Overview

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 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 a eugenics movement in the twentieth century. In The Shortest History of Scandinavia, historian Mart Kuldkepp masterfully sketches the outlines of Scandinavia's rich history--from the first known peoples of the region, who followed the ice sheet north at the end of the last Ice Age, to the Scandinavians living in nations that are among the happiest in the world today. In this deeply insightful volume, Kuldkepp illuminates the concept of ""Nordicness""--a hard-to-define quality that has nonetheless steered the region to respond to major challenges, actively shaping its history and exerting a considerable influence on European and global history in the process.

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Mart Kuldkepp is a professor and researcher of Estonian and Nordic history at University College London, where he specializes in the political history of the Baltic and Nordic regions in the twentieth century. He has also translated numerous books, poetry, and short stories, mainly from Icelandic and Old Icelandic into Estonian. He lives in London. Ann Richardson is an award-winning narrator. With a background of drama and music prevalent in her Midwestern upbringing, she delights in narrating fiction and portraying characters with a variety of accents, including Scandinavian and Southern U.S. Being of Swedish heritage is an important facet of Ann's life, as her father was a Swedish immigrant, and she travels to Sweden every few years to spend time with family and brush up on speaking the language. In her spare time Ann is a volunteer narrator for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), and also enjoys sculpting, painting, long-distance running, and hanging out with her family in Northern California.

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