North Sea oil, garden suburbs, socialized medicine, ombudsmen, economic diversification, party politics, relations with the US and the USSR—these are some of the exciting and controversial aspects of Scandinavian life in the 1970s that Franklin Scott explores in this revised edition of The United States and Scandinavia. An observer of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, Scott shows how the old tradition-oriented communities have transformed themselves into modern change-oriented societies keenly aware of their position in the world.

Using a chronological-topical structure, Scott shows how and why Sweden progressed from times of backwardness to an age of military greatness, through two centuries of cultural development and relapse into poverty followed by a sudden outburst of productive energy and the creation of an exceptionally prosperous welfare state where the ideal is consensus rather than confrontation.

North Sea oil, garden suburbs, socialized medicine, ombudsmen, economic diversification, party politics, relations with the US and the USSR—these are some of the exciting and controversial aspects of Scandinavian life in the 1970s that Franklin Scott explores in this revised edition of The United States and Scandinavia. An observer of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, Scott shows how the old tradition-oriented communities have transformed themselves into modern change-oriented societies keenly aware of their position in the world.

Using a chronological-topical structure, Scott shows how and why Sweden progressed from times of backwardness to an age of military greatness, through two centuries of cultural development and relapse into poverty followed by a sudden outburst of productive energy and the creation of an exceptionally prosperous welfare state where the ideal is consensus rather than confrontation.