Andreas Mørkved Hellenes - Böcker

The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) frequently attract attention as examples of a ‘Nordic model’. The meanings of the term vary, but especially since the global financial crisis of 2008-9 the Nordic countries have often been portrayed positively, as examples of economic dynamism, innovation and social equality. Studies of these images of the Nordic countries and their international circulations have opened new horizons for understanding the global influences upon the Nordic model. This volume explores how the Nordic model has been shaped by global entanglements, in exchange not only with Western Europe and North America, but also with the Global South. Drawing on selected case studies, the volume offers new perspectives on the meanings of the Nordic model and Nordic exceptionalism in a global context during the half century since c. 1970.

The concept of the Nordic model played an important role in the ideological and political rejuvenation of the Northern and Southern European political left from the 1970s to the 1990s. In a witness seminar organized by the Centre for Nordic Studies at Helsinki University, the Institute for Contemporary History at Södertörn University and the Department of History and Classical Studies at Aarhus University, key political actors for the development of European social democracy and Northern and Southern processes of European integration discuss the fortunes of the Nordic model from the 1970s to the 1990s. Participants included: Allan Larsson (former Minister for Finance of Sweden), Mogens Lykketoft (former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, leader of the Social Democrats) and Joaquín Almunia (former Minister of Public Administration of Spain and leader of PSOE). The witness seminar is funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS).