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Situated on Europe’s northern periphery, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden found themselves caught between warring powers during World War II. Ultimately, these nations survived the conflict as sovereign states whose wartime experiences have profoundly shaped their historiography, literature, cinema and memory cultures. Nordic War Stories explores the commonalities and divergences among the five Nordic countries, examining national historiographies alongside representations of the war years in canonical literary works, travel writing, and film media. Together, they comprise a valuable companion that challenges the myth of Scandinavian homogeneity while demonstrating the powerful influence that the war continues to exert on national identities.
"This edited volume is an indispensable contribution to World War II studies of cultural memory and representation. Although too often placed at the margins of great-power narratives about the larger European theater of war, the five Nordic nations here receive the nuanced, rigorous, and riveting investigations they have long deserved, especially within a comparative, pan-Nordic context. Theoretically rich in its engagement with memory and post-memory studies, this collective work brilliantly documents and brings to life a war that ended some 75 years ago yet continues to shape and reshape powerful national narratives of identity, destiny, guilt, innocence, cowardice, and valor." • Scandinavian Studies
“"As a whole, this is an interesting anthology that participates in opening a very fertile area of research. Its comparative approach brings many new elements into play that can contribute positively to the national approaches of previous studies” • Edda
“The volume makes an important contribution to understanding how the mass media in particular shaped the (nation-state) memory of the Second World War in a region of Europe that is mostly out of focus.” • Clio-Online
“The Nordic nations all had different and contrasting experiences of the Second World War. Not only did this condition the memories of contemporaries, but it also led to different ways of portraying the wartime experience that would lead to creating and sustaining both existing and new memories for ensuing generations. This book contains excellent accounts of how this work of memory was done in the five nations and it continues to influence their societies today. There is much for cultural historians to value in this volume, but international historians will also find a plentiful amount to add to their understanding of not only the Second World War but of the decades that followed.” • History
“The fascinating chapters in Nordic War Stories reveal the vastly different fates of the five Nordic countries concerning occupation, resistance, neutrality and engagement.” • Marianne N. Soleim, The Arctic University of Norway
Marianne Stecher-Hansen is a Professor in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, University of Washington.
List of Illustrations
Editor’s Acknowledgements
Editor’s Introduction
Marianne Stecher-Hansen
Part I: War Historiography
Chapter 1. Finland in World War II—Tragedy, Survival, and Good Wars
Juhana H. Aunesluoma
Chapter 2. Danish Historical Narratives of the Occupation—The Promises and Lies of April 9th
Sofie Lene Bak
Chapter 3. The Norwegian War Experience—Occupied and Allied
Tom Kristiansen
Chapter 4. The Icelandic National Narrative and World War II—“Freedom and Culture”
Guðmundur Hálfdanarson
Chapter 5. Sweden’s Ambiguous War—Contradiction and Controversy
John Gilmour
Part II: War Literature – Archive
Chapter 6. Karin Boye as Ambivalent Spectator of Fascism
Amanda Doxtater
Chapter 7. Isak Dinesen in Hitler’s Berlin—Neutrality’s Cloak in “Letters from a Land at War”
Marianne Stecher-Hansen
Chapter 8. Sigrid Undset’s Problematic Propaganda – The Call for Democracy in Return to the Future
Christine Hamm
Part III: War Literature – Canon
Chapter 9. Hans Christian Branner—Angst and the Existential Crisis of War in Denmark
Mark Mussari
Chapter 10. Crises of Memory in Norway’s Occupation Novel—Sigurd Hoel’s Meeting at the Milestone
Dean Krouk
Chapter 11. The Battle over Finnish Cultural Memory of War—Väinö Linna’s The Unknown Soldier
Julia Pajunen
Chapter 12. Investigating Sweden’s Postwar Neutrality—Ethics in Per Olov Enquist’s The Legionnaires
Jan Krogh Nielsen
Chapter 13. The Allied Occupation of Iceland—Indriði G. Þorsteinsson’s North of War
Daisy Neijmann
Part IV: War Cinema – Remembering and Forgetting
Chapter 14. Somewhere in Sweden – Quality Fiction and Popularized History in the World War II Television Series
Erik Hedling
Chapter 15. Icelandic Cinema and the American Military Presence – The Girl Gogo, Atomic Station, and Devil’s Island
Pétur Valsson
Chapter 16. War Memory, Compassion, and the Finnish Child – Klaus Härö’s Mother of Mine
Liina-Ly Roos
Chapter 17. The War Film as Cultural Memory in Denmark – April 9th and Land of Mine
Marianne Stecher-Hansen
Chapter 18. Acts of Remembering – Audiovisual Memory and the New Norwegian Occupation Drama
Gunnar Iversen
Chapter 19. Finland Returning to War on Screen – The Unknown Soldier of 2017
John Sundholm
Editor’s Epilogue
Marianne Stecher-Hansen
Index