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Through an in-depth analysis of historicist literature and art, this book demonstrates that cultural Scandinavism, despite its failure as a political mobilizer, was highly successful in strengthening and extending national consciousness-raising in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Cultural differences are often the trigger for conflict – whether politically motivated or arising from dissonant understandings of national culture. But what we regard as distinctive today in our cultural heritage or day-to-day cultural experience is deeply rooted in the rich diversity of the national currents of the nineteenth century. Culture and Conflict: Nation-Building in Denmark and Scandinavia, 1800–1930 explores the many strands of Danish and Scandinavian culture that helped to shape these cultural identities. The sixteen contributions in this volume analyse how competing national agendas influenced the development of political life as well as literature, the visual arts, and mu...
This open access edited volume shines new light on the history of propaganda and persuasion during the Nordic welfare epoch. A common analytical framework is developed that highlights transnational and transmedial perspectives rather than national or monomedial histories. The return of propaganda in contemporary debate underlines the need to historically contextualize the role and function of persuasive communication activities in the Nordic region and beyond. Building on an empirically situated approach, the chapters in this volume break new ground by covering a range of themes, from cultural diplomacy and nation branding to media materiality and information infrastructures. In doing so, the book stresses that the Nordic welfare epoch, with its associated epithet the “Nordic Model”, was built not only on governance, social security and economic productivity, but also on propaganda and persuasion.
This book examines Norwegian education throughout the course of the 19th century, and discusses its development in light of broader transnational impulses. The nineteenth century is regarded as a period of increasing national consciousness in Norway, pointing forward to the political independency that the country was granted in 1905. Education played an important role in this process of nationalisation: the author posits that transnational – for the most part Scandinavian – impulses were more decisive for the development of Norwegian education than has been acknowledged in previous research. Drawing on the work of educator and school bureaucrat Hartvig Nissen, who is recognised as the most important educational strategist in 19th century Norway, this book will be of interest to scholars of the history of education and Norwegian education more generally.
The terms ‘Nordic’ and ‘Scandinavian’ are widely used to refer to the politics, society and culture of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. But why have people felt the need to frame things as Nordic and why has the adjective Nordic become so prominent? This book adopts a rhetorical approach, analysing the speech acts which have shaped the meanings of the term. What do the different terms Nordic and Scandinavian have in common, and how have the uses of these terms changed in different historical periods? What accounts for the apparent upsurge in uses of the rhetoric of Nordicness in the 2010s? Drawing on eight case studies of the uses of Nordic and Scandinavian from the nine...
Democracy is today a concept that is overwhelmingly positively evaluated almost everywhere. A lot has been written about socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of democratic regimes as well as their institutional settings. By contrast, not much is known about the political manoeuvres and speech acts by which 'democracy' has been tied to particular regions and cultures in concrete historical situations. This book discusses a series of efforts to rhetorically produce a particular Nordic version of democracy. It shows that the rhetorical figure 'Nordic democracy' was a product of the age of totalitarianism and the Cold War. It explores the ways in which 'Nordic democracy' was used, mainly by the social democrats, to provide the welfare politics with cultural and historical legitimacy and foundations. Thus, it also acknowledges the ideological and geopolitical context in which the 'Nordic welfare state' was conceptualised and canonised. The contributors of the book are specialists on Nordic politics and history, who share a particular interest in political rhetoric and conceptual history.
Sheds new light on European and regional book markets, the development of a public sphere and the impact of new media on intellectual, social, religious and political change. How do you become a citizen? Ever since printing was introduced, being a member of society increasingly involved reading and writing: for sociability and belonging, instruction and entertainment, profit and charity, spiritual awakening and political debate. Literary practices shaped and changed identities and the organisation of society during the Long Eighteenth Century. In Scandinavia, this happened locally, as well as transnationally - reading, writing and producing texts involved entanglements within and beyond the ...
The second volume shines a light on the cultural and social changes that took place during the epoch of European Restorations, when the death of the Napoleonic empire existed as a crucial moment for contemporaries. Expanding the transnational approach of Volume I, the chapters focus on the transmutation of ordinary experiences of war into folklore and popular culture, the emergence of grassroots radical politics and conspiracies on the Left and Right, and the relationship between literacy and religion, with new cases included from Spain, Norway and Russia. A wide-ranging and impressive work, this book completes a collection on the history of the European Restorations.
Starting from the bicentenary of Helsinki University in 1840 and finishing with the opening of the University of Iceland in 1911, this volume analyses the importance of university jubilees in Northern Europe for the development of Scandinavist ideas.
This book accounts for Scandinavian unification efforts in a time of great upheaval. The ideological repercussions of the European revolutions of 1848-1849 and the Crimean War (1853-1856) transformed both the international political system and nationalism into more realist types. The First Schleswig War (1848-1851) having nearly turned into one of Scandinavian unification, the influence of Scandinavianism extended into the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian courts, cabinets and parliaments, attracting interest from the great powers. The Crimean War offered another window of opportunity for Scandinavian unification, before the Danish-German conflict over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein nearl...