Introduction to Nordic Cultures Introduction to Nordic Cultures Edited by Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen First published in 2020 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: www.uclpress.co.uk Text © Contributors, 2020 Images © Copyright holders named in captions, 2020 The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library. This book is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Lindskog, A. and Stougaard-Nielsen, J. (eds.). 2020. Introduction to Nordic Cultures. London: UCL Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353992 Further details about Creative Commons licences are available at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ Any third-party material in this book is published under the book’s Creative Commons licence unless indicated otherwise in the credit line to the material. If you would like to reuse any third-party material not covered by the book’s Creative Commons licence, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. ISBN: 978-1-78735-401-2 (Hbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-400-5 (Pbk.) ISBN: 978-1-78735-399-2 (PDF) ISBN: 978-1-78735-402-9 (epub) ISBN: 978-1-78735-403-6 (mobi) DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787353992 Contents List of figures vii List of contributors x Acknowledgements xiii Editorial Introduction to Nordic Cultures 1 Annika Lindskog and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen Part I: Identities 9 1. Viking-Age Scandinavia: Identities, Communities and Kingdoms 11 Haki Antonsson 2. The North: Territory and Narrated Nature 23 Annika Lindskog 3. Narrating Nations: Iceland and Finland in Texts 41 Haki Antonsson and Annika Lindskog 4. Modern Experiences 55 Elettra Carbone and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen 5. The Nordic Welfare Model 70 Mary Hilson Part II: Texts 85 6. The Trial of Bróka-Auðr: Invisible Bureaucracy in an Icelandic Saga 87 Richard Cole 7. Nora: The Life and Afterlife of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House 102 Elettra Carbone v 8. Nordic Noir 117 Anne Grydehøj 9. North Atlantic Drift: Contemporary Greenlandic and Sami Literatures 130 Kristin Lorentsen and Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen 10. New Scandinavians, New Narratives 146 Anne Grydehøj Part III: Images 163 11. Nordic Nature: From Romantic Nationalism to the Anthropocene 165 Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen 12. Emigration and Scandinavian Identity 181 Mart Kuldkepp 13. Film and the Welfare State: Three Informational Films about Healthcare 195 C. Claire Thomson 14. Stereotypes in and of Scandinavia 210 Ellen Kythor Index 225 vi CONTENTS List of figures Figure 1.1 The ninth or tenth-century iron ring from Forsa church in Hälsingland, central Swe- den. Source: Photo by Sven Rosborn. CC BY-SA 3.0. 15 Figure 1.2 Frösöstenen, the Frösö rune stone from Jämtland in Sweden, is the northernmost raised rune stone in Scandinavia, dated to the second half of the eleventh century. Source: Photo by Lavallen. 18 Figure 1.3 Illustration of Christ on the larger and younger Jelling rune stone. Together with the older and smaller rune stone, Jelling church and two Viking-Age grave mounds they form the Jelling monuments, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Jutland, Denmark. Source: Photo by Roberto Fortuna, National Museum of Denmark. CC BY-SA 3.0. 21 Figure 2.1 Drawing from Linnaeus’ diary to illustrate ‘The Mountains’ (Fjällen). With kind permis- sion from The Linnean Society, London. 30 Figure 2.2 Frontispiece for Flora Lapponica, published 1737. With kind permission from The Lin- nean Society, London. 34 Figure 2.3 ‘Carolus Linnaeus e Lapponia Redux Aetat’. Life-size portrait of Linnaeus in Sami cos- tume by Martin Hoffman, 1737. With kind permission from The Linnean Society, London. 36 Figure 3.1 Kullervon-sotaanlähtö. Postage stamp depict- ing the Kalevala-inspired painting ‘Kullervo Goes to War’ by A. Gallen-Kallela, 1935. 49 vii Figure 4.1 Cover of the English translation of Aho’s The Railroad (Rautatie, 1884), featuring Matti and Liisa waiting for the train at Lapinlahti station, one of Eero Järnefelt’s (1863−1937) original illustrations. © Norvik Press Ltd. 60 Figure 4.2 The river Akerselva seen from Hausmann bridge (Hausmannsbro) looking towards Christian Krohgs gate. Photograph taken by the Norwegian photographer Martinius Skøien (1849−1916) between 1880 and 1910. Source: National Library of Norway. 65 Figure 4.3 The painting ‘Struggle for Survival’ (‘Kampen for tilværelsen’, 1889) by the Norwegian nat- uralist painter and author Christian Krohg (1852−1925). Source: National Gallery of Norway. 66 Figure 7.1 The painting ‘The Nathanson Family’ (‘Familien Nathanson’, 1818) by the Danish painter C.W. Eckersberg (1783−1853), today considered a representation of a typical middle-class family in the Nor- dic countries in the nineteenth century. Source: Statens Museum for Kunst. 105 Figure 7.2 Adeleide Johannesen performing Nora’s tar- antella scene in the first staging of the play at Den Nationale Scene (The National Stage) in Bergen in 1880. Source: National Library of Norway. 110 Figure 7.3 Photograph of Helmer and Svetlana, the Helmers’ au pair, in Helmer Hardcore − A Doll’s House 2 by Jakob Weis (1970−). The play, which appeared in Danish in 2007, was translated into English by Paul Russell Garrett and produced by [Foreign Affairs] theatre company in 2015, featuring Krzysia Balin´ska and Will Timbers. © Camila França Photography. 111 Figure 9.1 Cover for the Danish edition of Niviaq Korneliussen’s novel Homo Sapienne. Pub- lished by Greenlandic publishing house Milik in Nuuk 2014. Cover photo featuring the actor Maria Mathiassen is by Jørgen Chem- nitz in collaboration with Korneliussen. Cover design by Ivalu Risager. © Milik Publishing. 138 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 11.1 The Danish painter Johan Thomas Lundbye’s (1818–48) ‘En Dansk Kyst. Motiv fra Kitnæs ved Roskilde Fjord’ (A Danish Coast. View from Kitnæs on Roskilde Fjord. Zealand, 1843). Oil on canvas. 188.5 × 255.5 cm. Source: Statens Museum for Kunst. 171 Figure 11.2 Johan Christian Dahl’s (1788–1857) paint- ing ‘Fra Stalheim’ (View from Stalheim, 1842). Oil on canvas. 190 × 246 cm. Source: National Gallery of Norway. 175 Figure 12.1 Res icke till Amerika (Do not travel to America). Poster from Nationalföreningen mot Emigrationen (the National Union Against Emigration). Source: Riksan- tikvarieämbetet. CC BY. 191 LIST OF FIGURES ix List of contributors Haki Antonsson is Associate Professor in Medieval Scandinavian Stud- ies in the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS). His main areas of research and teaching are the history and culture of Scandinavia between c.900 and 1300, the Christianisation of Scandinavia and the cult of saints and the associated Old Norse literature. Apart from numerous articles and book chapters, he is the author of St Magnus of Orkney: A Scandinavian Martyr- Cult in Context and Damnation (Brill 2007) and Sal- vation in Old Norse Literature (Boydell and Brewer 2018). He has also co-edited the anthology Saints and their Lives on the Periphery: Veneration of Saints in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe c.1000–1200 (Brepols 2010, with I.H. Garipzanov). Elettra Carbone is Lecturer in Norwegian Studies in the UCL Depart- ment of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS). Her main areas of research and teaching are nineteenth-century Norwegian and Nordic literatures, cul- tural mobility, sculpture and print culture. Apart from several articles, she is the author of Nordic Italies: Representations of Italy in Nordic Litera- ture from the 1830s to the 1910s (Nuova Cultura 2016) and has co-edited volumes such as The Norwegian Constitution and Independence of 1814 (Norvik 2015, with R. Hemstad), Sculpture and the Nordic Region (Rou- tledge 2017, with S. Ayres) and Love and Modernity (Norvik 2013, with C. Thomson). Richard Cole is Assistant Professor of Medieval History at Aarhus Uni- versity. He was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS). He has broad interests in medieval Scandinavian history and Old Norse philology. His articles have appeared in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, Saga-Book, Scandinavian Studies, Exemplaria and Harvard Theological Review. Having previously focused on questions of racial and religious difference in Old Norse lit- erature, he is currently working on a project to trace the emergence of bureaucratic mentalities in the Nordic Middle Ages. x Anne Grydehøj is Senior Teaching Fellow in Danish in the UCL Depart- ment of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS), where she teaches BA and MA students on a wide range of courses including language, comparative literature and modern literary theory. Her research within the field of crime fiction studies focuses on the problematics of citizenship and iden- tity in contemporary European societies and cultures, which has led to a number of conference papers and articles. Her monograph on citizen- ship, gender and ethnicity in contemporary French and Scandinavian engaged crime fiction is forthcoming from the University of Wales Press. Mary Hilson is Professor in History at the School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, and was until 2015 Reader in Nordic History in the UCL Department of Scandinavian Studies (SELCS). Apart from several articles on the Nordic welfare states and consumer co-operation, she is the author of The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (Reaktion Books 2008), and has co-edited anthologies such as A Global History of Con- sumer Co-operation since 1850: Movements and Businesses (Brill 2017, with S.