Although the Nordic countries have a reputation for tolerance and social democracy, they were not immune to fascism which spread across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This book offers the first comprehensive history of anti-fascism in the Nordic Countries. Through a number of case studies on anti-fascism in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of contentious politics in the Nordic Countries and to our broader knowledge of European fascism and anti-fascism. The case studies concentrate on the different manifestations of resistance to fascism and Nazism in the interwar era as well as some of the postwar variants. The book will be of considerable interest to scholars of anti-fascism as well as researchers of Nordic and Scandinavian history and politics.

This book initiates a critical discussion on the varieties of global anti-fascism and explores the cultural, political and practical articulations of anti-fascism around the world. This volume brings together a group of leading scholars on the history of anti-fascism to provide a comprehensive analysis of anti-fascism from a transnational and global perspective and to reveal the abundance and complexity of anti-fascist ideas, movements and practices. Through a number of interlinked case studies, they examine how different forms of global anti-fascisms were embedded in various national and local contexts during the interwar period and investigate the interrelations between local articulations and the global movement. Contributions also explore the actions and impact of African, Asian, Latin American, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern anti-fascist voices that have often been ignored or rendered peripheral in international histories of anti-fascism. Aimed at a postgraduate student audience, this book will be useful for modules on the extreme right, political history, political thought, political ideologies, political parties, social movements, political regimes, global politics, world history and sociology. Chapters 5 and 10 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Although the Nordic countries have a reputation for tolerance and social democracy, they were not immune to fascism which spread across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. This book offers the first comprehensive history of anti-fascism in the Nordic Countries. Through a number of case studies on anti-fascism in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of contentious politics in the Nordic Countries and to our broader knowledge of European fascism and anti-fascism. The case studies concentrate on the different manifestations of resistance to fascism and Nazism in the interwar era as well as some of the postwar variants. The book will be of considerable interest to scholars of anti-fascism as well as researchers of Nordic and Scandinavian history and politics.

How have the dramatic events of the Second World War been viewed in the Nordic countries? In this book leading Nordic historians analyse post-war memory and historiography. They explore the relationship between scholarly and public understandings of the war. How have national interpretations been shaped by official security-policy doctrines? And in what way has the end of the Cold War affected the Nordic narratives? The authors not only present the overarching themes that set the Nordic experience of the Second World War apart from other European narratives, but also describe the distinctive post-war characteristics of Denmark, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden. Key concepts such as national identity, memory culture, and the moral turn are placed in their Nordic context. Bringing new nuance to the post-war history of Europe, this is the first work to focus on Nordic narratives of the war, and is valuable reading for students, academics, and all who have an interest in the historiography of the Second World War or modern European history.

The increasing radicalization of political life in most countries in Europe lends special relevance to studies of the antifascist legacies on the continent. This insightful collection of essays is an in-depth review of antifascism in Slovenia, setting it in the context of related movements elsewhere in Europe. The period treated by the 19 essays comprises the interwar period, World War Two, and the post-war decades. The comparative and transnational perspectives advanced by the volume change our understanding of antifascism. The essays deal with the right-wing but also left-wing instrumentalization of antifascism, with a particular focus on the communist and post-communist periods. The authors point out that antifascism comes in various strains, whether inspired by liberalism, social democracy, communism, monarchism, anarchism, or even Christian conservatism. The contributors bring to light several overlooked antifascist actors, campaigns, and organisations, mostly in Slovenia and the Adriatic area.

Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively underresearched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities. This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.

Anti-Fascism and Ethnic Minorities explores how, and to what extent, fascist ultranationalism elicited an anti-fascist response among ethnic minority communities in Eastern and Central Europe. The edited volume analyses how identities related to class, ethnicity, gender and political ideologies were negotiated within and between minorities through confrontations with domestic and international fascism. By developing and expanding the study of Jewish anti-fascism and resistance to other minority responses, the book opens the field of anti-fascism studies for a broader comparative approach. The volume is thematically located in Central and Eastern Europe, cutting right across the continent from Finland in the North to Albania in the Southeast. The case studies in the fourteen research chapters are divided into five thematic sections, dealing with the issues of 1) minorities in borderlands and cross-border antifascism, 2) minorities navigating the ideological squeeze between communism and fascism, 3) the role of intellectuals in the defence of minority rights, 4) the anti-fascist resistance against fascist and Nazi occupation during World War II, as well as 5) the conflictual role ascribed to ethnicity in post-war memory politics and commemorations. The editors describe their intersectional approach to the analysis of ethnicity as a crucial category of analysis with regard to anti-fascist histories and memories. The book offers scholars and students valuable historical and comparative perspectives on minority studies, Jewish studies, borderland studies, and memory studies. It will appeal to those with an interest in the history of race and racism, fascism and anti-fascism, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Examining the changing reception of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries between 1870 and 1940, this follow-up volume to Disseminating Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries focuses on the broad movements of national revivalism that took place around the turn of the century as Finland and Norway, and later Iceland, were gaining their independence. The first part of the book demonstrates how translations and productions of Shakespeare were key in such movements, as Shakespeare was appropriated for national and political purposes. The second part explores how the role of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries was partly transformed in the 1920s and 1930s as a new social system emerged, and then as the rise of fascism meant that European politics cast a long shadow on the Nordic countries and substantially affected the reception of Shakespeare. Contributors trace the impact of early translations of Shakespeare's works into Icelandic, the role of women in the early transmission of Shakespeare in Finland and the first Shakespeare production at the Finnish Theatre, and the productions of Shakespeare's plays at the Norwegian National Theatre between 1899 and the outbreak of the Great War. In Part Two, they examine the political overtones of the 1916 Shakespeare celebrations in Hamlet's 'hometown' of Elsinore, Henrik Rytter's translations of 23 Shakespeare plays into Norwegian to assess their role in his poetics and in Scandinavian literature, the importance of the 1937 production of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle starring Laurence Olivier, and the role of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular in Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson's early work where it became a symbol of post-war passivity and rootlessness.

In this comprehensive and accessible book, Dean Krouk examines the young imperialist adventurer turned hero of the anti-Nazi resistance, Norwegian journalist, poet, and playwright Nordahl Grieg. This volume offers a first-rate analysis of the interwar period's political and cultural agendas in Scandinavia and Europe leading to the Second World War by examining the rise of fascism, communism, and antifascism. Krouk's presentation of Grieg's unexpected ideological tensions will be thought-provoking for many readers in the United States and elsewhere.

Fascism and Modernist Literature in Norway illuminates the connections between literature and politics in interwar Europe. Focusing on the works of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Knut Hamsun and modernist poets Asmund Sveen and Rolf Jacobsen, all of whom collaborated with the Nazi regime during the occupation of Norway in World War II, and those of the anti-fascist novelist and critic Sigurd Hoel, Dean Krouk reveals key aspects of the modernist literary imagination in Norway. In their writings, Hamsun, Sveen, and Jacobsen expressed their discontent with twentieth-century European modernity, which they perceived as overly rationalized or nihilistic. Krouk explains how fascism offered these writers a seductive utopian vision that intersected with the countercultural and avant-garde aspects of their literary works, while Hoel’s critical analysis of Nazism extended to a questioning of all patriarchal forms of authority. Krouk’s readings of their works serve as a timely reminder to us all of the dangers of fascism.