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A biography that provides insight into Henrik Ibsen's personal life, his creative work, and the world in which he lived. It paints the portrait of a complex, emotionally tormented artist - not one who is necessarily likable, but one whom we can understand and appreciate
The Scandinavians are regarded as Europe's most tolerant and peace-loving people. So how was it that one of the worst acts of political terror ever witnessed on this continent was committed by a Norwegian – against his fellow countrymen? Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: we fill our homes with cheap but stylish Nordic furniture; we envy their health-giving outdoor lifestyle; we glut ourselves on their crime fiction; even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, common-sensical acceptance of life's many vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavia, and how accurate our picture of life in Scandinavia today? Robert Ferguson digs down through two millennia of history to tell stories of extraordinary events, people and objects – from Norwegian Death Metal to Vidkun Quisling, from Agnetha Fältskog to Greta Garbo, from Lurpak butter to the Old Norse rune stones – that richly illuminate our understanding of modern Scandinavia, its society, politics, culture and temperament.
The School of Life offers radical ways to help us raid the treasure trove of human knowledge' Independent on Sunday Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher, theologian, literary stylist and social critic. Born in 1813 in Copenhagen, his philosophical work addressed living as a single individual and the importance of personal choice. A famously fierce critic of the idealist thinkers of his time, he is regarded as the first existentialist philosopher. Here you will find insights from his greatest works. The Life Lessons series from The School of Life takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary, everyday dilemmas. These books emphasize ways in which wise voices...
Productive media analysis is like an iceberg, argues Robert Ferguson. The vast bulk beneath the water is the intellectual, historical, and analytical base without which media may become superficial mechanical or glib. This text argues that the study of "race" and the media cannot be seriously undertaken engaging with theories of ideology and without awareness of contemporary theoretical work, such as approaches to Orientalism and critical discourse analysis. Drawing on examples from newspapers, film, radio, and television, Ferguson demonstrates the dose relationships between representations of "normality" and racism. Providing an overview and assessment of existing research in the area, the book is a challenge to intellectual complacency and a warning against the temptation to normalize the very term "race."
The wooden holiday cabin, or hytte, is a staple of Norwegian life. Robert Ferguson, author of Scandinavians, explores the significance of a national icon in this charming, affectionate history. Turf-roofed and wooden-built, offering fresh clean air, peace, isolation, and the promise of a day's wood-chopping, hiking, or snow-clearing amid landscapes of great beauty, the hytte--or wooden cabin home--is a crucial part of the national identity of every Norwegian. In 2016, Robert Ferguson and his wife bought a piece of land high up in the Hardangervidda, the plateau that dominates south-central Norway, and on it they built such a hytte. For Ferguson, the hytte represented the realisation of a dre...
865 A.D. Warring kings rule over the British Isles, but the Church rules over the kings. Powerful bishops and black-robed priests fill their cathedrals with gold, while threatening all who oppose them with damnation. But there are those who do not fear the priests, and they are the dreaded Vikings of Scandinavia. Among these Northern invaders, those who follow the Way of the Gods of Asgard carry the Hammer of Thor as their emblem, and they are sworn to increase mankind's knowledge and strength by conquest and by craft. And as Viking warlords cast hungry eyes upon a weak and divided Britain, the Way collides with the Church, launching an all-out war between The Hammer and the Cross. At the center of this bloody conflict is Shef, bastard son of a Norse raider and a captive English lady. A smith and a warrior, he is driven by strange visions that seem to come from Odin himself. Torn by divided loyalties, Shef alone dares to imagine new weapons and tactics with which to carve out a kingdom - and threaten the holy power of Rome itself!
Places and books like Rosslyn Chapel and The Da Vinci Code have focused attention on Scotland's Knights Templar. Who they were and what they did has been touched upon, but never properly explored until now. They were close advisors to Scotland's early kings; they were major property owners and respected landlords in a harsh and unforgiving time; and they were secretive and arrogant. But did they really flee from France to Scotland just prior to their arrest in 1307? Did they fight with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn in 1314? And how did the Templars continue on after Bannockburn? In The Knights Templar and Scotland Robert Ferguson intertwines Templar and Scottish history, from the foundation of the order in the early twelfth century right up to the present day. Including a comparison of the arrest of the Templars in France with the Templar Inquisition at Holyrood, and an examination of the part they played at Bannockburn, this is an essential book for anyone with an interest in history of the Knights Templar.
The role of religion in early American literature has been endlessly studied; the role of the law has been virtually ignored. Robert A. Ferguson's book seeks to correct this imbalance. With the Revolution, Ferguson demonstrates, the lawyer replaced the clergyman as the dominant intellectual force in the new nation. Lawyers wrote the first important plays, novels, and poems; as gentlemen of letters they controlled many of the journals and literary societies; and their education in the law led to a controlling aesthetic that shaped both the civic and the imaginative literature of the early republic. An awareness of this aesthetic enables us to see works as diverse as Jefferson's Notes on the S...
For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. The attack on Lindisfarne was a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090. Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls �the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact in Viking Age history�. His long familiarity with the literary culture of Scandinavia � the eddas, the poetry of the skalds and the sagas � is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries and the e...