Mart Kuldkepp

The Shortest History of Scandinavia (eBook, ePUB)

14,000 Years from the Stone Age and the Vikings to the Happiest Nations in the World

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From the Stone Age to Scandimaniaa brisk, illuminating journey through 14,000 years of Nordic history

Outsiders have long viewed Scandinavia as special, starting with the ancient Greeks and their myths of Ultima Thule, a place where the Sun goes to rest. Today, we admire Scandinavia for its universal welfare, equality, peacefulness, and untouched naturenot to mention its interior design, crime literature, and love of all things hygge.

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

In The Shortest History of Scandinavia, historian Mart Kuldkepp masterfully sketches the outlines of Scandinavia's rich historyfrom the first known peoples of the region, who followed the ice sheet north as it retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, to the Scandinavians living in nations that are among the happiest in the world today. The book spans the history of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden from prehistory to the present day.

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

The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: The Experiment
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Januar 2026
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9798893030921
• Artikelnr.: 73284327

Autorenporträt

Mart Kuldkepp is a professor and researcher of Estonian and Nordic history at University College London, where he specializes in the political history of the Baltic and Nordic regions in the twentieth century. He has also translated numerous books, poetry and short stories, mainly from Icelandic and Old Icelandic into Estonian. He lives in London.

Inhaltsangabe

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