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Chapter 2 examines the history of Leo Kari and other Scandinavian volunteers in the International Brigades. It takes issue with the long-standing depiction of the voluntary army in Spain as ’Comintern mercenaries’ or as essentially the sole invention of international communism. In addition, the chapter follows the trajectories of different members of the resistance movements in Denmark and Norway and examines why historians have typically overlooked the fact that the core of World War II sabotage groups were nearly all former volunteers of the civil war who used their military expertise from Spain to position themselves as leaders of the resistance. Most former war volunteers were completely marginalised in the Cold War climate emerging after 1947–1948, yet some of them still insisted on a third military adventure. The anti-colonial struggles were seen as a new opening, as is evident from Leo Kari’s renewed efforts to mobilise a voluntary army for the Algerian war of liberation in the early 1960s.
This article examines the role solidarity magazines played for the first generation of global Palestine activists. Through an analysis of Scandinavian magazines of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and microhistories of the first generation of solidarity activists in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden based on interviews, memoirs, novels, and letters, this article examines how the first Palestine committees and the foundational notions of the Palestinian cause were formed. This article argues that the solidarity magazine became a central forum for the co-creation of Palestine solidarity between Palestinians and their sympathizers. Viewing solidarity as a result of joint political and intellectual labor gives agency to solidarity as a third space between national solidarity movements and Third World liberation movements. By taking this approach, this article reads magazines as an aperture into the first iteration of Palestine as a global cause.
Pharmacological treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) involves central stimulants and non-stimulant drugs. Because treatment preferences may vary geographically, we hypothesize that prescription data can be estimated from publicly available sources. First, we explore the relevance of internet search trends as proxies for real-life drug prescription patterns. Second, we identify geographical variations in ADHD drug trends over time. Publicly available Google Trends data for five ADHD drugs were analysed for the years 2010–2023. Temporal and spatial patterns were compared within Scandinavia, and the preference for central stimulants over non-stimulant drugs was compared across 17 countries. We find that internet search trends correlate with ADHD drug prescriptions. In the Scandinavian countries, a dominance of methylphenidate is observed, with rising internet search trends over time in Norway and Denmark. Furthermore, interest in lisdexamphetamine, relative to dextroamphetamine and atomoxetine, has increased sharply in recent years in the Scandinavian countries. The search proportion of central stimulants to non-stimulant drugs in Scandinavia ranges from 81% (Denmark) to 93% (Norway). Overall, internet search trends for ADHD drugs mirror reported prescription patterns and identify a dominance of methylphenidate, with an increasing interest in lisdexamphetamine. As such, search trends may serve as a feasible source for identifying geographical drug preferences.
This paper explores a new direction for archaeological historiography by applying the Yale approach in deconstruction to a selection of archaeological texts discussing the Neolithization process in Norway. Focus is on the cultural-historical research paradigm and publications from the period 1906–38. The analysis discovers that scholars from this period did not consider foragers and farmers to be essential social identities in the past; foragers could become farmers, and farmers could turn back to foraging. Some scholars argued that farming was practiced before the Neolithic period, while others promoted a sense of care and awe towards prehistoric foragers. On the basis of these readings, it is argued that previous accounts of the cultural-historical research paradigm in Norway focused too narrowly on the social contexts of older research. A change of focus from contexts to the texts themselves and how they present the world can explore further the complexity of this research period.
Fortified Island (FORTIS) examines Iron Age fortifications on the island of Bornholm to assess their characters, locations and chronologies. Through a multimethod approach, the project deepens our understanding of fortifications in relation to their physical and cultural landscapes, both on Bornholm and in the Baltic Sea Region more generally.
Social medicine, as it was conceived of by left-wing medical doctors in Scandinavia from the 1930s became influential in the creation of a new role for medicine in the making of “the good society” and the political radicalism of social medicine was assimilated into the dominant, social democratic ideology. Several of the pioneers of the left-wing social medicine that had previously aimed for a disruption of the power balances in society, acquired hegemonic positions within the state medical bureaucracy. They constituted an expertise that, by and large, was responsible for the shaping of the national health policies in the “golden age” of the Scandinavian social democratic welfare states (1940s–70s). In this chapter, we discuss the coming into being and passing away of social medicine in the Scandinavian welfare states, exploring how it unfolded in the late twentieth century, in the clinic, in academia, and in health policy. We argue that in spite of its dominance within the central health bureaucracy, social medicine never managed to penetrate mainstream medicine and it left perhaps its strongest footprint abroad, in the field of international health.
Extraordinary finds from the Store Frigård cremation cemetery on the Danish island of Bornholm suggest that the society that used the site played a key role in supra-regional contacts and in the distribution of goods and people across the Baltic Sea between the Continent and Southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age.
The development of runic writing (the early Germanic alphabetic script) and the practice of inscribing runes on stone are difficult to trace, particularly as rune-stone inscriptions are rarely found in original and/or datable contexts. The discovery of several inscribed sandstone fragments at the grave field at Svingerud, Norway, with associated radiocarbon dates of 50 BC–AD 275, now provide the earliest known context for a runestone. An unusual mixture of runes and other markings are revealed as the fragments are reconstructed into a single standing stone, suggesting multiple episodes of inscription and providing insight into early runic writing practices in Iron Age Scandinavia.
This paper derives from new work on Mesolithic human skeletal material from Strøby Egede, a near coastal site in eastern Sjælland, with two foci. The first confirms sex identifications from original work carried out in 1986. The second, and central focus, re-examines comments by one of us (CM) based on work in 1992, and a new statistical analysis including data from the two Strøby Egede adults. In 1998 it was suggested that the Strøby Egede sample more closely resembled Skateholm, on the coast of Skåne in southern Sweden, than Vedbæk-Bøgebakken on Sjælland, fitting lithic patterns noted earlier by Vang Petersen. We revisit the 1998 suggestion below, comparing data from Strøby Egede to those available from southern Scandinavia and Germany, and suggest that the 1998 comment was, in all probability, incorrect. The analysis below suggests overall morphological similarity between individuals in eastern Sjælland and Skåne, while noting the existence of apparent outliers.
During the Late Neolithic, a series of short-lived, monumental-scale farmhouses were constructed across southern Scandinavia. The size of these structures is often taken as a tangible manifestation of the elite status of the inhabitants. Here, the author explores the architecture and associated material culture of the six largest known examples, drawing attention to general parallels with smaller farmhouses in the region. The comparison highlights similarities in spatial organisation and function indicating that, despite their size, these monumental houses served the same roles as dwellings and centres of agricultural production. Attention to function rather than size emphasises the importance of food production and control of surpluses in the emergence of social elites at the end of the Neolithic.
This chapter examines consistent patterns and changing trends in British representations of Scandinavia throughout the nineteenth century. It demonstrates how Scandinavia became not only an alternative destination for British travellers but also the source of new literary forms and motifs which inspired and fuelled contemporary debates in British society. Its case studies are Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), Harriet Martineau’s Feats on the Fjord (1841), and Maria Sharpe Pearson’s writings on Ibsen’s work published in the British press (1889–94). These texts demonstrate the growing attraction of the Scandinavian landscape and the so-called cultural (re)discovery of Old Norse literature and mythology as well as Scandinavia’s rising literary reputation from the 1880s onwards thanks to the international impact of realist and naturalist works by Scandinavian authors, notably Henrik Ibsen. Ultimately Scandinavia offered the ‘allure of accessible difference’ as the region was and continues to be perceived as both geographically and culturally close – and yet far away.
The history of peace research offers a window onto mid-twentieth-century European political thought in transformation. This chapter focuses on the transformation of peace research from the 1960s to the 1980s, as it evolved a radical and trans-national approach to politics, linking developmentalist concerns with decolonisation and economic underdevelopment at the global scale to a critique of social hierarchies at the national scale. Historically located both after the post-war pursuit of European peace through economic growth and regional integration and before the emergence of Euromissile peace movements of the 1980s, one strand of peace research soon became an approach to social justice all of its own, and came to be known as ‘positive peace’. Positive peace was most prominent in the Nordic countries, where it offered a means of connecting nationally framed accounts of social democracy to more radical and utopian calls for social justice on all political scales. During these years of international encroachment and domestic upheaval in Europe, positive visions for peace provided a space within which European intellectuals responded to newly recognised global-scale injustices such as the Vietnam War and the spectre of global famine, as well as building a more just social order at home.
Excavations at the vicarage yard (prästgården) at the famous Late Iron Age magnate centre of Gamla Uppsala, Sweden, have yielded six Viking Age (c.ad 750–1100) boat burials, several containing the remains of domestic dogs. The present study is an osteological examination of the remains of three of these dogs, one each from three boat graves, with a primary goal of morphological reconstruction and a secondary focus on identifying sex, age, and pathology. Two dogs were large, slender sight hounds, while the third was somewhat smaller and of indeterminate type. The preference for sight hounds in high-status graves is consistent with previous results from the contemporaneous nearby boat cemeteries of Vendel and Valsgärde, adding weight to the hypothesis of a shared funerary culture between these sites in the Late Iron Age.
Chapter Eighteen introduces us to Scandinavian Romanticism, which helped Denmark, Sweden, and Norway imagine themselves as independent nations by drawing on Old Norse and medieval sources, contributing to a shared sense of identity. The chapter explores its origins in Mallet and eighteenth-century antiquarianism, drawing parallels with Ossian and Percy, and discussing Ewald’s Rolf Krage. It then looks at some of the defining features of Scandinavian ballads, including the figures of elf and shield maiden. Sweden’s loss of Finland led to an ‘Old Scandinavian’ turn in which the Viking became a common topos, as we discover in works by Tegnér and Wergeland. It also led to calls for a new mythology, answered among others by Ewald, Grundtvig, and Oehlenschläger. Other writers include the young Ibsen, who began his career with plays about Norse mythology, and Erik Gustaf Geiger whose stories idealise Nordic liberty. Fairy tales were also an important Romantic genre. Möller discusses the motif of the Isle of Felicity in works by Almqvist and Atterbom before turning to the characteristic features of Andersen’s tales. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of Scandinavian Romantic fiction, including male-authored historical romances but also domestic novels written by women that look towards realism.
Hedeby was the largest town in the Viking North. Investigations have identified imports at the site from central and northern Scandinavia revealing long-distance connections. The chronology of this trade, however, is unclear. Here, the authors use a typological-biomolecular approach to examine connections during the early Viking Age. The application of ZooMS to an assemblage of antler combs, stylistically dated to the ninth century AD, reveals nearly all were made of reindeer antler. As most craft production waste from Hedeby comprises red deer antler, it is argued that these combs were manufactured elsewhere, perhaps hundreds of kilometres further north. The results have implications for understanding of production and regional connectivity in early medieval Scandinavia.
In the 1990s, three Scandinavian news media companies, Bonnier, Kinnevik, and Schibsted, internationalized their newspapers. Despite doing this during the same period, competing in the same industry and institutional environment, being exposed to the same opportunities by the opening of the Eastern European markets, and all belonging to a smaller language area, they differed in their internationalization models as well as in their outcomes. Despite initial successes, Bonnier and Kinnevik eventually discontinued their newspapers in the new markets, in many cases following significant losses, while Schibsted fared better. The main explanation for using different internationalization models was differences in business models, basically striving to do business internationally in a similar way as domestically. That is, they did not choose a specific internationalization model but sought to simply expand their business models internationally. Consequently, this article finds that when researching internationalization, more focus should be placed on business models.
Recent studies relate the introduction of Early Neolithic flint mining practices to the migration and rapid expansion of agricultural groups from north-western continental Europe into present-day Britain and southern Scandinavia. Here, the authors critically analyse this hypothesis, using a case study from south-western Sweden to demonstrate how transregional processes played out locally with their own dynamics, c. 4000 BC. They conclude that migration and population change only partly can explain what happened during the centuries immediately before and after 4000 BC. Local variation in human-material relationships also needs to be considered.
In 2015 and 2016 four Lesser White-fronted Geese (Anser erythropus), a globally threatened species, were caught and tagged during spring migration representing nearly 10% of the entire Swedish breeding population at the time. Two of the birds were followed over more than one season. Tracking data revealed an unexpected wide network of migration corridors and staging sites. Autumn and spring migration differed by stepping-stone sites and migration speed. So far unknown key stopover sites were discovered in Denmark, northern Germany, and Sweden. By using dynamic Brownian bridge movement models, the potential areas that Lesser White-fronted Geese used during migration are described and conservation implications spotlighted. This study provides another important piece of the puzzle describing the migration of Lesser White-fronted Geese in Western Europe.
This chapter takes stock of current research concerning undergraduate research in Scandinavia. A literature search identified relatively few studies that explicitly employ this concept. There is a strong emphasis on “research-based education” as a principle in all three Scandinavian countries, with a broader view on linking research and education. In recent years, perspectives emphasizing inquiry, student-centeredness and problem-based learning have attracted considerable attention. There are also other indications of practices associated with students behaving as researchers – e.g., the relatively wide use of the bachelors’ thesis and specific examples of institutions and cases where principles from undergraduate research have been employed. More recent developments include theuse of honours programmes.