The Shortest History of Scandinavia - 14,000 Years from the Stone Age and the Vikings to the Happiest Nations in the World

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 nature—not to mention its interior design, crime literature, and love of all things hygge.Yet Nordic history has had 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.The Shortest History of Scandinavia,In this short but deeply insightful volume, Kuldkepp illuminates the concept of “Nordicness”—a hardto- define quality that has nonetheless steered the region to respond to major challenges, actively shaping their history and exerting a considerable influence on European and global history in the process.