimination legislation and bans on discrimination
were less central in Nordic gender equality. Gender equality was a concept refer-
ring to power relations between women and men whereas non-discrimination re-
ferred to other forms of equality, encompassing age, health, ethnic origin, sex-
uality, religion, and other bases of discrimination. When the Nordic legislators
adjusted to the European standards, Finland passed a separate Non-Discrimina-
tion Act and made amendments to the Equality Act whereas Sweden and Norway
chose to integrate legislation on gender equality and non-discrimination. More-
over, since 2006, the mergers of Equality Ombudsmen and Discrimination Om-
budsmen or their offices have taken place in most of the Nordic countries. The
integration of the rights of the LGBTI people into the “Nordic” gender equality
remains tardy, however.⁵⁵
Despite the fact that the Nordic countries have been obliged to adjust to Eu-
ropean standards in equality legislation, gender equality has become a hallmark
of the Nordic societies, often used in various contexts. The UN fringe events, in
particular, provided opportunities to market the “Nordic way” globally. The Nor-
dic Council of Ministers does not hesitate to publish brochures in which the lead-
ing position of the Nordic countries in the field of gender equality is emphasised,
or to organise events on the Nordic model of gender equality. Over forty years of
cooperation on equality between women and men, and equal opportunities re-
sulted in a construction of the Nordic gender equality as a brand with some
“unique” characteristics. The Nordic cooperation contributed to a discursive con-
struction of Nordicness. The working mother and the woman in the labour mar-
ket became a characteristic representation of a Nordic woman. The Nordic coop-
eration has also shifted the focus towards men and masculinities and made the
caring man a crucial discursive construction of a Nordic man. In the rhetoric of
 Horn, “Setting the agenda,” 61; Waldemarson, “Gender equality the Nordic way,” 21.
 Waldemarson, “Gender equality the Nordic way,” 36; Nordic Information on Gender (NIKK),
accessed 20 October, 2020, https://nikk.no/en/home/.
152 Pirjo Markkola
Nordicness, the Nordic father, in particular, became one of the finest outcomes of
the Nordic gender equality.
Tero Erkkilä
Transparency and Nordic Openness in
Finland: Ideational Shift, Invented
Tradition, and Anders Chydenius
Introduction
Information access laws have spread rapidly since the 1990s primarily as part of
the global drive for good governance, and also due to national political context
and conflicts.¹ Transparency has become one of the key concepts of contempo-
rary politics.² It is a new term in the political language of the Anglo-American
world and beyond, and there are, in addition, liberal market notions bound
up with the term that have made their way into national political contexts.
This is perhaps most apparent in developing countries that are dependent on for-
eign direct investment and development aid.³ But countries with a significant in-
stitutional history of openness, such as the Nordic countries, are also exposed to
the new connotations of transparency.⁴
International policy discourses often tend to take nationalistic forms.⁵ While
an analysis of all national variants of the debate in the Nordic countries is be-
yond the scope of this chapter, the Finnish discourse on Nordic openness is
one example of this. It constructs a nationalistic, collective positioning of
 Daniel Berliner, “The Political Origins of Transparency,” The Journal of Politics 76, no. 02 (April
2014): 479 – 91, doi:10.1017/S0022381613001412; Christopher Hood, “Transparency in Historical
Perspective,” in Transparency: The Key to Better Governance?, ed. David Heald and Christopher
C. Hood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3 – 23.
 Todd Sanders and Harry G. West, “Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order,” in
Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, ed. Todd Sand-
ers and Harry G. West (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
 Abraham Azubuike, “Accessibility of Government Information as a Determinant of Inward
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa,” in Best Practices in Government Information: A Global Per-
spective, ed. Irina Lynden and Jane Wu (München: K.G. Saur, 2008), 243; Jeannine E. Relly and
Meghna Sabharwal, “Perceptions of Transparency of Government Policymaking: A Cross-Nation-
al Study,” Government Information Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2009): 148 – 57, doi:10.1016/
j.giq.2008.04.002.
 Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences (Houndmills: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2012).
 Vivien A. Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002), 211.
OpenAccess. © 2022 Tero Erkkilä, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
154 Tero Erkkilä
Finns as members of an open Nordic society at the top of global economic com-
petition. This chapter analyses the historical tradition of institutional openness
in Finland. I will argue that there is an increasing awareness of this tradition,
apparent in policy discourse on “Nordic openness,” which portrays openness
and access to government information as distinctive characteristics of Finland.⁶
While openness is usually linked with the consensual tradition of governing typ-
ical for the Nordic countries,⁷ awareness of this globally distinctive tradition also
results from reflexivity over institutional history that is seen to provide advant-
age in global economic competition.⁸ Global rankings and indicators that mea-
sure the performance of states in regard to good governance associate transpar-
ency with economic competitiveness. The Nordic countries have fared well in
these rankings.
The public sphere has been a central element in studies of nation building,
and has been used to explain the contextual differences of collective identities,
nationhood, and nationalism.⁹ In a world where convergence is seen to occur via
grand processes such as “modernisation” and “globalisation,” there are still dif-
fering national trajectories in political and economic institutions, concerning
citizen rights and freedoms, as well as “us vs. them” narratives of nationhood.
The public sphere has been theorised as both a structure or as a discursive
space.¹⁰ The latter position marks an opening for a genealogical conceptual
analysis of the “public,” an approach which is also adopted in this text. This ap-
proach makes concepts such as “publicity,” “openness,” and “transparency” in-
strumental in defining the institutional boundaries of the public sphere.¹¹ As a
 Tero Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences.

 Pekka Kettunen and Markku Kiviniemi, “Policy-Making in Finland: Consensus and Change,”
in The Work of Policy – an International Survey, ed. Hal Colebatch (New York: Lexington Books,
2006), 147– 60; Johanna Rainio-Niemi, “Small State Cultures of Consensus: State Traditions and
Consensus-Seeking in the Neo-Corporatist and Neutral Policies in Post-1945 Austria and Fin-
land” (Dissertation, Department of Social Science History, University of Helsinki, 2008).
 Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
 Klaus Eder, “The Public Sphere,” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 2– 3 (2006): 607– 11,
doi:10.1177/0263276406062705; Shmuel Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter, “Introduction:
Paths to Early Modernities – A Comparative View,” in Public Spheres and Collective Identities,
ed. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Wolfgang Schluchter, and Bjorn Wittrock (New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers, 2001).
 Eder, “The Public Sphere”; Myra Marx Ferree et al., “Four Models of the Public Sphere in
Modern Democracies,” Theory and Society 31, no. 3 (June 2002): 289 – 24.
 Cf. Margaret R. Somers, “What’s Political or Cultural about Political Culture and the Public
Sphere? Toward an Historical Sociology of Concept Formation,” Sociological Theory 13, no. 2
Transparency and Nordic Openness in Finland 155
social structure, the public sphere is itself a subject of an institutionalisation

process, where structural, institutional, and cultural factors meet.¹²
Sweden became the first country to adopt a law granting access to govern-
ment information in 1766. Publicity in state affairs was debated elsewhere in
eighteenth-century Europe, where accounts of failed attempts at breaking abso-
lutist secrecy tend to follow a narrative of how Enlightenment ideas on free
speech and freedom of the press battled the “mystery of the state” in
vain.¹³ There are general features in the adoption – and non-adoption – of access
laws in the 20th century,¹⁴ but the country-specific studies stress historical ex-
planations owing mainly to local conditions.¹⁵
(1995): 113 – 44; Margaret R. Somers, “Let Them Eat Social Capital: Socializing the Market versus
Marketizing the Social,” Thesis Eleven 81, no. 1 (2005): 5 – 19, doi:10.1177/0725513605051611.
 Eder, “The Public Sphere”; Eisenstadt and Schluchter, “Introduction: Paths to Early Modern-
ities – A Comparative View,” 17– 18; Margaret R. Somers, “Citizenship and the Place of the Public
Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy,” American Socio-
logical Review 58, no. 5 (1993): 587– 620.
 Richard van Dülmen, Die Gesellschaft Der Aufklärer: Zur Bürgerlichen Emanzipation Und Auf-
klärerischen Kultur in Deutschland. (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1986); Joris
van Eijnatten, “Between Practice and Principle: Dutch Ideas on Censorship and Press Freedom,
1579 – 1795,” Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual History 8 (2004): 85 –
113; Andreas Gestrich, Absolutismus Und Öffentlichkeit: Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland
Zu Beginn Des 18. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Tim Knudsen, Offen-
tlighed i Det Offentlige. Om Historiens Magt (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2003); Timo Kon-
stari, Asiakirjajulkisuudesta Hallinnossa. Tutkimus Yleisten Asiakirjain Julkisuudesta Hallinnon
Kontrollivälineenä (Helsinki: Suomalainen lakimiesyhdistys, 1977); Wolfgang Martens, Die Bot-
schaft Der Tugend: Die Aufklärung Im Spiegel Der Deutschen Moralischen Wochenschriften (Stutt-
gart: Metzler, 1971); Andreas Würgler, “Conspiracy and Denunciation: A Local Affair and Its Eu-
ropean Publics (Bern, 1749),” in Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment:
Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, ed. James Van Horn Melton (Aldershot:
Ashgate Pub Ltd, 2002), 119 – 131.
 Colin J. Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects: The Cross-National Adoption of Policy In-
struments for Bureaucratic Accountability,” Governance 10, no. 3 (1997): 213 – 33, doi:10.1111/
0952– 1895.401997040.
 John Durham Peters, Courting the Abyss: Free Speech and the Liberal Tradition, 1st ed. (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Tore Grønlie and Anne-Hilde Nagel, “Administrative
History in Norway,” Jahrbuch Für Europäische Verwaltungsgeschichte 10 (1998): 307– 32; Isabelle
Häner, Öffentlichkeit Und Verwaltung (Zürich: Schulthess Polygraphisher Verlag, 1990); Knudsen,
Offentlighed i Det Offentlige: Om Historiens Magt; Konstari, Asiakirjajulkisuudesta Hallinnossa:
Tutkimus Yleisten Asiakirjain Julkisuudesta Hallinnon Kontrollivälineenä; Barry Owen, “France,”
in Comparative Public Administration, ed. J. A. Chandler (London: Routledge, 2000), 200; K. G.
Robertson, Public Secrets: A Study in the Development of Government Secrecy (New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1982); Susan Rose-Ackerman, From Elections to Democracy: Building Accountable
Government in Hungary and Poland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Spence,
156 Tero Erkkilä
There has been a distinctive historical trajectory in the Nordic countries,¹⁶

where access to government documents is a constitutional principle of gover-
nance, namely the “principle of publicity” (Swedish: “offentlighetsprincipen,”
Finnish: “julkisuusperiaate”). In Finland, the principle of publicity gained
legal status in an access law adopted in 1951.¹⁷ Acknowledged as a constitutional
right, the principle of publicity declares all government documents to be public
unless otherwise indicated: “[D]ocuments and recordings in the possession of
the public authorities are public, unless their publication has for compelling rea-
sons been specifically restricted by an Act.”¹⁸ The principle is conceptually
broader than mere public access to official documents, as it is often seen to
cover openness of government activities and public access to court rooms and
decision-making venues.
The issue of institutional openness was debated in Denmark on various oc-
casions from the mid-1800s onwards. For example, the freedom of the press was
debated in the early 1770s leading to a short era of liberalisation, but this free-
dom did not acquire a similar kind of institutional status as in Sweden and did
not lead to the breaking of administrative secrecy.¹⁹ In Norway, then part of Den-
mark, efforts to break absolutist secrecy had a similar fate. The issue of institu-
tional openness was debated on several occasions from the mid-1800s onwards,
but it was not until 1970 that Denmark and Norway gained access legislation. In
Norway, this was part of a larger process towards the democratisation of public
administration.²⁰
“Italy,” in Comparative Public Administration, ed. J. A. Chandler, 1st ed. (London: Routledge,
2000), 126 – 47; A. P. Tant, British Government: The Triumph of Elitism: A Study of the British Po-
litical Tradition and Its Major Challenges (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1993); Richard C. Thurlow, The
Secret State: British Internal Security in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
 Carol Harlow, “Global Administrative Law: The Quest for Principles and Values,” The Euro-
pean Journal of International Law 17, no. 1 (2006): 193.
 Finland as a former part of Sweden had a Swedish administrative model that mostly re-
mained intact over the period of Russian rule, 1809 – 1917. Konstari, Asiakirjajulkisuudesta Hal-
linnossa: Tutkimus Yleisten Asiakirjain Julkisuudesta Hallinnon Kontrollivälineenä; Seppo Tiiho-
nen, Herruus: Ruotsi ja Venäjä (Helsinki: Hallintohistoriakomitea, 1994), 6.
 Finnish Const. 731/1999, 12 §.
 Knudsen, Offentlighed i Det Offentlige: Om Historiens Magt, 69 – 82.
 Einar Høgetveit, Hvor Hemmelig? Offentlighetsprinsippet i Norge Og USA, Særlig Med Henblikk
På Militærpolitiske Spørsmål. (Oslo: Pax Forlag, 1981), 70; Grønlie and Nagel, “Administrative
History in Norway,” 308, 329.
The issue of access to government information became topical in 18th-centu-

ry Sweden amid a transition from absolutist to liberal-bourgeois rule.²¹ Jürgen
Habermas’s work on the structural transformations of the public sphere has
been used to explain the institutional developments that made government in-
formation public in Sweden.²² Yet the anti-religious emphasis of this narrative
is misinformed in this context, for the clergy was responsible for spreading
the ideas of the Enlightenment, as well as demanding information on state af-
fairs.²³
Indeed, it was the Ostrobothnian clergyman and representative in the Swed-
ish Diet Anders Chydenius who is often credited with initiating the legislation in
1766. Chydenius was active in social issues and published widely.²⁴ He has been
seen as one of the forefathers of state theoretical thinking in Finland²⁵ and there
is now increasing interest in his work. But often works on older historical periods
tell us more about the time in which we live than the time we study. I will show
how Anders Chydenius’s persona became drawn into the debates on Nordic
openness and why he has become such an appealing figure at this time.
 Knudsen, Offentlighed i Det Offentlige: Om Historiens Magt, 63; Konstari, Asiakirjajulkisuu-

desta Hallinnossa: Tutkimus Yleisten Asiakirjain Julkisuudesta Hallinnon Kontrollivälineenä;
Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1993), 190 – 91; Tiihonen, Her-
ruus: Ruotsi ja Venäjä, 57.
 Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society (London: Polity Press, 1989); Knudsen, Offentlighed i Det Offen-
tlige: Om Historiens Magt, 63; Konstari, Asiakirjajulkisuudesta Hallinnossa: Tutkimus Yleisten
Asiakirjain Julkisuudesta Hallinnon Kontrollivälineenä.
 There are also other historical cases, often disregarded in the analysis of the “historical pub-
lics,” where religion and science provided both topics and forums for public debates. Marc For-
ster, “Debating the Meaning of Pilgrimage: Maria Steinbach 1733,” in Cultures of Communication
from Reformation to Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, ed.
James Van Horn Melton (Aldershot: Ashgate Pub Ltd, 2002); Robert von Friedeburg, “The Public
of Confessional Identity: Territorial Church and Church Discipline in 18th-Century Hesse,” in Cul-
tures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early
Modern German Lands, ed. James Van Horn Melton (Aldershot: Ashgate Pub Ltd, 2002), 93 –
103; David Zaret, “Religion, Science, and Printing in the Public Spheres in Seventeenth-Century
England,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun (Cambridge: The MIT Press,
1992).
 Jyrki Käkönen, “Anders Chydenius Ja 1700-Luvun Suomalainen Valtio-Opillinen Ajattelu,” in
Valtio Ja Yhteiskunta. Tutkielmia Suomalaisen Valtiollisen Ajattelun Ja Valtio-Opin Historiasta., ed.
Jaakko Nousiainen and Dag Anckar (Juva: Werner Söderström, 1983), 42– 43; Juha Manninen,
“Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act,” in The World’s
First Freedom of Information Act. Anders Chydenius’ Legacy Today, ed. Anders Chydenius Foun-
dation (Kokkola: Anders Chydenius Foundation, 2006), 18 – 53.
 Käkönen, “Anders Chydenius Ja 1700-Luvun Suomalainen Valtio-Opillinen Ajattelu.
158 Tero Erkkilä
The term “transparent,” originally of Latin origin (Latin: transpārēnt-em,

French: transparent), has optical connotations, referring to the way light or im-
ages travel through material, allowing one to see objects on the other side. The
term “transparent” has come into the English language through French and has
attained remarkable international attention in recent debates on power and so-
ciety.²⁶ In contemporary political vocabulary, transparency usually has connota-
tions of openness and clarity in political and administrative processes. But it is
increasingly also regarded as an economic virtue,²⁷ owing to paradigm shifts in
information economics that largely embody the efficiency-laden virtues of good
governance.²⁸
The notion of the virtuous circle is often used when referring to economic
competitiveness resulting from tightly interlinked institutional developments.²⁹
The OECD and the World Bank have promoted openness and access to govern-
ment information as part of their policies on good governance since the mid-
1990s.³⁰ There are also global rankings and indicators measuring the state of
transparency in nation states. These policy instruments have been effective in
formulating policy prescriptions on transparency that now link the issue to eco-
nomic competitiveness. In Finland, institutional openness is seen as an advant-
age in global economic competition. Here the accounts of Nordic openness serve
as an invented tradition that helps to address future challenges related to eco-
nomic globalisation.³¹ As I will show in the analysis, institutional openness is
now seen as an element of “virtuous circles,” where several institutional and
contextual factors reinforce each other to grant some nations economic advant-
age over others.
 Hood, “Transparency in Historical Perspective.”

 Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences.
 Wolfgang Drechsler, “Governance, Good Governance, and Government: The Case for Estoni-
an Administrative Capacity,” TRAMES, no. 4 (2004): 388 – 96; Joseph Stiglitz, “Information and
the Change in the Paradigm in Economics,” American Economic Review, 92, no. 3 (2002): 460 –
501; Joseph Stiglitz, “Is There a Post-Washington Consensus Consensus?,” in The Washington
Consensus Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance, ed. Serra and Joseph Stiglitz (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 41– 56.
 Geoffrey Garrett, “Global Markets and National Politics: Collision Course or Virtuous Cir-
cle?,” International Organization, 52, no. 4 (1998): 787– 824.
 OECD, Open Government: Fostering Dialogue with Civil Society (Paris: OECD, 2003); Catherine
Weaver and Christian Peratsakis, “Engineering Policy Norm Implementation: The World Bank’s
Transparency Transformation,” in Implementation and World Politics: How International Norms
Change Practice, ed. Alexander Betts and Phil Orchard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014),
179 – 94.
 Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences; Hobsbawm, “In-
troduction: Inventing Traditions.”
Kettunen has referred to this discourse of national competitiveness as a “co-

ercive circle” that diminishes the sphere of politics and democracy.³² Erkkilä and
Piironen assess similar potentials in global country rankings, using the Weberian
term “iron cage.” They argue that by quantifying the criteria of “good gover-
nance” the governance indicators have the potential to limit the sphere of poli-
tics and ethics.³³ Ironically, the policy of “virtuous circles” has long been seen as
a normative standard for the Nordic countries,³⁴ emphasising the values of effi-
ciency, solidarity, and equality, and binding together economics, politics, and
ethics.³⁵ This normative ideal was based on the perception that economic
growth, widening democracy and increased equality were mutually reinforcing,
rather than working in opposite directions. The Nordic countries grew to depend
largely on exports, which was balanced with planning, the welfare state, and la-
bour market policies, premised on the broad inclusion of actors.³⁶ These institu-
tional practices also hinge on the Nordic openness of governing and access to
government information.
Though openness is at present discussed as a tradition of Nordic governing,
there is an apparent conceptual reframing of institutional practices in Finland.
There is a distinctive institutional trajectory towards openness and access to gov-
ernment information in the Nordic countries, linked to democracy and political
accountability. However, current awareness of this tradition is linked to a global
drive for transparency where access to government information is seen as an at-
tribute of economic competitiveness. This also concerns the historical roots of in-
stitutional openness that is now seen to bring a competitive advantage to Fin-
land. While access to government information has traditionally been discussed
under the concept of publicity, belonging to the semantic field of democracy,
 Kettunen, Globalisaatio ja Kansallinen Me: Kansallisen Katseen Historiallinen Kritiikki, 12.

 Tero Erkkilä and Ossi Piironen, “Politics and Numbers: The Iron Cage of Governance Indi-
ces,” in Ethics and Integrity of Public Administration: Concepts and Cases, ed. Raymond W.
Cox III (Armonk: ME Sharpe, 2009), 125 – 45; cf. Max Weber, Economy and Society, vols. 1 and
2, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
 Kettunen, Globalisaatio ja Kansallinen Me: Kansallisen Katseen Historiallinen Kritiikki,
142– 45; Pauli Kettunen, “The Society of Virtuous Circles,” in Models, Modernity and the Myr-
dals., ed. Hanna Eskola and Pauli Kettunen, Renvall Institute Publications 8 (Helsinki: Helsinki
University, 1997).
 Pauli Kettunen, “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us,’” in The Global
Economy, National States and the Regulation of Labour., ed. Paul Edwards and Tony Elger (Lon-
don: Mansell Publishing, 1999), 123; Paula Tiihonen, “Good Governance and Corruption in Fin-
land,” in The History of Corruption in Central Government, ed. Seppo Tiihonen (Amsterdam: IOS
Press, 2003), 99 – 118.
 Kettunen, “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us,’” 129.
160 Tero Erkkilä
there has been a shift towards notions of openness and transparency, carrying
connotations of trust and economy. These ideational shifts come about with
the help of an invented tradition³⁷ that now also includes a historical reading
of Anders Chydenius, who is often regarded as the father of the world’s first in-
formation access law, passed in Sweden in 1766.
Analysing these changes in Finland, I will show how the discourse on Nordic
openness emerged in the mid-1990s during a critical juncture for Finnish gover-
nance, due to economic crisis, intensifying economic globalisation, and Fin-
land’s accession to the EU. In explaining the rise of the policy discourse of Nor-
dic openness and its communicative and coordinative forms, I will build on the
work of Pauli Kettunen, Martin Marcussen, and Vivien Schmidt.³⁸ In assessing
the conceptual shifts and the political use of concepts, I refer to the work of Rein-
hart Koselleck and Quentin Skinner.³⁹
I will first analyse the conceptual changes in governance discourse, using
government platforms and selected publications of the Economic Council of Fin-
land as my sources. I will then explore the communicative aspects of the policy
discourse and the construction of a collective memory of Nordic openness in Fin-
land in the historical accounts of the mid-2000s, when openness was also a
theme for the Finnish EU Presidency (2006). I conclude that the “virtues” of
good governance that are circulating internationally are now seen to have histor-
ical reference points in Finnish policy discourse, portraying Anders Chydenius as
the forebear of openness in Finland. Yet, the cognitive aspects of this discourse
point to political innovation and reassessments of institutional openness as an
element of economic competitiveness.
 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric
Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1– 14.
 Pauli Kettunen, Globalisaatio ja Kansallinen Me: Kansallisen Katseen Historiallinen Kritiikki
(Tampere: Vastapaino, 2008); Martin Marcussen, Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Eco-
nomic and Monetary Union (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2000); Schmidt, The Futures of
European Capitalism; Vivien A. Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power
of Ideas and Discourse,” Annual Review of Political Science 11, no. 1 (2008): 303 – 26,
doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342.
 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2004); Quentin Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas,”
History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3 – 53; Quentin Skinner, “Language and Political Change,” in
Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 6 – 23.
Nordic Openness in Finland: Conceptual Change

and Political Innovation
The invented tradition and discourse of Nordic openness carries nationalistic
connotations depicting Finland as a particularly open Nordic society and a lea-
gue table winner in the global rankings. These rankings have been a source of
national pride in Finland, constructing an image of a particularly open and suc-
cessful nation. The construction of a notion of a competitive “us”⁴⁰ becomes ef-
fective through “subjectification,” where actors acquire patterns of identities
linked to proposed actions to maintain “our national competitiveness”.⁴¹
Below, I show how the economic understanding of openness and access to gov-
ernment information have been acknowledged in government platforms in Fin-
land, visible also in the conceptual shift from “publicity” to “openness and trans-
parency.” This shift is also visible in the documents of the Economic Council of
the Finnish Government. To use Schmidt’s words,⁴² these documents represent
the “coordinative discourse” on Nordic openness, whereby the cognitive aspects
of the policy prescriptions on transparency are communicated and shared
among the policy actors. In order to legitimate the changes, the “communicative
discourse” of Nordic openness evokes an invented tradition⁴³ that accommo-
dates and legitimizes the changes at hand.
Conceptual Shifts in Government Platforms: Publicity,

Openness, Transparency
The shifts in the rhetoric of governing, i. e. arguments for its justification, are not
only a reflection of the institutional state of affairs but also carry the potential for
institutional change. These shifts can be seen to represent changes in the per-
ceived responsibilities and goals of government. In institutional theory, an “ide-
ational life-cycle” is often seen as consisting of periods of consensus, interrupted
by an external shock or ideational uncertainty, during which change is possible
or necessary.⁴⁴ Once the ideational and normative consensus is again sought,
 Kettunen, Globalisaatio ja Kansallinen Me: Kansallisen Katseen Historiallinen Kritiikki.

 Tero Erkkilä and Ossi Piironen, Rankings and Global Knowledge Governance: Higher Educa-
tion, Innovation and Competitiveness (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
 Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism.”
 Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.”
 Cf. Marcussen, Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Economic and Monetary Union.
162 Tero Erkkilä
that is as ideas become embedded or institutionalised,⁴⁵ another stable period

follows. Scholars have identified institutional change as an outcome of ideation-
al and ideological change, also entailing political conflict.⁴⁶ Here ideational
change largely rests on shifts in political rhetoric and narratives.⁴⁷
The discourse of “Nordic openness,” a perception of Nordic institutional tra-
dition that separates Finland from other nations, emerged in the 1990s, coincid-
ing with the end of the Cold War, Finnish membership of the EU and financial
crisis. This juncture allowed new institutional practices and ideas to be intro-
duced into the Finnish model of governing.⁴⁸ In Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsge-
schichte, such a critical juncture is termed Sattlezeit – a period of crisis during
which new concepts emerge and old ones are critically altered.⁴⁹ According to
Koselleck, conceptual change occurs when the gap between our experiences (Er-
fahrungsraum) and future expectations (Erwartungshorizont) grows too large.⁵⁰ It
is here that the vocabulary tends to change, as actors need to re-conceptualise
the new environment. Looking at the political concepts used in Finnish govern-
ment platforms since the 1917, neither “publicity” nor “openness,” let alone
“transparency,” have traditionally been part of the political vocabulary, but in-
stead started to appear in the 1990s. This new discourse makes references to
past traditions, such as the “principle of publicity.”
Internationally, the adoption of information access laws has usually been
preceded by a political debate on the topic, often crucial for the adoption.⁵¹
The term “publicity” did not appear in the Finnish government platforms at
the time of adoption of the Act on the Publicity of Government Documents in
1951. There were hardly any references to “publicity” or “openness” before the
1990s, when the notion of “openness” started to appear in the government plat-
forms of Prime Ministers Harri Holkeri (1987– 1991), Esko Aho (1991– 1995),
Paavo Lipponen (1995 – 1999, 1999 – 2003), Anneli Jäätteenmäki (2003), Matti
 Margaret R. Somers and Fred Block, “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Insti-
tutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate,” American Sociological Review 70, no. 2 (2005):
260 – 87.
 Guy B. Peters, Jon Pierre, and Desmond S. King, “The Politics of Path Dependency: Political
Conflict in Historical Institutionalism,” The Journal of Politics 67, no. 04 (2005): 1275 – 1300,
doi:10.1111/j.1468 – 2508.2005.00360.x; Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism.
 Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism”; Somers and Block, “From Poverty to Perversity,” 280.
 Cf. Marcussen, Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Economic and Monetary Union;
Peters, Pierre, and King, “The Politics of Path Dependency.”
 Koselleck, Futures Past; Melvin Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical
Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 17.
 Koselleck, Futures Past, 256.
 Bennett, “Understanding Ripple Effects.”
Vanhanen (2003 – 2007, 2007– 2010), Mari Kiviniemi (2010 – 2011), Jyrki Katainen
(2011– 2014), Alexander Stubb (2014– 2015), Juha Sipilä (2015 – 2019), Antti Rinne
(2019) and Sanna Marin (2019‐).⁵² At the turn of the 1990s, there was an apparent
confusion between the concepts of “public” and “open” – the former referred to
the public sector and government and the latter was understood in economic
terms, as referring to “open,” unregulated, sectors. The vocabulary then shifted,
as “openness” gained democratic connotations such as “openness of gover-
nance.” The economic connotations were associated with a new term, “transpar-
ency,” which also introduced the idea that the government was responsible to
the market.
In the government platform of Prime Minister Harri Holkeri (published in
April 1987) there were no references made to “openness” with regard to respon-
sible rule, but a reference was made to “open labour markets.” Similarly, the
platform of Prime Minister Esko Aho (1991) contained references to “openness”
in the context of economy. The government platform of Paavo Lipponen (1995),
titled “The government of employment and joint responsibility,” mentioned
functioning labour markets and labour market agreements as the keys to suc-
cess. The “open” labour market deliberations became an element of national
competitiveness.⁵³
The democratic connotations of openness first started to appear systemati-
cally in 1995 in the context of European governance (Finland joined the EU in
1995). The first Lipponen government stated that Finland would “enhance the
openness of the decision-making of the European Union,” which became a legit-
imizing argument for Finnish accession to the Union. Openness remained a topic
in Finnish EU politics in the platform of the second government of Paavo Lippo-
nen (April 1999). The platform stated that the government would act so that the
EU’s decision-making and administration would be developed according to the
principles of “openness,” “responsibility,” and “efficiency.” At the same time,
there were references to openness in relation to global economics and electoral
funding. Transparency, a newcomer to the Finnish political vocabulary, appeared
for the first time as “transparency” of pricing and financing in domestic politics.
At the same time, the institutional practices were in turmoil, as the relevant
legislation was being updated and several policies were adopted.⁵⁴ This led to
the adoption of the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (1999), the Per-
sonal Data Act (1999), and the Administrative Procedure Act (2004). Indeed, the
 The Finnish government platforms are all available online. Finnish Government, accessed 3
September, 2021, https://valtioneuvosto.fi/tietoa/historiaa/hallitusohjelmat.
 Cf. Kettunen, “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us.’”
 Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences.
164 Tero Erkkilä
legislation used up until this time was from 1951 and was even drafted before the
Second World War (in 1939). Given the changes due to digitalisation of public ad-
ministration alone, it is noteworthy that the revision took this long, particularly
in a country that now identifies with openness so prominently.
The government platforms published in the 2000s continued the agenda,
where the openness of decision making in the EU was a priority. While openness
still received some mentions in the context of open markets, the economic con-
notations were mostly found under “transparency.” The government platform of
Antti Rinne (2019), taken over in turn by Sanna Marin and titled “Inclusive and
Competent Finland,” also aimed to enhance collaboration with other Nordic
countries that arguably “share similar values concerning democracy, openness
and welfare state.”
To conclude, over the years the references to open government have emerged
in the government platforms. “Openness” was first used as an antonym of “pub-
lic” and started to obtain market connotations in the late 1980s. It was later dis-
placed by the term “transparency,” a newcomer to Finnish political vocabulary
that now predominantly carries references to the market economy. The govern-
ment discourse shifted from the semantic field of democracy towards the market.
In government rhetoric, openness appeared as a state tradition that was also
promoted in the EU, which appeared as the secretive “other” of the open Nordic
countries such as Finland.
Transparency and Economic Understanding of Openness
The two debates around openness and transparency – the Finnish exceptional
openness in the EU context (Nordic openness) and the economic potential of
transparency – meet in a nationalistic discourse. The Finnish concern over the
secretiveness of the EU in the mid-1990s initiated a narrative of openness as a
Nordic tradition in Finnish governing, separating “us” from “them.” National
competitiveness, which openness and transparency are increasingly seen as en-
hancing, is also debated under the same logic of inclusion and exclusion: “our”
competitive edge over “the others.” The coupling of efficiency and economic per-
formance with openness is a novel and not so readily apparent idea. In fact, in
the past, mainstream economics assumed that open systems were less efficient
than closed ones.⁵⁵ This conceptual change in government vocabulary points to
 Mark Skousen, “The Perseverance of Paul Samuelson’s Economics,” Journal of Economic Per-
spectives 11, no. 2 (1997): 137– 52.
political innovation due to a paradigm change in economics,⁵⁶ where the ideas of

market efficiency increasingly build on transparency.
The emergence of new political concepts also entails political innovation
and shifts in belief systems.⁵⁷ Here the study of conceptual change and the his-
torical analysis of institutions converge in their aim to reveal how social beliefs
are formed and institutionalised.⁵⁸ Conceptual change therefore gives an insight
into why and how certain policy problems arise, how they are constructed, and
how these problems can be arguably solved. Political concepts are means for
governing and sudden referencing to a policy concept is an indication of active
“politicking,” making the issue politically “playable.”⁵⁹
In the early 2000s, institutional economics was a rising topic in economic
policy-making,⁶⁰ featuring also prominently in the reports of the Economic
Council of the Finnish Government at that time.⁶¹ In these texts, the open market
and the availability of information are seen as mutually reinforcing and the role
of the state is perceived as enabling market activities. In the past, reference to
the Nordic model had provided an argument for synchronisation with other Nor-
dic countries and Sweden in particular.⁶² However, the debate on Nordic open-
ness, despite its explicit referencing of “Nordicness,” now marked the synchro-
nization of Finnish institutional practices with transnational institutional
models of transparency stemming from international organisations such as the
 Stiglitz, “Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics.”

 James Farr, “Understanding Conceptual Change Politically,” in Political Innovation and Con-
ceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1989), 25; Skinner, “Language and Political Change,” 20.
 Bo Rothstein and Sven Steinmo, ed., Restructuring the Welfare State: Political Institutions and
Policy Change (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 16.
 Kari Palonen, “Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking, and Politicization,” Alterna-
tives 28, no. 2 (2003): 55; Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.”
 Torben Iversen, “The Dynamics of Welfare State Expansion: Trade Openness, De-Industrial-
isation and Partisan Politics,” in The New Politics of the Welfare State, by Paul Pierson (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 45 – 79; Ugo Pagano, “Economics of Institutions and the Institu-
tions of Economics,” in Transforming Economics: Perspectives on the Critical Realist Project, ed.
Paul Lewis (London: Routledge, 2004), 252– 67; Dani Rodrik, “Why Do More Open Economies
Have Bigger Governments?” The Journal of Political Economy 106, no. 5 (1998): 997– 1032.
 Valtioneuvoston kanslia, “Euroopan Rakenteelliset Jäykkyydet,” Valtioneuvoston kanslian
julkaisusarja (Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslia, 2002); Valtioneuvoston kanslia, “Osaava, Avau-
tuva ja Uudistuva Suomi. Suomi Maailmantaloudessa –Selvityksen Loppuraportti,” Valtioneu-
voston kanslian julkaisusarja (Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslia, 2004).
 Pauli Kettunen, “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of History 26,
no. 3 (September 1, 2001): 225 – 47, doi:10.1080/034687501750303864.
166 Tero Erkkilä
World Bank and the OECD.⁶³ This also entailed a shift in the self-understanding
and narrative of Finland’s place in the world.
During the Cold War Finland was seen as a gateway between East and West
and references to “Nordic” democracy and society were used to highlight the fact
that Finland was not part of the Eastern Bloc.⁶⁴ The current references to Nordic
openness indicate a repositioning, where Finland is portrayed as a member of a
Nordic bloc within the EU but is also depicted as a leader in globalisation. The
Nordic model is now closely linked to a discourse on national competitiveness
and to a related pattern of identity, the competitive “us.”⁶⁵ The global indicators
have ranked Nordic countries high in competitiveness, democracy, and good gov-
ernance, which are also linked to institutional traditions in education, gender
equality, and welfare.
One of the institutional characteristics that stands out in global comparisons
is the history of openness and access to government information. Transparency
International’s Corruption Perception Index (published in 1995) has ranked Fin-
land and the other Nordic countries consistently within the top ten of least cor-
rupt countries. While this ranking does not measure transparency but corruption
– specifically bribery – it has been a source of great national pride in Finland
that it is now arguably one of the most “open” and least corrupt countries in
the world. Transparency is also implied in the World Economic Forum’s Global
Competitiveness Index (published in its current form since 2004) that focuses
on the institutional determinants of national economic performance. The Nordic
countries, Finland included, again rank well.
In 2006 the World Economic Forum found that the Nordic countries were
among the most competitive in the world, due to virtuous circles of transparency
and openness. Its chief economist and director of the Global Competitiveness
Programme Augusto Lopez-Claros, stated in 2006:
In many ways the [Nordic countries] have entered virtuous circles where various factors re-
inforce each other to make them among the most competitive economies in the world. […]
These are also countries that have public institutions that are characterised by an excep-
tionally high level of transparency and openness and this has contributed to improve busi-
ness confidence.⁶⁶
 Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences.

 Kettunen, “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland,” 234.
 Kettunen, “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us.’”
 Augusto Lopez-Claros, The Global Competitiveness Report 2005 – 2006: Video Interviews, Au-
gusto Lopez-Claros, http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/GCR20052006VideoInterviews/
index.htm.
Together with the Finnish success in the OECD’s PISA ranking, which depicted
Finnish primary education as a global leader and a model for others to follow,
these indicators have further contributed to the discourse of Nordic openness
that builds on an imaginary of global competitiveness and is used to construct
the notion of the competitive “us.”⁶⁷ Indeed, one of the mechanisms through
which global indicators become effective is “subjectification,” where actors ac-
quire patterns of identities linked to proposed action to maintain competitive-
ness.⁶⁸ While the storyline is not always clear, there is a shared understanding
of the positive qualities of openness and transparency that carry the promise
of a governance system that is at the same time democratic and efficient. Effec-
tively, transparency becomes a “third term”⁶⁹ which allows the bypassing of di-
chotomies such as democracy/efficiency, public/private, market/hierarchy (bu-
reaucracy); instead of either-or, it promises both.
The Open and Direct Finn: Anders Chydenius and Global

Economy
During the 2000s, the perception of “openness” as a Finnish historical trait grew.
The positive portrayal of Finland in the governance indices provided social sci-
entific proof for the narrative adopted earlier. This narrative also offered Finland
a new self-image, bearing connotations of progress and modernity, which also
lent credibility to Finnish attempts to export and promote institutional openness
elsewhere. In 2006, Finland named a “transparent and effective Union” as its ob-
jective for its EU presidency, highlighted also in the transparent logo of the pres-
idency. The theme was based on Finnish identity of being “open” and “direct” as
well as “progressive.”⁷⁰ Here we again see the dialectic between democracy
(open) and efficiency (direct).
In Finnish political architecture the issue of transparency had become top-
ical earlier in the construction of the Finnish Parliament supplementary build-
ing, completed in May 2004. Even though the proposal that won the bid for
the construction project did not go particularly far in utilising glass materials,
the vast majority of the proposals submitted in 1999 proposed that glass was a
 Kettunen, Globalisaatio ja Kansallinen Me. Kansallisen Katseen Historiallinen Kritiikki.

 Erkkilä and Piironen, Rankings and Global Knowledge Governance.
 Bob Jessop, “The Rise of Governance and the Risks of Failure: The Case of Economic Devel-
opment’,” International Social Science Journal 155 (1998): 29 – 45.
 Finnish EU Precidency 2006, [http://www.eu2006.fi/].
168 Tero Erkkilä
symbol of the “principle of publicity.”⁷¹ While transparent architecture in polit-

ical buildings was in fashion at the time,⁷² the metaphor of transparency⁷³ is now
linked with a historical tradition of openness in Finland.
The narrative of openness has even entered historical inquiry. This is most
obvious in the historical accounts of Anders Chydenius, who together with his
peer Peter Forsskål has attracted international interest.⁷⁴ Behind Chydenius’s
ideas on freedom of print and the right of acquiring information on state matters
was his opposition to the mercantilist tradition in eighteenth-century Sweden,
embodied in Stockholm’s trade privileges over peripheries. In Finland, historians
have drawn attention to the “Finnish” roots of this eighteenth-century thinker,
but at the same time used Chydenius to highlight the Swedish lineages of the
Finnish state, sharing a legal and administrative tradition.⁷⁵ The historical ac-
counts of Chydenius and his “Nordic” legacy hence stress Finland’s history as
part of Sweden, but at the same time portray Finland as a periphery, and a na-
tion to come, struggling against Stockholm.
 Eduskunta, “Lisärakennuksen arkkitehtuurikilpailu” (Eduskunta, 1999).

 Deborah Ascher Barnstone, The Transparent State: Architecture and Politics in Postwar Ger-
many (New York: Routledge, 2005); Nigel Whiteley, “Intensity of Scrutiny and a Good Eyeful: Ar-
chitecture and Transparency,” Journal of Architectural Education 56, no. 4 (2003): 8 – 16,
doi:10.1162/104648803321672915.
 William Whyte, “How Do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of
Architecture,” History and Theory 45, no. 2 (2006): 153 – 177, doi:10.1111/j.1468 –
2303.2006.00355.x.
 John M. Ackerman and Irma E. Sandoval-Ballesteros, “The Global Explosion of Freedom of
Information Laws,” Administrative Law Review 58, no. 1 (2006): 85 – 130; Hood, “Transparency in
Historical Perspective.,” 8; Stephen Lamble, “Freedom of Information, a Finnish Clergyman’s
Gift to Democracy,” Freedom of Information Review 97, no. February 2002 (2002): 2– 8; Ulla Carls-
son and David Goldberg, ed., The Legacy of Peter Forsskål: 250 Years of Freedom of Expression
(Gothenburg: Nordicom, University of Gothenburg, 2017), https://www.nordicom.gu.se/sv/sys-
tem/tdf/publikationer-hela-pdf/the_legacy_of_peter_forsskal._250_years_of_freedom_of_ex-
pression.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=38645&force=0.
 Jyrki Käkönen, “Anders Chydenius ja 1700-Luvun Suomalainen Valtio-Opillinen Ajattelu,” in
Valtio Ja Yhteiskunta: Tutkielmia Suomalaisen Valtiollisen Ajattelun ja Valtio-Opin Historiasta, ed.
Jaakko Nousiainen and Dag Anckar (Juva: Werner Söderström, 1983), 46 – 49; Manninen, “An-
ders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act”; Ilkka Patoluoto,
“Hyödyllinen Luomakunta: Hyötyajattelun Maailmankuvalliset Perusteet 1700-Luvun Ruotsin
Valtakunnassa,” in Hyöty, Sivistys, Kansakunta: Suomalaista Aatehistoriaa, ed. Juha Manninen
and Ilkka Patoluoto (Oulu: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Pohjoinen, 1986); Virrankoski, Anders Chyde-
nius: Demokraattinen Poliitikko Valistuksen Vuosisadalta.
In his writings Chydenius portrays the “free state” or “free nation” not as an
enemy of libertarian freedoms, but rather as their keeper.⁷⁶ When describing the
state, he uses metaphors such as a “ship,” “body,” or “clock,” which describe
the state as an intact entity, in need of “steering” and “well-performing” compo-
nents.⁷⁷ Chydenius argued for a widening of political inclusion, for which infor-
mation on state matters was a necessity. The state was to inform its citizens
about its successes and misfortunes alike so that they would know the
“truth.” It was in the search for truth that Chydenius saw the rationality of gov-
ernance based on the “free state.”⁷⁸ The truth was to be sought by an exchange
of ideas and opinions and Chydenius encouraged his readers to engage in public
debates.⁷⁹ These debates he saw as ideally taking place through writing. The re-
sults of this “competition of pens” were to be spread across the nation through
the new printing technique.⁸⁰
A symbolic figure in Finland, his face on the old 1000 Finn Mark note, Chy-
denius is often seen as a father of Finnish state theoretical thinking,⁸¹ a Nordic
Adam Smith or an interpreter of Montesquieu.⁸² Even though Anders Chydenius
himself regarded his work for the liberalising of print as his major achieve-
ment,⁸³ it took future generations some 240 years to take an interest in this.
Since the early 2000s, Chydenius has appeared in the speeches and public ap-
pearances of Finnish politicians.⁸⁴ Chydenius’s ideas are now seen as a Finnish
“export product.”⁸⁵ Swedish politicians have also made claims for this thinker,
but it turns out that his legacy is less known in Sweden than in Finland. In
 Anders Chydenius, “Den nationala vinsten,” in Politiska skrifter af Anders Chydenius (Helsin-
ki: G. W. Edlunds förlag, 1880), 31.
 Chydenius, 31.
 Chydenius, 31.
 Chydenius, Valitut Kirjoitukset (Porvoo: Werner Söderström, 1929), 170.
 Chydenius, “Den nationala vinsten,” 31.
 Käkönen, “Anders Chydenius ja 1700-Luvun Suomalainen Valtio-Opillinen Ajattelu.”
 Kimmo Sarje, “Anders Chydenius – Montesquieun Ihailija,” Politiikka 4 (1979): 297– 304.
 Chydenius, Valitut Kirjoitukset, 434– 37.
 Tuija Brax, “Julkisuusperiaatteen Haasteet.” (Tietämisen vapauden päivän seminaari, Puhe
tietämisen vapauden päivän seminaarissa, November 30, 2007), http://www.om.fi/Etusivu/Ajan-
kohtaista/Ministerinpuheita/Puhearkisto/Puheet2007Brax/1196159328843; Tarja Halonen, Puhe
Anders Chydeniuksen juhlavuoden pääjuhlassa Kokkolassa 1. 3. 2003, Anders Chydenius Säätiö,
2005) (speech at the main celebration of the Anders Chydenius Jubilee Year); Jacob Söderman,
“Salailusta on Tullut Maan Tapa,” Helsingin Sanomat, November 19, 2006, https://www.hs.fi/
sunnuntai/art-2000004441307.html; Jacob Söderman, “On Transparency” (presentation, IIAS
conference, Monterrey, Mexico, July 16, 2006).
 Manninen, “Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act,”
16.
170 Tero Erkkilä
2009, a Finnish delegation delivered a portrait of Chydenius to Anders Borg, the

Swedish Minister of Finance, who wanted to have Chydenius on the wall of his
office, because no picture of Chydenius could be found in Sweden.⁸⁶ This shows
how Chydenius has been reinvented for political use.
In Chydenius’s home region of Ostrobothnia, the issue of accessing state in-
formation had arisen in the tar export trade, as revenues were channelled to the
ruling elite in Stockholm rather than to local tradesmen. Anders Chydenius
wanted accurate information on the sales that the mercantilist rule of Stockholm
was making at the expense of the local tar producers and also the uprooting of
corruption was seen to play a role.⁸⁷ Ostrobothnia, on the west coast of modern-
day Finland, was the biggest manufacturer of tar and Sweden’s wealthiest re-
gion, but it lacked the rights to export tar independently. This now provides
an analogy for contemporary globalization,⁸⁸ just as the rise of printing technol-
ogy in the eighteenth century is a fitting metaphor for the current issues of dig-
italisation and the internet. The ideas of Chydenius are seen as relevant in the
contemporary context, especially when analysing the global transformations
in trade and democracy, where openness and transparency are coupled with
ideas of low corruption, rule of law, democracy, and competitiveness.
Chydenius and his ideas have great metaphoric value, making him appear as
a forbear of the contemporary problem of joining global trade and democracy.
His historical legacy can with good reason be described as “multipurpose.”⁸⁹
The different readings of Chydenius have also sparked debates on his political
use.⁹⁰ Chydenius is either a Finn battling against the Swedes⁹¹ or a Swedish-
Finn,⁹² a construct used in Finnish history when referring to Finland under
 Kalle Koponen, “Talouspappi Chydenius Pääsi Valtiovarainministerin Seinälle Ruotsissa,”

Helsingin Sanomat, 9 January, 2009.
 Juha Manninen, “Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information
Act,” in The World’s First Freedom of Information Act: Anders Chydenius’ Legacy Today, ed. An-
ders Chydenius Foundation (Kokkola: Anders Chydenius Foundation, 2006), 18 – 53; Pentti Vir-
rankoski, Anders Chydenius: Demokraattinen Poliitikko Valistuksen Vuosisadalta (Juva: Werner
Söderström, 1986), 109.
 Halonen, Puhe Anders Chydeniuksen juhlavuoden pääjuhlassa Kokkolassa 1. 3. 2003
 Pauli Kettunen, “Yhteiskunta Ohjattavana ja Ohjaajana – Historiallinen Näkökulma: Moni-
käyttöinen Chydenius,” Anders Chydenius foundation, accessed 3 September, 2021, http://
www.chydenius.net.
 Henrikki Heikka, “Kokkolan Kirkkoherra Parantaa Terroristit,” Kosmopolis 34, no. 1 (2004):
63 – 68; Jyrki Käkönen, “Henrikki Heikka Chydeniuksesta, Terrorismin Parantamisesta ja Vapaa-
kaupasta,” Kosmopolis 34, no. 1 (2004): 111– 14.
 Heikka, “Chydeniuksesta, Vapaasta Kaupasta ja Terrorismista”; Käkönen, “Henrikki Heikka
Chydeniuksesta, Terrorismin Parantamisesta ja Vapaakaupasta.”
 Brax, “Julkisuusperiaatteen Haasteet”; Söderman, “Salailusta on Tullut Maan Tapa.”
Swedish rule. In his time, Chydenius regarded himself as a Swede.⁹³ He did talk
about the prosperity of “Finns” under the Swedish King, but his understanding
of this was mostly regional, limited to Ostrobothnia and Åbo.⁹⁴
There is a tendency for historical references to political theorists to often be-
come mixed with contemporary political concepts and arguments. These theo-
rists become part of a political debate or ideological grouping that they, in
their time, would never have recognised.⁹⁵ Because of his influence on liberalis-
ing print, which also came to result in the abolition of absolutist secrecy, Chyde-
nius is now portrayed as the father of the “Freedom of Information Act”⁹⁶ or the
“right to know,” both concepts of Anglo-American origin. Chydenius is also seen
as a forbear of “free trade” or the abolition of “trade barriers.”⁹⁷ The “principle
of publicity” becomes translated into the “principle of transparency” and the
high ranking of the Nordic countries in the Transparency International’s Corrup-
tion Perception Index is seen as a legacy of Chydenius.⁹⁸ The principle of publi-
city has become a Finnish invention that has spread as far as Nokia and the
sauna.⁹⁹ A recent English translation of Ander Chydenius’s texts carries the
title “Anticipating the Wealth of Nations,” linking Chydenius to Adam
Smith.¹⁰⁰ However, Skinner highlights the importance of understanding ideas
in their context, and argues that such anticipations are mostly unwarranted in
conceptual history.¹⁰¹
Chydenius stands as a historical reference point in a time when the relations
of centre and periphery were being rethought. A vigorous opponent to mercan-
tilism, Chydenius easily gets drawn into debates where notions of (neo) mercan-
tilist and (neo) liberalist viewpoints meet. Even the Finnish narratives and im-
 Chydenius, Valitut Kirjoitukset, 426.

 Juha Manninen, Valistus ja Kansallinen Identiteetti: Aatehistoriallinen Tutkimus 1700-Luvun
Pohjolasta (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2000), 43; compare Manninen, “Anders
Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act”; Jouko Nurmiainen,
“Particular Interests and the Common Good in Swedish Mid-18th-Century Diet Politics: The ‘Fin-
nish’ Perspective,” Scandinavian Journal of History 32, no. 4 (2007): 388 – 404, doi:10.1080/
03468750701659350.
 Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.”
 Manninen, “Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act.”
 Heikka, “Chydeniuksesta, Vapaasta Kaupasta ja Terrorismista.”
 Söderman, “On Transparency.”
 Manninen, “Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information Act,”
17.
 Anders Chydenius, Anticipating the Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders Chyde-
nius, 1729 – 1803, ed. Maren Jonasson and Pertti Hyttinen (London: Routledge, 2011).
 Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.”
172 Tero Erkkilä
ages carrying a collective memory of openness contain a dialectic between de-

mocracy (open) and efficiency (direct). Though the storyline is not always fully
explicit, there are references to global markets and globalisation and the role
of information in organising them.
However, the present concerns of globalisation were beyond the reach of this
eighteenth-century thinker. The references to Chydenius and his work are part of
the politically motivated uses of the normatively appealing concepts of openness
and transparency.¹⁰² The narrative of Chydenius and other references to history
become part of the “communicative discourse” of Nordic openness,¹⁰³ which
now also accommodates the new ideas on transparency that have become inter-
nationally diffused. Leaping over history, Chydenius has become the embodi-
ment of the “open and direct Finn”: Nordic, educated, incorruptible, and engag-
ed in trade.
Conclusions
To sum up, the policy discourse on openness has resonated particularly well
with the Finnish institutional context, where the legislation on accessing govern-
ment information and the principle of publicity has existed for a long time (see
Table 1). Since the mid-1990s the discourse of Nordic openness has appeared in
Finnish government platforms and bills, in policy documents and strategies, in
public speeches of politicians, and in narratives told by civil servants.¹⁰⁴ It is also
found in governance indices and their interpretations, contemporary historical
analyses, and even in architecture and design of political relevance. The cogni-
tive aspects of this new policy discourse tap into the social scientific perceptions
of governance, and institutional and information economics. The normative, le-
gitimating discourse of Nordic openness extends to Finnish national history, in-
venting a tradition of Nordic governing. The notion of “Nordic” openness is con-
venient here, as it portrays Finns as members of a particularly open society as
opposed to other nationalities, but at the same time also references the fact
that Finland was a part of Sweden prior to 1809, highlighting and co-opting
the Swedish institutional practices that exist in Finland and that are now draw-
ing global attention. Furthermore, this (Nordic) discourse also bypasses the era
of Russian rule in Finland (1809 – 1917), characterised by censorship.
 Skinner, “Language and Political Change.”

 Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism.”
 See also Erkkilä, Government Transparency: Impacts and Unintended Consequences.
Table 1. Ideational dimensions of the discourse on openness and their representations in Fin-
land¹⁰⁵
Form Ideational core Representations
Cognitive legislative reform, policy new social scientific per- government platforms,
on public sector informa- ceptions of governance, government bills, policy
tion, administrative ethics institutional and infor- documents, strategies,
reform, initiatives of public mation economics public speeches, public
hearings, accountability programmes, numbers (in-
reform, better regulation dices, rankings), narratives
programme of civil servants, contem-
porary historical analysis,
Normative Nordic openness, the open Openness as a Nordic
political architecture and
and direct Finn tradition of Finnish gov-
design
erning
The shifting belief systems among policy actors carry new cognitive aspects but
this is largely hidden in the normatively appealing talk on openness as a tradi-
tion. Because institutional openness has a long history as a virtue of the Enlight-
enment, the Nordic welfare state, and liberalism, the new connotations seem to
find an ideational root in the above philosophies. In the era when the Finnish
welfare state was built, the exchange of information and negotiations between
various groups were an underlying and unspoken norm of governing.¹⁰⁶ Amid
economic globalisation, “openness,” “public sector information,” and “transpar-
ency” become political and economic concerns that are actively governed. Histo-
ry is therefore not only a marker for institutional continuity but also carries a po-
tential for institutional change.
Though the above developments in political rhetoric are seemingly inde-
pendent of institutional affairs, they converge in the rationalities and mecha-
nisms of change. The shift in the political rhetoric and concepts of governing
not only reflects institutional change but also propels it. In terms of accountabil-
ity, the shift in conceptualisation reframes the mechanism of government con-
trol. This also points to new external demands and audiences to whom civil serv-
ants bear responsibilities. Somewhat paradoxically, the sudden awareness of a
democratic trajectory marks an opening for its reframing in economic terms.
Consequently, the openness of government activities has become part of a
new political imaginary of national competitiveness. There is a perceivable reas-
sessment of the responsibilities of the government, marking a new ideational
 After Schmidt, The Futures of European Capitalism, 214.

 Kettunen, “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us.’”
174 Tero Erkkilä
cycle: Finnish governments now increasingly bear responsibilities towards mar-

ket actors through openness and transparency.¹⁰⁷ Though the democratic conno-
tations of openness would intuitively imply greater government responsibility to-
wards citizens, the emergence of this discourse coincides with mounting
demands for Finland’s competitiveness in an open economy.
Comparing the relevant policy documents with the public speeches of poli-
ticians, one can identify cognitive and normative aspects in the discourse of
openness that are in dissonance, though economic aspects are also slowly enter-
ing the normative talk on openness. There is an apparent construction of the col-
lective memory of openness as a Nordic tradition of Finnish governing. This is
part of Finland’s new European identity. The historical aspects are also promi-
nently present in the coordinative discourse shared by policy actors. The dis-
course on Nordic openness is a local variant of the global discourse on transpar-
ency. While references to institutional history allow it to contain a
nationalistically appealing normative message, the cognitive aspects of this dis-
course are increasingly linked to global economic competitiveness. This invented
tradition now also concerns Anders Chydenius, who has become the embodi-
ment of the “open and direct” Finn.
 Cf. Marcussen, Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Economic and Monetary Union.
Lily Kelting
New Nordic Cuisine: Performing Primitive
Origins of Nordic Food
“With Noma, our aim was to change food in Denmark…. [It was] a rhetorical instrument,
just another one in my toolkit … to redefine Nordic food.”
—Claus Meyer
2011: Rene Redzepi is a small man in a big tent. He wears jeans, rubber wading
boots laced over his knees, and a T-Shirt reading “MAD foodcamp.” His moppy
brown bangs are pushed to the side and he wears a flesh-colored, over-ear mic.
Based on the huge, resounding round of applause, cheers, and shouts, one un-
familiar might think Redzepi is not a chef, but a rock star. 2011 marked a high
point for Noma, Rene Redzepi’s two-Michelin-star restaurant in Copenhagen,
Denmark: Noma was named the best restaurant in the world for the second
year running, and Redzepi found himself as much celebrity as chef. Founded
in 2003 by gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer, Noma is not just a restaurant.
In 2008, Meyer and Redzepi added a research wing to the restaurant, the Nordic
Food Lab, where chefs and scientists tinker with culinary experiments that may
end up on the menu. And in this first Mad symposium in 2011, Redzepi turned
his culinary praxis into a marketable, shareable worldwide conversation about
how we should eat.
Noma is so media saturated that the origin story of the restaurant that Red-
zepi told at MAD foodcamp is already something like a mythos in the contempo-
rary food world. Redzepi grew up between Copenhagen and his father’s native
Macedonia. In industrialized Copenhagen, “people ate fast food and microwave
food. I don’t have any good food memories from my Danish childhood.”¹ Writing
about the New Nordic movement in their article “From Label to Practice: The
Process of Creating New Nordic Cuisine,” Haldor Byrkjeflot, Jesper Strandgaard
Pedersen, and Silviya Svejenova assert that Nordic food was an “empty label,”
which was transformed into a robust set of cultural practices by Redzepi,
Meyer, Magnus Nilsson, and other gastro-entrepreneurs, chefs, high-level gov-
ernment supporters, scientists, media disseminators, and foodies from around
2002 to the present.² New Nordic food is a cultural construction, a confluence
 Andreja Lajh, “Rene Redzepi on His Origins,” Haut De Gamme, November 10, 2015, https://
hautdegamme.net/2015/11/10/rene-redzepi-on-his-origins/.
 Haldor Byrkjeflot, Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen, and Silviya Svejenova, “From Label to Prac-
tice: The Process of Creating New Nordic Cuisine,” Journal of Culinary Science & Technology 11,
OpenAccess. © 2022 Lily Kelting, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the
176 Lily Kelting
of social, economic, political and cultural factors relating to the production and
consumption of Nordic food. New Nordic Food is powerful branding and a media
phenomenon; it is chefs, food-thinkers, and the media that write about them; it
is a Nordic Counsel of Ministers initiative funded at over 2 million DKK.³ New
Nordic Food is also, according to the restaurateur who coined the phrase, a
“rhetoric.”⁴
I focus not on the creation—or, indeed, death⁵—of New Nordic Food as a
matter of narrative teleology. Instead, this chapter attends to resonances between
these two vibrating strings of label and practice. In other words, I use method-
ologies of discourse analysis and conceptual history to demonstrate how, by
whom, and why the ambivalent label of “New Nordic” is applied.⁶ “New Nordic
food” is one of the earliest applications of the label “New Nordic,” if not the first
itself. The concept of the “New Nordic” emerged in the early 2000s either directly
from or alongside a movement to revitalize the identity of the Nordic culinary
industry.⁷ Governmental bodies seized on the concept as soon as it appeared—
formalizing “New Nordic Food” with a 2004 pan-Nordic manifesto of values
and well-funded programs to put those values onto Nordic plates.
New Nordic food is thus a highly successful rhetorical application of the con-
cept of “the Nordic” and a very powerful international brand. But what does this
brand actually signify? The “New Nordic” brings to mind a range of associations,
often contradictory. New Nordic food is pure and simple, but it is also innovative
and artistic. It can be applied to singular chefs—Rene Redzepi, for one—or to the
governmental programs of the Nordic Council of Ministers using local food tra-
ditions in the Nordic countries as external-facing gastrodiplomacy to promote
no. 1 (March 2013): 36 – 55, doi:10.1080/15428052.2013.754296. This article also contains a helpful
appendix of bibliographical references on New Nordic Cuisine, for those looking to explore this
fairly vast media scape.
 Jonatan Leer, “The Rise and Fall of the New Nordic Cuisine,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8,
no. 1 (January 1, 2016), doi:10.3402/jac.v8.33494..
 In Byrkjeflot, Pedersen, and Svejenova, “From Label to Practice,” 43.
 Leer, “Rise and Fall.”
 As distinct, for example, from sociological methodologies assessing actual practices of cook-
ing and eating in the Nordic region.
 Matthias Danbolt writes, in his survey of Nordic exceptionalism and New Nordic rhetorics,
“The use of ‘New Nordic’ as a novel brand emerged in particular from the discussions around
the so-called New Nordic Food-movement in the early 2000s.” In an introduction to a cluster of
articles about the aesthetics of the New Nordic, Danish art historian Mette Sandbye notes: “Sud-
denly, in the early 2000s, a new term started to be prevalent: ‘The New Nordic.’’ It mainly ap-
peared in relation to food, as ‘New Nordic Food.’”
ideas of Nordic exceptionalism abroad.⁸ The New Nordic gestures toward its own
contemporaneity while also looking to the past and future. And lastly, the New
Nordic need have little to do with Northern Europe at all. New Nordic Food can
be a smørrebrød in Claus Meyer’s Nordic Food Hall in New York City or chapu-
lines (grasshopper) tacos served at a Noma pop-up in Mexico. “New Nordic” can,
indeed, be a line of herbal supplements with “Scandinavian values” promising
increased vitality and ingredient purity to consumers from Copenhagen to
China.⁹
This chapter charts these various rhetorics of New Nordic Food in order to
survey who calls what “Nordic” and to what end. I orient the rhetorical work
done by these many players along two axes—time and place. “Time and
Place” is not only the subtitle of the first Noma cookbook, it is also a phrase
which occurs everywhere in the rhetorics of the New Nordic Food movement.
In short, I conclude that the New Nordic’s mingling of ancient techniques –
hunting and gathering – with utopian rhetoric creates a kind of full circle, an
ideological loophole, in which a return to eating lichen and ants is both a fan-
tasy of the paleolithic and a model for gastronomy’s future. In transporting Nor-
disk Mad (Nordic food: no-ma) to Japan, Mexico, New York, and other markets,
local and the global are not at odds but intermingled: creating, paradoxically, a
new rhetorical definition of terroir divorced from specific ecologies. Ultimately, I
argue that the intentional ambiguity of the label “New Nordic” in terms of time
and place gives its culinary applications staying power on the international
scene while performatively and rhetorically obscuring other dynamics at play
in terms of race, gender, and class.
 Nordic Council of Ministers, “Nordic Food Diplomacy,” Nordic Food Diplomacy, accessed 1
January 2019, http://www.nfd.nynordiskmad.org.
 This is not to suggest that New Nordic food can be anything and everything. One obvious
point of contrast in terms of the international circulation of Nordic Food is IKEA. IKEA,
whose food division has an annual turnover of over $2 billion, seems to represent everything
which the New Nordic Cuisine does not: IKEA’s menu is mass culture, budget friendly, kid
friendly, widely popular, and geographically accessible around the world. But these two Nordic
Food juggernauts are indeed not as separate as their reputations suggest. Claus Meyer, for exam-
ple, is doing sustainability consulting with IKEA to veganize at least half of the chain’s menu by
2025. This supports my thesis that the New Nordic Cuisine is not simply a set of recipes, chefs, or
restaurants but ideological rhetoric with extremely far-reaching political and cultural effects.
178 Lily Kelting
What is New Nordic Food?

Writing about “new Southern” food in the United States, scholar Marcie Cohen
Ferris writes that, “the challenge of food studies remains food itself.”¹⁰ To define
a food movement requires collating many fleeting experiences of cooking and
eating, from home kitchens to government nutrition protocols, involving social
actors from celebrity chefs to food critics to eaters to academics. As such, this
research has the same methodological constraints as all food studies scholar-
ship: an unstable and ephemeral source material. As such, my perspective brings
together rhetorical discourse analysis with a more specific focus on the perform-
ative, agential use of speech acts by specific social actors. I focus on cookbooks,
interviews, media, and other print materials to assess “what we talk about when
we talk about New Nordic Food.”
There has accumulated, over the past ten years, a small body of academic
research on the New Nordic Food movement from those affiliated with culinary
institutions (Noma “staff-anthropologist” Mark Emil Hermansen) to cultural
studies academics (Jonathan Leer). Let me very humbly here outline my own in-
terventions—first, as a performance studies scholar, to attune to the sensory ex-
periences and embodied knowledge immanent to writing about a cuisine, de-
scriptions which I often miss in sociological or anthropological analysis.
Jonathan Leer writes that New Nordic Food has been largely uncriticized by
media, which also makes scholarly analysis difficult; there is seemingly no out-
side to food media hype. Here, I attempt to write from that outside position, read-
ing this mediascape against the grain. The other day, as I sat writing this essay, a
student from Bangalore popped into my office and immediately asked about the
stack of New Nordic cookbooks on my desk: “Do you know what Rene Redzepi is
doing at that restaurant Noma in Copenhagen? It’s like everything they serve is
an artwork!” What seemed at first a great challenge, writing this chapter from
India, is in some senses also a great boon—from an outside vantage, the tension
is clear between food, that deeply ephemeral and personal sensory experience,
and its social meanings, which traverse the whole world through various media.
As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, the definition of “Nordic” is not
nearly straightforward; “Nordicness” stretches far beyond the geopolitical re-
gion. More concretely, my analysis here centres around key figures and institu-
tions of the movement as they circulate both within and outside Nordic coun-
tries: Noma, its chef Rene Redzepi and creator Claus Meyer, chef Magnus
 Marcie Cohen Ferris, The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American
Region (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 2.
Nilsson and his restaurant Fäviken, which opened in 2008 in remote Jämtland.
By focusing on the most famous and vocal proponents of New Nordic food,
and by centring further around discourses which originate in Denmark and Swe-
den, I do not mean to reproduce discourses which recentre all conceptions of the
Nordic around the region’s most powerful and wealthy nations. Instead, I hope
to underscore the centrality of these celebrity chefs and these two nations in the
international representation of Nordic food.
While the “new Nordic” cuisine is certainly the product of elite circles in
major cities,¹¹ the pan-Nordic and inclusive rhetorics of New Nordic food have
carried the label to every corner of the region. The initiatives developed by the
Nordic Council of Ministers around the label underscores that “New Nordic
Food” rhetorics are explicitly pan-regional. Their first collective initiative, the
New Nordic Cuisine Manifesto, carefully included signatories from across the
Nordic nations including Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, for example.
Perhaps there is something about the ecological focus of New Nordic Food which
resists both national boundaries as well as even regional ones.¹² Rene Redzepi
explained in a 2017 interview with Anthony Bourdain: “We need to better under-
stand what the hell does it mean to actually be a cook in the north. Are you a
local or not a local? People consider [Noma] to be a local restaurant but the
menu right now has ingredients that come from 1000 kilometres away, which
is nothing local. The reality is that Denmark has more in common with Germany
than with Finland or Norway, especially when it comes to food.”¹³
I stress the gap between the discourse of “New Nordic Food” and what peo-
ple are actually cooking and eating in Nordic countries in order to highlight
power relations at play. The “New Nordic” as a food media sensation is an
elite movement that originates in urban fine dining with visible and mobile ce-
lebrity chefs as its face. As a result, these rhetorics are not neutral but can ac-
tually elide other conceptions of Nordic food, especially with regard to indige-
 With the obvious counterexample of very remote gastrotourist destinations, like Fäviken.
Mark Emil Hermansen writes about the way in which Noma consolidates Nordic identity for
its “natives”; I wonder rather whether those natives might be an international cadre of elite din-
ers, journalists, and fellow food industry people rather than the people of Copenhagen (cf. Leer,
“Rise and Fall”).
 Although even this move towards regionalism over nationalism is unevenly distributed
across the Nordic nations. Cf. Nicklas Neuman and Jonatan Leer, “Nordic Cuisine but National
Identities: ‘New Nordic Cuisine’ and the gastronationalist projects of Denmark and Sweden,” An-
thropology of food, no. 13 (July 19, 2018), doi:10.4000/aof.8723.
 Rene Redzepi, “Rene Redzepi on the new Noma,” Parts Unknown, 13 April 2017, accessed 26
December 2018, https://explorepartsunknown.com/copenhagen/rene-redzepi-on-the-new-
noma/
180 Lily Kelting
nous chefs, vegetarians, immigrant foodways, and so on. After a panel in Berlin
on Nordic food and cultural diplomacy, I began to ask a woman from the Swed-
ish embassy about the impact of New Nordic food in Germany, she furrowed her
brows and shrugged. She mentioned that the local grocery has started carrying
metal tubes of Kalles Kaviar, is that what I meant? No. What I am writing about
here is not – or not primarily – the material networks through which Nordic
foods circulate but the way that rhetorics surrounding the New Nordic food
move promiscuously from Copenhagen to the hallways of a university in India.
Indeed, the label “New Nordic” is sometimes so powerful that its own key
practitioners reject affiliation with the movement. Fäviken chef and cookbook
author Magnus Nilsson,¹⁴ for example, originally rejected the comparison with
Redzepi and label New Nordic. In his encyclopaedic 2015 documentation of
home cooking across the Nordic countries, The Nordic Cook Book, Nilsson writes,
“I don’t consider myself to be Nordic; I am, in fact, Swedish or possibly Jämtlan-
dian.”¹⁵ One of Noma’s most notable “graduates,” Christian Puglisi, writes, “I do
not feel that I’m a part of the New Nordic movement, as I don’t adhere to a
dogma of using only ingredients from Denmark or the surrounding Nordic re-
gion. I am an individual, and [Copenhagen restaurant] Relæ is a unique restau-
rant with its own identity.”¹⁶ Thus, I emphasize that this analysis must remain on
the level of rhetorics rather than a sociological investigation of Nordic food
which might catalogue actual modes of Nordic eating (or indeed trace Scandi-
philia across other nations like the UK).
But to suggest that New Nordic Food is primarily a cultural force is not to
diminish its material effects. The cultural is never “merely” cultural. Indeed,
much of the rhetoric of Nordic exceptionalism in the 2000s and 2010s – from
hygge mania to more policy-oriented conversations around democratic socialism,
maternity leave, and education policy – are bulwarked by the success of the New
Nordic Food movement.¹⁷
 Magnus Nilsson, Fäviken (London: Phaidon Press, 2015).

 Magnus Nilsson, The Nordic Cook Book (London: Phaidon Press, 2015), 11.
 Christian Puglisi, Relæ: A book of ideas, (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press 2014), 32– 34.
 That is, “NCoM [Nordic Council of Ministers]’s numerous strategy plans and branding initia-
tives for the NNF over the last decade has not only been central in making New Nordic Cuisine
into a celebrated trademark internationally, it has also turned the ‘‘New Nordic’’ into a brand
that has aided the promotion of contemporary art, architecture, design, performing arts,
films, TV shows, and other realms of cultural production from the Nordic region internationally”
in Mathias Danbolt, “New Nordic Exceptionalism: Jeuno JE Kim and Ewa Einhorn’s The United
Nations of Norden and Other Realist Utopias,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8, no. 1 (January
2016): 10, doi:10.3402/jac.v8.30902.
TIME
“The New Nordic primitives”
Despite being some of the most expensive and desirable commodities available
in the early twenty-first century, the dishes at Copenhagen restaurant Noma are
not ostentatiously lavish, nor scientifically adventurous, but instead show a kind
of stereotypical Danish restraint. Indeed, rather than into a gastronomic future
of olive spheres and scented air, the plates at Noma gesture ever backwards. Red-
zepi’s most famous dishes hearken back to a primitive, prehistoric, or pre-Euro-
pean past. Take, for example, “langoustines and sea flavours,” served on a slab
of rock – as are many of Noma’s dishes. The sole langoustine tail is cooked for 32
seconds in a pan. The “sea flavours,” of course, take more time to develop – the
rock itself is dotted with a kind of mayonnaise-like emulsion of oyster flesh and
juice, strewn with rye breadcrumbs and dulse dust. The impression given by
such plating is that the lobster has simply been found like this – not manipulat-
ed in any way – and that the dish is somehow timeless. In the Noma cookbook,
photographs of dishes are interspersed with photographs of the raw ingredients,
such that an image of a razor clam nestled in seaweed rubs up against a photo of
the plated restaurant version, “razor clam with parsley, horseradish, mussel
juice” which involves freezing juiced horseradish into a light tumble of snow.¹⁸
On the other hand, these dishes are intensely of the moment. One word fre-
quently used to describe New Nordic dishes is a “snapshot” – “a snapshot of the
seasons,” as chef Esben Holmboe Bang describes the menu at his three-Michel-
in-starred restaurant Maaemo in Oslo.¹⁹ Less – or perhaps more? – poetically,
Redzepi writes of a dish of mackerel and a broth from the first peas of the
early summer: “It was almost like being bitch-slapped by the season.”²⁰ Indeed,
the “new Noma,” reopened in March 2018, does not follow a typical fine dining
progression from vegetables to meat to sweets; each menu is based instead on
“three different seasons, and there will be a period of microseasons within
each of them.”²¹ These are not “spring, summer, winter and fall” but are defined
in deep relation to the Danish landscape: “when the oceans are ice-cold,” “the
 Rene Redzepi, Noma: Time and Place (London: Phaidon Press, 2010).
 Esben Holmboe Bang, “Culinary journeys”. CNN Travel TV, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=rwUj2PY5_HM.
 Rene Redzepi, A Work in Progress: A Journal (London: Phaidon Press 2013), 91.
 Redzepi, “Rene Redzepi on the New Noma.”
182 Lily Kelting
green season” and “the game season, when the leaves begin to fall.”²² Thus, time
in New Nordic Cuisine is both intensely of the moment, hearkens to a primitive
past, and gestures toward the future of food. It is this non-linear, wild time that
gives the cuisine its rhetorical force.
The Nordic Kitchen Manifesto, signed in 2004 by twelve chefs from Sweden,
Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, demon-
strates the ways in which these aesthetic choices become codified as ethical im-
peratives. The first three items in the manifesto all suggest that the rhetorics of
intense seasonality and locality are not merely accidental but hallmarks of the
New Nordic Food movement. They declare that they intend, “1) to express the
purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics we wish to associate to our region; 2)
to reflect the changes of the seasons in the meal we make; 3) to base our cooking
on ingredients and produce whose characteristics are particularly in our cli-
mates, landscapes.”²³ Thus, embedded in the very creation of “New Nordic”
food discourse is idea that food must be seasonal and local so that it can repre-
sent Nordic values of purity, freshness, simplicity, and ethics. In this sense, the
New Nordic Food Movement is connected to other terms that associate “The Nor-
dic” with a kind of atemporal wilderness – for example “nordic” is used as a
label for walking with poles, cross-country skiing, or generally being out in na-
ture (Friluftsliv in Scandinavian). ²⁴
As such, the New Nordic becomes lastingly associated with a kind of prim-
itive, ahistorical time which makes it difficult to trace the contours of this rhet-
oric and the power mechanics of its functioning. It is not only the plating, but
also culinary techniques which stand liminally between “the raw and the
cooked” – such as smoking and pickling – which again associate the rhetoric
of new Nordic food with the rhetorics of prehistoricity and primitivity.²⁵ Fäviken
serves a beef heart tartare, as well as marrow scooped from a cow shinbone,
sawed in half tableside in the small dining room. Eating ants or lichen has be-
 Pete Wells, “The New Noma: FAQ,” 24 April 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/din-

ing/noma-restaurant-copenhagen.html
 Nordic Council of Ministers, “The New Nordic Food Manifesto,” Nordic Co-operation, ac-
cessed May 30, 2021, https://www.norden.org/en/information/new-nordic-food-manifesto.
 Indeed “Friluftsliv” is poised to be the latest hot Scandinavian “lifestyle trend” – the new
“hygge” – as North America and Europe look for strategies to cope with Covid-19 restrictions
in the wintertime. See also Aronssen and Graden, eds., Performing Nordic Heritage (Surrey: Ash-
gate, 2013).
 A distinction central to mid-century anthropology’s concept of societies, as in Claude Lévi-
Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology (New York: Harper Col-
ophon Books, 1975) or Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and
Taboo, Routledge Classics (London: Routledge, 2005).
come so associated with Noma’s avant-garde kitchens as to become a punchline.

Esben Holmboe Bang’s restaurant Maaemo, to take a different example, comes
from an Old Norse word that means “all things that are living,” directly combin-
ing the “New Nordic food” ethos of expanding the definition of the edible with
invocations of Old Norse language and culture.
This temporal play between the unmediated deep past and the extreme pre-
sent creates the wonder at the heart of Noma’s mission. Indeed, such tensions
have run throughout discourses of “the Nordic” throughout the 20th century. His-
torians Carl Marklund and Peter Stadius note that “inter-war Scandinavia was
portrayed as capable of somehow combining the past with the future, the old
with the new.”²⁶ The Nordic region, then, has long stood for both the progressive
and modern as well as the primitive and natural—the region is and has been de-
fined precisely by this friction.
“How the Vikings Conquered Dinner”²⁷
This kind of “cave man cooking” is not, of course, neutral.²⁸ In promoting these
primitive visions of the Nordic located in a kind of fantasy past, the New Nordic
only continues a long tradition of romanticizing the Nordic Middle Ages.²⁹ Here I
turn to one such rhetoric as a case study: Viking masculinities. In a spread in the
popular American glossy food magazine Bon Appetit, Magnus Nilsson stands
wrapped in furs, a thick blonde beard falling into the grey folds of the fur
pelt, his blonde hair falling past his shoulders. He is set against the red wood
walls of his restaurant, Fäviken, in northern Sweden. The photograph is from
2011, but it could be an illustration from Asterix, where Asterix and Obelix
 Carl Marklund and Peter Stadius, “Acceptance and Conformity,” Culture Unbound 2 (2010):
609 – 34
 Brett, Martin, “How the Vikings Conquered Dinner,” GQ, July 29, 2014, https://www.gq.com/
story/best-nordic-scandinavian-restaurants-noma.
 It is probably no coincidence that the rarified primitivism of the New Nordic Food movement
boomed in the same period (2005 – 2015) as the more widespread paleo food craze, with its focus
on “manly” steaks and functional fitness. See Linda Lapiņa and Jonatan Leer, “Carnivorous Het-
erotopias: Gender, Nostalgia and Hipsterness in the Copenhagen Meat Scene,” NORMA 11, no. 2
(April 2, 2016): 89 – 109, doi:10.1080/18902138.2016.1184479.
 See: Julian D. Richards, The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Kevin J. Harty, The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of
the Nordic Middle Ages (Jefferson: McFarland, 2014); Elisabeth I. Ward, “Viking Pop Culture on
Display: The Case of the Horned Helmets,” Material Culture Review 54, vol. 1 (Autumn 2001):
6 – 20.
184 Lily Kelting
meet their marauding neighbour to the North, the horned-helmeted Olaf.³⁰ Nils-
son has gotten a lot of press for his work at Fäviken, and journalists draw the
link again and again that Nilsson is “the head of the class of the Nordic Primi-
tives.”³¹ GQ sends a fine-dining reporter across Scandinavia to report on “how
the Vikings conquered dinner.”³² Food critic Allen Jenkins paints the scene for
The Guardian: “We head upstairs past an ancient wolfskin coat to the restau-
rant… [the] dining room is punctuated with a curtain of cod roe; air-dried pieces
of pig hang from the ceiling, giant jars of dried mushrooms and flowers line the
side tables.”³³ Smithsonian Magazine writer Rachel Nuwer opens her review of
the restaurant with Nilsson clapping his “bear-paw-sized hands”; her first course
at the restaurant is accompanied by a glass of mead—“just like the Vikings used
to drink,” according to sommelier Robert Andersson.³⁴
The rhetorical linkages between masculine Vikings, Nordic primitivism, and
New Nordic food are manifold. The frontispiece of Redzepi’s first cookbook,
NOMA: Time and Place, shows a greyscale map of the Nordic region, countries
textured with pine and leaves. The caption reads “Rene’s voyages”—dotted
lines span from Copenhagen to the Faroe Islands, to Iceland, to Greenland, loop-
ing back. It looks, more than anything, like a map of the Viking Leif Eriksson’s
voyages. A map like this – starting from Copenhagen and looping towards Green-
land – also hints at the history of intra-Nordic colonialism elided within New
Nordic Food’s rhetoric, particularly the pan-regional, co-operational, and cele-
bratory vision offered by programs funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers.
The association of New Nordic food with stereotypes of Viking/colonial male
heroic pasts serves to elide other modes in which we might talk about Nordic
food. We might instead discuss home baking done by women in Nordic coun-
tries. We might critique the near total absence of women chefs from this powerful
New Nordic Food rhetoric. Redzepi might seem an odd figure to centre these cri-
tiques around, as the son of an Macedonian immigrant, a slight, brown-haired
 E. g. in Stefan Fjeldmark et al,, Asterix et les Vikings [Asterix and the Vikings] (Montreal: Al-
liance Atlantis Vivafilm, 2006), DVD.
 Adam Sachs, “Fäviken Rising,” Bon Appetit, 15 August 2011, https://www.bonappetit.com/
test-kitchen/cooking-tips/article/f-viken-rising
 Brett Martin, “How the Vikings Conquered Dinner.”
 Allen Jenkins, “Magnus Nilsson: the Rising Star of Nordic Cooking,” The Guardian, 22 Jan-
uary, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/22/magnus-nilsson-faviken-swe-
den-chef.
 Rachel Nuwer, “Deep in the Swedish Wilderness, Discovering One of the World’s Greatest
Restaurants,” Smithsonian Magazine, 21 August, 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/trav-
el/deep-in-the-swedish-wilderness-discovering-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-restaurants-818172.
fellow. Still, the Nordic variation of the shouty, hyper-masculine celebrity chef
trope has the same effect: it creates a hostile and exclusive kitchen culture. Red-
zepi has written and spoken extensively about his anger problems: “Mr. Redzepi
admits he is not entirely a reformed man. He uses the C-word (and it is not
“cook”) in the first paragraph of his article and asks whether there is “still
room for guys like me” in the industry.”³⁵ “Guys like me” – underdogs, Vikings,
kitchen warriors – dominate the rhetoric of New Nordic Food and foreclose the
inclusion of other modes of cooking and eating, those associated with women,
for example, within the “New Nordic” brand.
As food media becomes big business – and celebrity chefs are not just fa-
mous chefs but widely known celebrities – the uncritical valorization of mascu-
linity creates rhetorics which continue to haunt the material conditions of the
contemporary kitchen. In the heyday of Noma’s position as “the best restaurant
in the world,” Rene Redzepi appeared on the cover of Time Magazine alongside
chefs David Chang and Alex Atala with the caption “Gods of Food” emblazoned
across their serious faces.³⁶ The “Gods of Food” issue featured not a single
woman chef. The response given by editor Howard Chua-Eoan after the issue
faced backlash was that women chefs lacked the “reach and influence” of
men like Redzepi – alluding to the rhetorics of masculinity straight from the pre-
vious millennium, and the “reach and influence” of “Rene’s voyages” across the
Northern Atlantic.³⁷
A different example might be Elaine Asp, chef at the restaurant Haavi i Glen
in the tiny village of Glen, one of 51 Sami villages in Sweden. Asp is famous for
her gampasuele: reindeer blood pancakes. It would be easy to market such a
dish as “metal” within the rhetoric of guitar-shredding, testosterone-fuelled
kitchen culture. Her restaurant, like Fäviken, is nestled in a small town of four-
teen residents, requiring a kind of pilgrimage to visit. But no one is calling Asp
one of the “New Nordic primitives,” she is neither a chef-saint nor a burly, “bear-
pawed” Viking. Her cuisine, rather, stems from indigenous Sami practices of
cooking and eating each part of the reindeer, of foraging as a result of following
herds, and living lightly off the land.
 Andrew Hill, “Too Many Angry Cooks Spoil the Business Broth,” Financial Times, August 24,
2015, https://www.ft.com/content/0d81ad46 – 4722– 11e5-b3b2– 1672f710807b.
 “The Gods of Food,” editorial, Time, November 18, 2013, http://content.time.com/time/mag-
azine/article/0,9171,2156845,00.html.
 Hillary Dixler Canavan, “Time Editor Howard Chua-Eoan Explains Why No Female Chefs Are
‘Gods of Food,’” Eater, November 7, 2013, https://www.eater.com/2013/11/7/6334005/time-gods-
of-food-controversy-howard-chua-eoan-women-chefs.
186 Lily Kelting
How new is the New Nordic?
Paradoxically, while both New Nordic culinary aesthetics and the movement’s
media coverage refer to the past, it is also a utopian project. This future orienta-
tion likely gives the movement its thrust and sticking power as a cultural force.
In 2013, chef and author Alice Waters wrote of Redzepi in the Wall Street Journal:
“Rene Redzepi is focused on the future in the biggest way possible.”³⁸ This uto-
pianism is even evident from a management perspective, for example the au-
thors of this market food trend report state: “Unlike contemporary culinary
trends in other European regions, e. g., the Mediterranean, the value proposition
of the NNC is not primarily driven by a wish to revive local traditions. Rather the
NNC is a futuristic quest.”³⁹ Between the MAD symposium founded by Redzepi
and the experimental culinary work done at the Nordic Food Lab, one gets the
sense that those mad geniuses in Copenhagen are not only serving ants in
order to create an avant-garde culinary experience – they are serving ants to
save the world.
And they’re not wrong. Certain directions of the New Nordic movement
might not only be a punchline but also provide more sustainable and ethical
foodways across the world – for example, by questioning the limits of the edible
in a food-insecure and overpopulated world. By changing aesthetics around for-
aging, bug eating, and the deliciousness of wild things, Noma may in fact be ac-
tively participating in a better future – and not just rhetorically.
The multiplicity of temporal perspectives is striking here, combining an exo-
ticized past, microseasonality, and the far future. Perhaps the runaway success
of the New Nordic Food movement lies in its performative frisson, its “never
for the first time”-ness. Jeff Gordiner writes for the New York Times: “Paradoxi-
cally, the New Nordic movement strives to carry diners way back to a more an-
cient realm of flavour. Even when looking forward, it summons a sort of Norse
gastronomic mythology centered on twigs, berries, roots, weeds, bark, hay,
grass, kelp, fish, soil and barrel-fermented funk.”⁴⁰
 Howie Kahn, “Noma’s Rene Redzepi Never Stops Experimenting,” The Wall Street Journal, 5
November, 2013, https://www.wsj.com/articles/nomas-rene-redzepi-never-stops-experimenting-
1415237540.
 Tino Bech-Larsen, Trine Mørk, and Sussanne Kolle, “New Nordic Cuisine: Is There Another
Back to the Future? – An Informed Viewpoint on NNC Value Drivers and Market Scenarios,”
Trends in Food Science & Technology 50 (April 1, 2016): 249, doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2016.01.020.
 Jeff Gordinier, “A Nordic Quest in New York,” The New York Times, February 18, 2014, Food,
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/dining/a-nordic-quest-in-new-york.html.
Food reporter Julia Moskin writes: “It is sometimes called ‘new Nordic,’ al-
though [Redzepi] and some other chefs from the region prefer the broader
label ‘authentic cuisine.’ It is earthy and refined, ancient and modern, both play-
ful and deeply serious. Instead of the new (techniques, stabilizers, ingredients),
it emphasizes the old (drying, smoking, pickling, curing, smoking) with a larger
goal of returning balance to the earth itself [italics mine].”⁴¹ While Moskin cre-
ates a tension between the twin labels of progressive “New Nordic” and past-ori-
ented “authentic cuisine,” I argue that these two rhetorics of Nordic food are two
sides of the same coin. The coexistence of mythical pasts, the present, and the
bold future orientation of the New Nordic is indeed the movement’s very signa-
ture. As Redzepi concludes in his 2013 A Work in Progress: A Journal: “When past
and present merge, something new happens.”⁴²
PLACE
Nordic Terroir: Rooted in Place
Just as the “New” in “New Nordic Food” encompasses both the movement’s fu-
turity as well as primitive pasts, “Nordic” has a similar wide-ranging rhetorical
function. Nordic ecology is on the one hand essential to the authenticity of New
Nordic Food. And on the other, the global strength of New Nordic Food rhetorics
demand that the idea of the “Nordic” slips away, even from its own regional bor-
ders. Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson writes in the preface to Noma: Time
and Place:
When we look at the plate, we should really also see the greater ecosystem. Finding out
where the food comes from and where it goes to – maybe this knowledge can be made
into a kind of flavour enhancer. It matters whether the potatoes come from New Zealand
or the Lammefjord area of Denmark, and I can see great potential in not dividing knowl-
edge and flavour (just as in art, you should not separate form and content).⁴³
Eliasson’s exhortation that the dish should reflect the ecosystem encapsulates a
key strand in the movement. The pages of the cookbook that follow show sweep-
 Julia Moskin, “New Nordic Cuisine Draws Disciples,” The New York Times, August 24, 2011,
Food, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/dining/new-nordic-cuisine-draws-disciples.html.
 Redzepi, A Work in Progress: A Journal, 119.
 Redzepi, Noma: Time and Place, 9.
188 Lily Kelting
ing coastlines, dense forests, and local shell fishermen in their orange hip wad-
ers. We can be nowhere but north.
It is no surprise – given that the book Noma, the restaurant Noma, and the
New Nordic Cuisine manifesto are all the brainchild of Claus Meyer – to see an
insistence on place throughout. After all, the principles associated with New
Nordic Cuisine (purity, freshness, simplicity and ethics) are tied not only to sea-
sonality but to “our climates, landscapes, and waters.”⁴⁴ This insistence on place
is one of the key defining factors of the New Nordic. But perhaps this emphasis
on “place” in fact simply recapitulates one of the key concepts in gastronomy –
that all food is connected to the land. The importance of terroir in southern Eu-
rope led to the creation of AOC and DOP labels in the 1930s, certifying as “au-
thentic” only wines, cheeses, or other foods from distinct agricultural regions.
By the twenty-first century, ideas about terroir had fallen out of popular dis-
course with the rise of globalization. So to hear Eliasson riff that “knowledge
is a kind of flavour enhancer” feels suddenly new; one might credit Redzepi,
Meyer, and other chefs of the New Nordic movement, with bringing back the con-
cept of terroir to popular discourse, where it has spread like wildfire.⁴⁵ Eliasson
is, of course, right: miso made in Copenhagen will taste different from miso
made in Aarhus will taste different from miso made in a coastal town outside
Tokyo. Different microbes float in on the breeze. Knowledge of these differences
– the kind of knowledge generated by the Nordic Food Lab – does make these
foods more delicious. Just ask the diners eating the results of their research
into fermentation, ageing, and the limits of the edible next door at Noma.
This, too, is terroir.
Despite its global power and inclusive sweep, at the heart of the rhetoric of
the New Nordic food is indeed a specific landscape, a terroir, and food systems,
which are inextricable from the cold waters and extreme seasons of the Nordic
region. Noma in particular is famous for its exclusive use of ingredients native
to the region. No black pepper and no lemons mean that acidity and bite
come instead from ants’ stress hormones or funky ferments. Because each fla-
vour must be coaxed out of a limited palate of ingredients native to the Nordic
region, many dishes become a kind of portrait of the landscapes from which
the ingredients come. In his Journal, Redzepi describes the thought process be-
hind his dish of hare with bitter greens and walnuts – “Torsten was the first to
 Nordic Council of Ministers, “The New Nordic Food Manifesto,”

 Indeed the Google Books Ngram review provides the data: appearances of “terroir” in Eng-
lish-language books increase exponentially after about 2004, as do appearances of the associ-
ated terms “slow food,” “food miles,” “farm to table” and “eating local.” The graphs of these
usages are nearly identical to a search for “Rene Redzepi.”
pick up the hare carcass. ‘What do you think its last meal was?’ I asked, ‘Do you
think we should try to stuff it back in?’”⁴⁶ This melding of food with a natural
environment shook the food world in the early 2000s, especially in comparison
to French gastronomy which has so dominated elite fine dining before this Nor-
dic ascendency. Food editor Joshua David Stein writes in his review of Noma,
“the wood infuses into the broth, creating a very special flavour that you some-
how recognize – it’s almost as if you’re walking through a forest and smelling the
forest. It sounds crazy. You’re recognizing it, you’re eating it.”⁴⁷
Terroir’s people
The Nordic Food Lab brought on a staff anthropologist, Mark Emil Hermansen,
who wrote an essay called: “Cultivating Terroir,” in which he chews through the
cultural work done by the chefs at Noma in creating a sense of place.⁴⁸ Similarly
to the way that New Nordic dishes are described as moments frozen in time,
“snapshots of the season,” Hermansen uses the language of anthropology to the-
orize ways that the food at Noma provides a portrait of Nordic terroir. Hermansen
cites reviews of the restaurant which pick up this theme:
At different times he [Redzepi] discovered how an ingredient should taste, its links to time
and place: a Swedish truffle, birch-tree sap, a Danish mushroom, succulent seaweed, the
potential of hazelnut and elderflower and nasturtium… “We cook the way we cook because
this is what we found,” Redzepi said. He’s a chef for a shrinking planet, the man who found
a terroir beneath the permafrost.⁴⁹
Such descriptions are everywhere in media appraisal of New Nordic restaurants

because they are the very cornerstone of the New Nordic philosophy: that food
should taste like where it comes from and that where it comes from should be
very close at hand.
Ecological terroir, however, is not the whole truth. Food scholar Amy Trubek
writes in her book on terroir, The Taste of Place, “Terroir and goût du terroir are
categories for framing and explaining people’s relationship to the land, be it sen-
 Rezepi, A Work in Progress: A Journal, 150.

 Joshua David Stein, “Sleep Noma.” Tasting Table, 26 July 2016, https://www.tastingtable.-
com/dine/national/noma-restaurant-copenhagen-rene-redzepi-joshua-david-stein.
 In Mark Emil Hermansen, “Creating Terroir – An Anthropological Perspective on New Nordic
Cuisine as an Expression of Nordic Identity,” Anthropology of Food S7 (22 December 2012).
 Hermansen, “Creating Terroir.”
190 Lily Kelting
sual, practical, or habitual. This connection is considered essential, as timeless

as the earth itself.”⁵⁰ But, of course, it is not essential but highly rather socially
and culturally created: “ultimately the cultural domain, the foodview, creates the
goût du terroir.”⁵¹ Hermansen, too, concludes that New Nordic terroir is not only
a culinary connection between food and the land but also a cultural site of iden-
tity formation. He even notes that New Nordic food is a site of “banal” nation-
alism for Nordics usually averse to overt nationalistic displays. Hermansen con-
cludes,
The idea of a Nordic folk when exposed to the modern world of globaliza-
tion, migration and electronic mediation exists to allow for a production of local-
ity in everyday discourse; but rather than basing its idea of itself on the per-
ceived historical ties that make out claims to blood or land, “native” bodies
are reproduced via a continued production of locality – “this is who we are.”
This allows for a way to view the New Nordic Cuisine as a sort of postnational
movement, especially because it reproduces a Nordic imagined community
based on the (re)creation of a Nordic cuisine that takes its meaning from the pro-
duction of locality, in the form of the Nordic terroir.
In essence, I understand Hermansen to argue for the hyper-local, wild, “taste
of the North” New Nordic Food as a site for identity formation for Nordic people.
Rather than construct a folk out of blood or soil, a race of Nordic People are tied
to, if not the land in a autochthonic sense, then the distinct foods of that land,
tastes from childhood. But these two rhetorics are, of course, intertwined.⁵² Her-
mansen’s claims for Noma’s folkishness might inoculate against charges of elit-
ism, they do seem to echo other contemporary populist rhetorics which connect
the “folk” to the land. Charlotte Higgins’ essay in the Guardian, “The Hygge Con-
spiracy,” connects the explosive interest in all things hygge with growing anti-im-
migrant sentiments in the U.K. before Brexit.⁵³ Ulla Holm, adding together the
emphasis on purity, fear of “contamination by outsiders,” and even brown shirts
of the front of house staff,⁵⁴ puts a finer point on it in her op-ed in the Danish
newspaper, Politiken: “Noma is fascism.”⁵⁵
 Amy Trubek, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of Cal-
ifornia Press, 2008),18.
 Trubek, Taste of Place, 20.
 See Merle Weßel’s chapter in this volume.
 Charlotte Higgins, “The Hygge Conspiracy,” The Guardian, November 22, 2016, http://
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/22/hygge-conspiracy-denmark-cosiness-trend.
 On this point Holm is (I assume) being ironic.
 Ulla Holm, “Noma er fascisme i avantgardistiske klæ’r,” Politiken, May 8, 2011, https://polit-
iken.dk/debat/kroniken/art5509397/Noma-er-fascisme-i-avantgardistiske-kl%C3 %A6r.
I did not go foraging with Rene Redzepi
Eating wild foods became so entangled with the New Nordic brand that one writ-
er wrote an article for online food magazine Eater titled, “The Era of the ‘I Forag-
ed With René Redzepi’ Piece.”⁵⁶ The article rounds up media contributions to the
“I foraged with Rene Redzepi” genre of food criticism. There are many. What
started as pragmatics soon became the chefs’ aesthetics. Aesthetics so remarka-
ble that the media all over the world reported about the ants, the lichen, the leaf
broth, and how good it all somehow tasted. Smoking, fermenting, pickling, and
storing the summer’s bounty for the winter may indeed have originated as
uniquely Northern strategies for coping with seasonal extremes, but for the
last fifteen years, they have been packaged as rhetorics. The most recent addition
to this genre is the Noma Guide to Fermentation, published by Phaidon in late
2018.
It becomes more complicated when these hyperlocal technologies, such as
foraging, proliferate as freely as digital hype pieces, cookbooks, and recipes.
After one “I went foraging with Rene Redzepi piece” detailed the author and
Redzepi’s adventures foraging for wild mushrooms in London’s Hampstead
Heath, amateur foragers began to overrun the park. Park authorities warned:
“If one in a thousand [park visitors] decided to pick funghi, that would be
8,000 foraging trips a year. We are on a point where, if it carries on, we could
see serious species loss on Hampstead Heath, particularly with the funghi.”⁵⁷
In 2017, Redzepi again attempted to spread the love of wild food beyond the
elite restaurant kitchen and to the populace by founding a foraging platform and
phone app, Vild Mad. Though it is designed for use in Denmark, the app FAQ
notes that “We hope that our program will inspire other wild food models
around the world.”⁵⁸ This ability of a restaurant to engage professional foragers
to reinscribe a taste for forgotten local foods, to resignify weeds as fine products,
is indeed a new turn in the fine dining landscape and a clarion call in a world
with increasingly precarious food systems. The power of rhetoric, though, shows
the ways in which a desire for wild food can escalate, spread, and proliferate far
beyond the localities in which these foods grow. There is, then, a real tension be-
 Paula Forbes, “The Era of the ‘I Foraged With René Redzepi Piece,’” Eater, May 3, 2011,
https://www.eater.com/2011/5/3/6683095/the-era-of-the-i-foraged-with-rene-redzepi-piece.
 “Noma Head Chef Accused of Illegal Mushroom Picking,” editorial, The Telegraph, 23 No-
vember 2010, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8154563/Noma-head-chef-accused-of-
illegal-mushroom-picking.html.
 “VILD MAD – Frequently Asked Questions,” Vild Mad, accessed May 30, 2021, https://vild-
mad.dk/application/files/5815/0227/5901/FAQ_US.pdf.
192 Lily Kelting
tween Noma’s philosophy of the local and the technologized global infoscape in
which it operates and spreads its brand.
Nordic food deterritorialized
But the spread of the New Nordic outside the North is not only digital. I have
spent 2018 writing this essay and eating “Nordic” food all over the world,
often wondering what exactly, ties the dishes before me to the terroir or “food-
view” of the Nordic region. New York, NY: I stop in the open Art Deco Vanderbilt
Hall at restaurateur Claus Meyer’s Great Northern Food Hall. I pay four dollars
for a croissant for “research”: I’m not in the mood for a brussels sprouts and
bacon smørrebrød and don’t want to shell out for a poached egg and cheddar
cheese “grain bowl” –supposedly an ode to Danish grød but right on time for
America’s low-carb, West-Coast inspired “bowl” craze. The croissant is not “Nor-
dic” in any way I can recognize. Minneapolis, Minnesota: I have a cocktail with
aquavit, carrot juice, and dill at a “New Nordic” restaurant. It is bitterly cold out-
side, and my Swedish-American friend and I are seated across from a blazing
fire, sharing a pleasant pheasant terrine with pickled persimmons, cornichons,
and some kind of quince mostarda.
Berlin: Olafur Eliasson’s younger sister, Victoria Eliasdottir, is opening a
“New Nordic” restaurant in Berlin. The first thing they place on the table along-
side thick slices of light rye bread is a combination of bacon fat and brown but-
ter. I am surprised because I was offered the very same spread with biscuits at
Husk, in Charleston, South Carolina, another restaurant deeply committed to
the local foodways of the American South. What makes this particular spread
“Nordic”? Did the butter come from Icelandic cows? The fat from Danish pigs?
Is there something about the seasonality, the sustainability, the innovation of
these dishes that made them clearly New Nordic? I couldn’t say.
A fourth example: Tulum, Mexico. The core Noma restaurant team helicop-
ters in and prepares what sounds like, frankly, the greatest meal of all time –
or “the meal of the decade” as Tom Sietsema described it.⁵⁹ And yet this final
example most clearly encapsulates the problem of the highly local New Nordic
 Tom Sietsema, “A World-Class Chef Built a $600 Pop-up in the Mexican Jungle. It Might Be
“the Meal of the Decade,’” Washington Post, April 25, 2017, Food, https://www.washingtonpost.-
com/lifestyle/food/a-world-class-chef-built-a-600-pop-up-in-the-mexican-jungle-it-might-be-
the-meal-of-the-decade/2017/04/25/e3b75244– 284e-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html.
food as a global phenomenon. Critic Pete Wells writes in an exceptional essay on

Noma Mexico, “What I find hard to run through my critical algorithms, though, is
the idea of a meal devoted to local traditions and ingredients that is being pre-
pared and consumed mostly by people from somewhere else.”⁶⁰ Tulum is a
place, but it is also a kind of no-place, a resort town. Half the residents live in
moderate to extreme poverty.⁶¹ This spectacular menu is designed to be eaten
by global food intelligentsia, not local people. Nor was celebrating indigenous
Mexican culinary knowledge an explicit part of Redzepi’s project. Wells asks:
“can a restaurant really be of its place if it doesn’t bend and sway to the breezes
of local tastes and local demands?… I’d rather review a restaurant that has its
roots in the ground.”⁶²
This is the key question: when New Nordic food is so deeply associated with
terroir, with “I went foraging with Rene Redzepi”—what happens when you go to
Mexico? How do you translate these relationships with foragers and fishermen
while also popping into countries with radically different food traditions like
Mexico and Japan? How is this then nordisk mad, which gives Noma its name?
What is then being exported? The possibility of a Noma Mexico highlights the
power of New Nordic as a rhetoric, that it can be so completely estranged
from even its own core tenets of time and place. Noma is not just a restaurant
or mode of cooking – it is an enormously powerful brand, maybe even a cult
of personality. “New Nordic” stands for and commercializes a hyper-specific
ethos of microseasonality and extreme locovorism while obscuring the fact
that the very existence of Noma Mexico requires performative and fluid defini-
tions of time and space. To be New Nordic is to be local, but that “local” can
be anywhere from Sydney to Tokyo to Tulum. As Jonathan Leer quips regarding
Meyer’s New York Nordic Food Hall: “if you can make it (Nordic) there, you can
make it (Nordic) anywhere.”⁶³
The New Nordic movement associated itself so strongly with the very con-
cept of localness itself that the above-mentioned concepts of “purity,” “fresh-
ness,” and “primitiveness” themselves become Nordic concepts. As Ryan Miller
of New York’s Momofuku Ssam puts it: “It’s not like I learned about some
new Danish cheese and came back and put it on my menu…. I learned to respect
organization and education and making food in the most natural way possi-
 Pete Wells, “Why I’m Not Reviewing Noma Mexico,” The New York Times, 23 May 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/dining/noma-tulum-pete-wells-mexico-rene-redzepi.html.
 Pete Wells, “Why I’m Not Reviewing Noma Mexico.”
 Pete Wells, “Why I’m Not Reviewing Noma Mexico.”
 Leer, “Rise and Fall.”
194 Lily Kelting
ble.”⁶⁴ This idea of “the natural,” it seems, is what “Nordic” signifies in “New
Nordic Food”: which is, of course, a cultural construction. “Nordic” does not sig-
nify Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, or Greenland but instead a
portable series of rhetorics, in which terroir is on the one hand central and on
the other has little to do with any specific terrain, culture, or history. The New
Nordic has come to stand in for an anytime and anyplace while gesturing toward
a Northern right here and right now. Writer Hank Shaw reiterates in The Atlantic:
“The lesson Redzepi is teaching us is to make beautiful food that is only possible
where you are right now – in the moment, and in the place.”⁶⁵
Conclusions
I have a confession to make. I have never eaten at Noma. It is, quite frankly, far
too expensive.⁶⁶ It is strange, to spend so long writing an essay about a restau-
rant with so few seats – where, as Pete Wells notes, most of the diners were likely
paid to be there, and where most of the diners likely flew to Copenhagen just to
eat there. I have written about the ways in which “New Nordic Food” rhetorics
manipulate and multiply time and place with exclusionary effects with regards
to gender. But class exclusion is the real engine behind New Nordic discourse.
To return to the “labels and practices” framework offered by Haldor Byrkjeflot,
Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen, and Silviya Svejenova, class is where the rhetorical
labels and material practices of the New Nordic Cuisine diverge. The rhetorics of
New Nordic Food associate “the Nordic” with “nature” rather than any specific
environment, with “the past and future” rather than any specific history; New
Nordic Food rhetorics deterritorialize terroir itself and rhetorics of New Nordic
Food gesture at once the deep past and the utopian future as chefs and writers
strive to balance on the knife-edge of the season. But these rhetorics – as com-
mercially viable and media-saturating as they are – cannot account for the sen-
sory, embodied practices of the New Nordic cuisine. Indeed, perhaps so many
people talk about Noma precisely because very few can afford to experience it
for themselves. “New Nordic” food is expensive food. It generates as much
meaning as it does because it is a commodity; it generates as much discourse
as it does because to have an opinion about Rene Redzepi is a form of cultural
 Moskin, “New Nordic Food Draws Disciples.”

 Hank Shaw, “Cook Like a Super-Locavore With Lessons From ‘Noma,’” The Atlantic, March
23, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/03/cook-like-a-super-locavore-with-
lessons-from-noma/72898/.
 At the time of writing, dinner costs €550, including wine.
capital. Like Pete Wells, I wonder about the ethics of paying so much to eat
something so extravagantly self-effacing. I wonder whether I am not simply jeal-
ous.
This is the other great paradox of Noma, that, as Wells writes, “as an aesthet-
ic project, it is also about questioning received hierarchies of value.”⁶⁷ Redzepi
famously gave his dishwasher since 2003, Ali Sonko, a ten percent share in
the restaurant (Redzepi himself owns twenty percent). Yet the optics of the
white Noma team wearing matching shirts with Sonko’s face on it when celebrat-
ing an award in London – Sonko emigrated from The Gambia – read to me as
woefully naive. But still, the best aspects of New Nordic food have trickled
down from Noma’s 46 tables to the rest of us, namely, an expanded and curious
definition of the delicious. New Nordic chefs and the governmental bodies that
support them are explicitly interested in advocacy – from the Nordic Food Lab’s
research on and celebration of entomological proteins, to the Mad Symposium’s
knowledge sharing, to the foraging app Vild Mad’s outreach to school children in
the hopes of popularizing foraged foods. The Nordic Council of Ministers intends
these social developments to have not only regional but global reach. Will a more
accessible utopianism become as essential to the movement as seasonality and
terroir?
 Wells, “The New Noma: FAQ.”

Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
Nordic Noir: Branding Nordicness as British
Boreal Nostalgia
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, Nordic crime fiction has become a
local and a global obsession, constituting a sub-genre of crime fiction in its own
right.¹ With a stock of glum detectives, cold, desolate landscapes and a penchant
for social critique, crime novels and television series from the Nordic countries
form a recognisable international brand, which is used in the marketing and ex-
port of not only the crime stories themselves, but also consumer goods, tourist
destinations, Nordic lifestyles, and social values.
This chapter explores how the reading and consumption of Nordic crime fic-
tion in the 2010s, particularly in the UK, became enmeshed in a much wider and
pervasive rhetoric of Nordicness made recognisable under the brand name of
Nordic noir. I am going to argue that when Nordic crime fiction travels abroad,
it is consumed as a globalised cultural good, desirable for its blend of transna-
tional generic forms and its exotic local anchoring. A utopian Nordicness or bore-
alism – a term to be discussed later in this chapter – may best describe the allure
of what is associated with Nordic noir in its British reception. Here, all things
Nordic have come to represent an imagined, desirable topography² bestowed
with stereotypical Nordic traits, sampling everything from social values to
well-designed consumer products, which can be accessed en bloc through the
consumption of crime fiction.
One suggestive example of how Nordic crime fiction has been used in the
branding of non-Nordic consumer products is a British television commercial
used in a marketing campaign for the petrol company Esso. The company’s cre-
ative agency produced a commercial in the style of a Scandinavian crime drama,
complete with a minimalist, gloomy set and actors speaking in Danish with Eng-
lish subtitles.³ In the commercial, a witness, who turns out to be an Esso engi-
 See Kerstin Bergman, Swedish Crime Fiction: The Making of Nordic Noir (Milan: Mimesis, 2014),
173; Barry Forshaw, Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction (Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Scandinavian Crime Fiction (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017).
 I am using the term “topography” (literally, “place writing”) to designate the confluence of
real, physical places and their complex and changing discursive, affective, or rhetorical figura-
tions. See J. Hillis Miller, Topographies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 3 – 4.
 Esso, “Esso – Fuel Engineer,” 1 September, 2017, YouTube video, 1:00, https://youtu.be/
g9caGx-RkTc. In the UK, subtitled foreign television programmes were a rarity, until the screen-
OpenAccess. © 2022 Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, published by De Gruyter. This work is

licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110730104-010
198 Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen
neer with a remarkable eye for detail, helps the Danish detectives solve a case
with Scandinavian-style meticulousness. It is implied that “Esso is renowned
for having meticulous attention to detail in everything it does – including devel-
oping fuel formulations that are designed on a molecular level to help improve
engine performance.”⁴ The connection between Nordic noir and a new fuel sys-
tem is far-fetched, to say the least. Why did Esso choose to use Danish television
drama as a vehicle for its branding, especially since there is no shortage of
homegrown television drama or British detectives obsessed with forensic detail?
The commercial suggests not only how iconic subtitled Nordic crime drama has
become in the UK over the past decade; more importantly, it points to an implicit
set of images that have become popularly associated with a contemporary rhet-
oric of Nordicness.⁵
The Esso commercial was meant to reach a segment of British middle-class
consumers, readers, and television viewers, which, I argue, is no longer looking
for confirmation of their own identities and social aspirations exclusively within
the Anglophone sphere. To these viewers the affective engagement with Nordic-
ness has become synonymous with wider aspirational cosmopolitan desires.
However, the cosmopolitan consumption of Nordic noir and a concomitant de-
sire for Nordicness is a complex phenomenon to locate, as it is stimulated partly
by Nordic self-presentations and a receiving culture’s analogous use of the Nor-
dic to express its own local desires and concerns. While Esso could have drawn
from a locally sourced list of perfectionist detectives, the Nordicness of subtitled
quality television drama allows the advertiser to target an audience who wants
to participate in current, legitimate consumer behaviour. The Nordic noir brand-
ing of Nordic television dramas on BBC FOUR from 2009 onwards. The experience of reading
subtitles on the screen became a marker for the fascination with – and exotic foreignness of
– Nordic noir drama series (see Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, “Nordic Noir in the UK: The Allure
of Accessible Difference,” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8, no. 1 (January 2016): 32704,
doi:10.3402/jac.v8.32704.
 John Wood, “New Synergy Supreme + Unleaded launched,” Forecourt Trader Online, 1 Sep-
tember, 2017, https://forecourttrader.co.uk/news/new-synergy-supreme-unleaded-launched/
640519.article.
 In a UK context, it is significant that even though the original language spoken by the actors
in the commercial is Danish, the associated cultural background, as understood by viewers, is of
a general Nordic character. Furthermore, the choice of the term “images” in this paragraph is
informed, as my analyses and argument in this chapter generally, by the theory of image studies
or imagology, associated with the work of Joep Leerssen. See, for instance, Joep Leerssen, “Here
follows A summary of imagological theory,” Imagologica: Dedicated to the critical study of na-
tional stoeretypes, n.d., para 6, accessed 1 May, 2021, https://imagologica.eu/theoreticalsumma-
ry.
ing also allows the company to draw on a set of positive values associated with
the Nordic region (e. g. that it is egalitarian, socially just, functionalist, rational,
healthy, and harmonious), which have become re-actualised and re-articulated
through the popularisation of Nordic crime fiction, the “mystery” of Nordic hap-
piness, NOMA’s locally foraged Nordic food and the Danish hygge-craze.⁶
In the following, I shall discuss how the publishing, marketing, and recep-
tion of Nordic crime fiction in the UK, along with television documentaries and a
recent deluge of articles and popular books on life, hygge, and happiness in the
Nordic countries, present the region neatly packaged to the extent that all recog-
nisable elements – history, art, culture, food, and consumer trends – appear mu-
tually dependent, causal and, importantly, essentially local or regional. Viewed
through contemporary popular cultural discourses in the UK, Nordic social real-
ities are portrayed as attractive and authentic destinations that provide what
might have been lost at home, but also as destinations that have already been
prepared for a “tourist gaze.”⁷ As such, this chapter will argue that the rhetoric
of Nordicness, around the international success of Nordic crime fiction at home
and abroad, poses both a challenge and an opportunity for re-assessing what the
rhetoric of Nordicness may signify in the twenty-first century.
From Nordic Crime Fiction to Nordic Noir

The story about the international success of Nordic crime fiction is by now well
known.⁸ The details of the genre’s success in the Anglophone world, leading to
the widespread adoption of the term Nordic noir, are worthwhile summarising
nevertheless as they demonstrate the genre’s unique impact and formation with-
in a complex contemporary media situation, in a changing commercial and
transnational field.
 See Lily Kelting’s chapter in this volume.

 John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage Pub-
lications, 1990).
 Susan Bassnett, “Detective Fiction in Translation: Shifting Patterns of Reception,” in Crime
Fiction as World Literature, ed. Louise Nilsson, David Damrosch, and Theo D’haen (London:
Bloomsbury, 2017), 149; Barry Forshaw, Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian
Crime Fiction, Film and TV (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2013); Wendy Lesser, Scandinavian
Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020); Andrew Nestingen
and Paula Arvas, “Introduction: Contemporary Scandinavian Crime Fiction,” in Scandinavian
Crime Fiction, ed. Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
2011); Stougaard-Nielsen, Scandinavian; and Steven Peacock, Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel,
Film, Television (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
It started with the global publishing phenomenon of Stieg Larsson’s Millen-

nium trilogy.⁹ In Sweden, the trilogy was well received and praised for its blend-
ing of social indignation with a thrilling plot. Originally published by Sweden’s
oldest independent publishing house, Norstedts, the Trilogy’s international rise
to fame was initiated when published in French by the independent publisher
Actes Sud. When subsequently published in English in 2008 by yet another in-
dependent publisher, Quercus, it was, against all odds, set on its way to becom-
ing “the biggest publishing phenomenon of the 21st century,” according to Brit-
ish journalist and author Mark Lawson.¹⁰ Indeed, as David Geherin reminds us,
Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire became “the first translated novel in 25
years to top the coveted New York Times best seller list.”¹¹ While the Anglophone
publishing markets have been notoriously impenetrable to foreign language fic-
tion,¹² several Nordic crime series have subsequently been translated into Eng-
lish and dozens more languages, and authors such as the Swedes Arne Dahl, Ca-
milla Läckberg and Liza Marklund, the Norwegian Jo Nesbø and the Dane Jussi
Adler-Olsen have sold millions of copies of their crime novels outside of the Nor-
dic region.¹³
The success of Scandinavian crime fiction, particularly in the UK, has given
birth to expressions such as “Scandimania,” “the Nordic invasion,” and “the
Swedish crime fiction miracle,”¹⁴ a rhetoric suggesting how rare it is for litera-
tures from smaller language areas to make an impact on the UK and US mar-
kets.¹⁵ Curiously, while the Nordic countries have generally been perceived as
small, peripheral, or semi-peripheral nations on the northern fringe of the Euro-
pean cultural and linguistic centres, the Nordic countries punch well above their
 Larsson, Stieg, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008); Lars-
son, Stieg, The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009); Larsson,
Stieg, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).
 Mark Lawson, “Crime’s grand tour: European detective fiction,” The Guardian, 26 October,
2012, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/26/crimes-grand-tour-european-detective-
fiction.
 David Geherin, The Dragon Tattoo and its Long Tale: The New Wave of European Crime Fiction
in America (London: McFarland, 2012), Kindle.
 See Rajendra Chitnis et al., eds., Translating the Literatures of Small European Languages
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020).
 See Nestingen and Arvas, “Introduction,” and Forshaw, Death.
 Johan Svedjedal, “Svensk skönlitteratur i världsperspektiv,” in Läsarnas Marknad, markna-
dens läsare: En forskningsantologi utarbetad för Literaturutredningen, ed. Ulla Carlsson and
Jenny Johannisson (Göteborg: Nordicom, 2012), 209.
 See Chitnis, Translating.
weight when it comes to international publishing. Monitoring the language

spread of bestsellers on several European markets between 2008 and 2014,
Miha Kovač and Rü diger Wischenbart have found that the impact of Nordic au-
thors on translations and sales is striking, establishing a cohort very similar to
authors writing in English:
The readers’ rush for Nordic crime is the tip of a giant iceberg that has grown over several
decades … After Stieg Larsson’s success, a new dynamics led to an explosion of transla-
tions, with new incoming authors to include Liza Marklund, Camilla Läckberg, Jens Lapi-
dus, Lars Kepler, Jo Nesbø, Arnaldur Inðridason, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and many others.
Their reach was further broadened by international acclaim for Scandinavian TV series
of the same genre, such as The Killing, The Bridge, The Protectors, Unit One and Mamon.¹⁶
Significantly, Kovač and Wischenbart suggest that the international publishing

success of Nordic crime fiction is closely tied to regional (Nordic) synergies
and cross-mediality: the success of Larsson’s novels (adapted for both a Swedish
and an English-language film); the success of authors from across the Nordic re-
gion and the coincident successes of Swedish television adaptations; and origi-
nal Danish television drama followed by serials from the rest of the region. In
fact, in 2008, the same year that Larsson’s first instalment of the Millennium tril-
ogy was published in English translation, the UK public broadcaster BBC wit-
nessed the first signs of a dramatic shift in the popularity of subtitled foreign tel-
evision drama, beginning with the Swedish series based on Henning Mankell’s
Wallander novels. This subtitled series aired on the niche channel BBC FOUR
alongside BBC’s own English language adaptation of the Wallander novels,
filmed in and around Ystad with British actors including Kenneth Branagh.
The British adaptation aired on the main channel BBC ONE to great acclaim
and with a much larger audience – 5 – 6 million viewers – than the 150,000
who regularly viewed the original Swedish adaptation – a reach that still consti-
tuted a relative success for BBC FOUR.¹⁷
Subtitled foreign drama had been a rarity in the UK, and literary translations
have consistently represented an insignificant share of the total publishing mar-
 Miha Kovač and Rü diger Wischenbart, “Diversity Report 2016: Trends and references in lit-
erary translations across Europe,” Verein für kulturelle transfers, accessed 13 September 2018,
www.culturaltransfers.org, 27.
 Andrea Esser, “Form, Platform and the Formation of Transnational Audiences: A Case Study
of How Danish TV Drama Series Captured Television Viewers in the United Kingdom,” Critical
Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 12, no. 4 (December 2017):
419 – 20, doi:10.1177/1749602017729649.
ket, lingering at around 4 percent.¹⁸ The BBC’s subsequent venture into purchas-
ing the rights to the twenty-episode Danish original crime series Forbrydelsen
(2007– 12; The Killing 2011– 12) became a game changer, and it was followed
by several successful Nordic productions and co-productions such as Borgen
(2010 – 13; UK 2012– 13) and Broen/Bron (2011– 2018; The Bridge 2012 – 18).¹⁹
While outperforming previous attempts to screen subtitled television series,
these Nordic series still reached a relatively small share of around one million
viewers. However, Forbrydelsen made Nordic series a “cult hit” in the British
press, it fuelled the burgeoning consumption of “box sets” – Forbrydelsen sold
300,000 units in the UK – and helped consolidate the brand BBC FOUR as a plat-
form “offering an ambitious range of innovative, high quality output that is in-
tellectually and culturally enriching.”²⁰ Judging by sales and viewer numbers,
Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and BBC’s Wallander had much wider public ap-
peal. However, the relative niche phenomenon of original Nordic television
drama imbued the genre with a status only afforded high-end consumer prod-
ucts, prestigious cultural experiences, and the rise of what has been called “com-
plex TV.”²¹
The international success of Scandinavian crime fiction and television
drama around 2008 – 9 was to some extent accidental. The trajectory of Larsson’s
Millennium Trilogy from a national and regional bestseller to a global phenom-
enon three years after its original publication was made possible by smaller in-
dependent publishers abroad. The simultaneous English language adaptation of
Mankell’s Wallander series by the BBC, and the attempt by BBC to reinvigorate
their niche channel through the Swedish Wallander series, led to the acquisition
of the Danish drama series Forbrydelsen, which was inexpensive at the time.
While popular and well received in Denmark, the success of Forbrydelsen as a
cultural trendsetter in a central, international television market such as the
UK’s was unpredictable and unprecedented.²² However, together these Scandina-
 See Chitnis, Translating.

 See Linda Badley, Andrew Nestingen, and Jaakko Seppälä, eds., Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Ap-
propriation (Cham: Palgrave, 2020), and Esser, “Form.”
 Esser, “Form,” 418. See Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, “Revisiting the Crime Scene: Intermedial
Translation, Adaptation, and Novelization of The Killing,” in Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropri-
ation, ed. Linda Badley, Andrew Nestingen, and Jaakko Seppälä (Cham: Palgrave, 2020).
 Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York:
New York University Press, 2015).
 According to Pia Majbritt Jensen, after Forbrydelsen, Danish audio-visual drama series expe-
rienced an “unprecedented global boom in exports.” Pia Majbritt Jensen, “Global Impact of Dan-
ish Drama Series: A Peripheral, Non-commercial Creative Counter-flow,” Kosmorama 263 (2016),
https://www.kosmorama.org/en/kosmorama/artikler/global-impact-danish-drama-series-pe-
vian “accidents” drew attention from publishers, broadcasters, media, and crit-
ics who began to look for common denominators – a secret Nordic formula be-
hind the success of their crime dramas – and the next Stieg Larsson.
The earliest instances of the use of the term “Nordic noir,” which became the
reference for this formula, may have been in a Wall Street Journal article in early
2010 and by the Nordic Noir Crime Fiction Book Club established by the Depart-
ment of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, which started its ac-
tivities in the Spring of the same year.²³ Subsequent “agents” that propelled the
consolidation of the term in the public imagination and contributed to the
growth of its symbolic capital, at least in the UK, include: the BBC documentary
Nordic Noir: The Story of Scandinavian Crime Fiction (December 2010); reviews
and blogs hosted by The Guardian; the distributor of television drama and
films Arrow Films, who adopted the brand name Nordic Noir for their Scandina-
vian TV dramas and established the Nordicana festival in London in 2013; and
Barry Forshaw’s survey of the genre in his book Death in a Cold Climate (2012).²⁴
Moreover, actors such as publishers and media corporations within the Nor-
dic region soon capitalised on and helped promote the brand of national and
Nordic crime fiction. Karl Berglund has convincingly demonstrated, for instance,
that particularly the rise of literary agents in Sweden, who rely heavily on the
sale of translation rights, coincided with and helped propel the international
ripheral-non-commercial-creative-counter. On the transnational dissemination and remaking of

Nordic television drama, see Badley, Nordic Noir; Pei-Sze Chow, Anne Marit Waade, and Robert
A. Saunders, “Geopolitical Television Drama Within and Beyond the Nordic Region,” Nordicom
Review 41, no. s1 (1 September 2020): 11– 27, doi:10.2478/nor-2020 – 0013; and Stougaard-Nielsen,
Revisiting.
 Ove Solum, “What is it about Nordic Noir?,” in Perspectives on the Nordic, ed. Jakob Lothe
and Bente Larsen (Oslo: Novus Press, 2016), 115 – 18; Gunhild Agger, “Nordic Noir – Location,
Identity and Emotion,” in Emotions in Contemporary TV Series, ed. Alberto N. García (Hound-
mills: Palgrave, 2016), 138.
 For the sake of full disclosure, it should be mentioned that I was the founder of the Nordic
Noir Book Club. See “The History of the ‘original’ Nordic Noir Book Club in London,” Nordic Noir
Book Club, accessed 8 September 2021, https://scancrime.wordpress.com/events. I was also in-
terviewed for the BBC documentary and Forshaw’s Death in a Cold Climate, and wrote a short
history of Scandinavian crime fiction for Arrow Films, which they used as an inlay for box
sets. My colleagues and I, in the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies, have frequently
been interviewed for articles in The Guardian and have collaborated with the newspaper on cre-
ating additional content for their coverage of Nordic television drama and cultures. This exem-
plifies the extent to which invested agents have been centrally involved in the promotion and,
not least, contextualisation of Nordic noir in the UK.
success of Swedish crime writers in the 2000s.²⁵ Therefore, the rise of what has
become known as the transnational Nordic noir brand came to exemplify what
Claire Squires has called a “cultural shift” in publishing, towards a marketing-
led publishing culture with its “growing professionalization and business-
based practice of publishing.”²⁶ Following this cultural shift, the circulation of
literature and other media started to take place in more fluid, mutually fertilis-
ing, and open networks driven by commercial interests and audience expecta-
tions and desires.
The somewhat coincidental cross-media success of Nordic crime fiction to-
gether with its wider matrix of related brands, demonstrates, as argued else-
where, that “literature does not travel solo and nor does it travel light; it is car-
ried and accompanied by films, television series, translators, publishers, state
subsidies, and all manner of lifestyle goods.”²⁷ This prompts us to consider Nor-
dic noir a complex, ever evolving transnational brand. As suggested in a hand-
book entry on “Nordic Noir,” the concept is “associated with a region (Scandina-
via), with a mood (gloomy and bleak), with a look (dark and grim), and with
strong characters and a compelling narrative.”²⁸ However, “confusingly” it is
also “associated with disparate, bleak dramas set in particular locations outside
the Nordic region … such as Wales, Italy, France, Mexico, and the United
States.”²⁹
As a brand, Nordic noir has become thoroughly mobile, loosening its ties to
“actual” Nordic topographies, writers, languages, and cultures. The British tele-
vision drama Fortitude (written by Simon Donald, 2015) is an example of how
late Nordic noir has transformed the “Nordic” from its “authentic” locations
into a set of loose references to previous series (the leading role is played by
Sofie Gråbøl known from Forbrydelsen), Nordic names and words in an other-
wise Anglophone and multicultural location (“Politi” on the crest of police uni-
forms) and geographical references to the Arctic and the Northern lights. This
continuing internationalisation of Nordic crime fiction points to the fact that it
 Karl Berglund, “With a Global Market in Mind: Agents, Authors, and the Dissemination of
Contemporary Swedish Crime Fiction,” in Crime Fiction as World Literature, ed. Louise Nilsson,
David Damrosch, and Theo D’haen (London: Bloomsbury, 2017).
 Claire Squires, Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain (Hound-
mills: Palgrave, 2009), 35.
 C. Claire Thomson and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, “A faithful, attentive, tireless following:
Cultural Mobility, Crime Fiction and Television Drama,” in Danish Literature as World Literature,
ed. Dan Ringgaard and Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 237.
 Annette Hill and Susan Turnbull, “Nordic Noir,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminol-
ogy, 26 April, 2017, doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.294.
 Hill and Turnbull, “Nordic Noir,” para. 1.
only became a recognisable genre or brand as novels and television series be-
came widely translated, subtitled, and adapted into foreign languages and mar-
kets.³⁰ Nordic crime fiction is only really “Nordic” when viewed or read from
abroad – when published, marketed, and sold in bookshops, book fairs or at
broadcasting trade fairs, where the branding of national or regional peculiarities
is essential for attracting the attention of potential funders, publishers, agents,
and book buyers in a crowded, globalised field.³¹
As a popular and bestselling genre, crime fiction has always operated in the
more commercialised end of the publishing spectrum. In their introduction to
the anthology, Perspectives on the Nordic, Jakob Lothe and Bente Larsen write
that a productive “reciprocity” between various perspectives on the Nordic
across genres and media is “often marginalized and suspended by the noise
of the culture industry that in the name of commercialism turns ‘the Nordic’
into a cliché, thus making it into a kind of commercial brand.”³² According to
the authors, Nordic noir is “one of the most important elements of the commer-
cial branding of the Nordic region.”³³ It is also a cliché “prompted by a number
of Nordic television series that became hugely popular in many countries.”³⁴
We need to consider whether it is possible to identify perspectives on the
Nordic across genres and media without accounting for the “noise of the culture
industry” and its attendant commercialism. As a commercial brand, Nordic noir
tends to smooth over the local and national particularities of the region – differ-
ences that seem particularly important to the peoples living within the Nordic
region. Kim Toft Hansen and Anne Marit Waade are aware of this tension be-
tween the somewhat empty brand value of the term and the potentially produc-
tive, “reciprocal,” access it offers to the “use value” of Nordic locations: “Basi-
cally, ‘Nordic Noir’ sounds slightly more sexy and appealing than
‘Scandinavian crime fiction,’ or the abbreviated ‘Scandi-crime’. It is infused
with brand value.”³⁵ However, since “Nordic Noir refers to the place of origin
 Though the novelty of Nordic crime fiction on international markets has worn off, Nordic
crime novels continue to be translated in disproportionate numbers considering the size of
the home markets. Writers outside of the Nordic region continue to write “Nordic Noir” crime
novels set in the Nordic region, and Nordic television series continue to find viewers abroad
and are adapted and appropriated for early-2020s foreign markets.
 Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, “Nordic noir in the UK.”
 Jakob Lothe and Bente Larsen, ed. Perspectives on the Nordic (Oslo: Novus Press, 2016), 10.
 Lothe and Larsen, Perspectives, 19.
 Lothe and Larsen, Perspectives, 11.
 Kim Toft Hansen and Anne Marit Waade, Locating Nordic Noir: From Beck to The Bridge
(London: Palgrave, 2017), 8.
or the narrative diegetic space” it is also congruent with “crime fiction as a world
brand,” which makes it “hardly surprising that narratives taking place locally are
used locally to brand places. Altogether, places, themes, and characters are
closely tied in crime fiction – and this clearly applies to Nordic Noir as well.”³⁶
Their approach in Locating Nordic Noir is not to ask what Nordic noir is, as
one would have done in a traditional genre study, but instead to inquire “Where
is Nordic Noir?” They thereby emphasise, on the one hand, the centrality of au-
thentic topographies and “local colour” in the narratives themselves,³⁷ and on
the other, how real and imagined locations are shaped in the reciprocal branding
and consumption across invested interest groups, agents, and nations. Examples
of place branding are particularly evident in television drama where local and
regional interest groups, such as municipalities and local film funds, find an op-
portunity to put their location “on the map” by promoting and enabling access to
relevant locations. Subsequently, such “fictionalised” actual locations can be
used by tourism agencies as desirable destinations. The well-known case of Ys-
tad’s promotion of “Wallanderland” is one notable early example of Nordic noir
place branding.³⁸
While the specific Nordic locations together with their national languages
may appear to erode with the profusely transnational brand of Nordic noir, sev-
eral studies have argued for the centrality of the genre’s perceived Nordicness. In
his detailed genealogy of the term in the international press, Ove Solum argues
that “crime fiction has become the most important area for cultural export and
the unprecedented international appeal of Nordic Noir, in tandem with a grow-
ing international interest in what in short can be described as Scandinavian-
ness, has been utilized to promote the ‘Nordic’ and Nordic culture.”³⁹ With refer-
ence to the London-based Nordicana fair mentioned earlier, which co-promoted
Nordic-noir television drama by inviting Nordic actors, and showcasing Nordic
travel destinations and food items, Solum points out that popular genres have
become instrumental in the branding of the Nordic region by foregrounding
both actual and imagined “Nordic” places and locations. Such place-branding
used by an external actor to sell television box sets has in turn prompted the
tourism industry in the Nordic countries to embrace the phenomenon for its
own purposes. “Nordic Noir,” Solum concludes, “is not only expanding as a
 Toft Hansen and Waade, Locating, 9.

 Toft Hansen and Waade, Locating, 10.
 See Anne Marit Waade, Wallanderland: Medieturisme og Skandinavisk TV-krimi (Aalborg:
Aalborg Universitetsforlag, 2013).
 Solum, “What is it,” 122.
genre beyond the Nordic countries; it has also become a phenomenon that far
exceeds the group of texts that constitutes the genre.”⁴⁰
It is, in other words, impossible to understand the rise of Nordic noir without
considering the wider commercial interests and agents involved in and gaining
from the making and branding of the phenomenon: from writers, publishers, lit-
erary agents, translators, and production companies to television distributors,
media outlets, educational, cultural, and tourism institutions both in and out-
side the Nordic region. What is, perhaps, most salient about the Nordic noir
brand from a UK perspective is the fact that the vast range of literary and
audio-visual texts it subsumes, located variously within and beyond the Nordic
region, are made to participate in a rhetoric of Nordicness that attaches certain
persistent values to images and discursive constructions of the “North.”
Branding Borealism
Louise Nilsson has noted the importance of accounting for the marketing and
media discourses in reception countries to understanding the success and im-
pact of Nordic noir. She suggests that “[i]n the case of Nordic Noir, … the market-
ing and media discourse visually merged a local literature with crime fiction’s
global discursive field and its mediascape by successfully connecting to a cos-
mopolitan imaginary of the north.”⁴¹ Reviewers in Anglophone newspapers, ac-
cording to Nilsson, construct a discursive image of the Nordic region through re-
peated use of figures such as coldness, ice, and morose detectives. This rhetoric
of Nordicness has been used profusely in the marketing of Nordic noir abroad (as
demonstrated by Agnes Broomé’s study of “Nordic” book-cover designs), and
Nilsson suggests that the foreign appeal of Nordic noir may partly rest “on a
longstanding culturally forged idea of the north.”⁴²
A suggestive term for such a deeply rooted rhetoric of Nordicness at the heart
of the recent “Scandimania” in the UK is “borealism.”⁴³ Sylvain Briens’s invalu-
 Solum, “What is it,” 123.

 Louise Nilsson, “Mediating the North in Crime Fiction,” Journal of World Literature 1, no. 4
(2016): 542, doi:10.1163/24056480 – 00104007.
 Agnes Broomé, “Swedish literature on the British market 1998 – 2013: A systemic approach”
(PhD diss., University College London, 2014); Nilsson, “Mediating”, 546.
 Sylvain Briens, “Boréalisme: Pour un atlas sensible du Nord,” Études Germaniques 2 (2018):
151– 76; Kristinn Schram, “Banking on Borealism: Eating, Smelling, and Performing the North,”
in Iceland and Images of the North, ed. Sumarliði Ísleifsson, in collaboration with Daniel Chartier
(Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2011).
able discussion of the term corresponds to a “reciprocal perspective” on the Nor-

dic or the North and brings out the significance of topography and the reciprocal
rhetoric of Nordicness, which I see as central to the phenomenon of Nordic noir.
Briens argues that borealism involves an external view that perceives the North
as a homogeneous whole and foregrounds topographical and climatic aspects
that are also central to the Nordic noir brand. The etymological root of the
word, “Boreas,” refers to the Ancient Greek God of the North wind, and has cul-
tural roots in a “North-South schematization of temperamental oppositions”⁴⁴ –
the North as cool, frugal, cerebral, morally inclined and the South as warm, sen-
sual, opulent and immoral. According to Joep Leerssen, this has been “one of the
more long-standing matrices imposed on the imaginary of Europe’s cultural
landscape”: “In the European imagination, the image of Scandinavia and the
Nordic countries has been deeply influenced by this master-polarity. Climate is
associatively correlated with landscape, with human habitation patterns, with
social and political organization, and in turn rationalized by reference to the in-
habitants’ purported ‘character.’”⁴⁵
As a brand, Nordic noir is deeply enmeshed in a borealist discourse, a term
around which we find a congregation of multi-directional desires and affective
responses. Nordic crime fiction became an “accidental” trigger for a new boreal-
ism in the UK fuelled by various sources: the coincidental international success
of Stieg Larsson and Nordic television drama produced by an increasingly inter-
nationalised, commercialised, and intermedial market for cultural products; and
the global infatuation with the Nordic welfare state as an (utopian) model for
creating just, egalitarian, and, not least, happy societies in the wake of the glob-
al financial crisis (2007– 8). Nordic noir came into being as a product of these
converging generic, affective, topographical, medial, and boreal perspectives
or rhetorics. In the following section of this chapter, examples from the
media, television documentaries, nation branding, popular ethnography, and
lifestyle journalism will be discussed as exemplifying the borealist and multidir-
ectional perspectives on the Nordic that have followed the “Scandimania” initi-
ated by the success of Nordic noir in the UK.
 Joep Leerssen, “Forword.” in Images of the North: Histories, Identities, Ideas, ed. Sverrir Ja-
kobsson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 16.
 Leerssen, “Forword,” 16.
Inspector Norse
One of the first examples of journalistic treatments of the Nordic crime phenom-
enon in the Anglophone world, the 2010 article “Inspector Norse” published in
The Economist, captures in its title a key fascination with the Nordic as both rec-
ognisable and somewhat exotic, and, importantly, conforming to deeply rooted
figurations of the Nordic. The title refers to the British crime television series In-
spector Morse. ⁴⁶ By replacing Morse with Norse, it references an external homo-
geneous understanding of the inherent Nordicness of the new crime wave, while
recalling a deep-seated cultural memory and British stereotype of invading
(Norse) Vikings.
The article presents a more current image of the Nordic countries as orderly,
crime free, and with enviable well-functioning welfare states that seem to contra-
dict the image presented in crime novels: “The neat streets of Oslo are not a nat-
ural setting for crime fiction.” This paradox leads to the question: why have Nor-
dic detective novels become so successful? Some shared characteristics are
emphasised. Apart from the always gloomy, melancholic detectives, the article
points to a particular Nordic style of crime writing characterised by simple
and plain writing devoid of metaphor. This attractive style of crime writing is
complemented with the lure of the Nordic setting, which links imagined land-
scapes of the “cold, desolate north” with a dystopian view of the fate of the Nor-
dic welfare societies: “The countries that the Nordic detectives call home are
prosperous and organised … But the protection offered by a cradle-to-grave wel-
fare system hides a dark underside.”⁴⁷
This figure of a Nordic “dark side” would become central to the image of
Nordic noir, and it was repeated in another early article on the phenomenon,
Ian MacDougall’s review of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy “The Man Who Blew Up the
Welfare State.” While Swedish crime fiction, according to MacDougall, “owes
its greatest debt to its British forebear, whose plots it cheerfully rips off … the
Swedish model distinguishes itself by infusing these plots with a social and po-
litical consciousness.”⁴⁸ He summarises Larsson’s main themes as “the failure of
the welfare state to do right by its people and the failure of men to do right by
women” – a theme that was more obviously foregrounded in the Swedish title of
 Inspector Morse, ITV, 1987– 2000.

 “Inspector Norse: Why Are Nordic Detective Novels So Successful?” The Economist, 11 March,
2010, accessed 1 May, 2021, http://www.economist.com/node/15660846.
 Ian MacDougall, “The Man Who Blew Up the Welfare State,” n+1 Magazine, 27 February,
2010, https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/book-review/man-who-blew-up-welfare-state.
the first novel in the Trilogy, Män som hatar kvinnor, which translates as Men
Who Hate Women. The novels’ critical depiction of the welfare state’s “well-pol-
ished façade” and “welfare-state comforts”, hiding widespread moral and polit-
ical corruption, exemplify a now widely accepted view of Nordic crime fiction as
depicting “the comprehensive failure of the world’s most comprehensive welfare
system”, as it is poignantly formulated by MacDougall.
Larsson’s deceptively realist and socio-critical style (devoid of metaphor),
MacDougall suggests, allows us to imagine (from abroad) that all is not right
in Sweden, an orderly, rather boring place hiding a dark underbelly. Of course,
the setting of violent crime stories involving misogynist Nazi serial killers and a
corrupt police state in locations commonly perceived to be peaceful, democratic,
egalitarian and just is an enticing premise – one that perhaps counter-intuitively
highlights a Nordic exceptionalism instead of succeeding in “blowing it up”.
However, to some readers like MacDougall the realism effects of Nordic crime
writing present a stark critique of the utopian socialist paradise in the North,
much in the same way the British journalist Roland Huntford’s notorious The
New Totalitarians (1971) critiqued the moral and psychological demise of the so-
cial-democratic welfare state.⁴⁹
Perhaps in a dual effort to exploit the global popularity of Larsson’s Swedish
crime novels for nation-branding purposes and to counteract the possible mis-
conception that Larsson was necessarily drawing an accurate picture of Sweden,
the Swedish Institute (SI) produced the report Sweden beyond the Millennium and
Stieg Larsson. ⁵⁰ The Institute, which has since the 1940s worked to produce and
promote a Swedish national image abroad⁵¹ – explains that they had noticed,
when reviewers abroad wrote about Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, they often
went into greater details about Sweden as well: “The Millennium trilogy is in
some ways a dramatization of 21st century Swedish society.”⁵² The report, there-
fore, tries to understand this “new” perspective on Sweden offered by the books
and attempts to respond to and participate in the branding of Sweden, including
the significance of the welfare state.
That nation branding and tourism are central aspects of the report is evident
from its abundant illustrations of Swedish locations, landscape images, and
 Roland Huntford, The New Totalitarians (London: Allen Lane, 1971).

 The Swedish Institute, Sweden beyond the Millennium and Stieg Larsson (Stockholm: Swed-
ish Institute, 2012), https://issuu.com/swedish_institute/docs/sweden_beyond_the_millennium.
 Nikolas Glover, “Imaging Community: Sweden in “Cultural Propaganda” Then and Now,”
Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (23 September 2009): 246 – 63, doi:10.1080/
03468750903134707.
 The Swedish Institute, Sweden beyond the Millennium, 34.
even the northern lights, some of which have little relevance for the books them-
selves. Through its report, the SI participates self-consciously in a jostling for
control over the image of Sweden “beyond the Millennium,” since “it is a
known fact that cultural expressions such as film and literature can have an ef-
fect on people’s impression of a place, for example a country.”⁵³
The SI walks a fine line between accepting the brand value of Larsson’s
bleak view of the modern Swedish welfare state – arguing that Larsson’s portrait
of Sweden makes the country appear less utopian and less dull (“the notion of
Sweden as a conflict-free model nation is shattered”), which has been great for
tourism – and attempting to control the brand by explaining that the Sweden of
the books is not what you would find if you visited from abroad.⁵⁴ SI reminds us
that the books also portray a modern, industrious nation with proud democratic
traditions, where, for instance, a journalist has the right to speak out against the
state. Through suggestive illustrations, Sweden is promoted as a country rich in
majestic, markedly Nordic landscapes and a well-functioning state.
Apart from demonstrating the to-and-fro branding of Nordicness taking
place between internal and external agents, the branding of Sweden through
crime fiction – in consort with a host of other cases where local tourism boards
use famous crime stories to brand their cities, towns, and regions across Scandi-
navia – risks participating in the maintenance of an un-reflexive boreal branding
and the construction of essentialist national or regional identities, what David
Pitcher has called, “a corporate model of Nordic ethnicity.” According to his
study of consumer practices and ethnicity in the contemporary UK:
The repeated connection between landscape and aesthetics produces a highly consistent
portrait of a Nordic temperament. Psychological dispositions and ethical, social and spiri-
tual values are shown to be the simultaneous product of a place and the ideas and practices
it generates. This corporate model of Nordic ethnicity is, I want to suggest, precisely what
has given Nordic style such a strong purchase in a contemporary British context.⁵⁵
Importantly, this “corporate model” is not exclusively produced by internal

agents such as tourism boards or by the crime stories themselves but become
“incorporated” in the transnational exchange of boreal imagery and Nordic
imaginings with markets, consumers, reviewers, readers, and viewers outside
of the Nordic region.⁵⁶
 The Swedish Institute, Sweden beyond the Millennium, 5.

 The Swedish Institute, Sweden beyond the Millennium, 34– 5.
 David Pitcher, Consuming Race (London: Routledge, 2014), 66.
 See the similar case and argument in Kelting’s chapter on “New Nordic Cuisine” in the pre-
sent volume.
Cracking the Norse Code: From Boreal

Utopianism to Scandimania
As implied in the reviews and report discussed above there is a particularly strik-
ing, some might say troubling, element to the contemporary British fascination
with Nordic culture – an infatuation, Pitcher identifies as, “a romanticized read-
ing of the politics of Nordic social liberalism and social democracy as produced
out of the same ‘natural’ combination of climate, geography and culture.”⁵⁷ No-
where is this eighteenth-century climate theory and borealist perspective on the
Nordic more explicitly and self-consciously stated than in Andrew Graham-Dix-
on’s three-part BBC documentary Art of Scandinavia. ⁵⁸
In his introduction to the series, it becomes clear that a running theme
throughout the series will be an exploration of what the national and regional
art of Scandinavia may tell us about the “Scandinavian mind” and how it has
been shaped by its “northern” locations and landscapes. While it is clear that
the presenter is well aware that a “climate theory” of national or regional belong-
ing has been discredited and proven dangerous fodder for ethno-essentialist
ideologies, it is similarly clear that his encounter with the Nordic landscape
per excellence – the sublime Norwegian fjords – leaves him unable to under-
stand Nordic art, culture, and societies as anything but the products of their top-
ographies. He finds himself perpetually in an “exotic” North where the “forbid-
ding beauty” of the landscapes and their “remoteness” from an unspecified
cultural centre – the South, likely London – impress themselves as self-evidently
“so far north” that the landscapes themselves must present the key to unlocking
the Scandinavian mind:
Scandinavia. The Nordic lands. So far north, they’ve often been simply left off the map of
world civilisations. Art, literature, philosophy – these belonged to the lands of the south. Of
sunshine, warmth, the light of reason. To the north lay the shadow lands, the lands of per-
petual midnight and darkness. But that’s not the whole story.… The art of Scandinavia re-
flects their stormy history, played out in landscapes of forbidding beauty. Nature’s been the
great enemy, but it’s also been the great inspiration. Not just for painting and poetry, but for
architecture and design. Inspired by the frozen forms of ice, or dark forests of pine. You
could say the Scandinavian mind itself has been shaped by nature, like a landscape formed
by a glacier. Despite their remoteness, the Nordic peoples have managed to fashion one of
 Pitcher, Consuming.
 Art of Scandinavia, presented by Andrew Graham-Dixon, BBC 4, 2016, 4,https://
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0745j6 m.
the most remarkable civilisations. And the art of Scandinavia shares many of the character-
istics of the Scandinavian landscape – hardness, sharpness, clarity. I think the north has
also given it some of its most distinctive moral and psychological characteristics. Pride –
tempered by a sense of living at the margins – anxiety, loneliness, melancholy. And blow-
ing through it all, like a cold, piercing wind, an absolute determination to endure, come
what may.⁵⁹
This “rhetoric of Nordicness” makes generous use of borealist imagery (coldness,

ice, dark, frozen, glaciers, remoteness). Graham-Dixon links the features of an
imagined, homogeneous, and perpetual climate with unchanging and distinctive
“moral and psychological characteristics” of the Scandinavian nations and the
region (Norden). Nordicness, therefore, begins with landscapes and a climate
that have inevitably been impressed on the Nordic peoples. Their art reveals na-
tional and regional, moral and psychological characteristics, and leads us to un-
derstand why it is the Nordic countries have become “remarkable civilizations” –
the much admired, successful welfare societies of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries.
Guided by representatives of the Nordic noir craze such as the Danish actor
Søren Malling, famous in Britain as Jan Meyer from the first season of Forbrydel-
sen, and the Swedish crime-writing team behind the pseudonym Lars Kepler,
Graham-Dixon goes in search for Danish “happiness” and the “underbelly of
the Modern Swedish welfare state.”⁶⁰ Although persuaded that “Nordic noir
dredges up ugly truth”⁶¹ about the Swedish welfare state, and being told to
take the train out of Stockholm to the suburbs if he wants to experience the
shadows of the welfare state in situ, he:
can’t find the Badlands described by the social critics of modern Sweden. Nothing truly
Noir, for sure. In fact, if I had to name a city that exemplifies failing social services, a crum-
bling transport infrastructure and yawning chasms of wealth, I’d pick London any day over
Stockholm. And on even the most remote station, the Swedish underground still does really
beautiful benches.⁶²
Art of Scandinavia begins with the nations’ topographies, their national-roman-

tic, anxious landscape paintings and ends with a perception of the art of Scan-
dinavia as always, in one way or the other, engaged in national self-presenta-
 Art of Scandinavia, episode 1, “Dark Night of the Soul,” directed by Ian Leese, presented by
Andrew Graham-Dixon, aired 14 March, 2016, on BBC 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/
b073mp87.
 Art of Scandinavia, episode 1, “Dark Night of the Soul.”
 Art of Scandinavia, episode 1, “Dark Night of the Soul.”
 Art of Scandinavia, episode 1, “Dark Night of the Soul.”
tions, as borne out of a “Scandinavian mind” and how this mind eventually
shaped the Nordic model of welfare. This perception illustrates the curse of
small nationhood: cultural expressions are reduced to homogeneous national
characteristics in comparison with the cultural centre – while local diversity,
temporal discontinuities, contradictions or cosmopolitan traits are unacknowl-
edged.
It is, of course, easy to dismiss such causal simplifications regarding topog-
raphy, art, and identity. While the documentary does suggest a notable cosmo-
politan British interest in the Nordic countries, it is an interest less preoccupied
with understanding the foreign not merely as different but also diverse and po-
tentially cosmopolitan. However, the rhetoric of Nordicness may ultimately have
not much to do with the Nordic region itself. One could view Graham-Dixon’s
borealism as less interested in Scandinavian art and its local uses and more pre-
occupied with how these Nordic national arts can be used to critically assess cur-
rent social conditions and national discourses in Britain. It is not a simple British
nostalgic longing for a utopian welfare society, the Nordic region is imagined as
a grouping of “authentic” and “rooted” societies that have been able to respond
critically and creatively to the social transformations brought on by neoliberal-
ism and globalisation. This rhetoric of Nordicness in the UK, I would argue, rep-
resents an internal British attempt to come to terms with the nation’s own inabil-
ity to present a unified, “corporate ethnic,” national narrative. Such a narrative
would stretch from the landscapes of Turner and Wordsworth to a harmonious,
homogeneous, and thoroughly content twenty-first century nation, without hav-
ing to consider contemporary British dislocations, the disharmonies of historical
imperialism, social inequalities, and the ravages of a thoroughly neoliberal wel-
fare state.
British borealism is a complex multi-focal “ethnography of looking at the
North” where images and narratives produced in and of the Nordic allow for
the sharing of certain “affective topographies” – “the kind of affect that binds
people to places or that imbues a place with desire.”⁶³ In the contemporary
use of the “Nordic” in the UK, these are commonly linked to perceptions of
what makes a good society. The Nordic does not represent a distant, exotic, topo-
graphic other employed to bolster a sense of British superiority. On the contrary,
Nordicness represents a utopian ideal of a more “tidy,” “cleaner and neater” Brit-
ain. An example of this was expressed in a piece of tongue-in-cheek travel jour-
nalism recounting a tour of Scandinavia in 2018:
 Lila Ellen Gray, Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life (Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 2013), 137.
The British relationship with Scandinavia is not complex. We are in awe. They are better-
governed, better-dressed, better-looking and write better crime novels. Of course, we can
always claim a bit of shared ancestry. Many of the quiet Danish villages I had passed
through on the train to Hirtshals had names that would fit seamlessly into the Lincolnshire
or Yorkshire Wolds. In fact this rolling rural landscape dotted with woodland is not dissim-
ilar, though cleaner and neater. As I’d gazed out that train window, I’d wondered: what if
the Vikings had persisted a little longer with their civilising ventures into Britain, would
London have the unhurried cool of Copenhagen, could Essex be tidy, and might there be
no need for Luton at all?”⁶⁴
This alternative boreal British past realised in a tidy, ordered contemporary Scan-
dinavia suggests a widespread, but also paradoxical type of nostalgia: a borealist
nostalgia expressed in a longing for the north as a home that was never realised;
a transnational nostalgia for the simplicity of a time now long gone both in the
Nordic region and in the UK. Such a “welfare nostalgia” for a culturally appro-
priated Nordic past was perhaps best exhibited in the set design for the BBC Wal-
lander series. The home of Wallander and the police station in Ystad were con-
sciously styled in the fashion of 1950s Scandinavian design, using functionalist
welfare aesthetics to give them the air of a coolly rational, socially engineered
society – which Mankell described as disintegrating in Wallander’s Sweden of
the early 1990s.
According to the production designer, she “wanted to symbolize the Swedish
utopia of the 1950s and 1960s by choosing Scandinavian interior design and ar-
chitecture from this period.”⁶⁵ Some Nordic scholars have noted the exotification
of Sweden or the “banal nationalism” presented in the British Wallander adap-
tation. Ingrid Stigsdotter remarks that “the ubiquity of classic wooden desks,
lampshades and decorative furnishing … stand out as being at once a little
too stylish and a little too old-fashioned to be quite real.”⁶⁶ In her view, this
translation or adaptation sees Sweden predominantly through a touristic lens.
However, the nostalgic Swedish utopia encoded in the location and the set of
 Kevin Rushby, “King of Denmark: How to Create Hygge in a Cabin by the Sea,” The Guardian,
5 August, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/aug/05/denmark-beach-seaside-scan-
dinavia-holiday-cabin.
 Quoted in Anne Marit Waade, “Crime Scenes: Conceptualizing Ystad as Location in the
Swedish and the British Wallander TV Crime Series,” Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Year-
book 9, no. 1 (28 July 2011): 20, doi:10.1386/nl.9.9_1.
 Ingrid Stigsdotter, “Crime Scene Skåne: Guilty Landscapes and Cracks in the Functionalist
Façade in Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind,” in Regional Aesthetics: Locating Swedish
Media, ed. Erik Hedling, Olof Hedling, and Mats Jönsson (Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt Arkiv,
2010), 254.
the Wallander series may also point to the way in which nostalgic borealism
functions as a significant affective topography in contemporary Britain.
Therefore, this particular example of converging national and transnational
nostalgia demonstrates an important point raised by Toft Hansen and Waade
concerning what they call “Norientalism”: “Norientalism may thus be both an
image held by the reader of Nordic fiction, but there is also a good chance
that the international spatial image, whether brightly romantic or melancholical-
ly ambivalent, is motivated by the self-image portrayed in written fiction.”⁶⁷ Just
as Nordic crime fiction can be seen to exhibit nostalgia for the utopian ideals of a
bygone golden age of the welfare state (as in Mankell’s Wallander novels), so the
infatuation with the Nordic in the UK may be understood as a transnational nos-
talgia for a place and a time that never belonged to the British – an affective top-
ography exhibiting a borealist nostalgic longing for the north as a home that
never was.⁶⁸
This would also partly explain why the Nordic noir craze has petered out
into an obsession with Nordic lifestyles, wellness, and popular Nordic buzzwords
such as Swedish lagom, Danish hygge, and Norwegian friluftsliv. A deluge of life-
style television programmes and books have appeared in the UK portraying the
Nordic countries individually and together as mostly utopian societies, as a de-
sirable yet unattainable nostalgic “elsewhere.” A pertinent example is Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall’s food, travel, and lifestyle series Scandimania. ⁶⁹ (Channel
4, 2014). His tour of Scandinavia presents a veritable “nation-crush”, a “scandi-
mania” for Nordic wellness, institutionalised egalitarianism, a dedication to sus-
tainability, a strong sense of community and quality of life. Fearnley-Whitting-
stall’s narrated introduction is a further example of the converging interests in
“all things Nordic” where landscape, food, society and crime fiction make up
a seemingly un-breakable or untranslatable “Norse code”, which he will, never-
theless, attempt to “crack” to reveal why these nations, and not Britain, are
among the happiest in the world:
There’s a lot of talk about Scandinavia at the moment. Their food is setting the gastronomic
world on fire. Nordic noir dramas have us glued to our screens. And Sweden, Norway and
Denmark are officially three of the happiest countries in the world. I want to find out why. ls
it their connection to nature and their breath-taking landscapes? Their spirit of coopera-
 Toft Hansen and Waade, Locating, 111.

 See Stougaard-Nielsen, Scandinavian, 115 – 21.
 Scandimania, presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, aired 2014, on Channel 4, https://
distribution.channel4.com/programme/scandimania.
tion? And does the famed dark side of Scandinavia really exist? To crack the Norse code,
l’m about to immerse myself in Scandimania.⁷⁰
The potential for branding consumer goods, arising from this popularised boreal
view of the Nordic region as seen from the UK, was not lost on Carlsberg, which
in 2017 started a marketing campaign, which included a television commercial
that aired on Channel 4 in the UK with the slogan “brewed in the UK the Danish
way.”⁷¹ The commercial is rendered in nostalgic autumnal colours and light and
features the internationally renowned Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen riding an
old-fashioned bicycle through Copenhagen’s cobbled streets, past national land-
marks and a “hyggelig” forest picnic, finally to arrive at the Carlsberg brewery.
Throughout the commercial, Mikkelsen philosophises about the secret to Danish
happiness: “Could it be that we find joy in nature? Could it be that we keep life
and work in perfect balance? Is it that we make time for hygge, feeling all fuzzy
and snuggly together?”⁷²
The commercial suggests that British consumers now have the opportunity
to follow “the Danish way” by drinking the rebranded Carlsberg Export, a
brand of beer brewed in the UK and commonly associated with low-brow con-
sumption and poor quality. The commercial taps into the British import of
“hygge” – a craze which erupted in 2016 with more than a handful of books pub-
lished in the UK on the phenomenon, most notably Meik Wiking’s The Little Book
of Hygge. ⁷³ Wiking’s hygge book, which sold more copies than most Nordic crime
novels in the UK, is clearly written for a general British audience, as he attempts
to explain how “hygge” makes the Danes happy through references to statistics,
his own experiences, and “shared” Danish values and traditions. In his presen-
tation of Danish lifestyles and customs, “hygge” conforms to a borealist matrix of
values such as simplicity, modesty, casualness, and familiarity. Anti-consumer-
ism, being in nature, playing board games instead of watching television and
surrounding oneself with hand-crafted rustic furnishings is “hyggeligt” and,
 Scandimania, episode 1, “Sweden,” presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, aired 2 Feb-

ruary, 2014, on Channel 4, https://distribution.channel4.com/programme/scandimania.
 See Ellen Kythor, “Stereotypes in and of Scandinavia,” in Introduction to Nordic Cultures, ed.
Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (London: UCL Press, 2020), 219 – 20.
 See Carlsberg, “Carlsberg – The Danish Way 60”,” 26 April, 2017, YouTube video, 1:00,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v8n7lL-frA&ab_channel=CarlsbergUK.
 See Alison Flood, “Hygge – the Danish art of living cosily – on its way to UK bookshops,”
The Guardian, 11 June, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/11/hygge-the-dan-
ish-art-of-living-cosily-on-its-way-to-uk-bookshops.
he realises towards the end, “hygge” is essentially nostalgic: “I was tripping on

nostalgia.”⁷⁴
Conclusion
The few cases I have selected – out of a plethora of similar ones – demonstrate
the assertion previously quoted by the Swedish Institute that “cultural expres-
sions such as film and literature can [indeed] have an effect on people’s impres-
sion of a place.” However, the origin and effect of the Nordic noir brand within
and outside of the Nordic region is by no means monodirectional. In a transna-
tional, cross-medial, and commercialised culture industry, the circulation of na-
tional and regional images, stereotypes, and values is thoroughly fluid and dia-
logic, constantly responding to and sharing affective topographies, which reflect
deep-seated historical matrices of geographical polarities.
Genres – and crime fiction in particular – have the power “to shape topog-
raphies of affect,” to bind people to certain places that hold deep historical and
rhetorical values, and reflect current desires for lost opportunities.⁷⁵ A transna-
tional genre such as Nordic noir suggests that such desirable places and public
feelings need not coincide with one’s own location. A segment of British readers,
viewers, and consumers has been remarkably receptive to the Nordic noir brand,
to the dark nostalgic tales of a “lost welfare paradise,” and to stories about los-
ing what once was firmly rooted – and Nordic content providers and agents have
responded in kind by preparing and elaborating on the Nordic brand for an ex-
ternal gaze and consumer. Out of this sharing of narratives, self-presentations,
and external imaginings, a new rhetoric of Nordicness has evolved that I suggest
we name borealist nostalgia – a reciprocal longing for a North that was never
one’s own.
 Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge (London: Penguin, 2016), 281.
 Gray, Fado, 137.
Bibliography
Ackerman, John M., and Irma E. Sandoval-Ballesteros. “The Global Explosion of Freedom of
Information Laws.” Administrative Law Review 58, no. 1 (2006): 85 – 130.
Adler-Nissen, Rebecca, and Ulrik P Gad. “Introduction: Postimperial Sovereignty Games in the
Nordic Region.” Cooperation and Conflict 49, no. 1 (1 March 2014): 3 – 32.
doi:10.1177/0010836713514148.
Ågerup, Martin. “Hvad er den nordiske model egentlig?” Politiken, 15 October 2011.
Agius, C. “Sweden’s 2006 Parliamentary Election and After: Contesting or Consolidating the
Swedish Model?” Parliamentary Affairs 60, no. 4 (12 May 2007): 585 – 600.
doi:10.1093/pa/gsm041.
Aimer, Peter. “The Strategy of Gradualism and the Swedish Wage‐Earner Funds.” West
European Politics 8, no. 3 (July 1985): 43 – 55. doi:10.1080/01402388508424540.
Akintug, Hasan. “The Åland Islands Meet European Integration: Politics of History and the EU
Referendums on Åland.” MA diss., University of Helsinki, 2020. https://helda.helsinki.fi/
handle/10138/318984.
Alexander, Charles C. “Prophet of American Racism: Madison Grant and the Nordic Myth.”
Phylon (1960–) 23, no. 1 (1962): 73 – 90. doi:10.2307/274146.
Allardt, Erik. “A Political Sociology of the Nordic Countries.” European Review 8, no. 1
(February 2000): 129 – 41. doi:10.1017/S1062798700004634.
— ed. Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education,
Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981.
Allen, Julie K. Icons of Danish Modernity: Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen. Seattle, Wash.:
University of Washington, 2012.
Allerfeldt, Kristofer. “‘And We Got Here First’: Albert Johnson, National Origins and
Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s.” Journal of Contemporary History
45, no. 1 (January 2010): 7 – 26. doi:10.1177/0022009409348019.
Andersen, Torben M. “Challenges to the Scandinavian Welfare Model.” European Journal of
Political Economy 20, no. 3 (September 2004): 743 – 54.
doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2004.02.007.
Anderson, Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1993.
Anderson, Perry. “Mr Crosland’s Dreamland.” New Left Review 1, no. 7 (1961).
Andersson, Jan A. “1950-talet, tid att så – tid att skörda.” In Norden i sicksack: tre spårbyten
inom nordiskt samarbete, edited by Bengt Sundelius and Karin Söder. Stockholm:
Santérus, 2000.
Andersson, Jenny. “Drivkrafterna bakom nyliberaliseringen kom från många olika hall.”
Respons, January 2020. http://tidskriftenrespons.se/artikel/drivkrafterna-bakom-nyliber
aliseringen-kom-fran-manga-olika-hall/.
— “Nordic Nostalgia and Nordic Light: The Swedish Model as Utopia 1930 – 2007.”
Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (23 September 2009): 229 – 45.
doi:10.1080/03468750903134699.
— The Library and the Workshop: Social Democracy and Capitalism in the Knowledge Age.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010.
220 Bibliography
Andersson, Jenny, and Mary Hilson. “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries.”
doi:10.1080/03468750903134681.
Andrén, Nils. “Det officiella kultursamarbetet i Norden.” Den Jyske Historiker 69 – 70 (1994):
213 – 27.
— Government and Politics in the Nordic Countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and
Sweden. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964.
— “Nordiska kulturkommissionen lägger grunden.” In Norden i sicksack: tre spårbyten
inom nordiskt samarbete, edited by Bengt Sundelius and Karin Söder. Stockholm:
Santérus, 2000.
Andersen, Astri, Ólöf Garðarsdóttir, Monika Janfelt, Cecilia Lindgren, Pirjo Markkola, and
Ingrid Söderlind. Barnen och välfärdspolitiken: Nordiska barndomar 1900 – 2000.
Stockholm: Institutet för Framtidsstudier, Dialogos förlag, 2011.
Angell, Svein Ivar, and Mads Mordhorst. “National Reputation Management and the
Competition State: The Cases of Denmark and Norway.” Journal of Cultural Economy 8,
no. 2 (4 March 2015): 184 – 201. doi:10.1080/17530350.2014.885459.
Anholt, Simon. Competitive Identity: The New Brand Management for Nations, Cities and
Regions. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2007. doi:10.1057/9780230627727.
Anttalainen, Marja-Liisa. Rapport om den könsuppdelade arbetsmarknaden. Oslo: Nordic
Council of Ministers, 1984.
Archer, Clive. “Introduction.” In The Nordic Peace, edited by Clive Archer and Pertti
Joenniemi. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003.
— “Nordic Co-operation: A Model for the British Isles.” In The Nordic Model: Studies in
Public Policy Innovation, edited by Clive Archer and Stephen Maxwell. Farnborough:
Gower, 1980.
Archer, Clive, and Stephen Maxwell, ed. The Nordic Model: Studies in Public Policy
Innovation. Farnborough: Gower, 1980.
Arla Foods. ‘JÖRĐ Oat Drink | Fresh & Organic’. Accessed 13 December 2020. https://jord
plantbased.com/en-gb/oat-drink/.
Árnason, Jóhann Páll, and Björn Wittrock, ed. Nordic Paths to Modernity. New York: Berghahn
Books, 2012.
Arnlaug, Leira. Welfare States and Working Mothers: The Scandinavian Experience.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Aronsson, Peter, and Lizette Graden, eds. Performing Nordic Heritage: Everyday Practices and
Institutional Culture. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Arter, David. “Party System Change in Scandinavia since 1970: ‘Restricted Change’ or
‘General Change’?” West European Politics 22, no. 3 (1 July 1999): 139 – 58.
doi:10.1080/01402389908425319.
— Scandinavian Politics Today. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.
Asp, Elaine. “Seasonal Chef.” Visit Sweden. Accessed 3 January, 2019. https://visitsweden.
com/seasonal-chef/.
Aunesluoma, Juhana. Vapaakaupan tiellä: Suomen kauppa- ja integraatiopolitiikka
maailmansodista EU-aikaan. Helsinki: Suomalasien Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011.
Aurell, Brontë, Anna Jacobsen, and Lucy Panes. Nørth: How to Live Scandinavian. London:
Aurum Press, 2017.
Bibliography 221
Aylott, Nicholas. “A Nordic Model of Democracy? Political Representation in Northern

Europe.” In Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe, edited by Nicholas Aylott.
— Models of Democracy in Nordic and Baltic Europe: Political Institutions and Discourse.
Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.
Azubuike, Abraham. “Accessibility of Government Informationas a Determinant of Inward
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa.” In Best Practices in Government Information: A
Global Perspective, edited by Irina Lynden and Jane Wu. München: K.G. Saur, 2008.
Badley, Linda, Andrew Nestingen, and Jakko Seppälä, eds. Nordic Noir, Adaptation,
Appropriation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. doi:10.1997/978-3-030-38658-0.
Baldwin, Peter. The Politics of Social Solidarity: Class Bases of the European Welfare State,
1875 – 1975. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511586378.
Bang, Esben Holmboe, interviewee. Culinary Journeys. “Part 1: Norway’s only
three-Michelin-starred chef.” Aired June 16, 2016, on CNN Travel TV. YouTube video,
6:39. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwUj2PY5_HM.
Barnes, Michael P. “Linguistic Variety in the Nordics.” Nordics.info. 21 February, 2019.
https://nordics.info/show/artikel/linguistic-variety-in-the-nordic-region/.
Bassnett, Susan. “Detective Fiction in Translation: Shifting Patterns of Reception.” In Crime
Fiction as World Literature, edited by Louise Nilsson, David Dramrosch, and Theo
D’haen, 143 – 56. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Baur, Erwin, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz. Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene.
München: J.F. Lehmann, 1931.
Bech-Larsen, Tino, Trine Mørk, and Susanne Kolle. “New Nordic Cuisine: Is There Another
Back to the Future? – An Informed Viewpoint on NNC Value Drivers and Market
Scenarios.” Trends in Food Science & Technology 50 (1 April 2016): 249 – 53.
doi:10.1016/j.tifs.2016.01.020.
Becker-Christensen, Henrik. Skandinaviske drømme og politiske realiteter: Den politiske
skandinavisme i Danmark 1830 – 1850. Aarhus: Arusia, 1981.
Bendixsen, Synnove, Mary Bente Bringslid, and Halvard Vike, eds. Egalitarianism in
Scandinavia: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan,
2018. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59791-1.
Bengtsson, Åsa, Kasper M. Hansen, Olafur Hardarson, Hanne Marthe Narud, and Henrik
Oscarsson. The Nordic Voter: Myths of Exceptionalism. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014.
Bennett, Colin J. “Understanding Ripple Effects: The Cross-National Adoption of Policy
Instruments for Bureaucratic Accountability.” Governance 10, no. 3 (1997): 213 – 33.
doi:10.1111/0952 – 1895.401997040.
Berggren, Henrik, and Lars Trägårdh. “Social Trust and Radical Individualism: The Paradox at
the Heart of Nordic Capitalism.” In The Nordic Way: Shared Norms for the New Reality,
Davos: World Economic Forum, 2011.
Berglund, Karl. “With a Global Market in Mind: Agents, Authors and the Dissemination of
Contemporary Swedish Crime Fiction.” In Crime Fiction as World Literature, edited by
Louise Nilsson, David Dramrosch, and Theo D’haen, 77 – 89. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Bergman, Kerstin. Swedish Crime Fiction: The Making of Nordic Noir. Milan: Mimesis, 2014.
Berliner, Daniel. “The Political Origins of Transparency.” The Journal of Politics 76, no. 2
(April 2014): 479 – 91. doi:10.1017/S0022381613001412.
Bildt, Carl. Hallänning, svensk, europé. Stockholm: Bonnier, 1991.
222 Bibliography
Birkenes, Magnus Breder, Lars G. Johansen, Arne Martinus Lindstad, and Johannes Ostad.
“From Digital Library to N-Grams: NB N-Gram.” In Proceedings of the 20th Nordic
Conference of Computational Linguistics, 293 – 95. Linköping: Linköping University
Electronic Press, 2015.
Björkman, Maria. Den anfrätta stammen: Nils von Hofsten, eugeniken och steriliseringarna
1909 – 1963. Lund: Arkiv förlag, 2011.
Björkman, Maria, and Sven Widmalm. “Selling Eugenics: The Case of Sweden.” Notes and
Records of the Royal Society 64, no. 4 (20 December 2010): 379 – 400.
doi:10.1098/rsnr.2010.0009.
Björkqvist, Jeanette. “Både Finland och Norge öppnar för att hjälpa.” Svenska Dagbladet, 12
December, 2020. https://www.svd.se/finland-redo-att-hjalpa-sverige-med-coronavard.
Blair, Tony. “Leader’s Speech,” Blackpool, 1996. British Political Speech.
http://www.britishpoliticalspeech.org/speech-archive.htm?speech=202.
Blomquist, Sören, and Karl Moene. “The Nordic Model.” In “The Nordic Model,” edited by
Soren Blomquist and Karl Moene. Special issue, Journal of Public Economics 127 (1 July
2015): 1 – 2. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.04.007.
Bodensten, Erik. “Scandinavia Magna: En alternativ nordisk statsbildning 1743.” In Norden
Historiker: Vänbok till Harald Gustafsson, edited by Erik Bodensten, Kajsa Brilkman,
David Larsson Heidenblad and Hanne Sanders, 61 – 75. Lund: Historiska Institutionen,
Lunds Universitet, 2018.
Borring Olesen, Thorsten. “Brødrefolk, men ikke våpenbrødre – Diskussionerne om et
skandinavisk forsvarsforbund 1948 – 49.” Den Jyske Historiker 69 – 70 (1994).
— “EFTA 1959 – 1972: An Exercise in Nordic Cooperation and Conflict.” In Regional
Cooperation and International Organizations: The Nordic Model in Transnational
Alignment, edited by Norbert Götz and Heidi Haggrén. London: Routledge, 2009.
Brandal, Nik, Bratberg Øivind, and Dag Einar Thorsen. The Nordic Model of Social Democracy.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Brander, Richard. Finland och Sverige i EU: Tio år av medlemskap. Helsingfors: Schildts,
2004.
Brax, Tuija. “Julkisuusperiaatteen haasteet.” Presented at the Tietämisen vapauden päivän
seminaari, 30 November 2007. http://www.om.fi/Etusivu/Ajankohtaista/Minister
inpuheita/Puhearkisto/Puheet2007Brax/1196159328843.
Brett, Martin. “How the Vikings Conquered Dinner.” GQ, July 29, 2014. https://www.gq.com/
story/best-nordic-scandinavian-restaurants-noma.
Briens, Sylvain. “Boréalisme: Pour un atlas sensible du nord.” Études Germaniques 2 (2018):
151 – 76.
Broberg, Gunnar. “Scandinavia: An Introduction.” In Eugenics and the Welfare State: Norway,
Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, edited by Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, 1 – 8.
East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005.
Broberg, Gunnar, and Mattias Tydén. “Eugenics in Sweden: Efficient Care.” In Eugenics and
the Welfare State: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, edited by Gunnar Broberg
and Nils Roll-Hansen, 77 – 150. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005.
Brommesson, Douglas. “Introduction to Special Section: From Nordic Exceptionalism to a
Third Order Priority – Variations of ‘Nordicness’ in Foreign and Security Policy.” Global
Affairs 4, no. 4 – 5 (20 October 2018): 355 – 62. doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1533385.
Bibliography 223
Broomé, Agnes. “Swedish Literature on the British Market 1998 – 2013: A Systemic
Approach.” PhD diss., University College London, 2014.
Browning, Christopher S. “Branding Nordicity: Models, Identity and the Decline of
Exceptionalism.” Cooperation and Conflict 42, no. 1 (March 2007): 27 – 51.
doi:10.1177/0010836707073475.
Burgers, Johannes Hendrikus. “Max Nordau, Madison Grant, and Racialized Theories of
Ideology.” Journal of the History of Ideas 72, no. 1 (2011): 119 – 40.
Byrkjeflot, Haldor, Jesper Strandgaard Pedersen, and Silviya Svejenova. “From Label to
Practice: The Process of Creating New Nordic Cuisine.” Journal of Culinary Science &
Technology 11, no. 1 (March 2013): 36 – 55. doi:10.1080/15428052.2013.754296.
Byrkjeflot, Haldor, Lars Mjøset, Mads Mordhorst and Klaus Petersen, eds. The Making and
Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideals and Images (London: Routledge, 2021)
doi:10.4324/9781003156925.
Callaghan, John. “Old Social Democracy, New Social Movements and Social Democratic
Programmatic Renewal, 1968 – 2000.” In Transitions in Social Democracy: Cultural and
Ideological Problems of the Golden Age, edited by John Callaghan and Ilaria Favretto,
177 – 193. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
Cameron, David. “Fixing Our Broken Society” (speech), Glasgow, 2008. Conservative
Speeches.
https://conservative-speeches.sayit.mysociety.org/speech/599630.
Canavan, Hillary Dixler. “Time Editor Howard Chua-Eoan Explains Why No Female Chefs Are
‘Gods of Food.’” Eater, 7 November 2013. https://www.eater.com/2013/11/7/6334005/
time-gods-of-food-controversy-howard-chua-eoan-women-chefs.
Carlsson, Ulla, and David Goldberg, eds. The Legacy of Peter Forsskål: 250 Years of Freedom
of Expression. Gothenburg: Nordicom, University of Gothenburg, 2017.
Casteel, James. “Historicizing the Nation: Transnational Approaches to the Recent European
Past.” In Transnational Europe: Promise, Paradox, Limits, edited by Joan DeBardeleben
and Achim Hurrelmann, 153 – 69. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
doi:10.1057/9780230306370_9.
Charlotte Higgins. “The Hygge Conspiracy.” The Guardian, 22 November 2016. http://www.the
guardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/22/hygge-conspiracy-denmark-cosiness-trend.
Childs, Marquis. Sweden – the Middle Way. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936.
Chitnis, Rajendra A., Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Rhian Atkin, and Zoran Milutinović, eds.
Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press, 2020.
Chow, Pei-Sze, Anne Marit Waade, and Robert A. Saunders. “Geopolitical Television Drama
Within and Beyond the Nordic Region.” Nordicom Review 41 (1 September 2020): 11 – 27.
doi:10.2478/nor-2020 – 0013.
Christiansen, Niels Finn et al., eds. The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal.
Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006.
Christiansen, Niels Finn, and Klaus Petersen. “Preface.” Scandinavian Journal of History 26,
no. 3 (September 2001): 153 – 56. doi:10.1080/034687501750303828.
Christiansen, Niels Finn, and Pirjo Markkola. “Introduction.” In The Nordic Model of Welfare:
A Historical Reappraisal, edited by Niels Finn Christiansen et al. Copenhagen: Museum
Tusculanum Press, 2006.
224 Bibliography
Chydenius, Anders. Anticipating the Wealth of Nations: The Selected Works of Anders
Chydenius, 1729 – 1803. Edited by Maren Jonasson and Pertti Hyttinen. London:
Routledge, 2011.
— “Den nationala vinsten.” In Politiska skrifter af Anders Chydenius. Helsinki: G. W.
Edlunds förlag, 1880.
— Valitut Kirjoitukset. Porvoo: Werner Söderström, 1929.
Clerc, Louis, Nikolas Glover, and Paul Jordan, eds. Histories of Public Diplomacy and Nation
Branding in the Nordic and Baltic Countries: Representing the Periphery. Leiden: Brill,
2015.
Coon, Carlton Stevens. The Races of Europe. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939.
Craig, David, and James Thomson, eds. Languages of Politics in Nineteenth-Century Britain.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Crosland, C.A.R. The Future of Socialism. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.
Dahlerup, Drude. Vi har ventet længe nok. Håndbog i kvinderepræsentation. Copenhagen:
Nordic Council of Ministers, 1988.
Dahlerup, Drude, ed. Blomster & spark: Samtaler med kvindelige politikere i Norden.
Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1985.
Danbolt, Mathias. “New Nordic Exceptionalism: Jeuno JE Kim and Ewa Einhorn’s The United
Nations of Norden and Other Realist Utopias.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8, no. 1
(January 2016). doi:10.3402/jac.v8.30902.
Danielson, Eva, and Märta Ramsten. Du gamla, du friska: Från folkvisa till nationalsång.
Stockholm: Atlantis, 2013.
Department of Health, Delivering the NHS Plan: Next Steps on Investment Next Steps on
Reform, April 2002. Available at
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20130107105354/http://www.dh.go-
v.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/@dh/@en/@ps/documents/digitalas-
set/dh_118524.pdf.
“Det nya arbetarpartiet är moderat nyspråk.” Aftonbladet, 20 July 2006.
Djurberg, Daniel. Geographie för begynnare. 6th ed. Örebro: N.M. Lindhs förlag, 1815.
Donald, Simon, dir. Fortitude. Sky Atlantic, 2015.
www.sky.com/watch/title/series/6bede254 – 961b-46f0-ba29 – 320c8660f824/fortitude.
Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London:
Routledge, 2005.
Drechsler, Wolfgang. “Governance, Good Governance, and Government: The Case for Estonian
Administrative Capacity.” TRAMES, no. 4 (2004): 388 – 96.
Duelund, Peter. “Nordic Cultural Policies: A Critical View.” International Journal of Cultural
Policy 14, no. 1 (February 2008): 7 – 24. doi:10.1080/10286630701856468.
— ed. The Nordic Cultural Model: Nordic Cultural Policy in Transition. Copenhagen: Nordic
Cultural Institute, 2003.
Dülmen, Richard van. Die Gesellschaft der Aufklärer. Zur bürgerlichen Emanzipation und
aufklärerischen Kultur in Deutschland. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag,
1986.
Eder, Klaus. “The Public Sphere.” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 2 – 3 (2006): 607 – 11.
doi:10.1177/0263276406062705.
Edling, Nils, ed. The Changing Meanings of the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in
the Nordic Countries. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019.
Bibliography 225
Edling, Nils, Jørn Henrik Petersen, and Klaus Petersen. “Social Policy Language in Denmark
and Sweden.” In Analysing Social Policy Concepts and Language. Comparative and
Transnational Perspectives, edited by Daniel Béland and Klaus Petersen. Bristol: Policy
Press, 2014.
Eduskunta. Lisärakennuksen Arkkitehtuurikilpailu. Eduskunta, 1999.
Eijnatten, Joris van. “Between Practice and Principle. Dutch Ideas on Censorship and Press
Freedom, 1579 – 1795.” Redescriptions: Yearbook of Political Thought and Conceptual
History 8 (2004): 85 – 113.
Einhorn, Eric S., and John Logue. Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social
Democratic Scandinavia. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N., and Wolfgang Schluchter. “Introduction: Paths to Early Modernities –
A Comparative View.” In Public Spheres and Collective Identities, edited by Shmuel N.
Eisenstadt, Wolfgang Schluchter, and Björn Wittrock. New Brunswick: Transaction
Publishers, 2001.
Eklund, Klas, Henrik Berggren, and Lars Trägårdh. The Nordic Way: Shared Norms for the New
Reality. Davos: World Economic Forum, 2011.
Ekman, Kari Haarder. Mitt hems gränser vidgades. En studie i den kulturella skandinavismen
under 1800-talet. Göteborg: Makadam förlag, 2010.
Elder, Neil, Alastair H Thomas, and David Arter. The Consensual Democracies? The
Government and Politics of the Scandinavian States. Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982.
Emmenegger, Patrick, Jon Kvist, Paul Marx, and Klaus Petersen. “Three Worlds of Welfare
Capitalism: The Making of a Classic.” Journal of European Social Policy 25, no. 1
(February 2015): 3 – 13. doi:10.1177/0958928714556966.
Engman, Max. “Är Finland ett nordiskt land?” Den Jyske Historiker 69 – 70 (1994).
Eriksson, Göran. “Slaget om Norden.” Svenska Dagbladet, 8 February 2012.
Erkkilä, Tero. Government Transparency: Impact and Unintended Consequences. Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Erkkilä, Tero, and Ossi Piironen. “Politics and Numbers. The Iron Cage of Governance
Indices.” In Ethics and Integrity of Publlic Administration: Concepts and Cases, edited by
Raymond W Cox III, 125 – 45. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2009.
— Rankings and Global Knowledge Governance: Higher Education, Innovation and
Competitiveness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1990.
Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, and Walter Korpi. “From Poor Relief to Institutional Welfare States:
The Development of Scandinavian Social Policy.” In The Scandinavian Model: Welfare
States and Welfare Research, edited by Robert Erikson et al.. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe,
1987.
Esser, Andrea. “Form, Platform and the Formation of Transnational Audiences: A Case Study
of How Danish TV Drama Series Captured Television Viewers in the United Kingdom.”
Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 12, no. 4
(December 2017): 411 – 29. doi:10.1177/1749602017729649.
Farr, James. “Understanding Conceptual Change Politically.” In Political Innovation and
Conceptual Change, edited by Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson, 24 – 49.
226 Bibliography
Fearnlay-Whittingstall, Hugh. “Scandimania.” Channel 4, 2 February 2014. https://youtu.be/

nNEOAl8afIw.
Feldborg, Andreas Andersen. Cursory Remarks on the Mediated Attack on Norway; Comprising
Strictures on Madame de Staël Holstein “Appeal to the Nations of Europe”; with Some
Historical and Statistical Fragments Relating to Norway. London: Hamblin & Seyfang,
1813.
Ferris, Marcie Cohen. The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American
Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Fjeldmark, Stefan et al., Astérix et les Vikings [Asterix and the Vikings]. Montreal: Alliance
Atlantis Vivafilm, 2006. DVD.
Flood, Alison. “Hygge – the Danish Art of Living Cosily – On Its Way to UK Bookshops.” The
Guardian, 11 June 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/11/hygge-the-
danish-art-of-living-cosily-on-its-way-to-uk-bookshops.
Forbes, Paula. “The Era of the ‘I Foraged With René Redzepi Piece.’” Eater, 3 May, 2011.
https://www.eater.com/2011/5/3/6683095/the-era-of-the-i-foraged-with-rene-redzepi-
piece.
Forshaw, Barry. Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
— Nordic Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction, Film and TV.
Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2013.
Forster, Marc. “Debating the Meaning of Pilgrimage: Maria Steinbach 1733.” In Cultures of
Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early
Modern German Lands, edited by James Van Horn Melton. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Frayne, James. “The Conservatives Are Now the True Worker’s Party.” The Daily Telegraph, 15
May 2015.
Friedeburg, Robert von. “The Public of Confessional Identity: Territorial Church and Church
Discipline in 18th-Century Hesse.” In Cultures of Communication from Reformation o
Enlightenment: Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, edited by James
Van Horn Melton, 93 – 103. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Frisch, Hartvig. Pest over Europa: Bolschevisme – Fascisme – Nazisme. Copenhagen: Henrik
Koppels Forlag, 1933.
Garrett, Geoffrey. “Global Markets and National Politics: Collision Course or Virtuous Circle?”
International Organization 53, no. 4 (1998): 787 – 824.
Gasche, Malte. Der “Germanische Wissenschaftseinsatz” Des “Ahnenerbes” Der SS,
1942 – 1945: Zwischen Vollendung der “völkischen Gemeinschaft” und dem Streben nach
“Erlösung.” Bonn: Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, 2014.
Geherin, David. The Dragon Tattoo and Its Long Tail: The New Wave of European Crime Fiction
in America. London: McFarland, 2012.
Van Gerven, Tim. “Scandinavism: Overlapping and Competing Identities in the Nordic World
1770 – 1919.” PhD diss, University of Amsterdam, 2020.
Gestrich, Andreas. Absolutismus und Öffentlichkeit: Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland
zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994.
Giddens, Anthony. The Third Way and Its Critics. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.
Glenthøj, Rasmus. Sønner av de Slagne. Copenhagen: Gad, 2014.
Bibliography 227
Glover, Nikolas. “Imaging Community: Sweden in ‘Cultural Propaganda’ Then and Now.”
doi:10.1080/03468750903134707.
Glover, Nikolas, and Andreas Mørkved Hellenes. “A ‘Swedish Offensive’ at the World’s Fairs:
Advertising, Social Reformism and the Roots of Swedish Cultural Diplomacy,
1935 – 1939.” Contemporary European History 30, no. 2 (May 2021): 284 – 300.
doi:10.1017/S0960777320000533.
Gobineau, Arthur de. Essai Sur l’inégalité Des Races Humaines. 3 vols. Hanover: Rumpler,
1853.
Goodman, Peter S., and Erik Augustin Palm. “Pandemic Exposes Holes in Sweden’s Generous
Social Welfare State.” The New York Times, 8 October, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/
2020/10/08/business/coronavirus-sweden-social-welfare.html.
Gordinier, Jeff. “A Nordic Quest in New York.” The New York Times, 18 February, 2014.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/dining/a-nordic-quest-in-new-york.html.
Götz, Norbert. “Norden: Structures That Do Not Make a Region.” European Review of History:
Revue Europeenne d’histoire 10, no. 2 (June 2003): 323 – 41.
doi:10.1080/1350748032000140822.
Götz, Norbert, and Heidi Haggrén, eds. Regional Cooperation and International
Organizations: The Nordic Model in Transnational Alignment. London: Routledge, 2009.
Grant, Madison. The Conquest of the Continent. New York: C. Scribner, 1933.
— The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History. New York: C.
Scribner, 1936.
Gray, Lila Ellen. Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life. Durham and London:
Duke University Press, 2013.
Grøn, Caroline, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders Wivel, eds. The Nordic Countries and the
European Union: Still the Other European Community? London: Routledge, 2015.
Grøn, Caroline, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders Wivel. “Mr. Svensson Goes to Brussels:
Concluding on the Nordic Countries and the European Union.” In The Nordic Countries
and the European Union, edited by Caroline Howard Grøn, Peter Nedergaard, and Anders
Wivel, 243 – 57. London: Routledge, 2015.
Grønlie, Tore, and Anna-Hilde Nagel. “Administrative History in Norway.” Jahrbuch Für
Europäische Verwaltungsgeschichte 10 (1998): 307 – 32.
Gundersen, Bjarne Riiser. Svenske tilstander: en reise til et fremmed land. Bergen: Vigmostad
& Bjørke, 2019.
Gunhild, Agger. “Nordic Noir – Location, Identity and Emotion.” In Emotions in Contemporary
TV Series, edited by Alberto N. García, 134 – 52. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2016.
Günter, Hans F.K. Ritter, Tod und Teufel: Der heldische Gedanke. Munich: J. F. Lehmann
Verlag, 1920.
Guterl, Matthew Pratt. The Color of Race in America, 1900 – 1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001.
Haatainen, Tuula. “Opening Speech.” In Possibilities and Challenges? Men’s Reconciliation of
Work and Family Life – Conference Report, edited by Jouni Varanka and Maria Forslund,
11 – 15. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006.
Haavio-Mannila, Elina. “The Position of Woman.” In Nordic Democracy, edited by Erik Allardt
et al. Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1981.
228 Bibliography
Haavio-Mannila, Elina et al. Unfinished Democracy: Women in Nordic Politics. Oxford:

Pergamon Press, 1985.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society. London: Polity Press, 1989.
Hagemann, Anine, and Isabel Bramsen. New Nordic Peace: Nordic Peace and Conflict
Resolution Efforts. TemaNord, 524. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2019.
doi:10.6027/TN2019 – 524.
Hagerman, Maja. Käraste Herman: Rasbiologen Herman Lundborgs gåta. Stockholm:
Norstedts, 2015.
Hale, Frederick. “Brave New World in Sweden? Roland Huntford’s ‘The New Totalitarians.’”
Scandinavian Studies 78, no. 2 (2006): 167 – 90.
Hálfdanarson, Guðmundur. “Iceland Perceived: Nordic European or a Colonial Other?” In The
Postcolonial North Atlantic Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, edited by Lill-Ann
Körber and Ebbe Volquardsen, 39 – 66. Berlin: Nordeuropa-Institut der
Humboldt-Universität, 2014.
Halonen, Tarja. Puhe Anders Chydeniuksen Juhlavuoden Pääjuhlassa Kokkolassa 1. 3. 2003.
Anders Chydenius Säätiö, 2005.
Häner, Isabelle. Öffentlichkeit und Verwaltung. Zürich: Schulthess Polygraphischer Verlag,
1990.
Hansen, Kasper M., and Karina Kosiara-Pedersen. “Nordic Voters and Party Systems.” In The
Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics, edited by Peter Nedergaard and Anders
Wivel. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Hansen, Lene. “Conclusion.” In European Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of
the Nordic States, edited by Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver, 212 – 25. London: Routledge,
2001.
Hansen, Lene, and Ole Wæver, eds. European Integration and National Identity: The
Challenge of the Nordic States. London: Routledge, 2001.
Hansen, Svein Olav. Vennskap og kjennskap i 100 år: Foreningen Norden 1919 – 2019. Oslo:
Gyldendal, 2020.
Hård af Segerstad, Ulf, Eward Maze, and Nancy Maze. Scandinavian Design. Helsinki: Otava,
1961.
Harlow, Carol. “Global Administrative Law: The Quest for Principles and Values.” The
European Journal of International Law 17, no. 1 (2006): 187 – 214.
Hartog, François. Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. Translated by
Saskia Brown. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Harty, Kevin J. The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages.
Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.
Harvard, Jonas, and Magdalena Hillström. “Media Scandinavism: Media Events and the
Historical Legacy of Pan-Scandinavism.” In Communicating the North: Media Structures
and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region, edited by Jonas Harvard and Peter
Stadius. Ashgate, 2013.
Harvard, Jonas, and Peter Stadius. “Conclusion: Mediating the Nordic Brand – History
Recycled.” In Communicating the North: Media Structures and Images in the Making of
the Nordic Region, edited by Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, 319 – 32. The Nordic
Experience. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Bibliography 229
Harvey, Malcolm. “A Social Democratic Future? Political and Institutional Hurdles in

Scotland.” The Political Quarterly 86, no. 2 (April 2015): 249 – 56.
doi:10.1111/1467 – 923X.12155.
Hausmann, Ricardo, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi. The Global Gender Gap Report
2009. Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2009.
Hecker-Stampehl, Jan, ed. Between Nordic Ideology, Economic Interests and Political Reality:
New Perspectives on Nordek. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Science and Letters, 2009.
— Vereinigte Staaten des Nordens: Integrationsideen in Nordeuropa im Zweiten Weltkrieg.
München: Oldenbourg, 2011.
Heidar, Knut. “Comparative Perspectives on the Northern Countries.” In Nordic Politics:
Comparative Perspectives, edited by Knut Heidar 262 – 275. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget,
2004.
Heikel, Cecilia. “Vi använder vår yttrandefrihet för att säga ifrån.” Svenska Yle, 28 July 2015.
https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2015/07/28/vi-anvander-var-yttrandefrihet-att-saga-ifran.
Heikka, Henrikki. “Chydeniuksesta, vapaasta kaupasta ja terrorismista.” Kosmopolis 34, no. 2
(2004).
— “Kokkolan kirkkoherra paranaa terroristit.” Kosmopolis 34, no. 1 (2004): 63 – 68.
Hellenes, Andreas Mørkved. “Tracing the Nordic Model: French Creations, Swedish
Appropriations and Nordic Articulations.” In The Making and Circulation of Nordic
Models, Ideals and Images, edited by Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. 83 – 101. London:
Routledge, 2021. doi:10.4324/9781003156925.
Hemstad, Ruth. “‘En skandinavisk nationalitet’ som litterært prosjekt: 1840-årenes
transnasjonale offentlighet i Norden.” In Nation som kvalitet: 1800-talets litterära
offentligheter och folk i Norden, edited by Anna Bohlin and Elin Stengrundet. Bergen:
Alvheim & Eide akademisk forlag, 2021.
— Fra Indian Summer til nordisk vinter: skandinavisk samarbeid, skandinavisme og
unionsoppløsningen. Oslo: Akademisk Publisering, 2008.
— “Fra ‘det förenade Scandinavien’ til ‘Nordens Tvillingrige’: Skandinavistisk propaganda
før skandinavismen, 1808 – 1814.” In Skandinavism. en rörelse och en idé under
1800-talet, edited by Magdalena Hillström and Hanne Sanders. Göteborg: Makadam
förlag, 2014.
— “Geopolitikk og geografibøker for folket: Den Norsk-Svenske unionens besværlige
beskrivelser.” In Naturvitenskap i nordisk folkeopplysning 1650 – 2016, edited by
Merethe Roos and Johan Tønnesson, 101 – 126. Oslo: Cappelen Damn, 2017.
— “Literature as Auxiliary Forces: Scandinavianism, Pan-Scandinavian Associations and
Transnational Dissemination of Literature.” In The Cultural Politics of Nation-Building in
Denmark and Scandinavia 1800 – 1930, edited by Sine Krogh, Thor Mednick, and Karina
Lykke Grand. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2021.
— “Madame de Staël and the War of Opinion Regarding the Cession of Norway
1813 – 1814.” Scandinavica 54, no. 1 (2015): 100 – 120.
— “‘Norden’ og “Skandinavien”: Begrepsbruk i brytningstid.” In Nordens historiker: Vänbok
till Harald Gustafsson, edited by Erik Bodensten et al., 45 – 60. Lund: Historiska
Institutionen, Lunds Universitet, 2018.
— “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad: Literature, Sociability and Pan-Scandinavian
Associational Life in German-Speaking Europe 1842 – 1912.” In Mit dem Buch in der
Hand: Beiträge zur Deutsch-Skandinavischen Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte/A Book in
230 Bibliography
Hand. German-Scandinavian Book and Library History, edited by Marie-Theres

Federhofer and Sabine Meyer, 159 – 83. Berlin: Nordeuropa-Institut, 2021.
— Propagandakrig: Kampen om Norge i Norden og Europa. Oslo: Novus forlag, 2014.
— “Scandinavianism. Mapping the Rise of a New Concept.” Contributions to the History of
Concepts 13, no. 1 (1 June 2018): 1 – 21. doi:10.3167/choc.2018.130102.
— “Scandinavianism, Nordic Co-operation and “Nordic Democracy.” In Rhetorics of Nordic
Democracy, edited by Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang, 179 – 93. Helsinki: Finnish
Literature Society, 2010. doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
Hemstad, Ruth, Jes Fabricius Møller, and Dag Thorkildsen, eds. Skandinavisme: Vision og
virkning. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2018.
Hermansen, Mark Emil. “Creating Terroir – An Anthropological Perspecive on New Nordic
Cuisine as an Expression of Nordic Identity.” Anthropology of Food S7 (December 2012).
Hernes, Helga Maria. Welfare State and Woman Power: Essays in State Feminism. Oslo:
Norwegian University Press, 1987.
Hewitt, Patricia. “Creating a Patient-Led NHS: The next Steps Forward” (speech). 10 January,
2006, transcript, The National Archives.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130107105354/http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/-
MediaCentre/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH_4126499.
— “Investment and Reform: Transforming Health and Healthcare.” Annual health and social
care lecture, 13 December, 2005, transcript, The National Archives.
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100408103750/http://www.dh.go-
v.uk/en/MediaCentre/Speeches/Speecheslist/DH_4124484.
Hill, Andrew. “Too Many Angry Cooks Spoil the Business Broth.” Financial Times, 24 August
2015. https://www.ft.com/content/0d81ad46-4722-11e5-b3b2-1672f710807b.
Hill, Annette, and Susan Turnbull. “Nordic Noir.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of
Criminology and Criminal Justice, by Annette Hill and Susan Turnbull. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.294.
Hillis Miller, J. Topographies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Hilson, Mary. “Consumer Co-operation and Economic Crisis: The 1936 Roosevelt Inquiry on
Co-operative Enterprise and the Emergence of the Nordic ‘Middle Way.’” Contemporary
European History 22, no. 2 (May 2013): 181 – 98. doi:10.1017/S0960777313000040.
— The International Co-operative Alliance and the Consumer Co-operative Movement in
Northern Europe, c. 1860 – 1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
— The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945. London: Reaktion Books, 2008.
Hilson, Mary, and Andrew Newby. “The Nordic Welfare Model in Norway and Scotland.” In
Northern Neighbours, edited by John Bryden, Lesley Riddoch, and Ottar Brox, 211 – 29.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696208.003.0010.
Hinsliff, Gaby. “Cameron Softens Crime Image in ‘hug a Hoodie’ Call.” The Guardian, 9 July,
2006. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jul/09/conservatives.ukcrime.
Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1 – 14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987.
Hoctor, Tom. “Beveridge or Bismarck? Choosing the Nordic Model in British Healthcare Policy
1997–c.2015.” In The Making and Circulation of Nordic Models, Ideals and Images,
Bibliography 231
edited by Haldor Byrkjeflot et al. 209 – 228. London: Routledge, 2021.

doi:10.4324/9781003156925 – 13
Hoctor, Tom. “Coming to Terms with the Market: Accounts of Neoliberal Failure and
Rehabilitation on the British Right.” British Politics (June 2020). doi:
10.1057/s41293 – 020 – 00141 – 9.
Hoffmann, Tobias and Bröhan-Museum Berlin, eds. Nordic Design: Die Antwort aufs Bauhaus
[Nordic Design: The Response to the Bauhaus]. Stuttgart: Arnoldsche, 2019.
Hofsten, Nils von. Ärftlighetslära. Uppsala: P.A. Norstedt & Söner, 1919.
Høgetveit, Einar. Hvor hemmelig? Offentlighetsprinsippeti Norge og USA, særlig med henblikk
på militærpolitiske spørsmål. Oslo: Pax, 1981.
Höglund, Erik et al., “The Revolution in Scandinavian Design.” Craft Horizons 18, no. 2 (April
1958). https://digital.craftcouncil.org/digital/collection/p15785coll2/id/4711.
Holli, Anne Maria. “Kriittisiä näkökulmia tasa-arvon tutkimukseen.” In Tasa-arvo toisin
nähtynä. Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, edited
by Johanna Kantola, Kevät Nousiainen, and Milja Saari, 73 – 96. Helsinki: Gaudeamus,
2012.
Holm, Sophie. Diplomatins ideal och praktik: Utländska sändebud i Stockholm 1746 – 1748.
Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2020.
Holm, Ulla. “Noma er fascisme i avantgardistiske klæ’r.” Politiken, 8 May 2011. https://polit
iken.dk/debat/kroniken/art5509397/Noma-er-fascisme-i-avantgardistiske-kl%C3%A6r.
Holmberg, Åke. Skandinavismen i Sverige vid 1800-talets mitt. Göteborg: Elanders
boktrykkeri, 1946.
Holter, Øystein Gullvåg. Can Men Do It? Men and Gender Equality – the Nordic Experience.
Hood, Christopher C. “Transparency in Historical Perspective.” In Transparency: The Key to
Better Governance?, edited by David Heald and Christopher C. Hood, 3 – 23. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
Horn, Denise M. “Setting the Agenda: US and Nordic Gender Policies in The Estonian
Transition to Democracy.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 10, no. 1 (March
2008): 59 – 77. doi:10.1080/14616740701747675.
— “Setting the Agenda. US and Nordic Gender Policies in the Estonian Transition to
Democracy.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 10, no. 1 (2008): 59 – 77.
Huntford, Roland. The New Totalitarians. London: Allen Lane, 1971.
Hyde-Price, Adrian. “Epilogue: ‘Nordicness’ – Theory and Practice.” Global Affairs 4, no. 4 – 5
(20 October, 2018): 435 – 43. doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1497451.
Ifversen, Jan. “About Key Concepts and How to Study Them.” Contributions to the History of
Concepts 6, no. 1 (15 September 2011). doi:10.3167/choc.2011.060104.
Ihalainen, Pasi, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen. “Parliament as a Conceptual Nexus.” In
Parliaments and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept, edited
by Pasi Ihalainen, Cornelia Ilie, and Kari Palonen. New York: Berghahn, 2016.
— eds. Parliaments and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept.
New York: Berghahn Books, 2016.
Ihalainen, Pasi, and Karin Sennefelt. “General Introduction.” In Scandinavia in the Age of
Revolution: Nordic Political Cultures 1740 – 1820, edited by Pasi Ihalainen, Michael
Bregnsbo, and Patrik Winton. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.
232 Bibliography
“Inspector Norse: Why Are Nordic Detective Novels So Successful?” The Economist, 11 March,
2010. http://www.economist.com/node/15660846.
Ísleifsson, Sumarliði and [with the collaboration of] Daniel Chartier. “Banking on Borealism:
Eating, Smelling and Performing the North,” 305 – 28. Québec: Presses de l’Université
du Québec, 2011.
Iversen, Torben. “The Dynamics of Welfare State Expansion: Trade Openness,
De-Industrialisation and Partisan Politics.” In The New Politics of the Welfare State,
edited by Paul Pierson, 45 – 79. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Jackson, John P., and Nadine M. Weidman. “The Origins of Scientific Racism.” The Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education, no. 50 (2005): 66 – 79.
Jalava, Marja, and Bo Stråth. “Scandinavia/Norden.” In European Regions and Boundaries: A
Conceptual History, edited by Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi. New York:
Berghahn Books, 2017.
Jalving, Mikael. Absolut Sverige: En rejse i tavshedens rige. København: Jyllands-Postens
Forlag, 2011.
Janfelt, Monika. Att leva i den bästa av världar: Föreningarna Nordens syn på Norden
1919 – 1933. Stockholm: Carlsson, 2005.
Jauhola, Marjaana, and Johanna Kantola. “Globaali sukupuolipolitiikka Suomessa.” In
Sukupuolikysymys, edited by Marita Husso and Risto Heiskala, 209 – 30. Helsinki:
Gaudeamus, 2016.
Jenkins, Allen. “Magnus Nilsson: The Rising Star of Nordic Cooking,” The Guardian, 22
January 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/22/magnus-nilsson-Fä
viken-sweden-chef.
Jensen, Pia Majbritt. “Global Impact of Danish Drama Series: A Peripheral, Non-Commercial
Creative Counter-Flow.” Kosmorama 263 (2016). https://www.kosmorama.org/en/kosmor
ama/artikler/global-impact-danish-drama-series-peripheral-non-commercial-creative-coun
ter.
Jessop, Bob. “The Rise of Governance and the Risks of Failure.” International Social Science
Journal 155 (1998): 29 – 45.
Joenniemi, Pertti. “Finland in the New Europe: A Herderian or Hegelian Concept.” In European
Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of the Nordic States, edited by Lene
Hansen and Ole Wæver. London: Routledge, 2001.
Johnsen, Lars. “Eldre bøker i den digitale samlingen: Et elektronisk blikk på tekster fra
perioden 1650 – 1850.” In Litterære verdensborgere: Transnasjonale perspektiver på
norsk bokhistorie 1519 – 1850, edited by Aasta Marie Bjorvand Bjørkøy et al., 190 – 214.
Oslo: National Library of Norway, 2019.
Jones, George. “Cameron Turns Blue to Prove Green Credentials.” The Daily Telegraph, 21
April, 2006.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1516276/Cameron-turns-blue-to-prove-green--
credentials.html.
Jónsson, Guðmundur. “Iceland and the Nordic Model of Consensus Democracy.”
Scandinavian Journal of History 39, no. 4 (8 August 2014): 510 – 28.
doi:10.1080/03468755.2014.935473.
Jordheim, Helge. “Europe at Different Speeds: Asynchronicities and Multiple Times in
European Conceptual History.” In Conceptual History in the European Space, edited by
Bibliography 233
Willibald Steinmetz, Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián, 139 – 74. New
York: Berghahn Books, 2017. doi:10.2307/j.ctvw04kcs.9.
Jordheim, Helge, and Einar Wigen. “Conceptual Synchronisation: From Progress to Crisis.”
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46, no. 3 (June 2018): 421 – 39.
doi:10.1177/0305829818774781.
Julkunen, Raija. “Sukupuoli valtiollisen politiikan kohteena.” In Sukupuolikysymys, edited by
Marita Husso and Risto Heiskala, 231 – 59. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2016.
Jungar, Ann-Cathrine, and Anders Ravik Jupskås. “Populist Radical Right Parties in the Nordic
Region: A New and Distinct Party Family?” Scandinavian Political Studies 37, no. 3
(September 2014): 215 – 38. doi:10.1111/1467 – 9477.12024.
Junge, Kay, and Kirill Postoutenko, eds. Asymmetrical Concepts After Reinhart Koselleck:
Historical Semantics and Beyond. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2011.
Kahn, Howie. “Noma’s René Redzepi Never Stops Experimenting.” Wall Street Journal, 6
November 2014. https://online.wsj.com/articles/nomas-rene-redzepi-never-stops-ex
perimenting-1415237540.
Käkönen, Jyrki. “Anders Chydenius ja 1700-luvun suomalainen valtio-opillinen ajattelu.” In
Valtio ja yhteiskunta. Tutkielmia suomalaisen valtiollisen ajattelun ja valtio-opin
historiasta, edited by Jaako Nousiainen and Dag Anckar. Juva: Werner Söderström, 1983.
— “Henrikki Heikka Chydeniuksesta, Terrorismin parantamisesta ja vapaakaupasta.”
Kosmopolis 34, no. 1 (2004): 111 – 14.
Kantola, Johanna, and Anne Maria Holli. “State Feminism Finnish Style: Strong Policies Clash
with Implementation Problems.” In Changing State Feminism, edited by Joyce Outshoorn
and Johanna Kantola, 82 – 101. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Kantola, Johanna, and Kevät Nousiainen. “Euroopan Unionin tasa-arvopolitiikka: Velvoittavaa
lainsäädäntöä ja pehmeää sääntelyä.” In Tasa-arvo toisin nähtynä: Oikeuden ja
politiikan näkökulmia tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, edited by Johanna Kantola,
Kevät Nousiainen, and Milja Saari, 121 – 42. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2012.
Kantola, Johanna, Kevät Nousiainen, and Milja Saari. “Johdanto: Tasa-arvosta ja sen
lukemisesta toisin.” In Tasa-arvo toisin nähtynä: Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia
tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, edited by Johanna Kantola, Kevät Nousiainen, and
Milja Saari, 7 – 27. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2012.
Karcher, Nicola. “Schirmorganisation der Nordischen Bewegung: Der Nordische Ring und
seine Repräsentanten in Norwegen.” Nordeuropaforum 1, no. 19 (13 July 2009): 7 – 36.
doi:10.18452/7996.
Karker, Allan. “Den nordiske model.” Den Store Danske. https://denstoredanske.lex.dk/den_
nordiske_model.
Karvonen, Lauri, and Per Selle. Women in Nordic Politics: Closing the Gap. Aldershot:
Darthmouth, 1995.
Kautto, Mikko. “The Nordic Countries.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, edited
by Francis G. Castles et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199579396.003.0040.
Kautto, Mikko et al., eds. Nordic Welfare States in the European Context. London: Routledge,
2001.
Kayser Nielsen, Niels. Bonde, stat og hjem: Nordisk demokrati og nationalisme fra pietismen
til 2. verdenskrig. Aarhus: Aarhus universitetsforlag, 2009.
234 Bibliography
Keating, Michael and Malcolm Harvey. Small Nations in a Big World: What Scotland Can
Learn. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2014.
Keränen, Marja. Finnish “Undemocracy”: Essays on Gender and Politics. Helsinki: Finnish
Political Science Association, 1990.
Kettunen, Pauli. Globalisaatio ja kansallinen me. Kansallisen katseen historiallinen kritiikki.
Tampere: Vastapaino, 2008.
— “Review Essay: A Return to the Figure of the Free Nordic Peasant,” review of The Cultural
Construction of Norden, edited by Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth. Acta Sociologica 42,
no. 3 (July 1, 1999): 259 – 69. doi:10.1177/000169939904200306.
— “The Conceptual History of the Welfare State in Finland.” In The Changing Meanings of
the Welfare State: Histories of a Key Concept in the Nordic Countries, edited by Nils
Edling, 225 – 75. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019.
— “The Nordic Model and the Making of the Competitive ‘Us.’” In The Global Economy,
National States and the Regulation of Labour, edited by Paul Edwards and Tony Elger.
London: Mansell Publishing, 1999.
— “The Nordic Welfare State in Finland.” Scandinavian Journal of History 26, no. 3 (1
September, 2001): 225 – 47. doi:10.1080/034687501750303864.
— “The Power of International Comparison: A Perspective on the Making and Challenging
of the Nordic Welfare State.” In The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal,
edited by Niels Finn Christiansen et al. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006.
— “The Society of Virtuous Circles.” In Models, Modernity and the Myrdals, edited by Pauli
Kettunen and Hanna Eskola. Renvall Institute Publication 8. Helsinki: Helsinki University,
1997.
— “The Transnational Construction of National Challenges: The Ambiguous Nordic Model of
Welfare and Competitiveness.” In Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational Historical
Perpectives on Social Policy, edited by Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011.
— “Yhteiskunta ohjattavana ja ohjaajana – Historiallinen näkökulma: Monikäyttöinen
Chydenius.” Anders Chydenius foundation. http://www.chydenius.net.
Kettunen, Pauli, Urban Lundberg, and Mirja Österberg. “The Nordic Model and the Rise and
Fall of Nordic Cooperation.” In Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition,
edited by Johan Strang. London: Routledge, 2016. doi:10.4324/9781315755366.
Kettunen, Pauli, and Klaus Petersen, eds. Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational
Historical Perspectives on Social Policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011.
— “Introduction: Rethinking Welfare State Models.” In Beyond Welfare State Models:
Transnational Historical Perpectives on Social Policy, edited by Pauli Kettunen and Klaus
Petersen. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011.
Kettunen, Pekka, and Markku Kiviniemi. “Policy-Making in Finland: Consensus and Change.”
In The Work of Policy – an International Survey, edited by Hal Colebatch, 147 – 60. New
York: Lexington Books, 2006.
Kharkina, Anna. From Kinship to Global Brand: The Discourse on Culture in Nordic
Cooperation after World War II. Stockholm Studies in History 97. Huddinge: Södertörns
högskola, 2013.
Kielos, Katrine. “Flight of the Swedish Bumblebee.” Renewal (London, England) 17, no. 2
(2009): 61 – 66.
Bibliography 235
Kjærsgaard, Kristine. “International Arenas and Domestic Institution Formation: The Impact of
the UN Women’s Conferences in Denmark, 1975 – 1985.” Nordic Journal of Human Rights
36 (2018): 271 – 86.
Kliemann-Geisinger, Henriette. “Mapping the North – Spatial Dimensions and Geographical
Concepts of Northern Europe.” In Northbound: Travels, Encounters, and Constructions
1700 – 1830, edited by Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, 70 – 76. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press,
2007.
Knudsen, Tim, ed. Den nordiske protestantisme og velfrærdsstaten. Århus: Aarhus
universitetsforlag, 2000.
— Offentlighed i det offentlige: Om historiens magt. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag,
2003.
Koikkalainen, P. “From Agrarian Republicanism to the Politics of Neutrality: Urho Kekkonen
and ‘Nordic Democracy’ in Finnish Cold War Politics.” In Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy,
edited by Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan Strang. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010,
doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
Koivunen, Anu, Jari Ojala, and Anh Holmén. “Always in Crisis, Always a Solution?: The Nordic
Model as a Political and Scholarly Concept.” In The Nordic Economic, Social and
Political Model, edited by Anu Koivunen, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, 1 – 19. London:
Routledge, 2021. doi:10.4324/9780429026690 – 1.
Koivunen, Anu, Jari Ojala, and Janne Holmén, eds. The Nordic Economic, Social and Political
Model: Challenges in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2021.
Konstari, Timo. Asiakirjajulkisuudesta hallinnossa: Tutkimus yleisten asiakirjain julkisuudesta
hallinnon kontrollivälineenä. Helsinki: Suomalainen lakimiesyhdistys, 1977.
Koponen, Kalle. “Talouspappi Chydenius pääsi valtiovarainministerin seinälle Ruotsissa.”
Helsingin Sanomat, 9 January 2009.
Koselleck, Reinhart. “A Response to Comments on Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.” In The
Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte, edited by
Hartmut Lehmann and Melvin Richter. Washington, DC: German Historical Institute,
1996.
— “Einleitung.” In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen
Sprache in Deutschland, edited by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck.
Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972.
— Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press,
2004.
— Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1979.
Kovač, Miha, and Rüdiger Wischenbart. “Diversity Report 2016: Trends and References in
Literary Translation across Europe.” Verein für kulturelle transfers. Accessed 13
September 2018. www.culturaltransfers.org.
Kristjánsdóttir, Ragnheiður. “Facing the Nation – Nordic Communists and Their National
Contexts, from the 1920s and into the Cold War.” In Labour, Unions and Politics under
the North Star: The Nordic Countries, 1700 – 2000, edited by Mary Hilson, Silke
Neunsinger, and Iben Vyff, 258 – 278. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
— “For Equality or Against Foreign Oppression? The Politics of the Left in Iceland Leading
up to the Cold War.” Moving the Social 48 (2012): 11 – 28.
doi:10.13154/mts.48.2012.11 – 28.
236 Bibliography
Kuhnle, Stein. Review of Modern Welfare States. The Journal of Politics 52, no. 3 (1990):
2131854. https://doi.org/10.2307.
— “The Beginnings of the Nordic Welfare States: Similarities and Differences.” Acta
Sociologica 21 (1978): 9 – 35.
— “The Scandinavian Welfare State in the 1990s: Challenged but Viable.” West European
Politics 23, no. 2 (April 2000): 209 – 228. doi_10.1080/01402380008425373.
Kuldkepp, Mart. “The Scandinavian Connection in Early Estonian Nationalism.” Journal of
Baltic Studies 44, no. 3 (1 September, 2013): 313 – 38. doi:
10.1080/01629778.2012.744911.
Kulturrådet, Ny kulturpolitik: Nuläge och förslag. Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1972.
Kurunmäki, Jussi. “‘Nordic Democracy’ in 1935: On the Finnish and Swedish Rhetoric of
Democracy.” In Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, edited by Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan
Strang. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010. doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
Kurunmäki, Jussi, and Johan Strang, eds. Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy. Helsinki: Finnish
Literature Society, 2010, doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
Kurvinen, Heidi, and Arja Turunen. “Toinen aalto uudelleen tarkasteltuna. Yhdistys 9:N Rooli
Suomalaisen Feminismin Historiassa’. Sukupuolentutkimus 3 (2018): 21 – 34.
Kvinnor och män i Norden: fakta om jämställdheten 1988. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of
Ministers, 1988.
Kythor, Ellen. “Stereotypes in and of Scandinavia.” In Introduction to Nordic Cultures, edited
by Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, 210 – 24. London: UCL Press, 2020.
Lagerspetz, Mikko. “How Many Nordic Countries?: Possibilities and Limits of Geopolitical
Identity Construction.” Cooperation and Conflict 38, no. 1 (March 2003): 49 – 61.
doi:10.1177/0010836703038001003.
Lajh, Andreja. “Rene Redzepi on His Origins.” Haut De Gamme, 10 November 2015. https://
hautdegamme.net/2015/11/10/rene-redzepi-on-his-origins/.
Lamble, Stephen. “Freedom of Information, a Finnish Clergyman’s Gift to Democracy.”
Freedom of Information Review 97, no. February 2002 (2002): 2 – 8.
Lane, Jan-Erik et al. “Scandinavian Exceptionalism Reconsidered.” Journal of Theoretical
Politics 5, no. 2 (April 1993): 195 – 230. doi:10.1177/0951692893005002003.
Lapiņa, Linda, and Jonatan Leer. “Carnivorous Heterotopias: Gender, Nostalgia and
Hipsterness in the Copenhagen Meat Scene.” NORMA 11, no. 2 (2 April 2016): 89 – 109.
doi:10.1080/18902138.2016.1184479.
Larsen, Eirinn. “State Feminism Revisited as Knowledge History: The Case of Norway.” In
Histories of Knowledge in Postwar Scandinavia: Actors, Arenas, and Aspirations, edited
by Johan Östling, Niklas Olsen, and David Larsson Heidenblad, 152 – 70. London:
Routledge, 2020.
Larsen, Eirinn, Sigrun Marie Moss, and Inger Skjelsbæk, eds. Gender Equality and Nation
Branding in the Nordic Region. London: Routledge, 2021.
Laurence, Jeremy. “Bed Blocking the Scandinavian Solution.” The Independent, 19 April,
2002.
Lawson, Mark. “Crime’s Grand Tour: European Detective Fiction.” The Guardian, 26 October,
2012. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/26/crimes-grand-tour-european-de
tective-fiction.
Leer, Jonatan. “The Rise and Fall of the New Nordic Cuisine.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
8, no. 1 (1 January, 2016): 33494. doi:10.3402/jac.v8.33494.
Bibliography 237
Leerssen, Joep. “Foreword.” In Images of the North: Histories, Identities, Ideas, edited by
Sverrir Jakobsson, 15 – 18. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.
— “A Summary of Imagological Theory.” Imagologica: Dedicated to the critical study of
national stoeretypes. Accessed 1 May, 2021. https://imagologica.eu/theoreticalsummary.
Leese, Ian, dir. Art of Scandinavia, episode 1, “Dark Night of the Soul.” Presented by Andrew
Graham-Dixon. Aired 14 March, 2016, on BBC 4,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b073mp87.
Lehti, Marko, and David J. Smith, eds. Post-Cold War Identity Politics: Northern and Baltic
Experiences. Cass Series – Nationalism and Ethnicity. London: Frank Cass, 2003.
Lenz, Fritz. “Die seelischen Unterschiede der großen Rassen.” In Menschliche
Erblichkeitslehre Und Rassenhygiene, edited by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz
Lenz, 520 – 83. Munich: J.F. Lehmann, 1931.
Lesser, Wendy. Scandinavian Noir: In Pursuit of a Mystery. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2020.
Letto-Vanamo, Pia, and Ditlev Tamm. Co-operation in the Field of Law. In Nordic Cooperation:
A European Region in Transition, edited by Johan Strang, 93 – 107. London: Routledge,
2016. doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 5.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Le Cru et Le Cuit. Mythologiques, vol. 1. Paris: Plon, 1964.
— The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology. New York: Harper
Colophon Books, 1975.
Lindert, Peter. “The Welfare State Is the Wrong Target: A Reply to Bergh.” Econ Journal Watch
3 (1 May, 2006): 236 – 50.
Lister, Ruth, and Fran Bennett. “The New ‘Champion of Progressive Ideals’? Cameron’s
Conservative Party: Poverty, Family Policy and Welfare Reform.” Renewal: a journal of
social democray 18, no. 1 – 2 (2010): 84 – 109.
Logue, John. “Review of The Consensual Democracies? by Neil Elder et al..” Scandinavian
Studies 55, no. 3 (1983).
Lothe, Jakob, and Bente Larsen, eds. Perspectives on the Nordic. Oslo: Novus Press, 2016.
Lundborg, Herman. Rasbiologi och rashygien: Nutida kultur- och rasfrågor i etisk belysning.
Stockholm: P.A.Norstedt, 1922.
— Rasfrågor i modern belysning. Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt, 1919.
— Rassenkunde Des schwedischen Volkes. Jena: Fischer, 1928.
— The Racial Characters of the Swedish Nation. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1926.
Lundström, Catrin and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum. “Nordic Whiteness: An Introduction.”
Scandinavian Studies 89, no. 2 (2017). doi:10.5406/scanstud.89.2.0151.
Lutzhöft, Hans-Jürgen. Der Nordische Gedanke in Deutschland 1920 – 1940. Stuttgart: E. Klett,
1971.
MacDougall, Ian “The Man Who Blew Up the Welfare State.” N+1 Magazine, 27 February,
2010. https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/book-review/man-who-blew-up-welfare-
state.
Madame de Staël i. e. A.W. Schlegel. An Appeal to the Nations of Europe. Frederikshald: H.
Gundersen & H. Larssen, 1833.
Mai, Anne-Marie. “Dreams and Realities: The Nordic Council Literature Prize as a Symbol for
the Construction of Nordic Cultural Cooperation.” In Nordic Cooperation: A European
Region in Transition, edited by Johan Strang, 109 – 130. London: Routledge, 2016.
doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 6.
238 Bibliography
Majander, Mikko. Pohjoismaa vai kansandemokratia? Sosiaalidemokraatit, kommunistit ja

Suomen kansainvälinen asema 1944 – 1951. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura,
2004.
Malmborg, Mikael af. “Den ståndaktiga nationalstaten: Sverige och den västeuropeiska
integrationen 1945 – 1959.” PhD diss., Lund University, 1994. https://portal.research.lu.
se/portal/sv/publications/den-staandaktiga-nationalstaten–sverige-och-den-vast
europeiska-integrationen-19451959(3f616aab-28c0-45ee-b2f0-7c865a86cfae)/export.html.
— Neutrality and State-Building in Sweden. St. Antony’s Series. Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2001.
Manninen, Juha. “Anders Chydenius and the Origins of World’s First Freedom of Information
Act.” In The World’s First Freedom of Information Act. Anders Chydenius’ Legacy Today,
edited by Anders Chydenius Foundation, 18 – 53. Kokkola: Anders Chydenius Foundation,
2006.
— Valistus ja kansallinen identiteetti: Aatehistoriallinen tutkimus 1700-luvun Pohjolasta.
Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2000.
Marcussen, Martin. Ideas and Elites: The Social Construction of Economic and Monetary
Union. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 2000.
— “Scandinavian Models of Diplomacy.” In The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian
Politics, edited by Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel. New York: Routledge, 2017.
Marjanen, Jani. “Nordic Modernities: From Historical Region to Five Exceptions.” International
Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 3, no. 1 (2015): 91 – 106.
doi:10.18352/22130624 – 00301005.
— “Transnational Conceptual History, Methodological Nationalism and Europe.” In
Conceptual History in the European Space, edited by Willibald Steinmetz, Michael
Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián, 139 – 74. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
— “Undermining Methodological Nationalism: Histoire Croisée of Concepts as Transnational
History.” In Transnational Political Spaces: Agents – Structures – Encounters, edited by
Mathias Albert, Gesa Bluhm, Jochen Walter, Jan Helmig, and Andreas Leutzsch, 2nd ed.,
239 – 63. Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2009.
Marklund, Carl. “The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas: The Welfare State as
Scandinavia’s Best Brand.” Geopolitics 22, no. 3 (2017): 623 – 39.
doi:10.1080/14650045.2016.1251906.
— “The Social Laboratory, the Middle Way and the Swedish Model: Three Frames for the
Image of Sweden.” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 264 – 85.
Marklund, Carl, and Klaus Petersen. “Return to Sender – American Images of the Nordic
Welfare States and Nordic Welfare State Branding.” European Journal of Scandinavian
Studies 43, no. 2 (2013): 245 – 57. doi:10.1515/ejss-2013 – 0016.
Marklund, Carl, and Byron Zachary Rom-Jensen. “Vanishing Scandinavian ‘Socialism’ in the
2020 US Election,” 2020. https://nordics.info/show/artikel/scandinavias-vanishing-so
cialism-in-the-2020-us-election/.
Marklund, Carl, and Peter Stadius. “Acceptance and Conformity: Merging Modernity with
Nationalism in the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930.” Culture Unbound 2, no. 5 (2010):
609 – 634. doi:10.3384/cu.2000.1525.10235609.
Marnix, Beyen. “Who Is the Nation and What Does It Do? The Discursive Construction of the
Nation in Belgian and Dutch National Histories of the Romantic Period.” In The Historical
Bibliography 239
Imagination in Nineteenh-Century Britain and the Low Countries, edited by Hugh

Dunthorne and Michael Wintle, 67 – 85. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Martens, Wolfgang. Die Botschaft der Tugend. Die Aufklärung im Spiegel der deutschen
moralischen Wochenschriften. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971.
Marx Ferree, Myra et al. “Four Models of the Public Sphere in Modern Democracies.” Theory
and Society 31, no. 2 (2002): 289 – 324.
Mazur, Amy G., and Dorothy McBride. “State Feminism.” In Politics, Gender and Concepts:
Theory and Methodology, edited by Gary Goertz and Amy G. Mazur, 244 – 69.
McBride, Dorothy, and Amy G. Mazur. The Politics of State Feminism: Innovation in
Comparative Research. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010.
Mead, W. R. An Economic Geography of the Scandinavian States and Finland. London:
University of London Press, 1958.
Mediastream. Royal Library of Denmark. Accessed 4 June 2021. https://www2.statsbiblioteket.
dk/mediestream/.
Melby, Kari, Anu Pylkkänen, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg. Inte ett ord
om kärlek: Äktenskap och politik i Norden ca 1850 – 1930. Göteborg and Stockholm:
Makadam förlag, 2006.
— “The Nordic Model of Marriage.” Women’s History Review 15, no. 4 (2006): 651 – 61.
doi:10.1080/09612020500530851.
Melby, Kari, Anna-Birte Ravn, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg. “A Nordic Model of Gender
Equality? Introduction.” In Gender Equality and Welfare Politics in Scandinavia: The
Limits of Political Ambition?, edited by Kari Melby, Anna-Birte Ravn, and Christina
Carlsson Wetterberg, 1 – 24. Bristol: Policy Press, 2008.
Melby, Kari, Anna-Birte Ravn, Bente Rosenbeck, and Christina Carlsson Wetterberg. “What Is
Nordic in the Nordic Gender Model?” In Beyond Welfare State Models: Transnational
Historical Perspectives on Social Policy, edited by Pauli Kettunen and Klaus Petersen,
147 – 69. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011.
Melvin, Richter. The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Middell, Matthias, and Lluís Roura i Aulinas, ed. Transnational Challenges to National History
Writing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Mishkova, Diana. Beyond Balkanism: the Scholarly Politics of Region Making. London:
Routledge, 2018.
Mishkova, Diana, and Balázs Trencsényi. “Conceptualizing Spaces within Europe: The Case of
Meso-Regions.” In European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, edited by
Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
Mishkova, Diana, Balász Trencsényi, and Marja Jalava, eds. “Regimes of Historicity’ in
Southeastern and Northern Europe, 1890 – 1945: Discourses of Identity and Temporality.”
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi:10.1057/9781137362476.
— ed. European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History. New York: Berghahn
Books, 2017.
— “Introduction.” In European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History, edited by
Diana Mishkova and Balázs Trencsényi. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017.
Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York:
New York University Press, 2015.
240 Bibliography
Mjøset, Lars. “The Nordic Model Never Existed, But Does It Have a Future?” Scandinavian
Studies 64, no. 4 (1992): 652 – 71.
Molbech, Christian. Lund, Upsala og Stockholm i Sommeren 1842: Nogle Blade af en Dagbog
med et Tillæg om “den skandinaviske Enhed.” Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandling,
1844.
Møller, Erik. “Den dynastiske skandinavismens grobunn af grenser, ca. 1845 – 1870.” In
Skandinavismen, edited by Ruth Hemstad, Jes Fabricius Møller, and Dag Thorkildsen,
257 – 68 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2018).
— Skandinavisk stræben og svensk politik omkring 1860. Copenhagen: Gad, 1948.
Møller, Jes Fabricius. “Grundtvig, Danmark og Norden.” In Skandinavismen, edited by Ruth
Hemstad, Jes Fabricius Møller, and Dag Thorkildsen, 99 – 120. Odense: Syddansk
Universitetsforlag, 2018.
Møller, Viggo Sten, ed. Scandinavian Design: Directory of Arts and Crafts Resources in
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Copenhagen, 1953. Copenhagen: Langkjærs
Bogtrykkeri, 1953.
Mordhorst, Mads. “Nation Branding and Nationalism.” In Nationalism and the Economy:
Exploration into a Neglected Relationship, edited by Stefan Berger and Thomas Fetzer.
Budapest: Central European University Press, 2019.
— “Nation-Branding og Nationalstaten.” Den Jyske Historiker 126 (2010): 16 – 39.
Moskin, Julia. “New Nordic Cuisine Draws Disciples.” The New York Times, 24 August, 2011.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/dining/new-nordic-cuisine-draws-disciples.html.
Mouritzen, Hans. “The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall.”
Journal of Peace Research 32, no. 1 (1995): 9 – 21. doi:10.1177/0022343395032001002.
Musiał, Kazimierz. “Reconstructing Nordic Significance in Europe on the Threshold of the 21st
Century.” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 286 – 306.
doi:10.1080/03468750903134723.
— Roots of the Scandinavian Model: Images of Progress in the Era of Modernisation.
Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2002.
Nairn, Tom. The Break-up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism. London: Verso, 1981.
Nasjonalbiblioteket [National Library of Norway]. https://www.nb.no/.
Nelson, George R. Freedom and Welfare: Social Patterns in the Northern Countries of Europe.
The Ministries of Social Affairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, 1953.
Nelson, Robert H. Lutheranism and the Nordic Spirit of Social Democracy: A Different
Protestant Ethic. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2017. doi:10.2307/j.ctv62hgm7.
Nestingen, Andrew, and Paula Arvas. “Introduction: Contemporary Scandinavian Crime
Fiction.” In Scandinavian Crime Fiction, edited by Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas,
1 – 20. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011.
Neuman, Nicklas, and Jonatan Leer. “Nordic Cuisine but National Identities: ‘New Nordic
Cuisine’ and the Gastronationalist Projects of Denmark and Sweden.” Anthropology of
food, no. 13 (2018). doi:10.4000/aof.8723.
Neumann, Iver B., eds. Hva skjedde med Norden? Fra selvbevissthet til rådvillhet. Oslo:
Cappelen, 1992.
— “Tre Innfallsvinkler til Norden: Kulturfelleskap, oppdeming for stormaktspolitikk,
regionbygging.” In Hva skjedde med Norden? Fra selvbevissthet til rådvillhet, edited by
Iver B. Neumann. Oslo: Cappelen, 1992.
Bibliography 241
Newby, Andrew G. “‘In Building a Nation Few Better Examples Can Be Found’: Norden and
the Scottish Parliament.” Scandinavian Journal of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 307 – 29.
doi:10.1080/03468750903134749.
— “‘One Valhalla of the Free’: Scandinavia, Britain and Northern Identity in the
Mid-Nineteenth Century.” In Communicating the North: Media Structures and Images in
the Making of the Nordic Region, edited by Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, 147 – 69.
Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
Nilsson, Louise. “Mediating the North in Crime Fiction.” Journal of World Literature 1, no. 4
(2016): 538 – 54. doi:10.1163/24056480 – 00104007.
Nilsson, Louise, David Dramrosch, and Theo D’haen. “Introduction: Crime Fiction as World
Literature.” In Crime Fiction as World Literature, edited by Louise Nilsson, David
Dramrosch, and Theo D’haen. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Nilsson, Magnus. The Nordic Cook Book. London: Phaidon Press, 2015.
— Fäviken. London: Phaidon Press, 2015.
“Noma Head Chef Accused of Illegal Mushroom Picking.” Editorial. Accessed 30 May, 2021.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/8154563/Noma-head-chef-accused-of-illegal-
mushroom-picking.html.
Nordic Council of Ministers. Den nordiska modellen i en ny tid – Program för Sveriges
ordförandeskap i Nordiska ministerrådet 2013. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers,
2012. doi:10.6027/ANP2012 – 746.
— Facts and Figures about Women and Men in the Nordic Countries. Kvinnor och män i
Norden 1985. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1985.
— Focus on Gender – Working toward an Equal Society. Nordic Gender Equality
Co-operation Programme 2006 – 2010. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006.
— Gender and Violence. A Nordic Research Programme 2000 – 2004, Final Report.
— Gender Equality – the Nordic Way. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2010.
— Miehet ja tasa-arvo – Toimintaohjelma ja taustamuistio. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of
Ministers, 1997.
— “Norden måste lära sig av misstagen under pandemiperioden.” Copenhagen: Nordic
Council of Ministers. Accessed 22 May, 2021. https://www.norden.org/en/node/50554.
— Norden som global vinderregion: På sporet af den nordiske konkurrencemodel.
Copenhagen: Nordic Council and Nordic Council of Ministers, 2005.
http://norden.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:701322/FULLTEXT01.pdf.
— Nordic Food Diplomacy. Accessed 1 January, 2019. http://www.nfd.nynordiskmad.org/.
— Nordic Gender Equality in Figures 2015. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2015.
— Nordic-Baltic Campaign Against Trafficking in Women. Final Report 2002. Copenhagen:
— Nordic-Baltic Co-operation on Gender Equality 1998 – 2003. Copenhagen: Nordic Council
of Ministers, 2004.
— Nordic Nordic Den Nordiska modellen i en ny tid – Program för Sveriges ordförandeskap
i Nordiska Ministerrådet 2013. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2004.
doi:10.6027/ANP2012 – 746.
— “Nordiska rådet: Vi tänker inte sluta använda ‘Nordiska modellen.’” Copenhagen: Nordic
Council of Ministers, 2012. https://www.norden.org/no/node/4004.
242 Bibliography
— The Emergence of a New Nordic Food Culture: Final Report from the Program New Nordic
Food II, 2010 – 2014. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2010.
— Together for Gender Equality – a Stronger Nordic Region. Nordic Co-operation
Programme on Gender Equality 2015 – 2018. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers,
2015.
— “The New Nordic Food Manifesto,” Nordic Co-operation, accessed May 30, 2021, https://
www.norden.org/en/information/new-nordic-food-manifesto.
— Women and Men in the Nordic Countries: Facts and Figures 1994. Copenhagen: Nordic
— Women and Men in the Nordic Countries: Facts on Equal Opportunities Yesterday, Today
and Tomorrow 1994. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 1994.
Nordiska Rådets Session 1953 – 2014. Stockholm/Copenhagen: Nordiska rådet, 1953 – 2014.
https://www.norden.org/en/information/past-sessions.
Noreen, Erik. “The Nordic Balance: A Security Policy Concept in Theory and Practice.”
Cooperation and Conflict 18, no. 1 (March 1983): 43 – 56.
doi:10.1177/001083678301800104.
North, Douglass C. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Nousiainen, Kevät. “Käsitteellisiä välineitä tasa-arvon käsittelyyn.” In Tasa-arvo toisin
nähtynä: Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen, edited
by Johanna Kantola, Kevät Nousiainen, and Milja Saari, 31 – 56. Helsinki: Gaudeamus,
2012.
Nuder, Pär. Saving the Swedish Model. London: Insitute for Public Policy Reseach, 2012.
https://www.ippr.org/research/publications/saving-the-swedish-model-learning-from-swe
dens-return-to-full-employment-in-the-late-1990s.
Nurmiainen, Jouko. “Particular Interests and the Common Good in Swedish Mid-18th-Century
Diet Politics: The ‘Finnish’ Perspective.” Scandinavian Journal of History 32, no. 4
(December 2007): 388 – 404. doi:10.1080/03468750701659350.
Nuwer, Rachel. “Deep in the Swedish Wilderness, Discovering One of the World’s Greatest
Restaurants.” Smithsonian Magazine, 21 August 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.
com/travel/deep-in-the-swedish-wilderness-discovering-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-restau
rants-818172/.
Nygård, Stefan. “The Southern Prism of the Northern Breakthrorugh: Georg Brandes and
Italy,” in Georg Brandes. Pioneer of Comparative Literature and Global Public
Intellectual, ed. Jens Bjerring-Hansen, Anders Engberg-Pedersen, and Lasse Horne
Kjældgaard (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
Nygård, Stefan, and Johan Strang. “Conceptual Universalization and the Role of the
Peripheries.” Contributions to the History of Concepts 12, no. 1 (2017): 55 – 75.
doi:10.3167/choc.2017.120105.
— “Facing Asymmetry: Nordic Intellectuals and Center-Periphery Dynamics in European
Cultural Space.” Journal of the History of Ideas 77, no. 1 (2016): 75 – 97.
doi:10.1353/jhi.2016.0006.
Nygård, Stefan, Johan Strang, and Marja Jalava, ed. Decentering European Intellectual Space.
European Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
OECD. Open Government: Fostering Dialogue with Civil Society. Paris: OECD, 2003.
Bibliography 243
Ojanen, Hanna, and Tapio Raunio. “The Varying Degrees and Meanings of Nordicness in
Finnish Foreign Policy.” Global Affairs 4, no. 4 – 5 (2018): 405 – 418.
doi:10.1080/23340460.2018.1533386.
Olesen, Thorsten Borring, and Johan Strang. “European Challenge to Nordic Institutional
Cooperation. Past, Present and Future.” In Nordic Cooperation: The European Region in
Transition, edited by Johan Strang, 27 – 47. London: Routledge, 2016.
doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 2.
Ørem, Tania. A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925 – 1950.
Vol. 1 – 3. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
Ornston, Darius. Good Governance Gone Bad: How Nordic Adaptability Leads to Success.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
Ørskov, Frederik Forrai. “In Ideological Transit: German Tourism to Denmark in the 1930s.”
Journal of Tourism History 11, no. 3 (2019): 243 – 62.
doi:10.1080/1755182X.2019.1650127.
Ösgård, Anton. “How Privatization Hobbled Sweden’s Response to Coronavirus.” Jacobin
Magazine, 2020. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/sweden-coronavirus-covid-nordic-scan
dinavia.
Østergaard, Uffe. Hvorhen Europa? København: Djøf forlag, 2018.
— “The Geopolitics of Nordic Identity: From Composite States to Nation States.” In The
Cultural Construction of Norden, edited by Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth, 25 – 71.
Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997.
Owen, Barry. “France.” In Comparative Public Administration, edited by J. A. Chandler,
50 – 74. London: Routledge, 2000.
Pagano, Ugo. “Economics of Institutions and the Institutions of Economics.” In Transforming
Economics: Perspectives on the Critical Realist Project, edited by Paul Lewis, 252 – 67.
London: Routledge, 2004.
Palonen, Kari. “Four Times of Politics: Policy, Polity, Politicking, and Politicization.”
Alternatives 28, no. 2 (2003): 171 – 86.
— The Politics of Limited Times: The Rhetoric of Temporal Judgment in Parliamentary
Democracies. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008.
Partanen, Anu. The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life. New York: Harper
Collins, 2016.
Patoluoto, Ilkka. “Hyödyllinen luomakunta: Hyötyajattelun maailmankuvalliset perusteet
1700-luvun Ruotsin valtakunnassa.” In Hyöty, sivistys, kansakunta: Suomalaista
aatehistoriaa, edited by Juha Manninen and Ilkka Patoluoto. Oulu: Kustannusosakeyhtiö
Pohjoinen, 1986.
Peacock, Steven. Swedish Crime Fiction: Novel, Film, Television. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2014.
Peltonen, Carita. Norden och närområdena: Kartläggning av jämställdhetssamarbetet [The
Nordic Region and the Adjacent Areas: Map of Equality Co-operation]. Copenhagen:
— “Nordic Men – Cooperation on Gender Equality.” In Possibilities and Challenges? Men’s
Reconciliation of Work and Family Life – Conference Report, edited by Jouni Varanka and
Maria Forslund, 125 – 30. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006.
244 Bibliography
Petäjäniemi, Tuulikki. “Naisten ja miesten tasa-arvo – yhteinen etu.” In Tasa-arv: Saavutuksia

ja haasteita [Equality. Achievements and Challlenges], edited by Jarmo Tarkki and
Tuulikki Petäjäniemi. Jyväskylä: Atena Kustannus, 1998.
Peters, B. Guy, Jon Pierre, and Desmond S. King. “The Politics of Path Dependency: Political
Conflict in Historical Institutionalism.” The Journal of Politics 67, no. 4 (November 2005):
1275 – 1300. doi:10.1111/j.1468 – 2508.2005.00360.x.
Petersen, Klaus. “Constructing Nordic Welfare? Nordic Social Political Cooperation
1919 – 1955.” In The Nordic Model of Welfare: A Historical Reappraisal, edited by Niels
Finn et al., 67 – 98. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006.
— “National, Nordic and Trans-Nordic: Transnational Perspectives on the History of the
Nordic Welfare State.” In Beyond Welfare State Models, edited by Klaus Petersen and
Pauli Kettunen, 41 – 64. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011.
doi:10.4337/9781849809603.00009.
— “Nordiske værdier: et kritisk reflekterende essay.” In Meningen med föreningen, edited
by Henrik Wilen, 73 – 83. København: Föreningarna Norden, 2019.
Pitcher, David. Consuming Race. London: Routledge, 2014.
Puglisi, Christian F. Relæ: A Book of Ideas. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2014.
Qvanten, Emil von. Fennomani och skandinavism: Om Finnland och dess sednaste utveckling.
Stockholm: Zachrish Haeggerström, 1855.
Rainio-Niemi, Johanna. “Small State Cultures of Consensus: State Traditions and
Consensus-Seeking in the Neo-Corporatist and Neutral Policies in Post-1945 Austria and
Finland.” PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2008.
Raunio, Tapio, and Teija Tiilikainen. Finland in the European Union. London: Frank Cass,
2003.
Redzepi, René. A Work in Progress: Journal. London: Phaidon Press, 2013.
— Noma: Time and Place. London: Phaidon Press, 2010.
— Rene Redzepi, “Rene Redzepi on the new Noma.” Parts Unknown, 13 April, 2017,
accessed 26 December, 2018.
https://explorepartsunknown.com/copenhagen/rene-redzepi-on-the-new-noma.
Reinfeldt, Fredrik. Det sovande folket. Edited by Christer Söderberg and Per Schlingmann.
Stockholm: Rätt Blankett & Trycksaksproduktion AB, 1993.
— “The New Swedish Model: A Reform Agenda for Growth and the Environment.” Speech
at London School of Economics, 26 February 2008. Regeringskansliet,
https://www.regeringen.se/informationsmaterial/2014/10/fredrik-reinfeldt-pressmeddela-
nden-tal-och-uttalanden-2006 – 2010/.
Relly, Jeannine E., and Meghna Sabharwal. “Perceptions of Transparency of Government
Policymaking: A Cross-National Study.” Government Information Quarterly 26, no. 1
(January 2009): 148 – 57. doi:10.1016/j.giq.2008.04.002.
Richards, Julian D. The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Ripley, William Zebina. The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study. New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1899.
Roberston, K. G. Public Secrets: A Study in the Development of Government Secrecy. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982.
Rodrik, Dani. “Why Do More Open Economies Have Bigger Governments?” The Journal of
Political Economy 106, no. 5 (1998): 997 – 1032.
Bibliography 245
Rönnberg, Linda. “Marketization on Export: Representations of the Swedish Free School

Model in English Media.” European Educational Research Journal 14, no. 6 (November
2015): 549 – 65. doi:10.1177/1474904115610782.
Roosen, Carl B. Alvorstale i anledning den i Sverig udgivne bog: Geographie eör [Sic]
begynnare, Författad as Daniel Djurberg, Rector Scholae. Frederikshald: H. Gundersen &
H. Larssen, 1833.
Rosenbeck, Bente. “Nordic Women’s Studies and Gender Research.” In Is There a Nordic
Feminism? Nordic Feminist Thought on Culture and Society, edited by Drude von der
Fehr, Anna G. Jónasdóttir, and Bente Rosenbeck, 344 – 57. London: UCL Press, 1998.
Rothstein, Bo, and Sven Steinmo, eds. Restructuring the Welfare State: Political Institutions
and Policy Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Rushby, Kevin. “King of Denmark: How to Create Hygge in a Cabin by the Sea.” The
Guardian, 5 August, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2018/aug/05/denmark-
beach-seaside-scandinavia-holiday-cabin.
Rustow, Dankwar A. “Scandinavia: Working Multi-Party Systems.” In Modern Political Parties:
Approaches to Comparative Politics, edited by Sigmund Neumann. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1956.
Rydgren, Jens. “Explaining the Emergence of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Case of
Denmark.” West European Politics 27, no. 3 (May 2004): 474 – 502.
doi:10.1080/0140238042000228103.
Ryner, J. Magnus. “The Nordic Model: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?” New Political Economy
12, no. 1 (March 2007): 61 – 70. doi:10.1080/13563460601068644.
Sachs, Adam. “Fäviken Rising.” Bon Appétit, 15 August, 2011. https://www.bonappetit.com/
test-kitchen/cooking-tips/article/f-viken-rising.
SAMAK. The Sørmarka Declaration: We Build the Nordics. SAMAK, November 2014. http://
www.samak.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sormarka-declaration_English.pdf.
Sanders, Todd, and Harry G. West. “Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order.”
In Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order,
edited by Todd Sanders and Harry G. West. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Sannes, John. Patrioter, inteligens og skandinaver: Norske reaksjoner på skandinavismen før
1848. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1959.
Sarah Stephan. “Making Autonomies Matter: Sub-State Actor Accommodation in the Nordic
Council and the Nordic Council of Ministers: An Analysis of the Institutional Framework
for Accommodating the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland within ‘Norden.’” European
Diversity and Autonomy Papers EDAP 3 (2014). http://www.eurac.edu/edap.
Sarje, Kimmo. “Anders Chydenius – Montesquieun Ihailija.” Politiikka 4 (1979): 297 – 304.
“Skandinaviska föreningar i utlandet: Se Utlandssvenskar.” In Nordisk Familjebok 25. 2nd ed.
Stockholm, 1917.
Schmidt, Vivien A. “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and
Discourse.” Annual Review of Political Science 11, no. 1 (June 2008): 303 – 326.
doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342.
— The Futures of European Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Schwab, Klaus. “Preface.” In The Global Gender Gap Report 2009, edited by Ricardo
Hausmann, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi. Geneva: World Economic Forum,
2009.
246 Bibliography
Schymik, Carsten. “European Antifederalists.” In Northern Europe and the Future of the EU:
Nordeuropa Und Die Zukunft Der EU, edited by Helge Høibraaten and Jochen Hille.
Berlin: Intersentia, 2011.
Scott, Andrew. “Looking to Sweden in Order to Reconstruct Australia.” Scandinavian Journal
of History 34, no. 3 (2009): 330 – 52. doi:10.1080/03468750903134756.
— “Social Democracy in Northern Europe: Its Relevance for Australia.” Australian Review of
Public Affairs 7, no. 1 (2006): 1 – 17.
Shaw, Hank. “Cook Like a Super-Locavore with Lessons From ‘Noma.’” The Atlantic, 23
March, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/03/cook-like-a-super-loca
vore-with-lessons-from-noma/72898/.
Sietsema, Tom. “A World-Class Chef Built a $600 Pop-up in the Mexican Jungle. It Might Be
“the Meal of the Decade.”’ Washington Post, 25 April, 2017, Food. https://www.wash
ingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/a-world-class-chef-built-a-600-pop-up-in-the-mexican-jun
gle-it-might-be-the-meal-of-the-decade/2017/04/25/e3b75244-284e-11e7-a616-
d7c8a68c1a66_story.html.
Silverstolpe, Gustaf Abraham. Lärobok i svenska historien. Stockholm: H.A. Nordstöm, 1805.
Sipilä, Helvi. “Yhdistyneitten kansakuntien toiminta sukupuolten tasa-arvon edistämiseksi.”
In Toisenlainen tasa-arvo, edited by Sirkka Sinkkonen and Eila Ollikainen, 13 – 20.
Kuopio: Kustannuskiila Oy, 1982.
Skinner, Quentin. “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas.” History and Theory
8, no. 1 (1969): 3 – 53.
— Visions of Politics: Regarding Method. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511790812.
Skinner, Quentin et. al. “Language and Political Change.” In Political Innovation and
Conceptual Change, 6 – 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Skousen, Mark. “The Perserverance of Paul Samuelson’s Economics.” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 11, no. 2 (1997): 137 – 52.
Sneedort, Frederik. “Vigtigheden af de tre nordiske Rigers Forening: En Tale af afgangne
Professor F. Sneedorf, holden i det nordiske Selskab i London i Foraaret 1792.”
Skandinask Museum 2 (1798): 122 – 34.
Söderman, Jacob. “On Transparency.” Presentation, IIAS conference, Monterrey, Mexico, 16
July, 2006. http://www.chydenius.net/eng/articles/artikkeli.asp?id=924.
— “Salailusta on tullut maan tapa.” Helsingin Sanomat, 19 November, 2006.
https://www.hs.fi/sunnuntai/art-2000004441307.html.
Solum, Ove. “What is it about Nordic Noir?” In Perspectives on the Nordic, edited by Jakob
Lothe and Bente Larsen, 109 – 26. Oslo: Novus Press, 2016.
Somers, Margaret R. “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and
Political Culture in the Transition of Democracy.” American Sociological Review 58, no. 5
(1993): 587 – 620.
— “Let Them Eat Social Capital: Socializing the Market versus Marketizing the Social.”
Thesis Eleven 81, no. 1 (May 2005): 5 – 19. doi:10.1177/0725513605051611.
— “What’s Political or Cultural about Political Culture and the Public Sphere? Toward an
Historical Sociology of Concept Formation.” Sociological Theory 13, no. 2 (1995):
113 – 44.
Bibliography 247
Somers, Margaret R., and Fred Block. “From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and
Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate.” American Sociological Review 70, no. 2
(2005): 260 – 87.
Sondrup, Steven P. et al., eds. Nordic Literature: A Comparative History. Vol. I, Spatial Nodes.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017. doi:10.1075/chlel.xxxi.
Sonne, Lasse. Nordek: A Plan for Increased Nordic Economic Co-operation and Integration
1968 – 1970. Helsinki: Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2007.
Sørensen, Øystein, and Bo Stråth, eds. The Cultural Construction of Norden. Oslo:
Scandinavian University Press, 1997.
Sørensen, Vibeke. “Nordic Cooperation: A Social Democratic Alternative to Europe.” In
Interdependence versus Integration: Denmark, Scandinavia and Western Europe,
1945 – 1960, edited by Thorsten Borring Olesen. Odense University Studies in History
and Social Sciences 193. Odense: Odense University Press, 1995.
Spence, R.E. “Italy.” In Comparative Public Administration, edited by J. A. Chandler, 126 – 147.
London: Routledge, 2000.
Spiro, Jonathan Peter. Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of
Madison Grant. Burlington: University Press of New England, 2009.
Stadius, Peter. “Happy Countries: Appraisals of Interwar Nordic Societies.” In Communicating
the North: Media Structures and Images in the Making of the Nordic Region, edited by
Jonas Harvard and Peter Stadius, 241 – 62. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013.
— “Hundra år av nordism.” In Meningen med föreningen, edited by Henrik Wilen, 73 – 83.
København: Föreningarna Norden, 2019.
— Resan till norr: Spanska nordenbilder kring sekelskiftet 1900. Helsingfors: Finska
Vetenskaps-societeten, 2005.
— “Trekungamötet i Malmö 1914: Mot en ny nordisk retorik i skuggan av världskriget.”
Historisk tidskrift för Finland 99, no. 4 (December 2014): 369 – 94.
Stein, Joshua David. “Sleep Noma Editor-at-Large Joshua David Stein Pays a First and Final
Visit to Noma.” Tasting Table, 26 July, 2016. https://www.tastingtable.com/dine/na
tional/noma-restaurant-copenhagen-rene-redzepi-joshua-david-stein.
Stein, Ringen. “Welfare Studies in Scandinavia.” Scandinavian Political Studies 9 (1974).
Steiner, Ann et al. “World Literature and the Book Market.” In The Routledge Companion to
World Literature, 316 – 24. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009.
Steinmetz, Willibald, and Michael Freeden. “Conceptual History: Challenges, Conundrums,
Complexities.” In Conceptual History in the European Space, edited by Willibald
Steinmetz, Michael Freeden, and Javier Fernández Sebastián. New York: Berghahn
Books, 2017. doi:10.2307/j.ctvw04kcs.9.
Stenius, Henrik. “Nordic Associational Life in a European and an Inter-Nordic Perspective.” In
Nordic Associations in a European Perspective, edited by Risto Alapuro and Henrik
Stenius, 29 – 86. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2010. doi:10.5771/9783845225944 – 29.
— “The Finnish Citizen: How a Translation Emasculated the Concept.” Redescriptions:
Yearbook of Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 8 (2004):
172 – 88.
Stie, Anna Elizabeth, and Jarle Trondal, eds. Rediscovering Nordic Cooperation. Special issue
of Politics and Governance 8, no. 4 (2020). doi:10.17645/pag.v8i4.3726.
Stiglitz, Joseph. “Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics.” American
Economic Review 92, no. 3 (2002): 460 – 501.
248 Bibliography
— “Is There a Post-Washington Consensus Consenus?” In The Washington Consensus

Reconsidered: Towards a New Global Governance, edited by Joseph Stiglitz and Serra
Stiglitz, 41 – 56. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Stigsdottir, Ingrid. “Crime Scene Skåne: Guilty Landscapes and Cracks in the Functionalist
Façade in Sidetracked, Firewall and One Step Behind.” In Regional Aesthetics: Locating
Swedish Media, edited by Erik Hedling, Olof Hedling, and Mats Jönsson, 243 – 62.
Stockholm: Mediehistoriskt Arkiv, 2010.
Stoddard, Lothrop. The Racial Realities in Europe. New York: Scribner, 1924.
Stoddard, Lothrop. The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man. New York:
Scribner, 1922.
— The Rising Tide of Color against White World Supremacy. New York: Scribner, 1920.
Stoltenberg, Thorvald. Nordic cooperation on foreign and security policy. Proposals presented
to the extraordinary meeting of Nordic foreign ministers in Oslo on 9 February 2009.
https://www.regjeringen.no/globalassets/upload/ud/vedlegg/nordicreport.pdf.
Stougaard-Nielsen, Jakob. “Nordic Noir in the UK: The Allure of Accessible Difference.”
Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8, no. 1 (January 2016): 32704.
doi:10.3402/jac.v8.32704.
— “Revisiting the Crime Scene: Intermedial Translation, Adaptation, and Novelization of
The Killing.” In Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation, edited by Linda Badley, Andrew
Nestingen, and Jakko Seppälä, 89 – 111. London: Palgrave, 2020.
Strang, Johan. “Georg Henrik von Wright och Ingemar Hedenius: rollen som intellektuell och
analytisk filosof i Finland och Sverige.” In Tankens utåtvändhet: Georg Henrik von
Wright som intellektuell, edited by Johan Strang and Thomas Wallgren, 192 – 215.
Finland: Svenska Litteratursällskapet, 2016.
— “Introduction: The Nordic Model of Transnational Cooperation?” In Nordic Cooperation: A
European Region in Transition, edited by Johan Strang, 1 – 26. London: Routledge, 2016.
doi:10.4324/9781315755366 – 1.
— “Kommentar: Vår älskade dystopi.” In Sverigebilden i Norden: En studie i Danmark,
Finland, Island och Norge. Stockholm: Svenska institutet, 2021. https://si.se/app/up
loads/2021/03/bilden-av-sverige-i-norden.pdf.
— ed. Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition. London: Routledge, 2016.
doi:10.4324/9781315755366.
Strang, Johan, and Jussi Kurunmäki. “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a World of
Tensions.” In Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy, edited by Jussi Kurunmäki and Johan
Strang. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010. doi:10.21435/sfh.17.
Stråth, Bo. “Den nordiska modellen: Historisk bakgrund och hur talet om en nordisk modell
uppstod.” Nordisk tidskrift för vetenskap, konst och industri 1 (1993).
— Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other. Wien: PIE Lang, 2000.
— Nordic Industry and Nordic Economic Cooperation. Sweden: A & W International, 1978.
— ed. “Poverty, Neutrality and Welfare: Three Key Concepts in the Modern Foundation of
the Myth of Sweden.” In Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community: Historical
Patterns in Europe and Beyond. Wien: PIE Lang, 2000.
— “The Swedish Image of Europe as the Other.” In Europe and the Other, Europe as the
Other, edited by Bo Stråth, Vol. 10. Wien: Peter Lang, 2010.
Sundelius, Bengt. Managing Transnationalism in Northern Europe. Boulder: Westview Press,
1978.
Bibliography 249
Sundelius, Bengt, and Claes Wiklund. “Quo Vadis? Tretton insikter om Norden.” In Norden
sett inifrån: Det fjärde spårbytet, edited by Bengt Sundelius and Claes Wiklund.
Stockholm: Santérus, 2017.
Supplement to Nordic Co-operation Programme on Gender Equality 2019 – 2022. Equal Rights,
Treatment and Opportunities for LGBTI People in the Nordic Region. Copenhagen: Nordic
Svedjedal, Johan. “Svensk skönlitteratur i världsperspektiv.” In Läsarnas marknad,
marknadens läsare: En forskningsantologi utarbetad för literaturutredningen, edited by
Ulla Carlsson and Jenny Johannisson, 209 – 220. Göteborg: Nordicom, 2012.
Svensk Konversationslexikon. Stockholm, 1845.
Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB). https://www.saob.se/.
Svenska Dagstidningar, Royal Library of Sweden. Accessed 4 June, 2021. https://tidningar.kb.
se/.
Sverdrup, Bjørn Otto. “Europeisering som de-institusjonalisering – Nordisk politisk samarbeid
i endring.” In Europa i Norden: Europeisering av nordisk samarbeid, edited by Johan P.
Olsen and Bjørn Otto Sverdrup. Oslo: Tano Aschehoug, 1998.
Swedish Institute. “Sweden beyond the Millennium and Stieg Larsson.” Stockholm: Swedish
Institute, 31 October 2012. https://issuu.com/swedish_institute/docs/sweden_beyond_
the_millennium.
Tant, A. P. British Government: The Triumph of Elitism: A Study of the British Politcal Tradition
and Its Major Challenges. Aldershot: Darthmouth, 1993.
“The Gods of Food.” Editorial. Time, 18 November 2013. http://content.time.com/time/sub
scriber/article/0,33009,2156845,00.html.
Thomson, C. Claire, and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen. “A Faithful, Attentive, Tireless Following:
Cultural Mobility, Crime Fiction and Television Drama.” In Danish Literature as World
Literature, edited by Dan Ringgaard and Mads Rosendahl Thomson, 237 – 68. London:
Bloomsbury, 2017.
Thurlow, Richard C. The Secret State: British Internal Security in the Twentieth Century.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1994.
Tiihonen, Paula. “Good Governance and Corruption in Finland.” In The History of Corruption
in Central Government, edited by Seppo Tiihonen, 99 – 118. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2003.
Tiihonen, Seppo. Herrus: Ruotsi ja Venäjä. Helsinki: Hallintohistoriakomitea, 1994.
Timonen, Virpi. Restructuring the Welfare State: Globalization and Social Policy Reform in
Finland and Sweden. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2003.
Todorova, Maria. “Spacing Europe: What Is a Historical Region?” East Central Europe 32,
no. 1 – 2 (2005): 59 – 78. doi10.1163/18763308 – 90001032.
Todorova, Maria. Imagining the Balkans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Toft Hansen, Kim, and Anne Marit Waade. Locating Nordic Noir: From Beck to The Bridge.
London: Palgrave, 2017.
Trägårdh, Lars. “Swedish Model or Swedish Culture?” Critical Review 4, no. 4 (September
1990): 569 – 90. doi:10.1080/08913819008459622.
— “Statist Individualism: On the Culturality of the Nordic Welfare State.” In The Cultural
Construction of Norden, edited by Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth. Oslo: Scandinavian
Univ. Press, 1997.
250 Bibliography
— “Sweden and the EU: Welfare State Nationalism and the Spectre of ‘Europe.’” In
European Integration and National Identity: The Challenge of Nordic States, edited by
Lene Hansen and Ole Wæver. London: Routledge, 2002.
— “Mellem liberalism og socialisme: Om det særlige ved den nordiske model.” Kritik 45,
no. 206 (2012).
Trier Morgensen, Lars. “Fogh frelste den nordiske model.” Politiken, 5 September 2009.
Troebst, Stefan. “Introduction: What’s in a Historical Region? A Teutonic Perspective.”
European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d’histoire 10, no. 2 (June 2003): 173 – 88.
doi:10.1080/1350748032000140741.
Trubek, Amy. The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journesy into Terroir. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008.
Tsarouhas, Dimitris. Social Democracy in Sweden: The Threat from a Globalized World.
London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008.
Turner, Barry, and Gunilla Nordquist. The Other European Community: Integration and
Cooperation in Northern Europe. Houndmills: Palgrave, 1982.
Tydén, Mattias. Från politik till praktik: de svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935 – 1975.
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2002.
“Urlaub in Schleswig-Holstein – Offizielle Tourismusseite,” 25 August, 2016. https://www.sh-
tourismus.de/.
Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage
Publications, 1990.
Valtioneuvoston kanslia. Euroopan rakenteelliset jäykkyydet. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston
kanslia, 2002.
— Osaava, avautuva ja uudistuva Suomi: Suomi maailmantaloudessa -selvityksen
loppuraportti. Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kanslia, 2004.
Valdimarsdóttir, Friða Rós. Nordic Experiences with Parental Leave and Its Impact on Equality
between Women and Men. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2006.
Varanka, Jouni, and Maria Forslund, eds. Possibilities and Challenges? Men’s Reconciliation
of Work and Family Life – Conference Report. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers,
2006.
Vibe, Johan. “Norden – et samarbeite nedenfra?” In Hva skjedde med Norden? fra
selvbevissthet til rådvillhet, edited by Iver B. Neumann. Oslo: Cappelen, 1992.
Vik, Hanne Hagtvedt et al., eds. Nordic Histories of Human Rights. London: Routledge, 2021.
“VILD MAD – Frequently Asked Questions.” Vild Mad. Accessed 30 May 2021. https://vild
mad.dk/application/files/5815/0227/5901/FAQ_US.pdf.
Villaume, Poul, and Thorsten Borring Olesen. Dansk udenrigspolitiks historie V: I
blokopdelingens tegn. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2005.
Virrankoski, Pentti. Anders Chydenius: Demokraattinen poliitikko valistuksen vuosisadalta.
Juva: Werner Söderström, 1986.
Waade, Anne Marit. “Crime Scenes: Conceptualizing Ystad as Location in the Swedish and
the British Wallander TV Crime Series.” Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook
9, no. 1 (2011): 9 – 25. doi:10.1386/nl.9.9_1.
— Wallanderland: Medieturisme og Skandinavisk TV-Krimi. Aalborg: Aalborg
Universitetsforlag, 2013.
Wæver, Catherine, and Christian Peratsakis. “Engineering Policy Norm Implementation: The
World Bank’s Transparency Transformation.” In Implementation and World Politics: How
Bibliography 251
International Norms Change Practice, edited by Alexander Betts and Phil Orchard,
179 – 94. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Wæver, Ole. “Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War.” International Affairs 68,
no. 1 (January 1992): 77 – 102. doi:10.2307/2620462.
Waldemarson, Ylva. “Gender Equality the Nordic Way: The Nordic Council’s and Nordic
Council of Ministers’ Cooperation with the Baltic States and Northwest Russia in the
Political Field of Gender Equality 1999 – 2010.” In Gender Equality on a Grand Tour:
Politics and Institutions – the Nordic Council, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia, edited by
Eva Blomberg, et al., 20 – 86. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
Wallem, Frederik. Det norske Studentersamfund gjennom hundrede aar: 1813 – 1913.
Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1913.
Ward, Elisabeth I. “Viking Pop Culture on Display: The Case of the Horned Helmets.” Material
Culture Review, 54, no. 1 (2001).
https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17894.
Weber, Max. Economy and Society. Vol. 1 and 2. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1978.
Weibull, Lauritz. “Efter Roskilde fred: Ur Skånska kommissionens och Taubenfelts bref till
Kungl. Maj:t 1658—1660.” Historisk tidskrift för Skåneland 1, no. 4 – 6 (1901): 175 – 253.
Weindling, Paul. “Weimar Eugenics: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human
Heredity and Eugenics in Social Context.”. Annals of Science 42, no. 3 (1985): 303 – 318.
doi:10.1080/00033798500200221.
Wells, Pete. “The New Noma: Frequently Asked Questions.” The New York Times, 24 April,
2018, Food. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/dining/noma-restaurant-copenhagen.
html.
Wendt, Franz. Cooperation in the Nordic Countries: Achievements and Obstacles. Stockholm:
Almqvist & Wiksell International for the Nordic council, 1981.
Weßel, Merle. An Unholy Union? Eugenic Feminism in the Nordic Countries, ca. 1890 – 1940.
Helsinki: Unigrafia, 2018.
— “The Concept of the ‘Nordic Race’ in German and Nordic Racial-Theoretical Research in
the 1920s.” NORDEUROPAforum – Zeitschrift Für Kulturstudien 2016 (2016): 29 – 49.
doi:10.18452/8186.
Wetterberg, Gunnar. The United Nordic Federation. Copenhagen: Nordic Council, 2010.
Whiteley, Nigel. “Intensity of Scrutiny and a Good Eyeful: Architecture and Transparency.”
Journal of Architectural Education 56, no. 4 (May 2003): 8 – 16.
doi:10.1162/104648803321672915.
Whyte, William. “How Do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of
Architecture.” History and Theory 45, no. 2 (May 2006): 153 – 77.
doi:10.1111/j.1468 – 2303.2006.00355.x.
Wiking, Meik. The Little Book of Hygge. London: Penguin, 2016.
Wischenbart, Rüdiger. “The Business of Books 2016: Between the First and the Second Phase
of Transformation; An Overview of Market Trends in North America, Europe, Asia and
Latin America, and a Look beyond Books.” Frankfurt Book Fair, June 2016. https://fill-liv
relecture.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/white_paper_business_of_books_june_2016.
pdf.
Witoszek, Nina, and Atle Midttun. “Sustainable Modernity and the Architecture of the
‘Well-Being Society’: Interdisciplinary Perspectives.” In Sustainable Modernity: The
252 Bibliography
Nordic Model and Beyond, edited by Nina Witoszek and Atle Midttun. London:
Routledge, 2018.
Wivel, Anders. “What Happened to the Nordic Model for International Peace and Security?”
Peace Review 29, no. 4 (2017): 489 – 96. doi:10.1080/10402659.2017.1381521.
Wood, John. “New Synergy Supreme+Unleaded Launched.” Forecourt Trader Online, 1
September, 2017. https://forecourttrader.co.uk/news/new-synergy-supreme-unleaded-
launched/640519.article.
Wooldridge, Adrian. “The next Supermodel.” The Economist, 2 February, 2013. https://www.
economist.com/leaders/2013/02/02/the-next-supermodel.
World Economic Forum. The Global Gender Gap Report 2014. Geneva: World Economic Forum,
2014. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR14/GGGR_CompleteReport_2014.pdf.
———.The Global Gender Gap Report 2017. Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2017. http://
www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2017.pdf.
———.The Global Gender Gap Report 2020. Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2020. https://
www.weforum.org/reports.
Worsaae, J.J.A. “Om vigtigheden af et centrum for Nordisk Oldforskning.” Annaler for Nordisk
Oldkyndighed og Historie, 1846, 3 – 20.
Wright, Georg Henrik von. “Sverige och Ryssland.” Finsk Tidskrift, 1941.
Würgler, Andreas. “Conspiracy and Denunciaion: A Local Affair and Its European Publics
(Bern, 1749).” In Cultures of Communication from Reformation to Enlightenment:
Constructing Publics in the Early Modern German Lands, edited by James Van Horn
Melton. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.
Zahidi, Saadia. “What Makes the Nordic Countries Gender Equality Winners?” Huffington
Post, 24 October 2013.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-makes-the-nordic-cou_b_4159555#:~:text=All%
20Nordic%20countries%20reached%2099,to%20primary%20and%20secondary%
20education.
Zaret, David. “Religion, Science, and Printing in the Public Spheres in Seventeenth-Century
England.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: The
MIT Press, 1992.
Zwicker, Charles. “Review of Modern Welfare States.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1
(1991): 197 – 98.
Contributors
Professor Tero Erkkilä, University of Helsinki
Associate Professor II Ruth Hemstad, University of Oslo/National Library of Norway
Professor Mary Hilson, Aarhus University
Senior Lecturer Tom Hoctor, University of Bedfordshire
Assistant Professor Lily Kelting, Flame University
Dr. Jani Marjanen, University of Helsinki
Professor Pirjo Markkola, Tampere University
Professor Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, University College London
Associate Professor, Academy of Finland Research Fellow Johan Strang, University of Helsinki
Dr. Merle Weβel, Universität Oldenburg

Scandinavian Is M

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Scandinavian Is M

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Scandinavian Is M

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Contesting Nordicness

Edited by Heikki Haara and Koen Stapelbroek

From Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand

For details go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948486

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Johan Strang, Jani Marjanen and Mary Hilson

Mary Hilson and Tom Hoctor

Helsinki and Aarhus, May 2021

Regardless of the complicated answers to what makes Norden Nordic, there

conceptualisation of these phenomena, like the recent The Changing Meanings of

rary Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59791-1; Hanne Hagt-

“Nordic” as a contested concept

 Troebst, “Introduction;” Todorova, Imagining the Balkans; Todorova, “Spacing Europe”;

Contested Nordic geographies

 Stadius, Resan till norr.

often construed against a German or a European conservative other, or as an ex-

Nordicness as simultaneously age old and progressive

velopment.³² As such, the rhetoric of Nordicness has involved a wide range of

The interchangeability of “the Nordic” and the national

It is often argued that the Nordic identity is special because it is complementary,

hiding more troublesome aspects of the image or reputation of a particular Nor-

 Marklund, “The Nordic Model on the Global Market of Ideas.”

“The Nordic” in different parts of the region

The rhetoric of Nordicness within the region and abroad

 Koikkalainen, “From Agrarian Republicanism to the Politics of Neutrality.”

 Hellenes, “Tracing the Nordic Model.”

The historical layers of Nordic rhetoric

them emphasise analyses of long-term diachronic change in the use of concepts,

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:

national awakening, was also a spokesperson of Scandinavian and Nordic cul-

Cold War Norden and beyond

ciety, 2010), doi:10.21435/sfh.17; Kurunmäki and Strang, “Introduction: ‘Nordic Democracy’ in a

 Götz and Haggrén, Regional Cooperation and International Organizations, 2.

Conclusion: from community to branding?

Sweden, tidningar.kb.se; DIGI–Nationalbibliotekets digitala samlingar, Finland, digi.kansallis-

another Norwegian newspaper criticized the widespread Swedish usage of such

The Swedish Scandinavian Rhetoric

 Den Constitutionelle, 19 February 1837 (editorial article on the front page).

Frequently used phrases were, in particular, the “Scandinavian Peninsula” and

 “Scandinavian,” in Sweden at this time referred to the Scandinavian peninsula. An example

The Danish Scandinavian Rhetoric

interest in Old Norse literature, manuscripts, and monuments contributed to il-

The pan-Scandinavian movement developed from regional Danish and

 “Om Skandinavien,” Granskeren, 15 June 1843.

ciliation and the necessity of closer collaboration. Numerous speeches during

The Scandinavian Vocabulary Turn

 Ruth Hemstad, “Organizational Scandinavianism Abroad”; Ruth Hemstad, “Literature as

newspapers in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway – and to a certain degree in Fin-

 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” (“skandinavisk*”) in Swedish newspapers rose

In the Norwegian digitized newspaper corpus, the same tendency is prevalent,

Figure 3: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Norwegian newspapers

 The frequency of the term “Scandinavian” (“skandinavisk*”) in Norwegian newspapers rose

Figure 4: Frequency of the terms “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Swedish-language new-

The references to “Scandinavian” and “Nordic” in Nordic newspapers in gen-

Scandinavian Sympathies and Related Phrases

parts of the pan-Scandinavian rhetoric, having clear political implications and

Some phrases could change their meaning, depending on the context, as

The development in the rhetorical use of “Scandinavian” in the 1840s can-