BiblioVault - Books about Nordic Countries

Nestor Makhno and Rural Anarchism in Ukraine, 1917-1921

Colin Darch

Pluto Press, 2020

Histories of the Russian Revolution often present the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 as the central event, neglecting the diverse struggles of urban and rural revolutionaries across the heartlands of the Russian Empire. This book takes as its subject one such struggle, the anarcho-communist peasant revolt led by Nestor Makhno in left-bank Ukraine, locating it in the context of the final collapse of the Empire that began in 1914.

Between 1917 and 1921, the Makhnovists fought German and Austrian invaders, reactionary monarchist forces, Ukrainian nationalists and sometimes the Bolsheviks themselves. Drawing upon anarchist ideology, the Makhnovists gathered widespread support amongst the Ukrainian peasantry, taking up arms when under attack and playing a significant role - in temporary alliance with the Red Army - in the defeats of the White Generals Denikin and Wrangel. Often dismissed as a kulak revolt, or a manifestation of Ukrainian nationalism, Colin Darch analyses the successes and failures of the Makhnovist movement, emphasising its revolutionary character.

Over 100 years after the revolutions, this book reveals a lesser known side of 1917, contributing both to histories of the period and broadening the narrative of 1917, whilst enriching the lineage of anarchist history.

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No Man Is An Island

Community and Commemoration on Norway's Utøya

Jørgen Watne Frydnes, translated by Wendy H. Gabrielsen

University of Massachusetts Press, 2025

On July 22, 2011, a white supremacist killed eight people at Oslo’s Government Center in Norway and then terrorized the idyllic island of Utøya, where he executed sixty-nine more people, mostly teenagers. The country had never suffered such a massacre, and in the aftermath, the entire population was reeling.

Utøya, the Norwegian Labor Party’s summer camp for youth, a beloved place where many Norwegians learned about democratic values and processes, made lifelong friendships, and developed a vision for a just society, became mired in grief and discord. When Jørgen Watne Frydnes took on the daunting task of rebuilding the island and charting its future, he had to figure out a compassionate and just way forward. He made a radical decision: he set out to talk with each family of a murdered person, seeking to understand their needs and their hopes so that the future of the island could include their wishes and concerns. This emotionally grueling work, which was never considered in the scholarly literature on commemoration, led to a true renewal of Utøya, resulting in a meaningful memorial to those who were lost as well as beautiful surroundings for campers who come there to study democracy and peace.

Frydnes’s narrative, originally published in Norwegian, is structured around the seasons of the year and the landscape of the island, and tracks one person’s account of learning how to remember, commemorate, and honor the dead, and acknowledge a mass tragedy, and yet also create a nurturing, aspirational space for hope.

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Northern Arcadia

Foreign Travelers in Scandinavia, 1765 - 1815

H. Arnold Barton

Southern Illinois University Press, 1998

Northern Arcadia is a comparative study of the accounts of foreign visitors to the Nordic lands during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Before the late eighteenth century, few foreigners ventured as far as Scandinavia. The region seemed a cold hyperborean wilderness and a voyage there a daring adventure. From the mid-1760s on, however, foreigners arrived in the Nordic lands in increasing numbers, leaving numerous accounts that became increasingly popular, satisfying a growing curiosity about regions beyond the traditional grand tour.

The pre-Romantic mood of the period—with its predilection for untamed nature and for peoples uncorrupted by overrefined civilization—further stimulated fascination with the North. European titerati discovered the Nordic sagas, finding them exhilarating, passionate, imaginative, and original. The French Revolution and the ensuing European wars effectively closed off much of the Continent to foreign travel, turning attention to the still neutral northern kingdoms.

Travel literature about Scandinavia thus illuminates the shift in the European intellectual climate from the enlightened rationalism and utilitarianism of the earlier travelers in this period to the pre-Romantic sensibility of those who followed them. In a Europe torn by war and revolution, sensitive souls could find their new Arcadia in the North—at least until the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves became engulfed by the Napoleonic wars after 1805.

The first scholar to examine as a whole the travel literature dealing with Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and the Færø Islands, H. Arnold Barton discusses accounts left by both the celebrated and the obscure. Well-known travelers include Vittorio Alfieri, Francisco de Miranda, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Malthus, and Aaron Burr. Literary travelers of the day included Nathanael Wraxall, William Coxe, Charles Gottlob Küttner, Edward Daniel Clarke, and John Carr.

Northern Arcadia brings out contrasts: among the various Nordic lands and regions; among the reactions of travelers of differing nationality; between the earlier as opposed to the later travelers of the time; between native Scandinavian and foreign perceptions of the North; between conditions in Scandinavia and those in other parts of the Western world; between then and now. It incorporates continuity and change, reality and mentality.

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Northern Light

Norway Past and Present

Ambassador Nils-Johan Jørgensen was educated at the universities of Oslo and Oxford (Norway Scholar at Wadham) and was Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). As a Norwegian career diplomat he served in Brussels, Copenhagen, Harare, Tokyo, Bonn and Dar es Salaam. He retired in 2001. He is the author of books and articles on European integration, international development, Southern Africa and Germany and Japan.

Amsterdam University Press, 2019

Here is a new, challenging appraisal of Norway, the author’s country of birth, that redefines its history, culture and heritage – ‘after Ibsen’ – and looks, with a degree of ominous foreboding, at its future and the future of Europe. Ex-diplomat and widely published author Jørgensen explores an array of topics, from Norway’s Viking past, its pursuit of independence, the German occupation, its politics and cultural heritage , the defence of NATO, the relationship with Europe, and the challenge of Russia, concluding with ‘self-image and reality’. In Northern Light, the author challenges many existing perceptions and stereotypes, making this an essential reference for anyone interested in Norway and its people, international affairs, European history and its cultural legacy.

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