Scandinavia category: 802 books

With near-mythical forests of birch and pine, the Nordic and Baltic countries boast a rich tradition of religious wood carving that is in many ways emblematic of their cultures. Sacred to the Touch examines the spiritual and intellectual projects of six twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists...

'The stories in this collection brilliantly draw a world through brief details and coincidence.' - The Manchester Review.  A woman receives a postcard from a married man she's never met, addressed, it would seem, to his mistress... A successful business man tries to scheme his way out...

Greta Nissen was a lovely Norwegian beauty with fair skin and enchanting blue eyes. Her mother started her out early in dancing and ballet. When the girl was just six years of age she entered the Royal Opera of Copenhagen where she acquired additional training. In 1924 Greta came to the United States...

Lukas Moodysson is one of the most accomplished and unconventional filmmakers of his generation in Sweden. Moodysson, now well known for his English-language film Mammoth (2009) as well as his heartbreaking indictment of sex-trafficking in Sweden, Lilya 4-Ever (2002), debuted as a writer and director...

Amid the intrigue of the Russian court, John Quincy Adams took walks with Alexander I, spoke up for America, and, as historian William Harlan Hale writes in this short-form book, scored a diplomatic triumph.

The 19th-century boom in mass tourism, fuelled by the introduction of the railways, brought with it the rise of travel writing. Guided excursions such as "Cook's Tours" (the first of which was led by Thomas Cook in 1841, and went from Leicester to Loughborough) were not for everyone. Many...

Two centuries ago when the kingdoms of Northern Europe were struggling for supremacy on the Baltic and control of the narrow portal to the sea, there appeared a young prince, the marvel of his age, who made himself the arbiter of these kingdoms and of their rulers. The military successes of Charles...

              The central fact of Norman history and the starting-point for its study is the event so brilliantly commemorated by the millenary of 1911, the grant of Normandy to Rollo and his northern followers in the year 911. The history of Normandy, of course, began long before that...

Gustav I, born Gustav Eriksson of the Vasa noble family and later known as Gustav Vasa, was King of Sweden from 1523 until his 1560 death, previously self-recognised Protector of the Realm from 1521, during the ongoing Swedish War of Liberation against King Christian II of Denmark, Norway and Sweden....

The history of Sweden in the seventeenth century is perhaps one of the most remarkable political success stories of early modern Europe. Little more than a century after achieving independence from Denmark, Sweden - an impoverished and sparsely-populated state - had defeated all of its most fearsome...

A collection of Civil War–era letters written by Hans Christian Heg, who grew up in southeastern Norway, migrated to Wisconsin, and traveled to the gold fields of California and the mining camps of the West, only to return to the Badger State to lead a regiment of Scandinavian immigrants—the Fifteenth...

“A Sea Cadet in 1711 and a Vice Admiral in 1718, young Wessel barged into battle against his Swedish foes wherever he found them, often in direct violation of orders issued by timid souls in the Admiralty. But Frederik IV, King of Denmark-Norway, loved a winner. He gave his youthful fighting cock...

In 1931, Sir William Craigie gave the Alexander Lectures in English at the University of Toronto entitled The Northern Element in English Literature with a focus on proving the existence of a Northern literary culture, comparing English literature with Northern literature, especially that of the Scottish and Scandinavians. The book is divided into four lectures.

A selection of Norwegian folktales chosen by Sigrid Undset, True and Untrue and Other Norse Tales is based on the classic folklore collected by Pieter Christian Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. These wonderful stories tell of worlds similar to our own, worlds with love and hate, sorrow and joy, humor and...