Nordic Paths To Modernity

Within the growing attention to the diverse forms and trajectories of modern societies, the Nordic countries are now widely seen as a distinctive and instructive case. While discussions have centred on the 'Nordic model' of the welfare state and its record of adaptation to the changing global environment of the late twentieth century, this volume's focus goes beyond these themes.

The guiding principle here is that a long-term historical-sociological perspective is needed to make sense of the Nordic paths to modernity; of their significant but not complete convergence in patterns, which for some time were perceived as aspects of a model to be emulated in other settings; and of the specific features that still set the five countries in question (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) apart from one another.

The contributors explore transformative processes, above all the change from an absolutistmilitary state to a democratic one with its welfarist phase, as well as the crucial experiences that will have significant implications on future developments. Review: ...the articles, taken together, provide an exciting picture of the diversity that is unified in the Nordic region... [and] a significant contribution to the discussion of multiple modernities. * Scandinavian-Canadian Studies/Etudes scandinaves au Canada The contributors to this volume are supremely well-qualified to explore these themes; most of them have spent long and distinguished careers researching these or similar questions...As one might expect, the book impresses above all with the weight of scholarship displayed here. * H-Soz-u-Kult ...the chapters are lucidly composed, and consequently pleasant to read...The introduction by the editors is very fine indeed...I find something compellingly interesting everywhere in the text.

The combination of theory, conception and fact is quite gracefully handled. No heavy-footed jargon here. * Sheldon Rothblatt, University of California, Berkeley