The Story of Scandinavia

From the Vikings to Social Democracy

By: Stein Ringen

Narrated by: Chris Courtenay

Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Story of Scandinavia, political scholar Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.

Scandinavian history has been one of dramatic discontinuities of collapse and restarts, from the Viking Age to the Age of Perpetual War to the modern age today. For a thousand years, the Scandinavian countries were kingdoms of repression where monarchs played at the game of being European powers, at the expense of their own populations.

The brand we now know as "Scandinavia" is a recent invention. During most of its history, Denmark and Sweden, and to some degree Norway, were bloody enemies. These sentiments of enmity have not been fully settled. Under the surface of collaboration remain undercurrents of hatred, envy, contempt and pity.

What does it mean today to be Scandinavian? For the author, whose identity is Scandinavian but his life European, this masterly history is a personal exploration as well as a narrative of compelling scope.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Stein Ringen (P)2023 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Critic reviews

Carrying us from the Vikings to today, Stein Ringen's sweeping narrative will engage and instruct everyone from specialists to first-timers. Scandinavia is another outstanding book from a writer remarkable for the breadth of his reach and the incisiveness of his analysis (James T. Kloppenberg, author)

I've been looking forward to this.

I've been looking for a comprehensive "Scandinavian" history and while I have been successful in finding a few that I liked, none of them quite captured the scope I was looking for. As someone of Scandinavian descent, I wanted to hear the whole story (obviously that's technically impossible but you know what I mean). Too many other histories spend too much time with the vikings, feeling as though the area went straight from Harald Blutooth into World War II. I thought this book struck an excellent balance between breadth and depth; a good volume, if you will.

As an audiobook, there were bits and pieces that I would have skipped over in a physical edition, such as lists of kings and things like that. Skipping ahead in an audiobook is a bit more involved since you don't know how long the parts may go on. The accompanying PDF was helpful, but hard for me to remember to check as the book progressed and not much help if you listen while driving, etc.

This is not a romantic history. In fact, I found it amazingly frank at times. I really liked that; histories of a people or place that are too glowing are obviously slanted. I was under no such belief here. In fact, personally, I loved the author's take on the viking era and found it so refreshing after so long in a pop culture that assigns them far more than they are due (especially that freaking Netflix show). The modern welfare state was given its proper treatment, as well. It wasn't derogated as waste or hedonism nor was it deified into an unequivocal utopia. The balance in this story was ridiculously well done.

The author's treatment of religion and religious history was a surprise as I was completely expecting a typical secularist "take-down" of the subject. Given the religious disinterest of modern Scandinavia, I thought that very likely. That's not to say it was overtly pro-faith, but again I think the author struck an amazing balance in storytelling. If they had blatantly lambasted Lutheranism, for example, or skipped over it as "peripheral" then they would have glossed over and misrepresented a foundational part of the modern Scandinavian identity, however unpopular it is today. I was glad to see they didn't do that.

I gave the story three stars only because there were so many names and dates peppered throughout this story; it felt a bit too dry at times. Also, the structure of the story was a little hard to follow. The audiobook chapters and the book's chapters didn't necessarily line up completely (I think there was an added level of subdivision for the audiobook) which made it a bit hard to keep up with. Chapters would cover a period of time focusing on one subject, then the next chapter would go back in time and discuss another period on another subject. Jumping between the three countries was also hard to keep up with sometimes.

I'm confident that most of those issues I had are really just due to my relationship with audiobooks. I like them, but they have their limitations for me. Being able to see the words would've helped me track the paths the story took better, I am sure. But even with that I still enjoyed this book quite a bit!!