Customer Reviews

Scandinavia: At War with Trolls--A Modern History from the Napoleonic Era to the Third Millenium

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This is a useful, competent, and satisfying, but not quite outstanding overview of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish history since 1800. It covers all the main events, introduces the main artistic and political personalities, and is written in a direct and easy-to-read style. I was pleased that the author is not among the pedants who insist that Finland is "Nordic but not Scandinavian." He ignores this distinction completely and gives Finland plenty of space in the book, as it deserves. I was surprised that he often seems a bit cynical about Scandinavia and sometimes presents its history in a slightly defeatist tone -- perhaps his intention is to be tongue in cheek but I wasn't always sure.

The book falls short in a few areas. It contains not a single photograph or illustration. While the author writes fluently, one wishes more work had been put into creating a truly pleasant experience for the reader: paragraphs are long, the narration sometimes loses track of what the reader knows, and the use of metaphor gets a bit stretched sometimes. There are a few editing errors (the story of Krueger matches repeats in two slightly different versions, and the Danish section of the bibliography seems to have been omitted). This is too bad because the book is basically pretty good and a little more work could have produced a book that readers would really savor.

I purchased a second hand copy of this book before a trip to Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. It is not what I would call exciting reading but it provides a good survey of Scandinavian history. The context helped me enjoy my trip more.